Photos of revolutionary cause succeeded either in compartmentalizing their thinking, so that the Republican Liberty's of whites could be kept distinct from the emancipation of enslaved blacks, or introducing the problem to one of priorities and assigning to emancipation a rather low place. The conservative phase of the Revolution showed in a profound respect for property rights, which included property rights in slaves, and in an abiding fear of upsetting the delicate mechanisms of slave Society. Americans of the Revolutionary generation managed to retain both their philosophy and their peculiar institution of slavery by defining the humanity of the Negro. The free Society of the infant Republic wasn't even more consciously and explicitly White Society than its Colonial predecessor.