The 2nd amendment is about the right of the states to maintain militias. State militia were used to maintain domestic tranquility. In the southern states the main threat to domestic tranquility came in the form of slave rebellions. Two of the Federalist, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, were members of the New York. Manumission Society. The slave owing southern states were afraid that the new constitution would allow the federal government to disband the militia and thereby abolish slavery.
The 2nd amendment is not about an individuals right to gun ownership; it is about slavery!
Read on below the fold.
A brief history of slavery in America
In the 17th century flat out slavery was rare in the North American colonies. The main work force was comprised of indentured servants and yes to some degree enslaved Indians, but as a total percentage of the total population, slavery remained small. The first record of black Africans in the colonies is from 1619 when a captured Portuguese slave ship landed in Jamestown and the black Africans were sold to the colonist as indentured servants. The institution of slavery came slowly to the colonies, but we know that in 1708 Virginia passed a slave law.
All servants imported and brought into the Country...who were not Christians in their
native Country...shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves
within this dominion...shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resist his
master...correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction...the
master shall be free of all punishment...as if such accident never happened.
As the 18th century progressed the slave population increased. By 1775 it is estimated that there were about a half a million African slaves in the colonies. Half the population of Virgina was black and the African slaves out numbered the free, predominately white, colonists in South Carolina by two to one.
Rebellion and militias
The Stonos Rebellion 1739
In mid-August [of 1739], a Charlestown newspaper announced the Security Act. A response to the white's fears of insurrection, the act required that all white men carry firearms to church on Sundays, a time when whites usually didn't carry weapons and slaves were allowed to work for themselves. Anyone who didn't comply with the new law by September 29 would be subjected to a fine.
On September 19th of that same year about twenty black slaves sacked a shop that sold guns killing the two shop owners. The group then marched to the farm of Mr. Godfrey, burnt his farm to the ground and killed him and his son and daughter. Their numbers grow to about fifty as the mob chased down and killed any white they encountered.
Around four in the afternoon, somewhere between twenty and 100 whites had set out in armed pursuit. When they approached the rebels, the slaves fired two shots. The whites returned fire, bringing down fourteen of the slaves. By dusk, about thirty slaves were dead and at least thirty had escaped. Most were captured over the next month, then executed; the rest were captured over the following six months -- all except one who remained a fugitive for three years.
Slave Conspiracies in Colonial Virginia
Slave rebellions were also happening in Virgina, in response to these rebellions the Virginia legislature passed a regulation in 1722 banning free blacks from voting and owning guns. This is very telling. Here we have a southern colony passing gun control laws.
By 1730, Indian slavery was over and the number of white indentured servants was dwindling, but black slaves had risen to about a quarter of Virginia's population. White Virginians' anxiety increased proportionately.
In the fall of that year, Governor William Gooch reported to the Board of Trade that another slave uprising had been scotched. The spark was a false rumor that "His Majesty had sent Orders for setting of them free as soon as they were Christians, and that these Orders were Suppressed." Gooch tried to learn the source of this falsehood and called out the militia to take up any slave found off his master's plantation. "A great many" were made prisoner and were whipped for "rambling Abroad," and by this method Gooch hoped "to Convince them that their best way is to rest contented with their Condition."
Six months later, in the middle of winter, Phase Two of the insurrection began:
Negros, in the Countys of Norfolk & Princess Anne, had the boldness to Assemble on a Sunday while the People were at Church, and to Chuse from amongst themselves Officers to Comand them in their intended Insurrection, which was to have been put in Execution very soon after: But this Meeting being happily discovered and many of them taken up and examined, the whole Plot was detected.
After a trial, four ringleaders were executed and the rest harshly punished.
The insurrection had spread to as many as five other counties, Gooch informed the Board of Trade, though the plot had not advanced as far in them as it had in Norfolk County. He ordered the militia to patrol two or three times a week to prevent night meetings, and had every man bring his guns to church on Sundays so that they would not "be Seized by the Slaves in their Absence, if the same mutinous Spirit should be Revived amongst them." Gooch told the Bishop of London that some of the blame for slave unrest fell on cruel masters who "use their Negroes no better than their Cattle."
