[1990a] (122-3) The Role of African Americans. Blacks, both slave and free,
tended to support the Patriot cause. In fact, some black veterans of the French
and Indian War enrolled as minutemen. Black soldiers also fought at Fort
Ticonderoga, Bunker Hill, and Lexington and Concord. As much as the support of
able-bodied soldiers was welcomed, the participation of blacks posed problems
for the members of the Continental Congress. They worried that blacks would
take the idea of freedom too seriously and wondered if such thinking might
encourage slaves to revolt. In November 1775, George Washington, acting with
the advice of other generals, recommended that black soldiers be barred from
enlisting in the Continental army. The Continental Congress agreed. In the same
month, the British stepped up their efforts to recruit blacks, offering freedom
to any slave or indentured servant who would join the British Army. The British
action forced the Americans to reconsider their position, and in January 1777,
the Continental army began enlisting free blacks. A year later, Rhode Island
raised an entirely black battalion, made up of soldiers both slave and free. In
all, about 5,000 black soldiers fought for the Patriot cause. Women's Contribution
to the War Effort. Although men were expected to do the fighting, women fought
too. Sally St. Clair of South Carolina, like Deborah Sampson of Massachusetts,
disguised herself as a man and enlisted in the Continental army. When Molly
Pitcher's husband fell next to his artillery piece, legend has it that she took
his place. Women were also among the most skilled spies in the colonial
intelligence network. Wives often accompanied their husbands' regiments. They
cooked, laundered, or sewed during lulls in combat. They collected or prepared
medicines and nursed sick and wounded soldiers. Benjamin Franklin's daughter,
Sara Franklin Bache, organized a Daughters of Liberty chapter to make clothing
and handle hospital shipments. With many men away fighting, women took over
traditionally male jobs. They maintained farms, ran businesses, and worked as
blacksmiths, producing the cannons, guns, and shot needed to keep the
Continental army going.
[1990b] (88-9) Wartime in America. The war affected every American in the
thirteen colonies -- patriot, loyalist, or indifferent; man, woman, or child;
black, red, or white; slave, indentured, or free. Even in areas that never saw
a redcoat, the war was felt, if in no other way than by inflation. To finance
the war the Continental Congress and the state governments printed money as
fast as they could. The phrase "not worth a continental" soon showed
what people thought of this money. The war brought prosperity to many. Farmers
included 90 percent of all Americans, and many of them prospered by selling
their crops to both the British and the American armies. They sold to whichever
side paid more. Washington's men were starving at Valley Forge in the winter of
1777-1778, while the British, only a few miles away, were being well fed from
the rich farms of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Washington could never forget
the irony of his army lacking food in a country filled with farms. One army
officer, bitter about profiteering, wrote, "I despise my countrymen. I
wish I could say I was not born in America." Women at war. The departure
of men for war forced women to take up many jobs. Like women who were widowed,
they operated the farms, ran the printing presses, served as artisans and
shopkeepers -- doing whatever needed to be done. Some women gathered their
children and followed their husbands to the army. They went with the army
wherever it moved, and they helped to nurse the wounded, make camp, cook, do
the laundry, carry out clerical tasks, and, in battle, carry water and bullets
to the soldiers, even load and fire muskets and cannons. Margaret Corbin
followed her husband to war from their home in Pennsylvania. When he was killed
while commanding a cannon at the Battle of Fort Washington, New York (November
16, 1776), she filled his place until she was severely wounded. More famous,
though no more courageous, was Mary (Molly) McCauley, known as Molly Pitcher
for the pitcher of water she carried back and forth during the hot weather and
hot fighting of the Battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778 When her husband fell in
the battle, she too took his place at a cannon till the battle was over. We
know of at least one woman, and there were probably more, who passed as a man
and fought as a soldier. Deborah Sampson enlisted in the 4th Massachusetts
Regiment in 1782 and served for more than a year. Abigail Adams, brilliant wife
of John Adams, played another kind of role. She ran the farm and business while
her husband was away at the Continental Congress. She kept him aware of what
was going on at home. She told him of the profiteering, of how the people felt,
and she discussed ways to recruit soldiers and finance the war. Abigail tried
to improve the lot of women in the new country, but John was not impressed:
"Depend on it," he wrote, "we know better than to repeal our
masculine systems. Blacks in the Revolution. Many blacks were involved in the
war right from the start. They were present at the battles of Lexington and
Concord. At the Battle of Bunker Hill, Peter Salem and Salem Poor stood out for
their bravery. After George Washington took over the army, however, it was
decided not to have blacks in the service any more. But this policy did not
last long because the British promised freedom to all blacks who came to them.
Whenever British armies appeared in the South, large numbers of slaves, seeking
to be as free as white Americans, joined them. At war's end 14,000 sailed away
with the British. As blacks flocked to the British, George Washington,
Congress, and all the states except South Carolina and Georgia changed their
minds. They enlisted blacks and promised slaves that they would receive their
freedom after the war. Of course, slaves could not join without their masters'
permission, so of the 5000 blacks who fought in the war, most were from the
North. In general, they served in mixed units and were present at almost all
the military actions of the war. The Loyalists. A substantial number of
Americans opposed the war and wanted to stay with Great Britain. The Loyalists
came from every occupation and were of every degree of wealth. Many kept quiet
about how they felt and were not bothered by the patriots. Some went to Canada
or England. A few, like Jedediah Smith and Phineas Lyman of New England, took
their families from comfortable homes and headed west to try to establish a new
life In the wilderness-far from the problems of empire and freedom. About
60,000 became soldiers and fought on the British side. Loyalists who did not
leave their homes, but whose sentiments were known, often found themselves
shunned by their neighbors. Some were tarred and feathered, and many lost their
property by state confiscation or patriot plundering. Others were treated as
traitors and were imprisoned or exiled to towns far from home. During the
course of the war, and at its end, thousands of Loyalists left America never to
return. Most went to Canada. There they added a strongly British element to the
largely French population. They became useful citizens, serving in the
assemblies and as judges and governors.
[1990c] (169-70) Women in the Revolution. It would be wrong to think that it
was only the fighting men of the Continental and French armies and navies who
won independence for the new United States. Other groups made important
contributions to victory. Women played a major role. Some managed farms and
shops while husbands, brothers, and fathers went off to war. Other women helped
more directly by following the armies in the field or in camp. They washed,
cooked, and sewed for the soldiers. They nursed the sick and cared for the
wounded in makeshift hospitals. In fact, women were considered an essential
part of eighteenth-century armies. It was not unusual for women to work as part
of a gun crew, as Molly Pitcher did. (See page 164) Margaret Corbin, the 25-year-old
wife of John Corbin, took over his position at a small cannon during the
American retreat across New Jersey in November 1776. She was badly wounded.
Congress, recognizing that her wounds would leave her crippled, awarded her a
pension of half a soldier's pay each year for the rest of her life. A few women
distinguished themselves in unusual ways during revolutionary times. Phillis
Wheatley was bought directly off a slave ship from Africa. She became noted for
her poetry. One of her poems was about General George Washington, and she was
invited to visit his headquarters at Cambridge in 1776. Deborah Sampson dressed
in men's clothes, served as an American soldier, and won a pension from
Congress. "Number 355" was an American spy in New York. No one knew
her name, but she was one of the most valuable agents the Americans had. The
Help of Other Groups. Blacks also did essential work on the home front and with
the fighting armies. Crispus Attucks, a black sailor, has been called "the
first casualty of the American Revolution." Once fighting began, blacks
and whites together served in the militia and the Continental army. Peter
Salem, Prince Hall, and Salem Poor were black militiamen at the battle of
Bunker Hill. One historian has written that two thirds of a Rhode Island
regiment at Yorktown were blacks. Slaves were encouraged to join the
Continental army because some Patriot commanders promised them their freedom.
British commanders in Virginia made the same kind of promises. Though these
promises were sometimes broken, many slaves won their freedom. In New York most
tribes in the Iroquois confederacy supported the British. But the Oneidas and
some of the Tuscaroras aided the American cause. In the west nearly all the
Indians fought alongside the British. George Rogers Clark had Indian guides and
some Indian support. (170) [Picture] Many blacks fought in a Rhode Island
regiment during the War for Independence. Do you think the fighters were
fighting for their freedom as well?
[1990d] (189-91) Blacks
and the Revolution. American blacks were deeply involved in the Revolution. In
fact, the conflict provoked the largest slave rebellion in American history
prior to the Civil War.
Once the war was under way, blacks found a variety of ways to turn events to
their own advantage. For some, this meant applying Revolutionary principles to
their own lives and calling for their personal freedom. For others, it meant
seeking liberty behind English lines or in the continent's interior. Thousands
of American blacks found their lives changed. During the pre-Revolutionary decade, as their
white masters talked excitedly about liberty, the dignity of humankind, and the
nobility of opposing despotism, increasing numbers of black Americans
questioned their own oppression. In the North, some slaves petitioned legislatures to set
them free. In the South, pockets of insurrection appeared. In 1765, more than
100 South Carolina slaves fled to the interior, where they tried to establish a
colony of their own. The next year, slaves paraded through the streets of
Charleston, chanting, "Liberty, liberty!" In November 1775, Lord Dunmore issued a
proclamation offering freedom to all Virginia slaves and servants, "able
and willing to bear arms," who would leave their masters and join the
British forces in Norfolk. Within weeks, 500 to 600 slaves had responded. Among those who demonstrated
their commitment to freedom by traveling through the hostile,
Patriot-controlled countryside was Thomas Peters, from Wilmington, North
Carolina. Kidnapped from the Yoruba tribe in what is now Nigeria and brought to
America by a French slave trader, Peters was sold in Louisiana about 1760. He
resisted enslavement so fiercely that his master sold him into the English
colonies. By 1770, Peters belonged to William Campbell, an immigrant Scots
planter on North Carolina's Cape Fear River. Here Peters toiled while the storm
brewed between England and the colonies. Peters's plans for his own declaration
of independence may have ripened as a result of the rhetoric of liberty he
heard around his master's house, for William Campbell had become a leading
member of Wilmington's Sons of Liberty and talked much about inalienable
rights. By mid-1775, the Cape Fear region, like most areas from Maryland to
Georgia, buzzed with rumors of slave uprisings. Importations of new slaves were
banned, and patrols were dispatched to disarm all blacks in the area. In July,
the state's Revolutionary government imposed martial law when the British
commander of Fort Johnston at the mouth of the Cape Fear River near Wilmington
gave "encouragement to Negroes to elope from their masters." Four
months later, Dunmore issued his dramatic proclamation. Thomas Peters struck
his blow for freedom in March 1776, when 20 British ships entered the Cape Fear
River and disembarked royal troops, who quickly established control over the
surrounding countryside. Peters seized the moment to redefine himself as a man
instead of William Campbell's property and escaped. During the war, he fought
with the British-officered Black Pioneers. How many American blacks such as
Peters sought liberty behind British lines is unknown, but as many as 20
percent may have done so. In
dramatic contrast to their white masters, blacks saw in England the promise of
freedom, not tyranny. As the war dragged on, English commanders pressed blacks
into service, usually in support roles but also as combatants. From the Virginia slaves who
responded to Dunmore's proclamation, a regiment of black soldiers was formed
and marched into battle, their chests covered with sashes on which was
emblazoned "Liberty to Slaves." Some of the blacks who joined England
and fought for their freedom achieved it. At the war's end, several thousand were
evacuated with the British to Nova Scotia, where they established their own
settlements. Their reception by the white inhabitants there, however, was
generally hostile. By the end of the century, most had left Canada to found the
free black colony of Sierra Leone on the west coast of Africa. Thomas Peters was a leader
among them. Many of
the slaves who fled behind English lines, however, never won their freedom. At the end of the war, as the
British prepared to evacuate the port cities, blacks from the surrounding
countryside crowded in, begging to be taken away. Against their appeals for
liberty, British commanders had to balance the terms of the peace treaty, which
stipulated that the British were to evacuate "with all convenient Speed
and without causing any destruction or carrying away any Negroes or other
Property of the American Inhabitants." In the end, hundreds of slaves were
returned to their American owners. Several thousand others, their value as
fieldhands too great to be ignored, were transported to the West Indies and the
harsher slavery of the sugar plantations. It was evident that England had not entered
the war to abolish slavery. Other blacks chose not to flee behind British lines
but took advantage of the war's confusion to drift away into the towns or
country-side in pursuit of a new life. Some sought refuge among the Indians,
though not always with success. The Seminoles of Georgia and Florida generally
welcomed black runaways and through intermarriage absorbed them into tribal
society. The blacks' reception by the Cherokees and Creeks, however, was more uncertain.
Some were taken in, but others were returned to their white owners in return
for bounties, while still others were held in slavelike conditions by new
Indian masters. Numerous
other blacks made their way north, following rumors that slavery had been
abolished there. Whatever
their destination, thousands of American blacks acted to throw off the bonds of
slavery. Fewer blacks fought on the American side than on England's, in part
because neither the Congress nor the states were eager to see blacks armed. Faced with the increasing need
for troops, however, the Congress and each of the states except Georgia and
South Carolina relented and pressed blacks into service. Of the blacks who served the
Patriot cause, many received the freedom they were promised. The patriotism of
countless others, however, went unrewarded. (190) [Picture] During the Revolutionary War, James Armistead
Lafayette, a Virginia slave, sewed as a spy against the British for the French
general, Lafayette. In recognition of his service, the Virginia General
Assembly granted him his freedom in 1786.
[1990e]
[1991] (83-5) ACTION AND REACTION. Jubilant at the repeal of
the Stamp Act, few colonists paid attention to the Declaratory Act. It came as
a surprise, therefore, in 1767 when Parliament passed the Townshend Acts. The
king and Parliament still meant to get more revenues from the colonies. The
Townshend Acts placed duties on glass, paper, paint, lead, and tea. These
duties had to be paid in gold or silver. The money would be used to pay the
salaries of the governors and other officials. Writs of assistance would be
used to enforce the acts. The Townshend Acts levied duties, not direct taxes.
But the colonists were not interested in the distinction. The question was,
wrote John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, "whether the parliament can legally
take money out of our pockets, without our consent." The Townshend Acts
further threatened colonial liberty by taking financial control over local
government from the elected assemblies. British officials would no longer need
to cooperate with the assemblies because the assemblies would no longer be
paying their salaries. In Boston the town meeting voted to boycott the British
goods. The driving force behind this vote was Samuel Adams. Cousin of John Adams,
he was a revolutionary, a radical, and the firebrand of the Revolution.
"Every dip of his pen stung like a horned snake," complained the
governor of Massachusetts. The boycott spread throughout the colonies. The Sons
of Liberty pressured shopkeepers not to sell imported goods. Daughters of
Liberty held spinning bees at which they drank herbal tea. These symbolic
activities publicized the necessity of wearing and using American-made goods.
Instead of learning stitchery, young women learned to knit. Charity Clarke, a
New York teenager, wrote her English cousin of her vision of "a fighting
army of amazons . . . armed with spinning wheels." When customs officials
seized the merchant John Hancock's ship Liberty in Boston harbor, riots broke
out against the customs officials. Appalled, the king's ministers decided to
restore order by taking advantage of a recent law, the Quartering Act. The law
said any colony could be forced to quarter -- house and feed -- British troops.
The decision to quarter troops in the city only made things worse. The common
soldiers were poorly paid. They thus hired themselves out as laborers at rates
lower than those that American workers received. Resentments festered. Even Sam
Adams's shaggy dog took sides and became famous for biting only Redcoats. The
redcoats and street youths often taunted each other. "Lobsters for
sale!" the youths would holler. "Yankees!" the soldiers jeered.
Yankee was intended as a term of ridicule, but colonists soon came to wear it with
pride. Tensions finally exploded in the incident called the Boston Massacre. On
March 5, 1770, a gang of street youths and dock workers began pelting British
soldiers with snowballs. Someone rang the church bells, the sign for people to
come out for a fire. Hundreds poured into the streets. Fearing the angry mob,
one soldier fired and then the others. When the smoke cleared, five men lay
dead or mortally wounded. One was Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave. Seeking to
inflame public opinion. the Sons of Liberty portrayed the incident as a
massacre. In a highly unpopular move, John Adams decided to defend the eight
British soldiers against the charge of murder. The law, he said, should be
"deaf . . . to the clamors of the populace." The jury found six to be
innocent, and two guilty, of manslaughter. Little more than a month later, the
British Parliament repealed the Townshend Acts, keeping only the duty on tea as
a symbol of its authority The crisis seemed past, and peace and prosperity
returned. Sam Adams was not content to let people forget the cause of liberty.
In 1772 Adams organized a Committee of Correspondence to maintain communication
among Massachusetts towns. Soon committees sprang up in all the colonies,
establishing a network over which vital news could quickly travel. (96-100) 3
Winning Independence. Section Focus. Key Terms: war materiel, Battle of
Saratoga, partisan, Battle of Yorktown, Treaty of Paris (1783). Main Idea:
Despite British control of the major cities, the Patriots defeated the British
because they had superior leadership and control of the countryside.
Objectives: As you read, look for answers to these questions: 1. What
difficulties did Washington face as head of the American army? 2. What were the
major battle of the war? 3. Why did the Americans win the war? In 1776 Mercy
Otis Warren, sister of James Otis, published The Blockheads, a play set in
Boston during the British occupation. In the play a British officer, General
Puff, complains: Well, gentlemen, a pretty state for British generals and
British troops -- the terror of the world become mere scarecrows to themselves.
We came to America, flushed with high expectations of conquest, and curbing
these sons of riot. . . . But how are we deceived? Instead of this agreeable
employ, we are shamefully confined within the bounds of three miles, wrangling
and starving among ourselves. General Puff's complaint describes the situation
the British found themselves in throughout the Revolution. With the exception
of Boston, the British were able to hold every seaboard city they chose to.
