Part 3: After Bacon's Rebellion
"When Africans, indigenes and poor Europeans began to rebel, simultaneously, simple survival {of the capitalist slavocracy} meant concessions to one of these groups. In this context, scuttling the aspirations of Africans indigenes versus assuaging poorer Europeans seemed to be the only viable option given the momentum of settler colonialism" (22)
"The colonies were class societies and, hence, within them, class struggle was characteristic. There was not only the Transatlantic phenomenon but also the internal conflicts of: artisans, mechanics, workers against merchants and bosses; slaves against slave owners; yeomen against large planters; debt-farmers against wealthy land owners and creditors. These class struggles permeate all of colonial history and always - from Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia in 1667 to the Massachusetts Land War, led by Samuel Adam's father in the 1740s - the forces of the king were arrayed on the side of 'law and order' (exploitation and plunder) and served as bulwarks against the urgent demands of the colonial masses" (23)
Thus, the slave owning class initiated, over a period of decades, a carefully calculated system to maintain slavery while maximizing their profits, by gradually abolishing European indentured servitude, in favor of lifetime, hereditary enslavement of Africans. To justify this, they formulated the specious concept of a separate, superior 'white race' as a means of forging cross-class unity among all people in the colonies of European descent.
John Locke
John Locke, the author of Two Treatises of Government in 1689 (his most famous work), wrote Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina in 1669. In that book he says, among other things, that "every Freeman in Carolina shall have "absolute power and authority over his Negro Slaves."
However, he goes even further. The work is essentially a 'manifesto' justifying social hierarchy and class oppression.
Locke envisioned a colonial system that confers favor upon elites and manor lords. According to him, commoditization of land must be based on class status. He divided counties in the South Carolina colony into 5 sections: one-fifth for property owners, one-fifth for aristocrats, and three-fifths for untitled manor lords and freeholders. Locke's constitution had no place for 'democracy'.
"Land held power because if its extent, potential for settlement, and future increase. Knowing how to master the land's fruitfulness was the true definition of class power. It is important that we understand Bacon's Rebellion for what it revealed: the most promising land was never equally available to all . . .By 1700, indentured servants no longer had much of a chance to own land. They had to move elsewhere or become tenants. The royal surveyors made sure that large planters had first bids on new, undeveloped land, and so the larger tracts were increasingly concentrated in fewer hands. Then as more ships of slaves arrived in the colony, these too were monopolized by major landholding families." (24)
Theodore Allen informs us that the chattel slave owning class made a special effort to make sure white supremacy was systematically propagated. In the 1705 Act Concerning Servants and Slaves, and the 1723 Act Directing the Trial of Slaves, it was mandated that parish clerks and church 'wardens' regularly read these laws to their congregants.
"This era saw the emergence of laws barring people, classified as white, from meeting or marrying members of the population assigned to the bottom castes. Becoming an armed servant or overseer, with material and social benefits, was an offer most European settlers could not refuse if they wanted to avoid poverty, prison or banishment to even harsher environments."(25)
This propaganda was also posted on the doors of courthouses. All people of European descent (who had previously been designated by their European nation of origin) - whether they were property owners or property-less - were now 'white', and, supposedly, part of the ruling class.
"The denial of the right of self-defense, {to African males} would become a factor in the creation of a novel form of white male supremacy, informed by the principle that any white male could assume 'familiarity' with any black female. That principle came to be sanctioned by law. A 1667 Maryland Provincial Court decision, for example, stipulated that "no slave had recourse against the violator of his bed. . .The law simply does not criminalize the rape of slave women" (26)
"Nor does the colored woman suffer alone: the moral purity of the white woman is deeply contaminated. She lives in habitual intercourse with men, whom she knows to be polluted by licentiousness, and often is she compelled to witness in her own domestic circle," Sarah Grimke (a Southern white woman from a slave owning family, who with her sister, Angelina, became active in both the Abolitionist and Suffrage movements)
"Enslaved women were, as defenders of slavery put it, 'safety valves', helping to redirect the lust of white men away from white women"(27)
A thorough and honest study of American history sheds much needed light on the relationship between male and white supremacy. In the late 17th century Virginia's colonial rulers passed a law that said that ALL children born to enslaved mothers were automatically enslaved. This established the principle of 'descent through the mother', which was a reversal of the English common law principle of 'descent through the father (partus sequitur), a law which had been in existence for hundreds of years. This allowed slave owners to reproduce their labor force, through sexual intercourse, without any personal responsibility or familial obligations.
As the colonies transitioned from indentured servitude to lifetime, hereditary enslavement of Africans, the latter were required to carry 'passes'. Despite this, slave uprisings, large and small, continued. Virginia enacted its first slave codes - official rules for regulating the behavior of the enslaved - and established the notorious slave patrols.
"The system of slavery demanded a special police force and such a force was made possible and unusually effective by the presence of the poor whites. This explains the difference between the slave revolts in the West Indies, and the lack of effective revolt in the southern United States.
In the West Indies, the power over the slave was held by the Whites and carried out by them and such Negroes as they could trust. In the South, on the other hand, the great planters formed, proportionately, quite as small a class, but they had singularly enough at their command some five million poor Whites; that is, there were actually more white people to police the slaves than were slaves"(28)
By 1704, the colonial government in South Carolina established slave patrols, embedding them into the already existing volunteer militias. Other colonies followed their model; one which would generally remain in place until the Civil War. Learning to read and holding meetings were strictly outlawed.. Organizing or even suggesting rebellion could result in death. Whites who refused to participate in patrols received stiff fines.
