This essay systematically reformulates an earlier argument about Locke and new world slavery, adding attention to Indians, natural law, and Locke's reception. Locke followed Grotian natural law in constructing a just-war theory of slavery. Unlike Grotius, though, he severely restricted the theory, making it inapplicable to America. It only fit resistance to “absolute power” in Stuart England. Locke was nonetheless an agent of British colonialism who issued instructions governing slavery. Yet they do not inform his theory—or vice versa. This creates hermeneutical problems and raises charges of racism. If Locke deserves the epithet “racist,” it is not for his having a racial doctrine justifying slavery. None of this makes for a flattering portrait. Locke's reputation as the champion of liberty would not survive the contradictions in which new world slavery ensnared him. Evidence for this may be found in Locke's reception, including by Southern apologists for slavery.
Lenni Brenner, ed., Jefferson and Madison on Separation of Church and State (Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2004), 272.
2.
Peter Laslett, "Introduction," in Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press , 1988 [1960]), especially 102, 105-6, 237n, 284n.
3.
James Tully , An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 137-76; Barbara Arneil, John Locke and America: The Defence of English Colonialism (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1996); Mark A. Michael, "Locke's Second Treatise and the Literature of Colonization,"Interpretation25 (1998 ): 407-27; Duncan Ivison, "Locke, Liberalism, and Empire," in The Philosophy of John Locke: New Perspectives , ed. Peter R. Arnstey ( London: Routledge, 2003), 86-105; Herman Lebovics, Imperialism and the Corruption of Democracies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006 ), chap. 5; and David Armitage, "John Locke, Carolina, and the Two Treatises of Government," Political Theory 32 (2004): 602-27. Slavery, surprisingly, is not always discussed in this literature.
4.
David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1988 [1966]); Martin Seliger, The Liberal Politics of John Locke (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968); H.M. Bracken, "Essence, Accident, and Race," Hermathena116 (1973): 81-96; Richard H. Popkin, "The Philosophical Bases of Modern Racism ," in Philosophy and the Civilizing Arts, ed. Craig Walton and John P. Anton (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1974), 126-65; Wayne Glausser, "Three Approaches to Locke and the Slave Trade," Journal of the History of Ideas51 (1990): 199-216; Robert Bernasconi, "Locke's Almost Random Talk of Man: The Double Use of Words in the Natural Law Justification of Slavery," Perspektiven der Philosophie18 (1992): 293-318; Tully, An Approach; Jennifer Welchman, "Locke on Slavery and Inalienable Rights," Canadian Journal of Philosophy25 (1995): 67-81; and Robert Bernasconi and Anika Maaza Mann , "The Contradictions of Racism: Locke, Slavery and the Two Treatises," in Race and Modern Philosophy, ed. Andrew Valls (Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, 2005 ), 89-107.
5.
John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the "Two Treatises of Government" (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 108-10, 174-77; William Uzgalis, "`The Same Tyrannical Principle': Locke's Legacy on Slavery," in Subjugations and Bondage: Critical Essays on Slavery and Social Philosophy, ed. Tommy L. Lott (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 49-79; Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 200-6; Douglas Lewis, "Locke and the Problem of Slavery," Teaching Philosophy26 (2003): 261-82; Ian Shapiro, "John Locke's Democratic Theory," in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Ian Shapiro (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 334; and Paul Sigmund, Selected Political Writings of John Locke (New York: Norton, 2005), 371.
6.
James Farr, "`So Vile and Miserable an Estate': The Problem of Slavery in Locke's Political Thought," Political Theory14 (May 1986): 263-89; and James Farr, "`Slaves Bought with Money,'" Political Theory17 (August 1988): 471-74.
7.
Parenthetical references are to treatise and section number of Peter Laslett, ed., Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press , 1988 [1960]). Emphases are Locke's.
8.
Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1957), 115n3; and Roger S. Woolhouse, Locke: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 111, 463.
9.
See especially Langdon Cheves, ed., The Shaftesbury Papers and Other Records Relating to Carolina ( Columbia: South Carolina Historical Society, 1897).
10.
John Harrison and Peter Laslett, Library of John Locke ( Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1965).
11.
The Lords Proprietors continued to solicit new settlers when Locke was secretary. See Verner Crane, The Southern Frontier: 1670-1732 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press , 1929); M. Eugene Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina: A Political History, 1663-1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966); and Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002).
12.
John Ogilby , America (London: 1671), 317, 342, 377, 380.
