Cornell University Press

Settling Debt - Cameron Seglias

Settling Debt overturns the familiar tale of early antislavery as a pure moral triumph by revealing its uneasy ties to colonial ambition and economic anxiety. Cameron Seglias shows how, from the late seventeenth century through the American Revolution, settlers and religious writers condemned slavery as a threat to their own prosperity and salvation. Debt, understood both as money owed and moral obligation, anchored their vision of freedom and shaped how they justified seizing Indigenous lands while denouncing racial bondage. Drawing from neglected books, pamphlets, poems, and dramatic protests, like the radical acts of Benjamin Lay, Seglias weaves literary close readings with sharp historical insights to expose how freedom and dispossession were two sides of the same coin. At once readable and provocative, Settling Debt compels us to see how the language of moral debt masked the building of a colonial order rooted in inequality. In revisiting this past, Seglias offers a timely reminder: The debts of America's founding have yet to be settled.

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