In a message dated 4/4/02 2:12:13 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
<< your point about slavery not being a
defining issue in the land of Adams, Otis, or Dickinson is weak. >>
Mr. Kiracofe:
I agree that statement was not well thought and the rest of your post
accurately states the historical circumstances. This issue arose from
Professor Hardwick's assertion that Jefferson could not have been Jefferson
without slavery. I was challenging that assertion on the basis that the
intellectual thought of the colonies was reached without regard to slavery,
and in fact, it was reached in spite of slavery. There was slavery throughout
the world in the 18th century of both white and black with a most grievous
form in the English colonies. But the evolution of law and thought in Britain
and the impact of the Enlightenment was Jefferson's intellectual heritage and
the slavery of that thought was political and economic, not the chattel
slavery of the Africans and others. Indeed, Locke acknowledges that slavery
fits within his natural rights concept. The colonists railed against
Parliament for attempting to "make them slaves" all the while owning slaves,
so African slavery in the colonies was not in any way the genesis of that
political philosophy, although my three examples, Adams, Otis and Dickinson,
came to include them in the sweep of that concept, as did Jefferson. To pose
it another way, had there been no slavery in British America, the history of
intellectual thought for Adams, Otis and Dickinson and Jefferson would have
been the same, the period of conflict from 1763 to Lexington would have been
the same and Jefferson would still have written the Declaration of
Independence.
_____________________________________________________________________ Richard
E. Dixon
Attorney at Law
4122 Leonard Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030
703-691-0770
fax 703-691-0978
______________________________________________________________________
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