Joseph J. Ellis by Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation Page B

et al.,
Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United States, 1
5 vols. (Baltimore, 1972), vol. 12, 277–87. The debates over the Quaker petitions are mentioned in passing in most secondary accounts of the period. See, for example, Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick,
The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1787–1800
(New York, 1993), 151–152. The fullest and most recent scholarly treatment is by Richard S. Newman, “Prelude to the Gag Rule: Southern Reaction to Antislavery Petitions in the First Federal Congress,”
JER
16 (1996): 571–599. See also Howard Ohline, “Slavery, Economics, and Congressional Politics,”
JSR
46
(1980): 355–360.
      2.
First Congress
, vol. 12, 287–288.
      3. Ibid., 289–290.
      4.
First Congress
, vol. 3, 294. The text of the petitions are most readily available in Alfred Zilversmit,
The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North
(Chicago, 1967), 159–160.
      5. More, much more, on this subject shortly. For now, the best surveys of the topic are Donald L. Robinson,
Slavery in the Structure of American Politics
(New York, 1971), 201–247; David Brion Davis,
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1975), 122–131; Duncan J. MacLeod,
Slavery, Race and the American Revolution
(Cambridge, 1974), 37–39; Paul Finkelman,
Slavery and the Founders:
Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson
(London, 1996), 1–33. See also Sylvia R. Frey,
Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age
(Princeton, 1991).
      6.
First Congress
, vol. 12, 296.
      7. Ibid., 307–308.
      8. Ibid., 308–310.
      9. Ibid., 297–298, 310–311. There are several versions of the debate recorded in
First Congress
, based on the several newspaper accounts published at the time and the official account in the
Congressional Register
. The accounts seldom disagree, though they vary in length and detail.
    10. Ibid., 308.
    11. Ibid., 296–297, 307.
    12. Ibid., 298–299, 305–306.
    13. Ibid., 311.
    14. Ibid., 312.
    15.
First Congress
, vol. 3, 295–296.
    16. Gary B. Nash,
Race and Revolution
(Madison, 1990), 3–24, offers the most robust neoabolitionist interpretation of the revolutionary era. All the standard treatments of the subject emphasize the exuberant expectations generated by the revolutionary ideology: Davis,
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution
, 48–55; Robinson,
Slavery in the Structure of American Politics
, 98–130; Winthrop Jordan,
White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1110–1812
(Chapel Hill, 1968), 269–314. On the resonant and quasi-religious power of the Declaration of Independence, see Pauline Maier,
American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence
(New York, 1997). See also the collection of essays in Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, eds.,
Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution
(Charlottesville, 1983).
    17. Robinson,
Slavery in the Structure of American Politics
, 124–129; MacLeod,
Slavery, Race and the American Revolution
, 21–29; Quaker Petition to the Continental Congress, 4 October 1783, Record Group 360, National Archives, Washington, D.C. The best collection of documents on this phase of the antislavery movement is Roger Burns, ed.,
Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688–1188
(New York, 1977), 397–490. On slavery itself, the authoritative work is Philip Morgan,
Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Low Country
(Chapel Hill, 1998).
    18. Zilversmit,
The First Emancipation
, 109–138.
    19. Robert McColley,
Slavery in Jeffersonian Virginia
(Urbana, Ill., 1964), 141–162. For Jefferson’s early leadership, see Joseph J. Ellis,
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
(New York, 1997), 144–146.
    20. This paragraph represents my attempt to negotiate the scholarly minefield that confronts anyone trying to explain the anomalous character of