A major omission by our history textbooks concerning the blacks caught in the middle of the American Revolution against Great Britain.
http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R605151000
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006053916X/
http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,1561729,00.html
We’ve been taught to think of the War for American Independence as a righteous struggle against British imperial tyranny and a victory for democracy. Noble colonial farmers joined the militias to fight for their freedom and all the ideals that subsequent generations of Americans hold dear. Recent historical texts on the NYT best-seller list have also contributed to this narrative, along with our childhood schoolbooks. But what if you were black during the war? How did the colonial slaves fit into this tug-of-war between the British and Americans? Dr. Simon Schama was recently on KQED Forum, interviewed about his book Rough Crossings. He’s a British author and professor at Columbia. His book chronicles the mass exodus of over 80,000 black slaves to the loyalist, British side (a.k.a. the bad guys). Thousands fled towards Canada or even took up arms against the rebels in the hopes of winning their freedom, returning to Africa, and gaining status as actual human beings under British common law. Of course the Redcoats didn’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts: they were desperate to recruit more soldiers, and sought to cause insurrection/desertion among the rebels’ major labor force.
So for black slaves (20% of the colonial population), the fight for independence and freedom was on the side of the Union Jack, not the Stars and Stripes. In fact, “negroes, servants, and lunatics” were generally barred from bearing arms for the American side, unless used as cannon fodder, enlistment bonuses for colonists (Uncle Sam wants you, and he’ll give you two slaves for your trouble!), or scrubs to replace white militiamen who needed to return home to safeguard their plantations. I guess this is understandable; if you were an abusive slave owner, wouldn’t you worry about arming blacks en masse?
With their livelihood and social hierarchy in jeopardy, many Americans (especially southern plantation owners) desperately fought the Redcoats to prevent this emancipation from happening. Aiding slaves also worked against the British, because loyalist or centrist southerners were practically forced to the American side in order to defend their convenient economic system. At the time, slave revolts were taking place throughout the Caribbean, and some blacks were treated as free people in Great Britain (due to great emancipation efforts by the religious community and others, slavery was abolished in 1833). Under such pressure, I suppose the American colonists couldn’t afford to lose their precious labor force, and southern Americans would fight another bloody war some decades later for the same cause. Unlike the terribly whitewashed, mythologized depictions of the Revolution in films such as “The Patriot”, maybe the war for freedom and liberty was more about protecting the institution of slavery than we care to admit. Do such investigations de-legitimize American liberty and other values? Not really, but maybe such lesser-known tidbits of history (amazing stories conveniently ignored or suppressed in our schools) would give us a more comprehensive perspective on America’s foundations and heritage. Maybe such unfortunate historical realities may allow us to decipher/interpret various discrepancies or hypocrisies that we encounter in this country today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism
At the end of the war, one of the top priorities of the new United States was a roundup of escaped slaves. The Americans even demanded the return of all blacks under General Cornwallis’ charge. Life was generally better for blacks that were lucky enough to join the Empire, but it wasn’t a fairytale ending. British-owned or already-loyalist slaves were exempt from emancipation. Newly freed black émigrés to Nova Scotia were granted land, education, and other freedoms, but still encountered much hardships and racism by white loyalists. King George III then decided to return many of the refugee slaves to Freetown, Sierra Leone in West Africa, and even granted them political autonomy and representative government. The ex-slaves revolted, prospered, and were so ahead of their time socially (even granting women the right to vote and hold office a century before the USA did), that the Empire reneged on their generosity and Sierra Leone became a Crown Colony in 1808. But the British slave trade was essentially banned by 1807, and totally abolished in 1833, decades before the American Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation. So great advancements in freedom, liberty, and human dignity do not always originate from white American heroes. And sometimes an Empire can respect human rights much better than a democracy. But sadly, America and Britain’s proud stories of historical heritage were often tragedies for the blacks involved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown
To conclude, a Jon Stewart-style “moment of Zen”: the week after revolutionary patriot Patrick Henry declared, “Give me liberty or give me death”, his own slave Ralph took the advice, chose liberty, and then joined the British side!
Bury the Chains is another good book my mom read about the British efforts to emancipate slaves in their empire:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618104690
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From Publishers Weekly
Reviewed by Adam Hochschild. Has there ever been a patch of history more celebrated than the American Revolution? The torrent is endless: volume after volume about the glory of 1776, the miracle of 1787 and enough biographies of the Founding Fathers to stretch from the Liberty Bell to Bunker Hill and back again. The Library of Congress catalogue lists 271 books or other items to do with George Washington's death and burial alone. By contrast with the usual hagiography, distinguished historian Schama has found a little-known story from this era that makes the Founding Fathers look not so glorious. The Revolution saw the first mass emancipation of slaves in the Americas—an emancipation, however, not done by the revolutionaries but by their enemies. Many American rebel leaders were slave owners. To hit them where it most hurt, Britain proclaimed freedom for all slaves of rebel masters who could make their way to British-controlled territory. Slaves deserted their horrified owners by the tens of thousands. One, who used his master's last name, was Henry Washington; another renamed himself British Freedom. The most subversive news in this book is that the British move so shocked many undecided Southern whites that it actually pushed them into the rebel camp: "Theirs was a revolution, first and foremost, mobilized to protect slavery." Even though they lost the war, most British officers honored their promise to the escaped slaves. The British commander in New York at the war's end, where some 3,000 runaway slaves had taken refuge, adamantly refused an irate Washington's demand to give them back. Instead, he put them on ships for Nova Scotia. And there, nearly a decade later, another saga began. More than a thousand ex-slaves accepted a British offer of land in Sierra Leone, a utopian colony newly founded by abolitionists, which for a few years in the 1790s was the first place on earth where women could vote. Sadly, however, financial problems and the British government's dismay at so much democracy soon brought an end to the self-rule the former slaves had been promised. Schama once again gives his readers something rare: history that is both well told and well documented. In this wonderfully sprawling epic, there are a few small errors about dates and the like, and perhaps a few more characters than we can easily keep track of, but again and again he manages to bring a scene, a person, a conversation dramatically to life. Would that more historians wrote like this.
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