When Enslaved Black People Had to Choose Between the British and the Patriots
The above struggle for equality in the 1900s had roots that stretched back centuries, to before America was even a country. Today, the struggle between Britain and American colonists is usually presented as a fight for liberty between tyranny and freedom. Which was true – from the perspective of white American Patriots. From the perspective of many colonists of African descent, it was more complicated. The side that actually offered them liberty and freedom from tyranny was not the Patriots, but the British. In 1775, Samuel Johnson summed up one of the greatest contradictions of the Patriots’ fight for freedom: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negros?” Many of the American colonists’ foremost advocates of liberty and equality owned hundreds of other humans.
Blacks fought for the Patriots in the war’s early battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. However, when George Washington assumed command, he was appalled to see blacks bearing arms. With slave uprisings a constant fear of slaveholders, the sight of armed discomfited plantation owners, such as the army’s new commander. So Washington forbade the recruitment of black soldiers, and eventually purged them from the Continental Army. It was only later, after his forces were drastically reduced by desertions and diseases, that Washington was forced to turn a blind eye to black soldiers. The British thought differently about arming blacks, and sought to turn the rebels’ slaves against them. In November, 1775, Virginia’s British governor, Lord Dunmore, offered slaves their freedom in exchange for service to the Crown.
