Eye for an Eye: The Role of Armed Resistance ... - Freedom Archives

more than slaves or mercenaries . African maroons realized the necessity of
pursuing their collective interests through alliance with elements whose interests
were also antagonistic to the expansionist, pro-slavery settler society of the U.S .
In these alliances Africans brought skills and information, and were provided with
necessary resources for survival and resistance .
While there was ambivalence about arming enslaved Africans, military
necessity often overruled fear of Black rebellion . As seen in the case of fighting
the Natchez and African maroons in French Colonial Louisiana, the Spanish in its
undermining of British colonies in the southeast and the British at the Negro Fort
during the War of 1812, when they saw it in their interests white settlers and
European colonizers would employ Africans as cannon fodder. In the eighteenth
century, enslaved Africans were used on several occasions as cannon fodder by
Europeans and white settlers in military conflict with Native nations . '6 The use
of Africans as cannon fodder by white settlers and European colonizers also
contributed to the development of the armed Black resistance tradition . While the
intent of arming Blacks by white settlers was definitely emancipation, in some
cases Blacks saw fighting as mercenaries for white interests as a means of per-
sonal freedom and even, as in the case of Fort Moussa, collective liberation . In the
case of the British colonies in North America, Anglo settlers in the U.S . relied on
English law and heritage establish who in their jurisdiction should be armed .
English law supported the notion of an armed citizenry. In practice this right and
encouragement to bear arms did not extend to poor people, dissidents and reli-
gious minorities . In British North America, enslaved and sometimes free African
descendants as well as Native people were denied the right to bear arms . One