A major paradox of modern happiness gained wide public exposure in 1776 when Thomas Jefferson substituted the phrase “the pursuit of happiness” in place of Locke’s formulation: “life, liberty, and property.” In substituting happiness for property, Jefferson obscured the central hypocrisy of the Revolution, that—as contemporaries complained—the “loudest yelps for liberty” were made by those practicing slavery. Jefferson elided the overlap between the pursuit of happiness and the protection of human property. And he blurred the connection between the assertion of slave power and the creation of a broad emotional hegemony in the service of multifaceted projects of political-economic mastery. Today, historians of emotion face an urgent need to explore the deep roots of this feeling in systems of unfreedom.

1776年，托马斯·杰斐逊（Thomas Jefferson）取代了“追求幸福”一词来代替洛克的表述：“生命，自由和财产”，这是现代幸福的一个主要悖论。杰斐逊用幸福代替财产，掩盖了革命的中心虚伪，正如当代人所抱怨的那样，“最响亮的自由为自由”是由实行奴隶制的人制造的。杰斐逊消除了追求幸福与保护人类财产之间的重叠。他模糊了奴隶制的主张与广泛的情感霸权的建立之间的联系，以服务于政治经济精通的多个项目。如今，情感史学家迫切需要探索这种情感在无自由系统中的深层根源。