s financial worth. In part, the greater significance of property was religious--a sign that God was on their side, or they were on God's side. The Puritans, for example,
taught that society originates in a contract between God . . . and people . . . , whereby if the people agreed to abide by His commands . . . He would assure them outward prosperity. Having made such an agreement, the people, in another compact, voluntarily subjected themselves to a king or to other civil rulers (Morgan 64).
According to such a philosophy, if blacks are slaves and are deprived of such outward prosperity, then that is a sign from God that they are somehow lesser beings than the whites who own them and who are wealthy and politically powerful. What mattered, in the political, economic and religious thoughts of the European Americans, was their own freedom, their own independence, which consisted first and foremost of economic freedom and economic independence. It is no coincidence that the protests which sparked the American Revolution were tax-related, i.e., economic.
Morgan writes of Thomas Jefferson's thought that "It was an axiom of current political thought that republican government required a body of free, independent, property-owning citizens. A nation of men, each of whom owned enough pr
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