What was the greatest source of optimism for african americans during the revolutionary war period?

By the winter of 1777-78, the Continental Army had dwindled to 18,000 from disease and desertion. This, together with the active recruitment of enslaved blacks by the British, finally convinced Washington to approve plans for Rhode Island to raise a regiment of free blacks and slaves.

Colonel Tye was perhaps the best-known of the Loyalist black soldiers. An escaped bondman born in Monmouth County, New Jersey, he wreaked havoc for several years with his guerrilla Black Brigade in New York and New Jersey. At one time he commanded 800 men. For most of 1779 and 1780, Tye and his men terrorized his home county -- stealing cattle, freeing slaves, and capturing Patriots at will. On September 1, 1780, during the capture of a Patriot captain, Tye was shot through the wrist, and he later died from a fatal infection.

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Although these early leaders were black men, women were the majority of the membership of early black congregations, and they frequently took the lead in conversion. Many of these women claimed, and actually exercised, the right to preach, and a large number of them were exhorters (informal preachers).

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Part 1: 1450-1750 <---Part 2: 1750-1805 Part 3: 1791-1831 Part 4: 1831-1865

Andrew Bryan, the founder of the First African Baptist Church, was born enslaved in 1737, on a plantation outside of Charleston, South Carolina. He served as coachman and body servant to Jonathan Bryan, who along with his brother Hugh and several other planters, was arrested for preaching to slaves. Jonathan Bryan's plantation became the center of efforts by dissenting group of planters to evangelize their slaves.In 1782, Andrew was converted by the preaching of George Liele, the first black Baptist in Georgia, who was licensed to preach to slaves along the Savannah River. Liele baptized Andrew and his wife Hannah. When Liele and hundreds of other blacks left with the British later that year, Andrew continued to preach to small groups outside of Savannah. With his master's encouragement, he built a shack for his small flock, which included a few whites. Although he brought hundreds into his church, 350 others could not be baptized because of their masters' opposition.Fearing slave uprisings and desertions to the British, Georgian masters forbade their slaves to listen to Andrew's sermons. Even slaves who had passes were stopped and whipped, and members of the church, both slave and free, were harassed, whipped, and jailed. Jonathan Bryan and several other sympathetic planters protested Andrew's imprisonment. Upon his release he continued to preach in a barn on the Bryan plantation, between sunrise and sunset. With the support of several prominent white men of Savannah who cited the positive effect of religion on slave discipline, Andrew was ordained and his church certified in 1788. When his own master died, Andrew Bryan purchased his freedom. In 1794, Bryan raised enough money to erect a church in Savannah, calling it the Bryan Street African Baptist Church -- the first black Baptist church in Georgia (and probably the United States), as well as the first Baptist church, black or white, in Savannah. By 1800, the church had grown to about 700; they reorganized as the First Baptist Church of Savannah, and 250 members were dismissed in order to establish a branch outside of Savannah.Bryan died in 1812, having obtained a house of his own, property in Savannah and in the country, and the freedom of his wife -- though his "only daughter and child, who is married to a free man" remained in slavery along with her seven children, since according to law children inherited the condition of their enslaved mothers. previous | next

Related Entries: • First African Baptist Church of Savannah • David George • George Liele

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As their stories testify, men of African descent did serve as soldiers and sailors aboard warships and on privateers during the war in substantial numbers on either side; nearly 1,000 African American sailors were captured and held in Britain’s notorious Dartmoor prison—and they embraced their status as free black seamen struggling to uphold their belief in “Free Trade and Sailors Rights.” Some 600 Chesapeake Bay slaves joined the British Colonial Marines and marched with redcoats on Washington, DC, and Baltimore, while others chose to remain with their masters and fight for the Americans. The American army had not opened its enlistments to black troops, and most states did not permit blacks to muster. There were no all-black regular army units in 1812 and 1813, and the black presence, when noted, was poorly documented. Along the coast of Georgia and South Carolina, enslaved peoples faced the same choices as did those in the Chesapeake, while along the Gulf Coast they found additional choices—some joined with the Spanish, with Native American tribes, and others with Andrew Jackson or the British. Jackson ultimately secured the assistance of most with promises of freedom and equality that never fully appeared.

