Quotes About Freedom

All men are created equal," at the time, was certainly not intended to include women, slaves, or Indians. It was a radical concept for its day, regardless of its limited scope. Beyond that, as Wood and others have maintained, the concept of equality served as a blueprint for the future, pointing in a direction which would eventually extend across the lines of gender and to all racial, ethnic, religious, or political minorities.

General Montgomery noted that the soldiers in his charge "carry the spirit of freedom into the field, and think for themselves," and that they even "felt it necessary to call a sort of town meeting" to plan any maneuvers. They demonstrated such a "leveling spirit, such an equality among them, that the officers have no authority," Montgomery reported. "The privates are all generals.

The voices of moderation on both sides had been silenced. With no more opposition from within, American war hawks were free to do as they pleased.

According to official records, exactly 3,000 free African Americans departed from New York to Canada in 1783—1,336 men, 914 women, and 750 children.

Unlike the tens of thousands of emigrants who were still enslaved and the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who remained in bondage in the new United States, a handful of free black émigrés left written accounts of their personal adventures.

On October 8 Washington convened a war council to determine "whether it will be adviseable to re-inlist any Negroes in the new Army—or whether there be a Distinction between such as are Slaves & those who are free?" The Council voted "unanimously to reject all Slaves, & by a great Majority to reject Negroes altogether.

The American Revolution, a fight for freedom from colonial rule, was also the most extensive and destructive "Indian war" in the nation's history. Whereas other wars affected individual nations, the Revolution affected all Native Americans east of the Mississippi.

Since free people of color, almost invariably poor, came cheaply, prior restrictions against their enlistment were either overturned or ignored. Despite national policy, even slaves were allowed to enlist; some towns paid bounties to masters who allowed their slaves to join the army.

Free blacks tended to enlist for "three years or the duration" while slaves promised to serve until the end as a condition of obtaining their freedom.

The intrusions upon the civil liberties of religious pacifists in the American Revolution revealed an ironic twist: the rebels who professed to carry the torch of freedom did their best to extinguish it, while those they accused of demonstrating a "destructive tendency" to subvert "freedom and independence" were the ones who kept that torch ablaze.

In New York, "An Act More Effectually to Punish Adherents of the King" declared that "preaching, teaching, speaking, writing, [or] printing" opinions favorable to the Crown was a capital offense, commutable by a three-year tour on a ship of war.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

Literally and figuratively, this was the fate of many southern slaves in the Revolutionary War. They had scented freedom—some had even managed a taste—but here they were on a desolate plain, starving and diseased, cast out and abandoned between two sets of white men who had once used them to great advantage.

if we strive to re-create reality more to our liking, we will trend not toward freedom and hope but toward disgusting and impious degradations, and there is no depth to which we will not fall even further. But

The past can be a terrible weight bound to you by an unbreakable chain. You can drag it with you, forever looking over your shoulder at what holds you back. Or you can let it go and move forward. It's your choice.

Your destiny is now your own to forge as best as you may.