Within Edmund Morgan’s paper, he addresses how he believes that a race-based system came to be within the American colonies. He makes the argument that a race-based slave system, where Africans were subjected to enslavement, was the result of Englishmen trying to gain control over the social problems that came with the arrival of poor Englishmen.
He first starts off his argument by speaking upon Thomas Jefferson's views on freedom, during the 17th century. He expresses how Jefferson was an advocate for the freedom of colonial people from ties, such as debts, that made colonial people's independence restrained from truly being free. People’s power being restrained meant that colonial people would not possess the power to fight for what Jefferson…show more content… Morgan defined slave labor as “a solution which strengthened the rights of Englishmen and nourished that attachment to liberty which came to fruition in the Revolutionary generation of Virginia statesmen” (Morgan, pg.24,1972). He elaborates on how the increase in importation of slaves led to a decrease in the number of angered freemen, a decrease in importation of indentured servants, and how black Africans were the easier containable option compared to Englishmen.” When the annual increment of freedmen fell off, the number that re-mained could more easily find an independent place in society...”( Morgan, pg.27,1972). He includes this information to elaborate on how a race-based slave system would allow Virginia to progress into greater conditions, where there was less conflict and where the colony was able to progress into a rights oriented society that leaders like Jefferson wanted America to progress into. With a race-based slave system in effect, Virginia’s colonial Englishmen could live peacefully with one another, and English men could grow to make something of