In some instances, the feats of men like Denison were recorded for posterity, but the stories of noncombatants are chronicled often only in statistics. In the Chesapeake, as many as 4,000 to 5,000 enslaved people fled to British protection and were evacuated to Bermuda, Canada, or Trinidad. In New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, enslaved people and free blacks worked alongside whites to dig entrenchments for those cities, loudly proclaiming their civic and patriotic duty. Yet, black-white relations worsened after the war. Collectively, black unity had demonstrated a powerful threat, engendering fears in white America that were exacerbated by memories of the recent revolution in nearby Haiti (1791–1804). In the aftermath of the conflict, Americans destroyed free mulatto gulf communities in former Spanish Florida that they viewed as a threat to peace and as a challenge to the white status quo. Later, the removal of American Indians east of the Mississippi River bolstered the southern plantation system, creating the Cotton Kingdom of the mid-1800s and further altering race relations. Meanwhile, in British dominions, former American enslaved people clutched tenaciously to the freedom they obtained with evacuation, though the British government abandoned them in a segregated naval base in Bermuda or herded them into ill-provisioned camps in Canada and then into unsettled regions of Trinidad; they struggled economically, but they remained free.

In the end, the War of 1812 did not provide greater opportunities or equality for free blacks as they anticipated, nor did it initiate a wave of emancipation for enslaved Americans seeking freedom. They would find themselves wedged between slavery and freedom, and between race discrimination and egalitarianism. Their patriotic efforts had not reshaped white minds about what role they should play in society, and public memories of the war largely ignored their contributions. New prejudicial racial distinctions replaced class differences among blacks and destroyed once and for all the optimism of the Revolutionary era. For African Americans, the “forgotten war” delayed their quest for equality and freedom.

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The biggest misconception is that black Americans were invisible during the American Revolution, and that they did not participate in direct action towards American independence. The reasons for these misconceptions largely stem from nineteenth century efforts to whitewash history as slavery became a far more divisive issue. Efforts continued into the twentieth century as the Lost Cause narrative relegated African American contributions to our history as secondary footnotes when necessary for discussion. It wouldn’t be until the 1960s where a new school of researchers, historians and scholars peeled back the layers of neglect, and rediscovered the impact these early Americans indeed had on significant events during the American Revolution. Since then, hundreds of excellent works have been produced that show and explain just how vital these Americans were and remain to our understanding of how we became a nation through revolution.

To be fair, it would not be accurate to suggest black Americans were commanding troops on the battlefield, nor should we sensationalize their actual contributions and place during the Revolutionary War. Participation was largely contingent on several main factors, chief among them the necessity for aiding the existing army in the field. Both the Continental and British armies would employ blacks into the ranks for this reason. Fighting for emancipation or for liberty, particularly in the case of the American Cause, was not the driver for enlisting them into service. But it also would be inaccurate to state that many Continental officers didn’t advocate for their freedoms in the name of liberty. The best we can do is separate the motives of both sides in using black support where it could best aide each army, sometimes at the expense of these individuals, and sometimes to their eventual goal of achieving freedom for themselves. 

Looking at the American side, black Americans were in thick of it from the very first minutes of the revolution. Whether we want to point to Crispus Attucks being the first man shot down at the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, or the actions of minutemen assembling from the hills around Lexington and Concord, the evidence is plain and clear that black citizens rallied to defend their mixed communities from the British army. Individuals like Peter Salem, Lemuel Hayes, Barzillai Lew, and Salem Poor, among other noted participants, were eyewitness to events because they were fighting in them. The Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, is of specific importance because Salem Poor was officially recognized by his superiors for mortally wounding British Lieutenant-Colonel James Abercrombie, the highest-ranking officer to die in the battle. 

