The focus of the paper, “Slavery and Freedom: The
American Paradox”, was to show that some of the founding fathers were not
as hypocritical as they seem. He used first used Thomas Jefferson as an example
by showing his distrust towards debtors and non-landowners. He distrusted
debtors, despite being one himself, due to their inability to be truly “free”.
He thought that being in debt gave the debtor control and therefore a debtor
could not be free. He also distrusted those who lived in the city and did not
own land. He feared that if they were to lose their job they would have nothing
to fall back on, and could only rely on charity. The author also pointed out
how they couldn’t only worry about slaves in the early times. In the early days
before slavery was as popular, indentured servitude was popular due to the
promise of being gifted land after your work period of over. This in turn backfired when the tobacco
buyers wouldn’t buy small amounts of barrels, leading the previously indentured
servants to rebel in Bacon’s Rebellion.
This led to an increased rate of slavery since the slaves had a much
harder time rebelling and could be punished more harshly.
The
point of view for this paper was not of someone from today, but was attempting
to be a point of view like how those living during the time would have had. You
can first see this with how he talks about how Thomas Jefferson was not as
racist as we would assume today. The next time we can see the point of view is
when they talk about the fear of rebellions of servants and slaves alike, and
how this evolved into a large fear of the slaves by many owners. This point of
view is also shown when talking about Sir William Berkeley and his immense fear
of rebellion due to his history regarding the English civil wars.
Our
discussions in class touched on a lot of topics and questions coming from the
reading, and surprisingly, outside it as well. We talked a lot about where the
fear of slaves and servants came from and how it came to be. We also talked
about how relationships(both consensual and unconsensual) were somewhat common
between slaves and their masters, most prominently, we talked about Thomas
Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemmings, with whom he is believed to have had 6
children. We also talked about how the rebellions of slaves in Haiti fueled the
fear of owners in the colonies.
We are
left wondering whether the author is correct in his assumptions that masters
lived in fear of their slaves. Another possible question could be whether the
founding fathers were truly hypocritical and hiding it or whether they were
just fearful and trying to do the best for their people. Another question I
personally have is if the slave owners were fearful or if a large part in the
fear was to gain stricter laws and make sure their slaves stayed complacent and
in line so the farms would stay in operation.