Editing American Revolution (section)

===Status of African Americans===
{{main|African-American history}}
[[File:Prince_Estabrook_memorial_close_up.jpg|thumb|A [[Lexington, Massachusetts]] memorial to [[Prince Estabrook]], who was wounded in the [[Battle of Lexington and Concord]] and was the first Black casualty of the [[American Revolutionary War|Revolutionary War]]]]
[[File:00SalemPoor.jpg|thumb|A postage stamp, created at the time of the bicentennial, honors [[Salem Poor]], who was an enslaved African American man who purchased his freedom, became a soldier, and rose to fame as a war hero during the [[Battle of Bunker Hill]].<ref>Hubbard, Robert Ernest. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=XwPFDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA98 Major General Israel Putnam: Hero of the American Revolution]'', p. 98, McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, North Carolina, 2017. {{ISBN|978-1476664538}}.</ref>]]
During the revolution, the contradiction between the Patriots' professed ideals of liberty and the institution of slavery generated increased scrutiny of the latter.<ref name="Ideological-Origins-Bailyn">{{cite book|first=Bernard|last=Bailyn|title=The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution|publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|edition=3rd|isbn=978-0674975651|year=2017|orig-date=1967}}</ref>{{rp|235}}<ref name="Moral-Capital">{{cite book|last=Brown|first=Christopher Leslie|title=Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|location=Chapel Hill|year=2006|isbn=978-0807830345}}</ref>{{rp|105–106}}<ref name="Radicalism-Wood">{{cite book|last=Wood|first=Gordon S.|title=The Radicalism of the American Revolution|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|location=New York|year=1992|isbn=0679404937}}</ref>{{rp|186}} As early as 1764, the Boston Patriot leader [[James Otis, Jr.]] declared that all men, "white or black", were "by the law of nature" born free.<ref name="Ideological-Origins-Bailyn"/>{{rp|237}} Anti-slavery calls became more common in the early 1770s. In 1773, [[Benjamin Rush]], the future signer of the Declaration of Independence, called on "advocates for American liberty" to oppose slavery.<ref name="Ideological-Origins-Bailyn"/>{{rp|239}} Slavery became an issue that had to be addressed.  As historian Christopher L. Brown put it, slavery "had never been on the agenda in a serious way before," but the Revolution "forced it to be a public question from there forward."<ref>Brown, Christopher. PBS Video "Liberty! The American Revolution," Episode 6, "Are We to be a Nation?," Twin Cities Television, Inc. 1997.</ref><ref>Brown, Christopher Leslie. ''Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism'', pp. 105–106. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2006. [[ISBN|978-0-8078-3034-5]].</ref>

In the late 1760s and early 1770s, several colonies, including Massachusetts and Virginia, attempted to restrict the slave trade, but were prevented from doing so by royally appointed governors.<ref name="Ideological-Origins-Bailyn"/>{{rp|245}} In 1774, as part of a broader non-importation movement aimed at Britain, the Continental Congress called on all the colonies to ban the importation of slaves, and the colonies passed acts doing so.<ref name="Ideological-Origins-Bailyn"/>{{rp|245}}

In the first two decades after the American Revolution, state legislatures and individuals took actions to free slaves, in part based on revolutionary ideals. Northern states passed new constitutions that contained language about equal rights or specifically abolished slavery; some states, such as New York and New Jersey, where slavery was more widespread, passed laws by the end of the 18th century to abolish slavery by a gradual method. By 1804, all the northern states had passed laws outlawing slavery, either immediately or over time.<ref>Arthur Zilversmit, ''The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North'' (1967) pp. 201-230</ref>

