I'm John Batchler. I'm continuing with Daniel Rood in the shadow of the great house, a history of the plantation

in America. John Locke writing a document that becomes critical to understand how people of the

mainland, that's America, the tidewater colonies, the Carolina colonies, eventually all of the South, understood who works in the

fields and who lives in the great house, the big house. John Locke writes, every freeman of

Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over Negro slaves. Of what opinion or religion soever.

That's John Locke.

Professor, did George Washington know that?

Did James Madison know that?

Did Patrick Henry know of that statement?

And did they refute it or did they agree with it?

I'm not sure if they specifically knew of it as very literate men.

I imagine they did, but they certainly believed that even a lot more strongly than John

Locke did.

They were a lot more sure about that than John Locke was, it turns out.

I think what's important about, so he writes that in 1670.

I think the words of that phrase are very important.

Because first of all, he uses the word Negro, which is a borrowing from the Portuguese, Negro,

who had before the British were ever even involved,

began to create this new kind of racial category of a person who had no rights to be respected,

and who had no history to reckon with.

And that was this sort of new fiction of the Negro.

So he's able to use that.

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