The Carolinian Context of John Locke’s Theory of Slavery

Locke’s Theory of Slavery

Locke presents a carefully limited theory of slavery that addresses potential Royalist absolutist claims in terms familiar to anyone reading the Whig literature of the seventeenth century. In the process, he generates an account of slavery that begins from his propositions about human equality and natural rights, thereby rejecting natural slavery. As Farr has noted, Locke’s “emphasis on unjust action serves to distinguish Locke from many other theorists of slavery,” likewise precluding justifications based on “original sin” or “pagan belief.” ²⁰ Significantly, it also precludes any sort of consensual slavery, ²¹ since “Freedom from Absolute, Arbitrary Power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a Man’s Preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his Preservation and Life together” (4.23). Consenting to the rule of another is only legitimate under the “Legislative power . . . established, by consent, in the Common-wealth” (4.22).

Had Locke stopped here, he would have given an account of slavery that aligned with many of his Whig allies, who could trace their own slavery rhetoric back to the Parliamentarian writers of the 1640s. ²² But Locke does not stop with a rejection of political slavery, explaining that when someone has

forfeited his own Life, by some Act that deserves Death; he, to whom he has forfeited it, may (when he has him in his Power) delay to take it, and make use of him for his own Service. This the perfect condition of Slavery, which is nothing else, but the State of War continued, between a lawful Conqueror, and a Captive. (4.23–24)

Locke later makes the connection between slavery and war even more explicit; slaves are “Captives taken in a just War” and “are by the Right of Nature subjected to the Absolute Dominion and Arbitrary Power of their Masters” (7.85), a claim Locke repeats elsewhere (15.172).

The critical question is thus what constitutes an “Act that deserves Death.” Locke’s description of slavery as “the State of War continued” links slavery to acts that place the eventual slave in a state of war with his master. The right of self-preservation gives men the power to defend themselves, and “hence it is, that he who attempts to get another Man into his Absolute Power, does thereby put himself into a State of War with him; It being understood as a Declaration of a design upon his life” (3.17). Any aggressive act against another person in the state of nature qualifies, since such an act necessarily entails a desire to take away the freedom of another person, and “He that in the State of Nature, would take away the Freedom, that belongs to any one in that State, must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away every thing else” (3.17).

Locke further limits the institution of slavery through his extensive discussion of just-war theory. While the just conqueror has “an Absolute Power over the lives of those, who by an Unjust War have forfeited them” (16.178), Locke is explicit that the licit enslavement originating in a just war is strictly limited to “those, who have actually assisted, concurr’d, or consented to that unjust force” (16.179). This precludes the creation of hereditary institutions of slavery, since “the miscarriages of the Father are no faults of the Children” (16.182). This restriction extends to property; the conqueror does not gain title to the lands of his new slaves (16.180), since their children maintain their right to inherit and use the land for their own sustenance (16.190). If a conqueror’s compensation for damages infringes on the survival of the wife and children of the enslaved, the conqueror “must remit something of his full Satisfaction, and give way to the pressing and preferable Title of those, who are in danger to perish without it” (16.183). In short, Locke presents a limited theory of slavery that carefully excludes women and children.

Locke also spends considerable time contemplating crops as a measure of reparations in the course of fleshing out his claim that the conqueror gains no title to land. Even if the damages of war are to be returned “to the utmost Farthing,” Locke insists that the settling of damage claims “will scarce give him a Title to any Countrey he shall Conquer” (16.184), since the regenerative quality of cultivated land on both sides of a conflict invalidates permanent claims to reparations, since any damage to crops will be solved by another season’s planting (16.184). Further, only agricultural production and land is worth demanding reparations over; money is by nature no more valuable “than the Wampompeke of the Americans to an European Prince, or the Silver Money of Europe would have formerly to an American” (16.184).

The picture that results from this theory is rather detailed. Political slavery is ruled out by Locke’s insistence that absolute power can never come from consent—hardly surprising, given Locke’s commitment to refuting Filmer and his fellow Royalists. The general notion that war might serve to justify slavery is likewise not unusual. What is remarkable is the depth of attention given to developing a just-war theory that explicitly protects the property and freedom of those outside the conflict, while also devoting considerable attention to issues of reparations for crop destruction. Arguments about crop destruction and agricultural regeneration are particularly interesting in this context because of Locke’s specific reference to America and the relationship of these arguments to Chapter V. In that chapter, Locke outlines his thoughts on the agricultural bounty brought about by cultivation in a distinctively colonial context (5.40), and illustrates his discussion of money with reference to its value to people “in the middle of the in-land Parts of America” (5.48). ²³ Thus, while Farr contends that “Locke’s theory of slavery . . . is consistent with his theory of natural rights, and even necessary given his theory of the just war,” Locke’s involvement with Carolina and references to America suggest that this gets the relationship backwards. Instead, Locke’s just-war theory is necessary to his theory of slavery because it provides a detailed framework for addressing the problems of Indian slavery in Carolina, where just-war considerations were front and center for Locke’s patron.

Locke, Carolina, and Just-War Rhetoric

In 1662, Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper joined with seven other leading statesmen to form a company dedicated to colonizing the land between Virginia and the Spanish settlements in Florida, but the earliest attempt to colonize the area failed by the end of 1668. By then, Locke had been a member of Ashley’s household for over a year, having taken up residence on a semi-permanent basis in the spring of 1667; at this point Ashley made Locke secretary to the Lords Proprietors.

