Featuring: Larry Kenneth Alexander
Transcript:
Let us not shy away from the unvarnished truth. America’s revolution was a civil war—colonial Englishmen fighting against imperial Englishmen—a conflict born from shared ethnic roots and diverging ideals. And yet, beneath this battle for independence lies a profound truth that, had it been widely acknowledged, might have altered the course of the rebellion. Slavery in the 13 American colonies was extralegal and pure racial tyranny, the product of colonial government corruption. The British imperial government enacted the American Colonies Act of 1766, also called the Declaratory Act, which abolished all colonial American laws that denied or questioned the supreme legislative authority of England’s parliament. Among the abolished laws were the extralegal colonial slave codes and Negro laws, which perpetuated slavery and stripped Black Englishmen of their legal rights.
These colonial laws were legally indefensible, for only England’s imperial government held the lawful authority to legislate on matters of such gravity, and Parliament, in its wisdom, never authorized slavery within the kingdom. The imperial government abolished all colonial slave codes and Negro laws 10 years before America’s Declaration of Independence in 1776. This truth was laid bare in 1772, when Lord Chief Justice Mansfield of England’s Court of the King’s Bench delivered his landmark ruling in James Somerset versus Charles Stewart. Mansfield declared unequivocally that slavery was not allowed or approved by English law and could only be lawful if authorized by positive law—a legislative power Parliament possessed but never exercised.
This decision sent shockwaves through the 13 colonies, exposing the illegitimacy of their slave codes and Negro laws. The truth was out. As St. Augustine once said, “Truth is a lion. Let it loose, it will defend itself.” This truth was a revelatory fact then, as it is now. In April 1775, as rebellion began to stir in the 13 colonies, Virginia’s royal governor, John Murray, the Earl of Dunmore, issued a warning. If colonists took up arms, he would declare freedom to the slaves and reduce the city of Williamsburg to ashes. Enslaved Black Englishmen did not wait for Dunmore’s declaration. By the hundreds, they seized their freedom, running to British lines for liberation. For them, the lion of truth was already roaring.
Prominent abolitionists in Britain, like Granville Sharp, who championed the Somerset case, saw the glaring contradiction in the American colonists’ cries for freedom while maintaining the brutal institution of slavery. Sharp and his contemporaries condemned the hypocrisy of a revolution that sought liberty for some while denying it to others. British loyalists joined the chorus, pointing to the Somerset decision as evidence that Imperial England, not American patriots, held the moral high ground. They argued that the British Empire was more progressive on the issue of slavery.
This tension—this collision of British ideals and governance—was resolved by America’s Congress and each state government when they chose English law over Thomas Jefferson’s strident objections. The Revolution’s leaders, Imperial England, and Colonial America all bore witness to this truth, and their legislative decisions echo through history, empowering us to confront the contradictions of our past and strive for a future where liberty truly means liberty for all. Let us remember: facts are indeed stubborn things, and we must let the lion of truth continue to roar, unrestrained and provocatively, until every chain is broken and every ahistorical narrative is undone. For truth, once loose, cannot be silenced. It will defend itself.
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