This paper examines the origins and entrenchment of slavery in early American history, tracing its development from the arrival of European settlers through the decades preceding the Civil War. It surveys colonial laws that codified slavery as an institution, documents resistance by enslaved people — including the 1739 Stono Rebellion — and analyzes the contradictions embodied by Thomas Jefferson, who condemned slavery in writing while owning more than two hundred enslaved people. Drawing on primary sources including legal statutes, firsthand accounts, and Jefferson's own writings, the paper argues that slavery was a deeply embedded system challenged continuously from within by those it oppressed.
The paper demonstrates the use of extended primary-source quotation as analytical evidence. Rather than merely summarizing events, the author allows colonial laws, the Stono Rebellion narrative, Jefferson's correspondence, and Revel's verse to speak directly, then contextualizes each source within the broader argument about slavery's entrenchment and resistance to it. This technique shows readers how to let historical documents carry argumentative weight.
The paper moves chronologically and thematically: it opens with slavery's pre-Revolutionary roots, establishes the legal framework that codified bondage, pivots to resistance with the Stono Rebellion as a case study, examines Jefferson as a figure of contradiction, grounds the human cost in a firsthand poetic account, and closes with Jefferson's own prediction of slavery's demise. Each section advances a cumulative argument about the depth and fragility of the institution.
There is sound evidence that slavery had spread through America long before 1776. Like a spreading cancer, slavery took hold with the earliest settlers. As they arrived from Europe, white settlers began to push inward into vast uncharted territories, bringing with them their concept of and belief in slavery.
When the American Revolution began with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, slavery was already well rooted. Many leaders of the Revolution regarded the elimination of slavery as impossible. American slaveholders had effectively protected their beloved institution.
For nearly ninety years following the signing of the Declaration of Independence and before the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the practice of lifetime bondage continued. It was nothing more than an evolutionary process that had begun almost 160 years before 1776.
North American slaves were Africans or of African descent, though there was a minority of Native Americans also forced into slavery. The popular practice of the slave trade created massive involuntary migration. The question of how slavery originated remains complex. The Old Testament of the Bible contains references to slavery, offering one possible historical antecedent. The English were enslaving Black Africans by the early seventeenth century, and most European Americans from the beginning of the country's formation accepted slavery as uniformly grounded in the principle of white supremacy.
Laws were enacted that reinforced slavery as an institution. One piece of legal language read: "That all servants imported and brought in this country, by sea or land, who were not Christians in their native country… shall be accounted and be slaves, and as such be here bought and sold notwithstanding a conversion to Christianity afterwards."
The laws of the day, passed by representatives of the slave owners, also provided for the nominal care of slaves. One law stated: "That all masters and owners of servants, shall find and provide for their servants, wholesome and competent diet, clothing, and lodging." Laws also formally protected servants from being whipped while naked. These provisions, however minimal, reveal how thoroughly American slavery was embedded in the legal order rather than simply practiced informally.
Slaves in America did not automatically accept the system created by their masters, and evidence of that resistance has grown in recent scholarship. There were numerous slave revolts, though the uprisings were never as widespread or as dangerous to slave owners as the rebellions in Latin America or the West Indies. American slaves often rebelled against their lifelong imprisonment by escaping, fleeing to territories where laws had abolished slavery.
This was not always the available path. On September 9, 1739, a Sunday, things were far from usual near Stono, located close to St. Augustine, Georgia. Sunday was the day slave owners permitted their slaves to plant and work for themselves. For the other six days, the slaves labored for their owners; the seventh day was their own. Slaves used that day to do their own chores — without it, they would have had no food.
A slave named Jemmy led a group of about twenty "Angola Negroes" who assembled that morning. They seized a warehouse and killed two men, Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Robert Bathurst. They plundered the building and took small arms and powder. A contemporary account describes what followed:
"They plundered and burnt Mr. Godfrey's house, and killed him, his daughter, and son. They then turned back and marched southward along Pons, which is the road through Georgia to Augustine. They passed Mr. Wallace's Tavern towards daybreak, and said they would not hurt him for he was a good man and kind to his slaves, but they broke open and plundered Mr. Lenny's house, and killed him, his wife and child. They marched on towards Mr. Rose's, resolving to kill him; but he was saved by a Negro, who having hid him went out and pacified the others. Several Negroes joined them, they calling out 'Liberty,' marched on with colours displayed, and two drums beating, pursuing all the white people they met with, and killing man, woman, and child when they could come up to them. Colonel Bull, Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina, who was then riding along the road, discovered them, was pursued, and with much difficulty escaped and raised the country. They burnt Colonel Hext's house and killed his overseer and his wife. They then burnt Mr. Sprye's house, then Mr. Sacheverell's, and then Mr. Nash's house, all lying upon the Pons Road, and killed all the white people they found in them."
The group continued to swell, and the rebels became intoxicated on rum found during the ransacking of houses. Nearly a hundred stopped in a field to dance, sing, and beat drums, drawing even more to their number. They celebrated their ten-mile march, having burned buildings and killed slaveholders and their families with little opposition.
The Southern planters quickly raised a militia, and on horseback charged into the rebels. The militia killed several on the spot; others fled back to their plantations, believing their absence had gone unnoticed. Those who returned were taken and shot, as were others found fleeing in the fields. The killings of the rebels were framed as retribution for the murdered slaveholders and their families.
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