The first calls for suppressing visible black enlistment came with the influx of officers and soldiers from colonies outside of New England. While many of the Massachusetts men were farmers, many more were sailors and port workers accustomed to interracial employment and cooperation. This was not the case with arriving soldiers from Virginia and elsewhere, as those black workers in the South were more likely to be enslaved than those in Boston. Gen. George Washington, himself a slave owner and understanding of these sentiments, also understood the need for a continental force that identified beyond regional differences. This is not to suggest he immediately welcomed black soldiers in the army, but for us to understand that even Washington, as wary as he was with the look of armed black men, was desperate for capable armed men. African Americans who had been fighting in Massachusetts were grandfathered into the army after new rules went into effect on July 10, 1775, which barred both free and enslaved black Americans from enlistment. 

This would not last long. As stated, Washington, along with the sentiments of fellow Southern officers and soldiers, was not induced to arm enslaved black Americans as it presented a clear conundrum for the institution of chattel slavery. But Washington was also desperate for men, and as the events of 1776-77 played out, he soon relented and gradually became supportive of arming free citizens, regardless of their skin color. Further prodding by a handful of animated junior officers pushed Washington in the last remaining years of the war. Chief among these officers was John Laurens, son of Continental Congress president Henry Laurens; Alexander Hamilton, a skillful aide-to-camp of Washington’s inner circle, and the Marques de Lafayette, the young Frenchman whose zeal for liberty and faith in the commander in chief brought him under the wing of Washington like no other. Along with a handful of others, these officers became vocally supportive of allowing black Americans to fight in the army. And when it came to arming slaves, John Laurens was unequaled in his quest to raise regiments within South Carolina and Georgia in 1780-81. These efforts proved futile against the ruling plantation gentry, but they clearly signaled a contradiction that the American Revolution presented: who was eligible for this liberty and freedom we speak to fight for? Their effect surely spread as even American general Nathanael Greene, himself a slave owner, was advocating the arming of slaves to battle proxy loyalist raiders in South Carolina. 

At the beginning of the war, free black citizens could and did join the ranks of the Continental army. This was when the existence of the army was still coming together; there was no official order and decorum established yet of who could join. We also must understand that black soldiers were not segregated from white soldiers. The only instance of segregation came with the raising of the First Rhode Island Regiment under Colonel Christopher Greene. Famed for their bright white dress, they were one of several regiments to participate in the defense of Rhode Island in August 1778. This segregation effort was not done to shun black participation, but rather to prove that blacks could fight as well as whites. Their regiment aside, the vast majority of the remaining black Americans who served in the Continental army did so fully integrated within other regiments and units. But most black soldiers were not armed recruits; they were cooks, laborers, craftsman, drummers, flag-bearers, couriers and medical assistants. We can document the instances where individual black soldiers fought in battle under arms, such as the storming of Redoubt 10 at Yorktown in October 1781, but it would not be accurate to claim that every regiment had black soldiers marching with muskets shoulder-to-shoulder with white soldiers. In some cases, regiments did have more black soldiers than others, making them a visible presence for eyewitnesses to account for. This is where we’ve gotten the assumption that one-fifth of the Continental army at Yorktown was black, the observation made by a visiting European officer. Records show that only about 5,000 black soldiers fought for American independence with the army over the eight years of war. But we also must remember that the Continental Army was never larger than 15,000 strong at any given time, and that the army became divided into four separate entities by 1780: northern, main, southern, and western. Having a detachment of three hundred men with less than fifty of whom were black is not insignificant, nor should we assume it was that way for purely racial reasons. 

A large portion of black Americans enlisted in the army, but a sizable amount, particularly those who were enslaved, were signed up by their masters to serve in their place. It was not uncommon for wealthy people to pay an individual to be their substitute if drafted into service, as was the case later in the Civil War. Despite the ban of enlisting slaves into the army, those serving in place of their masters were taken. When policies loosened, and individual states began recruiting whoever they could get to satisfy muster rolls for the army, more enslaved people filled the ranks of the army. In some instances, it was difficult to find white Americans willing to enlist; it was also far more common that black Americans did not own property to tend to, making them more suited for the military. We also know that many who escaped their plantations also passed as free black Americans. There was some suspicion of this going on, and some states demanded that black enlistees showed proof of their legal status upon registering. But the Continental Congress, Washington, and others generally approved of the enlistments. The same approval can be said of those black Americans who joined the Continental Navy. Whereas the sight of armed black soldiers held a menacing position with many white Americans, no such thought was given to black sailors aboard merchant vessels. Between centuries of employment on the high seas, and the noted presence of black workers in shipyards throughout the continent, it was simply a far more accepted position for them to be in. And the navy, more desperate for men than even the Continental army, literally could not say no. 

