A Painful Struggle: America Works to Defeat Slavery

The development of the United States is one of continuously expanding freedom. From times before the nation’s beginning in 1776, the America made progress along various lines in the direction of increasing liberty.

The gravest and greatest of these steps was, of course, the elimination of slavery. The majority of Americans resisted slavery: the first slaves were imported into Brazil and other South American regions in 1510, but North America was able to hold out against slavery for more than another century.

Prior to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation, the majority of the residents in the majority of the thirteen colonies opposed slavery. Led by Roger Wiliams, Rhode Island made slavery illegal in 1652. Samuel Sewall published abolitionist writings in Massachusetts as early as 1700.

In all thirteen colonies, energetic abolitionist movements were at work prior to 1776.

Once the nation was established as independent from Britain, is was clear that the “Founders wanted to abolish slavery,” as Ben Shapiro writes:

From its founding, the United States attempted to come to grips with slavery and phase it out. The state of Vermont was the first sovereign state to abolish slavery, in 1777.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that King George III “waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither.” Rebellion against England’s king was a step toward ending slavery.

Although slavery vanished from most of the original thirteen states, and from those later added to the union, it stubbornly resisted American efforts to eradicate it from some of the states, particularly those which had integrated it into agricultural economies of tobacco, cotton, and sugar cane.

Continuing the struggle against slavery, the U.S. Constitution was written in 1787, including the famous and controversial “three-fifths clause.” This phrase was introduced as an anti-slavery tactic: It both created a congnitive dissonance by its disconcerting logic, and denied power to a bloc of pro-slavery states. Ben Shapiro explains:

The Constitution of the United States is frequently seen as enshrining slavery, but the so-called three-fifths clause was an attempt to do the opposite. The whole question of popular apportionment rested on whether to count slaves as full people for purposes of representation. To do so would have put the slaveholding south at a significant advantage: they would have counted slaves in their population, not allowed them to vote, then used their increased representation in order to re-enshrine slavery. As James Madison noted, the delegates from South Carolina fought for blacks to be counted as whole people so as to include them “in the rule of representation, equally with the Whites.” The three-fifths compromise was designed to curb the South’s expansionist tendencies with regard to slavery by preventing them from stacking the electoral deck. The Constitution also allowed slave importation to continue until 1808 — but Congress moved in 1807 to end it there.

By 1807, then, the U.S. was ahead of schedule in its efforts to end slavery. A small but entrenched group of leaders continued to support slavery.

The final end of slavery was possible because the nation’s economy was based, not on slavery, but on free enterprise. Not only was the industrial part of the country not dependent on slavery, but rather it actively opposed slavery.

Yet abolitionism was not confined to any one part of the United States. Before and during the war, significant abolitionist movements existed in all states. The South was not a united monolithic pro-slavery bloc.

For at least these two reasons, then, a massive amount of energy was poured into the war to end slavery: because the larger part of the economy did not rely on slavery, and because the larger part of society was opposed to slavery:

The United States fought a great and massive Civil War to free the slaves, in which over 620,000 Americans died, nearly half the total number of Americans to die in all wars combined. The economy of the United States was not built on slavery — in fact, the South’s economic power was dismal compared to that of the north, which is why the north was able to overcome the south during the Civil War.

Between 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and 1865, when the Civil War ended, America achieved its goal of ending slavery.

In South America, Brazil kept slavery long after the United States had ended it. Slavery was not abolished Brazil until 1888. Likewise, Cuba maintained slavery until 1886.

The movement to abolish slavery in the United States was part of a larger trend to expand freedom for all people. As soon as the Civil War was over, and slavery was gone, this movement went on to obtain another great goal. The abolitionist movement gave birth to the suffrage movement, with the goal of women voting. The same political party, the part of Lincoln, energized both movements. By 1869 — not 1920 as sometimes reported — women in the United States began voting regularly.

Throughout American history, the nation has worked to increase liberty, expanding suffrage to larger and larger segments of society, creating more economic opportunities, and allowing more and varied forms of expression.

