Security, Sovereignty, and Slavery
This lecture introduces students to the challenges, objectives, and outcomes that defined the environment in which US/North American national security was born. First, the lecture summarizes the contrasting and complementing notions of Security, Sovereignty, and Slavery from the Colonial Period into the period before the American Civil War period. Second, we will consider what elements of the national security structures established then remain in America's security infrastructure and architecture. At the birth site of American security, the competing challenges of Security, Sovereignty, and Slavery pushed and pulled the colonial landscape into an American Civil War. The lecture will examine this to determine if today, these elements are the potential substrate upon which America’s national security structures were established. Were there significant and identifiable laws and principle institutions established to contain the masses of Black bodies imported to these shores, eradicating the caste and culture of the first inhabitants, Native Americans, and directed toward the European armed completion for dominance in the US/North America? Are roots of the colonial Security, Sovereignty, and Slavery conundrum core components of modern national security? If so, are they the genesis of certain failures of law and security while seeking sovereignty? The lecture will address the nature of several select Colonial period through Civil War doctrine, laws, and regulations that sought security through establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty and posterity using African enslavement as a key component.
About this Lecture
Lectures of Opportunity offers U.S. Naval War College (NWC) students, faculty, and staff an opportunity to learn more about national and international socio-political subjects that may be of relevance to the NWC community.
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