The Politics of Reconstruction (Part 03)

When the U.S. Civil War ended in 1865, the victorious Republican Party saw a chance to solidify its gains. The Republicans had created their political party with the goal of ending slavery. Now that the war was over and slavery was ended, the Republicans wanted to make sure that slavery was permanently gone and would never come back. They also wanted to make sure that the newly-freed African-Americans would have the full rights of citizenship.

Meanwhile, the defeated Democrats were angry. They had defended slavery, and sought maintain and support slavery. But now their former slaves were free citizens and able to vote. Even though the Democratic Party had lost the war, it hoped to find ways to prevent African-Americans from having civil rights.

This conflict between the Democrats and the Republicans in the postwar years was actually the same conflict they had in the prewar years. This postwar era is called the ‘Reconstruction’ era.

In the prewar years, the conflict took the form of the Republican Party, its goal of abolishing slavery, and its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, as historian Dinesh D’Souza writes:

In the years leading up to the war, in multiple addresses and in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln himself stressed the main issue that separated the two parties. “The difference between the Republican and the Democratic parties,” Lincoln said in a September 11, 1858, speech at Edwardsville, Illinois, “is that the former consider slavery a moral, social and political wrong, while the latter do not consider it either a moral, social or political wrong.”

The Democrats defended slavery so strongly that they were willing to start a four-year-long war about the issue, causing more than 500,000 deaths.

During the war, in the election of 1864, the Democrats nominated George McClellan, a pro-slavery candidate, to be president. McClellan lost, and Abraham Lincoln won reelection.

After the war’s end, the Democratic Party had a strong affection for the “plantation” lifestyle, a lifestyle which ended when Lincoln freed the slaves in 1863. The Democrats wanted their slaves back, as Dinesh D’Souza reports:

Even in the aftermath of the Civil War, so strong was their attachment to the plantation that an overwhelming majority of Northern Democrats refused to vote to permanently end slavery. Again, we are speaking of Northern Democrats; Southern Democrats who may have been expected to vote against the amendment were not permitted to vote at all. And when the Thirteenth Amendment went to the states for ratification, only Republican states carried by Lincoln voted for it; Democratic states that went for McClellan all voted no.

The Republican Party promoted three constitutional amendments: the Thirteenth Amendment, which protected and made permanent Lincoln’s decree that slavery be permanently abolished; the Fourteenth Amendment, which declared that former slaves would have full citizenship and enjoy equal protection under the law; and the Fifteenth Amendment, which specified that all citizens, including former slaves, had right to vote, regardless of race.

These three “Republican Amendments” revealed the core beliefs of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party opposed all three.

Even after the end of the Civil War, the Democrats hoped somehow to recreate a slave-like condition for African-Americans. Their main way of doing this was the ‘sharecropping’ system, which exploited certain legal agreements to keep former slaves, and other Blacks, in poverty.

Sharecropping was one way the Democratic Party fought against the “Republican Amendments” during the ‘Reconstruction’ era. Opposing the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments was another way. After 1877, the end of the Reconstruction era, Democratic legislatures began to write “Jim Crow Laws,” another attempt to reverse the Republican Party’s achievements.

The Politics of Reconstruction (Part 02)

The U.S. Civil War (1861 to 1865) grew out of political disputes between the Democrats and the Republicans in the 1850s. When the war ended, those disputes continued. In the years after the Civil War, from 1865 to 1877, Democrats and Republicans continued to argue. Historians call these postwar years the ‘Reconstruction’ era.

In all three eras — before the war, during the war, and after the war — the conflict was about slavery. The Democrats defended the institution of slavery, and wished to support and maintain it. The Republicans had created their political party with the goal of ending slavery. The two parties were absolutely opposed to each other.

“The slavery debate was not a North-South debate but rather a partisan debate,” writes historian Dinesh D’Souza. A leader in the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, wrote the following to a leader in the Democratic Party:

You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.

Commenting on this letter, written by Lincoln, historian Dinesh D’Souza notes that:

In 1860, at the time Lincoln wrote this letter, no Republican owned a slave. I don’t mean merely that no Republican leader owned a slave. No Republican in the country owned a slave. All the slaves in the United States at the time — all four million of them — were owned by Democrats.