Locke and his new employers immediately turned to crafting a constitution. The first edition of the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina is dated July 21, 1669, and portions of the manuscript are in Locke’s hand. ²⁴ The nobility and manorial system of the Fundamental Constitutions would have been odd even by 1669, as by this time the aristocratic model of English society had been significantly undermined by social change. ²⁵ Broadly Harringtonian in form, it required that lands be maintained in constant proportion, and established “a landed aristocracy ruling its inferiors in the countryside, with political institutions embodying a balance between this propertied class, the smaller landowners and the demands of ‘prerogative.’” ²⁶ The Proprietors hoped that property guarantees for lower-class migrants (“leet-men”), in addition to the provisions for religious freedom, would lure leet-men and “attract and keep the weightier sort” to lead the settlement. ²⁷ For leet-men, the provisions of the Fundamental Constitutions would have represented a social step up by providing both land and “formal avenues to pursue grievances” in the form of manorial courts. ²⁸

Throughout the Fundamental Constitutions, “the proprietors clumsily but consistently tried to balance their interests with Indian rights.” ²⁹ Indians were granted religious freedom and parcels of land within the baronies set up by the Proprietors, and the Proprietors reserved all rights to negotiate land purchases and other matters with the natives. ³⁰ This stipulation aimed to prevent conflict between the colonists and their Indian neighbors over land rights, protecting the colony from an attack in its earliest stages, and the initial set of temporary laws for the colony, dated July 27, 1669, included a provision that “you are not to suffer anyone to take up lands within two miles and a halfe of any Indian Towne, if it be of ye same side of a River, we hopeing in time to draw ye Indians into our government.” ³¹ Further, the Indians were to play a key role in the colony’s early survival and eventual economic viability, providing a trading partner as well as instructing the colonists on “the proper season to plant Corne & Beanes & Pease.” The need for self-sufficiency, especially important should war cut off communication or supplies from the colony, was a driving principle behind the initial instructions. A letter from Shaftesbury to one of his agents in Charles Town implored him to “be careful and use [the Indians] justly and kindly, and by none but faire ways endeavour to unite them with us.” ³²

Given the small size of the colony when the first settlers arrived in March 1670, the implementation of the Fundamental Constitutions was put off in favor of a set of temporary laws. Almost immediately, the hoped-for quiet trading relationship between the colonists and local Indians was disrupted. In the late summer of 1671, an English servant shot and killed a Coosa Indian, and the Coosas retaliated by attacking crops. On September 27, “as the said Indians will not comply with any faire intreatyes to live peacably and quietly,” the Grand Council of South Carolina declared war. ³³ Several Coosa were taken prisoner by the colonists, and on October 2, the Grand Council decided that “every company who went out upon that expedition shall secure & maintaine the Indians they have taken till they can transport the said Indians,” ³⁴ provided that the Coosas did not sue for peace in the meantime. Almost immediately, the captives were shipped to the West Indies as slaves. As the eighteenth-century historian Alexander Hewatt wrote, in order to encourage colonists to take the field, “a price was fixed on every Indian the settlers should take prisoner, and bring to Charlestown. These captive savages were disposed of to the traders, who sent them to the West-Indies, and there sold them for slaves.” ³⁵ Indian slaves offered “immediate reward” and were quickly made “a profitable branch of trade,” while “lands, without hands to cultivate them, were rather a burden, than in any way beneficial, to men who were allowed more by the proprietors than they could turn to any profit.” ³⁶

The Coosa conflict began an era in which the inhabitants of South Carolina became “the Indian slave traders of the North American continent.” ³⁷ The group of prominent men the Proprietors hoped would form the backbone of the new colony quickly became enamored of the prospects of trading in Indian slaves, where quick profits were all the more appealing because the colony was unable to produce its own food, much less a reliable cash crop. ³⁸ This faction of powerful leaders within the colony came to be known as the “Goose Creek men” for their plantations along Goose Creek, and their “political activity . . . revolved around the enslavement of Indians.” These interests ran directly counter to the main objectives of the Lords Proprietors, who wanted a secure, agriculturally self-sufficient colony. Consequently, the Goose Creek men resisted Proprietary control, and “their ferocious defense of their trading interests continually disrupted the Carolina political scene, had a significantly adverse impact on European migration to the colony, and provoked war.” ³⁹

The twin concerns of agricultural production and Indian slavery dominated virtually every conversation between the Proprietors and their recalcitrant settlers in Charles Town throughout Locke’s involvement with the colony. The failure to develop a cash crop for the colony led settlers to turn to other sources of income, and consequently Indian slavery remained a critical issue throughout the 1670s. After the initial conflict with the Coosa, the colonists fought multiple wars with local tribes, primarily the powerful Westo, and abetted smaller conflicts between tribes. Over the course of this period, the Proprietors and colonists began to speak of Indian slavery in just-war terms that resonate with Locke’s theory of slavery.

