Quotes from Ray Raphael

For enslaved people themselves—about 430,000 in the southern colonies, and another 50,000 or so in the North—the coming of the Revolution brought new hopes and new dangers.9 They could not have helped but notice the peculiar references to "freedom" and "slavery" voiced by their masters.

By treating all residents as American rebels, the occupying army made a false assumption come true. "Instead of destroying the Revolution," states historian Joseph Tiedemann, "the British army became one of its agents.

in 1772 Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, determined that James Sommersett, who had been purchased in Virginia, taken to England, and then escaped, could not be forcibly returned to his master.10 American slaves took this case to heart: if they could somehow reach the shores of England, they too would be set free.

The British, like the Americans, demanded oaths of allegiance, reasoning that anybody who signed would have a vested stake in British victory.

They feared slaves who "entertained ideas, that the present contest was for obliging us to give them their liberty."12 They feared the British, who "have been tampering with our Negroes; and have held nightly meetings with them; and all for the glorious purpose of enticing them to cut their masters' throats while they are asleep.

The Treaty of Paris, as expected, went unheeded. In many communities throughout the country the victorious patriots—some still angry, some coveting land, some just exercising the power now at their command—made it clear that loyalists would find no peace among them.

And worst of all, what if lower-class whites rebelled with the rest? That would present the ultimate challenge to the authority of the slaveholders. At least in Maryland, where poor loyalists rose in opposition to the patriot elite, this seemed a real possibility.

However distorted by the eyes of white masters, the courageous struggles for black freedom during the American Revolution are still evident in the historical sources. Behind every advertisement for a runaway slave lies a saga of heroic proportions:

The majority of loyalist émigrés from the North went to Canada. Three-quarters of these arrived in Nova Scotia, which at that time included all the maritime provinces.

Many whites who were suspected of loyalties to the British were hounded, tarred and feathered, sent into exile—but they were not hanged on the mere suspicion of what they might do in the future. Something else was going on here, something with a distinctly racial twist. Jeremiah personified the worst fears of white patriots: what if black men, acting as their own agents, sided against them?

On November 14, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, made it official: And I do hereby further declare all indented Servants, Negroes, or others, (appertaining to Rebels,) free, that are able and willing to bear Arms, they joining HIS MAJESTY'S Troops as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper Sense of their Duty, to HIS MAJESTY'S Crown and Dignity.42

Yet patriot masters apparently felt the need to fabricate such arguments, if only to relieve their own consciences. Understandably, they preferred to envision themselves as purveyors of freedom, the British as engineers of slavery. But it wasn't true, and the slaves undoubtedly knew this.

Liberty to slaves"—it must have sounded so sweet. On plantations throughout the Chesapeake region African Americans held in bondage spread the news.

Vacuous pronouncements of good will meant little while "the violent spirit" ruled people's hearts. Time, and time alone, would heal the many wounds of the Revolution.

Two runaways who were captured by the patriots reported that three-quarters of the soldiers who manned the garrison were Negroes and that "all the blacks who are sent to the fort at the great Bridge, are supplied with muskets, Cartridges &c strictly ordered to use them defensively & offensively.

Illness took a terrible toll. "Had it not been for this horrid disorder," Dunmore wrote on June 26, "I should have had two thousand blacks; with whom I should have had no doubt of penetrating into the heart of this Colony.

Although Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia, was the only British official to promise emancipation, many enslaved people throughout the South assumed that if they offered their services to the British they would be set free. To some extent this was true.

With limited space and supplies on their ships, British captains did not take on every man, woman, or child who came their way. But they did aid and encourage the runaways however they could.

Despite these gross exaggerations, even the most conservative estimates by modern scholars suggest that well over 10,000 slaves fled to the British in search of freedom, while the total number of blacks who served in the Continental Army was only about 5,000—and many of these, perhaps most, were freeman, not slaves.

In the words of historian Robert Olwell, "fugitive slaves were sheltered under the guise that they constituted contraband enemy property, rather than recognized as liberated persons."90 Royal officers wanted slaves for the labor they might perform—and to deprive the rebels of that labor.

Officially, blacks who labored for the British received wages; in reality, they received little or nothing after deductions were made for their provisions

Slaves who had escaped from loyalist masters were returned upon demand. Other refugees who were not deemed of use by the army were put to work on plantations owned by British officers or sold to the West Indies. If short of supplies, the British would sometimes trade back slaves for provisions. When the royal fleet retreated from Port Royal in 1780, Major General Alexander Leslie refused to take with him several hundred African Americans who had dared to escape and were requesting asylum

After the war, white loyalists joined with white patriots and Catawba Indians to destroy these and other black communities which had managed to take advantage of the turbulent times to fashion lives without masters, if only for a short period of time.107

As governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson signed a bill granting every white male who enlisted for the duration of the war "300 acres of land plus a healthy sound Negro between 20 and 30 years of age or 60 pounds in gold