The Silence of Martha Laurens Ramsay on Slavery

Over the issue of slavery, Martha was silent. In Martha’s Memoirs and her personal letters, she rarely discussed the issue of slavery, but it was an unavoidable issue that she had to confront with. Her father was ambivalent to it, while her Uncle James frankly resisted to it. Their close friend Benjamin Rush fiercely opposed to the slavery system and advocated colonial Americans to “put a stop to slavery” in terms of “all mankind as equal,” and pointed out that slaves should be entitled “all the privileges of free-born British subjects” and the children of the slaves should be embraced “in one great Family.” Following Rush, Ramsay firstly opposed to the slavery, because he assumed it was inhuman and immoral. When he arrived at Charles Town and made new friends who were slave owners, “Ramsay's ambition did not weaken his opposition to slavery nor did his views make him a social or political pariah.” However, living in an economy based on slavery, befriended by slaveholders he respected, Ramsay became an honored member of Charleston's tight knit elite and, eventually, a slaveowner, his view on slavery became ambiguous. Martha assisted his husband and copied his revolutionary books, from which she absolutely knew Ramsay’s view on slavery. But why was Martha reticent to it? Gillespie assumed that “her silence about slavery was, it appears, the result of choice rather than unconscious omission.” Without enough documents, it is rather difficult for us to explain the reasons behind Martha’s choice. But there were two reasons which could explain her silence. One reason was probably because she was a woman who was not allowed to take part in political affairs at that time. Another reason was probably because she didn’t want to propose her view on slavery, because she didn’t want to challenge her father, Uncle, as well as her husband’s authority.