“Servants not Soldiers” The Origins of Slavery in the United States Army, 1797–1816

Studies of American slavery have long focused upon private actors in the “systemic operation of capitalism.” Historians of the latest generation have considered a wide range of entry points for new knowledge: “soul” values, the “transatlantic manufactory” of the Middle Passage, women enslavers, slavery’s capitalism, and the private enterprises that spun expansive networks of domestic slave-trading. When the “state” features in slavery studies, the focus tends to highlight politics, law, and legislation in varying and overlapping domestic, Atlantic, and global contexts, concluding that even if slavery was a contested subject domestically, nationally and internationally the United States was a slaveholding republic. However, what does it mean for the U.S. to have been a slaveholding republic? Some scholars have looked at foreign policy; others have counted officeholders. Some have studied jurisprudence or even sought to discern the intention of the Constitution’s framers.¹