It is clear that this opposition between the parties during the prewar years is the same conflict that continued between them in the postwar years. During the ‘Reconstruction’ era, the Republicans overcame the Democratic Party to ratify three amendments to the Constitution.

The three Reconstruction amendments formed the basis for civil rights, not only for African-Americans, but eventually for all citizens. These amendments grew organically out of the Declaration of Independence, out of the U.S. Constitution, and out of the Bill of Rights.

The magnificient scope of Republican Reconstruction can be seen in three landmark constitutional amendments: the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment extending equal rights under the law to all citizens; and the Fifteenth Amendment granting blacks the right to vote. These amendments went beyond unbinding the slave and making him a freeman; they also made him a U.S. citizen with the right to cast his ballot and to the full and equal protection of the laws.

Yet the Democrats stubbornly opposed these amendments. The Reconstruction era is the time when the Republicans worked to solidify the civil rights of African-Americans, while the Democrats were simply angry that their slaves had been taken away.

The anger and resentment which lingered in the Democrats would last for many years. The bitter feud between the two parties did not go away quickly, and did not go away even after the painful and bloody Civil War.

Before, during, and after the war, the hostile relationship between the two parts was largely the same, and based on the same disagreement about the same issue.

The Politics of Reconstruction (Part 01)

Historians use the word ‘Reconstruction’ to refer to the years immediately after the U.S. Civil War.

The war ended when General Grant and General Lee signed the terms of surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. Some historians argue that the ‘Reconstruction’ began somewhat earlier, in those regions of the Democrat territory that had already been taken over or occupied by the Republicans.

The Reconstruction is generally thought to have ended around 1877, but again, that date is subject to some interpretation.

The Reconstruction marks a transition: the conflict about slavery was fought with military weapons during the war; after the war, the conflict continued, but not as a military conflict. Before, during, and after the war, the Democratic Party supported slavery.

The Republican Party was created for the purpose of ending slavery. The Democrats felt angry and humiliated that the Republican Party had succeeded in its goal. The Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, had freed the slaves by signing his Emancipation Proclamation, and the Republicans had supported the Union Army to ensure that the slaves were freed.

There were people who voted for the Democratic Party both in the northern states and in the southern states. In the North, the Democrats were in the minority; in the South, they were in the majority. During the Civil War, the Democrats in the northern states were in communication with the Democrats in the southern states. Their continuous goal was to maintain slavery. After the war, their goal was to restore and renew slavery.

Likewise, the Republican voters in the North were the majority, but in the South they were a minority. Because the Republicans had dedicated themselves to ending slavery, the Republican voters in the South — although they were in the minority — carried out sabotage operations to undermine the Democratic Party’s war effort.

After the war, the Republicans worked to solidify the end of slavery, by passing the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. These amendments to the Constitution guaranteed civil rights for African-Americans. The Democratic Party opposed these amendments furiously.

Historian Dinesh D’Souza explains that, given the nature of political events before, during, and after the Civil War, it is clear that events “blame the conflict mostly on” the Democratic Party, and further blame the Democratic Party “again for the postbellum resistance to” the efforts of Reconstruction. Looking at the leadership of the Confederate States of America, “the Democratic Party affiliation of the Confederates” is clear.

The President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, was a member of the Democratic Party, as was his vice-president, Alexander Stephens. But support for slavery was not limited to the Democratic Party in the southern states.

In the northern states, the words and actions of elected officials, party officials, and ordinary voters show “the role of the Northern Democrats in upholding slavery before and during the Civil War, and then reestablishing a form of neo-slavery in the South after the war.” Not only was the Democratic Party composed of “apologists for slavery,” but Democrats established the system of sharecropping as way to push African-Americans back down into an inferior status.

“The Civil War arose” because of a conflict between two political parties. The basis of the war was “a bitter struggle between a Republican Party that sought to block the spread of slavery and a Democratic Party North and South that sought to continue it.” It was “the role of the Northern Democrats, even during the war, to undermine the Union war effort, to force a peace treaty with the South and to give slavery a permanent place in America’s future.”

