Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

"democracy" through wresting their nationhood away
from England, their slaves sought liberation by overthrowing
Amerika or escaping from it. Far from being either
patriotic Amerikan subjects or passively enslaved neutrals,
the Afrikan masses threw themselves daringly and passionately
into the jaws of war on an unprecedented
scale-that is, into their own war, against slave Amerika
and for freedom.
The British, short of troops and laborers, decided
to use both the Indian nations and the Afrikan slaves to
help bring down the settler rebels. This was nothing unique;
the French had extensively used Indian military
alliances and the British extensively used Afrikan slave
recruits in their 1756-63 war over North America (called
"The French & Indian War" in settler history books). But
the Euro-Amerikan settlers, sitting on the dynamite of a
restive, nationally oppressed Afrikan population, were terrified-and
outraged.
This was the final proof to many settlers of King
George 111's evil tyranny. An English gentlewoman traveling
in the Colonies wrote that popular settler indignation
was so great that it stood to unite rebels and Tories again.
(15) Tom Paine, in his revolutionary pamphlet Common
Sense, raged against "...that barbarous and hellish power
which hath stirred up Indians and Negroes to destroy
us."(16) But oppressed peoples saw this war as a wonderful
contradiction to be exploited in the ranks of the European
capitalists.
Lord Dunmore was Royal Governor of Virginia in
name, but ruler over so little that he had to reside aboard a
British warship anchored offshore. Urgently needing reinforcements
for his outnumbered command, on Nov. 5,
1775 he issued a proclamation that any slaves enlisting in
his forces would be freed. Sir Henry Clinton, commander
of British forces in North America, later issued an even
broader offer:
"I do most strictly forbid any Person to sell or
claim Right over any Negroe, the property of a Rebel, who
may claim refuge in any part of this Army; And I do promise
to every Negroe who shall desert the Rebel Standard,
full security to follow within these Lines, any Occupation
which he shall think proper."(l7)
Am~rlkan propapanda--1ndlana alllad to the ~rltfrh'murd.r' a r.tt1.r woman
Governor Benjamin Harrison lost thirty of "my finest
slaves"; William Lee lost sixty-five slaves, and said two of
his neighbors "lost every slave they had in the world";
South Carolina's Arthur Middleton lost fifty slaves.(l9)
Afrikans were writing their own "Declaration of
Independence" by escaping. Many settler patriots tried to
appeal to the British forces to exercise European solidarity
and expel the Rebel slaves. George Washington had to denounce
his own brother for bringing food to the British
troops, in a vain effort to coax them into returning the
Washington family slaves .(20) Yes, the settler patriots
were definitely upset to see some real freedom get loosed
upon the land.
To this day no one really knows how many slaves
freed themselves during the war. Georgia settlers were said
to have lost over 10,000 slaves, while the number of
Afrikan escaped prisoners in South Carolina and Virginia
was thought to total well over 50,000. Many, in the disruption
of war, passed themselves off as freemen and
relocated in other territories, fled to British Florida and
Canada, or took refuge in Maroon communities or with
the Indian nations. It has been estimated that 100,000
Afrikan prisoners-some 20% of the slave population-freed
themselves during the war.(21)
Could any horn have called more clearly? By the
thousands upon thousands, Afrikans struggled to reach
British lines. One historian of the Exodus has said: "The
British move was countered by the Americans, who exercised
closer vigilance over their slaves, removed the ablebodied
to interior places far from the scene of the war, and
threatened with dire punishment all who sought to join the
enemy. To Negroes attempting to flee to the British the
alternatives 'Liberty or Death' took on an almost literal
meaning. Nevertheless, by land and sea they made their
way to the British forces."(18)
The war was a disruption to Slave Amerika, a
chaotic gap in the European capitalist ranks to be hit hard.
Afrikans seized the time-not by the tens or hundreds, but
by the many thousands. Amerika shook with the tremors
of their movement. The signers of the Declaration of Independence
were bitter about their personal losses:
Thomas Jefferson lost many of his slaves; Virginia's
The thousands of rebellious Afrikans sustained the
British war machinery. After all, if the price of refuge
from the slavemaster was helping the British throw down
the settlers, it was not such a distasteful task. Lord Dunmore
had an "Ethiopian Regiment" of ex-slaves (who
went into battle with the motto "Liberty to Slaves" sewn
on their jackets) who helped the British capture and burn
Norfolk, Va. on New Years Day, 1776.(22) That must have
been sweet, indeed. Everywhere, Afrikans appeared with
the British units as soldiers, porters, road-builders, guides
and intelligence agents. Washington declared that unless
the slave escapes could be halted the British Army would
inexorably grow "like a snowball in rollingW.(23)
It was only under this threat-not only of defeat,
but defeat iil part by masses of armed ex-slaves-that the
settlers hurriedly reversed their gears and started recruiting
Afrikans into the Continental U.S. Army. The whole con-
18 tradiction of arming slaves and asking them to defend their