Turning our attention to how the British coerced black Americans into service, one must begin with Lord Dunmore’s proclamation in 1775 that stipulated all enslaved persons in Virginia who escaped and joined up with the British/Loyalist forces would thereby be legally freed. As much as some of us might want to presume this was done as a motion of pure abolitionism, it was, in fact, a way of creating chaos among the Virginian and southern plantation ecosystem. As Virginia’s royal governor, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore was deliberately trying to intimidate rebels from organizing; this would hopefully keep them busy. Perhaps nothing stirred fears more among ruling white perpetrators of slavery than the thought of their black slaves rising up and overthrowing their masters with lethal force. A handful of insurrections had already ingrained themselves into colonial memory, so these fears were not entirely unjustified. Nevertheless, Lord Dunmore’s proclamation stoked these embedded nightmares among the ruling elite, and within months of its public debut, hundreds of enslaved black men were joining the British side in support of fighting for their freedom. The immediately effects, though, were far more mixed than hoped. The first regiment of black troops fell victim to smallpox while others who expected to be armed were in fact given laborer positions aiding the British army. Dunmore’s proclamation would later inspire Sir Henry Clinton, the commanding general of British forces in America, to issue his own decree known as the Philipsburg Proclamation. Unlike the Virginian’s move, by 1779, the war was not going well for the British, and Clinton sought to reroute the campaign into the South. Knowing that the enslaved population far outnumbered the free population of white civilians, Clinton sought to destabilize the southern states by offering freedom to any enslaved person who escaped their rebel masters and came to the British side. Rather than being an abolitionist-at-heart, Clinton’s plan hoped to inspire the collapse of rebel support in the South. While this did not happen, it did create the atmosphere for fierce partisan warfare among neighbors and inspired upwards of 100,000 enslaved black Americans to flee their plantations. Throughout the revolution, most black Americans, free and enslaved, believed the British held a better argument for liberty than the Americans did, which explains why so many risked all to flee to them. In some cases, the British army seized slaves for themselves. By war’s end, the British had the logistical nightmare of trying to transport not just their defeated army, but also loyalist citizens who wished to leave the United States, and now freed slaves looking for a new life out of bondage in America. 

In many ways, the British army used eager black participants as secondary supporters to the main forces. This is not to suggest there weren’t armed black men fighting within the British ranks. It’s only to suggest that such examples were few and far between, mostly left to loyalist raiding parties that were informal and not part of the regular army. Examples of black regiments within the British army show up during the early years of the war in the northern states, and during the Southern Campaign in 1780-81. As stated, the primary task of military-age black men was not to fight in the army, but to serve as support staff for it. Laborers dug ditches and assembled redoubts for the army, most notably at Yorktown. Others were given a gruesome fate: dying of smallpox, many were intentionally left near rebel farms and routes of the American forces in Virginia. Others, like their counterparts on the American side, spied for the British where possible. 

In this brief overview of African American participation during the Revolutionary War, we should be aware of a few things. There were black men who served in the armies as soldiers and black men who served for the armies as support. There were also countless black women and children who aided and supported both armies as well. The role of camp follower is for another discussion, however. Both free and enslaved men fought for American independence and for the British attempt to squash the rebellion. Most black Americans supported the British for reasons we know, but many served with the Continental Army because they believed in what the revolution presumably stood for. Some decided to serve for person reasons, detached from skin color while others served precisely for the color of their skin. The complexities are part of the reason why these stories have remained on the margins of our general knowledge of the time period. The lack of simplicity leaves many to fumble the truth. To see contradiction befall many of these explanations is to first see with clarity how the principles that drove the American Revolution were what would undo slavery’s legitimacy within the United States. Among even those men fighting for liberty, it became difficult to explain how some people were destined for freedom and others were destined for bondage. For African Americans, the choice has always been freedom, and the many who served during the American Revolution is further proof of how much they were willing to sacrifice to obtain it. 

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