How Did The Americans Contribute To John Locke's Rights

In the 1700s, racial superiority was rampant. For those born anything other than Caucasian, there were essentially no rights. France and its colonies – Saint Domingue in particular – were benefitting off the backbreaking work of the people the white Frenchmen deemed inferior. Rallying for the rights of those of darker skin tone were the Jacobins. Henri Grégoire, a founder of the Jacobin club, was a vital supporter in the movement for the rights of nonwhites. Examining the foundations of the Jacobins’ arguments and looking at Grégoire’s actions makes it clear that Grégoire’s contributions resulted in equal rights.
The Jacobins were strong advocates for granting rights to nonwhites in France and its colonies. However, they didn’t come
Although Locke wasn’t thinking of the black people in slavery, the ideas portrayed in his writings could be applicable to the argument for the allowance of rights for all men. In the Second Treatise of Civil Government, Locke stated,
All men are naturally in … a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature; without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination and
This is what the mulatto, people of mixed race – especially people with one black parent and one white parent, and black men wanted – to be equal to the white men. In Chapter IV, Locke pronounced, “The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.” While this statement may sound radical, Locke doesn’t just leave men unaccountable for their actions. He said that there should be a government in place and that men should have a “standing rule to live by” that everyone in society has to obey. Beyond those rules, Locke believed that men should “not be subject to the inconsistent, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man…” Applying the Second Treatise of Civil Government to the mulatto and black men, instead of just English men, provided a good argument for the