Paradox Of Freedom In Early British America

Devon Cummings
HIST 226L – 111
Dr. Steven Garabedian
October 7, 2014

Paradox of Freedom in Early British America

Throughout early British America the basis of any type of freedom was the denial of freedom for others. Starting with indentured servants when colonists first started to occupy America, there were classes that controlled and groups that were being controlled. Although mainland Britain still had control over what happens in the British colonies, there was still a sense of freedom that the “controllers” had. While the American Revolution was all about the colonists gaining freedom from Britain, it simultaneously matched up with the increasing “unfreedom” of blacks in America
Racial slavery became the most prominent type of enslavement

The American Revolution was kick started with a protest against the new Stamp Act, which taxed all paper products sold, giving the money to their homeland. The colonist’s argument of “taxation without representation” against Parliament was hypocritical in the way that they were enslaving blacks with barely any reason and especially no representation. In this protest, “liberty” was one of the key factors. The word “liberty” has many meanings, one of them being freedom from captivity. While the British settlers were fighting for their liberty, they were taking it away from hundreds of thousands of

Patrick Henry, who is famous for his quote, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” knew racial separation was an invented justification for inhumane slavery. He still owned slaves himself. Slavery was convenient and worth the money for the people that could afford it. Racial slavery was the first time in America that people were born into slavery. If you were born into a slave family, you became a slave yourself. Although Patrick Henry knew that what he was doing was wrong, he continued to do it because the American community accepted it. Slavery began to peak when it became a part of the social norm. If the leaders of the freedom movement owned slaves, it made it acceptable to people following in their political footsteps to do the same socially. Because race is a social construction, it relied on people like Patrick Henry and other leaders to prove to the majority of America that it was okay to fight for their own freedom while keeping others in