ABSTRACT
The Future of Slavery in Suspension. Possibly Great Britain could have ended slavery in the colonies by the simple expedient of consistently releasing slaves, wherever its troops were lodged in rebel territory, from Massachusetts to Georgia. Such a policy, in addition, would have comported with British policy at home. In 1772, in the Somerset case, Lord Mansfield had ruled that England’s free soil could not tolerate the presence of slavery, and ordered the release of a slave brought from Virginia to the home country. Although this decision did not affect the destinies of slaves elsewhere, notaoly in the West Indies, it furnished a precedent which could have changed the course of history. (See Reading No. 6, for a comparison with the problem o f the Emancipation Proclamation.) Unfortunately, the Brit ish commanders in America were blinded by self-interest, and, rather than turning slaves against their masters, preferred to seize many of them for transportation and sale in Jamaica and elsewhere.
