In the Shadow of Liberty: Introduction–Chapter 2

Standing in a 1796 portrait of the Washington family is a house servant in uniform, a black man in profile, his features vague and shadowy.

Ona Judge escaped her bondage, bravely challenging America’s most powerful man.

Isaac Granger grew up on Thomas Jefferson’s plantation during the American Revolution and lived among the enslaved people who were called “family” by the author of the Declaration of Independence.

But many people still do not understand or want to accept this basic truth: America was “conceived in liberty” in 1776, but the country was also born in shackles.

Well into the twentieth century and the civil rights movement, the poisonous legacy of slavery shaped many attitudes about African Americans.

For much of that time—in letters, newspapers, books, and speeches—many white people commonly described enslaved African Americans as shiftless or lazy, disrespectful or “uppity,” and ignorant.

For much of that time—in letters, newspapers, books, and speeches—many white people commonly described enslaved African Americans as shiftless or lazy, disrespectful or “uppity,” and ignorant.

More important, slavery destroyed society’s most basic pillar—the family. It did so by telling enslaved people if and when they could marry. It made marriage a whim of the master rather than a legal right.

For generations, American history books hid or downplayed the evils of slavery.

There is no way to gloss over slavery. It was a murderous crime against humanity.

Its brutal tools were whips, manacles, and floating prisons called slave ships.

Slavery always relied on ignorance—keeping the enslaved from learning to read or write because books and words carry the ideas that help set people free.

This book tells the real story of real people—all of them born in slavery’s shackles—who were considered the property of some American heroes.

It is very different to say, for example, that “William Lee was born enslaved” than it is to say, “William Lee was Washington’s slave.” This critical distinction reflects how we think about the people who were victims trapped in a powerful system.

Later, as an ambitious farmer, George Washington relied completely on enslaved labor to grow his crops, catch fish in the nearby Potomac River, clean his house, make his clothes, and put food on his table.

Thirty-five-year-old George Washington was riding through his home county in colonial Virginia when he stopped to take part in an estate sale. One of Washington’s neighbors, Colonel John Lee, had died, and his property was being auctioned to pay off the dead man’s debts. That estate included all of the enslaved people on the plantation.

William Lee, about sixteen years old at the time of the auction, became George Washington’s valet, or personal servant.

Like other Americans, he complained that British taxes on printed paper and other goods were unfair and that other British laws were a form of tyranny.

While Patrick Henry thought slavery was “repugnant,” he never freed any enslaved people because of the “general inconveniency of living without them.”

More than twenty-five enslaved people labored in his home, fields, and mills in upstate New York.

Their stately homes—Mount Vernon, Monticello, Montpelier, and the Hermitage—are major tourist attractions.

The people who were legal “property” of presidents were among the millions of enslaved people who lived and toiled in America—and who were stuck in the shadows, too.

AUGUST 20, 1619
Twenty Africans are brought to the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia. Sold as indentured servants, these African captives must work for a period of time but are promised their freedom.

1684
Africans are imported into Philadelphia, beginning a thriving slave trade in that city.

1700
In Boston, Judge Samuel Sewall, one of the judges in the famous Salem witch trials, writes one of the first antislavery tracts in America.

When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted.

When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted.

Sometimes, the desperate people in chains tried to strike back at the outnumbered crew. Resistance was futile. The white men had all the guns, whips, and swords.

Some were taken away to be “seasoned,” trained in a slave’s duties.

For many years, the notion that slavery had always been practiced—and, more important, approved by the Bible—was used by many Americans to defend slavery.

No one knows exactly how many native people died after Europeans arrived in the New World, but the estimated percentages are staggering—epidemics wiped out as many as 90 percent of some native communities.

When a Spanish priest saw how cruelly the natives were treated and how rapidly they were dying, he recommended a solution. This priest, Bartolomé de las Casas, suggested using imported African laborers instead of oppressing the native people.

As the Spanish and other European colonizers of the New World switched from a frenzied hunt for gold and silver to the production of cash crops like tobacco, rice, and sugar, the demand for African workers exploded.

Wherever Europeans arrived to set up New World colonies—from Canada down to Chile and Peru and across the Caribbean—slavery became key to the conquest of the Americas.

By the early 1700s, fewer white Europeans were willing to accept the hardships of servitude in America.

1713
Quaker opposition to slavery in Philadelphia continues to grow; some Quakers develop a plan for emancipating slaves and returning them to their native lands in Africa.

1739
The Stono Rebellion, a violent slave uprising, is put down in South Carolina. Thirty white people and forty-four black people die in the violence.

1754
John Woolman, a Philadelphia Quaker and tailor, publishes Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes: Recommended to the Professors of Christianity of Every Denomination. Arguing that slavery is unchristian and cruel, it becomes the most widely distributed antislavery work before the Revolution.

1758
Philadelphia Quakers stop buying and selling slaves and press for outright abolition of slavery.

1776
The Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. During the debates, Congress removes a passage in Thomas Jefferson’s draft that condemns the slave trade.