The common thread which connects the points of U.S. history from the 1600s to the present is the persistent drive to expand freedom.

Some People Are Citizens, Others Are Residents: What’s the Difference?

Usually people are citizens of the country in which they live, but not always. A person can live in one country, and yet be a citizen of a different country.

A person could be an American citizen, but never have been in the United States at any point in her or his entire life. Another person might live in the U.S. for 20, 30, or 40 years, and yet not be a citizen.

A citizen has rights, privileges, duties, and obligations. Each of those words has specific meaning: Rights belong to citizens, and citizens can legally claim their rights; rights cannot be legally denied to citizens. Privileges are given to citizens, but can be taken away legally. A duty is something that you should do, but which nobody will force you to do. An obligation is some that you’re required to do, and somebody will force you to do it.

This can be made clear with examples: Freedom of the press is a right; people can print whatever they want on a piece of paper. To drive 70 miles per hour is a privilege; the government could change the speed limit to 60 miles per hour and people would have no recourse. To vote is a duty; citizens should do it, but they are not forced to do it. To pay taxes is an obligation; if people try to avoid doing it, they will be forced to do it.

Non-citizen residents do not have as many rights and privileges as citizens. Victor Davis Hansen writes:

A resident of America should be easily distinguished from a citizen by the etymologies of the respective two nouns. “Resident” derives from the Latin residere, “to sit down or settle.” It denotes the concrete fact of living in a particular place. In contrast, “citizen” entails a quality, a privilege of enjoying particular rights predicated on responsibilities — and not necessarily on location at any given time.

If a citizen of the United States happens to be in Norway on the day of a Norwegian election, the U.S. citizen does not get to vote in Norway, even though he’s there in that country, because he’s not a citizen of Norway.

Likewise, if a citizen of Norway happens to be in the United States on the day of a U.S. election, the Norwegian does not get to vote in the U.S., even though he’s right there on election day, because he’s not a citizen of the U.S.

Citizenship is not about a person’s race or religion; it’s not about a person’s gender or age. It’s about a piece of paper; it’s about the government under which you are. There are approximately 195 countries in the world. Every human being is a citizen of one of them.

Are there exceptions? Yes. A small number of people have dual citizenship, or multiple citizenships. But the governments involved place pressure on them to select one citizenship to the exclusion of others, once they reach the age of adulthood, sometime between age 18 and age 25, depending on the country. There is also a very small number of people who have no citizenship; they are usually considered criminals. Victor Davis Hanson explains:

An American resident can be a citizen or subject of any foreign nation who just happens to be living within the boundaries of the United States. US citizens, however, are entitled to constitutional protections wherever they go — to the extent possible given the constraints of their hosts. Most specifically, citizenship ensures the right to a US passport and, with it, leave and return to America whenever one wishes.

Having a citizenship doesn’t determine who you are, what you believe, or which political opinions you have. Simply because a person is a citizen of Germany or Switzerland, or of Poland or Czechia, doesn’t mean that she or he will love or hate certain people, or vote a certain way. It merely means that they are registered with a certain government.

The American Identity: A Nation Built on the Idea of Freedom

In the first few decades of the twenty-first century, the word ‘identity’ has gained a new, larger, and different role in society and in politics. This trend started already at the end of the twentieth century. Therefore it might be, in the context of American History, well and fitting to ask about “the nation’s enduring identity” in the words of Ben Shapiro.

What is it that lies at the core of the identity of the United States? Part of the answer lies in the fact that it is founded on ideas. Most, or even all, previous nation-states were founded on the concept of a dynasty: that the right to rule was the property of a family — one particular family, the royal family — and that like other property, could be handed down through inheritance. The United States is different: It is a nation based on ideas.

In other words, there is a choice in history: either a nation-state is founded on the exclusive hereditary rights of a dynastic family to rule, or it is founded on concepts.

