The Character of Freedom: The Scottish Enlightenment and American Slavery (American Political Thought)

An original and deeply researched look at how Scottish Enlightenment ideals interacted with religious philosophy to inform and inspire abolitionists and enslavers alike in the founding of the American republic. The concept of liberty-so important to the American founding-was significantly informed by Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, which was central to the the Framers’ religious and political education.This intellectual tradition offered potential support for antislavery ideology.Some founders, however, were also enslavers whose practices of bondage were in conspicuous contradiction with these professed ideals.What is the actual relationship between the Scottish Enlightenment and racial slavery?Gideon Mailer answers this question in The Character of Freedom. Mailer examines how enlightenment and evangelical religious ideas interacted with discussions of racial slavery in the Scottish Atlantic World from the 1740s through the 1840s.From Glasgow to Philadelphia, from Edinburgh to Prin