Modern historical scholarship has been influenced
by the interpretation of slave behavior, which stressed the
impact of the system on the slave, rather than his response to
it. Consequently, it has failed to give proper recognition to
African contributions to American life.
Chapter 4
All Men Are Created Equal
Slavery and the American Revolution
"How is it," asked Samuel Johnson, "that we hear the loudest
yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" The British author
was only one of many Europeans who thought it strange that a nation
run by slave owners should be so noisily demanding its own freedom.
This same bitter inconsistency was embodied in the death of Crispus
Attucks. A mulatto slave who had run away from his Massachusetts
master in 1750, he spent the next twenty years working as a seaman and
living in constant fear of capture and punishment. In 1770, he, with
four others, was killed in the Boston Massacre. Ironically, the first
man to die in the Colonial fight for freedom was both an Afro-American
and a runaway slave. His death became symbolic of what was to be an
underlying question in the years to come: "What place would there be
for the African in America once the colonies gained freedom from the
old world?"
The Quakers were the first group in America to attack slavery.
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