American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia

This chapter introduces the main arguments in American Slavery, American Freedom. Morgan’s thesis is that pre-revolutionary America’s desire for freedom and equality, championed by its Founding Fathers, was “accompanied by the rise of slavery” (4). The key to this uniquely American “paradox” can be found in the history of colonial Virginia (5) because, on the eve of the American Revolution, Virginia was the largest state and Virginians owned 40% of America’s enslaved Africans. Morgan’s work recounts the marriage of slavery and freedom with “the one supporting the other” in the colony of Virginia (6).

Virginia was named during English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh’s failed attempt to build a settlement in Roanoke from 1586-1587. English explorers had to outrun the Spanish, who were enslaving and killing the New World’s indigenous people. To remove the Spanish threat and destroy Spain’s empire, English pirates like Sir Francis Drake took up the cause of freedom. Drake aligned with the Indians and enslaved the Cimarron people of Panama. Morgan notes that his alliance was not undone because of racial prejudice.

Morgan suggests that our understanding of freedom is “an English invention” (15): Parliamentarians established freedom for England in the political realm, while English writers like the Hakluyt cousins advanced the cause of English empire to spread that freedom around the world.