In the case of the United States, the ideas on which the nation is founded include: liberty, freedom, equality, and the rule of law.

Liberty and freedom are slightly different, but those minutiae can be left to philosophers instead of historians. The “rule of law” is worth understanding: This concept speaks about the uniform, neutral, and equal application of laws to any citizen in a nation. The speed limit on a local road, e.g., is the same, even if the driver happens to be a congressman or a senator, even if the driver happens to be wealthy or influential. Anyone caught driving faster than the speed limit is liable to get a ticket and liable to have to pay the fine.

The United States is founded on these ideas, but it has not always implemented them perfectly. American history is a series of steps toward ever-increasing levels of freedom; that path has not always been smooth or direct.

From its earliest beginnings, the United States worked to eliminate slavery. When, e.g., Samuel Sewall published an abolitionist book in 1700, he was already preceded by a 1652 law, passed by the Rhode Island legislature, which outlawed slavery there. The law, encouraged by Roger Williams, was unevenly enforced, but nonetheless manifests the will of the people of Rhode Island.

This same Roger Williams found his motives for opposing slavery to be united with his motives for nudging America away from British rule, revealing the American spirit to be, from its very beginnings, an abolitionist spirit. A majority of the residents of the thirteen colonies opposed slavery.

Despite a strong abolitionist sentiment, it took considerable time to finally abolish slavery. It was not until Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War — i.e., until some point in time between 1863 and 1865 — that slavery in the United States was finally ended.

Which leaves us with a painful and perplexing question: Why, then, did slavery persist in other nations around the world? Why did slavery persist in Cuba until 1886 and in Brazil until 1888? In Madagascar until 1896 and in Egypt until 1904? In Thailand until 1905 and in China until 1909?

The answer, in part, lies in the foundation of the United States on the idea of freedom. Other nations were founded one one group — one family — claiming the right to exercise power over everyone else in the nation.

People in various nations around the world looked at the United States and hoped to copy the American pattern — they hoped to gain the same freedoms and rights for themselves in their various nations. As historian Ben Shapiro writes:

European colonists arrived in America in order to establish a country founded on principles of liberty and religious toleration. America is guilty of many sins in its past — but the principles enshrined in the Constitution are eternal and good. The Constitution’s central natural law principles laid forth the notions of individual liberty and rights to one’s own labor — and over time, those rights would be perfected in the United States, not through centralized government, but through good people struggling to bring about change through blood and sacrifice and persuasion.

In the United States, not only was slavery ended, but the right to own property and the right to vote was extended to citizens of all races; in the world today, there are other nations which allow only some people to vote, and not others. In the United States, a person of any race can be a citizen; in other nations, only people of certain races can be citizens.

In the U.S., women as well as men can vote; in other nations in the world today, women are deprived of full suffrage and not allowed to vote as men vote.

In the U.S., a citizen’s vote is counted as equal to the vote of any other citizen, regardless of wealth. In other nations today, only the wealthy are allowed to vote.

In the words of Ben Shapiro, there is a collection of ideas which constitute “the system upon which our freedoms and prosperity is based.” In addition to the ideas mentioned above, there are ideas like popular sovereignty — the idea that the legitimacy of the government is found in the consent of the governed; a government is valid only if those who are governed by it give their consent to be so governed.

Another foundational principle in the United States is the idea of majority rule. Because the U.S. allows citizens to vote equally, regardless of gender, race, religion, or wealth, it is the majority of ordinary people who can decide major questions of government.

Around the world, the U.S. has served as an example of a nation-state governed by freely-elected representatives. Political revolutionaries and political reformers in other countries have studied the U.S. carefully, and worked to replicate its success. “The truth is, America, while certainly not perfect, has long been a beacon of hope,” as Ben Shapiro notes. “America’s founding principles and documents have allowed it to become a model of freedom and democracy for the world.”

Even those nations which are harshly critical of the United States, even those which firmly oppose the United States, still copy the principles which were first articulated and put into action during the American Revolution of 1776.