The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America

by Gerald Horne

As so often happened for centuries to come, those who played this particular “race card” prevailed: to be against slavery of Africans meant you favored exploitation of Europeans. Or, to put it another way, those who favored lessening exploitation of Europeans should be in favor of enslavement of Africans.

A metropolis edging closer to abolition and colonies moving in the opposite direction, a paradigmatic colony frowning on the arrival of what today would be considered racial brethren to countervail a disproportionate number of Africans—such factors were creating an unsustainable relationship that collapsed by 1776.