They could do so by reason of their superior firepower, trained troops, and
supply ships from Britain. But British troops went into the countryside at
their peril. As another character in Warren's play noted: "These Yankee dogs
. . . divert themselves by firing at us, as at a flock of partridges. A man can
scarcely put his nose over the entrenchments without losing it." THE
COUNTRY DIVIDED. For all the frustrations experienced by the British, the
Americans had their own problems. The Revolution was more than a revolt. It was
a civil war that bitterly divided families and neighbors. About two-fifths of
the Americans were active Patriots, about one-fifth were active Loyalists, and
the remainder were neutral. Both Patriots and Loyalists included Americans from
all walks of life and from all parts of America. In general, however, New
England and Virginia had the greatest share of Patriots. The Loyalists were
most numerous in New York State, among Scottish immigrants of the Carolinas,
and in the seaboard cities. Among those tending to remain neutral were the
Quakers and the German population of Pennsylvania. Most of the American Indians
also sided with the British, for they felt the British were more likely to
protect their land. However, the war permanently divided the Six Nations of the
Iroquois. The Tuscaroras and Oneidas joined the Americans, and the rest favored
the British. AMERICANS AT WAR. Throughout the war George Washington faced the
problem of how to hold the Continental Army together. His genius was that he
succeeded in doing so against heavy odds. The needs of the army were great:
guns, wagons, horses, ammunition, shoes, clothes, tents, kettles, soap, food.
The Continental Congress issued paper money to pay for the supplies, but the
British were paying for the same goods in silver and gold. As the war dragged
on, Continental money became worthless as suppliers refused to honor it. At
times the army seemed held together only by the respect the soldiers felt
toward Washington himself. Although he could be stern and aloof, Washington
cared deeply about the welfare of his soldiers, even when he could do nothing
about it. After the first days of revolutionary enthusiasm, Washington found it
difficult to get men to enlist for long terms and to endure the necessary
hardships. Only one group of people were willing to sign up for several years
at a time. These were black men. At first Washington, a slaveholder himself,
opposed the enlistment of African Americans. He and others feared that the
arming of black people could threaten the slave system. But when the British
offered freedom to slaves who fought for the king, Washington announced that
the Patriot forces would welcome black soldiers. Altogether about 5,000 blacks
served in the Continental Army. The army's problems would have been even worse
were it not for Patriot women. Martha Washington was the most famous of those
who followed their husbands in the army. Some did so because they had no
independent way to survive. Others followed the army out of affection and
caring. Whatever their reason, women busied themselves washing, cooking,
nursing, sewing, and mending. A few women joined their men on the battlefield.
One was Mary Ludwig Hays, who, even after her husband collapsed from the heat,
continued to load and fire the cannon. Women served in other ways as well. They
gave up their pewter plates to be melted into musket balls. They spied. They
forced merchants to set fair prices and not profit from wartime scarcity. And
they used their pens. Esther Reed's essay The Sentiments of an American Woman
inspired the formation of the first national women's organization in 1780. Its
members went door-to-door raising funds that were then used to make shirts for
the troops. THE NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS. 1176-1718. "These are the times that
try men's souls." -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis. When the British sailed
from Boston in March 1776, George Washington guessed that they would reappear
at New York City. From New York the British could move easily in all directions.
And if they could control the Hudson Valley, they could divide the country in
two. Acting on his hunch, Washington hastened with his raw army to New York.
There he stationed his forces on both Manhattan and Long Island. The British
commander Howe, who had spent two months in Nova Scotia after leaving Boston,
finally made his move. In June the British arrived with the largest seaborne
army ever launched. The ships were so numerous that the harbor resembled a
forest of stripped trees. The overwhelming strength of the British forces,
including the Hessian mercenaries, forced Washington from Long Island and then
from Manhattan. By September the ragged army was retreating into New Jersey
with Howe at its heels. By December Washington had crossed the Delaware into
Pennsylvania. It was now winter -- and a cold one. Leaving Hessians in New
Jersey, Howe returned to the warmth and gaiety of New York. After all, a proper
army did not fight in winter. Besides, Howe reasoned, winter just might destroy
what was left of Washington's ragtag army. Patriot spirits were about as low as
the thermometer. From a force of 20,000 the army had dwindled to a few
thousand. To rekindle the patriotic fire, Thomas Paine published a new
pamphlet. "These are the times that try men's souls," he wrote in The
Crisis. "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis,
shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the
love and thanks of man and woman. With the situation desperate, Washington was
willing to gamble all. Late on December 25 Washington and his troops rowed
across the ice-clogged Delaware River to the New Jersey shore. From there they
marched in the bitter pre-dawn cold to catch the Hessians at Trenton sleeping
off their Christmas revels. The Patriots captured or felled more than 1,000
Hessians. In addition they acquired a great quantity of war materiel -- the
supplies, guns, and ammunition that make it possible to fight. Washington's
victories at Trenton and a week later at Princeton gave the Patriots new hope.
The army's ranks swelled with recruits. In the summer of 1777, Howe began a
campaign to seize Philadelphia. He hoped that capturing the capital of the
rebelling states would destroy their will. Howe took Philadelphia, but he failed
to behead the Patriot cause. The Continental Congress just picked up and moved
to the town of York. Howe 's excursion to Philadelphia, however, did wreck a
grand British plan to isolate New England. In the summer of 1777, a British
army started to move south from Canada. At the same time, British forces were
supposed to move east from Lake Ontario and north from New York. The three
armies would meet in Albany, securing the Hudson Valley. However, Howe in New
York had already decided to take Philadelphia and so ignored the orders to
march north. Howe, a historian has written, was "one of the greatest
bus-missers in British military history." Meanwhile, the British army
under General John Burgoyne was working its way south from Canada and running
into problems. Burgoyne thought his army could live off the countryside, but at
the Battle of Bennington. Patriot forces destroyed his raiding party As
Burgoyne's weakened army reached Saratoga, it faced a powerful American army
under Horatio Gates. Howe should have been closing in behind Gates, but was in
Philadelphia. At the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777, Gates decisively
defeated Burgoyne. The American victory at Saratoga satisfied France that the
American effort was a cause worth backing. In Paris, Benjamin Franklin had been
doing his best to persuade Britain's old enemy France to ally itself with the
Americans. The victory at Saratoga was convincing, and France entered the war.
Driven from Philadelphia by Howe, Washington spent the winter of 1777-1778 at nearby
Valley Forge. Ever after the name would symbolize the hunger and suffering
endured by the Patriots. "No pay, no clothes, no provisions, no rum,"
soldiers wailed. And yet they stayed. The winter also brought new hope and new
men with good skills. From Germany came Baron von Steuben. A professional
soldier and drillmaster, Von Steuben had turned the Valley Forge troops into a
well-trained army by spring. From France came the Marquis de Lafayette, a young
nobleman. He would become one of the army's most popular leaders. WAR IN THE
SOUTH, 1718-1781. After failing to secure the Hudson Valley or destroy
Washington's army, the British changed their strategy by trying to take the
South. There they expected a strong core of Loyalist support. They also
(correctly) expected black slaves to join them in large numbers. Pursuing the
promise of freedom, at least 50,000 blacks served the British as guides, spies,
and laborers. Some saw action in the field. The British took Savannah in
November 1778, and in 1780 their assault on Charleston succeeded. As British
forces under Lord Cornwallis set out to secure the countryside, however, a new
wave of violence resulted. Loyalists and Patriots formed guerrilla bands that
conducted vicious raids in which all existing rules of warfare were cast aside.
Loyalist and Patriot partisans, members of the guerrilla forces, slaughtered
each other. British Colonel Banastre Tarleton, known as the "butcher"
of the countryside, added to the violence by announcing he would "give no
quarter" -- show no mercy -- to rebel captives. The Patriots responded in
kind. At the battle of Kings Mountain, victorious Patriots shouted
"Tarleton's Quarter" as they killed Loyalist captives. By 1780 a new
general, Nathanael Greene, was put in charge of the American army in the South.
One of Washington's most able officers, Greene established a policy of mercy
toward Loyalists. By successfully wooing the Cherokee Indians, he restored some
order to the southern frontier. The attacks of his highly mobile forces so weakened
the British that Cornwallis decided to retreat and establish a base at
Yorktown, Virginia. Meanwhile French help arrived. Almost 7,000 well-trained,
well-supplied troops landed in Rhode Island under the command of General
Rochambeau (roh-shahm-BOH). The French fleet of Admiral de Grasse was in
American waters. The coordination of the French and American forces led to the
battle that ended the war, the Battle of Yorktown. Cornwallis's position at
Yorktown depended on British control of the seas. The American state and
Continental navies had pestered British shipping, but it took the French navy
to change the balance of sea power. De Grasse and his fleet blockaded the
entrance to Chesapeake Bay, thereby preventing reinforcements from reaching
Yorktown. The armies of Washington and Rechambeau swiftly marched south, and
together the American and French troops began a siege of Yorktown on September
28. On October 17, 1781, Cornwallis finally sent up the white flag of
surrender. Two days later the British laid down their arms. (97) [Picture] This
print shows Mary Ludwig Hays taking over her fallen husband's cannon. For her
wartime services, she was awarded a lifetime pension by the government.
CULTURAL PLURALISM: In what other ways did American women help the
revolutionary cause? (98) [Picture] This famous painting of Washington crossing
the Delaware River to attack the British forces at Trenton dates from 1851. The
artist has changed Washington’s stance for dramatic effect. HISTORY: What was
the significance of the Christmas Day surprise attack? (99) [Map] MAP SKILLS.
What route did British troops take from New York to Philadelphia? In what state
was the Battle of Trenton fought? CRITICAL THINKING. Why might the capture of
Philadelphia be described as a failure for the British? (100) [Picture] George
Washington appears to the left of the American flag in this scene of the 1781
surrender of Cornwallis and the British troops at Yorktown, Virginia. The
artist, John Trumbull, painted many scenes of the American Revolution. HISTORY.
What was the significance of the British surrender?
[1992a]
[1992b] －
[1992c]
[1992d] (96-8) Wartime in America. The war affected every American in the
thirteen colonies – patriot, loyalist, or indifferent; man, woman, or child;
black, red, or white; slave, indentured, or free. Even in areas that never saw
a redcoat, the war was felt, if in no other way than by inflation. To finance
the war the Continental Congress and the state governments printed money as
fast as they could. The phrase "not worth a continental" soon showed
what people thought of this money. The war brought prosperity to many. Farmers
included 90 percent of all Americans, and many of them prospered by selling
their crops to both the British and the American armies. They sold to whichever
side paid more. Washington's men were starving at Valley Forge in the winter of
1777-1778, while the British, only a few miles away, were being well fed from
the rich farms of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Washington could never forget
the irony of his army lacking food in a country filled with farms. One army
officer, bitter about profiteering, wrote, "I despise my countrymen. I
wish I could say I was not born in America." Women at war. The departure
of men for war forced women to take up many jobs. Like women who were widowed,
they operated the farms, ran the printing presses, served as artisans and
shopkeepers -- doing whatever needed to be done. Some women gathered their
children and followed their husbands to the army. They went with the army
wherever it moved, and they helped to nurse the wounded, make camp, cook, do
the laundry, carry out clerical tasks, and, in battle, carry water and bullets
to the soldiers, even load and fire muskets and cannons. Margaret Corbin
followed her husband to war from their home in Pennsylvania. When he was killed
while commanding a cannon at the Battle of Fort Washington, New York (November
16, 1776), she filled his place until she was severely wounded. More famous,
though no more courageous, was Mary (Molly) McCauley, known as Molly Pitcher
for the pitcher of water she carried back and forth during the hot weather and
hot fighting of the Battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778. When her husband fell in
the battle, she too took his place at a cannon till the battle was over. We
know of at least one woman, and there were probably more, who passed as a man
and fought as a soldier. Deborah Sampson enlisted in the 4th Massachusetts
Regiment in 1782 and served for more than a year. Abigail Adams, brilliant wife
of John Adams, played another kind of role. She ran the farm and business while
her husband was away at the Continental Congress. She kept him aware of what
was going on at home. She told him of the profiteering, of how the people felt,
and she discussed ways to recruit soldiers and finance the war. Abigail tried
to improve the lot of women in the new country, but John was not impressed:
"Depend on it," he wrote, "we know better than to repeal our
masculine systems." Blacks in the Revolution. Many blacks were involved in the war right
from the start. They were present at the battles of Lexington and Concord. At
the Battle of Bunker Hill, Peter Salem and Salem Poor stood out for their
bravery. After George Washington took over the army, however, it was decided not
to have blacks in the service any more. But this policy did not last long
because the British promised freedom to all blacks who came to them. Whenever British armies
appeared in the South, large numbers of slaves, seeking to be as free as white
Americans, joined them. At war's end 14,000 sailed away with the British. As
blacks flocked to the British, George Washington, Congress, and all the states
except South Carolina and Georgia changed their minds. They enlisted blacks and promised slaves that
they would receive their freedom after the war. Of course, slaves could not
join without their masters' permission, so of the 5000 blacks who fought in the
war, most were from the North. In
general, they served in mixed units and were present at almost all the military
actions of the war. The Loyalists. A substantial number of Americans opposed
the war and wanted to stay with Great Britain. The Loyalists came from every
occupation and were of every degree of wealth. Many kept quiet about how they
felt and were not bothered by the patriots. Some went to Canada or England. A
few, like Jedediah Smith and Phineas Lyman of New England, took their families
from comfortable homes and headed west to try to establish a new life in the
wilderness -- far from the problems of empire and freedom. About 60,000 became
soldiers and fought on the British side. Loyalists who did not leave their
homes, but whose sentiments were known, often found themselves shunned by their
neighbors. Some were tarred and feathered, and many lost their property by
state confiscation or patriot plundering. Others were treated as traitors and
were imprisoned or exiled to towns far from home. During the course of the war,
and at its end, thousands of Loyalists left America never to return. Most went
to Canada. There they added a strongly British element to the largely French
population. They became useful citizens, serving in the assemblies and as
judges and governors .
[1992e] (96-8) Wartime in America. The war affected every American in the
thirteen colonies – patriot, loyalist, or indifferent; man, woman, or child;
black, red, or white; slave, indentured, or free. Even in areas that never saw
a redcoat, the war was felt, if in no other way than by inflation. To finance
the war the Continental Congress and the state governments printed money as
fast as they could. The phrase "not worth a continental" soon showed
what people thought of this money. The war brought prosperity to many. Farmers
included 90 percent of all Americans, and many of them prospered by selling
their crops to both the British and the American armies. They sold to whichever
side paid more. Washington's men were starving at Valley Forge in the winter of
1777-1778, while the British, only a few miles away, were being well fed from
the rich farms of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Washington could never forget
the irony of his army lacking food in a country filled with farms. One army
officer, bitter about profiteering, wrote, "I despise my countrymen. I
wish I could say I was not born in America." Women at war. The departure
of men for war forced women to take up many jobs. Like women who were widowed,
they operated the farms, ran the printing presses, served as artisans and
shopkeepers -- doing whatever needed to be done. Some women gathered their
children and followed their husbands to the army. They went with the army
wherever it moved, and they helped to nurse the wounded, make camp, cook, do
the laundry, carry out clerical tasks, and, in battle, carry water and bullets
to the soldiers, even load and fire muskets and cannons. Margaret Corbin
followed her husband to war from their home in Pennsylvania. When he was killed
while commanding a cannon at the Battle of Fort Washington, New York (November
16, 1776), she filled his place until she was severely wounded. More famous,
though no more courageous, was Mary (Molly) McCauley, known as Molly Pitcher
for the pitcher of water she carried back and forth during the hot weather and
hot fighting of the Battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778. When her husband fell in
the battle, she too took his place at a cannon till the battle was over. We
know of at least one woman, and there were probably more, who passed as a man
and fought as a soldier. Deborah Sampson enlisted in the 4th Massachusetts
Regiment in 1782 and served for more than a year. Abigail Adams, brilliant wife
of John Adams, played another kind of role. She ran the farm and business while
her husband was away at the Continental Congress. She kept him aware of what
was going on at home. She told him of the profiteering, of how the people felt,
and she discussed ways to recruit soldiers and finance the war. Abigail tried
to improve the lot of women in the new country, but John was not impressed:
"Depend on it," he wrote, "we know better than to repeal our
masculine systems." Blacks in the Revolution. Many blacks were involved in
the war right from the start. They were present at the battles of Lexington and
Concord. At the Battle of Bunker Hill, Peter Salem and Salem Poor stood out for
their bravery. After George Washington took over the army, however, it was
decided not to have blacks in the service any more. But this policy did not
last long because the British promised freedom to all blacks who came to them.
Whenever British armies appeared in the South, large numbers of slaves, seeking
to be as free as white Americans, joined them. At war's end 14,000 sailed away
with the British. As blacks flocked to the British, George Washington,
Congress, and all the states except South Carolina and Georgia changed their
minds. They enlisted blacks and promised slaves that they would receive their
freedom after the war. Of course, slaves could not join without their masters'
permission, so of the 5000 blacks who fought in the war, most were from the
North. In general, they served in mixed units and were present at almost all
the military actions of the war. The Loyalists. A substantial number of
Americans opposed the war and wanted to stay with Great Britain. The Loyalists
came from every occupation and were of every degree of wealth. Many kept quiet
about how they felt and were not bothered by the patriots. Some went to Canada
or England. A few, like Jedediah Smith and Phineas Lyman of New England, took
their families from comfortable homes and headed west to try to establish a new
life in the wilderness -- far from the problems of empire and freedom. About
60,000 became soldiers and fought on the British side. Loyalists who did not
leave their homes, but whose sentiments were known, often found themselves
shunned by their neighbors. Some were tarred and feathered, and many lost their
property by state confiscation or patriot plundering. Others were treated as
traitors and were imprisoned or exiled to towns far from home. During the
course of the war, and at its end, thousands of Loyalists left America never to
return. Most went to Canada. There they added a strongly British element to the
largely French population. They became useful citizens, serving in the
assemblies and as judges and governors. (98) Multicultural Connection: Over
7,000 Hispanic soldiers fought in the American Revolution. One such soldier
Jorge Farragut, who was born in Ciudadela, Minorca, and was the father of Civil
War hero David G. Farragut. Jorge Farragut served as captain of a ship in the
navy of South Carolina. At the end of the war, Jorge Farragut had attained the
rank of major in the calvary.
