Liberty was claimed by everyone in earshot. Enslaved people, women, tenants and Native nations all pressed the Revolution's own language back at it — and the record of what they got is the honest measure of what it was.
ON THE FLOOR
Charles Horton Cooley
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“You learned who you are by watching what other people reflected back at you. The mirror, it turns out, was people all along.”
ON THE FLOOR
Edward Soja
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“Space is not the stage the story happens on - it is one of the actors. Ask WHERE, and half the mystery answers itself.”
ON THE FLOOR
George Herbert Mead
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“The self is a conversation: the I speaking, the Me listening with everyone else's ears. You rehearse society every time you think.”
AM2-031 · Who Was the Revolution For? — Open the drawer
A handwritten petition filed by an enslaved person in a Massachusetts court, circa 1770s, seeking freedom through legal argument. The document represents enslaved people's direct appropriation of Revolutionary language—natural rights, liberty, consent of the governed—to challenge their own bondage in real time.
AM2-032 · Who Was the Revolution For? — What is this thing?
A legal document recording the purchase and formal release of an enslaved person by their owner, combining property transfer language with a declaration of freedom—a paper that is simultaneously a receipt and a liberation.
AM2-033 · Who Was the Revolution For? — Read the source
A January 1777 petition by eight enslaved men in Boston petitioning the Massachusetts General Court for freedom, using the language of natural rights from the Revolution itself to demand their own liberty.
AM2-034 · Who Was the Revolution For? — Map it / time it
A 1773 petition to the Massachusetts General Court by enslaved people requesting freedom, signed by multiple petitioners and filed in court records—direct evidence of enslaved people weaponizing Revolutionary language within months of its public utterance.
AM2-035 · Who Was the Revolution For? — Two sources disagree
A 1773 petition by enslaved Bostonians to the colonial legislature, requesting freedom under natural law principles. The document directly mirrors Revolutionary rhetoric while exposing the gap between declared universal rights and actual liberty.
AM2-036 · Who Was the Revolution For? — State the claim
A 1773 petition signed by enslaved Bostonians requesting freedom, invoking Revolutionary language of natural rights while the war for independence was being debated.
AM2-037 · Who Was the Revolution For? — Take the other side
The radical state constitution that abolished property requirements for voting and office-holding, establishing the broadest male suffrage in the Atlantic world and embodying the Revolution's expansive logic within its own moment.
AM2-038 · Who Was the Revolution For? — Weigh it
A 1773 petition by enslaved people in Massachusetts to the colonial legislature, using Revolutionary language of natural rights to demand freedom. It directly mirrors the colonists' own liberty rhetoric back at them.
AM2-039 · Who Was the Revolution For? — Build the answer
A 1773 petition signed by enslaved people in Massachusetts requesting their freedom, written in their own voices and submitted to colonial legislators—a direct claim on Revolutionary liberty language before independence was declared.
AM2-040 · Who Was the Revolution For? — For the file
An October 1775 letter from enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley to General George Washington, requesting his patronage and invoking revolutionary language of freedom while herself held in bondage—a primary source that tests the Revolution's universalist claims against its practice.
AM2-041 · Who Was the Revolution For? — Go and look
A 1773 petition signed by enslaved Bostonians requesting their freedom, filed directly to the Massachusetts General Court using the Revolution's own language of natural rights and liberty.
AM2-042 · Who Was the Revolution For? — Now, today
A 1773 petition signed by enslaved people in Massachusetts requesting their freedom, using the Revolution's own language of natural rights and liberty to demand immediate emancipation.
AM2-043 · Who Was the Revolution For? — Teach it back
A 1773 petition by enslaved people in Massachusetts invoking Revolutionary language of natural rights and liberty to demand their own freedom, demonstrating how the colonists' own rhetoric was turned back upon them.
AM2-044 · Who Was the Revolution For? — The other place
A South Carolina planter's private letter wrestling with slavery's contradiction to revolutionary principle, written while his son served in the Continental Army and his enslaved workers remained bound.
AM2-045 · Who Was the Revolution For? — One object, close
A formal petition submitted by enslaved men to the Massachusetts legislature claiming natural rights using the Revolution's own language. The document directly echoes the Declaration's rhetoric to demand freedom, making visible the gap between revolutionary principle and practice.
From the gallery’s own wall — “AM2-031 · Who Was the Revolution For? — Open the drawer”.