The spoils of victory… Revolution and strange fruit

While detailing the substantial participation by Americans of African descent in the Continental armies, its worth asking -- what was in it for them? What did they get out of it in the end?

Lerone Bennett, Jr., in Before The Mayflower, refers to the early years of Independence as "the Black Pioneer period. There was no consensus at that point on the place of blacks in a commonwealth founded on the inalienable rights of all men." While "few believed that the new social compact included blacks or Indians or even white women... there was a provocative fluidity to the first years of the American venture."

Gary Nash, in Race and Revolution, offers some hard numbers: In 1755 only 1,817 Americans of African descent in Maryland were free; the number reached 8,000 in 1790 and 20,000 by 1800. In Virginia, from 1,800 free in 1782, the number grew to 13,000 in 1800 and then 20,000 ten years after that. In Delaware, a free population of 3,899 in 1790 grew to 8,268 in 1800 and 13,186 in 1810.

Bennett refers to "the thousands who were manumitted by slaveholders infected by the germinal ideas of the Declaration." Philip Graham of Maryland said holding his "fellow men in bondage and slavery is repugnant to the golden law of God and the unalienable right of mankind as well as to every principle of the late glorious revolution which has taken place in America." Of course these were minority opinions -- in the southern states, only one in twelve people of African descent were free when this brief window closed. But as Bennett also observes, "Slavery in the North died as a direct result of these currents."

Vermont didn't abolish slavery. Slavery was never allowed in Vermont, but it wasn't a state until 1791. Before the Revolution, New Hampshire claimed the territory and granted small plots to individual families. New York's royal governor claimed the same land, and granted huge tracts to wealthy men who tried to bring in tenant farmers. Those who accepted New Hampshire grants voted not to allow slavery, and included at least two families of African heritage. They formed the Green Mountain Boys to fight the Yorkers before they agreed to seize Fort Ticonderoga from the British.

Massachusetts was probably next. Nothing in history happens in distinct acts. The curtain doesn't ring down on "Act 13 -- Slavery" then lift up after intermission for "Act 14 -- Emancipation." Before Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, or the Declaration of Independence, there had been "freedom suits" in Massachusetts courts. John Adams is on record that "I never owned a Negro or any other slave," but, his struggling law practice was not above accepting, as paying clients, owners of slaves who had been served with a freedom suit. He generally lost. Adams wrote in a letter to a friend, "I never knew a Jury by a Verdict, to determine a Negro to be a slave. They always found them free." So there was a long-term build up of public disposition to see enslaved people freed.

Elizabeth Freeman, formerly known as Mum Bett, was a plaintiff in the freedom suit that found slavery in violation of Massachusetts’s post-revolutionary state constitution.

Massachusetts, like most former colonies, wrote a new Constitution for itself after declaring independence. It did not declare enslaved people to be free. But it contained broad language that “mankind in a state of nature are equal, free, and independent of each other, and have a right to the undisturbed enjoyment of their lives, their liberty and property.” One man and one woman enslaved in the household of Colonel John Ashley of Great Barrington, engaged a lawyer to sue for their freedom, citing that language. Ironically, their owner-of-record had helped write similar language into a 1773 petition against British tyranny, the Sheffield Resolves. Ashley refused to obey a writ or replevin, but a jury trial resulted in a decision that the new state constitution banned slavery, freeing the plaintiffs, and granting them 30 shillings each.

Many states, including Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania provided for a gradual process of emancipation taking decades. But in practice, slavery collapsed in the remaining states north of Maryland by 1810. The American Revolution made slavery controversial. This had two equal and opposite results. Some enslaved people were emancipated, while a number of "free states" developed. But those who wished to retain slavery were under pressure to come up with new and inventive arguments to justify how anyone could be kept as a slave in a land formally dedicated to liberty and equality. The confederate states of America, four score and seven years later, was quite explicitly a revolt against the Declaration of Independence.