[1992f] (130-2) The Boston Massacre. Before the French and Indian War,
British troops had never been stationed in the colonies. Now, during peacetime,
several thousand "Redcoats," so called because of their red uniforms,
were suddenly quartered in Boston. Tensions mounted. Most people in Boston did
not hesitate to show their dislike for the soldiers, but they avoided violence.
On March 5, 1770, serious trouble erupted. A squad of soldiers guarding the
hated customs house was being taunted by a crowd of sailors, loafers, and small
boys. The crowd threw snowballs and rocks, and some attacked the British
soldiers. The Redcoats began to fire into the crowd. When order was restored,
three Americans lay dead on the ground. Two others died later of their wounds.
One of the first patriots to die in the cause of American independence was
Crispus Attucks, a black man. The captain of the guards, Thomas Preston, and eight
of his men were arrested and accused of murder. A few Boston radicals, led by
Sam Adams, now began to hint that the colonies should declare their
independence. Adams was a founder of the local Sons of Liberty and one of the
authors of the Massachusetts Circular Letter. Another radical, the silversmith
Paul Revere, made and distributed an engraving of this Boston Massacre that
portrayed Captain Preston commanding his sneering soldiers to fire at unarmed
American civilians. (162-3) Self-Evident Truths. Over the years people have
argued heatedly about what Jefferson meant by the first of his self-evident
truths In the Declaration of Independence -- "that all men are created
equal." Historical imagination can help us understand. First of all, Jefferson
surely meant by men "people," just as when he spoke of "the
opinions of mankind," he meant the opinions of all people, women and men
alike. This is not to suggest that Jefferson or any other signer of the
Declaration believed in equal rights for women as the term is used today. The
delegates who signed the Declaration believed that women were entitled to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness so long as they behaved as men thought
they should behave. During the Revolution women held many jobs usually performed
by men in peacetime. Many ran farms and shops while their husbands, fathers,
and brothers were at war. Abigail Adams called herself a "farmeress"
and really did manage the Adams farm. Some women served as nurses in the army.
A few actually fired guns in defense of liberty. Martha Washington joined her
husband in winter camp and encouraged other women to do war work. "Whilst
our husbands and brothers are examples of patriotism," she wrote "we
must be patterns of industry." Women were not the legal equals of men, and
no movement to improve the position of women grew out of the Revolution. On the
other hand, Jefferson certainly meant that only free men were created equal.
Jefferson believed that for free men there were certain unalienable rights,
God-given rights that no just government could take away for any reason. How
could he, a slaveholder, claim that liberty was a God given right of "all
men"? During the Revolutionary War about 5,000 Africans served in the
American army and navy. Crispus Attucks fell in the Boston Massacre. Peter
Salem, Caesar Ferrett, Samuel Craft, and Prince Estabrook were among the
militiamen on the Lexington common when the first shots were fired. Salem Poor,
Cato Howe, and Cesar Jabor were among the defenders of Breed's Hill. Indeed.
Africans, slave and free, fought in every major battle. Still, most Americans
tolerated slavery. Nearly every European person in America of the 1770s was in
some ways prejudiced against Africans by today's standards. Further, most men
of all origins were "male chauvinists" by today's standards. We must
use our historical imagination if we want to understand these men and their
times. To condemn George Washington for owning slaves and taking control of his
rich wife's property would only show that we did not understand Washington and
the Revolution. We would be equally wrong if we took the Declaration so
literally as to believe that the signers were perfect democrats. Reaction to
the Declaration. Many Americans, particularly the Patriots (also known as Whigs),
rejoiced at the news that independence had been declared. Throughout the
colonies Whigs celebrated, holding festive banquets and demonstrations to show
their support of the Declaration. Some Americans greeted the news with
indifference. These people did not care one way or another. The Loyalists (or
Tories), strongly opposed the sentiments expressed in the Declaration and
regarded the Whigs as traitors. Despite Paine's plea to "let the names of
Whig and Tory be extinct," arguments between the Whigs and the Tories
continued throughout the Revolutionary War. In many cases, the Tories openly
welcomed the British troops and did all they could to hurt the Patriots' cause.
In other cases they fled to Canada or returned to England as the revolution and
the war spread.
[1992g] －
[1992h] (59-60) Having begun with this straightforward reading, the
historian is less likely to wrench out of context a particular passage,
magnifying its importance at the expense of the rest of the document. Yet taken
by itself, the reading of "surface content" may distort a document's
import. Significance, after all, depends upon the circumstances under which a
statement is made as much as upon the statement itself. Thus the historian must
approach a document from several perspectives in order to establish its
historical context. The context of a document may be established, in part, ty
asking what the document might have said but did not. When Jefferson retired to
his second-floor lodgings on the outskirts of Philadelphia, placed a portable
writing desk on his lap, and put pen to paper, he had many options. The
Declaration in its final ~ form was hardly a foregone conclusion. Yet the
modern reader, seeing only the end result, is tempted to view the document as
the logical, even inevitable result of Jefferson's deliberations. Perhaps it
was, but the historian needs to ask how it might have been otherwise. What
might Jefferson and the Congress have declared but did not? As Jefferson
himself remarked, "The sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive
but by what they reject also." Only by identifying the range of
alternatives in any historical situation can we appreciate why one path was
chosen over another. One way of reconstructing the might-have-been's in the
Declaration is to locate them in earlier drafts. Here are the paths Jefferson
wished to take, which Congress ultimately rejected. Perhaps most interesting is
his discussion of slavery, originally included among the grievances against the
king: He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most
sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never
offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another
hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical
warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king
of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought
& sold, he has prostituted his negative [used his veto power] for
suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable
commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of
distinguishing die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among
us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering
the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes
committed against the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them
to commit against the lives of another. Blaming the king for slavery in America
certainly was tortuous logic. Jefferson based his charge on the fact that
several times during the eighteenth century, Virginia's legislature passed a
tariff designed to restrict the importation of slaves. It did so not so much
out of humanitarian motives, although these were occasionally mentioned, but
because the slave population in Virginia was expanding rapidly. Importing too
many slaves would lower the price of domestic slaves whom Virginia planters
wanted to sell. It would also create an unfavorable balance of trade, drawing
out of the colony funds used to pay for imported slaves. The British
administration, however, consistently disallowed such laws -- and thus the king
had "prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to
prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce." In part, the laws were
disallowed because many Americans wished the slave trade to continue --
Virginian landowners who would have benefitted from the lower prices, as well
as Georgians and South Carolinians who (as Jefferson himself admitted)
"had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the
contrary still wished to continue it." To accuse the king of enslaving
black colonials was ridiculous enough, but Jefferson's indictment appeared even
more absurd because it then turned around and hotly accused the king of freeing
black colonials. In November 1775, the loyal Governor Dunmore of Virginia
proclaimed that any slave who deserted his master to fight for the king would
be freed. Hence Jefferson, after condemning the awful practice of slavery,
called King George to account for the vile "crime" of freeing slaves
who remained loyal. Congress wisely dropped the long passage and only accused
the king more generally of encouraging "domestic insurrections."
Jefferson's rough draft reveals those issues he raised which Congress rejected,
but it necessarily provides no clue to the alternatives which neither Jefferson
nor Congress included in the Declaration. That there had been other
alternatives can be seen by looking at a declaration made some ten years
earlier by another intercolonial gathering, the Stamp Act Congress. This
declaration, like Jefferson's, began by outlining general principles before
proceeding to list specific grievances. In reading the first three resolves,
note the difference between their premises and those of the Declaration. I.
That his Majesty's Subjects in these Colonies, owe the same Allegiance to the
Crown of Great-Britain. that is owing from his Subjects born within the Realm,
and all due Subordination to that August Body the Parliament of Great-Britain.
II. That his Majesty's Liege Subjects in these Colonies, are entitled to all
the inherent Rights and Liberties of his Natural born Subjects, within the
Kingdom of Great-Britain. III. That it is inseparably essential to the Freedom
of a People, and the undoubted Right of Englishmen, that no Taxes be imposed on
them, but with their own Consent, given personally, or by their
Representatives. Significantly, the rights emphasized by the Stamp Act Congress
in 1765 differ from those emphasized in 1776. According to the Stamp Act
resolutions, the colonists are entitled to "all the inherent Rights and
Liberties" of "Subjects, within the Kingdom of Great-Britain."
They possess "the undoubted Right of Englishmen. " Nowhere in
Jefferson's Declaration are the "rights of Englishmen" once mentioned
as justification for protesting the king's conduct. Instead, the Declaration
magnifies what the Stamp Act only mentions in passing-natural rights inherent in
the "Freedom of a People," whether they be English subjects or not.
[1993a] (130) Jefferson was also author of the phrase that translated social
mobility into an American principle. By declaring on July 4, 1776, that
"all men are created equal," the United States committed itself to a
doctrine that was to prove the world's most powerful lever for social and
political change. The declaration was intended simply to justify the colonists'
withdrawal from the mother country, which had refused to treat them as equals.
But no great imagination was needed to see wider implications in Jefferson's
axiomatic statement of human equality. Its relevance to black slavery was
inescapable. As soon as Americans complained that British taxation would reduce
them to slavery, they began to feel uneasy about their own enslavement of
Africans. They even forswore the slave trade in their nonimportation
agreements. In the Experimental Period most of the states, Southern as well as
Northern, forbade the further importation of slaves, and the Northern states
provided for the eventual liberation of those already within their borders.
Many Southerners also freed their slaves voluntarily at this time. But Americans were not yet ready
to face up to the racial meaning of their egalitarian creed. No Southern state
provided for the legal abolition of slavery. Jefferson himself continued to
hold slaves throughout his lifetime, and Southern slaves continued to do the
work that accounted for the major exports of the whole United States. Eventually Americans would
have to pay for their failure. Meanwhile the contradiction between the creed of
equality and the practice of slavery was heightened as white Americans
gradually turned their written commitment into an active force to better their
own lives The principle of equality was as hostile to aristocracy as to
slavery. Having got along without a titled nobility for a century and a half,
Americans were determined to continue without one and looked suspiciously at
anything that smacked of special privilege. States forbade their citizens to
accept titles from foreign nations. And when officers of the Continental Army
formed the Society of the Cincinnati in 1783 they met with a storm of protest
from critics who feared that the association might become the nucleus of an
aristocracy. In Connecticut even a medical society, seeking to raise the
standards of the profession by licensing practitioners, was at first denied a
charter because its members were to be chosen for life and might thus become a
privileged order. (130) [Picture] Negroes for Sale.
[1993b]
[1994a] (56-8) Independence. It seems astonishing that actual fighting could
continue for a year while each side hoped for reconciliation. Yet Americans
were deeply attached to their mother country and seemed downrightfearful of
even whispering the word "independence." It was an English writer
newly arrived in America who broke the logjam of public sentiment. In Common
Sense, published anonymously in January 1776, Thomas Paine directly attacked
the monarchy, not merely the king's ministers, and called for establishment of
an independent American republic. Having attacked "the Royal brute of
Britain " he went on to declare "There is something very absurd in
supposing a Continent to be perpetually governed by an island.” Paine's Common
Sense was widely read and widely acclaimed. It was, in fact, one of the most
immediately influential political pamphlets ever written. Public opinion
shifted rapidly. On April 6, 1776, Congress opened American ports to the
commerce of all nations except Britain. This, in itself, placed America
independent of Britain. A month later, Congress advised all colonies to form
new state governments if they had not already done so. Nine hours of debate on
July 1 helped bring some reluctant delegates around, and on July 2, Congress
adopted a Resolution of Independence: "Resolved, That these United
Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, . . . and
that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is,
and ought to be, totally dissolved.” Adopting this resolution was crucial, but
one further step seemed desirable as a means of enlisting the support of
foreign powers. As Thomas Jefferson put the matter, "a decent respect to
the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation." On July 4, 1776, having made numerous
changes in Jefferson's draft of such a declaration of causes, Congress finally
ordered it printed and "proclaimed in each of the united states and at the
head of the army. The Declaration of Independence was an appeal to the world. A
brief preamble stated the theory of natural rights, which, after nearly a
hundred years of discussion since their classic formulation by John Locke,
could well be called "self-evident." Then followed the long list of
British transgressions, which supported the right of revolution. The note of
moderation remained: "Governments long established should not be changed
for light and transient causes." But in the eyes of the Americans, their
grievances were heavy and of long duration. The Declaration's statement that
"all men are created equal" may not have seemed to Congress to go
beyond the conventional notion of the political equality of free and propertied
citizens. But even before the Declaration, many white people were deeply
troubled that the institution of slavery continued while they were calling for
liberty themselves. When in May 1775 the question of using slaves as soldiers
came up in Massachusetts, it was decided that their enlistment would be
"inconsistent with the principles that are to be supported," and they
were rejected. When the British began to use slaves that November, however,
white Americans altered their stand. Many of the slaves among the 5000 black
men who served with the American Revolutionary army were freed at the end of
the war. Loyalists. Some Americans opposed independence and the war. These
Loyalists -- or Tories, as the patriots called them -- varied in number from
place to place and from time to time. The best modern estimates suggest that
the Loyalists never numbered more than a fifth of the white population. But
numbers alone do not tell why some people chose to remain loyal to the British
Crown. For many people the decision was a crisis of conscience; for others it
was a matter of self-interest. Men who had held positions as royal officials,
for example, found it easy to remain loyal to the Crown. Some Loyalists had a
distaste for popular rule. Certain ethnic groups tended to become Loyalist
because other ethnic groups in the same area were becoming patriots. Quakers
and German pacifists could not become active patriots because their principles
prevented them from supporting any sort of war. Probably the most important determinant
of opinion was the presence of armed men in the immediate neighborhood. The
presence of British troops could work in two ways: they could make Loyalists
out of those who wished to pick the winning side, or they could make patriots
out of outraged farmers who watched helplessly as redcoats made off with their
corn and livestock. As the fighting moved from one part of the colonies to
another, more and more Americans had to make a choice. This pattern placed the
Loyalists at a tremendous disadvantage: British troops came and went, while
their armed American opponents and neighbors usually remained. The patriot
majority remained a majority mostly because of its long-term control of the
countryside. Committees of patriots, backed with bayonets, drove many Loyalists
from their homes and communities. The new states provided legal machinery for
taking Loyalist property. There were brutalities on both sides, but few
Loyalists lost their lives except in battle against patriot forces. Throughout
the war, the British constantly overestimated the number of Loyalists. Yet at
the same time they failed to take full advantage of Loyalist support.
Professional British army officers often treated these potential supporters
with the same contempt they had for all colonials. Eventually, many Loyalists
left the United States for England or other parts of the British empire. Many
even received financial compensation from the British government for their
losses during the war. The departure of so many Loyalists had an important
impact on the future of the new country. It meant that the most determined
opponents of the Revolution were no longer on the scene when the Americans won.
After the war, Americans were able to deal with the problems of nation-building
without having to worry about a large group of people who opposed the entire
enterprise. (62-3) Slavery. One group of Americans had no share in this freedom
and prosperity. Black slaves and slavery itself stood out as the one great
exception to the principles of the Revolution. What happened with American
slavery was easily the most important social result of the Revolution. The war
itself had changed the lives of some slaves, for several thousand had served in
the armed forces of both sides, and many of them had gained their freedom by
doing so. Especially in the lower South, many slaves had rebelled against
whatever white authorities claimed to own them. Thousands of others were
carried off by the British when they left Georgia and South Carolina. For the
great majority of blacks, though, the war meant continued toil in the fields.
Yet the rationale for the Revolution brought into question the entire
institution of slavery, for it was obvious to many white Americans that their
claims to liberty and the rights of all men meant that holding slaves was
wrong. Nonetheless, whites felt there were major barriers to freeing black
slaves. First, slaves were property, and for years white Americans had argued
that no government could deprive people of their property without their consent.
In this case, one principle of the Revolution, the owner's natural right of
property, collided directly with another, the slave's natural right of liberty.
Second, many white Americans thought that freed slaves would become a drain on
society, a hostile group of people who would either rob or starve. Third, many
whites simply did not want to live with free blacks. They would have been happy
to see them free if they would somehow go away. Finally, many slave owners
opposed emancipation simply because they were profiting from slave labor. The
net result of these feelings was that some states took steps toward abolishing
slavery and others did not. From Pennsylvania northward, where there were few
slaves, it was relatively easy to end slavery. In Massachusetts, court
decisions found that slavery violated the state constitution's assertion that
"all men are born free and equal." Elsewhere in the North, the states
passed gradual-emancipation laws. These acts did not abolish slavery outright;
they provided that slaves born after passage of the act would become free at a
certain age, such as twenty-one or twenty-eight. Many such laws named July 4 as
the date when they would go into effect. That date itself pointed to the force
of Revolutionary principles. By 1802 all northern states had provided for the
gradual end of slavery. But many blacks in effect won their own freedom, by
buying themselves and their families' freedom or by running away. In the
southern states, the principles were the same but the number of slaves much
greater. In Virginia and Maryland, where slavery was less profitable than
further south, there was much discussion about getting rid of it. The major
difficulty was that most whites wanted to get rid of blacks if they were freed,
and there was no realistic way of doing this. A number of white masters
privately freed some or all of their slaves. In doing so, they often cited the
principles of the Revolution, but just as frequently they referred to
principles of Christian brotherhood; in many cases they referred to both. The
Revolution had still another important impact on the pattern of American
slavery. The coming of the war brought the importation of slaves from Africa to
a halt. For several reasons this change was nearly permanent. A majority of white
Americans had begun to recognize the injustice and horrible cruelty of the
Atlantic slave trade. Slaves were in great demand only in South Carolina and
Georgia; elsewhere in the South, planters had more slaves than they could use.
