The Revolutionary War

Black people fought for America’s freedom while many of them were not free.

According to History.com, The Revolutionary War was an insurrection by American Patriots in the 13 colonies to British rule, resulting in American independence. The tension between England and the colonies erupted in violence in Boston, Massachusetts on March 5, 1770. A detachment of British soldiers fired into a group of civilians gathered on historic State Street.

These tensions eventually led to writing the Declaration of Independence in 1776. When the British surrendered on October 19, 1781, Americans were independent of Britain and began establishing their own government.

I was only taught bits and pieces of the Revolutionary War when I was in school. My search for truth led me to a book found in my Dad’s footlocker he brought back from WWII. According to the book, The Negro Pilgrimage in America, by C.L. Lincoln, Crispus Attucks, a black sailor who sought to rally the confused Americans in the face of British fire, was the first to give his life for America. When President George Washington assumed command of the Continental Army in July, 1775, he issued an order excluding all black people from service in the war. The British countered by offering freedom to all slaves who joined the Crown’s forces. This move forced Washington to modify his positon and permitted free black people to serve. All slaves remained barred from fighting for America’s freedom or their own.

Lincoln wrote that The Battle of Bunker Hill produced two black heroes in the colonial struggle for liberty. Peter Salem, a black soldier, shot the British commander during that bloody engagement. Another heroic black man, Salem Poor, was awarded a formal commendation by the Massachusetts legislature for “behaving like an experienced officer and a brave and gallant soldier.”

By the end of the Revolutionary War, an estimated 5,000 black soldiers had served in the Continental Army. A few free black men attained financial success before and after the war. Many bought farms and small plots of useless land that didn’t yield anything.

Although they had escaped an oppressive relationship with England, the majority of delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were openly pro-slavery. The Founding Fathers provided a twenty-year extension of slavery in the Constitution. Through the efforts of the Quakers and Methodists, the manumission of slaves increased during the Revolutionary period. The first manumission statue was enacted by Maryland in 1752. The first years of the Republic saw the free black population grow rapidly. Near the end of the eighteenth century, nearly three times as many black people were free as were slaves. This was attributed to the birth of black children to free black and racially mixed parents.

 A law in 1662 that stated that all children born of a black mother in the colony shall be bond or free according to the status of the mother. Virginia enacted another law which stated if a white woman servant married a black man, she would serve for five additional years. In 1664, Maryland law provided if a freeborn white woman married a slave, she became the servant of her husband’s master as long as the husband lived. This law also stated the children born of such a couple became slaves at birth. This law was later repealed to prevent the forced marriage of usually poor white women servants to black man by unscrupulous masters. Eventually, the white wives of black men were elevated to freed status. By 1850, thirty-seven percent of free black people in the United States were classified as mulattoes, many the children of slave mothers whose white masters had “freed” their offspring.

When Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1792, it changed the base of the Southern economy. Cotton became the major Southern crop and to grow enough cotton to meet the demand and keep the cotton gins running, large numbers of workers were needed. This increased demand for labor caused the South’s reliance on slave labor economy. The South refused to give up its slave holdings and caused it to expand. Even before 1792, slavery was a dominant and economic way of life which Southern people were not willing to change. As the cotton industry grew, slavery grew.

Enslaved people were caught in the toils of oppression. More time and effort was spent in preventing them from escaping, or in catching them if they did escape. Prices for healthy slaves were high. Slavery had become big business and the possibility of political action to put an end to it became more remote. Industrialists in the North and in England had large sums of money invested in the Southern cotton industry.

Mr. Lincoln’s book provided a detailed explanation of black people’s painful lived experience during this time. Regardless of the pain, we need to know our true history.

Francie Mae. February 7, 2021.

 References

C.Eric Lincoln. November 1967. The Negro Pilgrimage In America. Bantam Pathfinder Books.

 “Revolutionary War.” History.com Editors. Website Name: History. URL. https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/american-revolution-history. Access date, February 6, 2021. A&E Television Networks. Updated September 3, 2019. Published October 29, 2009.