Independence Minded

Step into Sandy Slater’s maybank hall office and the first thing you notice is the red walls, a wink to her courses on gender and sexuality, where red carries cultural meaning. It’s the also perfect backdrop for the stark print on the wall behind her: a British tax collector being tarred and feathered after Parliament’s 1765 Stamp Act – the first direct tax on the American colonies that sparked protests from Boston to Charleston.

“It was excruciating,” she says.

The tarring, not the tax, which was nominal. But the painting is a searing reminder that the Revolution was messy, personal and often brutal. Now, as the nation marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, Slater, a professor of history and director of the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program, wants people to grapple with the Revolution’s full complexity.

“We’re still talking about freedom, property, human rights, representation – how to matter to our government,” she says. “It’s a really important moment of reflection – of awe – that this little collection of colonies made a nation, but it also calls us to be self-critical and hold ourselves accountable.”

Slater’s own curiosity about freedom began in the “hollers” of Turkey Creek, Ky. The daughter of a coal mining, family-farm community in Appalachia – a “forgotten people historically,” she says – she grew up attuned to inequity, especially around class. As a child, she devoured Abraham Lincoln’s words and wanted to trace the roots of the ideas he invoked, leading to a doctorate in history from the University of Kentucky in 2009. She started at the College two weeks after defending her dissertation. She felt at home immediately.

“I love it here,” she says, adding with a laugh: “Good luck prying me out of my office.”

Her research reaches across early America and the Atlantic World with a specialty in the intersections of class, race, gender and sexuality. Charleston, the fourth-largest colonial city, is a living archive for that work.

“Everywhere there’s a historical marker, beautiful architecture, a story,” says Slater. “I always stop and pause at a marker and think, Aren’t I lucky to be at the College of Charleston?”

For Slater, the Revolution was “absolutely a civil war” – not just between colonists and crown, but within communities and families. Even Benjamin Franklin was riven by division: “His son was the royal governor of New Jersey and a loyalist,” she notes. “After he refused to support the Patriot cause, Franklin saw his son only once again, a cold meeting to settle debts.”

Why should Americans care about the 250th? Because, argues Slater, the Revolution’s ideals are not relics – they are live questions. It’s a chance to assess the “unfulfilled promise” of the Declaration of Independence. Yes, the founding period restricted political participation to a narrow slice of property-owning white men; women, free Black Americans, enslaved people and Native Americans were largely excluded or pushed westward. But Slater sees elasticity in the founding language to expand rights over time.

“Women’s rights advocates, abolitionists, Abraham Lincoln – they all go back to the language of the Declaration and the Constitution to expand those promised freedoms,” she says.

The danger lies in treating those documents as static. “They have to evolve with the times,” she cautions, “and reflect the society in which we find ourselves.”

Plus, it’s one heck of a story: a rebel alliance defeating the imperial forces.

“It was the most unlikely of victories, given the limited resources, lack of preparedness and tentative unity among the colonists,” she says. “Nobody thought America would win.” – Tom Cunneff