Again and again the Americans complained or feared they would be the "slaves" of the British. It had, Bailyn writes, a particular meaning in the 18th century, the subjects of an absolute monarchy, like the French or Danes.
But there were a population of non metaphorical slaves in the 13 colonies, and the revolutionaries began to consider in their ferment for liberty and rights, if they were being a tad inconsistent.
Southern patriots like Jefferson acknowledged this inconsistency, but they could find no way to do without the institution of slavery without plunging their colonies into chaos.
In Massachusetts, James Otis struck a bolder note: "all men" meant all men "black or white." Samuel Cooke, a minister preached that in tolerating Negro slavery 'we, the patrons of liberty, have dishonored the Christian name." Some protested the Atlantic slave trade as an exercise in "force and power."
One of the harshest attack was by Baptist minister John Allen. "The iniquitous and disgraceful practice of keeping African slaves." was an abomination, in violated natural and inalienable rights of mankind, the laws of society and humanity, God's law and the charter of Massachusetts.
Colonial efforts to ban slavery, the Atlantic slave trade or tax it out of existence had been vetoed by royal governors or England. But it was, in Bailyn's words, a weak excuse. Levi Hart, a clergyman in Griswold, Conn, gave a barnburner of a sermon in 1775, stressing the inconsistency of protesting a tax on tea while inflicting infinitely more tyranny on the enslaved. He summed up: "when shall the happy day come, that Americans shall be
consistently engaged in the cause of liberty?"