And most whites thought there was already a surplus of black people. They
feared and disliked the ones they already had, whether slave or free, and they
wanted no more. The great majority of white Americans wanted the new nation to
be a white man s country. (63) Elizabeth Freeman was an African American woman
from Massachusetts who successfully sued for her freedom in 1783.
[1994b] (197-8) African-Americans
and the Revolutionary War.
American blacks were deeply involved in the Revolution. In fact, the conflict
provoked the largest slave rebellion in American history prior to the Civil
War. Once the war was under way, blacks found a variety of ways to turn events
to their own advantage. For some, this meant applying Revolutionary principles
to their own lives and calling for their personal freedom. For others, it meant
seeking liberty behind English lines or in the continent's interior. During the
pre-Revolutionary decade, as their white masters talked excitedly about liberty
and the nobility of opposing despotism, increasing numbers of black Americans
questioned their own oppression. In the North, some slaves petitioned
legislatures to set them free. In the South, pockets of insurrection appeared.
In 1765, more than 100 South Carolina slaves fled to the interior, where they
tried to establish a colony of their own. The next year, slaves paraded through
the streets of Charleston chanting "Liberty, liberty!" In November
1775, Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation offering freedom to all Virginia
slaves and servants who would leave their masters and join the British forces
in Norfolk. Within weeks, 500 to 600 slaves had responded. Among those who
demonstrated their commitment to freedom by traveling through the hostile,
Patriot controlled countryside was Thomas Peters, from Wilmington, North
Carolina. Kidnapped from the Yoruba tribe in what is now Nigeria and brought to
North America by a French slave trader, Peters had been purchased in Louisiana
about 1760. He resisted enslavement so fiercely that his master sold him into
the English colonies. By 1770, Peters belonged to William Campbell, an
immigrant Scots planter on North Carolina's Cape Fear River. Here Peters toiled
while the storm brewed between England and the colonies. Peters's plans for his
own declaration of independence may have ripened as a result of the rhetoric of
liberty he heard around his master's house, for William Campbell had become a
leading member of Wilmington's Sons of Liberty and talked much about
inalienable rights. By mid-1775, the Cape Fear region, like many areas from
Maryland to Georgia, buzzed with rumors of slave uprisings. Importations of new
slaves were banned, and patrols were dispatched to disarm all blacks in the
area. In July, the state's Revolutionary government imposed martial law when
the British commander of Fort Johnston at the mouth of the Cape Fear River near
Wilmington gave "encouragement to Negroes to elope from their
masters." When 20 British ships entered the Cape Fear River in March 1776
and disembarked royal troops, Peters seized the moment to redefine himself as a
man, instead of William Campbell's property, and escaped. During the war, he
fought with the British-officered Black Pioneers. How many African-American
adults sought liberty behind British lines is unknown, but as many as 20 percent
may have done so. In contrast to their white masters, blacks saw in England the
promise of freedom, not tyranny. As the war dragged on, English commanders
pressed blacks into service. A regiment of black soldiers, formed from Virginia
slaves who responded to Dunmore's proclamation, marched into battle, their
chests covered with sashes on which was emblazoned "Liberty to
Slaves." Some of the blacks who joined England achieved their freedom. At
the war's end, several thousand were evacuated with the British to Nova Scotia,
where they established their own settlements. Their reception by the white
inhabitants there, however, was generally hostile. By the end of the century,
most had left Canada to found the free black colony of Sierra Leone on the west
coast of Africa. Thomas Peters was a leader among them. Many of the slaves who
fled behind English lines, however, never won their freedom. As the British
prepared to evacuate the port cities at the end of the war, blacks from the
surrounding countryside crowded in, begging to be taken away. Against their
appeals for liberty, British commanders had to balance the terms of the peace
treaty, which stipulated that the British were to evacuate "with all
convenient Speed and without causing any destruction or carrying away any
Negroes or other Property of the American Inhabitants." In the end,
hundreds of slaves were returned to their American owners. Several thousand
others, their value as fieldhands too great to be ignored, were transported to
the West Indies and the harsher slavery of the sugar plantations. England had
not entered the war to abolish slavery. Many blacks took advantage of the war's
confusion to slip away into the towns or countryside in pursuit of a new life.
Some sought refuge among Indians in the interior. The Seminoles of Georgia and
Florida generally welcomed black runaways and through intermarriage absorbed
them into tribal society. The blacks' reception by the Cherokee and Creek,
however, was more uncertain. Some were taken in, but others were returned to
their white owners in return for bounties, while still others were held in
slavelike conditions by new Indian masters. Numerous blacks made their way
north, following rumors that slavery had been abolished there. Whatever their
destination, thousands of African-Americans acted to throw off the bonds of
slavery. Many fewer blacks fought on the American side than on England's, in
part because neither the Congress nor the states were eager to see them armed.
Faced with the increasing need for troops, however, the Congress and each of
the states except Georgia and South Carolina eventually relented and pressed
blacks into service. Of those who served the Patriot cause, many received the
freedom they were promised. The patriotism of countless others, however, went
unrewarded. (198) [Picture] During the Revolutionary War, James Armistead
Lafayette, a Virginia slave, served as a spy against the British for the French
general, Lafayette. In recognition of his service, the Virginia General
Assembly granted him his freedom in 1786.
[1994c] (215-7) African Americans in the Revolution. 7. African Americans fought in the
major battles of the Revolution, from Lexington to Yorktown. During the war,
more than 5,000 African Americans served in the American army. Many of these
soldiers were from New England. In Rhode Island, African Americans formed a
black regiment.
These soldiers helped win the Battle of Newport in 1778 and were praised for
their brave actions against the British army. 8. Some of the African Americans
who fought in the war were free, but many of them were slaves. When the war
began, the Continental Army did not allow slaves to enlist. Then, in 1775, the
British army offered freedom to slaves who would fight on its side. Many slaves
decided to join the British to gain freedom. In January 1776, the Continental
Army changed its policy and agreed to accept slaves as soldiers. Why would the
British policy cause the Continental Army to change its policy? African
Americans then formed a large regiment of soldiers in Maryland. Others served
in the American army in Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia. People in
History. 9. James Armistead. A
slave from Virginia named James Armistead took an important part in the Battle
of Yorktown. When
Washington’s army arrived in Virginia in 1781, Armistead's master allowed him
to join it. Armistead went to work for Lafayette, the young French general who
was serving in the American army. Many times, Lafayette sent Armistead into the
British camp to learn about the plans of the British. His reports of the
British army's plans helped the French and American armies end the war at
Yorktown. Armistead later was honored for his service. He also gained his freedom after the war and
took the name Lafayette.
10. When the war
ended, the new state governments granted freedom to most slaves who had fought
in the Continental Army. Yet most African Americans had not taken part in the
fighting. Thus, most African Americans still were slaves when the war ended. Patriots against Loyalists. 11.
Some Americans did not want to separate from Britain and become an independent
nation. Americans who stayed loyal to George III during the war were called
Loyalists. Those Americans who supported the war and fought against the British
called themselves Patriots. Patriots and Loyalists hated each other. Patriots
feared that Loyalists would aid the British army. They believed all Loyalists
were spies and traitors. However, although some Loyalists did help the British,
many just tried to stay out of the fighting. 12. Loyalists suffered many
hardships during and after the American Revolution. Many Loyalists lost their
homes and their lands. Many were put in prison. As a result, nearly 100,000
Loyalists left the United States. They moved to Canada, the West Indies, and
England. Many were lawyers, doctors, landowners, and business people. When they
left, the United States lost an important group of educated and able people.
(217) [Picture] When James Armistead Lafayette was an old man, this portrait of
him was painted as a gift for General Lafayette.
[1994d]
[1995a] －
[1995b] (85) FREEDOM FIGHTERS. The material on these two pages is concerned
with minority individuals and groups that fought in the American Revolution.
The arrangement of the material makes it suitable as a presentation-type lesson
with activity. Procedure. 1. Make a transparency for yourself, and photocopies
for your students, of the facing page. 2. As each segment (indicated by the
illustrations) is treated, your students may make brief notes on the lines next
to each illustration. Then, have them agree on captions for the pictures, and
write them on the top lines. 3. Questions that you may ask your students after
each segment has been presented follow: Haym Salomon Cave His Life for Freedom.
*What are some of the important facts about Salomon? (He was a Polish Jew, he
was arrested twice as a spy, he raised thousands of dollars for Washington's
army, he was only 45 when he died.) *How do you know from the story that the
drawing shows Salomon after his second capture? (The first time he was released
from prison, the second time he escaped, and that is what the illustration
shows.) Europeans Aid Washington. *Match the general with the country from
which he came: (Pulaski and Kosciusko from Poland. DeKalb and Von Steuben from
Germany, Lafayette from France) *How did the availability of friendly foreign
ports help American ships during the Revolution? (Ships could be repaired,
supplies could be replenished, the harbors were safe.) African-Americans Help
Washington *Why is Crispus Attucks especially remembered? (He was the first
American to be killed in the struggle for freedom.) *Why were African-Americans
welcomed into the navy? (Many of them had experience on American fishing and
merchant boats.) John Paul Jones. *In what way did Jones bring the war directly
to the British people? (His ships raided the British coasts.) *What prompted
Jones to leave his homeland? (He thought he might not be fairly treated in a
trial related to a sailor he had killed.) Suggested Picture Captions. Haym
Salomon: A stone wall hides Haym Salomon from the British. Europeans Aid
Washington: A foreign general offers his opinion to Washington.
African-Americans Help Washington: Jack Sisson batters General Prescott's door.
John Paul Jones: Captain Jones has his ship tied to the Serapis for a
hand-to-hand battle. Haym Salomon Gave His Life for Freedom. Haym Salomon was
born of Jewish parents in Poland in 1740. Early in his life he became a fighter
for freedom in his own country. Because of this, he was forced to leave Poland.
In 1772 he came to the American colonies. Soon he began working to help the
American struggle for independence. In 1776 he was arrested and jailed by the
British. He was released from prison, but in 1778 he was arrested once more. He
was condemned to die by hanging. Haym managed to escape to Philadelphia. There
he put his business talent to work to raise many thousands of dollars for
Washington's army. He worked so hard for the American cause that he ruined his
health. He died almost penniless at the age of forty-five. He gave his life for
freedom as surely as though he had died on the battlefield. Europeans Aid
Washington. Many Europeans hoped that the Americans would win the fight for
independence. They helped in many ways. Sometimes Europeans joined Washington's
forces and fought as enlisted men or officers. Four of the most important
foreign officers were Generals Pulaski and Kosciusko from Poland and Generals
DeKalb and Von Steuben from Germany. The most popular foreigner was General
Lafayette from France. Sometimes American ships were allowed to enter friendly
foreign ports where they could be safe from the enemy. While there, the ships
might be repaired or supplies might be taken on board. Some foreign governments
loaned or gave money to the Americans so that they could carry on the war. The
most important foreign aid came from France. Without French soldiers, sailors,
supplies, and money, the Americans might not have won their independence.
African-Americans Help Washington. The first American to die for the cause of
freedom was Crispus Attucks, an African-American who was killed in the Boston
massacre. Before the Revolution ended, some 5,000 African-Americans had served
in the colonial armed forces. They fought from Concord and Lexington to
Yorktown. They served as soldiers, laborers, skilled workers, hospital
attendants, spies, messengers, and scouts. Many who had experience on American
fishing and merchant ships joined the navy. Jack Sisson and others of the Rhode
Island First Regiment battered down the door of General Prescott of the British
army and then captured him. Peter Salem, who fought at Bunker Hill was praised
by his officers as performing "like an experienced officer as well as an
excellent soldier." John Paul Jones -- Naval Hero. John Paul Jones was
born in Scotland in 1747. At the age of twelve, he became an apprentice seaman.
At an early age he was given command of his own ship. Unfortunately, he killed
a sailor who attacked him during a mutiny. Jones feared that he could not prove
he had fought in self-defense because the mutineers would lie about what had
happened. So, he fled to Virginia. When the Revolutionary War broke out, he
volunteered for naval duty. Soon, he was made captain and was given command of
a small fleet. He was so daring that he even raided the coasts of Great
Britain. His most famous battle was with the British warship Serapis. The
British commander asked Jones if he was ready to surrender. Jones answered,
"I have not yet begun to fight." His men boarded the Serapis and sank
it. Jones's fleet sank or captured more than three hundred British ships.
[1995c] －
[1996a] (161-2) African Americans in the Age of Revolution. The British also
lost in the Carolinas because they did not seek greater support from those
southerners who would have fought for liberty with the British -- African
American slaves. Black Americans, virtually all in bondage, made up one-third
of the population between Delaware and Georgia. Since the beginning of the
resistance to Britain, white southerners had worried that the watchwords of
liberty and equality would spread to the slave quarters. Gripped by the fear of
slave rebellion, southern revolutionaries began to take precautions.
Marylanders disarmed black inhabitants and issued extra guns to the white
militia. Charlestonians hanged and then burned the body of Thomas Jeremiah, a
free black who was convicted of spreading the word to others that the British
"were come to help the poor Negroes." White fears of rebellion.
Southern whites fully expected the British to turn slave rebelliousness to
their strategic advantage. As early as 1775, Virginia's royal governor, Lord
Dunmore, confirmed white fears by offering to free any slave who joined the
British. When Clinton invaded the South in 1779, he renewed that offer. Janet
Schaw, an English woman visiting her brother's North Carolina plantation,
reported that his neighbors had heard that loyalists were "promising every
Negro that would murder his master and family he should have his Master's
plantation. . . . The Negroes have got it amongst them and believe it to be
true." But in Britain there was overwhelming opposition to organizing
support among African Americans. British leaders dismissed Dunmore's ambitious
scheme to raise a black army of 10,000 and another plan to create a sanctuary
for black loyalists on the southeastern coast. Turning slaves against masters,
they recognized, was not the way to conciliate southern whites. Even so,
southern fears of insurrection made the rebels reluctant to enlist black
Americans as soldiers. At first, Congress barred African Americans from the
Continental Army, But as the rebels became more desperate for manpower, policy
changed. Northern states actively encouraged black enlistments, and in the
Upper South, some states allowed free men of color to join the army or
permitted slaves to substitute for their masters. African American quests for
liberty. Slaves themselves sought freedom from whichever side seemed most
likely to grant it. In 1775 more than 800 took up Dunmore's offer and deserted
their masters, and thousands more flocked to Clinton's forces after the fall of
Charleston. For many runaways the hope of liberation proved an illusion.
Although some served the British army as laborers, spies, and soldiers, many
died of disease in army camps or were sold back into slavery in the West
Indies. An estimated 5000 black soldiers served in the revolutionary army in
the hope of gaining freedom. In addition, the number of runaways to the North
soared during the Revolution. All told, some 55,000 slaves fled to freedom,
some escaping behind British lines, others into the North. The slave revolts so
dreaded by southern whites never materialized. Possibly the boldest slaves were
drawn off into the armies; possibly greater white precautions discouraged
schemes for black rebellions. In South Carolina, where the potential for revolt
was greatest, most slaves chose to remain on plantations rather than risking a
collective resistance and escape in the midst of the fierce partisan warfare.
[1996b] (108-9) African-Americans’ Dilemma. Slaves faced a dilemma at the beginning of the
Revolution: how could they best pursue their goal of escaping perpetual
servitude? Should they fight with or against their white masters? With no
correct choice immediately apparent, African-Americans made different
decisions. Some
indeed joined the revolutionaries, but to most an alliance with the British
appeared more promising. Thus news of slave conspiracies surfaced in different
parts of the colonies in late 1774 and early 1775. All shared a common element:
a plan to assist the British in return for freedom. One group of slaves
futilely petitioned General Thomas Gage, the commander in chief of the British
army in Boston, promising to fight for the redcoats if he would liberate them.
The most serious incident occurred in 1775 in Charleston, where Thomas
Jeremiah, a free black harbor pilot, was brutally executed after being
convicted of attempting to foment a slave revolt. A fear of such acts made
white residents of the British West Indian colonies far more cautious in their
opposition to parliamentary policies than their counterparts on the mainland.
On most Caribbean islands, blacks outnumbered whites by six or seven to one.
With the ever present threat of slave revolt or foreign attack hanging over
their heads, the planters could not afford to risk opposing Britain, their
chief protector. (115-6) The American Army. As the war dragged on, the
Continental Army and the militia took on decidedly different characters. State
governments, responsible for filling military quotas, found that most men
willing to enlist for long periods in the regular army were young, single, and
footloose. Farmers with families tended to prefer short-term militia duty. As
the supply of whites willing to sign up with the Continentals diminished,
recruiters in the northern states turned increasingly to African-Americans,
both slave and free. Perhaps as many as five thousand blacks eventually served
in the revolutionary army, and most won their freedom as a result. Also
attached to the American forces were a number of women, who were the wives and
widows of poor soldiers. Such camp followers worked as cooks, nurses, and
launderers in return for rations and low wages. The American army was unwieldy
and difficult to manage, yet the shapelessness provided an almost unlimited
reservoir of manpower and womanpower. The officers of the Continental Army
developed an intense sense of pride and commitment to the revolutionary cause.
The hardships they endured, the battles they fought, the difficulties they
overcame all helped to forge an esprit de corps that was to outlast the war.
The realities of warfare were often dirty, messy, and corrupt, but the officers
drew strength from a developing image of themselves as professionals who
sacrificed personal gain for the good of the entire nation. In 1777, the chief
British effort was planned by the flashy "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne,
a playboy general and subordinate of William Howe, who had gained the ear of
Lord George Germain. Burgoyne convinced Germain that he could lead an invading
force of redcoats and Indians down the Hudson River from Canada, cutting off
New England from the rest of the states. He proposed to rendezvous near Albany
with a similar force that would move east from Niagara along the Mohawk River
valley The combined forces would then presumably link up with Sir William
Howe's troops in New York City. That Burgoyne's scheme would give
"Gentleman Johnny" all the glory and relegate Howe to a supporting
role did not escape Sir William's notice. While Burgoyne was plotting in London,
Howe was laying his own plans to take Philadelphia. Just as Burgoyne left Howe
out of his plans, Howe left Burgoyne out of his. Thus the two major British
armies in America would operate independently in 1777, and the result would be
a disaster.
