The notion that these leaders—who had lived in their lifetimes under at least four different governments—wished to freeze the concepts they developed in the hurly-burly of current events is nonsense. What they expected of successive generations was that the inheritors of the system of freedom and democracy that they built would act with as much wisdom for their own time as they had shown in shepherding the nation into being. The Constitution was not created to be a straightjacket; it is a framework for a living engagement with the contemporary problems.
Our nation was born partly to protect race slavery, and grew to maturity with a decision to limit that slavery. We have a collective responsibility to view this history from our own perspective. While personal guilt is not in question, personal responsibility for the condition of people of color continues. Whites are the beneficiaries of the totality of the decisions made by our founders. Where, in the light of more modern views, they erred, we have the same obligation they assumed; to build in our time a society that better accords with our fundamental values than the one that we inherited.
They chose to fight a rigid society that was not responsive to their needs. They sought to create a society that would be more flexible and responsive and they succeeded. The value of their success lies in our continued willingness to address today’s problems with the same spirit. Madison summed this up best in the Federalist 14, responding to the argument that the nation was too vast to be governed by a republic:
Why is the experiment of an extended republic to be rejected, merely because it may comprise what is new? Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience?…They pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabrics of governments which have no model on the face of the globe. They formed the design of a great Confederacy, which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate.30
In this spirit, it is our opportunity to address the resonances of slavery that are still heard in the land. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 marked our most recent sustained effort toward a more equal society. At the first anniversary of that act, President Lyndon Johnson, at Howard University—probably without knowing it—sounded eerily like Benjamin Franklin in 1789.
Freedom is the right to share, share fully and equally, in American society—to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school.…But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race, and then say, “You are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.…We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.31
President Johnson’s sentiment was echoed in 1990 by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the United States Supreme Court:
As a nation we aspire to ensure that equality defines all citizens’ daily experience and opportunities as well as the protection afforded to them under the law.32
While we have made measurable progress in improving opportunities, we still need to address these issues in the spirit of Benjamin Franklin.34 Our posterity should be able to look back and conclude that we accepted Madison’s obligation to “improve and perpetuate” the society that the founding fathers—and their successors over two centuries—bequeathed us. The phrase “improve and perpetuate” may appear internally inconsistent, but it is not. It acknowledges that values of the Declaration infuse our lives with obligations to each other, to those who came before and will come after, to enhance those values that— in our view—will make the pursuit of happiness—which includes living in a just society—a genuine human option.
* * *
In Memoriam
* * *
Ruth and I first began this book about slavery after we visited the mansion in Northern Virginia that belonged to Robert E. Lee. We wandered the sweeping lawns and the luxurious rooms—what had once been the great wealth of the Southern Aristocracy, most of it based on slavery. It was in the rooms of that mansion that the Lees had conspired with Jefferson to overthrow the British government. We wondered why the scions of the successful planter slaveholder families would bite the hand that had brought them such wealth. We continued our research over the years, and at the behest of our literary agent, Ronald Goldfarb, we completed one more revision in December of 2003. In January 2004, Ruth died in an automobile accident. In the spring, while I was struggling with memories of our marriage of fifty-one years, Ron urged me to complete the manuscript. As I did so, I felt that Ruth was by my side, and we were still working together.
Her spirit and her life come alive in the “Requiem for Ruth Blumrosen” written by our dear friend Barbara Chase-Riboud:
Requiem for Ruth Blumrosen
* * *
I will leave your white house and tranquil garden
Let life be empty and bright.
-Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova
I
I think about you to the point of tears,
Catch the hundreds of intonations of your voice,
The self-taught justice of your smile,
The many allées of your brilliant mind,
The bottomless reservoir of sweetness.
How could you end so suddenly?
Drowning out the sound of my own voice speaking
With the crack of hot steel and plate glass
And the shriek of shattered dreams?