13.
Locke's map of Cape Fear is reprinted in Cornelius M. D. Thomas, James Forte (Wilmington, NC: J. E. Hicks, 1959).
14.
See William Patterson Cumming, "Naming Carolina," North Carolina Historical Review22 ( 1945): 34-42; and Worthington Chauncey Ford, "Early Maps of Carolina," Geographical Review16 (1926): 264-73. There is a partial reproduction of this map in William P. Cumming, The Southeast in Early Maps , 3rd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), plate 35.
15.
See E. S. de Beer, ed., Correspondence of John Locke, 8 vols. (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1976), #254 (where "a map of Carolina" is discussed), #270 (in which Locke intimates plans of travel to Carolina), #275 (where herbal medicines used by Indians and "Negroes" are identified), #279 (on the success of cattle in Carolina), #287 (with reference to "Lock Island"), and #289 (on inter-colonial trade and political intrigue in England). Other colonial correspondents included Joseph West, Isaac Rush, Richard Lilburne, and Andrew Percival, who variously conveyed to Locke intelligence about the "Indians Trade" and a plan to send him some "dressed Deare Skinnes" (#318).
16.
K.H.D. Haley , The First Earl of Shaftesbury ( Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1968), 349.
17.
This was reported by Woodward himself in a 1674 letter to Ashley, presumably catalogued by Locke as the latter's secretary (now in Public Record Office 30/24/48, #96).
18.
de Beer, Correspondence, #305. Locke refers to the "Caribee" and "Westoe Tongues" when discussing translation in Peter Nidditch, ed., Essay concerning Human Understanding (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1975), III.v.8.
19.
Essay, II.xvi.6. This passage dates to Draft B of the Essay (late 1671), where Locke wrote of "some Indians I have spoken with," in Peter Nidditch and G. A. J Rogers, eds., Drafts of the Essay concerning Human Understanding ( Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1990), 157.
20.
Alden Vaughan , Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500-1776 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 104; and Gene Waddell, Indians of the South Carolina Low Country, 1562-1751 (Columbia: South Carolina Historical Society, 1980), 235-36. Also see St. Julien Ravenal Childs, "Honest and Just at the Court of Charles II," South Carolina Historical Magazine64 ( 1963): 27. Locke noted the Americans prior to arrival in England in reference to a (now missing) letter of 1670 from Thomas Colleton: "Honest, Just Two Cassiques sonnes clothed and civily treated by him in Barbadoes," in Cheves, Shaftesbury Papers, 249.
21.
Cheves, Shaftesbury Papers, 258.
22.
Essay, II.xiii.20, II.xvi.6, IV.iv.11, IV.xvii.4, IV.xvii.6; Ruth Grant and Nathan Tarcov , eds., Some Thoughts concerning Education ( Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1996), sec. 145.
23.
de Beer, Correspondence, #279.
24.
Armitage, "John Locke, Carolina," 613-15.
25.
Mark Goldie, ed., Political Essays (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 179-80.
26.
Armitage, " John Locke, Carolina," 609, claims that Locke made the addition himself. However, the ampersand used in the manuscript copy does not appear to be Locke's (see PRO 30/24/47/3).
27.
This locution figures in documents from August 20, 1671, April 25, 1674, and May 20, 1674, among others, in A. S. Salley, ed., Records in the British Public Record Office Relating to South Carolina, 1663-1684 (Atlanta, GA: Foote and Davis, 1928). The Fundamental Constitutions were also promulgated by "we, the true and absolute lords and proprietors of the province" (Political Essays, 162).
28.
Political Essays, 180. The Lords Proprietors not only wanted to control land, but the Indian trade in all forms. This made them critical of the colonists' conduct toward the Indians, especially slave raids for transport to the Caribbean. See Gallay, Indian Slave Trade, 43-69.
29.
Political Essay, 162, 166.
30.
See April 4, 1671, and May 23, 1674 (in Salley, Records). Edisto Island is now its name.
31.
de Beer, Correspondence, #475. Toinard responded agreeably (in #481), praising those "constitutions" on religion and flattering Locke's illustriousness.
32.
Ogilby, America, 512. Cumming, "Naming Carolina," first speculated that Locke wrote the "propaganda chapter" on Carolina, inferring from Colleton's letter. de Beer (Correspondence, v. 1, p. 356n1) doubts this.
33.
