American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia

“In spite of the fact that Drake had engaged in the slave trade, in spite of the fact that the English in Ireland were at that very moment subjecting the natives to a treatment not much different from what the Indians of Hispaniola received from Columbus, the English in Panama had cast themselves as liberators and had allied with blacks against whites.” 

Morgan’s intention is to show that although the British had the capacity to treat other people harshly, they did not arrive in America intent on enslaving Indians or Africans. In fact, as Drake’s actions showed, they intended to fight for freedom of all people in the New World, including enslaved Africans (the Cimarron people from what is now known as Panama) who were fleeing Spanish enslavement. Racial prejudice did not seem to hinder English actions generally or Drake’s specifically in the late 16th century.

“With Drake’s help, it seems, the vision of Hakluyt and Raleigh was beginning to materialize: England was bringing freedom to the New World. To be sure, it was coming as a means to an end; Drake and Raleigh were both interested in power, profit, and plunder. But freedom has frequently had to make its way in the world by serving as a means to an end, and it has often proved a powerful means.” 

This quotation supports Morgan’s central argument that freedom and equality were values that Americans sought alongside less desirable and antithetical—and in the case of slavery, fundamentally inhumane—ideas. From the start, then, the ideal of freedom was tinged by self-interest and exploitation of the very men who sought it in the New World. Raleigh and Drake, who respectively challenged the Spanish at the Outer Banks and attempted to integrate the Indians into Virginian freedom and equality, did not envision a colony and relationships based on race or racism.

“Although they hoped for profits, theirs was a patriotic enterprise that would bring civility and Christianity to the savages of North America and redemption from idleness and crime to the unemployed masses of England.” 

Morgan is connecting the ideas that were more fully developed in colonial Virginia, namely by linking the redemption of non-whites with the redemption of the poor. The English originally came to the Americas to make life better for the good Indians whom they thought they would encounter.