U.S. Department of State Fiscal Year 2020 Agency Financial Report

Unalienable Rights and the Evil of Slavery P rominent among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure, from the founders’ point of view, are property rights and religious liberty. A political society that destroys the possibility of either loses its legitimacy. For the founders, property refers not only to physical goods and the fruit of one’s labor but also encompasses life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They assumed, following philosopher John Locke, that the protection of property rights benefits all by increasing the incentive for producing goods and delivering services desired by others. The benefits of property rights, though, are not only pecuniary. Protection of property rights is also central to the effective exercise of positive rights and to the pursuit of happiness in family, community, and worship. Without the ability to maintain control over one’s labor, goods, land, home, and other material possessions, neither can one enjoy individual rights, nor can society build a common life. Moreover, the choices we make about what and how to produce, exchange, distribute, and consume can be tightly bound up with the kinds of human beings we wish to become. Not least, the right of private property sustains a sphere generally off limits to government, a sphere in which individuals, their families, and the communities they form can pursue happiness in peace and prosperity. The importance that the founders attached to private property only compounds the affront to unalienable rights involved at America’s founding in treating fellow human beings as property. It also explains why many abolitionists thought that owning prop- erty was a necessary element of emancipation: only by becoming property-owning citizens could former slaves exercise economic independence and so fully enjoy their unalienable rights. Respect for unalienable rights requires forthright acknowledge- ment of not only where the United States has fallen short of its principles but also special recognition of the sin of slavery – an institution as old as human civilization and our nation’s deepest violation of unalienable rights. The legally protected and institu- tionally entrenched slavery that disfigured the United States at its birth reduced fellow human beings to property to be bought, sold, and used as a means for their owners’ benefit. Many slave-owning founders, not least Thomas Jefferson, recognized that in the light of unalienable rights, slavery could only be seen as a cruel and indefensible institution. In contemplating slavery in his Notes on the State of Virginia, he wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” Nevertheless, it would take a grievous civil war, costing more American lives by far than any other conflict in the nation’s history, to enable the federal government to declare slavery unlawful. It would take another century of struggle to incorporate into the laws of the land protections to guarantee African Americans their civil and political rights. Our nation still works to secure, in its laws and culture, the respect for all persons our founding convictions require. It has been the work of Americans down through the generations to understand that unalienable rights, realized in part in the privi- leges and protections of citizenship, apply to all persons without qualification. Far from a repudiation of, this progress in under- standing represents fidelity to, the nation’s founding principles. Born a slave, Frederick Douglass through the power of his oratorical gifts became an important influence on his countrymen, including President Abraham Lincoln, in winning recognition of the unalienable rights of black Americans, both before and after the abolition of slavery. 40 | U ni ted S tates D epartment of S tate 2020 A gency F inanci al R eport