ABSTRACT
Slavery, sectional differences, and the conflicts they engendered proved manifest less than a month after the thirteen colonies declared their independence. While devising means to pay for war, the Continental Congress debated whether slaves should be taxed as persons or property. Anticipating eight decades of threats that lay in the future, South Carolinian Thomas Lynch, Jr. warned that “If it is debated, whether their Slaves are their Property, there is an End of the Confederation. Our Slaves being our Property, why should they be taxed more than the Land, Sheep, Cattle, Horses, &c.” To this early threat of disunion, Benjamin Franklin sardonically replied that “Slaves rather weaken than strengthen the State, and there is therefore some difference between them and Sheep. Sheep will never make any Insurrections.” 1
