...dissolution of the United States. In England, author Samuel Johnson posed a barb that was difficult to avoid: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"34 34. Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, p.275. 2. UNITING AROUND A...

...juxtaposed figurative with literal slavery in his famous reply: "if slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"55 Literal slavery is not an issue here; Johnson, Burke, and Price all despised it. But, since...

...attention to the paradox at the heart of the colonists' complaint: 'If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?'58 Reflections on the Revolution Burke 's Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on...

...hundred men, women and children, some of whom were his blood relations. As Dr. Samuel Johnson had asked: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" With this in mind, it is hardly surprising to find that Jefferson's words and deeds on the subject...

...rely on such individual motives and goodwill in response to Samuel Johnson's famous jibe at Americans: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" Yet owners manumitted a surprisingly large number of slaves during the Revolution or soon after. Even...

...287, 308-10, 350-51. 1 34. In perhaps the most famous Tory quip to this effect, Samuel Johnson asked, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" Quoted in Jack P. Greene, "Slavery or Independence: Some Reflections on the Relationship among Liberty,...

...hypocrisy is, of course, longstanding, instantiated perhaps most memorably by Samuel Johnson's quip: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" See also Barbara J. Fields, "Ideology and Race in American History," in Region, Race, and Reconstruction,...

...owners. Not a few Englishmen and many Americans read the Declaration and wondered, as did Samuel Johnson, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" This question bothered some early constitution makers. But only three of the new states confronted...

...from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have." The British were only too happy to agree. "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" asked British writer Samuel Johnson. A few white colonists responded to these contradictions by calling...

...seemed cheap. The American Revolution changed all this. The revolutionaries did not need Dr. Johnson ("How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?") to tell them about the glaring inconsistency between their appeals to liberty and their owning of slaves....