It is so absurd I almost laugh crazily,
Into the bitter virgin silence you have left behind,
Polite to the end, closing the door softly
On unforeseen evil, everything upside-down forever,
In secret places that you never showed me,
Laughing together in passing.
II
Thus you bear my heart away chilled,
Amongst the peonies which bloomed yesterday,
In the mirror of serene Gulf waters where patiently
I wait each day for one last conversation, one last kiss,
In that bronze twilight between being and not being,
And the melancholy frustration of a loved one’s
Cancelled rendezvous. I can’t be angry.
For I wasn’t there; only grief and darkness were there,
In my place, deep and velvety and above all,
Incomprehensible as are other people’s dreams, as is,
A distant light-house or a burden in an outstretched palm,
I don’t even recognize my own wailing voice,
Or the unsolvable riddle burning like a night lamp
Before an eternal door, eternally closed.
III
Your home is now the waters of the Gulf of Mexico
Grown silent from the sun’s bright blaze.
Your limpid countenance and tender eyes
Watch from its depths the long day extinguished
By violence and the even longer night when penguins
Dance on shore in a grove of singing nightingales
And illegal aliens take flight for the border.
But you are quiet, resplendent in moonlight and salty mist,
Your judicial eyes are closed wide open.
Your lips curve in an arc at our reckless rovings
And incessant
murmurings because: you are quiet. Dark blue drifts over the sea’s lacquer.
My Requiem is no longer sorrowful, but radiant,
A copper penny thrown over my shoulder, slicing
The satin surface, a silver coffin, pure swan.
IV
Rest. Rest. Rest, my love, my Ruth,
Leave our sobbing and our prayers
Facing your magnificent smile
How bright the lunar eyes and relentless far-off gaze
That has come to rest on the doorstoop of Paradise.
Glancing back she cries: “I will wait”
Which like a wax seal on the heart, unique, valedictory,
Unforgettable, erases all remaining memory of the event,
Forgiving all with a wave of her tawny hand so that
Each day becomes a Remembrance Day. And she can’t return!
But even beyond Lethe, I shall take her with me,
Hold to the living outline of her soul: “I will wait” she cries,
A sacred reproach from the one who died to those who cannot
Imagine her death, which is neither a magnificat of roses nor a
Host of Archangels, but a gracious acquittal of the living.
Barbara Chase-Riboud
Rome, March 19, 2004
* * *
Bibliography of Works Cited
* * *
Adams, Charles Francis. The Works of John Adams, Vol. X. Boston: Little, Brown, 1856
Alden, John R. A History of the American Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969
Andrews, Charles M. The Colonial Background of the American Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1924
Arendt, Hannah. On Revolution. New York: Penguin, 1990
Bailyn, Bernard. The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1974
Ballagh, James Curtis, Ed. A History of Slavery in Virginia. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1902, Reprinted 1968
Bancroft, George. History of the United States, IV. New York: Little, Brown, 1854
Banning, Lance. The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995
Barrett, Jay. A. Evolution of the Ordinance of 1787. New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1891; Reprinted in Dale Van Every. The First American Frontier. Arno Press, 1977
Blackstone, William. Commentaries on the Laws of England: A Facsimile of the First Edition of 1765-1769. Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979
Blackstone, William. Commentaries on the Laws of England 1768–69. Ed. 3. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1768–1769
Bowen, Catherine Drinker. Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September, 1787. Boston: Little, Brown, 1986
Bradley, Patricia. Slavery, Propaganda, and the American Revolution. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1998
Brands, H. W. The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Doubleday & Co., 2000
Breen, T. H. Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001
Brodsky, Alyn. Benjamin Rush: Patriot and Physician. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004
Burnett, Edmund Cody. The Continental Congress. New York: MacMillan & Co, 1941
Butterfield, L. H., Ed. The Adams Papers: Diary and Autobiography of John Adams. Vol. 1–3. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1961
Cappon, Lester J., Ed. The Adams–Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959
Carter, Clarence, Ed., The Territorial Papers Of The United States, Vol. II. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1934
Chamberlain, Mellen, LLD. John Adams: The Statesman of the American Revolution. Cambridge: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1898
Chitwood, Oliver Perry. Richard Henry Lee: Statesman of the Revolution. Morgantown: West Virginia University Foundation, 1967
Collier, Christopher and James Lincoln Collier. Decision in Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention of 1787. New York: Ballantine Books, 1986