[1996c] (67) 2-12 WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON? Some students will be surprised
that support for the Patriot cause was not 100 percent! By stepping into the
shoes of other Americans, your students will better understand the many
conflicting issues surrounding the War of Independence. (91-3) 2-12 WHOSE SIDE
ARE YOU ON? Most historians agree that, at best, 50 percent of people living in
colonial America supported the Patriots (colonists who wanted independence from
England) during the American War of Independence; some historians believe that
a more accurate breakdown was the following: 33 percent supported the Patriots,
33 percent supported the Tories (colonists who did not want independence from
England), and 33 percent were neutral. This is sometimes hard for us to believe
today! There were many issues for Americans to consider when contemplating
which side to support or whether to remain neutral. Much depended upon your
status in society and this status depended much on race, gender, and class.
Below are listed many different kinds of Americans living in 1776. Imagine you
are each of these people and consider the issues facing you at that time. Then
in the space provided, write whether, if you had been this American, you would
have been a Patriot, a Tory, or neutral, and why. 1. ENSLAVE AFRICAN AMERICAN
MAN. a. In 1776, the British announced that any enslaved African American man
would be granted freedom if he fought for the Tories. b. Though many African
Americans fought on the side of the Patriots in the beginning battles of the
War of Independence, the Continental Congress forbade their enlistment from
July 1776 to January 1777; as the war continued, African Americans were allowed
to serve in the Continental Army. If I had been an enslaved African American
man during the American War of Independence, I would have (circle one)
supported the Patriots/supported the Tories/remained neutral because. . . 2.
EUROPEAN AMERICAN WOMAN. a. Women were not allowed to vote or participate in
politics. b. Upon marriage, all property owned by a woman would become the
possession of her husband. c. Women were sometimes taught to read but rarely
taught to write. If I had been a European American woman during the American
War of Independence, I would have (circle one) supported the Patriots/supported
the Tories/remained neutral because. . . 3. INDENTURED EUROPEAN AMERICAN MALE
SERVANT. a. Indentured servants typically had to serve their masters four to
seven years before they gained their independence. b. Indentured servants were
not allowed to vote. c. Fifty percent of the Europeans who came to America
during the colonial period were indentured servants. d. A wealthy colonist who
was being drafted into the Continental Army could pay another man (very often
an indentured servant) to do his term of service. If I had been an indentured
European American male servant during the American War of Independence, I would
have (circle one) supported the Patriots/supported the Tories/remained neutral
because. . . 4. NATIVE AMERICAN MAN. a. The King of England (King George III)
had proclaimed in 1763 that colonists were not to settle land west of the
Appalachian mountains; this area was reserved for the Native Americans. b. The
Native Americans and European American colonists had often clashed between the
years of 1619 and 1776; these were often bloody confrontations with much loss
of life on both sides. c. Many Native Americans had fought with the French,
against the English during the French and Indian War of 1754-1763. If I had
been a Native American male during the American War of Independence, I would
have (circle one) supported the Patriots/supported the Tories/remained neutral
because. . . 5. WEALTHY EUROPEAN AMERICAN MALE PIANTATION OWNER a. Growers of
sugar, tobacco, and indigo (all which was grown in the southern colonies) were
required to sell their products to England although they could often get higher
prices from Continental European buyers. b. Many wealthy Southerners were
related to the upper class of England, often distantly related to English
royalty. c. The new taxes required by the 1767 Townshend Acts placed new levies
on many English imports that wealthy colonists desired such as paper, glass,
paint, and tea. If I had been a wealthy European American male plantation
owner, I would have (circle one) supported the Patriots/supported the
Tories/remained neutral because. . . 6. WEALTHY EUROPEAN AMERICAN MALE
MERCHANT. a. English mercantilism laws prohibited American colonists from
manufacturing and exporting goods such as hats, iron, and wool cloth. b. Navigation
Acts passed by the English Parliament prohibited merchants from shipping their
goods on any ships other than English or colonial ships. c. The English
parliament increased taxes on many goods imported to the colonies and called
for strict enforcement. If I had been a wealthy European American male merchant
during the American War of Independence, I would have (circle one) supported
the Patriots/supported the Tories/remained neutral because. . . 7. EUROPEAN
AMERICAN FEMALE SHOP OWNER AND INNKEEPER. a. Unmarried women were allowed by
the British government and colonial law to run small businesses on a very
limited basis. b. Colonists were required to provide food and housing for
British soldiers upon demand. c. The colonial economy depended greatly on
smooth trade relations with England. If I had been a European American female
shopowner and innkeeper during the American War of Independence, I would have
(circle one) supported the Patriots/supported the Tories/remained neutral
because. . .
[1996d] －
[1996e] (92) The Struggle in the South. The British now turned to a southern
strategy, expecting support from those loyal to the crown. They easily captured
Savannah, Georgia, and, after a long siege. Charleston, South Carolina, in
1780. But though loyalists were numerous in the Georgia and Carolina
backcountry, they met determined resistance from rebel irregulars led by men
like Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter. As a vicious, partisan war seared the
backcountry, the Continentals, after a humiliating defeat at Camden, South
Carolina, secured an important victory at Cowpens. Soon after, they forced
exhausted British troops under Lord Cornwallis to give up their pursuit of the
rebel army at Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina. Nathanael Greene, in command
of the Continental Army in the South, proved an ingenious strategist. His
support for the rebel partisans and his careful treatment of a civilian
population disenchanted by Cornwallis's marauding army frustrated British
efforts to take the Carolinas. The British, fearful of estranging whites, had
chosen not to mobilize one large group of southerners who might have fought
with them to win liberty -- African-American slaves. Instead, blacks were
recruited, eventually and reluctantly, for the Continental Army. (94) LEARNING
OBJECTIVES. When you have finished studying this chapter, you should be able
to: 1. Explain why the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of
Independence when it did, and discuss that document's justification for
revolution. 2. Explain why many Americans became loyalists or tried to remain
neutral during the revolutionary struggle. 3. Describe the evolution of British
and American military strategy during the war for independence, tracing the
course of the conflict from north to south. 4. Explain the significance of the
British surrender at Saratoga. (98) Review Questions. MULTIPLE CHOICE. 12.
During the American Revolution, African American slaves: a. were unwilling to
fight for either the British or the Continentals, as neither side denounced
slavery itself. b. fought for the British when promised their freedom, but not
for the Continentals, who they distrusted. c. fought only for the Continentals,
in hopes that it would help win them their freedom. d. were willing to fight for
whichever side promised them freedom. (pp. 161-162). (99) IDENTIGICATION
QUESTIONS. You should be able to describe the following key terms, concepts,
individuals and places, and explain their significance: Terms and Concepts.
Battle of Bunker Hill, Second Continental Congress, Declaration of
Independence, standing army, militia, Battle of Princeton, Battle of Saratoga,
siege of Charleston, Battle of Camden, Battle of Yorktown, loyalists, homespun,
Continental Army, Hessians, Battle of Germantown, partisan war in the South,
Battle of King's Mountain, Treaty of Paris, 1783. Individuals and Places.
William Howe, Charles, Lord Cornwallis, George Washington, Benedict Arnold,
Valley Forge, Thayendanegea, Francis Marion, Thomas Jefferson, John Burgoyne,
Horatio Gates, Henry Clinton, Baron von Steuben, Nathanael Greene, Comte de
Rochambeau. (101) ESSAY QUESTIONS. 1. Describe British and American military
strategies as they evolved over the course of the War for Independence. Explain
the general geographic progression of the fighting from north to south. 2. List
and explain several ways the Declaration of Independence justified the
colonies' break with Great Britain. 3. How did the Revolution affect the lives
of non-combatants -- men and women slave and free? 4. The answer to the
question "would they fight," the text says, was "yes -- but on
their own terms." Explain who fought -- and why. Who didn't fight -- and
why? 5. What was the most important reason that the British lost the War for
Independence? Defend your response.
[1997a] (56-7) It then went on to list grievances against the king, "a
history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States." The list accused
the king of dissolving colonial governments, controlling judges, sending
"swarms of Officers to harass our people," sending in armies of
occupation, cutting off colonial trade with other parts of the world, taxing
the colonists without their consent, and waging war against them, "transporting
large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation
and tyranny." All this, the language of popular control over governments,
the right of rebellion and revolution, indignation at political tyranny,
economic burdens, and military attacks, was language well suited to unite large
numbers of colonists and persuade even those who had grievances against one
another to turn against England. Some Americans were clearly omitted from this
circle of united interest drawn by the Declaration of Independence: Indians,
black slaves, women. Indeed, one paragraph of the Declaration charged the king
with inciting slave rebellions and Indian attacks: He has excited domestic
insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of
our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. Twenty years
before the Declaration, a proclamation of the legislature of Massachusetts of
November 3, 1755, declared the Penobscot Indians "rebels enemies and
traitors" and provided a bounty: "For every scalp of a male Indian
brought in . . . forty pounds. For every scalp of such female Indian or male
Indian under the age of twelve years that shall be killed . . . twenty pounds .
. . .” Thomas Jefferson had written a paragraph of the Declaration accusing the
king of transporting slaves from Africa to the colonies and "suppressing
every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce."
This seemed to express moral indignation against slavery and the slave trade
(Jefferson's personal distaste for slavery must be put alongside the fact that
he owned hundreds of slaves to the day he died). Behind it was the growing fear
among Virginians and some other southerners about the growing number of black
slaves in the colonies (20 percent of the total population) and the threat of
slave revolts as the number of slaves increased. Jefferson's paragraph was
removed by the Continental Congress because slaveholders themselves disagreed
about the desirability of ending the slave trade. So even that gesture toward
the black slave was omitted from the American Revolution's great manifesto of
freedom. The use of the phrase "all men are created equal" was probably
not a deliberate attempt to make a statement about women. It was just that
women were beyond consideration as worthy of inclusion. They were politically
invisible. Though practical needs gave women a certain authority in the home,
on the farm, or in occupations such as midwifery, they were simply overlooked
in any consideration of political rights, any notions of civic equality. To say
that the Declaration of Independence, even by its own language, was limited to
life, liberty, and happiness for white males is not to denounce the makers and
signers of the Declaration for holding the ideas expected of privileged males
of the eighteenth century. Reformers and radicals, looking discontentedly at
history, are often accused of expecting too much from a past political epoch
and sometimes they do. But the point of noting those outside the arc of human
rights in the Declaration is not, centuries late and pointlessly, to denounce
the moral failures of that time. It is to try to understand the way in which the
Declaration functioned to mobilize certain groups of Americans, ignoring
others. Surely, inspirational language to create a secure consensus is still
used, in our time, to cover up serious conflicts of interest in that consensus,
and to cover up, also, the omission of large parts of the human race. The
reality behind the words of the Declaration of Independence was that a rising
class of important people needed to enlist on their side enough Americans to
defeat England, without disturbing too much the relations of wealth and power
that had developed over 150 years of colonial history. Indeed, 69 percent of
the signers of the Declaration of Independence had held colonial office under
England When the Declaration of Independence was read, with all its flaming radical
language, from the town hall balcony in Boston, it was read by Thomas Crafts, a
member of the Loyal Nine group, conservatives who had opposed militant action
against the British. Four days after the reading, the Boston Committee of
Correspondence ordered the townsmen to show up on the common for a military
draft. The rich, it turned out, could avoid the draft by paying for
substitutes; the poor had to serve. This led to rioting and shouting:
"Tyranny is Tyranny let it come from whom it may."
[1997b] (54) CHAPTER 3. The American Revolution. HISTORY JOURNAL. Before
reading the chapter, write about your understanding of the Revolutionary War
and how you think the war may have changed people’s lives. OCTOBER 19, 1781:
BRITISH SURRENDER AT YORKTOWN. An enslaved African named James gained
permission from his owner, William Armistead to join the Continental Army
stationed nearby. It was March 1781. The general commanding these American
troops was Marie Joseph Lafayette, a young French aristocrat, who had volunteered
to serve with the American army. That spring Lafayette sent many spies to the
nearby British camp, but no one was as important as James. The secret
information James gathered helped Lafayette and the Americans corner the
British at Yorktown, Virginia. In October 1781 the British surrendered there,
ending the fight for independence. At the end of the war, however, Lafayette
went home a hero, and James went home an enslaved person. Yet, with Lafayette's
help, James was to be given his freedom. The Frenchman wrote a letter
describing James's "essential services" during the war and urged that
James be released by his owner in recognition of the value of those services.
In 1786 the Virginia legislature finally freed James in thanks for his military
efforts during the American Revolution. James Armistead's story was exceptional, but
the lives of many Americans -- African and white, male and female, famous and
unknown -- changed during the Revolutionary era. Americans tasted new freedoms
as they faced new challenges after the Revolutionary War. People of all
backgrounds struggled together to forge their new nation. (55) [Picture] James
Armistead began calling himself "James Lafayette," in honor of the
man who helped free him. (59) The Boston Massacre. Conflict over taxation
prompted Britain to send troops to Boston to enforce laws and maintain order.
The presence of British soldiers only raised tensions. Clashes between citizens
and soldiers became common in Boston. On the evening of March 5, 1770, the tensions
exploded into violence in an event that came to be called the Boston Massacre.
Accounts of the incident vary, but most agree that it began when a mob of
townspeople taunted a British sentry on duty Other British soldiers, led by
Captain Thomas Preston, came to the sentry's aid. Tempers flared. The crowd
threw snowballs and rocks at the soldiers. In the confusion, shots rang out.
Some reports say that one soldier's musket went off by mistake, and then other
soldiers began to fire. Others say an unidentified person commanded the
soldiers to fire. Three
colonists, including Crispus Attucks, a sailor of African and Native American
ancestry, lay dead.
Two more colonists later died from their wounds. Captain Preston was put on
trial and acquitted. Two of his men were convicted of manslaughter and were
branded on the hand. A period of uneasy calm followed the Boston Massacre.
Samuel Adams continued to use the incident to stir up anti-British feelings,
but no violent protests resulted. New trouble began in 1773. Parliament passed
the Tea Act to save the East India Company, a British trading company, from
bankruptcy, According to this law, only the East India Company could sell tea
to the colonies. Though the tea would sell for a lower price than Americans
were used to paying, they would still have to pay the import tax on it. Most of
all, colonists resented the East India Company's monopoly on selling tea. To
protest the tea tax, Boston's Sons of Liberty disguised themselves as Mohawks
and went to the pier one night. There they tossed 342 chests of tea into the
harbor. As punishment for the so-called Boston Tea Party, Parliament closed
Boston Harbor to all shipping until the tea was paid for. General Thomas George
Gage, commander of British troops in North America, took over as governor of
the colony to restore order to the rebellious city. (75) Trying to End Slavery.
While white Americans waged a revolution to gain liberty from the tyranny of
Britain, some enslaved Africans viewed fighting on the British side as their
own best chance to grasp liberty from the tyranny of slavery In Virginia, Lord
Dunmore's 1775 proclamation offering freedom to Virginia's enslaved persons and
servants "able and willing to bear arms" attracted more than 500
eager African Americans. The first volunteers formed a regiment of African
American soldiers wearing chest sashes that proclaimed, "Liberty to
Slaves!" As many as 20 percent of African Americans may have crossed
behind British lines to struggle for their own freedom. Only a few thousand
African Americans fought on the American side during the Revolution because the
Americans did not promise them release from slavery, If the Revolution did not
end slavery; it did deal the Institution a powerful blow. For one thing, the
importation of enslaved persons almost stopped during the war. Though
importation resumed briefly afterwards, 11 of the 13 states had outlawed it by
1790. In addition, the Revolution brought the very institution of slavery under
increased attack. In the South, the legislatures of Virginia and Maryland made
it easier for slaveholders to free enslaved persons. A rapid increase in the population of freed
African Americans fed expanding free African American communities in cities
such as Richmond and Baltimore. In the North, where enslaved persons made up a
much smaller percentage of the population, the Revolution prompted states
either to abolish slavery outright or to weaken it. In 1773, Dr. Benjamin Rush,
the physician and Pennsylvania leader who helped found America's first antislavery
society, said, "The plant of liberty is of so tender a Nature, that it
cannot thrive long in the neighborhood of slavery." In 1779 Pennsylvania
legislated that all children born to enslaved women should be freed at age 21
if female and age 28 if male. Even such cautious steps demonstrated the North's
understanding that human slavery could never be reconciled with the ideals of
the Revolution.
[1998a] (191-2) The Partisan Struggle in the South. Cornwallis’s task in the
Carolinas was complicated by the bitter animosity between rebels and loyalists
there. Many Carolinians had taken sides years before Clinton’s conquest of
Charleston. In the summer and fall of 1775 the supporters of Congress and the
new South Carolina revolutionary government mobbed, tortured, and imprisoned
supporters of the king in the backcountry. These attacks only hardened loyalist
resolve: roving bands seized ammunition, broke their leaders out of jail, and
besieged revel outposts. But within a matter of months, a combined force of
rebel militias from the coast and the frontier managed to defeat loyalist
forces in the backcountry. Rebels and loyalists battle for the backcountry.
With the fall bf Charleston in 1780, the loyalist movement on the frontier
returned to life. Out of loyalist vengefulness and rebel desperation issued the
brutal civil war that seared the southern backcountry after 1780. Neighbors and
even families fought and killed each other as members of roaming rebel and tory
militias. The intensity of partisan warfare in the backcountry produced
unprecedented destruction. Loyalist militia plundered plantations and assaulted
local women; rebel militias whipped suspected British supporters and burned
their farms; both sides committed brutal assassinations and tortured prisoners.