The Democratic Party, before, during, and after the Civil War, was united in its desire to preserve and promote slavery. In the first few years of postwar peace,

the Northern Democrats attempted to block the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and worked closely with the Southern Democrats to defeat Reconstruction, which was a Republican project to create multicultural democracy in America. Instead the Democrats deplyed a new weapon, racial terrorism, to disperse white Republicans, subjugate blacks, and reestablish their political hegemony in the South.

After the Civil War, leaders in the Democratic Party asked the rhetorical question, “What did we go to war for, but to protect our property?” The famous Democrats who’d argued heatedly for slavery before and during war continued to be the leaders of their political party after the war. Alexander Stephens, one of the first to use this rhetorical question, was the Vice President of the Confederate States of America during the war, and cheerfully nominated by the Democratic Party to run for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives.

Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, influenced policy inside the Democratic Party during the postwar years, giving speeches and writing books.

Although the Republican Party had the majority of voters in the northern states, there were still a significant number of Democrats in the North, and they continued to agitate for slavery during and after the war. Before the war began, President Lincoln, as a leader in the Republican Party, wrote to a leader in the Democrat party:

You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.

It is no surprise that the Democrats in the South supported slavery. It is shocking to learn that the Democrats in the North supported slavery, and did so long after the Civil War ended. The Republican Party had been created for the purpose of ending slavery, and the Democrats were angry that the Republicans had succeeded. Regarding the words quoted above from Lincoln’s letter, Dinesh D’Souza writes:

Lincoln was not actually distinguishing the positions of the North versus the South. The North certainly did not unanimously share the view that slavery was wrong. Only Republicans in the North held that position. Democrats in the North — Stephen Douglas notably among them — emphatically rejected that view. Northern Democrats led by Douglas contested the 1860 election against Lincoln on the basis of that disagreement.

The Reconstruction Era was a struggle between the Democrats and the Republicans. The Reconstruction Era was simply a continuation of the war, which had been a conflict between the two parties.

Kennan's Prescient Awareness of the Soviet Threat: Should America Ally Itself with the USSR?

Between 1931 and 1963, George F. Kennan worked for the U.S. State Department. During those years, and afterward, he gathered information, analyzed it, and explained it, both to the U.S. federal government, as well as to the public at large. He served under an impressive and diverse array of presidents — Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson.

In 1941, Kennan was in Berlin, observing the operations of the Nazi government, which had taken over Germany eight years earlier. France and England were already at war with the Nazi government. Russia, i.e. the USSR, had recently switched sides, from being a friend of the Nazis to an enemy of the Nazis.

America was already supporting Britain in its war effort to liberate Germany from the Nazis. It was becoming increasingly clear that the United States would probably soon become directly involved in the war.

When Russia changed its allegiance, and started fighting against both the Germans and the Nazis, the English government under the leadership of Winston Churchill issued statements warmly welcoming the Soviet Socialists to the anti-Nazi cause. It is probable that many English political leaders had private misgivings about an alliance with the Soviets.

The question facing the United States was this: in American efforts to stop the Nazis, should the U.S. embrace the Soviet Socialists as allies? Like many officials in the upper levels of government, George Kennan was aware of the mass murders which the Soviets had carried out in Ukraine and other places. Kennan wrote to Washington from Berlin:

I feel strongly that we should do nothing at home to make it appear that we are following the course Churchill seems to have entered upon in extending moral support to the Russian cause in the present Russian-German conflict. It seems to me that to welcome Russia as an associate in the defense of democracy would invite misunderstanding of our own position and would lend to the German war effort a gratuitous and sorely needed aura of morality. In following such course I do not see how we could help but identify ourselves with the Russian destruction of the Baltic States, with the attack against Finnish independence, with the partitioning of Poland and Romania, with the crushing of religion throughout Eastern Europe, and with the domestic policy of a regime which is widely feared and detested throughout this part of the world and the methods of which are far from democratic. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that in every border country concerned, from Scandinavia — including Norway and Sweden — to the Black Sea, Russia is generally more feared than Germany.

Kennan’s report reveals that, even after fighting had begun on the Eastern Front, the nations of central and eastern Europe were more worried about the Soviets than about the Nazis.

Such worries turned out to be correct. Although the war in that part of the world killed many thousands of people between 1939 and 1945, the postwar Soviet occupation of that same part of the world killed millions more. The postwar peace under Soviet Socialist domination turned out to be deadlier than the war itself.

