Amin Mudarres
Slavery and freedom: The American paradox.
9/17/2015

From freedom of speech to bringing a concealed firearm into a church, Americans today are quick to reference their favorite colonial ancestors in defending the rights and freedoms our founding fathers fought for. But what is seldom referenced or quoted is how one fifth of the population at the time of the revolution enjoyed none of those rights. For Edmund Morgan, American slavery and American freedom go hand in hand. He points out how many historians have ignored writing about the early development of American independence simply to avoid the fact that it was almost entirely shaped by the rise of slavery. He challenges that notion and looks further in explaining how such …show more content…
Revolutionists had intentions of becoming separate but equal, but those intentions seemingly came at a price. Morgan states 'To a very large degree it may be said that Americans bought their independence with slave labor (122).' Vital to the prosperity of any nation, is its ability to trade. The most obvious choice was tobacco. While Tobacco was a very profitable crop, it was also a very demanding one, leading to labor issue. The market responded and gave birth to the indentured servants, laborers who worked for promised amount of period specified in a contract. These people like most in the Virginia colony hoped to acquire some land after their terms of service. But the reality of the matter was that for many of these indentured servants this would not happen. As their hopes were broken, they increasingly became rebellious, namely with Bacon’s rebellion. As a result, Virginia restricted its freemen even harsher. The assembly of Virginia went as far as to confine voting rights to only landholders and householders, further disenfranchising the growing population of freemen and adding to the growing animosity from their land-owning