Commager, Henry Steele, ed. Documents of American History. 9th ed. New York: Appleton Century Crafts, 1971
Cutler, William Parker and Julia Perkins Cutler, Eds., Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LLD. Vol. 1. Original, 1888; Reprinted, Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1987
Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975
Draper, Theodore. A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution. New York: Random House, 1996
Dumond, Dwight Lowell. Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America. University of Michigan Press, 1961
Egnal, Marc. A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988
Ellis, Joseph. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Alfred A. Alfred A. Knopf, 1996
Ernst, Robert. Rufus King: American Federalist. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968
Farrand, Max. The Framing of the Constitution of the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1913
Farrand, Max. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911, Revised 1966
Fehrenbacher, Donald E. The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978
Fehrenbacher, Donald E. The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001
Ferling, John. John Adams: A Life. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1992
Ferling, John. A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003
Ferling, John, Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000
Fielding, Sir John. Extracts from Such of the Penal Laws, as Particularly Relate to the Peace and Good Order of the Metropolis. London, 1762
Finkelman, Paul. An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981
Finkelman, Paul. “Slavery and Bondage in the Empire of Liberty,” In Frederich D. Williams, Ed., The Northwest Ordinance: Essays on Its Formation, Provisions, and Legacy. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1988
Finkelman, Paul. “Slavery and the Constitutional Convention; Making a Covenant with Death,” in Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity. Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward C. Carter II, Eds. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987
Flournoy, H. W. Ed., Calendar of Virginia State Papers, May 16, 1795 to December 31, 1798, Embracing the Letters and Proceedings of the Committee of Correspondence and Inquiry of Virginia and the Other Colonies from March 12, 1773 to April 7, 1775. Vol. VIII, 1890, Reprinted 1968
Foner, Philip, ed. Basic Writings of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Willey Book Co., 1944
Foner, Philip. History of Black Americans from Africa to the Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom. Westdort, CN: Greenwood Press, 1975
Freehling, William. The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay 1776–1854. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990
Fryer, Peter. Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. Pluto Press, 1984. www.eastlondon history.com/wilkes.htm
Gerzina, Gretchen Holbrook. Black London. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995
Gipson, Lawrence Henry. The Coming of the Revolution. New York: Torchbook, 1962
Goebel Jr., Julius. Cases and Materials on the Development of Legal Institutions. Brattleboro, VT: Vermont Printing Co.,1946
Greene, Jack P., Ed. Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press,1994
&nbs
p; Greene, Jack P. Understanding the American Revolution: Issues and Actors. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1995
Grigsby, Hugh Blair. The Virginia Convention of 1776. New York: Da Capo Press, 1969
Halliday, E. M. Understanding Thomas Jefferson. New York: HarperCollins, 2001
Henretta, James A. “Wealth and Social Structure.” In Colonial British America, edited by Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984
Higginbotham Jr., A. Leon. In the Matter of Color. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978
Hildreth, Richard. The History of the United States of America. Vol. II, New York: Harper & Bros., 1880
Hutson, James, Ed., Supplement to Max Farrand’s The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987
Isaac, Rhys. Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellions on a Virginia Plantation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004
Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003
Jefferson, Thomas. Works of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Paul Leicester Ford. Vol. I. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904
Jensen, Merrill. The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution 1774–1781. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959
Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1904–37
Lindsay, Arnette G. “Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Great Britain Bearing on the Return of Negro Slaves, 1783–1828.” Journal of Negro History. Vol. 5. (October, 1920); http://dinsdoc.com/lindsay-1.htm
Lynd, Staughton. Class Conflict, Slavery, and the United States Constitution. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1767