These militias and patrols did not just consist of impoverished white men. According to historian Sally Hadden, all white males, rich or poor, were required to participate in militias and patrols, although the commanders were usually property owners and slave owners.
"After 1650 slavers in Virginia began expanding deeper into the territory of the Tuscarora Nation, and were the first English settlers in what became the North Carolina colony in 1729. During the first three decades of Virginia settler incursion, the colony's militia was used solely to attack and burn down Tuscarora towns, incinerate their crops, and slaughter the families who resided there" (29)
The French and Indian War (1754-1763) was the North American manifestation of the Seven Years War between France and Britain, essentially over colonial 'territories'. Between 1756 and 1763, European colonial powers fought a series of wars, primarily over colonial possessions, all over most of the world. With England emerging the major victory, it gave them domination over world trade (particularly sea power) for almost two centuries. Consequently, France lost all claims to Canadian lands east of the Mississippi River.
During the war, Indigenous peoples, including the Ottawa, Miami, Kickapoo and the confederation of tribes under Chief Pontiac's leadership, allied with British forces. Although the alliance proved to be in a losing effort, the toll it took on the victors was great enough that the indigenous were able to wrest a concession from the British colonialists: halt the migration of settlers west of the Allegheny-Appalachian mountain chain "ordering those who had settled there to relinquish their claims and return to the kingdom's thirteen colonies"(30). This was known as the Royal Proclamation of 1763.
Of course, abandoning their colonial expansion was the very last thing many settlers wanted to do. They defied it every chance they got.
"In 1765, in order to enforce the Proclamation line, the British Parliament imposed the Stamp Act on the colonists; a tax on all printed materials that had to be paid in British pounds, not local paper money. The iconic colonial protest slogan "taxation without representation is tyranny". . .did not tell the whole story, considering what the tax was to pay the cost of housing, feeding and transporting soldiers"(31).
"Individual white settlers who took Native American lands feared retaliation. But many white people lived in cities and were not worried about Indian attack. White settlers, in conjunction with the U.S. government which wanted to "open up" Native American land, had to convince the public that Native Americans were dangerous and needed to be exterminated.
A campaign, using, pictures and the media created images of Indians as primitive, cruel savages who wanted to kill white men and rape white women. This campaign made it easier to justify the appropriation of Native American lands, and the death and removal of Native Americans themselves."(32)
There is significant evidence confirming that the decision to issue a unilateral declaration of independence from Great Britain was made many years before 1776. . .
Spain's colonial settlements, begun on the west coast of the continent, were expanding east and south., eventually exceeding in size the British-controlled ones. Colonial rivalries - including the French - raged even after 1776.. Moreover, Spain, with colonies throughout Central and South America, began freeing some of their slaves, especially in their Florida colony, arming them to attack the adjacent British colonies.
As a countermeasure the British began to arm their enslaved population in various parts of their colonies, even considering abolition. Of course their colonial surrogate leaders were vehemently opposed to these developments.
The founding-fathers-to-be were socially engineering a society - a slavocracy - based on the myth of white supremacy, as a form of colonial control and labor policy. The very last they wanted was armed ex-slaves in their midst.
The periodic slave uprisings and insurrections caused many colonists to refer to the enslaved Africans as "intestinal enemies." These contradictory strains were creating a symbiotic loathing and reliance upon Africans, with murderous surveillance deemed necessary to ensure that they were at all times under control, a trend that did not necessarily abate with the founding of the new republic."(33)
Another critical concern for the colonial slavocrats was a dynamic Abolition Movement emerging in the Mother Country. That movement created the atmosphere that resulted in a stunning judicial ruling in the Somerset Case of 1772. . .
Lord Mansfield, who ruled in favor of James Somerset
James Somerset was an enslaved man who was brought from South Carolina to London with his owner, William Drayton. Shortly after arriving he escaped, was subsequently caught, but sued for his freedom. After a contentious trial, he was allowed to go free. The judge in the case found that slavery was not supported in the Common Law.
From the perspective of many U.S. slave owners the verdict portended the end of chattel slavery in all of the British colonies.
"How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?," said Samuel Johnson, a prominent British writer, in 1775. "If the Negroes are furnished with firearms for defense, and utensils for husbandry, and settled in some simple form of government within the country, they may be more grateful and honest than their masters. Arm the Africans and indigenes to çombat the rebels!"(34)
The break with Britain was inevitable. . ."
Notes
22. Gerald Horne, Apocalypse of
Settler Colonialism, pg. 148
23. Herbert Aptheker, The Unfolding
Drama, pg. 16
24. Nancy Isenberg, White Trash, pg.
41
25. John Woodford, Apocalypse of Our
Times (Against the Current,
Jan./Feb. 2019) pg. 27
26. Theodore Allen, The Invention of
the White Race, pg. 103
27. Greg Grandon, The End of the
Myth, pg. 73
28. W.E.B. Du Bois, Black
Reconstruction in America, pg. 12
29. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, LOADED,
A Disarming History of the Second
Amendment, pgs. 61-62
30. Ibid., pgs. 30-31
31. Ibid., pg. 31
32. Paul Kivel, Uprooting Racism, pgs.
54-55
33. Gerald Horne, The
Counter-Revolution of 1776, pg.
241
34. Ibid., pg. 240
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