All of society, observed one minister. "seems to be at an end. Every
person keeps close on his own plantation. Robberies and murders are often
committed on the public roads. . . . Poverty, want, and hardship appear in
almost every countenance." Cornwallis, when confronted with the chaos,
erred fatally He did nothing to stop his loyalist allies or his own troops from
mistreating civilians. A Carolina loyalist admitted that "the lower sort
of People, who were in many parts originally attached to the British
Government, have suffered so severely . . . that Great Britain has now a
hundred enemies, where it had one before." Although rebels and loyalists
alike plundered and terrorized the backcountry; Cornwallis's forces bore more
of the blame and suffered the consequences. A growing number of civilians
outraged by the king's men cast their lot with the rebels. That upsurge of
popular support enabled Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox_' and his band of
white and black raiders to cut British lines of communication between
Charleston and the interior. It swelled another rebel militia led by "the
Gamecock," Thomas Sumter, who bloodied loyalist forces throughout the
central part of South Carolina. It mobilized the "over-the-mountain
men," a rebel militia in western Carolina who claimed victory at the
Battle of King's Mountain in October 1780 By the end of 1780; these successes
had persuaded most civilians that only the rebels could restore order. British
victory at Camden. If rebel fortunes prospered in the partisan struggle, they
faltered in the conventional warfare being waged at the same time in the South.
In August of 1780 the Continentals commanded by Horatio Gates lost a major
engagement to the British force at Camden, South Carolina. In the fall of 1780
Congress replaced Gates with Washington's candidate for the southern command,
Nathanael Greene, an energetic 38-year-old Rhode Islander and a veteran of the
northern campaigns. (194-5) African Americans in the Age of Revolution. The
British also lost in the Carolinas because they did not seek greater support
from those southerners who would have fought for liberty with the British --
African American slaves. Black Americans, virtually all in bondage, made up
one-third of the population between Delaware and Georgia. Since the beginning
of the resistance to Britain. white southerners had worried that the watchwords
of liberty and equality would spread to the slave quarters. Gripped by the fear
of slave rebellion, southern revolutionaries began to take precautions. Marylanders
disarmed black inhabitants and issued extra guns to the white militia.
Charlestonians hanged and then burned the body of Thomas Jeremiah, a free black
who was convicted of spreading the word to others that the British "were
come to help the poor Negroes." White fears of rebellion. Southern whites
fully expected the British to turn slave rebelliousness to their strategic
advantage. As early as 1775, Virginia's royal governor. Lord Dunmore, confirmed
white fears by offering to free any slave who joined the British. When Clinton
invaded the South in 1779, he renewed that offer. Janet Schaw, an English woman
visiting her brother's North Carolina plantation, reported that his neighbors
had heard that loyalists were "promising every Negro that would murder his
master and family he should have his Master's plantation. . . . The Negroes
have got it amongst them and believe it to be true." But in Britain there
was overwhelming opposition to organizing support among African Americans.
British leaders dismissed Dunmore's ambitious scheme to raise a black army of
10,000 and another plan to create a sanctuary for black loyalists on the
southeastern coast. Turning slaves against masters, they recognized, was not
the way to conciliate southern whites. Even so, southern fears of insurrection
made the rebels reluctant to enlist black Americans as soldiers. At first.
Congress barred African Americans from the Continental Army. But as the rebels
became more desperate for manpower, policy changed. Northern states actively
encouraged black enlistments, and in the Upper South, some states allowed free
men of color to join the army or permitted slaves to substitute for their
masters. African American quests for liberty. Slaves themselves sought freedom
from whichever side seemed most likely to grant it. In 1775 more than 800 took
up Dunmore's offer and deserted their masters, and thousands more flocked to
Clinton's forces after the fall of Charleston. For many runaways the hope of
liberation proved an illusion. Although some served the British army as
laborers, spies, and soldiers, many died of disease in army camps or were sold
back into slavery in the West Indies. An estimated 5000 black soldiers served
in the revolutionary army in the hope of gaining freedom. In addition, the
number of runaways to the North soared during the Revolution. All told, some
55,000 slaves fled to freedom, some escaping behind British lines, others into
the North. The slave revolts so dreaded by southern whites never materialized.
Possibly the boldest slaves were drawn off into the armies; possibly greater
white precautions discouraged schemes for black rebellions. In South Carolina,
where the potential for revolt was greatest, most slaves chose to remain on
plantations rather than risking a collective resistance and escape in the midst
of the fierce partisan warfare.
[1998b] (51-2) 6 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. THE
CHAPTER IN PERSPECTIVE. Ironically, British attempts after the Seven Years' War
to consolidate political control over their American empire pushed colonials
toward independence. After driving France from North America in 1763, the
darkest fears of British policymakers were realized in the decade of crisis
that followed. Many Americans, deeply disillusioned by Parliament's attempt to
raise colonial revenues, came to regard independence as their only real
alternative. Misunderstanding and suspicion on both sides gave rise to the
American Revolution, a complex conflict that was at once a colonial war of
liberation, a civil war among loyal and rebel Americans, and a renewal of the
struggle for global supremacy between England and France. OVERVIEW. Even after
of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the
strong response to Common Sense, it remained unclear whether most Americans
favored independence. And would those Americans who did want independence be
willing to fight for it? The Decision for Independence. When the Second
Continental Congress convened at Philadelphia in the spring of 1775, many
moderate and conservative delegates clung to the hope of a settlement with
Britain. Radicals who favored independence moved cautiously, hoping that time
would create consensus. Even as Congress approved the creation of the
Continental Army, it dispatched the "Olive Branch Petition" declaring
loyalty to George III. The harsh British response to that overture withered the
cause of compromise within the colonies, opening the way for Congress's
adoption of the Declaration of Independence, drafted mainly by Thomas
Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. In the first part of the Declaration, Jefferson set
forth a general justification of revolution. He invoked the "self-evident
truths" of human equality and "inalienable rights" to
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The second and longer
section denied England any authority in the colonies and blamed George III for
a "long train of abuses and usurpations." Despite an increasing base
of support, rebel leaders still recognized that a substantial minority of
colonials remained loyal to the king and Parliament. Loyalism was especially
strong in those places where violent controversies over sectional grievances or
land tenure had raged during the decades before 1776. The loyalists' deepest
fear was that the break from Britain would plunge America into anarchy or civil
war. British troops under General William Howe prepared to wage a conventional
war in America, by capturing cities and luring the main American force into a
decisive battle. As George Washington took command of the Continental Army
outside of Boston, he faced daunting odds. The British army was a seasoned
professional fighting force, while the Continentals lacked both in numbers and
in military discipline. In 1776 the British evacuated Boston, took New York City,
and drove the Continentals into a retreat through New York and New Jersey. But
as winter set in, Washington recouped some of his army's credibility at the
Battles of Trenton and Princeton. Many civilians in that region, alienated by
the British army's harsh treatment, switched their loyalties to the rebel
cause. In the summer campaign of 1777, Howe's army took Philadelphia, but
British forces under John Burgoyne suffered a disastrous defeat at Saratoga,
New York. The Turning Point The victory at Saratoga marked a turning point in
the fighting. In 1778. France openly allied with American rebels, and shortly
thereafter, Spain joined France. What had been a colonial rebellion had now
widened into a European war, forcing the British to disperse their army to fend
off challenges all over the world. Sir Henry Clinton, who replaced Howe as
commander-in-chief, pulled back from Philadelphia to New York City. En route,
he fought to a draw with Washington at the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse in
June 1778. The previous winter had been a harrowing one for the Continentals at
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, but it left them spoiling for a fight. And the
training and discipline instilled by Baron von Steuben showed at Monmouth
Courthouse. But thereafter, with Clinton's army holed up in New York City,
Washington's inactive Continentals erupted into mutinies. Since the end of
1776, the Continental rank-and-file had been drawn from the most propertyless
and desperate Americans. Their needs for food, clothing, and shelter had been
exploited by profiteering military contractors and neglected by a Congress
suspicious of standing armies. The Struggle in the South While the war in the
North stalemated, the British pursued a southern strategy. They easily captured
Savannah, Georgia, and, after a long siege, Charleston, South Carolina in 1780.
But British hopes that southern resistance would quickly collapse were snuffed
out by the rebel militia. Although loyalists were numerous in the Georgia and
Carolina backcountry, they met determined resistance from rebel irregulars led
by men like Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter. As a vicious, partisan war seared
the backcountry, the Continentals, after a humiliating defeat at Camden, South
Carolina, secured an important victory at Cowpens. Soon after, they forced
exhausted British troops under Charles, Lord Cornwallis, to give over their
pursuit of the rebel army at Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina. Nathanael
Greene, in command of the Continental Army in the South, proved an ingenious
strategist. His support for the rebel partisans and his careful treatment of a
civilian population disenchanted by Cornwallis's marauding army frustrated
British efforts to take the Carolinas. The British, fearful of estranging
whites, had also erred by refusing to mobilize one large group of southerners
who might have fought with them to win liberty -- African-American slaves. The
World Turned Upside Down Cornwallis made one final bid for victory at Yorktown,
Virginia, in 1781. But he found himself outflanked by Continentals under
Washington, French troops under the Comte de Rochambeau, and the French navy
under the Comte de Grasse. With the tide of war in Europe turning against them
as well, the British decided to cut their losses in America and agreed to the Treaty
of Paris in 1783. Many Americans had, indeed, been willing to fight for
independence, but always on their own terms. (53) LEARNING OBJECTIVES. When you
have finished studying this chapter, you should be able to: 1. Explain why the
Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. 2. Explain
why many Americans became loyalists or tried to remain neutral during the
revolutionary struggle. 3. Describe the evolution of British and American
military strategy during the war for independence. 4. Explain the significance
of the British surrender at Saratoga. 5. Explain the failure of Britain's
"southern strategy." (56) Review Questions. MULTIPLE CHOICE. 9. What
was the role of African-Americans in the revolution? a. As the war dragged on,
blacks -- especially northern free blacks -- were increasingly welcome to
enlist. b. Americans generally avoided arming blacks, but the British eagerly
recruited runaway slaves. c. Though still enslaved, they rallied around the
revolutionary rhetoric of freedom, uniformly supporting the American cause. d.
Very few slaves escaped to freedom; those who did found themselves welcomed in
the north, the West Indies, or Canada. (pp. 194-195) (56-7) IDENTIFICATION
QUESTIONS. You should be able to describe the following key terms, concepts,
individuals and places, and explain their significance: Terms and Concepts;
Battle of Bunker Hill, Second Continental Congress, Declaration of
Independence, standing army, militia, Battle of Princeton, Battle of Saratoga,
siege of Charleston, Battle of Camden, Battle of Yorktown, loyalists, homespun,
Continental Army, Hessians, Battle of Trenton, Battle of Germantown, Battle of
Monmouth, partisan war in the South, Battle of King's Mountain, Treaty of
Paris, 1783. Individuals and Places; William Howe, Charles, Lord Cornwallis,
George Washington, Benedict Arnold, Thomas Jefferson, John Burgoyne, Horatio
Gates, Henry Clinton, Valley Forge, Thayendanegea, Francis Marion, Baron von
Steuben, Nathanael Greene, Comte de Rochambeau. (57) MAP IDENTIFICATIONS. On
the map below, label or shade in the following places. In a sentence, note
their significance to the chapter. (For reference, consult the map in Nation of
Nations on page 193.) 1. site of the siege of Charleston. 2. site of the battle
of Camden. 3. site of the battle of King’s Mountain. 4. site of the battle of
Guilford Courthouse. 5. site of Yorktown. (58) ESSAY QUESTIONS. 1. Describe
British and American military strategies as they evolved over the course of the
War for Independence. 2. Describe the effect of the Battle of Bunker Hill on
the course of the War for Independence. 3. Henry Laurens, a South Carolina
merchant, reported that after the war's outbreak, local slaves took up the cry
of Liberty -- as he put it "m thoughtless imitation." Do you agree?
What options were available to African-Americans during the Revolution? How did
different people exercise those options? Be as specific as possible. 4. From
Washington's point of view, what were the chief obstacles to be overcome in
fighting the war? How did he address those problems? 5. What was the single
most important reason that the British lost the War for Independence? Critical
Thinking. EVALUATING EVIDENCE (MAPS). 1. The map on page 177 shows how
political allegiances varied from region to region during the War for
Independence. What map shown earlier in the text helps most to explain this
geographic distribution? Explain your answer. 2. What major flaw in British
military strategy is indicated by the map of the northern campaigns shown on
page 185? 3. Judging from the map of the southern campaigns on page 193, where
were civilians exposed to the greatest dangers? EVALUATING EVIDENCE
(ILLUSTRATIONS). 1. The picture of Benjamin Franklin on page 187 illustrates
his remarkable popularity among the French public. What accounted for
Franklin's success in Paris? To what extent did that popularity assist his
diplomatic triumph? 2. What does the picture of the Continental soldiers on
page 188 suggest about the grievances of Washington's army? What were the
sources and consequences of disaffection within the ranks of the Continentals?
3. What does the picture of Francis Marion crossing the Pee Dee River on page
195 suggest about the character and composition of rebel militia units in the
South?
[1998c] (189) When the Revolutionary War began, British and American
officials urged neutrality on the Indians. The British, expecting the conflict
to be short, wished to disrupt the interior as little as possible. The
Americans worried about Indian attacks from the west while facing British power
along the coast. The Native Americans, however, were too important militarily
to ignore. By the spring of 1776, both sides were actively seeking Indian
alliances. (201-3) African Americans and the Revolutionary War. American blacks
were deeply involved in the Revolution. In fact, the conflict provoked the
largest slave rebellion in American history prior to the Civil War. Once the
war was under way blacks found a variety of ways to turn events to their own
advantage. For some, this meant applying revolutionary principles to their own
lives and calling for their personal freedom. For others, it meant seeking
liberty behind English lines or in the continent's interior. During the
prerevolutionary decade, as their l white masters talked excitedly about
liberty, increasing numbers of black Americans questioned their own oppression.
In the North, some slaves petitioned legislatures to set them free. In the
South, pockets of insurrection appeared. In 1765, more than 100 South Carolina
slaves fled to the interior, where they tried to establish a colony of their
own. The next year, slaves paraded through the streets of Charleston chanting
"Liberty, liberty! " In November 1775, Lord Dunmore issued a
proclamation offering freedom to all Virginia slaves and servants, "able
and willing to bear arms," who would leave their masters and join the
British forces in Norfolk. Within weeks, 500 to 600 slaves had responded. Among
them was Thomas Peters, from Wilmington, North Carolina. Kidnapped from the
Yoruba tribe in what is now Nigeria and brought to North America by a French
slave trader, Peters had been purchased in Louisiana about 1760. He resisted
enslavement so fiercely that his master sold him into the English colonies. By
1770, Peters belonged to William Campbell, an immigrant Scots planter on North
Carolina's Cape Fear River. Here Peters toiled while the storm brewed between
England and the colonies. Peters's plans for his own declaration of
independence may have ripened as a result of the rhetoric of liberty he heard
around his master's house, for William Campbell had become a leading member of
Wilmington's Sons of Liberty and talked excitedly about inalienable rights. By
mid-1775, the Cape Fear region, like many areas from Maryland to Georgia,
buzzed with rumors of slave uprisings. Importations of new slaves were banned,
and patrols were dispatched to disarm all blacks in the area. In July, the
state's revolutionary government imposed martial law when the British commander
of Fort Johnston, situated at the mouth of the Cape Fear River near Wilmington,
encouraged Negroes to "elope from their masters." When 20 British
ships entered the Cape Fear River in March 1776 and disembarked royal troops,
Peters seized the moment to redefine himself as a man, instead of William
Campbell's property, and escaped. Before long, he would fight with the
British-officered Black Pioneers. How many African Americans sought liberty
behind British lines is unknown, but as many as 20 percent may have done so. In
contrast to their white masters, blacks saw in England the promise of freedom,
not tyranny. As the war dragged on, English commanders pressed blacks into
service. A regiment of black soldiers, formed from Virginia slaves who
responded to Dunmore's proclamation, marched into battle, their chests covered
by sashes emblazoned with the slogan "Liberty to Slaves." Some of the
blacks who joined England achieved their freedom. At the war's end, several
thousand were evacuated with the British to Nova Scotia, where they established
their own settlements. Their reception by the white inhabitants, however, was
generally hostile. By the end of the century, most had left Canada to found the
free black colony of Sierra Leone on the west coast of Africa. Thomas Peters
was a leader among them. Many of the slaves who fled behind English lines,
however, never won their freedom. In keeping with the terms of the peace
treaty, hundreds were returned to their American owners. Several thousand
others, their value as field hands too great to be ignored, were transported to
the West Indies and the harsher slavery of the sugar plantations. England had
not entered the war to abolish slavery. Other blacks took advantage of the
war's confusion to slip away from their masters in pursuit of a new life. Some
sought refuge among the Indians in the interior. The Seminoles of Georgia and
Florida generally welcomed black runaways and through intermarriage absorbed
them into tribal society. The blacks' reception by the Cherokee and Creek,
however, was more uncertain. Some were taken in, but others were returned to
their white owners in return for bounties, and still others were held in
slavelike conditions by new Indian masters. Numerous blacks made their way
north, following rumors that slavery had been abolished there. Whatever their
destination, thousands of African Americans acted to throw off the bonds of
slavery. Fewer blacks fought on the American side than on England's, in part
because neither the Congress nor the states were eager to see them armed. Faced
with the increasing need for troops, however, the Congress and each of the
states except Georgia and South Carolina eventually relented and pressed blacks
into service. Of those who served the Patriot cause, many received the freedom
they were promised. The patriotism of countless others, however, went
unrewarded. (202) [Picture] During the Revolutionary War, James Armistead
Lafayette, a Virginia slave, served as a spy against the British for the French
general Lafayette. In recognition of his service, the Virginia General Assembly
granted him his freedom in 1786. (Valentine Museum. Richmond. VA) (213-4) The
place of human slavery in a republican society also vexed the revolutionary
generation. During the several decades preceding independence, the trade in
human chattels had flourished. Though several northern colonies had abolished
the slave trade, the 1760s had witnessed the largest importation of slaves in
colonial history. The Revolutionary War halted that trade almost completely.
