 There has been a steady stream of articles and books over the last sixty years arguing that given Locke’s involvement with trade and colonial government, the theory of slavery in the Second Treatise was intended to justify the institutions and practices of Afro-American slavery. If this were the case, Locke’s philosophy would not contradict his actions as an investor and colonial administrator. However, there are strong objections to this view. Had he intended to justify Afro-American slavery, Locke would have done much better with a vastly more inclusive definition of legitimate slavery than the one he gives. It is sometimes suggested that Locke’s account of “just war” is so vague that it could easily be twisted to justify the institutions and practices of Afro-American slavery. This, however, is also not the case. In the chapter “Of Conquest” Locke explicitly lists the limits of the legitimate power of conquerors. These limits on who can become a legitimate slave and what the powers of a just conqueror are ensure that this theory of conquest and slavery would condemn the institutions and practices of Afro-American slavery in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Nonetheless, the debate continues. One element of the debate has to do with Locke’s role in the writing of the Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolinas. David Armitage in his 2004 article “John Locke, Carolina and the Two Treatises of Government” argues that Locke was involved in a revision of the Fundamental Constitution of the Carolinas at the very time he was writing The Two Treatises of Government. The provision that “Every Freedman of the Carolinas has absolute power and authority over his negro slaves” remained in the document unchanged. In his 2016 book The Ashley Cooper Plan, Thomas Wilson gives a detailed account of Ashley Cooper’s intentions for the Carolina colony and how Cooper’s intent was thwarted by Barbadian slave owners who changed Carolina society from a society with slaves to a slave society. L. H. Roper, in his 2004 book Conceiving Carolina: Property, Planters and Plots 1662–1729, offers a different account of what went wrong, focusing on conflicts over the trade in Indian slaves. James Farr’s article “Locke, Natural Law and New World Slavery” (2008) is one of the best statements of the position that Locke intended his theory of slavery to apply to English absolutism and not Afro-American slavery while noting that Locke’s involvement with slavery has ruined his reputation as the great champion of liberty Roger Woolhouse in his recent biography of Locke (Woolhouse 2007: 187) remarks that “Though there is no consensus on the whole question, there certainly seems to be ‘a glaring contradiction between his theories and Afro-American slavery’”.