Revolutionary Voices from the Slave Houses

By Gary L. Williams

Imagine you were at the American Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. You were among the delegates who shaped the founding document of a new nation. You were also among the few who knew the harsh reality of slavery, the system that provided free labor for many of the wealthy planters and merchants in attendance. You saw the contradiction between the ideals of liberty and equality and the practice of owning human beings as property. You heard the voices of the enslaved people who lived in small, dark, windowless slave houses, who were sold on auction blocks, who were whipped and branded and separated from their families. You felt their pain and their longing for freedom.

Would you have had the courage and the principle to speak up for them? Would you have challenged your fellow delegates to end the injustice of slavery and to include all people in the vision of “We the People”? Would you have risked your reputation, your fortune, and your life for the sake of humanity?

Revolutionary Voices from the Slave Houses explores this hypothetical scenario through historical research and fictional narratives. It gives voice to the enslaved people who were silenced and erased from the official history of the United States of America. It invites you to listen to their stories and to imagine what could have been different if someone had spoken for them at the Convention.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9781398499935

Gary L. Williams

Gary L. Williams, Esquire, is a resident of Laurens, South Carolina. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Newberry College in Newberry, South Carolina. In 1989, he was conferred a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law in Columbia, South Carolina. He is the first person of colour to establish a private law practice in the City and County of Laurens since the founding of Laurens County in 1785.

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About the Author

Gary L. Williams, Esquire, is a resident of Laurens, South Carolina. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Newberry College in Newberry, South Carolina. In 1989, he was conferred a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law in Columbia, South Carolina. He is the first person of colour to establish a private law practice in the City and County of Laurens since the founding of Laurens County in 1785.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all those voices searching for Freedom and Liberty.

Copyright Information ©

Gary L. Williams 2024

The right of Gary L. Williams to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398499904 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398499911 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781398499935 (ePub e-book)

ISBN 9781398499928 (Audiobook)

www.austinmacauley.co.uk

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Canary Wharf

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E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

I acknowledge all who have been enslaved.

Preface

UNITED STATES DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…

– 1776

PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America…

– 1787

UNITED STATES’ EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

…All persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free…

– January, 1863

THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom…

– November, 1863

THE UNITED STATES PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

– Approved Current Version, 1954

Up Above My Head

Up above my head,

I hear music in the air

Up above my head,

I hear music in the air

And I really do believe,

(yeah) I really do believe

There is a Heaven somewhere…

Song by Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Marie Knight, 1947. Copyright of lyrics Princess Music Publishing Corp.

1

The beginning of revolution has always made people hesitate, for within the definition of hesitation, there becomes an unknown point of decision. The colonists had reached their revolutionary decision to begin a revolution and not continue being governed by a British Empire. This colonial decision was made, their muskets were loaded, and thereafter, there became the first shot heard around the world. This revolutionary shot was made by the colonists at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, followed by Bunker Hill.

This revolutionary decision by the colonists generally became real in the colony of Massachusetts, and thereafter, throughout the other colonies, after Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill, when the revolutionary colonists began their point of no return. These battles fortified and changed the colonial landscape by continuing to empower the colonists’ separation from Britain. From the very beginning of this revolutionary battle, if they would be victorious with their desire for freedom, these revolutionary colonists needed to be committed to the revolutionary cause, that is, committed to a complete change from British governance.

The revolutionary colonists did and won their freedom; however, their definition was a selfish ideation, since they never wanted freedom for all. With that first shot, the revolutionary colonists were clearly stating to King George III of England that freedom was what they sought, and freedom was what they shall have. They declared this revolutionary demand to King George III in their revolutionary declaration; their revolutionary clarion call swept down through the thirteen colonies, instilling a new spirit across this land’s width and depth.

The spirit in the colonial air began in the mid-1700s, when revolutionary conversations of freedom from taxation without representation and revolutionary speech turned to revolutionary action. Loyalists to King George III fought to keep their wealthy lifestyle that they had created on these colonial shores. Both sides in the battles sought to keep their people, called slaves, confined in the small, dark squares of the windowless slave houses, all occupying slave rows at this time and on the various plantations of the time; they sought to keep a free labour supply available as needed.

Interestingly, one of the men at Lexington and Concord who was shot and given his so-called freedom was Prince Estabrook, a slave of Benjamin Estabrook. Although he was freed, he was freed into a land where all were not free, and all people would not be free until 1865. Those who were not free provided the free labour supply to the revolutionary colonists, and Prince would also continue to supply the colonists with his valuable skills and carry his