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Juneteenth and Other Lesser Known African-American Historical Culture

Khalid Elhassan June 15, 2020 34 min

Colonel Tye - American Revolutionary War — Colonel Tye as portrayed in a PBS documentary. PBS

25. All Men Are Created Equal?

The offer of freedom to black slaves by the British authorities struck slaveholders such as Thomas Jefferson as monstrous. It convinced many of the undecided amongst their ranks to side with the Patriots. In a nod to that sentiment, the Declaration of Independence, despite the “All men are created equal” part, assails the British for offering the colonists’ slaves an opportunity to secure that equality.

In 1779, General Henry Clinton, the British commander in chief in America, went even further than Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s British governor. Clinton issued the Phillipsburg Proclamation, which decreed that any slaves who fled their rebel masters and made it to British lines were free. It further enraged slaveholders, and cemented their commitment to the Patriot cause.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.