Revolutionary Americans’ liberty rhetoric contradicted their enslaved-holding practice

Evidence

Benjamin Franklin had spent years across the water lobbying English power for a relaxation of its colonial policies. He was arguing that England was enslaving Americans, and regularly using the analogy that England was making “American whites black.” All along, Samuel Johnson hated this racist analogy. As Franklin sailed back to America at the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, Johnson released Taxation No Tyranny. He defended the Coercive Acts, judged Americans as inferior to the British, and advocated the arming of enslaved Africans. “How is it,” Johnson asked, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” Someone in the colonies had to officially answer the great Samuel Johnson. That someone was Thomas Jefferson. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 269

Categorization

• XREF: Johnson’s ‘drivers of negroes’ line cuts directly against the celebratory American founding narrative; connects to reader’s interest in how racist policy precedes stated ideals. — connects to: Americans glorified liberty radiating outward more than receiving the oppressed
• CANDY: The ‘loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes’ jab is a sharp, quotable capsule of the founding contradiction.