From Rome to Philadelphia, from Cicero to Thomas Jefferson: The Implications of Ancient Philosophy for the Modern and Postmodern World

The phrase “Natural Law” is not common in ordinary conversation, but it is central to understanding the form of government which has allowed the United States to be an example of freedom, liberty, and civil rights. What is Natural Law? Simply this: the idea that some things are right, and some things are wrong.

By saying that “some things are right,” Natural Law theory means to reject the idea that some things are merely “thought to be right” or “believed to be right” or that it is “someone’s opinion that some things are right.” When Natural Law theory says that “some things are right,” it means that the “rightness” of those things is independent of anyone’s opinion or belief.

It is important to note that Natural Law theory is not liberal or conservative, it is not leftwing or rightwing, and it is not Republican or Democrat. Rather, it is a way of thinking that most people use, whether they know it or not. Most political views, opinions, or parties use some form of Natural Law theory to promote themselves.

Natural Law theory is an effort to escape subjectivism — to escape being trapped in a cloud of beliefs and opinions, and to enter into the realm of reality and fact.

The Roman author Cicero wrote about Natural Law theory. The Founding Fathers are the authors of the United States Constitution; they had studied many books, including Cicero’s writings. But the differences between Cicero and the Founding fathers were large: Cicero did much of his writing around 75 B.C., the Founding fathers were writing in the 1780s. Cicero lived in Rome, the Founding fathers lived in America. Cicero was a pagan polytheist, the Founding Fathers were Christians.

But despite these differences, they had much in common. They sought freedom and liberty for citizens of their nations. They saw that freedom and liberty can be protected by a government composed of freely-elected representatives. They saw that justice is the result of exploring the objective nature of the universe, not mere subjective opinions.

One of the connecting points between Cicero and the Founding Fathers was a legal scholar named William Blackstone, who lived neither in America nor in Rome. Blackstone lived in England. He transmitted the idea of Natural Law from Cicero to the Founding Fathers, as historian Cleon Skousen writes:

Most modern Americans have never studied Natural Law. They are therefore mystified by the constant reference to Natural Law by the Founding Fathers. Blackstone confirmed the wisdom of the Founding Fathers by stating that it is the only reliable basis for a stable society and a system of justice. Then what is Natural Law? A good place to seek out the answer is in the writings of one of the American Founders’ favorite authors, Marcus Tullius Cicero.

The phrase “Founding Fathers” can be used to refer to the authors of the United States Constitution, but it can also be used to refer to the authors of the Declaration of Independence, or it can be used more generally to refer to the people who worked, in one way or another, to create freedom and independence for the United States.

In any case, they, like most modern and postmodern thinkers, used some form of Natural Law theory, as scholar Cleon Skausen writes:

It was Cicero who cut sharply through the political astigmatism and philosophical errors of both Plato and Aristotle to discover the touchstone for good laws, sound government, and the long-range formula for happy human relations. In the Founders’ roster of great political thinkers, Cicero was high on the list.

The flexibility of Natural Law theory is also its strength: in a policy debate, it is common for both sides to use some Natural Law argumentation. It is so pervasive that speakers and authors are often unaware that they are using Natural Law theory.

Writers who argue against Natural Law theory often, unknowingly, use Natural Law reasoning in their effort to abolish Natural Law.

To understand the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, the reader must be aware of Natural Law theory. This is true also of the other documents which have ensured human rights and justice throughout the world: from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense to John Locke’s Treatises on Government; from Edmund Burke’s writings to the thoughts which guided James Otis and Sam Adams.

A Conflict of Armies, a Conflict of Ideas: World War II as an Ideological Battle

World War II is an event which is unavoidable in the study of the twentieth century. As historian Howard Zinn writes,

Never had a greater proportion of the country participated in a war: 18 million served in the armed forces, 10 million overseas; 25 million workers gave of their pay envelope regularly for war bonds.

The ideologies of WWII represented a spectrum of political doctrines. The Western Allies spoke of freedom and liberty, of governments composed of freely-elected representatives, and of the equal dignity and value of each and every human life. The Axis powers demonstrated through their actions an opposing ideology, as Zinn notes:

It was a war against an enemy of unspeakable evil. Hitler's Germany was extending totalitarianism, racism, militarism, and overt aggressive warfare beyond what an already cynical world had experienced.