Tully, An Approach, 143-44, 154. It is unclear whether Tully means that Locke intended to refer to Indian slavery or that others might have read him this way. If the latter, more reception history is needed. Anyway, Tully allows that "Locke's theory of conquest" was "written for another purpose," namely, "the right to punish Charles II in an armed revolt."
34.
Robert Filmer , Patriarcha and Other Political Writings, ed. Peter Laslett (Oxford, UK : Basil Blackwell, 1949), 224. Locke quotes this inexactly but not misleadingly (at 2.22).
35.
Filmer, Patriarcha, 225.
36.
Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development ( Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 173.
37.
Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, book III, ed. Richard Tuck (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005 [1625]), 1360f.
38.
Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, 1360n, 1362, 1482, 1482n.
39.
Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, 1362, 1374, 1378. For these views, Rousseau condemned "Grotius and the rest."
40.
Restrictions aside, they also differ in that Grotius thought slavery was a possible conclusion of war whereas Locke defined it as war's continuation (especially at 2.24).
41.
Arguably, this crucial stricture also weighs against the justification of slavery by purchase. It raises an obvious question about the alienation of property: if the conqueror cannot pass title to "his Posterity," how can he justly sell his slaves to anonymous others who are not his heir(s) and are even further removed from the slave's original "act that deserved death"? Neither heir nor buyer stands in relation to the slave as does the conqueror. Although Locke nowhere argues directly about the justice of trade in slaves, this passage suggests that "slaves bought with money" (1.131) were not justifiably enslaved.
42.
"Dies with them" precludes any possibility that "hereditary slavery is fundamental to Locke's conception of right," as asserted by Welchman, "Locke on Slavery," 81.
43.
Filmer, Patriarcha, 270-71.
44.
Laslett, "Introduction ," 385n.
45.
Uzgalis, "` The Same Tyrannical Principle.'" Locke's intentions aside, Uzgalis reinforces the disjuncture between Locke's theory and African slavery in America.
46.
Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 202, 206. Entitlement notwithstanding, Waldron concludes that "there is simply no possibility of reconciling Locke's very limited theory of legitimate enslavement with the reality of the institution in the Carolinas or anywhere else in the Americas."
47.
See note 41 above.
48.
Locke often-though not invariably-distinguished power from right. For example, he responded to Filmer's claim that fathers "anciently" had the "power" to sell or castrate their children by saying, "If this proves a right to do so, we may, by the same Argument, justifie Adultery, Incest, and Sodomy" (1.59). Later, he observes how "the practice of the strong and powerful . . . is seldom the rule of Right" (2.180). cf. 1.59, 2.186, and 2.199 (where "Tyranny is the exercise of Power beyond Right, which nobody can have a Right to").
49.
John A.Simmons, The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 176. Simmons also notes the confusion between slave and servant (in 1.130), adding "perhaps Locke finds it hard to refer to those who are clearly unjustly enslaved (by his own principles) as `slaves,' however contentedly he may have profited from the slave trade himself." Generally, see Richard Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999 ), 169-70.
50.
Tyrrell offered a theory of property in what Tuck (Natural Rights Theories, 154-55, 170) calls the "Lockean section" of Patriarcha Non Monarcha. Tuck speculates that Tyrrell changed his mind because of Locke's intervention just prior to publication. David Wootton and John Marshall deny this, arguing that Tyrrell was the innovator who influenced Locke. See Wootton, ed., Political Writings of John Locke ( New York: Penguin, 1993), 49-64; and Marshall, JohnLocke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 234-37.
51.
James Tyrrell , Patriarcha Non Monarcha ( London, 1681), 62, 87, 113 (first pagination, which ends at 136).
52.
Tyrrell, Patriarcha Non Monarcha, 118 (second pagination, which renumbers what should have been 137 as 97 and proceeds from there).
53.
This passage is read as Locke's endorsement of Sidney's argument that there are natural slaves by Ian Simmons, The Mind of John Locke: A Study of Political Thought in its Intellectual Setting (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 172. But "their mean souls" (emphasis added) is clearly a reference to royalist authors.
54.
Locke, Political Essays, 307.
55.
Locke, Political Essays , 26; Grant and Tarcov, Some Thoughts concerning Education, sec. 50.
56.
Locke, Political Essays , 154-5; also J. R. Milton and Philip Milton, eds., Essay concerning Toleration (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 2006), 294-95. Locke also refers here to "fair prisoners of war" who deserve to be "treated civilly" in contrast to the cruel treatment of "galley slaves." This opens a possible gap between the Second Treatise and the Essay concerning Toleration.
