Negotiating Freedom is an educational project that offers students a new perspective on the institution of slavery in the early United States. Generally slavery is taught as the opposite of freedom—two states of existence with a clear boundary separating them. However, it is important for students to understand the constant negotiations that took place in early America to define what freedom was and who was deserving of it. The path from slavery to freedom was not necessarily a straightforward one—nor was freedom guaranteed once it was obtained.
The existence of slavery in the early American republic affected every aspect of Americans’ lives. It was intimately connected to how Americans defined themselves as individuals and as a nation. This website will guide teachers and students in exploring how slaves sought freedom and the barriers that slaves encountered during the struggle for a life free from bondage. As the site of the first English settlement in North America and a political power in the original thirteen colonies, Virginia is a useful case study in examining a slave society in the early republic.
But one question remains: How do we define freedom? In the early American republic, as white Americans and slave owners sought to define freedom as a privilege, free African Americans and slaves fought to define it as a right.