“The Happiness of Liberty of Which I Knew Nothing Before”

This chapter shows that the final split between the English colonial rulers and settlers in British North America provided passports to freedom for runaway slaves, who during the white American War for independence deserted their passport masters. It provides a historical analysis of the formation of the binary racial division that arose out of the project of colony building on Manhattan Island during the early modern era and took shape in articulation with divisions of class, religion, birthplace, gender, sexuality, and language.

Archaeology · Articulation (sociology) · Colonialism · Genealogy · Happiness · Human sexuality · Independence (probability theory) · Nothing · Political science · Politics · Sociology · White (mutation) · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society