This conversation began immediately after the first conflict with the Coosa. A letter from Shaftesbury, with a superscription in Locke’s hand, commends Thomas Gray and the Grand Council for “subduing our injurious neighbors the Cussoo Indians.” ⁴⁰ While Shaftesbury generally lauded the conduct of his colonists in the war with the Coosa, two articles drafted in Locke’s hand on December 16, 1671, were added to the temporary laws. Directly responsive to the colonists’ exportation of captured Coosa in the war was the law that “Noe Indian upon any occasion or pretense whatsoever is to be made a slave or without his owne consent to be carried out of our country,” ⁴¹ a particularly necessary intervention given that “the rapid chronology of murder, war, and enslavement suggests a high degree of familiarity with the pattern” of Indian slavery on the part of the Barbadian Carolina colonists. ⁴² This law, like many Proprietary decrees, was generally ignored by the Carolina settlers; the exportation of slaves continued unabated. ⁴³

In May of 1674 Shaftesbury, frustrated that Charles Town’s intended agricultural economy had been superseded by cattle-raising and slave trading, decided to begin a separate settlement directly under his supervision at St. Giles Edisto. Shaftesbury entrusted Dr. Henry Woodward with the task of negotiating relationships with the nearby Indians and with the Spanish to the south. ⁴⁴ In the fall of 1674 Woodward concluded an alliance with the Westos, and wrote a lengthy report to Shaftesbury, endorsed by Locke upon its receipt, in which he wrote of expecting the return of his new allies “in March with deare skins, furrs & younge slaves.” ⁴⁵ Thus began Shaftesbury’s direct financial interest in the Indian slave trade. ⁴⁶ Many tribes participated in slave trading after the arrival of the English, ⁴⁷ but slave trading was of particular interest to the Westo, who began slave raids prior to their contact with settlers in Carolina. Supplied with guns, shot, and powder by English traders, “the little direct extant evidence regarding the [Westo] suggests that their arrival in the Georgia interior during 1659 may have been directly motivated by the demand for slaves in Virginia.” ⁴⁸ This trade also provided direct economic benefits; “the growing demand for European manufactures resulted in an artificial increase in hostilities among Indian tribes, and slaves became the objects of warfare rather than merely by-products. Often traders actually incited intertribal warfare in order to profit from the sale of captives.” ⁴⁹

By 1675, the colonists had recognized the importance of portraying their slaves as captives taken in just wars. On December 10, 1675, the Grand Council of the colony heard testimony from “Mr. John Boon the English Interpreter, and Capt. Titus the Indian Interpreter,” and the pair

did declare that the Indian prisoners which the Sowee and other our Neighbour Indians have lately taken, are Enemies to the said Indians who are in Amity with the English, and that the said Indian prisoners are willing to worke in this Countrey, or to be transported from hence, upon which it is Conceived that the said Indian prisoners may be transported by any who have or shall purchase them. ⁵⁰

This claim, included in the transmissions of the colonists to the Proprietors, accomplished two goals: it argued loosely that the method of capture was a just one, and it skirted the 1671 law banning Indian slavery. By placing agency on the allied tribes, the Grand Council “demonstrated that they were not enslaving ‘innocent’ Indians and that they were complying with their Indian allies’ wishes,” but at the same time fell back on a notion of just punishment for the captured—“it did not matter that the Indians were not at war with the English, only that they were taken in war and that their captors chose to sell them.” ⁵¹ Such reasoning justified Shaftesbury’s profits in Indian slaves as well, as the Westos engaged in slave-taking conflicts with the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Chicasa, Coweta, and Cusseta tribes, and may have gone as far as the Mississippi River in pursuit of captives. ⁵²

In 1677, the Lords Proprietors, still frustrated by the willful resistance of their colonists, barred trade with Indians to the south and the largest nearby tribes, including the Westo, without a license from Shaftesbury and one other proprietor “for ye safety of your Settlement and plantation upon Ashley River.” ⁵³ Officially deprived of their profits from the Indian slave trade and lacking a cash crop to make up the difference, the unhappy settlers of Charles Town turned to war to bolster their flagging economic prospects. While the small coastal tribes were already allied with Mathews and others in Charles Town, it was clear by 1677 that the most profitable trade—in slaves as well as other goods—lay with larger inland tribes like the Westo. Two months after the Proprietary monopoly was declared, the Grand Council began to take a progressively more hostile stance toward the Westo, ⁵⁴ culminating in a protracted conflict beginning in 1679. Shortly thereafter, the Proprietors set up a commission to hear Indian grievances as a way “to maintaine peace, and a friendly correspondence with the Indians.” These instructions, dated May 17, 1680, required the commission to “Inviolably and punctually” prevent the sending away of Indian slaves. ⁵⁵ Shaftesbury, well aware of the tensions his trade monopoly with the Westos had created, ensured that the instructions to the commission included the restriction that it was “not to meddle with or contradict any order that we have or shall give concerning the Trade with the Westos and those other remote nations during the tyme limited.” ⁵⁶ Shaftesbury’s monopoly was not to be undermined by the new commission; it was an attempt to control the repeated provocations of the colonists at Charles Town toward their Indian neighbors, which invited war and the loss of the entire Proprietary investment.

The Goose Creek men took the war as an opportunity to ensure their economic position in defiance of the orders of the Lords Proprietors. On April 12, 1680, a Westo named Ariano came before the Grand Council. He claimed that Woodward had approached his tribe and encouraged them to kill colonists John Boone and James Moore when they arrived for negotiations since Boone and Moore were coming to “Espy and observe there strength and maner whereby they might be easier destroyed” and that “if they did come to ye English settlement upon their invitacon that they should be sent in shipps beyond seas and sold for slaves”—clearly not an unusual or idle threat. ⁵⁷ In June, Woodward was detained, his trade relations with the Westo were cut, and the Grand Council commenced full-scale war. Ironically, the Grand Council cited as one of the provocations to war the fact that “Certaine of the people and Inhabitants of this province have bought and purchased several of the said Neighbour Indians from them the said Westoes and their confedrates and doe detaine them thereupon as slaves contrarie to the possitive orders and directions of the Lords proprietors.” ⁵⁸ The Goose Creek men proceeded to win a decisive victory over the tribe, enslaving many of them.

