This module addresses one of the central paradoxes Links to an external site.htt

This module addresses one of the central paradoxes Links to an external site.https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paradox of American history: the development of racial slavery in the colonies alongside emerging conceptions of American freedom and liberty. It begins by exploring the growth and spread of racial slavery in the colonies, how race became not just a marker of physical difference but a legal category, and how slavery and the transatlantic slave trade became crucial to the development of America’s political economy Links to an external site. https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-economy
. The essay by Edmund Morgan Links to an external site. https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2013/in-memoriam-edmund-sears-morgan
, “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox,” is a condensed version of his groundbreaking book from 1975, American Slavery, American Freedom
Links to an external site. https://wwnorton.com/books/American-Slavery-American-Freedom/
. Morgan’s thesis, that slavery and freedom in were not incompatible but interdependent in colonial North America, is one of the most important and influential in American history. It’s far more controversial today than it ever has been since the New York Times incorporated some of Morgan’s ideas in its 1619 Project Links to an external site. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=BB5A4463EC404CB06F5D846A063BE604&gwt=pay&assetType=PAYWALL
. This project, which in part echoes Morgan’s arguments about how slavery was central to the development of America’s economy and political system, began in 2019 to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans at Jamestown, Virginia. So much of the public debate on this topic and the 1619 Project – particularly in the media and on social media – is marred by knee-jerk partisanship and ignorance of actual scholarship on the topic. As always, we are holding ourselves to a much higher standard. I do not determine your grade based on whether you agree with Morgan’s arguments (or the 1619 Project) or not. Instead, I want you to think deeply and critically about this topic and come to your own conclusions based on your interpretation of evidence. Your conclusions and interpretations may differ completely from mine – and that’s fine.
The last part of this week’s module covers the American Revolution. This is a monumental topic and I want you to focus on the causes and consequences of the American Revolution, assess the role slavery played it in, and consider why the Revolution left slavery largely intact despite the radicalism of its rhetoric of natural rights, equality, freedom, and liberty. This week’s film, Thomas Jefferson: A View from the Mountaintop, addresses an apparently glaring contradiction from this era. Jefferson, of course, was one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence. He penned the now immortal words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness . . .” Nevertheless, Jefferson held more than 100 men, women, and children in bondage in 1776. How do you explain this seeming contradiction – or is it even a contradiction at all? Arguments that Jefferson was merely a product of his time and place go only so far. Some White Virginia slaveholders could not reconcile the ideals of the Revolution with slavery and some even freed their slaves, either at time or in their wills. But Jefferson and most other slaveholders did neither. Some Protestant Christians, particularly the Quakers, but also the Baptists and Methodists, many of who lived in the South, declared slavery to be a moral and political evil. Jefferson and George Washington and James Madison, along with some other founders, would not have disagreed but they could not bring themselves to emancipate their slaves or abolish the institution in the new nation. Why? And how do you explain the fact that four of the first five presidents of the United States, including Jefferson, were large slaveholders from Virginia? Is that mere coincidence or does it reveal something deeper about the relationship between slavery and America’s political economy at the time?
Again, your answers to these questions may not resemble my answers to them. As always, I’m far more interested in how you think and write as an historian – how you develop and support your ideas – than in what you think.
Readings
“Slavery and the Making of Race,” Links to an external site. Part II, Chapter 3, The American Yawp https://www.americanyawp.com/text/03-british-north-america/#II_Slavery_and_the_Making_of_Race
“Slavery, Anti-slavery, and Atlantic Exchange,” Links to an external site. Part III, Chapter 4, The American Yawp https://www.americanyawp.com/text/04-colonial-society/#III_Slavery_Anti-Slavery_and_Atlantic_Exchange
Morgan, Edmund. “Slavery Links to an external site. and Freedom: The American Paradox,” Links to an external site. The Journal of American History 59, no. 1 (June 1972): 5-29.
https://fscjflvc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01FALSC_FSCJ/2a9b7j/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_60927669
“The American Revolution,” Links to an external site. Chapter 5, The American Yawp

5. The American Revolution

Film
Thomas Jefferson: A View from the Mountain, Part 1
https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-18276caba06
Thomas Jefferson: A View from the Mountain, Part 2
https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-c919258cfe1
Discussion forum intro and questions: In his 1972 essay, “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox,” historian Edmund Morgan writes that dismissing slavery as an unfortunate exception in a new nation dedicated to liberty and freedom is too naïve and simplistic. He also says it’s naïve and simplistic to dismiss the founders commitment to liberty and freedom as a “mere sham.” Instead, he argues, slavery and freedom were interconnected, interdependent. “The rise of liberty and equality in this country was accompanied by the rise of slavery.” This is, Morgan argues, “the central paradox of American history” (5-6).
Do you agree with Morgan – is this the “central paradox of American history”? Why or why not?
How does the example of Thomas Jefferson support or undermine Morgan’s argument?
Instructions: There are two parts to participating in a discussion forum. The first part is your main post. This should be ONE or TWO PARAGRAPHS BUT NO LONGER!!!!! It should directly answer the forum’s questions and use evidence and examples from assigned materials to support your points. You should also cite your sources using simple in-text citations. For example, (“The American Revolution,” The American Yawp) and (Morgan 5-6) when you’re citing the readings and (Thomas Jefferson) when you’re citing the film. You can answer the questions in any way you see fit, but you must use evidence from Morgan’s essay and the film on Thomas Jefferson. Of course, you can use evidence from the assigned chapters in The American Yawp too.