1770-1776: Resistance and Revolution
Big Idea
Fearing loss of control over Black people, American colonists united in their commitment to enslavement and utilized the language of political enslavement as justification for the revolution against Britain. African people across the colonies fought in small and big ways for their liberty and human rights.
What’s important to know?
American Slavery: The connection between race and slavery in the Americas was a significant departure from how slavery had been understood and practiced throughout history.
African Resistance: The story of enslavement in America is not passive. Enslaved persons developed multiple ways to resist and demand their human rights.
Fighting for the Freedom to Enslave: A key factor uniting the colonies in favor of the American Revolution was Britain's growing interference with the power of White slave owners.
1: American Slavery
1700s Map of West Africa
Image Source: Library of Congress
European colonists did not invent slavery in the Americas. The way they tied enslavement to race and made it a permanent condition forced upon a diverse group of African people from different countries, regions, ethnicities, and culture was new.
Jessica Millward (2015) underscored this point in her biography of a freed Black woman. She wrote:
Africans who lived along the Gold Coast [modern-day Ghana] possessed an entirely different viewpoint of slavery from the one that existed in the New World. Oral tradition passed down from those who survived the Middle Passage held that slavery was not an absolute—it was not permanent, it was not inherited, and in most cases, it was not perpetual…The enslaved were regarded as human beings who were entitled to certain rights and privileges. (p. 43)
The completely dehumanizing aspects of enslavement as practiced in the colonies separated the practice from the ways slavery had been enacted in other parts of the world for centuries.
2: African Resistance
For enslaved Africans, resistance to the dehumanizing practices of Western slavery showed up in many ways. Living in the world where the White men established the rules, meant living in a world where Black ideas or values did not matter. Black resistance to this dehumanization and control appeared in many nuanced ways. Historian Ira Berlin (1998) noted,
The minuet between master and slave, when played to the contrapuntal music of paternalism, was a constant, as master and slave continually renegotiated the small space allotted them. But the stylized movements—the staccato gyrations, the seductive feints, the swift withdrawals, and the hateful embraces—represented just one of many dances of domination and subordination, resistance and accommodation. (p. 4)
Students
Want to know more? Historian Ibram X. Kendi discussed ways enslaved Africans resisted enslavement, shaped their own culture, and in doing so shaped American culture.
From Learning for Justice teaching videos.
3: Fighting for the Freedom to Enslave
For White men, racial enslavement became the backdrop against which they defined their legal and political framework. Historian Edward Morgan (1975) argued that the enslavement of Black people directly impacted White men’s development of a political ideology of liberty that protected White status. He noted that the English colonists gained “a special appreciation of the freedom dear to republicans, because they saw every day [in slavery] what life without it could be like” (p. 376). As a result, race-based enslavement informed the development of colonial legal structures and informed its enforcement of those laws before, during, and after the American Revolution (Morgan, 1975; Musselwhite, Mancall, & Horn, 2019).
Official medallion of the British Anti-Slavery Society.
Image Source: BlackPast
As the colonists engaged in arguments with the British government over taxation and control, the British government retaliated by threatening to free the enslaved people in the colonies. This threat became a central unifying factor among the colonies, even as the rhetoric they embraced was that of freedom. The reality of losing the economic benefits created through enslavement proved too high a cost and too valuable an asset to allow Britain to dictate whether enslavement continued in the colonies. For the colonists freedom had a color, and that color was White.
In 1772, an enslaved man accompanied his White owner to Britain and sued for his freedom while on British soil. The judge ruled in his favor noting that “British common law did not allow slavery on the soil of the mother country” (Hannah-Jones, 2021, p. 15). This ruling startled the colonists. As historian Alan Taylor wrote, “Although the ruling did not apply there [in the colonies], colonial masters felt shocked by the implication that their property system defied English traditions of liberty” (p. 15). Further, “the colonists took the ruling as an insult, as signaling that they were of inferior status, and feared that it would encourage their most valuable property to stow away to Britain seeking freedom” (p. 15). Even worse, they feared that Britain may one day declare that the rules of the British homeland now applied to the colonists — an act that would free the enslaved Black men, women, and children, and destroy the thriving economy of White colonists in North America.
“In one sense, slaveholding Patriots went to war in 1775 and declared independence in 1776 to defend their rights to own slaves.”
The White dependence on Black enslavement that had developed over the course of the eighteenth century proved to be a unifying factor across the colonies. As White slave owners had convinced themselves of their God-given elevated status above Black men and women to alleviate any lingering guilt of conscience, they now had British leaders suggesting this hierarchy was illegal and immoral. As a social matter of status and as an economic matter of profitability these threats proved too dangerous to go unaddressed. The colonists swiftly moved from disgruntled subjects to subjects in outright rebellion against one of the most powerful nations on the globe (Hannah-Jones, 2021, p. 16).
Photograph of plaque commemorating Dunmore’s “Ethiopian Regiment.”