The Proprietors learned of this conflict from a separate letter, not a report from the Grand Council. The reply from the Proprietors conveys frustration and anger with the recalcitrant colonists, complaining that they had received “no Depositions to prove the matter of fact upon which this warr was grounded nor no Generall Letter to us from your selves.” While a war “occationed by a reall necessity for ye preservation of the Collony” would meet with Proprietary approval, this conflict seemed “to serve the ends of particular men by trade.” ⁵⁹ Shaftesbury wrote separate instructions to Andrew Percival and Mathews, asking them to negotiate a peace treaty with the Westo to restore trade relations in which one provision “must be . . . that if any of the Westoes shall go to any plantation but St. Giles or Mepken it shall be reckoned a breach of ye Peace, and lawfull for ye English to seize on such as soe doe.” ⁶⁰

It was after this incident and his release from the Tower in 1681 that Shaftesbury turned his attentions more fully to Carolina, where he made a final effort to develop a stable agricultural economy while protecting his interests. Shaftesbury and four other Proprietors signed a series of temporary laws in May of 1682 that eliminated the grievance commission and included a pair of injunctions against the Indian slave trade. The colonists “are not upon any pretence or Reason whatsoever to suffer any Indian to be sent away from Carolina,” and the Proprietors took “all the Indians within 400 miles of Charles towne into our protection as Subjects to ye monarchy of England you are not to suffer any of them to be made Slaves.” ⁶¹ Another set of instructions reiterated the two and a half mile buffer around Indian settlements and stated that the Proprietors would make every effort “to obtaine ye consent of the Indeans concerned” in land distributions. ⁶² Amidst this flurry of instructions, Shaftesbury initiated revisions to the Fundamental Constitutions in order to make the colony more attractive to groups of French Huguenots and Scottish Dissenters who were considering migrating. ⁶³

Locke and the Revisions to the Fundamental Constitutions

Locke’s involvement with the colony during this period changed. His flight to France in November of 1675 ended his tenure as secretary to the Proprietors. Scholars long assumed that Locke’s involvement with Carolina in France was virtually nonexistent, and that Locke did not pay serious attention to colonial affairs again until 1696, when he took up a post on the Board of Trade. ⁶⁴ In fact, his involvement with Carolina continued unabated through the composition of the Second Treatise, as David Armitage has demonstrated. ⁶⁵ Locke dedicated his “Observations on Wine, Olives, Fruit, and Silk,” composed during his time in France, to Shaftesbury; ⁶⁶ evidence from Locke’s journals indicates that he intentionally sought out “whatever might be ‘fit,’ ‘good,’ or ‘usefull in Carolina,’” suggesting that the work is “a piece of ‘agricultural espionage’ undertaken on Shaftesbury’s behalf with the needs of the Carolina colony in mind.” ⁶⁷ Likely related is the group of French Huguenots who were granted permission to migrate to Carolina in April of 1680 because many were “skilfull & practiced in the manufacture of Wines, Silkes & Oyles.” ⁶⁸

Beyond Locke’s “agricultural espionage,” there is other evidence that his interest in Carolina did not wane while in France. Locke’s journal contains a series of notes under the heading “Atlantis” that date between 1676 and 1679. These notes focus on potential marriage laws and other social policies, and are clearly addressed to Carolina. ⁶⁹ Locke also titled a note “Carolina” in 1679 that dealt with colonist–Indian relations. ⁷⁰ He requested that a copy of the Fundamental Constitutions be sent to him in France in September of 1677, ⁷¹ and carried on a lengthy correspondence with Nicolas Toinard and Henri Justel from 1678 to 1681 in which the Fundamental Constitutions were a topic of frequent discussion. ⁷²

This experience led to Locke’s participation in a substantial set of revisions to the Fundamental Constitutions in the summer of 1682. ⁷³ On August 17, a new edition of the Fundamental Constitutions was published. One draft of the August edition with emendations survives, and three people suggested revisions: Peter Colleton, Locke, and an unidentified third hand. Locke’s revisions are extremely detailed, and all of them made it into the August edition of the Fundamental Constitutions. ⁷⁴ These revisions betray concern with the course of Indian affairs in Carolina. The Proprietors continued to insist that “no person whatsoever shall hold or claim any Land in Carolina, by Purchase, gift, or otherwise, from the natives or any other whatsoever, but merely from and under the Lords proprietors,” ⁷⁵ but the constitutional rules about warfare and trials in the colony change significantly, a response to wars with the Indians and the Woodward affair. Sections 38 through 40 of the August 1682 version, all of which deal with the chain of command in wartime, have been revised, as well as Section 32 on trials, making it more difficult to convict.