No southern state abolished slavery. However, individual owners could free their slaves by personal decision. Numerous slaveholders who freed their slaves cited revolutionary ideals in their documents; others freed slaves as a reward for service. Records also suggest that some slaveholders were freeing their own mixed-race children, born into slavery to slave mothers. The number of free Blacks as a proportion of the Black population in the upper South increased from less than 1 percent to nearly 10 percent between 1790 and 1810 as a result of these actions.<ref>Ketcham, Ralph. ''James Madison: A Biography'', pp. 625–626, American Political Biography Press, Newtown, Connecticut, 1971. {{ISBN|0945707339}}.</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/franklin/|title=Benjamin Franklin Petitions Congress|date=August 15, 2016|publisher=National Archives and Records Administration}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Petition from the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery|url=http://www.ushistory.org:80/documents/antislavery.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060521035446/http://www.ushistory.org/documents/antislavery.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=May 21, 2006|date=February 3, 1790|access-date=May 21, 2006|last=Franklin|first=Benjamin}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=John Paul Kaminski|title=A Necessary Evil?: Slavery and the Debate Over the Constitution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t3SDQgfxsCIC&pg=PA256|year=1995|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|page=256|isbn=978-0945612339}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Painter|first=Nell Irvin|title=Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present|year=2007|page=72}}</ref><ref>Wood, Gordon S. ''Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson'', pp. 19, 132, 348, 416, Penguin Press, New York, 2017. {{ISBN|978-0735224711}}.</ref><ref name="wsws.org">{{cite web|url=https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/28/wood-n28.html|title=Mackaman, Tom. "An Interview with Historian Gordon Wood on the New York Times 1619 Project,"|website=wsws.org|access-date=October 10, 2020|date=November 28, 2019}}</ref><ref name="Mackaman, Tom 2015">{{cite web|url=https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/03/wood-m03.html|title=Mackaman, Tom. "Interview with Gordon Wood on the American Revolution: Part One", World Socialist Web Site, wsws.org, March 3, 2015. Retrieved October 10, 2020.|date=March 3, 2015}}</ref><ref>Wood, Gordon S. ''The Radicalism of the American Revolution'', pp. 3–8, 186–187, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1992. {{ISBN|0679404937}}.</ref><ref name="Bailyn, Bernard pp. 221-4">Bailyn, Bernard. ''Faces of Revolution: Personalities and Themes in the Struggle for American Independence'', pp. 221–224, Vintage Books, New York, 1992. {{ISBN|0679736239}}.</ref>{{Excessive citations inline|date=May 2024}} Nevertheless, slavery continued in the South, where it became a "peculiar institution", setting the stage for future sectional conflict between North and South over the issue.<ref name="Radicalism-Wood"/>{{rp|186–187}}

Thousands of free Blacks in the northern states fought in the state militias and Continental Army. In the south, both sides offered freedom to slaves who would perform military service. Roughly 20,000 slaves fought in the American Revolution.<ref>Hubbard, Robert Ernest. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=XwPFDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA98 Major General Israel Putnam: Hero of the American Revolution]'', p. 98, McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, NC, 2017. {{ISBN|978-1476664538}}; Hoock, Holger. ''Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth'', pp. 95, 300–303, 305, 308–310, Crown Publishing Group, New York, 2017. {{ISBN|978-0804137287}}; O'Reilly, Bill and Dugard, Martin. ''Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence'', pp. 96, 308, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2017. {{ISBN|978-1627790642}}; {{cite web|url=https://www.historyisfun.org/learn/learning-center/african-americans-and-the-american-revolution-2/|title=Ayres, Edward. "African Americans and the American Revolution," Jamestown Settlement and American Revolution Museum at Yorktown website, Retrieved October 21, 2020.}}; {{cite web|url=http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/active_learning/explorations/revolution/revolution_slavery.cfm#:~:text=Slavery%2C%20the%20American%20Revolution%2C%20and%20the%20Constitution%20African,sensitivity%20to%20the%20opinion%20of%20southern%20slave%20holders|title="Slavery, the American Revolution, and the Constitution", University of Houston Digital History website, Retrieved October 21, 2020}}</ref>