57.
With this passage in mind, "Locke's theory, if intended to sanction the colonial slave trade . . . could do so only by denying its own deepest premises" argues Jerome Huyler, Locke in America (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995), 344n63. Locke is not unlike Aristotle in this mismatch of theory and practice, despite their substantive differences about natural slavery. "In working out his theory [Aristotle] does not make the supposition that he is describing contemporary slavery or even that what he is saying is applicable to it. The theory does not explicitly or otherwise pretend to be a theory directly or indirectly concerned with contemporary slavery. . . . Aristotle simply failed to allow his theory of ownership to exert any pressure on his own practice while he lived." See Malcolm Schofield, Saving the City: Philosopher-Kings and Other Classical Paradigms ( New York: Routledge, 1999), 133.
58.
"The Constitutions never made much impact on the actual government of Carolina" (Goldie, ed. Political Essays, 161)-as antebellum Southerners observed. For recent assessments, see J.R. Milton, "John Locke and the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina," Locke Newsletter21 (1990): 111-33; and Vicki Hsueh, "Giving Orders: Theory and Practice in the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina," Journal of the History of Ideas63 (2002), esp. 425-26.
59.
Armitage, " John Locke, Carolina"; and J.R. Milton, "Dating Locke's Second Treatise," History of Political Thought16 (1995): 356-90.
60.
Cheves, Shaftesbury Papers , 327.
61.
The temporary laws are in CO5/286/41, reprinted in Cheves, Shaftesbury Papers, 367.
62.
These instructions are in CO5/1359/266-303. Laslett, "Introduction," 284n, alleged that "the Instructions to Governor Nicholson . . . regard negro slaves as justifiably enslaved because they were captives taken in a just war." But this is a serious misstatement that has misled many subsequent scholars who have not consulted the originals. There is nothing in the Instructions on "captives taken in a just war," much less that they prove that Locke thought the raids of the Royal African Company were "just wars." This was previously observed in Farr, "`So Vile and Miserable an Estate,'" 286n29; and later in Ruth Grant, John Locke's Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 68n, who concludes that Locke's "theory . . . can in no way support that institution."
63.
See Quentin Skinner on "the myth of coherence" in "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas," History and Theory8 (1969): 3-53; and Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, introduction.
64.
Bernasconi and Mann, "The Contradictions of Racism," 100-1.
65.
For example, Bracken, "Essence, Accident, and Race," 81-96; Popkin, "Philosophical Bases," 126-65; Bernasconi, "Locke's Almost Random Talk of Man ," 293-318; and chapters in Andrew Valls, ed., Race and Modern Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). On Locke's anti-essentialism, see Peter R. Anstey and Stephen A. Harris, "Locke and Botany," Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences37 (2006): 151-71.
66.
Bernasconi and Mann, "Contradictions of Racism," 90, 100. They concede, however, the theory's "unsuitableness for the task" of justifying slavery.
67.
Ibid., 101.
68.
Filmer, Patriarcha, 94.
69.
Locke, Essay, II.xvi.6; IV.xii.11. Similarly, Locke insists that "the Americans are not all born with worse understandings than the Europeans," in Ruth Grant and Nathan Tarcov , eds., Conduct of the Understanding ( Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1996), 179.
70.
George Fitzhugh , "Southern Thought Again," DeBow's Review23 (1857): 451. "It was not necessary to denigrate the Negro race to defend slavery," argues Larry E. Tise, Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840 (Athens : University of Georgia Press, 1987 ), 12. That is, some pro-slavery arguments "refused racism," Michael O'Brien, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860, vol. 2 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 960.
71.
cf. Bracken, "Essence, Accident, and Race"; Farr, "`So Vile and Miserable an Estate'"; Valls, ed., Racism and Modern Philosophy, chaps. 6, 7, 13; and William Uzgalis, "`An Inconsistency Not to be Excused': On Locke and Racism," in Philosophers on Race, ed. Julie K. Ward and Tommy L. Lott (Oxford, UK: Blackwell , 2002), 81-100.
72.
