![]() ![]() Post-revolutionary Virginia society recommitted to slavery after brief discussions of manumissions and owners developed a bifurcated understanding of their slaves. Slave families were torn apart at much higher rates than before the Revolution and while some owners might try to avoid that, most did not care, justifying their actions by dehumanizing Africans as quasi-animals who did not really suffer. Abolition of primogeniture meant that younger heirs had increased property rights, which led to a greater division of property, usually of the human variety. The American Revolution created a rhetoric of equality that contributed to emancipation in the North but in the South and especially in Virginia, where so many of the Founding Fathers originated, it created a society of white male freedom that deepened its tyranny over slaves. ![]() Alan Taylor’s Pulitzer Prize winning history of slavery in Virginia during the American Revolution and Early Republic is truly outstanding. ![]()
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