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America’s First Constitutions and Declarations of Rights
If in their relations with Great Britain the Americans had a right to
equal rights, it seemed to follow, said later generations, that in their relations with each other, all of the American people had a right to equal
rights. Such, in fact, was the very basis of the principle of equality before
the law—although in 1776 our understanding of this aspect of rule of law
was rather muddled and confused. Even as the colonial patriots paraded
through the streets of Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston, however, and
raised on high their proclamations of liberty, there was an inherent contradiction that suggested hypocrisy in the minds of some Tories. Here was a
Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner.
Here were thirteen colonies, all of them legally recognizing slavery, declaring their love of freedom. ‘‘How is it,’’ quipped the great English
writer Samuel Johnson, ‘‘that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among
the drivers of negroes?’’ That slaveholders should be fighting for their
freedom in the name of the rights of man was indeed a paradox, and with
each passing generation public awareness of the inconsistency between
the American ideal of equal rights and the American practice of slavery
became ever more pronounced. Yet the English were hardly any more intolerant of slavery than the Americans. Before the American Revolution,
approximately one-third of the British merchant fleet was engaged in
transporting fifty thousand Negroes a year to the New World. Parliament did not abolish slavery in the English colonies until 1833. It would
be erroneous to conclude from this, however, that the English and the
Americans, particularly those who participated in the writing and adoption of the Declaration of Independence, were insincere or hypocritical
about their declarations of liberty. The growth of freedom in AngloAmerica, it must be remembered, came about gradually. It began with
the struggle between the King and the English nobility and trickled down
to other classes, each claiming rights and privileges that were previously
enjoyed only by the few. In 1776, this evolutionary process was still in its
infancy, and the notion that all persons were entitled to the same rights
was simply inconceivable to the average freeholder. The freemen saw
t