Between the Axis and the Western Allies were the ambiguous Soviet Socialists. In the late 1930s, until June 1941, they joined forces with the Axis powers and had gleefully invaded Poland. They pivoted instantly to the Allied side of the war after Hitler’s Nazis betrayed and attacked them.

What was the difference between Hitler’s “National Socialism” and Stalin’s “Soviet Socialism” — or was there a difference? The reader will recall that the word ‘Nazi’ is simply an abbreviation for ‘National Socialism.’

The war effort to stop the Axis powers, an effort put forth by the English, French, and American governments, representated “something significantly different, so that their victory would be a blow to imperialism, racism, totalitarianism, militarism, in the world,” as Zinn phrases it. It is no mere coincidence that questions about civil rights would come to the fore in the United States during WW2.

By means of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), and its predecessor, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), women were integrated into the armed services to a degree never before experienced. Women rose to officer rank, and were entrusted with classified secrets of military intelligence.

Although President Franklin Roosevelt and his Secretary of War Henry Stimson insisted on a policy of segregation among troops, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower decided to integrate Black and White soldiers. As historian Evan Andrews writes about the Allied military commanders, the “situation during the Battle of the Bulge inspired them to turn to African American G.I.s on more than one occasion.”

Black soldiers served in large numbers. Eisenhower took a risk, contradicting Roosevelt’s demand for a segregated army. The Roosevelt administration also did not want Black troops in combat; it wanted them in support roles. But Black infantrymen were eager to prove themselves in combat, and Eisenhower gave them that opportunity. Combat soldiers also often received higher pay, as Evan Andrews reports:

Some 2,500 black troops participated in the engagement, with many fighting side by side with their white counterparts. The all black 333rd and 969th Field Artillery Battalions both sustained heavy casualties assisting the 101st Airborne in the defense of Bastogne, and the 969th was later awarded a Distinguished Unit Citation — the first ever presented to a black outfit. Elsewhere on the battlefield, troops from the segregated 578th Field Artillery picked up rifles to support the 106th Golden Lions Division, and an outfit called the 761st “Black Panthers” became the first black tank unit to roll into combat under the command of General George S. Patton.

Creating a milestone event in the history of civil rights, “Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and John C.H. Lee called on black troops to” move to the front and take on important combat roles. Responding to an opportunity never given to them before, “several thousand had volunteered by the time the engagement ended.”

In general, America’s “wartime policies” were designed to “respect the rights of ordinary people everywhere to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” in Zinn’s words. Did America do this perfectly? Of course not. But America made progress, and made more progress than had ever been made before, in matters of civil rights and racial equality. Again, it is no simple accident that the “civil rights era” and the “civil rights movement” emerged in the 1950s, fueled by veterans who’d returned home from the battlefields of WW2. The civil rights era began as soon as the nation had recovered from the war, normalized, and placed itself onto a peacetime footing.

Eisenhower’s wartime decisions to advance the cause of civil rights translated into how “postwar America, in its policies at home and overseas,” would “exemplify the values for which the war was supposed to have been fought.”

America had been an effective member of the Western Allies, working with England, France, and other nations to oppose an “enemy of unspeakable evil” as Zinn calls combination of European National Socialism and Japan’s militaristic imperialism.

The Allies were “fighting against racist totalitarianism,” as historian Mary Grabar writes. The fight was economic as well as military:

Fortunately, once the order was given to increase production for armaments and other military supplies, American factories were able to get close enough to meeting President Roosevelt’s “seemingly impossible yearly production goals” to vaunt the Allies to victory.

In August 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill had stated the foundational principles for the Allies, including the intent to “respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.” At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Stalin agreed to abide by these principles, but secretly had already planned to subject the nations of Eastern Europe to the type of oppression which Nazis had imposed upon them. For Poland and Czechoslovakia to be “liberated” from Nazi domination by the Soviet Socialist army meant merely to be immediately placed under a similar domination imposed by the Soviet Union.

The high ethical standard set, and largely met, by the Western Allies was made into a practical reality by the free enterprise system and the industrial power which it created and unleashed, as Mary Grabar reports:

The United States has “over twelve million in uniform,” but “suffered only about 416,000 combat casualties,” which was just slightly above “3 percent of those enrolled in the military” and was “proportionally the fewest combat casualties of the major powers.” American industries might have helped save American lives and win the war.

