ABSTRACT
Introduction It has been a commonplace of political thought and historical judgement in the West that slaves are outside politics, that they are excluded from civil and political society, politically inert. When, during the secession winter of 1861, soon-to-be Confederate President Jefferson Davis insisted that the principles of equality espoused in the Declaration of Independence referred only to ‘the men of the political community’ and had ‘no reference to the slave’, and that the Constitution did not put ‘the negroes ... upon the footing of equality with white men – not even upon that of paupers and convicts’ but rather ‘discriminated against [them] as a lower caste, only to be represented in the numerical proportion of three fifths’, he echoed ideas as old as antiquity. Slaves, wrote Aristotle in The Politics, while ‘necessary conditions’ could not be ‘integral parts’ of the ‘state’s existence’, could not have citizenship which was ‘limited to those who have the right of sharing in office’ and ‘requires the experience of ruling as well as of being ruled’. Indeed, the concepts of the ‘franchise’ and ‘enfranchisement’ have been associated, historically and etymologically, not only with the granting of citizenship and voting rights but also with liberation from bondage.1
