insight and it’s been picked apart around the edges, but few scholars of early America doubt its resonance. In fact, if anything, Morgan undersold his own argument by refusing to accept that Jefferson, Madison and other slave owning elites were fully conscious of the
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Replying to @yeselson @baseballcrank and
contradiction of their revolutionary ambitions. So, re Virginia especially, the state that embodied the colonial America—yes, without question. But no, in that I think the rest of the graf exaggerates the efficacy and normative decency, for lack of a better term, of the British
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Replying to @yeselson @baseballcrank and
Rich, it sounds like you are arguing for an importantly different claim from the one Dan highlighted.
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Replying to @jneeley78 @baseballcrank and
Read it thru, Josiah. I think the paragraph went in a different direction than I thought its thesis statement would take it.
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Replying to @yeselson @baseballcrank and
I did read it very carefully. It starts with an argument that is very weak (colonists were worried that Britain would end the slave trade) and then shifts into an argument that doesn’t support the original claim (wealth from slavery gave them the power to rebell).
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Replying to @jneeley78 @baseballcrank and
I agree about the first part. That seems to be Schama’s argument, but that’s been challenged. But the wealth was no small thing. Surely, that was part of the calculation these very shrewd tough minded men made.
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Replying to @yeselson @baseballcrank and
There’s the rub. The wealth empowered revolution point would be worth exploring, but it doesn’t support the thesis, which is a problem. And as far as I can tell the thesis is unsupportable, which is also a problem.
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Replying to @jneeley78 @baseballcrank and
I think protecting slavery was, as Morgan wrote, paradoxically part of the ideological foundation for, at the least, Virginia’s movement for independence. And Virginia was central to the Revolution. The rest of the paragraph I don’t really buy, but I would defer to specialists.
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Replying to @yeselson @baseballcrank
I’m not a specialist, but I would note that 1) The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade hadn’t been formed in 1776, 2) Wilberforce wasn’t even in parliament yet, 3) Britain was at that time one of the leaders of the slave trade, 4) when Britain did get around to banning
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Replying to @jneeley78 @baseballcrank
Right—I agree that the fear of possible British abolitionism is undercooked and not plausible.
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Which is the thesis advanced by the lead NYT 1619 essay.
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Replying to @baseballcrank @jneeley78
I’d put it like this: Retaining the ideology and political economy of slavery was a very big rationale for Virginia’s elite deciding to rebel, but not because of a fear of British abolitionism, but in a defense of a non universal universalism undergirded by chattel slavery.
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But I also think that arguing the merits, engaging the particular authors (in this case
@nhannahjones, also the series conceptualizer), consulting’s the specialists is the way to go. Not trashing a bunch of serious thinkers/writers as propagandists.1 reply 0 retweets 1 like - Show replies
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