The timing of this revision also coincides with a critical period in Locke’s composition of the Second Treatise; there is textual evidence that indicates Locke was in fact working on his sections on slavery at about this time. David Armitage has demonstrated that Locke’s chapter “On Property” was most likely composed around the same time as Locke’s involvement in the 1682 revisions to the Fundamental Constitutions. Chapter V shares a key characteristic with Chapter IV, “On Slavery,” and Chapter XVI, “On Conquest.” As J.R. Milton has noted, Locke’s style of biblical citation changed over the course of his life. In the First Treatise, the numerous Biblical references are almost without exception of the same form, either “1 Gen. 28” or “Gen. 1. 28.” The Second Treatise’s twenty citations of the Bible show no such consistency. Fourteen of the twenty citations use the same format for the verses, such as Locke’s citation of “Judg. 11. 27” at 3.21. However, the remaining six citations all use Roman numerals, following the form “Exod. XXI” found at 4.24. Thus, “in the early writings—those before the journey to France in 1675—all the citations without exception use Arabic numerals for the chapters. In the Essay and in the other works published after 1690, on the other hand, the chapter numbers are almost invariably indicated by Roman letters.” ⁷⁶ After 1678 the old citation style is phased out; “in his papers for the years 1679-83 out of hundreds of references there are a mere handful in the old style.” ⁷⁷

The citational change leads to one critical conclusion. Given the citation styles in Chapter V, the section on property “does not belong with its surroundings. . . . It is very difficult to believe that Locke wrote the chapters in their present order, using the old style in Chapter III, going over to the new style for Chapters IV and V, and then returning to the old style for all thirteen references in Chapters VI and VIII.” The Roman citation style that reflects a later period of composition can only be found in Chapter IV, “On Slavery,” Chapter V, “On Property,” and Chapter XVI, “On Conquest,” indicating that these were written or at least revised at a later point in Locke’s life, likely during the same period when he wrote Chapter V. Chapters IV and XVI contain the heart of Locke’s theory on slavery; the just-war rationale for legitimate slavery is suggested in Chapter IV and fleshed out in Chapter XVI. This suggests that Locke was working on his theory of slavery at the same time that he helped revise the Fundamental Constitutions after a devastating war spurred by the Indian slave trade that had seriously undermined his patron’s interests in the colony.

Carolina, Conquest, and Locke’s “Three Failures”

While Shaftesbury clearly approved of the Coosa conflict and some forms of taking Indian slaves, he complained bitterly in 1680 about the lack of information about the Westo war. The complaint that this war seemed only “to serve the ends of particular men by trade” was coupled with instructions for a peace treaty that included a provision for enslaving Westos for breaching the peace. The implication was that a war for trade was both dangerous to the colony and an illegitimate action by the colonists, while a defensive war against crop-destroying Indians—as Shaftesbury thought described the war with the Coosa—was worthy of Proprietary support.

Traces of this concern appear in Locke’s journal writings, as well as his theoretical works. Locke had ample indication that the Indians were perpetually engaged in conflict; in September of 1670, he read John Bull’s letter to Shaftesbury which described how the Westos “warr against all Indians they . . . doe come upon these Indians heere in the tyme of their cropp & destroye all by killinge Caryinge awaye their Corne & Children & eat them.” ⁷⁸ Woodward wrote to Shaftesbury of Westo relations with “the Cowatoe and Chorakae Indians with whom they are at continual warrs,” ⁷⁹ and even the Proprietary propaganda about the colony insisted that the Indians were constantly at war. At the request of Peter Colleton, who asked for a description that “might invite people without seeming to come from us,” Locke likely penned a description of Carolina for John Ogilby’s atlas America in 1671, ⁸⁰ which mentions “the constant Warrs they are engag’d in” and claims that the primary role of Indian leaders is “to lead their Men out against their Enemies in War.” ⁸¹

In his note “Carolina” from February 1679—the only note in his journals given that title—Locke writes that the colonists “should never pardon on any consideration the murder of any of our people” by the Indians. However, he admits, such retaliation may be dependent on “when we are in a condition to do it.” In cases where the full penalty of “life still for life” cannot be exacted, then it is wise “not to take notice of it if you are not in a condition to demand that and stand upon it.” ⁸² Retribution also figures prominently in Locke’s only discussion of slaves that places them in a particular social setting. In the First Treatise, while attempting to undercut the Filmerian idea that “making War and Peace are marks of Sovereignty,” Locke argues that “A Planter in the West Indies has more, and might, if he pleased (who doubts) Muster them up and lead them out against the Indians, to seek Reparation upon any Injury received from them” (11.130). Thus Locke refutes Filmer by claiming that according to that definition, “a Man in the West-Indies, who hath with him Sons of his own, Friends, or Companions, Soldiers under Pay, or Slaves bought with Money” who leads a war and concludes peace would have to be considered an absolute monarch (11.131). ⁸³

The back-and-forth over whether wars in the colony were just renders Farr’s last two concerns—demography and heredity—less problematic. While statistics from the era are sparse, it seems that in the early years of the colony the vast majority of Indian slaves taken were male warriors. This was the case in the Coosa war of 1671, when captive warriors were shipped to Barbados, and nothing to the contrary appears in surviving Proprietary records from the period. While over time the trade in Indian slaves shifted from exclusively focusing on warriors to including women and children, that change does not appear to occur until after Locke’s flight to Holland, ⁸⁴ and Locke and the Proprietors may have been opposed to this practice on both practical and moral grounds. Likewise, it appears that hereditary Indian slavery was not a concern for Locke and the Proprietors. While Indian slaves were taken in droves throughout the 1670s and 1680s, “there is little evidence . . . to indicate that the Carolinians themselves held Indian slaves during the first decade of settlement.” ⁸⁵ In 1683, we know of only four Indian slaves privately held in the Carolina colony, ⁸⁶ and it was not until 1711 that extant records demonstrate that Carolina colonists privately held double-digit numbers of Indian slaves. ⁸⁷ While there were probably more Indian slaves privately held than surviving records indicate, during the time of Locke’s closest involvement virtually every Indian slave captured in the colony was shipped out, as the risk of an Indian slave escaping or inviting attacks on the colony was obvious. ⁸⁸

