The Abolishment Of Slavery During The French Revolution

Nature affects everything. These effects range from the reasoning behind our everyday decisions to any actions that are physically possible. The question of what nature allows has been debated for years, resulting in wars, mass executions, and the toppling of governmental institutions in the search for an answer. One such response to this overwhelming question was the French Revolution.
In the early eighteenth century, Europe was dominated by powerful monarchs that enforced a wide range of laws that greatly restricted certain groups. Yet, during this time of heavy restriction, the Enlightenment, a movement that spurred intellectual thinking, and questioned the major institutions at the time, occurred. Most notably, the Enlightenment questioned
Slavery was a ‘natural’ institution that had been ingrained into society long before the French Revolution. The institution itself ranged in severity and reasoning. There was serfdom, which was a form of economic slavery. There was also the ‘traditional’ form of slavery in which the person was bought and sold as property. The legitimacy of stripping people of any rights they may have had, including any political rights and even the most basic ‘natural’ rights a person has, was highly contested during this age. One of the most prominent speakers calling for the abolishment of slavery, Marquis de Condorcet, wrote many documents denouncing the institution. In one highly acclaimed pamphlet, Condorcet wrote, “Although I am not the same color as you, I have always regarded you as my brothers [referring to African slaves]. Nature formed you with the same spirit, the same reason, the same virtues as whites…reducing a man to slavery, buying him, selling him, keeping him in servitude: these are truly crimes…” In this, Condorcet is condemning the institution of slavery because of the dehumanization of the slaves and that they have lost their rights. These rights of “property…the control over his time, his strength, of everything that nature has given him to maintain his life and satisfy his needs…” , he believes, come from nature and are inherent in every man. He also states that owning a slave
In the opening speech given by Jacques Brissot, one of the society’s active members, he stated, “… all men were free by Nature; that the Kingdom of the Franks must be free in reality as well as in name…How could his benevolent hand not be extended one day toward the Negroes who live under his Laws?” Brissot is claiming that men were once said to be free because of nature, yet the laws exclude blacks from being incorporated into the category of ‘men’. This statement once again shows that people at the time were questioning why there was slavery, when it is believed that nature creates all to be equal. Nature is the one who decided that everyone is equal and no man should contradict that, no matter the color of their