Image Source: Wikipedia
White colonists also remained concerned about slave revolts. After the Battle of Lexington and Concord, in April 1775, Virginia’s governor, John Murray, the Earl of Dunmore, offered “freedom to any enslaved person belonging to a Patriot if he fled his enslaver and joined Dunmore’s ‘Ethiopian Regiment’” (Hannah-Jones, 2021, p. 14). This further incited panic among the many slave-holding founders from Virginia—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Dunmore’s act alongside the daily acts of African resistance, rebellion, and running away fueled their resolve to fight. The financial gain White enslavers continued to reap as a result of enslavement financed the expensive undertaking of the war (p. 16).
The colonists duplicity of motive—claiming the King was unfairly enslaving them while doing that very thing—did not go without notice by others in the world. An English writer by the name of Samuel Johnson, wrote, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” (p. 16).
Think about It!
The Declaration of Independence and the Protection of Slavery
Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence every July 4th, remembering our origin story as one of resolve against a tyrannical King George making unjust demands on the colonies. We read the declaration proudly and hope to carry on it’s legacy. When historians argue that slavery was a predominant driver of the desire to rebel it can feel like a disconnected and unlikely argument. After all, the founders didn’t include that in their list of grievances against King George. Or did they?
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration, begins his document noting: “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” (National Archives)
He then begins a long list of grievances the colonies are bringing against the King. His last grievance is as follows: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” (National Archives)
First, it is important to note that in this time (unlike the present) when a list was created people ordered it from least important to most important. So, while we would have put the most important grievance first, they put it last, which is the one about domestic insurrections.
Second, what does Jefferson mean when he talks about insurrections? It might be easy to skip over the word “and” and think that he is merely talking about the British allying with Native Americans against the colonists. But there are two clauses in that sentence. And the first clause is not about Native Americans. The first clause, refers to the emancipation offered to enslaved Africans by the Earl of Dunmore when he promised their freedom in return for deserting their Patriot slave owners. As historian Woody Holton argues, “Thomas Jefferson spoke for other white Americans when he stated, in the largest and angriest complaint in the Declaration of Independence, that Dunmore’s emancipation proclamation was a major cause of the American Revolution” (Hannah-Jones, 2021, p. 17).
This is a rather uncomfortable conclusion and hard to square with our ideas of ourselves as a freedom-loving nation. historian James Oliver Horton acknowledges this when he wrote, “For a nation steeped in this self-image, it is embarrassing, guilt-producing, and disillusioning to consider the role that race and slavery played in shaping the national narrative” (p. 17).
How does our discomfort drive us to form narratives about our past? How does allowing the narrative to reflect a truer expression of what happened enhance our understanding of our current situation and the racial divisions we still face? Can we embrace the best parts of our country’s history and acknowledge its sins at the same time? What does this look like?
Your Turn
How did the enslavement of Black people impact White political leaders understanding of freedom? Could you make the argument that slavery was not only the cause of the Civil War but also of the Revolutionary War? How did Black people express their humanity and agency throughout this time?
-
“How America Made Skin Color Power” video produced by Race: The Power of an Illusion
Video with Professor Anthony Bogues of Brown University answering the question “How do enslaved people resist slavery?”
Enslaved African resistance materials from the Library of Congress.
Books:
Camp, S. (2004). Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South. The University of North Carolina.
Hannah-Jones, N et al. (2021). The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. One World Press.
Holton, W. (1999). Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia. University of North Carolina Press.
Waldstreicher, W. (2010). Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification. Hill and Wang.
Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812, 2nd. ed. (1968; Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2012).
-
Download Text-Dependent Questions for Key Concept 9 related to Ibram Kendi’s video above.
Zinn Education Project: “Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution.”
-
General Resources:
Books & Articles:
Theising, A., ed. (2020). In the Walnut Grove: a consideration of the people enslaved in and around Florissant, Missouri. Florissant Valley Historical Society.
Frazier, H. C. (2004). Runaway and Freed Missouri Slaves and Those Who Helped Them, 1763-1865. McFarland & Co.
Wright, John A. (2002). Discovering African American St. Louis, Second Edition. Missouri Historical Society Press, pp. 14-15.
Archives:
The State Historical Society of Missouri: George P. Rawick Papers.
Museums & Parks:
-
Camp, S. M. H. (2004). Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South. The University of North Carolina Press.
Chakravarti, A. (2019). Mapping ‘Gabriel’: Space, Identity and Slavery in the Late Sixteenth-Century Indian Ocean, Past & Present, p. 243.
Greene, S.E. ed. et al. (2013). The Bitter Legacy: African Slavery Past and Present. Markus Wiener Press.
Greene, S.E. (2011). West African Narratives of Slavery: Texts from 19th and early 20th Century Ghana. Indiana University Press.
Horne, G. (2014). The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. NYU Press.
Inikori, J. and Engerman, S., eds. (1992). The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Duke University Press.
-
Berlin, I. (1998). Many thousands gone: the first two centuries of slavery in North America. Harvard University Press.
Hannah-Jones, N et al. (2021). The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. One World Press. (Quote from Michael Groth also from The 1619 Project, p. 17.)
Millward, Jessica. (2014). Finding Charity’s Folk. The University of Georgia Press.
Musselwhite, P., Mancall, P., and Horn, J. (2019) Virginia 1619: Slavery and freedom in the making of English America. University of North Carolina Press.