In many parts of the British Empire the economy was dependent upon the brutal institution of chattel slavery. In America at the time of the Revolutionary War roughly one-fifth of the population of those colonies that would eventually separate from the tyranny of the King were themselves denied their own “unalienable” right to liberty. This lead Jefferson to add in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence the following clause: “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.“

Most people in the world remember the chattel slavery issues associated with the American Civil War. These were certainly atrocities but it is important to remember the the history of slavery is not an American or “southern” issue, it was an atrocity born and perpetuated by economic excess and abuse. Failing to end it in 1787 (with the US Constitution) was certainly a criminal act but the problem is older and bigger. As happens all too often, the biggest criminals in this scheme went unpunished and the victims are never avenged.

This series will not go into the American Civil War but focus no why slavery did not slowly wane in America, why the general emancipation of slaves did not happen as the writers of the US Constitution thought was imminent and inevitable, and why, despite their bold proclamation in 1807 abolishing the slave trade, the British Parliament is actually to blame (as Jefferson so clearly stated) for the slavery in America, the Caribbean, India, and many other places in the British Empire.

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