Locke and African Slavery

Another significant change in the 1682 revisions is the previously unnoticed fact that the original Section 101, which gave a master “absolute power and authority over his negro slaves,” is completely absent from the August edition. It appears in the edition of January 1682, where it is numbered as Section 110, and returns in the edition of 1698, but Locke played no role in those revisions. The only remaining reference to slavery in the August 1682 edition guarantees religious freedom for slaves, ⁸⁹ a provision that remains essentially unchanged from the original 1669 edition. ⁹⁰ The most interesting surviving copy strongly suggests that the omission was conscious, rather than a copyist’s mistake. ⁹¹ In that edition, a hand has gone through each article in the August edition and written the number of its corresponding article in the January edition. ⁹² Articles 115 and 116 in the August edition are accordingly labeled as articles 109 and 111 from the January edition. However, no mention is made of the missing “absolute power and authority” clause. While each of their revisions made it into the final draft, Article 110 of the January edition went unremarked in the revisions that Locke, Colleton, and an unknown third hand collaborated on.

The disappearance of this article is all the more notable for Locke and Shaftesbury’s interests in African slavery. Shaftesbury received revenues from a plantation in Barbados from the 1640s until 1655 that held nine African slaves, and in 1646 held an interest in a ship that plied the “Guinea Trade.” ⁹³ Shaftesbury was also one of the largest investors in the new Royal African Company in 1671, encouraging Locke to invest as well, and served in administrative posts between 1672 and 1674. ⁹⁴ Locke and Shaftesbury both sold their shares at a profit in 1677. During the same period, Shaftesbury, encouraged by the prospect of providing military support and a trading partner for Carolina, had invested (along with Locke) in the Bahamas Adventurers in 1672. Some 40 percent of the island’s inhabitants at that time were African slaves, and a proposal mooted prior to Locke’s involvement called for the importation of eight thousand African slaves to start the colony on a path toward economic prosperity along the Barbadian model. ⁹⁵ Locke had other interactions with African slavery; he may have considered starting a plantation of his own in the Bahamas, ⁹⁶ and heard from Peter Colleton about the effects of “tarara root” on the ailments of African slaves in Barbados. ⁹⁷ Locke likewise served as Secretary to the Council on Trade and Foreign Plantations from 1673 to 1674, where he scrutinized reports on colonial affairs, including slavery. ⁹⁸

Carolina appears to fit this mold, given its description as “the only English colony that began its existence with a preference for African slave labor and a significant number of African slaves among its original settlers.” ⁹⁹ This fits with the role of Barbadian planters in shaping Proprietary policy in the 1660s, primarily through Sir John Colleton’s position as a Proprietor and his son Peter’s active involvement in the slave trade and the Charles Town settlement. Slaves made up a significant portion of the population from the beginning; it appears that by 1672 “between one fourth and one third of the colony’s newcomers were Negroes.” ¹⁰⁰

Against this background, it is difficult to explain the disappearance of the slavery clause, but attention to changes in the colony between 1669 and 1698 suggest a more nuanced view than the traditional assumption that the Proprietors sought to develop a plantation society “built on enslaved African labor.” ¹⁰¹ With the encouragement of John Colleton, the Proprietors sought to draw migrants from Barbados. Since the island had some thirty thousand African slaves by 1670, this required assurances for wealthy planters that their property rights would be protected. ¹⁰² Like the initial settlement plan in 1663, ¹⁰³ the 1669 settlement spearheaded by Shaftesbury made no explicit provision of land in the proposed headright system for planters who brought slaves, and potential Barbadian settlers soon inquired about their status. In response, Shaftesbury wrote to the Barbadian planter Sir John Yeamans that “we find you are mistaken in our Concessions that wee have not made provision of Land for negroes by saying that we grant 150 acres of land of every able man servant in that we mean Negroes as well as Christians.” ¹⁰⁴

This lack of clarity reflected an underlying ambivalence about the objectives of the colony and the place of slavery within it. Attracting Barbadian planters represented a cheaper way to settle the new colony, and their accompanying slave labor force presented the prospect of rapid agricultural growth and profitability. Yet the Fundamental Constitutions and many of the Proprietors’ actions over the first decade of settlement suggested that Shaftesbury and his compatriots had a different social model in mind. The unusual nature of the Fundamental Constitutions has often been noted by commentators, who question why the manorial system is enshrined in the Fundamental Constitutions when “by 1669 serfdom had completely disappeared in England” and the Proprietors would have been under no pressure to replicate the old feudal structure in the New World. ¹⁰⁵

The Fundamental Constitutions are less strange if viewed as an effort to reach back to an earlier, more stable social model: “an adaptation of English institutions and law to a greater frontier palatinate.” ¹⁰⁶ Social change, in the form of rapid population growth, changes in agricultural practices, and the taking of common lands by nobles “led to a corresponding decline in the ability of people to maintain livelihoods in the countryside,” causing significant internal migration and discontent. ¹⁰⁷ Beginning in the sixteenth century, colonial expansion was promoted as a way to simultaneously relieve the pressures of excess population and promote English power. ¹⁰⁸ This belief was paired with a society that still viewed land ownership as a marker of social status, and consequently “when stripped of its curious verbiage the plan to establish a nobility based on large-scale land ownership was ‘a very practical promotional device.’” ¹⁰⁹

This promotional nature shows through in the status of leet-man, which would have represented a social step up for many of the prospective migrants by providing an opportunity for land ownership and “formal avenues to pursue grievances” through manorial courts. ¹¹⁰ This vision was trumpeted by pamphlets for the colony, which sought to entice lower-class Englishmen with promises of land and easy social advancement. Locke’s description of Carolina for Ogilby includes a lengthy section describing the benefits for leet-men who migrate to Carolina. Leet-men would receive a hundred acres in a land of “Health, Plenty, and Riches,” and their rights to property and freedom of conscience would be ensured by the Fundamental Constitutions, the “best and fairest Frame” of government. ¹¹¹ Notably absent from Locke’s description is any reference to slavery, African or Indian, including in the summary of major constitutional provisions included at the end of Locke’s essay.

