Only fifteen percent of Revolutionary America’s population enjoyed full legal freedom

Evidence

Had Lockean dicta been applied to all the human beings in British North America on the eve of the Revolution, and had all been permitted to enjoy the natural and legal rights of freemen, it would have been necessary to alter the status of more than 85 per cent of the population. In law and in fact no more than 15 per cent of the Revolutionary generation was free to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness unhampered by any restraints except those to which they had given their consent. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 416

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Connects to the Republic’s founding myth of universal liberty versus its actual exclusionary legal structure.
• SEED: Angle: the 15 percent free — a quantitative lens on the limits of the American founding era.