Editing American Revolution (section)

====Black Americans====
{{main|African Americans in the Revolutionary War}}
{{further|Black Patriot|Black Loyalist|Book of Negroes}}
[[File:"Crispus_Attucks,"_by_Herschel_Levit,_mural_at_the_Recorder_of_Deeds_building,_built_in_1943._515_D_St.,_NW,_Washington,_D.C_LCCN2010641712.tif|thumb|''Crispus Attucks'', a ({{Circa|1943}}) portrait by [[Herschel Levit]] depicts [[Crispus Attucks|Attucks]], who is considered to be the first American to die for the cause of independence in the Revolution.]]
[[File:Soldiers_at_the_siege_of_Yorktown_(1781),_by_Jean-Baptiste-Antoine_DeVerger_(cropped).png|thumb|An African American soldier (left) of the [[1st Rhode Island Regiment]], widely regarded as the first Black battalion in [[United States Armed Forces|U.S. military]] history]]
Free Blacks in the [[New England Colonies]] and [[Middle Colonies]] in the North as well as [[Southern Colonies]] fought on both sides of the War, but the majority fought for the Patriots. Gary Nash reports that there were about 9,000 Black veteran Patriots, counting the Continental Army and Navy, state militia units, privateers, wagoneers in the Army, servants to officers, and spies.<ref>Gary B. Nash, "The African Americans Revolution", in ''Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution'' (2012) edited by Edward G Gray and Jane Kamensky pp. 250–270, at p. 254</ref> Ray Raphael notes that thousands did join the Loyalist cause, but "a far larger number, free as well as slave, tried to further their interests by siding with the patriots."<ref>Ray Raphael, ''A People's History of the American Revolution'' (2001) p. 281</ref> [[Crispus Attucks]] was one of the five people killed in the [[Boston Massacre]] in 1770 and is considered the first American casualty for the cause of independence.

The effects of the war were more dramatic in the South. Tens of thousands of slaves escaped to British lines throughout the South, causing dramatic losses to slaveholders and disrupting cultivation and harvesting of crops. For instance, [[South Carolina]] was estimated to have lost about 25,000 slaves to flight, migration, or death which amounted to a third of its slave population.<ref>Peter Kolchin, ''American Slavery: 1619–1877'', New York: Hill and Wang, 1993, p. 73</ref>

During the war, the British commanders attempted to weaken the Patriots by issuing proclamations of freedom to their slaves.<ref name="Revolutionary War: The Home Front">[http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/amrev/homefrnt/homefrnt.html Revolutionary War: The Home Front], Library of Congress</ref> In the November 1775 document known as [[Dunmore's Proclamation]] Virginia royal governor, [[John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore|Lord Dunmore]] recruited Black men into the British forces with the promise of freedom, protection for their families, and land grants. Some men responded and briefly formed the British [[Ethiopian Regiment]]. Historian [[David Brion Davis]] explains the difficulties with a policy of wholesale arming of the slaves:

{{blockquote|But England greatly feared the effects of any such move on its own [[West Indies]], where Americans had already aroused alarm over a possible threat to incite slave insurrections. The British elites also understood that an all-out attack on one form of property could easily lead to an assault on all boundaries of privilege and social order, as envisioned by radical religious sects in Britain's seventeenth-century civil wars.<ref>Davis p. 148</ref>}}

Davis underscores the British dilemma: "Britain, when confronted by the rebellious American colonists, hoped to exploit their fear of slave revolts while also reassuring the large number of slave-holding Loyalists and wealthy Caribbean planters and merchants that their slave property would be secure".<ref>Davis p. 149</ref> The Americans, however, accused the British of encouraging slave revolts, with the issue becoming one of the [[27 colonial grievances]].<ref>Schama pp. 28–30, 78–90</ref>

The existence of [[Slavery in the colonial United States|slavery in the American colonies]] had attracted criticism from both sides of the Atlantic as many could not reconcile the existence of the institution with the egalitarian ideals espoused by leaders of the Revolution. British writer [[Samuel Johnson]] wrote "how is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of the Negroes?" in a text opposing the grievances of the colonists.<ref>Stanley Weintraub, ''Iron Tears: America's Battle for Freedom, Britain's Quagmire, 1775–1783'' (2005) p. 7</ref> Referring to this contradiction, English abolitionist [[Thomas Day (writer)|Thomas Day]] wrote in a 1776 letter that {{blockquote|if there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.<ref>(1) [https://books.google.com/books?id=X2QCAa27Zy4C&pg=PA77 Armitage, ''Global History'', 77.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160510164328/https://books.google.com/books?id=X2QCAa27Zy4C&pg=PA77 |date=May 10, 2016 }}<br />(2) {{cite book|last=Day|first=Thomas|url=https://archive.org/stream/fragmentoforigin00dayt#page/10/mode/2up|title=Fragment of an original letter on the Slavery of the Negroes, written in the year 1776|work=London: Printed for John Stockdale (1784). Boston: Re-printed by [[William Lloyd Garrison|Garrison]] and Knapp, at the office of "[[The Liberator (anti-slavery newspaper)|The Liberator]]" (1831)|page=10|access-date=February 26, 2014|quote=If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160316112142/https://archive.org/stream/fragmentoforigin00dayt#page/10/mode/2up|archive-date=March 16, 2016|url-status=live}} At: [https://archive.org/ Internet Archive] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140304015927/https://archive.org/ |date=March 4, 2014 }}: [https://archive.org/details/Johns_Hopkins_University The Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140423235217/https://archive.org/details/Johns_Hopkins_University |date=April 23, 2014 }}: [https://archive.org/details/birney James Birney Collection of Antislavery Pamphlets] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140806025911/https://archive.org/details/birney |date=August 6, 2014 }}.</ref>}} Thomas Jefferson unsuccessfully attempted to include a section in the Declaration of Independence which asserted that King George III had "forced" the [[Atlantic slave trade|slave trade]] onto the colonies.<ref name="MaierAmerican">Maier, ''American Scripture'', 146–150.</ref> Despite the turmoil of the period, African-Americans contributed to the foundation of an American national identity during the Revolution. [[Phyllis Wheatley]], an African-American poet, popularized the image of [[Columbia (name)|Columbia]] to represent America.<ref name="Hochschild p.50-51">Hochschild pp.&nbsp;50–51</ref>{{full citation needed|date=October 2024}}

The 1779 [[Philipsburg Proclamation]] expanded the promise of freedom for Black men who enlisted in the British military to all the colonies in rebellion. British forces gave transportation to 10,000 slaves when they evacuated [[Savannah, Georgia|Savannah]] and [[Charleston, South Carolina|Charleston]], carrying through on their promise.<ref>Kolchin, ''American Slavery'', p. 73</ref> They evacuated and resettled more than 3,000 [[Black Loyalist]]s from New York to [[Nova Scotia]], [[Upper Canada]], and [[Lower Canada]]. Others sailed with the British to England or were resettled as freedmen in the [[West Indies]] of the Caribbean. But slaves carried to the Caribbean under control of Loyalist masters generally remained slaves until British abolition of slavery in its colonies in 1833–1838. More than 1,200 of the Black Loyalists of Nova Scotia later resettled in the British colony of [[Sierra Leone]], where they became leaders of the [[Sierra Leone Creole people|Krio]] ethnic group of [[Freetown]] and the later national government. Many of their descendants still live in Sierra Leone, as well as other African countries.<ref>Hill (2007), see also [http://www.blackloyalist.com/ blackloyalist.com]</ref>{{full citation needed|date=October 2024}}