Similarly, the limited discussion of slavery in promotional pamphlets by Samuel Wilson and Robert Ferguson in 1682 is subservient to the greater goal of appealing to potential leet-men with descriptions of the agricultural bounty of the colony. Ferguson makes just one reference to the presence of slaves in the colony, instead focusing on settlers like “Andrew Percival . . . who by his own industry (Providence guiding) has raised and advanced from One Hundred Head of Cattel, to more than One Thousand, in less than seven years.” ¹¹² Wilson mentions the desire of migrants to eventually buy “Negro slaves, (without which a Planter can never do any great matter),” ¹¹³ but in the context of discussing how prospective leet-men can make their initial fortune through agriculture without the use of slaves; “many persons who went to Carolina Servants, being Industrious since they came out of their times with their Masters, at whose charge they were Transported, have gotten good Stocks of Cattle, and Servants of their own.” ¹¹⁴

This cursory discussion of slavery is in contrast to later promotional literature for the colony, which by 1710 included “2 Negro slaves, 40 l. each” as a requirement “in order to live comfortably” in Carolina. ¹¹⁵ These later pamphlets spent considerable space explaining the social position and advantages of owning “those we call Slaves,” taking care to distinguish them from indentured servants, and included extended discussions of the price of African slaves, their work patterns, the particularities of slave ownership and “Maintenance,” and recommended that a new migrant look into hiring himself out “to be Overseer over the slaves” until he could establish his own plantation. ¹¹⁶

The striking change in tone in promotional pamphlets corresponded to a significant change in Carolina’s economy after the publication of the Second Treatise. Rice quickly became “as central to the economy of the lower South as tobacco was to that of the upper South” after its arrival in the 1690s. ¹¹⁷ Consequently, the African population of the colony skyrocketed, leading to the introduction of the first slave code in Carolina in 1690; that “perfunctory” code was overhauled and radically strengthened in 1696, ¹¹⁸ and the labor demands of rice cultivation and the experience of many West African slaves in growing rice eventually made enslaved Africans a comfortable majority in the colony. ¹¹⁹ The presence of Barbadians in Carolina again proved essential to the slave trade, as they led the large-scale importation of African slaves into the colony in the 1690s. ¹²⁰

This history suggests one possible explanation for the disappearance of the “absolute power and authority” clause. The Proprietors, embarking on a final effort in Shaftesbury’s lifetime to attract leet-men to the colony, feared that continued migration from Barbados would encourage disproportionate growth in slavery at the expense of leet-men. By removing a clause that protected slave holdings, they may have hoped to stem some of the flow of settlers from Barbados—settlers that included several of the “Goose Creek Men” who caused such headaches. These were the same men who had “a high degree of familiarity with the pattern” of Indian slavery from their time on the island, where many captured Indians were shipped from Carolina. ¹²¹

Interpreting why the article on slavery passes unremarked in Locke’s revisions is more difficult, and has led Armitage to conclude that Locke retained a “tacit commitment to this brutal provision.” ¹²² The involvement of Peter Colleton, absentee owner of his father’s plantation in Barbados, may suggest an answer. It may have been impolitic for Locke or anyone else to suggest removal of the clause while collaborating with Colleton. Locke’s personal connection to Colleton seems to have faded by this point; their correspondence ends after July of 1674, and if the revisions of 1682 were made by circulating the document to interested parties, as the presence of three hands suggests, then there is nothing that personally connects the two after 1674. This is indicative of a more general trend in Locke’s life: his intimate involvement with African slavery was relatively dormant between 1677 (when he sold his Royal African Company stock) and 1696, when he took up a post on the Board of Trade. Unlike his interest in Carolina, which continues to appear in his correspondence and his activities throughout the late 1670s and early 1680s, African slavery drops out of Locke’s day-to-day affairs and his correspondence for a considerable length of time beginning in the late 1670s. While this hardly means that Locke forgot what he knew about African slavery, it is suggestive of the relative salience of African and Indian slavery for Locke during the critical period of 1682, especially given the events that precipitated the revisions.

Conclusion

Locke’s involvement in Carolina raises serious problems for the dominant scholarly approaches to the Second Treatise. Arguments that attempt to separate the theory of slavery from a colonial context become more difficult to sustain. The conditions in Carolina provide an example of real-world practices that the theory could work to justify, even though it remains “woefully inadequate as an account of Afro-American slavery.” ¹²³ This undermines Farr’s claim that Locke was engaged in purely local disputes when writing the Second Treatise, especially when paired with the textual evidence linking the theory of slavery to Locke’s “American” theory of property. Carolina also helps explain why Locke is concerned with defining a class of legitimate slaves in the first place; if he were purely interested in English affairs, as Farr contends, Locke would gain nothing out of a theory that both creates the opportunity for legitimate slavery while failing to justify any of its colonial forms.

