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"America was founded by slave owners who want to be free". -George Carlin
in Politics
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First of all, it is important to understand the dominating mentality at that time. Slaves were not seen as something special by any significant fraction of the population; they were considered just another type of property, along with buildings, cattle, vegetables, mining tools, etc. The question on the status of slaves, raising from the eventual consideration of the view that slaves are people rather than property, became a part of the political landscape a bit later than the period of gaining independence from the British Empire.
In this context, given that the Empire did not treat slavery much different from how it treated any other type of property on its colonies' territories, you could group up all the property into one category and generalize the claim to: "America was founded by property owners who wanted to be free". And that is much closer to the historical realities.
Let us consider now this generalized claim. The treatment of individual property by the Empire was, indeed, the core factor in emergence and escalation of the independence movement, and the freedom for the colonists to own property was a part of it. But there is more to it than meets the eye.
It is common nowadays to hear the following interpretation: "The Independence War was a response to the harsh taxation of the colonies by the empire". This is not a very accurate interpretation, since not only were the taxes not significantly increased prior to the war - but it also misses the fact that other British colonies did not join the rebellion, despite existing in a very similar legal environment.
The core reason the War and the consequent independence occurred lays in the dominating political philosophy in the American colonies. For religious, historical and philosophical reasons, the notion became popular in the 13 colonies that policing should be done by locally appointed and consented upon by the local population individuals, as opposed to the centralized government existing overseas. While the British rule was overall accepted, it was not seen as having been given a mandate to appoint the officials without the colonists' consent - the mandate it systematically utilized nonetheless. The Quebec Act of 1774, essentially taking away the right to define economical policies from the colonists, was the last nail in the coffin of the incredibly unpopular system.
On the other hand, say, in Canadian provinces, where the dominating political philosophy was very different and defined by the (at the time) leading version of Catholicism, the British policies were not seen as encroachment on people's rights, because the concept of rights there did not contradict having to abide by the policies dictated from overseas. In other words, the property owners trusted the Crown to define proper economical policies on their land, and did not see the possibility of excessive taxes as something inherently unnatural.
To summarize, the ability to own property (including slaves) that is regulated only by the locally elected officials was what led to the foundation of the US. The colonists believed that every restriction of property rights should be consented on by the affected population, and the affected population alone, and nobody else. This does not mean that the restriction itself cannot exist, or cannot be harsh; for example, a slave owner living in Massachusetts and supporting the Independence War realized very well that his right to own slaves could be abolished in the end - but he believed that the local population would not do that, understanding how important slavery was for their prosperity at the time.
So, Carlin is not wrong - his characterization is simply reductionist, separating slavery into a special category, while the same reasoning applied to every other property category. It was about the freedom to own and control property, not the freedom to own slaves (albeit not excluding it either).
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"Americanism not Globalism, will be our credo." ~Donald Trump
"A communist is like a crocodile" ~Winston Churchill
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