Locke, indeed, positively dissociates color from any conception of man in the Essay (IV.vii.16) when he ridicules the English "Child" who "can demonstrate to you that A Negro is not a man, because Whiteness was one of the constant simple Ideas of the complex Idea he calls Man." Similarly, in Draft B, "a child who hath noe other Idea of a man, but a whiteish colour of his face" has an "imperfect" idea of man. Moreover, "a child unused to the sight of a More [Moor] & having had some such description of the devill would call a negro a devill rather then a man & at the same time perhaps call a Dryll [mandrill] a man." See Nidditch and Rogers, eds., Drafts, 202, 192. These passages (concerning childish impressions) undermine those interpretations that Locke consciously or clearly advanced philosophical racism on the basis of species-nominalism or anything else.
73.
Mark Goldie, ed., The Reception of Locke's Politics, 6 vols. (London, 1999).
74.
John Norris , The Liberty and Property of British Subjects (London: J. Roberts, 1726), x, 22, 23, 27.
75.
James Otis, Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved ( Boston : Edes and Gill, 1764), 6, 29.
76.
John Dickinson , Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies (Philadelphia: David Hall, 1768), 6, 38.
77.
John Dickinson , An Essay on the Constitutional Power of Great Britain over the Colonies in America (Philadelphia: William and Thomas Bradford, 1774), 103, 103n.
78.
Charles Elliott , The Sinfulness of American Slavery ( Cincinnati, OH: Swormstedt and Power, 1850), 205-6.
79.
Benjamin Ferris [Amicus], Slavery among the Puritans: A Letter to the Rev. Moses Stuart (Boston: Little, Brown, 1850), 41.
80.
Josiah Tucker , A Series of Answers to Certain Popular Objections, Against Separating from the Rebellious Colonies (Gloucester, MA : R. Raikes, 1776), ix, xiii, 103, 104-5.
81.
Later, Jeremy Bentham also mocked "the liberty-champion" for the Fundamental Constitutions, "a performance which from that day to this has never been more spoken of in any other character than that of a failure" (in Armitage, "John Locke, Carolina," 620). Armitage claims that Tucker and Bentham were "theoretically acute" about Locke. This seems generous given their polemic, brevity, and inattention to restrictions in chapter 16.
82.
George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the American Continent (Boston: Little, Brown , 1874 [1834]), 145, 150, 151, 171n.
83.
Bernasconi and Mann, "The Contradictions of Racism" 32, 105n32, referring to W. Duncan, "North Carolina, Part I," DeBow's Review11 (July 1851): 30-40; and J. D. B. de Bow, "Charters and Constitutions of South Carolina, Part 1," DeBow's Review20 (April 1856): 395a-414a.
84.
On Dew and "Our Slavery Question," see O'Brien, Conjectures of Order, chap. 18. Also see Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000 (Cambridge , UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
85.
Thomas R.Dew,Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature of 1831 and 1832 (Richmond, VA: T. W. White, 1832), 19. This passage was reprinted in "Professor Dew's Essays on Slavery: Origin of Slavery, and its Effects on the Progress of Civilization, Chapter II," DeBow's Review 11 (July 1851): 24.
86.
Dew, "Professor Dew's Essays," 20, 38, 42, 46, 97, 106, 111 (reprinting passages from Dew, Review of the Debate).
87.
Albert Taylor Bledsoe, Essay on Liberty and Slavery (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1856), mostly reprinted in "Liberty and Slavery: or, Slavery in the Light of Moral and Political Philosophy," in Cotton is King!, ed. E. N. Elliott ( Augusta, GA: Pritchard, Abbott, and Loomis, 1860), 273ff. Approval came from George Frederick Holmes, "Bledsoe on Liberty and Slavery ," DeBow's Review21 (August 1856): 138, 143.
88.
George Fitzhugh , "The Politics and Economics of Aristotle and Mr. Calhoun" DeBow's Review27 (August 1857): 166; and "The Revolutions of 1776 and 1861 Contrasted," Southern Literary Messenger37 (December 1863): 719. Also see Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free Society ( Richmond, VA: A. Morris, 1854), 175, 187; "Southern Thought Again," 455; and C. Vann Woodward , ed., Cannibals All, or Slaves Without Masters, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1988 [1857]), 13, 71.
89.
Fitzhugh, " The Revolutions of 1776 and 1861 Contrasted," 721-23.
de Bow, "Charters and Constitutions of Carolina," reprinting the previously unidentified article by de Bow, "Carolina Political Annals," Southern Quarterly Review7 (April 1845): 479-526.
93.
de Bow, " Charters and Constitutions of Carolina," 396, 398n, 399, 401-4, 406, 411.