If Locke’s engagement in Carolina shows that Farr is incorrect about his purely domestic motivations, it is equally troublesome for arguments that Locke is bent on colonial expropriation or that he may have changed his views on slavery after his deepest involvement with African slavery in the early 1670s. Members of the first camp are forced to confront not only Locke’s exclusion of women and children on the terms of theory, but also the fact that Locke was involved in Proprietary efforts to control and limit the slave trade within just-war bounds, efforts that went alongside attempts to respect the land claims of Carolinian tribes. ¹²⁴ Those like William Uzgalis and Roger Woolhouse, who take the second approach to Locke’s theory, derive some potential support from the disappearance of the article on African slavery from the 1682 revisions, though we have nothing that ties that directly to Locke. However, Uzgalis and Woolhouse both point to the gap between Locke’s sale of his Royal African Company stock and the composition of the Second Treatise as evidence for the possibility that Locke’s views on slavery had changed. ¹²⁵ This view is undermined by the fact that the Proprietors repeatedly affirmed the legitimacy of just-war slavery, and the similarities between the theory that Locke ultimately offers and conditions in Carolina suggest that he was supportive of at least some of the forms of slavery that were practiced there.

Given these difficulties, I suggest a stronger claim: that the theory serves as a justification of just-war slavery as Shaftesbury and his compatriots wished it could be practiced in Carolina. Such a view makes sense of the detail and sophistication of Locke’s theory of legitimate slavery, as well as its textual relationship to Locke’s well-known concerns with the New World in the Second Treatise. Viewing Carolina as the animating concern behind the specific content of the theory helps us to understand Locke’s interest in agricultural reparations, as well as Locke’s concern with creating a carefully limited class of legitimate slaves. This claim is corroborated by historical conditions in 1682, after a serious conflict with the Westo and accusations by Shaftesbury that the colonists were provoking war to profit from Indian slaves. This historical background also provides a potential explanation for the disappearance of the “absolute power and authority” clause in the 1682 Fundamental Constitutions that does not rely on the problematic claim that Locke came to view slavery as illegitimate prior to writing the Second Treatise. The semi-feudal character of the Fundamental Constitutions and the efforts of the Proprietors to attract “leet-men” likewise suggest that the “absolute power and authority” clause was not as central to the Proprietary project as is usually supposed, making the removal of constitutional protection of slave ownership a less drastic step.

While the correspondence between Locke’s theory and the practice of Indian slavery is not perfect, the intense debates between the Proprietors and the Carolina colonists indicate that we should not expect a perfect congruence. Locke was well aware that the slavery practiced in the colony did not match with his own theory, and he sought to create a system that could clearly respond to the conditions he dealt with daily as secretary to the Proprietors and as Shaftesbury’s confidant. Furthermore, the Proprietors sought to make allowances for the peaceful coexistence of natives and settlers, although they were hobbled by significant misunderstandings about the land use practices of local tribes.

This stronger claim shares two important premises with Farr’s account. First, Locke was deeply concerned with rejecting arguments for absolutism at home, and nothing in Locke’s theory of slavery undermines that goal. The rhetoric of slavery was ubiquitous in Locke’s circles, and Locke himself uses such rhetorical comparisons throughout the text. ¹²⁶ The Second Treatise can thus be seen as an attempt to meet absolutist arguments at home as well as address the colonial issues with which he was intimately familiar through his work with the Lords Proprietors, and the high-flown rhetoric is a reflection of his multiple objectives—colonial and domestic—when engaging in the “pamphlet warfare” that characterizes Locke’s work. ¹²⁷

Second, Farr remains correct that African slavery is not justified by Locke’s theory, and Farr may well be right that “Locke knew this.” ¹²⁸ He was certainly familiar with the African slave trade, as his activities in the 1670s indicate, and the Fundamental Constitutions and Proprietary practice represented a significant effort to attract the owners of African slaves from Barbados, albeit alongside a backward-looking system of serfdom. Locke never shows concern for the fate of captured Indian slaves once they reach Barbados, where whatever children they had would have been kept as slaves, and Farr’s “three facts” remain potentially problematic in the context of Indian slavery.

Yet while the strong account of Locke’s theory agrees that African slavery cannot be justified by the Second Treatise, it does not foreclose the possibility that Locke had come to endorse just-war slavery by 1682 but reject African slavery. This view still faces the serious hurdle of explaining Locke’s later work on the Board of Trade, as Uzgalis recognized, ¹²⁹ but it is strengthened by the recognition that Locke’s investments in African slavery did not call for a thoroughgoing account of how slavery could be legitimate, unlike his engagement with Carolina.

Few documents survive from the critical period in 1682 when Locke is with Shaftesbury, and the references to slavery in Locke’s remaining papers from before the publication of the Two Treatises are few and far between, making these questions extremely difficult to answer. Without drafts or much documentary material on the composition of the Two Treatises, circumstantial evidence of composition periods and the concerns of Locke’s patron are the best that can be mustered. Even granting these difficulties, the interpretation advanced here restores the colonies to our understanding of Locke’s theory of slavery, while avoiding the interpretive problems that arise from linking the Second Treatise to African slavery. Previous accounts of Locke’s theory of slavery do not cohere with his extensive engagement in Carolina and the evident balancing act attempted by Shaftesbury and the Proprietors. Whether it is merely a context for or in fact the central concern of Locke’s theory of slavery, Carolina provided Locke tremendous practical experience in colonial affairs and a window onto a debate over what made slavery legitimate. We are right to consider Locke’s career as “a tale of intimate and informed involvement with all manner of slavery,” but the “manner of slavery” most important to Locke when writing the Second Treatise—the Indian slavery of the Carolina colony—has been overlooked.