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42 Michèle Ducket

freedom to the Negroes. In 1802, Napoleon was to restore the slave trade and

slavery in the French colonies. In America, where the whole economy depended

on slave labour and slave traffic, the question was raised of how to reconcile

the founding of a new nation with an institution which implied non-citizenship.

In 1787, the Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery in a third of the territory,

and there were many separate instances of manumission in some of the states.

But of the thirteen states, eight were to maintain slavery. After Independence,

abolitionist literature abounded, refuting the racist arguments. 'Christian and

humanitarian motives combine with the principles of liberal ideology' to prove

that the new nation could not act against the very precepts on which it was

founded.^49 But most of them trusted in democracy to bring about the gradual

decline of the institution.

The principles which are the basis of the Government of the United States will uner-

ringly lead to the extinction of slavery throughout the empire, as soon as it is compat-

ible with public security and the welfare of the slaves themselves.^60

But there was still no question of slaves being integrated into the American
nation, we have the example of Thomas Jefferson accepting the emancipation
of the Negroes but proposing to dispatch them to Sierra LeoneB1 or even to
Santo Domingo. The English philanthropist, Thomas Clarkson, had written
a pamphlet which was republished in Philadelphia in 1788. Written for the
British public for the sole purpose of condemning the slave trade, it also pro-
posed a means whereby the Americans could 'carry on the Transatlantic trade
while ethicizing it'.^62 The blacks would be sent back to Africa, and thenceforth
there would no longer be a slave trade, but a trade in the products of their
labour. It is of some significance that at this decisive point in its history, the
United States had only economic, if humanitarian, solutions to offer, and that
no mention was made of slavery in its Constitution. As Elise Marienstras so
aptly puts it: 'Recognized in theory as a member of the human species, the
American Negro was granted none of the prerogatives universally attributed
to mankind by current ideology.'^63
As we know, it was Great Britain who, with the loss of her American
colonies, was the first to launch an abolitionist campaign, in 1787. The London
Anti-Slavery Society (Wilberforce, Clarkson, Pitt, Grainville, Fox and Burke)
prompted the founding of the French Society in 1788 (Condorcet, Brissot,
Lafayette, Mirabeau, a number oí fermiers-généraux (tax-farmers) and adminis-
trators and a few merchants). The main target was the slave trade; but here
again, economic and humanitarian motives were inextricably linked: Great
Britain wanted to put an end to a form of trade which brought wealth to the
Americans, and the French saw the abolition of the slave trade as a means to
stamp out slavery. In the documents of the Société des Amis des Noirs—