The Western Allies fought a physical, military war. But they also fought an ideological battle of ethics. The Western Allies did not succeed in offering a perfect example of civil rights, but they understood civil rights to be the goal, and made significant and large amounts of progress toward this goal. Because the civil rights era began immediately after the war, it can be seen as an extension of the war’s ideology. During WWII and during the first postwar decade, the progress in civil rights was greater and more significant than any before or after. The efforts and achievements in the field of civil rights were better than any previous or since: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, the founding of the SCLC, The Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Supreme Court’s school desegregation decisions, the Little Rock Nine, and lunch counter sit-ins, etc.

Eisenhower, decisive in WWII desegregation decisions, continued to promote civil rights during the 1950s.

The postwar understanding of justice and civil rights is largely a product of WW2. The questions about ‘justice’ and ‘civil rights’ being asked in the first quarter of the twenty-first century would not be possible or imaginable without the foundational ideas, found in the Atlantic Charter of 1941, which constituted and composed the essence of the Western Allies.

James Otis: Multidimensional Freedom

A generation of thinkers, writers, and politicians propelled the residents of North America to rebel against the cruel tyranny which the British monarchy imposed on them. Among the fieriest of them was James Otis.

In the early days of 1764, Otis was a loyal British subject, living in North America, and enthusiastic about the global growth of the British Empire. But soon his investigations and thoughts caused him to see the evil side of the matter: the Empire was imposed its will upon the colonists in North America, and was in fact fueled by continually imposing oppression on the colonies.

One of the most outrageous injustices imposed on the Americans was Britain’s Stamp Act, a piece of legislation would have economically brutalized the colonies. Coordinated resistance arose: The colonies created the Stamp Act Congress to discuss the matter on a level which went beyond the borders of any one colony and united the concerns of the colonies; the Sons of Liberty organized public gatherings and vocal protests.

Outside of North America, people in other parts of the world watched the developments with interest. Not everyone sympathized with the Americans.

Those who owned and operated plantations in the West Indies, islands in the Carribean, were concerned. They understood that freedom for American colonists would create a desire for freedom among other oppressed people, including slaves.

While the colonists in North America were largely in favor of freedom for slaves, or at least had no strong objections to it, the islands in the Carribean were much more economically reliant on slavery, and found any hint of abolishing slavery to be threatening, as historian Jill Lepore writes:

Nor were the West Indian planters wrong to worry that one kind of rebellion would incite another. In Charleston, the Sons of Liberty marched through the streets, chanting, “Liberty and No Stamps!” only to be followed by slaves crying, “Liberty! Liberty!” And not a few Sons of Liberty made this same leap, from fighting for their own liberty to fighting to end slavery. “The Colonists are by the law of nature born free, as indeed all men are, white or black,” James Otis Jr. insisted, in a searing tract called Rights of the British Colonists, Asserted, published in 1764, only months after he had rejoiced about the growth of Britain’s empire.

James Otis saw that logic demanded that, if he demanded freedom for the colonists from British repression, then he would also favor freedom for slaves. The majority of North American colonists agreed with him.

Decades later, the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 would increase the economic dependence of plantation owners in the southern states. Even with that increase, however, the majority of people in what was by then the United States favored the abolition of slavery.

Reason demanded that the concept of freedom, based on a person’s humanity, be extended to all people. James Otis understood that natural law, based on the structure of the universe and not on human legislation, gave every person the right to liberty. “In the 1760s, he,” as Jill Lepore writes,

saw the logical extension of arguments about natural rights. He found it absurd to suggest that it could be “right to enslave a man because he is black” or because he has “short curl’d hair like wool.” Slavery, Otis insisted, “is the most shocking violation of the law of nature,” and a source of political contamination, too. “Those who every day barter away other men’s liberty, will soon care little for their own,” he warned.

James Otis and his words remain as evidence for one of the strongest defenses of liberty, freedom, and justice in history. He was an intellectual warrior in the cause of justice, and realized long before many of his fellow North Americans that the colonies would and should fight for their independence, and that as a logical extension of that struggle, they would and should also fight to end slavery.