What if the American Revolution wasn’t a noble birth of liberty, but a costly wrong turn? Before muskets were raised at Lexington and Concord, the British Empire was already inching toward something remarkable: the abolition of slavery. In 1772, just three years before the war began, the landmark Somerset decision in England ruled that slavery had no basis in common law. While it didn’t outlaw slavery across the empire, it signaled growing discomfort with the institution. British abolitionists like Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson were building momentum. By 1807, Britain banned the slave trade; by 1833, it abolished slavery entirely.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the American colonies, especially in the South, were deeply entrenched in slavery. Many of the Revolution’s leading voices were enslavers who feared that continued British rule might imperil their human property. In fact, during the war, the British offered freedom to enslaved people who escaped and joined their forces. The Americans, despite their soaring rhetoric about liberty, were far more reluctant to do the same. In this light, the Revolution was not just a fight for freedom: it was also, for some, a fight to preserve slavery.
Had the colonies remained within the empire, they likely would have been pulled along Britain’s abolitionist trajectory. Slavery might have ended decades earlier, without the catastrophic toll of a Civil War. Instead, the United States forged its identity through violent rupture, glorifying revolution and enshrining ideals it could not yet fulfill.
America’s foundational rebellion may have delayed justice rather than advanced it. Peace, reform, and patient negotiation–Canada’s path–might have built a fairer, stabler society. Liberty, contrary to our cherished American myths, isn’t always won on the battlefield. Sometimes, it’s secured by fighting for reform and changing from within.
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Show Notes:
Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/slave-nation/
We Could Have Been Canada: Was the American Revolution such a good idea?https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/we-could-have-been-canada
Bernie Sanders clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZWzADxM_kw