been
deliberate ways of opposing the system. Masters complained that many of
their slaves were chronic shirkers. When slaves dragged their feet while
working, it was seen as evidence of their inferiority. When white union
workers behave similarly, it is labeled a slowdown.

Other slaves appear to have indulged in deliberate mischief, trampling
down crops, breaking tools, and abusing livestock. A southern physician,
Dr. Cartwright, concluded that this behavior was symptomatic of a mental
disease peculiar to Africans. He labeled the disease Dysaethesia
Aethiopica and insisted that masters were wrong in thinking that it was
merely rascality. He also concluded that the slave's chronic tendency to
run away was in reality the symptom of yet another African disease,
Drapetomania, which he believed would eventually be medically cured.

Finally, some slaves engaged in active resistance. Most of the slave
insurrections in America were very small, and most were unsuccessful.
The three best known insurrections were those led by Gabriel Prosser,
Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner. These revolts will be treated more fully
in the next chapter.

The masters consistently refused to see examples of passive or active
resistance as signs of manhood. Lying and stealing were never interpreted
as passive resistance, but were always attributed to an inferior savage
heritage, as was slave violence. Prosser, Vesey, and Turner, instead of
being numbered among the world's heroes fighting for the freedom of their
people, were usually represented as something closer to savages,
criminals, or psychopaths. Modern historical scholarship has been
influenced by the interpretation of slave behavior, which stressed the
impact of the system on the slave, rather than his response to it.
Consequently, it has failed to give proper recognition to African
contributions to American life.

Chapter 4

All Men Are Created Equal

Slavery and the American Revolution

"How is it," asked Samuel Johnson, "that we hear the loudest yelps for
liberty among the drivers of negroes?" The British author was only one
of many Europeans who thought it strange that a nation run by slave
owners should be so noisily demanding its own freedom. This same bitter
inconsistency was embodied in the death of Crispus Attucks. A mulatto
slave who had run away from his Massachusetts master in 1750, he spent
the next twenty years working as a seaman and living in constant fear