The conflicting themes of liberty and slavery in America’s complex history stimulated a lively dialogue between a panel of experts and interested students. This thought-provoking event took place Feb. 7, in the Surfboard Room as part of the W. David Baird Distinguished Lecture Series.
Pulitzer Prize winner Dr. Edward J. Larson — also a history professor at Pepperdine and the Hugh and Hazel Darling chair in law — unpacked the ideas of his newest book, “American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765-1795.”
During the discussion, faculty members and students commented on the impact of Larson’s book and offered their opinions on it.
Larson introduced the heated debate that drove him to write his book.
“One side, coming from a history of radical and progressive ideology, argued that American history and the American Revolution is all about slavery now,” Larson said. “The other side, also coming from a long tradition, argued that the American Revolution was all about liberty, and I was curious.”
Echoing this curiosity, Dr. Richard Hughes, Dr. Christina Littlefield and Dr. J. Christopher Soper participated as a panel of experts during this discussion. Littlefield is adviser for Currents Magazine, which is part of Pepperdine Graphic Media.
“Without fully realizing the hypocrisy of their claims, both Federalists and Anti-Federalists fought against the bondage they suffered under British rule,” Soper said. “Meanwhile, nearly one-quarter of the population was enslaved. Slavery was justified as a positive good to the many and central to the economy as America fought for freedom from Britain.”
Larson said he knew these topics would be controversial and would require extensive exploration.
“I just wanted to go back to the sources,” Larson said. “What I tried to do is never turn to secondary sources but to read primaries to see what people wrote, what people said, what people did at the time and present my findings.”
Ultimately, Larson said he tackled this challenging debate by concluding that neither extreme was fully correct.
“We have a complex inheritance,” Larson said. “The revolution was all about liberty, whether it was a slaveholder like George Washington or those that would become abolitionists fighting for liberty. But it was also about slavery because it was perpetuated.”
The panel of experts elaborated on what they said was a perhaps unsatisfying but evidential claim.
“In a debate that often generates more heat than light, Larson’s book places both liberty and slavery as the shared inheritance of America,” Soper said.
The panel of experts discussed how colonists claimed “taxation without representation” was a form of slavery while they themselves were slave practitioners, which was a jarring act of hypocrisy. The scholars said that, through slavery, Americans undermined their own traditional biblical beliefs that all of humanity is made in God’s image.
This heavy topic of discussion stimulated a response from many students who attended this panel event.
“We have to acknowledge that, with liberty, slavery also existed,” first-year Natalie Powell said. “It’s easy for us now to ignore all the bad things we did years ago, but we can’t be where we are today without acknowledging that slavery was a part of our past. It really stood out to me that we need to remember the past of our country and how that can help us move on today.”
Some students said they hope Pepperdine continues to hold events similar to this panel discussion as they felt they learned new and valuable information.
“I wish there were more meetings like this because I didn’t know the extent of how deeply racism was associated with American culture and how much slavery affected American history,” first-year Andrew Roh said.
While the discussion acknowledged a shameful part of America’s history, Larson said he did not wish to leave his audience discouraged about America’s past.
“Liberty is truly a central theme of both the American Revolution and the first great emancipation of enslaved Africans in the history of the world,” Larson said. “We should continue to live up to that legacy.”
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Contact Madeline Del Rio via email: madeline.delrio@pepperdine.edu
