Criminality and Conscience in the First Wave of American Abolition

This paper explores the impact of eighteenth-century social philosophy on antislavery thought in the early United States. Enlightenment theories related to social environment and human nature significantly influenced abolitionist efforts across the Atlantic world. While environmentalism, as a number of historians have observed, provided an intellectual basis for a potent critique of racism, it also encouraged moderation when it came to policy. For some, the formerly enslaved were considered unfit for political participation in the republic, not because of their race, but due to the corrupting and degrading effects of bondage. To be enslaved was to be treated as a criminal and some feared that former slaves would act as such upon being released. Interestingly, debates over the proper punishment of convicted criminals and their reintegration into society intersected with those regarding slavery and emancipation. The most radical conceptualizations of both emancipation and incarceration were grounded in a respect for the individual conscience and an understanding of human nature and natural rights that transcended social environment. Some advocates of these approaches were emboldened by the democratic politics of the early 1790s. I argue that a conservative reaction to the political culture of the French Revolution and its perceived violent excesses (especially the rebellion in Saint-Domingue and the Jacobin Terror) served to divide the nascent abolitionist movement. Anti-slavery and anti-racist radicalism was frequently attacked for its disordering potential and conservatives drew on the intellectual resources of the moderate Enlightenment to justify gradualism or inaction.