Though southern planters talked of replacing their lost chattels once the war
ended, a combination of revolutionary principles, a reduced need for fieldhands
in the depressed Chesapeake tobacco economy, the continuing natural increase
among the slave population, and anxiety over black rebelliousness argued for
the slave trade's extinction. By 1790, every state except South Carolina and
Georgia had outlawed slave importations. Termination of the slave trade had
powerful implications, for it reduced the infusion of new Africans into the
black population. This meant that an ever higher proportion of blacks was
American-born, thus speeding the process of cultural transformation by which
Africans became African Americans. Slavery itself came under attack during the
revolutionary era, with immense consequences for blacks and the nation's
future. As the crisis with England heated up, catchwords such as liberty and
tyranny, mobilized by colonists against British policies, reminded citizens
that one-fifth of the colonial population was in chains. Samuel Hopkins, a New
England clergyman, accosted his compatriots for "making a vain parade of
being advocates for the liberties of mankind, while. . . continuing this
lawless, cruel, inhuman, and abominable practice of enslaving your fellow
creatures." Following independence, the attacks intensified. In Georgia
and South Carolina, where blacks outnumbered whites more than two to one,
slavery escaped significant challenge. Committed to the doctrine of racial
superiority and fearing the black majority, whites shuddered at the prospect of
black freedom. Moreover, slave labor remained essential to the still prosperous
rice economy. In response to the dangers generated by the war, whites wound the
local slave codes even tighter. In Virginia and Maryland, by contrast, whites
argued openly whether slavery was compatible with republicanism, and in these
states significant change did occur. The weakened demand for slave labor posed
by the depressed tobacco economy facilitated the debate. Though neither state
abolished slavery both passed laws making it easier for owners to free their
slaves without continuing to be responsible for their behavior. Moreover,
increasing numbers of blacks purchased their own freedom or simply ran away. By
1800, more than one of every ten blacks in the Chesapeake region was free, a
dramatic increase from 30 years before. The majority lived and worked in
Baltimore, Richmond, and other towns, where they formed communities that became
centers of an expanding African American society as well as havens for escaping
slaves from the countryside. For blacks in the Chesapeake region, the
conditions of life slowly changed for the better. The most dramatic
breakthrough occurred in the North. There slavery was either abolished or put
on the road to gradual extinction. Abolition was possible in the North because
slavery had neither the economic nor social importance that it did in the
South. In most areas, blacks constituted no more than 4 percent of the
population, nor were blacks so essential as a labor force. Northern blacks
joined in the attacks on slavery Following independence, they eagerly
petitioned state assemblies for their freedom. "Every Principle from which
America has acted in the course of their unhappy difficulties with Great
Britain," declared one group of Philadelphia blacks, "pleads stronger
than a thousand arguments in favor of our petition." In 1780, the
Pennsylvania assembly passed a law stipulating that all newborn blacks were to
be free when they reached age 21. It was a cautious but decisive step. Other
northern states adopted similar policies of gradual emancipation. In scattered
instances, free blacks participated actively in revolutionary politics. When
the first draft of the Massachusetts constitution, explicitly excluding blacks
and mulattoes from the franchise, was made public, William Gordon, a white
clergyman, voiced his protest. "Would it not be ridiculous . . . and
unjust to exclude freemen from voting . . . though otherwise qualified, because
their skins are black?" he questioned. "Why not . . . for being
long-nosed, short-faced, or . . . lower than five feet nine?" In the end,
Massachusetts's constitution made no mention of race, and there, as well as in
Pennsylvania and New York, African Americans occasionally cast their votes. If
civic participation by blacks was scattered and temporary in the North, it was
almost totally absent in the South. With the brief exception of North Carolina,
African Americans could neither vote nor enjoy such basic rights of citizenship
as protection of their persons and property under the law. In the South, blacks
remained almost entirely without political voice, except in the petitions
against slavery and mistreatment that they pressed upon the state regimes. Even
as freemen, blacks continued to encounter pervasive discrimination. Still,
remarkable progress had been made. Prior to the Revolution, slavery had been an
accepted fact of northern life while after the Revolution, it no longer was.
That change made a vast difference in the lives of countless black Americans.
The abolition of slavery in the North increased the sectional divergence
between North and South. The consequences of that divergence would become even
more apparent in the nineteenth century In addition, there now existed a
coherent and publicly proclaimed antislavery argument, one closely linked in
Americans' minds with the nation's founding. The first antislavery
organizations had been created as well. Although another half century would
pass before antislavery became a significant force in national politics, the
groundwork for slavery's final abolition had been laid. (302-4) Race, Slavery,
and the Limits of Reform. As we have seen (Chapter 7), the Revolution initiated
the end of slavery in the northern states and raised challenges to its
continued existence in the Upper South. As the new century began, however,
antislavery sentiment was declining, while private manumission slowed as well.
The reasons were several. The gradual abolition of slavery in the North soothed
many consciences, while in the South, the spread of cotton increased the value
of slave labor. Equally important were two slave rebellions that generated
intense alarm among American whites. Panic-stricken whites fleeing the
Caribbean island of Santo Domingo in 1791 carried word to the North American
mainland of the black Haitians' successful rebellion against a French colonial
army of 25,000. The news spread terror through the South, where rumors abounded
that Haitian incendiaries would soon be landing. Immediately, southern whites
tightened their Black Codes, cut the importation of new slaves from the
Caribbean, and sought out malcontents among their own chattels. Colonial
rebellions were fine, but not when they set blacks against white authority.
Though the Haitian rebellion was not immediately successful, it began a long
struggle that would create the first black republic in the Americas before
Thomas Jefferson left the presidency A second shock followed in the summer of
1800, when another rebellion just outside Richmond, Virginia, was nipped in the
bud. Gabriel Prosser, a 24-year-old slave, had devised a plan to arm 1,000
slaves for an assault on the city. Prosser and his accomplices were native-born
African Americans who spoke English, worked at skilled jobs that gave them
considerable personal freedom (and thus opportunity to lay their plans), and
knew enough about American independence to speak confidently of freedom and
equality. A drenching downpour delayed the attack, providing time for several
black house servants (subsequently granted their freedom by the Virginia
Assembly) to sound the alarm before the conspirators could act. No white lives
were lost, but blacks paid a heavy price as alarmed whites exacted their
revenge. Scores of slaves and free blacks were arrested, and 25 suspects,
including Prosser, were hanged at the personal order of Governor James Monroe.
The carnage saddened Thomas Jefferson. "There is strong sentiment that
there has been hanging enough," he wrote to Monroe. "The other states
and the world at large will forever condemn us if we go one step beyond
absolute necessity." In the midst of panic, however, necessity was hard to
define. In the early nineteenth century, antislavery appeals all but disappeared
from the South. Even religious groups that had once denounced slavery now grew
quiet. "A large majority of the people of the southern states,"
declared Congressman Peter Early of Georgia in 1806, "do not consider
slavery as a crime. They do not consider it immoral to hold human flesh in
bondage. Many deprecate slavery as an evil, as a political evil," he
continued, "but not as a crime." White southerners at the time of the
Civil War would be saying much the same thing. In the North, sentiment was
increasingly conciliatory toward slave owners. Most of slavery's critics
assumed that private manumission was the only safe approach, that it should be
gradual, and that freed blacks should be relocated to colonies in Africa. The
American Colonization Society, founded in 1816, typified these attitudes. Many
of its supporters, while detesting slavery, believed that the two races could
not coexist together. Others were slaveholders who saw in colonization a
convenient way of reducing the free black population and eliminating
troublesome bondsmen. The Colonization Society never sent many blacks abroad,
but it did help allay white anxieties. During the half century following
independence, strong and growing black communities appeared in the port cities.
As the lives of Ben Thompson and Phyllis Sherman revealed, emancipation in the
North and the increase of freedmen in the Upper South enabled increasing
numbers of African Americans to leave their masters' homes and seek the
companionship of other people of color in places such as Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore. On the eve of independence, 4,000 slaves and a few
hundred free blacks had called the four port cities home; 50 years later, more
than 30,000 African Americans did so. The men who came sought employment as laborers
or sailors, the women as domestics. There were hundreds like Alexander Giles, a
free black Philadelphia seaman who had been born in 1777 in nearby Kent County,
Delaware, and Randall Shepherd, who had made his way north from Nansemond
County, Virginia, in 1798. The development of black neighborhoods reflected
both white discrimination and blacks' ardent desire for their own communities.
In rural areas, free blacks lived in isolation, as Phyllis Sherman had; in the
port cities, black communities provided protection 1 and greatly improved the
chances of finding a marriage partner, establishing a family, and participating
in the activities of community organizations. Family formation was eased
because many of the migrants were women, thus correcting a longstanding urban
imbalance in the black population. Former slaves often created extended
households that included relatives, friends, and boarders. As circumstances
allowed, single-family units were formed. By 1820, most blacks in the northern
cities lived in autonomous households. As their numbers grew, African Americans
created an array of organizations independent of white control and capable of
serving the needs of the black community. Schools provided education to black
children excluded from white academies, mutual aid societies offered help to
the down and out, and fraternal associations provided venues for fellowship and
mutual support. It was black churches, however, that quickly emerged as the
institutional cornerstones of black community life, a position they would
continue to occupy throughout the nation's history. Following the Revolution,
growing numbers of free blacks joined integrated Methodist and Baptist
congregations in cities such as Philadelphia and New York, drawn by their
strongly biblical theology, enthusiastic forms of worship, and frequently
stated opposition to slavery As the numbers of black communicants grew,
however, they found themselves segregated in separate church galleries,
excluded from leadership roles, and even denied communion in white-dominated
congregations. Whereas many black Christians were reluctant to withdraw from
biracial congregations, others sought opportunity to control their own
religious lives, first by forming their own churches within the Methodist and
Baptist folds, and then by creating their own denominational structures. In
1794, a small group of black Methodists led by Richard Allen, a slave-born,
black itinerant preacher, organized the Bethel African American Methodist
Church in Philadelphia. Originally established as an integral part of American
Methodism, Allen's congregation moved toward separatism, first by requiring
that only "Africans and descendants of the African race" be admitted
to membership, and finally, in 1815, by rejecting denominational oversight
altogether. A year later, the congregation joined with a similarly independent
Negro Methodist congregation in Baltimore to form the African Methodist
Episcopal Church -- the first independent black denomination in the United
States. Though never as numerous as black Methodists, black Baptists
established their own separate churches during the early nineteenth century in
places such as Boston (1805), Philadelphia (1810), New Orleans (1826), and St.
Louis (1827). Located in areas of densest black, urban settlement, these
churches not only nurtured distinctive African American forms of Christian
worship, but also provided education to black children via Sunday and day
schools and burial sites for blacks excluded from other cemeteries. Equally
important, black churches provided secure sites where the basic rituals of
family and community life -- marriages and birth announcements, funerals and
anniversaries -- could be celebrated, and where community norms could be
enforced. By the 1830s, a rich cultural and institutional life had taken root
in the black neighborhoods of American cities. White hostility, however,
remained a reality of black urban life. Slavery's abolition might actually have
increased white enmity in the North, especially during hard times when free
blacks competed with white laborers for employment. Working-class whites were
unnerved as well by the growing black competition for cheap housing. Overt
violence against free blacks was infrequent during the early decades of the
century, but even so, blacks found themselves increasingly segregated in
residence, employment, and social life. In the early republic, race as well as
gender and class continued to separate Americans from each other and reveal the
limits of America's emerging democratic faith. (304) [Picture] In his
watercolor of a black Methodist church meeting, Paul Svinin, a traveler from
Russia, reveals his amazement at the physical emotion displayed by the
worshipers. "African" churches and other organizations were rare before
1800 but grew steadily in the ensuing decades. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Rogers Fund, 1942 (42.95.19))
[1999a] (147) [Picture] Hunting shirts, like the one worn by this rifleman
(second from the right), captured the imagination of the French army officer in
America who made these watercolor sketches of the uniforms of revolutionary
soldiers. The enlistment of blacks (infantryman at the far left) drew the
artist’s attention as well.
[1999b] －
[1999c] (141-3) Declaring Loyalties. Delegates to the Second Continental
Congress approved the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776, and made
their approval public on July 4 (the text of the Declaration is reprinted in
the Documents appendix at the back of this book). As John Adams was fond of
saying, "The die was cast," and Americans had to weigh loyalty to
king against loyalty to a new nation. For Americans of every region, religion,
social class, and race, this decision weighed heavily In the face of such a
critical choice, many wavered. Throughout the war that followed the
Declaration, a surprising number of colonists clung to neutrality, hoping that
the war could be resolved without their having to participate or choose sides,
Those who did commit themselves based their decision on deeply held beliefs and
personal considerations as well as fears (see Individual Choices: Esther Quincy
Sewall). Many loyalists believed that tradition, commitment, and common sense
argued for acknowledging parliamentary supremacy and the king's right to rule.
These colonists had a deep respect for the structure of the British government,
with its balance among royalty, aristocracy, and the common people and its
ability to preserve the rights of each group. In their judgment, the advantages
of remaining within the protective circle of the most powerful nation in Europe
seemed too obvious to debate. The likelihood of swift and bloody defeat at the
hands of the British army and navy seemed too obvious to risk. Many of the men
who articulated the loyalist position were members of the colonial elite. They
frankly admitted their fears that a revolution would unleash the "madness
of the multitude." The tyranny of the mob, they argued, was far more
damaging than the tyranny of which the king was accused. Not all colonists who
chose loyalism feared the mob or revered the principles on which the British
political system was based. For many, the deciding issues were economic.
Holders of royal offices and merchants who depended on trade with British
manufacturers found loyalty a compelling alternative. The loyalist ranks were
also filled with colonists from the "multitude." Many small farmers
and tenant farmers gave their support to the Crown when their political and economic
foes -- the great planters of the South or the New York manor lords -- became
patriots. The choice of which side to back often hinged, therefore, on local
struggles and economic conflicts rather than on imperial issues, For some of
the perhaps 150,000 active loyalists, loyalism was a matter of personal
character as much as conscious self-interest. Reluctance to break a solemn oath
of allegiance to the king, anxiety over breaking ties with the past, fear of
the chaos and violence that were a real part of revolution -- any and all of
these feelings could motivate a colonist to remain loyal rather than rebel. For African Americans, the
rallying call of liberty was familiar long before the Revolution began. Decades
of slave resistance and rebellion demonstrated that black colonists did not
need the impassioned language of a Patrick Henry or a Samuel Adams to remind
them of the value of freedom. Instead, many slaves viewed the Revolution as
they viewed epidemics and imperial warfare: as a potential opportunity to gain
their own liberty. In the same way, free blacks saw the Revolution as a
possible opportunity to win civil rights they had been denied before 1776.
African Americans pointed out the inconsistencies of the radical position even
before the Declaration of Independence. In 1773, a group of enslaved blacks in
Boston petitioned the governor and the assembly for their freedom, "in
behalf of all those, who . . . are held in a state of SLAVERY, within the
bowels of a FREE country!" There were white colonists who appreciated the
injustice of a white slaveholding community in crisis over threats to its
liberty. In 1774, while John Adams debated the threat of political slavery for
colonial Englishmen in the First Continental Congress, his wife Abigail
observed: "It always appeared a most iniquitous [sinful] scheme to me --
to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who
have as good a right to freedom as we have." Tom Paine agreed. Writing as
"Humanus" in a Philadelphia newspaper, Paine urged white patriots to
abolish slavery and give freed blacks western land grants. Other patriots worried that
slaves would seek their freedom by supporting the British in the war. The royal
governor of Virginia was ready to make an offer of freedom to the colony's
slaves. In 1775, Governor Dunmore expressed his intention to "arm all my
own Negroes and receive all others that will come to me whom I shall declare
free." Rumors of this plan threw terror into neighboring Maryland
planters, who demanded that their governor issue arms and ammunition to protect
against slave insurrection. Throughout
the South, white communities braced themselves for a black struggle for freedom
that would emerge in the midst of the colonial struggle for independence. When
Dunmore did offer freedom to "all indentured Servants, negroes or others .
. . able and willing to bear Arms" who escaped their masters," he was
more interested in disrupting the slave-based plantation economy of his
American enemies than in African American rights. Yet slaves responded, crossing into
British lines in great enough numbers to create an “Ethiopian Regiment” of
soldiers. These black loyalists wore a banner across their uniforms that read
“Liberty to Slaves.” Only six hundred to two thousand slaves managed to escape
their masters in 1775-1776, but in the southern campaigns of the long war that
followed thousands of black men, women, and children made their way to the
British lines. Once in uniform, black soldiers were usually assigned to work in
road construction and other manual labor tasks rather than participate in
combat. Perhaps as many as fifty thousand slaves gained their freedom during
the war, as a result of either British policy or the disruptions that made
escape possible.
[2000a] (65-9) DECLARING FOR FREEDOM. Saying less, however, is not the same
as saying nothing. By not deleting the accusation regarding “domestic
insurrections,” Congress revealed that this particular issue remained a
sensitive one. Indeed, other local declarations featured it prominently.
Marylanders complained that slaves “were proclaimed free, enticed away, trained
and armed against their lawful masters.” Pennsylvanians objected that the
British had incited “the negroes to imbrue their hands in the blood of their
masters.” North Carolina echoed the sentiment nearly word for word. The
frequency of this complaint raises a question. Leave aside for a moment the
issue of white attitudes toward slavery and liberty. How did the actions of
African Americans affect the drafters of the Declaration? On the face of it,
the chance of answering that question seems farfetched. The approximately
400,000 black slaves living in the colonies in 1776 could not leave a trail of
resolutions or declarations behind them, for most were not allowed to. Yet the
Declaration’s complaint that Britain was stirring up American slaves brings to
mind the similar laments of proslavery advocates in the 1850s and of
segregationists during the 1950s and 1960s. Both repeatedly blamed “outside
agitators” for encouraging southern blacks to assert their civil rights. In the
eighteenth century, the phrase most commonly used was instigated insurrection.