The Norfolk conspiracy led to further crackdowns on the slave population and stringent demands on Virginia's militia. The militia was made up not of paid professional military men but of farmers and planters, many of whom did not own slaves. Armed and mounted, the militia's job was to patrol the countryside in search of suspicious gatherings, a dangerous process so time-consuming that it "has occasioned a good deal of Fatigue to the Militia, and some loss in their Crops, as happening at a time their Labour & Industry were much wanted in their Grounds."
There was no real external threat to the colonies. The threat to domestic tranquility was from within. Clearly the militia were formed in response to the fear of slave rebellions.
Quakers and the Manumission Society
In the north events developed in a different direction.
As early as 1688 the German Mennonites and Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania had declared
Now, tho they are black, we can not conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves, as it is to have other white ones. There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men like as will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike? Here is libety of conscience, wch is right and reasonable; here ought to be likewise liberty of ye body, except of evil-doers, wch is an other case. But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against. In Europe there are many oppressed for conscience sake; and here there are those oppressed wh are of a black colour.
SLAVERY in PENNSYLVANIA
To be sure the anti-slave movement in Pennsylvania had other than just moral roots
But by 1720, a wheat-based economy had sprung up, and the good reputation of Pennsylvania in Europe was luring Scots-Irish and German immigrants, who were willing to hire on as indentured servants in exchange for passage across the Atlantic. It's estimated that half the immigrants to colonial America arrived this way, and in Pennsylvania about 58,000 Germans and 16,500 Scots-Irish sailed up the Delaware between 1727 and 1754. The Quaker farmers turned to these for work on their farms. On a relatively small farm growing grain, it was cheaper to do it this way than to own slaves.
Regardless of the motivation, Pennsylvania begins gradual emancipation in 1780, the same year that a freedom clause in the Massachusetts constitution is interpreted as an abolishment of slavery.
Vermont had already abolished slavery in 1777.
Also in 1777, John Jay introduces an anti-slave law to the New York legislature. It did not pass and the Revolutionary war puts abolitionist's ambitions on hold. But in 1785 John Jay forms the New York Manumission Society dedicated to abolishing slavery in New York He recruits fellow Federalist Alexander Hamilton to the cause. Here we have two of the authors of the Federalist Papers firmly in the anti-slavery camp. Hamilton was a monarchist at heart but he realized that a hereditary monarchy would not work in the newly independent colonies. So instead he advocated for life long terms for both the president and senate. Further, he thought that the governors of the states should be appointed by the federal government. He did not get his way in the finale constitution but his critics in the south took due note of his strong Federalist position and viewed the new constitution with suspicion. Would the new constitution, championed by abolitionists, allow a strong federal government to disarm the militias and abolish slavery?
The third Federalist author, James Madison was also opposed to slavery on principal. In Federalist #42, he says
It ought to be considered as a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period of
twenty years may terminate forever, within these States, a traffic which has long and so
loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern policy; that within that period it will receive
considerable discouragement from the Federal government and be totally abolished, by a
concurrence of the few States which continue the unnatural traffic in the prohibitory
example which has been given by so great a majority of the Union. Happy would it be for the
unfortunate Africans if an equal prospect lay before them of being redeemed from the
oppression of their European brethren!
James Madison and Slavery
James Madison's feelings about the slavery issue become even clearer as events led to the Federal Convention of 1787. In his treatise written before the convention, "Vices of the Political System of the United States," Madison wrote, "Where slavery exists the republican Theory becomes still more fallacious."7 At the convention Madison worked hard to keep direct reference to the word "slave" out of the Constitution. On June 30th, in the heat of the debate over representation in the Congress, James Madison offered what he thought was a compromise solution. Seeing that the true division was not the big states against the little ones but the North against the South, he proposed that the representation in one house be based on the number of free inhabitants in each state plus three-fifths of the number of slaves. The second house would be based solely on the number of free inhabitants. He also worked to free the nation of the slave trade problem.
But Madison was open to compromise and it is one of those compromises that lead to the 2nd amendment. The Southern sates would ratify the new constitution but only if amended. The second of those amendments allowed the states to maintain their militias, militias whose primary mission was the suppression of slave rebellions.
Editorial
To be a strict constructionist is to embrace an often brutish and bigoted view of society. Over the past 200 years our country has abolished slavery, outlawed the genocide which was common in our history and granted over half the population a voice in our democracy with the passage of the 19th Amendment. But we are not done and we must continue to grow as a society. It is my sincere hope that 200 years hence our ancestors will view us too as brutish as I often now view my 18th century forefathers.