African American Particiption in the Revolutionary War

~ Beginnings - Slaves in Colonial America ~

The vast majority of Africans brought to the 13 British colonies worked as agricultural laborers; many were brought to the colonies specifically for their experience in rice growing, cattle herding, or river navigation. For example, South Carolina planters drew upon the knowledge of slaves from Senegambia in West Africa to begin cultivating rice, their first major export crop. In the South, slaves grew tobacco in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, and rice and indigo in South Carolina and Georgia. In the North, slaves also worked on farms.

African Americans, slave and free, also worked in a wide variety of occupations. They were household workers, sailors, preachers, accountants, music teachers, medical assistants, blacksmiths, bricklayers, and carpenters, doing virtually any work American society required.

By 1750 there were nearly 240,000 people of African descent in British North America, fully 20 percent of the population, though they were not evenly distributed. The greatest number of African Americans lived in Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina because large plantations with many slaves were concentrated in the South. Blacks constituted over 60 percent of the population in South Carolina, over 43 percent in Virginia, and over 30 percent in Maryland, but only about 2 percent in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. In the Northern colonies, enslaved people were much more likely to work in households having only one or a few slaves.

The first African slaves brought to the English colonies arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. They were captured in Africa and then transported across the Atlantic Ocean. It is estimated that more than 10 million people were brought from Africa to the Americas as slaves.

Howard Pyle created this depiction of the 1619 arrival of Virginia's first blacks. Harper's Weekly (1917)

Virtually all colonies had a small number of free blacks, but in colonial America, only Maryland had a sizeable free black population. Over the generations of enslavement, at least 95 percent of Africans in the United States lived in slavery. But even as early as the 1600s, some gained their freedom by buying themselves or being bought by relatives. Since slavery was inherited through the status of the mother, some blacks became free if they were born to non-slave mothers. Others gained their freedom from bondage for meritorious acts or long competent labor.

~ Slavery vs Indentured Servitude ~

Slavery was the most extreme, but not the only form of unfree labor in British North America. Many Europeans and some Africans were held as indentured servants. Neither slaves nor indentured servants were free, but there were important differences. Slavery was involuntary and hereditary. Indentured servants made contracts, often an exchange of labor for passage to America. They served for a limited time, commonly seven years, and generally received "freedom dues," often land and clothing, upon finishing their indenture. Although some slaves gained freedom after a limited term, others served for life, and a second generation inherited the slave status of their mothers. Gradually by the 18th century, colonial laws were consolidated into slave codes providing for perpetual, inherited servitude for Africans who were defined as property to be bought and sold.

In their day-to-day lives, slaves and servants shared similar grievances and frequently formed alliances. Advertisements seeking the return of slaves and servants who had run away together filled colonial newspapers. When a slave named Charles escaped in 1740, the Pennsylvania Gazette reported that two white servants, a "Scotch man" and an Englishman, escaped with him. Sometimes interracial alliances involved violence. During Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, slaves and servants took up arms against Native Americans and the colonial government in Virginia. In 1712 New York officials executed Native Americans and African American slaves for plotting a revolt, and in 1741 four whites were executed and seven banished from colonial New York for participating with slaves in a conspiracy. People in similar circumstances-poor and unfree whites, Native Americans, and blacks-formed alliances throughout the colonial era.

~ During the Revolution ~

Colonists, both black and white, worked together to fight what they saw as British injustices. Interracial mobs rioted against the Stamp Act of 1765 and other despised regulations imposed on the colonies throughout the 1760s. American protests targeted British officials and soldiers. In 1770 Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave of mixed African and Native American descent, led an interracial crowd of sailors and laborers in attacking the British guard at Boston's customs office. They threw snowballs, chunks of ice, and stones; in response, the soldiers fired into the crowd, wounding six and killing Attucks and four others. For rebellious Americans, the Boston Massacre, as this event was named, symbolized Britain's armed determination to deprive them of their rights.

When the American Revolution began in 1775, all but 25,000 of the 500,000 African Americans in British North America were enslaved. Many were inspired by American proclamations of freedom, and both slaves and free blacks stood against the British. The black minutemen at the Battle of Lexington in 1775 were Pompy of Braintree, Prince of Brookline, Cato Wood of Arlington, and Peter Salem, the slave of the Belknaps of Framingham, freed in order that he might serve in the Massachusetts militia. Prince Estabrook, a slave in Lexington, was listed among those wounded in this first battle of the war. African Americans also served in the Battle of Bunker Hill, where former slave Salem Poor received official commendation as "a brave and gallant soldier."

At first General George Washington refused to recruit black troops. It was the British who made the first move to enlist blacks. In November 1775 Lord Dunmore, the British colonial governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation that all slaves belonging to rebels would be received into the British forces and freed for their services. Tens of thousands of slaves escaped from Southern plantations, and over a thousand fought for the British. Tye, "a Negro who [bore] the title of colonel" led one interracial guerilla band in New Jersey. In the South, such bands, called banditti, burned and looted plantations, stole horses, and liberated slaves, some of whom became British soldiers.

The demands of war eventually changed Washington's mind, and he began to recruit black soldiers. Before the war was over, more than 5000 African Americans from every state except Georgia and South Carolina served in the Revolutionary army. Slaves, many serving in their owner's place, were promised freedom in return for their service. There were several black regiments like the Rhode Island Regiment and Massachusetts' "Bucks of America," but most African Americans served in integrated units, the last integrated American army units until the Korean War in the 1950s.

Thus, African Americans in search of freedom from slavery served on both sides during the Revolution. As a result of the Revolution, the population of free blacks in the United States increased-from about 25,000 in 1776 to nearly 60,000 when the first federal census was conducted in 1790.

This portrait (left) of an unidentified Revolutionary War sailor was painted in oil by an unknown artist, circa 1780. Prior to the war, many blacks were already experienced seamen, having served in the British navy and in the colonies' state navies, as well as on merchant vessels in the North and the South. This sailor's dress uniform suggests that he served in the navy, rather than with a privateer.

Image Credit: The Newport Historical Society

Slavery was important to American patriots. It was the opposite of liberty and served as a benchmark against which they measured their own freedom. They continually warned that they would not be denied their rights, saying they must not be the "slaves" of England. The ideals of the Revolution emphasized the incompatibility of slavery in a free land, and slaves petitioned for their freedom using the words of the Declaration of Independence.

African Americans hoped that men who wrote such lofty words as "all men are created equal" would realize the immorality of continuing to enslave their fellow countrymen. "We expect great things," one group wrote, "from men who have made such a noble stand against the designs of their fellow men to enslave them."

However, the American Revolution and the American colonies' fight against British oppression did not bring slavery to an end. The words slave and slavery did not appear in the Constitution written in 1787, but the framers of the Constitution struck a compromise allowing the slave trade to continue until 1808. Slavery remained important to the economy of the new nation, and after the Revolution, it became more concentrated in the South.

(See Bibliography Below)

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Bibliography:
Horton, Lois E. and James Oliver Horton, "African American History," Encarta Encyclopedia 99.