310 Political Activity and Resistance to Oppression: From the American Revolution to the Civil War
and other restrictions on the American colonies as compen-
sation for fi nancial expenses England incurred during the
Seven Years War. Outraged colonists, infuriated by the new
legislation, began agitating in the streets and issuing de-
mands for independence from British rule. Ultimately, this
led to a full-scale war between the English government and
the colonies, which resulted in American independence.
Yet beyond the specifi c events that led to armed confl ict,
the American Revolution was also inspired by the forma-
tion of new ideologies. Th is period witnessed the rise of the
Enlightenment, which built on scientifi c and mathematical
advancements and applied them to human government and
politics as well as economics. Th e result of Enlightenment
thought in the American colonies was a theory of natural
law, the idea that the world functioned according to a set
of natural laws governed by reason and logic. According to
such scholars as John Locke, these natural laws included the
right to life, liberty, and private property. As such, revolu-
tionary ideology raised questions about a number of ideas
that had previously been used to justify slavery, especially
aft er the concepts of freedom, equality, brotherhood, and
inalienable rights began to circulate widely throughout the
colonies. Th e language of revolution explicitly drew on the
imagery of slavery, and the rebels even likened themselves
to being “slaves” of the British Crown. Th e rebels were fur-
ther infl uenced by the reality of slavery during the draft ing
of the Declaration of Independence because, of course, the
initial draft of the Declaration included a passage denounc-
ing the slave trade as being a violation of the sacred rights
of life and liberty, a section that was eventually deleted be-
cause the Southern delegates were deeply opposed to it.
Even so, American colonists did not initially see a con-
tradiction between Enlightenment ideology and slavery,
but it became increasingly clear in the years that followed,
partly because black people began to raise that contradic-
tion. Enslaved people had already been agitating for free-
dom prior to the Revolutionary War, but the Enlightenment
was useful to their cause because the rhetoric gave them
the language and the justifi cation for their argument. Spe-
cifi cally, between 1775 and 1780, black people bombarded
newly formed state legislatures with petitions demanding
their freedom. Drawing directly on the language in the
Declaration of Independence, such petitions asserted that
black people were equally entitled to the “rights of man”
and argued that they shared the same God-given rights to
freedom and equality as their white counterparts. Activistas a means of reclaiming black identity and eventually black
independence.
Th e AMRS proved to be an accessible forum for African
American leaders from diff erent locales to exchange views
on matters of race and reform. It provided a new generation
of reformers the tools to shape the plans for more decisive
action that arose during the 1840s. Th rough the public de-
liberations that surrounded the American Moral Reform
Society and its failure to redress racial inequality through
moral suasion, the next generation of African American
leaders learned a number of lessons about the methods and
effi cacy of racial reform in the United States.
See also: Colored Convention Movement; Cornish, Samuel;
Whipper, William
Eric RoseBibliography
Bell, Howard. “Th e American Moral Reform Society, 1836–1841.”
Journal of Negro Education 27, no. 1 (Winter 1958):34–40.
Glaude, Eddie, Jr. Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early
Nineteenth Century America. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2000.
Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1969.
Ripley, C. Peter, ed. Th e Black Abolitionist Papers. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Ripley, C. Peter, ed. Th e Minutes and Proceedings of the First An-
nual Meeting of the American Moral Reform Society, Held at
Philadelphia in the Presbyterian Church in Seventh Street,
- Philadelphia: Historic Publications, 1969.
American Revolution
Th e American Revolution has been heralded throughout
U.S. history as a momentous event, an era when oppressed
colonists freed themselves from the bonds of England’s tyr-
anny and gained their independence—once and for all. For
people of African descent, however, the response to Ameri-
can independence was always more complex. For them,
it was an era in which the contradiction and hypocrisy of
slavery was exposed, but in the end, slavery still emerged
victorious throughout most of the nation. Even so, African
American men fought valiantly in the war, in hopes that
their loyalty would earn them freedom and equality.
Th e Revolutionary era actually began shortly aft er 1760,
when King George III of England sought to impose taxes