“The newspapers were full of Publications calculated to excite the fears of the
People --” wrote one indignant South Carolinian in 1775, "Massacres and
Instigated Insurrections, were words in the mouth of every Child." And
hardly children alone: South Carolina's First Provincial Congress voiced their
own "dread of instigated insurrections." North Carolinians echoed the
sentiment, warning that "there is much reason to fear, in these Times of
general Tumult and Confusion, that the Slaves may be instigated, encouraged by
our inveterate Enemies to an Insurrection." But were the British
"instigating" rebellion? Or were they taking advantage of African
Americans' own determination to strike for freedom? As historian Sylvia Frey
has pointed out, the incidence of flight, rebellion, or protest among enslaved
African Americans increased significantly in the decade following the Stamp Act,
despite the long odds that weighed against success. In 1765, the Sons of
Liberty paraded around Charleston harbor shouting "Liberty! Liberty and
stamp'd paper!" Soon after, black slaves organized a demonstration of
their own, chanting "Liberty!" Planter Henry Laurens believed this
action to be merely a "thoughtless imitation" of white colonials, but
it frightened many South Carolinians. With good reason. Look more closely at
events in Virginia preceding Lord Dunmore's Proclamation. Dunmore in November
1775 offered freedom to able-bodied slaves who would serve the king. Six months
earlier, anticipating the outbreak of hostilities, the governor had confiscated
some of the colony's gunpowder to prevent it from falling into rebel hands. At
that point, "some Negroes. . . had offered to join him and take up
arms." What was Dunmore's reaction? He ordered the slaves "to go
about their business" and "threatened them with his severest
resentment, should they presume to renew their application." Patriot
forces, on the other hand, demanded the return of the gunpowder and accused
Dunmore of seizing it with the intention of "disarming the people, to
weaken the means of opposing an insurrection of the slaves." At this
charge Dunmore became "exceedingly exasperated" and threatened to
"declare freedom to the slaves and reduce the City of Williamsburg to
ashes." In other words, the slaves, not Dunmore, made the first move in
this particular game of chess. And far from greeting the slaves' offer with
delight, Dunmore shunned it -- until patriot fears about black insurrections
made him consider the advantages that black military Support might provide.
Similarly, in 1773 and again in 1774 the loyal governor of Massachusetts,
General Thomas Gage, was approached with five separate petitions from "a
grate Number of [enslaved] Blacks" offering to fight for him if he would
provide arms and set them free. "At present it is kept pretty quiet,"
Abigail Adams reassured her husband, John, who was off at the First Continental
Congress. By 1775, unrest among black slaves was common in many areas of the
Carolinas and Georgia. South Carolina had taken on "rather the appearance
of a garrison town," reported one observer, because the militia were
patrolling the streets at night as well as during the day, "to guard
against any hostile attempts that may be made by our domesticks." White
fears were confirmed when a black harbor pilot, Thomas Jeremiah, was arrested,
tried, hanged, and burned to death for plotting an insurrection that would enlist
the help of the British navy. Jeremiah had told other blacks that “there was a
great War coming soon” that “was come to help the poor Negroes.” According to
James Madison, a group of Virginia slaves “met together and chose a leader who
was to conduct them when the English troops should arrive.” The conspiracy was
discovered and suppressed. Islands along the coast, as well as British
cruisers, attracted slaves striking for freedom: Tybee and Sullivan’s Island
off South Carolina; cockspur Island off Georgia. The slaves were not “inticed,”
reported one captain; they “came as freemen, and demanding protection.” He
could “have had near 500 who had offered.” The actions of these and other
enslaved African Americans clearly affected the conduct of both British
officials and colonial revels. The British, who (like Dunmore) remained
reluctant to encourage a full-scale rebellion, nevertheless saw that the mere
possibility of insurrection might be used as an effective psychological threat.
If South Carolinians did not stop opposing British policy, warned General Gage
ominously, “it may happen that your Rice and Indigo will be brought to market
by negroes instead of white People.” For their part, southern white colonials
worked energetically to suppress both the rebellions and all news of them. As
two Georgia delegates to the Continental Congress informed John Adams, slave
networks could carry news "several hundreds of miles in a week or
fortnight." When Madison heard about the slave conspiracy in Virginia, he
saw clearly the dangers of talking about the incident: "It is prudent such
things should be concealed as well as suppressed," he warned a friend.
Maryland's provisional government felt similarly about Governor Dunmore's
proclamation in neighboring Virginia. It immediately outlawed all
correspondence with Virginia, either by land or water. But word spread anyway.
"The insolence of the Negroes in this county is come to such a
height," reported one Eastern Shore Marylander, "that we are under a
necessity of disarming them which we affected [sic] on Saturday last. We took
about eighty guns, some bayonets, swords, etc." Thus, the actions of
African Americans helped push th6 delegates in Congress toward their final
decision for independence, even though the Declaration remained largely silent
on the subject. By striking; for liberty, slaves encouraged the British to use
them as an element in their war against the Americans. As Lord North told the
king in October 1775, British troops sent to Georgia and the Carolinas should
expect to meet with success, especially because "we all know the perilous
situation. . . [arising] from the great number of their negro slaves, and the
small proportion of white inhabitants." The Americans were pushed toward
independence by this knowledge. Georgia delegates told John Adams that slaves
in their region were simply waiting a chance to arise, and if "one
thousand regular [British] troops should land in Georgia, and their commander
be provided with arms and clothes enough, and proclaim freedom to all the
negroes who would join his campaign, twenty thousand would join it from
[Georgia and South Carolina] in a fortnight." James Madison, worrying
about Lord Dunmore, confided that the possibility of a slave insurrection
"is the only part in which this Colony is vulnerable; & if we should
be subdued, we shall fall like Achilles by the hand of one that knows the
secret." George Washington too perceived the threat. Dunmore must be
crushed instantly, he warned in December 1775, "otherwise, like a snowball,
in rolling, his army will get size." Although southern delegates at first
attempted to pass legislation forbidding black Americans from serving in the
Continental Army, Washington changed his mind and supported the idea, having
come to believe that the outcome of the war might depend on "which side
can arm the Negroes the faster." Until recently, few historians have
appreciated the role African Americans played in shaping the context of
independence. Actions do speak louder than words -- often enough. Still, the echoes
of the Declaration's words and the persistent hold of its ideals have outlasted
the often contradictory actions of its creators. Jefferson's entire life
embodied those contradictions. More than any American president save Lincoln,
Jefferson contributed to the downfall of slavery. In addition to penning the
Declaration's bold rhetoric, he pushed for the antislavery provision in the
Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which served as a model for later efforts to stop
slavery's expansion. Yet despite Jefferson's private criticisms of slavery, he
continued to depend on the labor of enslaved African Americans throughout his
life. Though he apparently maintained a sexual relationship with one of his
slaves, Sally Hemings, upon his death he freed none, except five members of the
Hemings family. Sally was not among them. It lay with Abraham Lincoln to
express most eloquently the notion that a document might transcend the
contradictions of its creation. In 1857, Lincoln insisted that in proclaiming
"all men are created equal," the founders of the nation did not mean
to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that
equality. They meant to set up a standard maxim for flee society, which should
be familiar to all, and revered by all, constantly looked to, constantly
labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated,
and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting
the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.
"For the support of this Declaration," Jefferson concluded, "we
mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred
Honor." This sentiment was no idle rhetoric. Many delegates took the final
step toward independence only with great reluctance. If the war was lost, they
faced a hangman's noose. Even in victory, more than a few signers discovered
that their fortunes had been devastated by the war. Yet it does no dishonor to
the principles of the Revolution to recognize the flawed nature of Jefferson’s attempt
to reconcile slavery with liberty. Even less does it dishonor the Revolution to
appreciate the role enslaved African Americans played in forcing the debates
about independence. They too risked all in the actions -- the unspoken
declarations -- that so many of them took to avail themselves of life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. (67) [Picture] Masters whose slaves ran away
commonly posted notices in newspapers offering rewards for their return. The
advertisements often assumed that slaves had gone to join kin. But these
advertisements from an issue of The Virginia Gazette in November 1775 indicate
that slaveowners were frequently convinced that their male slaves might have
gone to offer service to Lord Dunmore or to the British navy (“a Man of War’s
Man”). (Virginia Historical Society)
[2000b] (65-9) DECLARING FOR FREEDOM. Saying less, however, is not the same
as saying nothing. By not deleting the accusation regarding “domestic
insurrections,” Congress revealed that this particular issue remained a
sensitive one. Indeed, other local declarations featured it prominently.
Marylanders complained that slaves “were proclaimed free, enticed away, trained
and armed against their lawful masters.” Pennsylvanians objected that the
British had incited “the negroes to imbrue their hands in the blood of their
masters.” North Carolina echoed the sentiment nearly word for word. The
frequency of this complaint raises a question. Leave aside for a moment the
issue of white attitudes toward slavery and liberty. How did the actions of
African Americans affect the drafters of the Declaration? On the face of it,
the chance of answering that question seems farfetched. The approximately
400,000 black slaves living in the colonies in 1776 could not leave a trail of
resolutions or declarations behind them, for most were not allowed to. Yet the
Declaration’s complaint that Britain was stirring up American slaves brings to
mind the similar laments of proslavery advocates in the 1850s and of
segregationists during the 1950s and 1960s. Both repeatedly blamed “outside
agitators” for encouraging southern blacks to assert their civil rights. In the
eighteenth century, the phrase most commonly used was instigated insurrection.
“The newspapers were full of Publications calculated to excite the fears of the
People --” wrote one indignant South Carolinian in 1775, "Massacres and
Instigated Insurrections, were words in the mouth of every Child." And
hardly children alone: South Carolina's First Provincial Congress voiced their
own "dread of instigated insurrections." North Carolinians echoed the
sentiment, warning that "there is much reason to fear, in these Times of
general Tumult and Confusion, that the Slaves may be instigated, encouraged by
our inveterate Enemies to an Insurrection." But were the British
"instigating" rebellion? Or were they taking advantage of African
Americans' own determination to strike for freedom? As historian Sylvia Frey
has pointed out, the incidence of flight, rebellion, or protest among enslaved
African Americans increased significantly in the decade following the Stamp
Act, despite the long odds that weighed against success. In 1765, the Sons of
Liberty paraded around Charleston harbor shouting "Liberty! Liberty and
stamp'd paper!" Soon after, black slaves organized a demonstration of
their own, chanting "Liberty!" Planter Henry Laurens believed this
action to be merely a "thoughtless imitation" of white colonials, but
it frightened many South Carolinians. With good reason. Look more closely at
events in Virginia preceding Lord Dunmore's Proclamation. Dunmore in November
1775 offered freedom to able-bodied slaves who would serve the king. Six months
earlier, anticipating the outbreak of hostilities, the governor had confiscated
some of the colony's gunpowder to prevent it from falling into rebel hands. At
that point, "some Negroes. . . had offered to join him and take up
arms." What was Dunmore's reaction? He ordered the slaves "to go
about their business" and "threatened them with his severest
resentment, should they presume to renew their application." Patriot
forces, on the other hand, demanded the return of the gunpowder and accused
Dunmore of seizing it with the intention of "disarming the people, to
weaken the means of opposing an insurrection of the slaves." At this
charge Dunmore became "exceedingly exasperated" and threatened to
"declare freedom to the slaves and reduce the City of Williamsburg to
ashes." In other words, the slaves, not Dunmore, made the first move in
this particular game of chess. And far from greeting the slaves' offer with
delight, Dunmore shunned it -- until patriot fears about black insurrections
made him consider the advantages that black military Support might provide.
Similarly, in 1773 and again in 1774 the loyal governor of Massachusetts,
General Thomas Gage, was approached with five separate petitions from "a
grate Number of [enslaved] Blacks" offering to fight for him if he would
provide arms and set them free. "At present it is kept pretty quiet,"
Abigail Adams reassured her husband, John, who was off at the First Continental
Congress. By 1775, unrest among black slaves was common in many areas of the
Carolinas and Georgia. South Carolina had taken on "rather the appearance
of a garrison town," reported one observer, because the militia were
patrolling the streets at night as well as during the day, "to guard
against any hostile attempts that may be made by our domesticks." White
fears were confirmed when a black harbor pilot, Thomas Jeremiah, was arrested,
tried, hanged, and burned to death for plotting an insurrection that would
enlist the help of the British navy. Jeremiah had told other blacks that “there
was a great War coming soon” that “was come to help the poor Negroes.”
According to James Madison, a group of Virginia slaves “met together and chose
a leader who was to conduct them when the English troops should arrive.” The
conspiracy was discovered and suppressed. Islands along the coast, as well as
British cruisers, attracted slaves striking for freedom: Tybee and Sullivan’s
Island off South Carolina; cockspur Island off Georgia. The slaves were not
“inticed,” reported one captain; they “came as freemen, and demanding
protection.” He could “have had near 500 who had offered.” The actions of these
and other enslaved African Americans clearly affected the conduct of both
British officials and colonial revels. The British, who (like Dunmore) remained
reluctant to encourage a full-scale rebellion, nevertheless saw that the mere
possibility of insurrection might be used as an effective psychological threat.
If South Carolinians did not stop opposing British policy, warned General Gage
ominously, “it may happen that your Rice and Indigo will be brought to market
by negroes instead of white People.” For their part, southern white colonials
worked energetically to suppress both the rebellions and all news of them. As
two Georgia delegates to the Continental Congress informed John Adams, slave
networks could carry news "several hundreds of miles in a week or
fortnight." When Madison heard about the slave conspiracy in Virginia, he
saw clearly the dangers of talking about the incident: "It is prudent such
things should be concealed as well as suppressed," he warned a friend.
Maryland's provisional government felt similarly about Governor Dunmore's
proclamation in neighboring Virginia. It immediately outlawed all
correspondence with Virginia, either by land or water. But word spread anyway.
"The insolence of the Negroes in this county is come to such a
height," reported one Eastern Shore Marylander, "that we are under a
necessity of disarming them which we affected [sic] on Saturday last. We took
about eighty guns, some bayonets, swords, etc." Thus, the actions of
African Americans helped push th6 delegates in Congress toward their final
decision for independence, even though the Declaration remained largely silent
on the subject. By striking; for liberty, slaves encouraged the British to use
them as an element in their war against the Americans. As Lord North told the
king in October 1775, British troops sent to Georgia and the Carolinas should
expect to meet with success, especially because "we all know the perilous
situation. . . [arising] from the great number of their negro slaves, and the
small proportion of white inhabitants." The Americans were pushed toward
independence by this knowledge. Georgia delegates told John Adams that slaves
in their region were simply waiting a chance to arise, and if "one
thousand regular [British] troops should land in Georgia, and their commander
be provided with arms and clothes enough, and proclaim freedom to all the
negroes who would join his campaign, twenty thousand would join it from
[Georgia and South Carolina] in a fortnight." James Madison, worrying
about Lord Dunmore, confided that the possibility of a slave insurrection
"is the only part in which this Colony is vulnerable; & if we should
be subdued, we shall fall like Achilles by the hand of one that knows the
secret." George Washington too perceived the threat. Dunmore must be
crushed instantly, he warned in December 1775, "otherwise, like a
snowball, in rolling, his army will get size." Although southern delegates
at first attempted to pass legislation forbidding black Americans from serving
in the Continental Army, Washington changed his mind and supported the idea,
having come to believe that the outcome of the war might depend on "which
side can arm the Negroes the faster." Until recently, few historians have
appreciated the role African Americans played in shaping the context of
independence. Actions do speak louder than words -- often enough. Still, the
echoes of the Declaration's words and the persistent hold of its ideals have
outlasted the often contradictory actions of its creators. Jefferson's entire
life embodied those contradictions. More than any American president save
Lincoln, Jefferson contributed to the downfall of slavery. In addition to
penning the Declaration's bold rhetoric, he pushed for the antislavery
provision in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which served as a model for later
efforts to stop slavery's expansion. Yet despite Jefferson's private criticisms
of slavery, he continued to depend on the labor of enslaved African Americans
throughout his life. Though he apparently maintained a sexual relationship with
one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, upon his death he freed none, except five
members of the Hemings family. Sally was not among them. It lay with Abraham
Lincoln to express most eloquently the notion that a document might transcend
the contradictions of its creation. In 1857, Lincoln insisted that in
proclaiming "all men are created equal," the founders of the nation
did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying
that equality. They meant to set up a standard maxim for flee society, which
should be familiar to all, and revered by all, constantly looked to, constantly
labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated,
and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting
the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.
"For the support of this Declaration," Jefferson concluded, "we
mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred
Honor." This sentiment was no idle rhetoric. Many delegates took the final
step toward independence only with great reluctance. If the war was lost, they
faced a hangman's noose. Even in victory, more than a few signers discovered
that their fortunes had been devastated by the war. Yet it does no dishonor to
the principles of the Revolution to recognize the flawed nature of Jefferson’s
attempt to reconcile slavery with liberty. Even less does it dishonor the
Revolution to appreciate the role enslaved African Americans played in forcing
the debates about independence. They too risked all in the actions -- the
unspoken declarations -- that so many of them took to avail themselves of life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (67) [Picture] Masters whose slaves ran
away commonly posted notices in newspapers offering rewards for their return.
The advertisements often assumed that slaves had gone to join kin. But these
advertisements from an issue of The Virginia Gazette in November 1775 indicate
that slaveowners were frequently convinced that their male slaves might have gone
to offer service to Lord Dunmore or to the British navy (“a Man of War’s Man”).
(Virginia Historical Society)