American slave owners and the fight for liberty: Book uses man's case as window onto Revolution's contradictions

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American slave owners and the fight for liberty: Book uses man's case as window onto Revolution's contradictions
December 13, 2009
By Jason Claffey
fosters.com

Thomas Jeremiah was a singular character in American history, a flawed hero doomed in Shakespearean fashion.

A free black man in Charleston, S.C., during the Colonial era, he worked himself up from nothing to become a harbor pilot and one of the wealthiest people in the city by 1775. He earned the American Dream before it was known as the American Dream.

Yet despite being black and free, he was a slave owner. And despite his wealth, he was illiterate.

He also was proud of his improbable success — and it made whites jealous.

He was accused — falsely — of inciting a slave insurrection based on the dubious claims of two slaves. He was convicted by a kangaroo court, and in August of 1775 — as the Colonists prepared to go to war in the name of liberty — he was hanged and his body burned.

The life and times of Thomas Jeremiah, which largely have gone untold, are the subject of J. William Harris' new book, "The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah: A Free Black Man's Encounter with Liberty," published by Yale University Press.

Harris, a University of New Hampshire history professor, said he was drawn to Jeremiah's story because it showed the "complex relationship between liberty and slavery" during the American Revolution.

"It struck me as a tremendously interesting story that was very unusual and tragic," Harris said. "The (Colonists) were claiming to represent liberty, but they were violating some of the fundamental British institutions that protected (it)."

"The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah" is one of several books Harris has written on the American South. One, "Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont and Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation," was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in history.

Harris, 63, has a personal connection to the South — he was born in Jacksonville, Fla., and attended a segregated high school in Atlanta.

In "The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah," Harris explores the glaring contradictions and ironies of the American Revolution, when white Colonists fought for freedom while denying it to their black slaves.

His research took him to South Carolina, London and Scotland. It was sometimes frustrating, as there were few primary documents that mentioned Jeremiah. Instead, he relied heavily on letters written by Charleston patriot Henry Laurens and British Lord William Campbell.

Laurens, the most well-known man in Charleston, was Jeremiah's chief accuser and successfully won a conviction against him. Campbell, the colony's royal governor, believed the charges against Jeremiah were unjust and tried to save him.

It would be easy to paint Jeremiah as the hero and Laurens as the villain, but it wasn't that simple, Harris said. In their own way, they were both flawed heroes.

Jeremiah fought for his freedom, yet denied it to his slaves. Laurens owned slaves too, yet he led the patriot cause during the Revolution and eventually became the president of the Continental Congress.

Even Campbell was a slave owner, though he believed in due process for all, whether black or white.

The common thread was slavery, Harris said.

"It was the basis of their wealth," he said. "They (Jeremiah, Laurens, and Campbell) thought of blacks as inferior. They didn't see the contradiction."

Fear of slaves rising up against their masters fueled the rumors that led to Jeremiah's trial. In May of 1775, as word of the fighting at Lexington and Concord, Mass., spread, whispers of the British invading South Carolina or inciting a slave revolt began circulating. Jeremiah made an easy target, perhaps more so because whites were jealous of his success, Harris said.

The ensuing trial was a defining moment in the lives of its participants. For Jeremiah, it was his downfall after achieving an unparalleled level of success.

Campbell became "anguished" about being unable to save Jeremiah, Harris said. A year after the trial, Campbell came back with a British fleet to recapture Charleston. He was wounded on a ship and never fully recovered, dying a year and a half later.

After he became president of the Continental Congress, Laurens was captured by the British navy and spent a year and a half in the Tower of London. He, too, never fully recovered and died in 1792. Harris said Laurens harbored some regret about his conduct toward slaves — and possibly toward Jeremiah.

Exposing the dual nature of the three characters, Harris' book "weaves together the lives of three slave owners, opening up wonderful new insights about liberty in the context of the American Revolution," according to a review by Orville Vernon Burton, author of "The Age of Lincoln."

Pulitzer Prize winner Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, in a review, called Harris' book a "searing portrayal of the central paradox of the American Revolution — the centrality of slavery to the struggle for political liberty. By focusing on a single event, it exposes another paradox as well — that making a story small can also make it bigger."

"The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah: A Free Black Man's Encounter with Liberty" was selected by "Library Journal" for its "Best Books of 2009" list and is available in bookstores and online.