Liberty and Freedom - Now with 50% more DECEIT!

It is conflicting to think that American democracy was established by men who had established their wealth and political power largely on the backs of slaves. The economy of the colonial era revolved on the labor of slaves, and thus those who arrived with intentions to grow their wealth found that slavery was a necessity to business success. One can thus make the argument that slaves provided the conduit for liberty and democracy, but ironically although both the Patriots and slaves shared the common core desire for “liberty”, they shared not the same vision for its execution.

The irony is too great to deny; the Revolutionary War “through the eyes of enslaved blacks turns its meaning upside down. In Georgia, the Carolinas and much of Virginia, the vaunted war for liberty was, from the spring of 1775 to the late summer of 1776, a war for the perpetuation of servitude”. (Schama) Yet, the perpetuation of servitude translated into a life of "liberty and the pursuit of happieness" to a select powerful few, whom did not include Black slaves, servants, the poor, or women.

Oppression must always have an oppressor and a victim, and in the case of slaves in America, there existed more than one source of oppression and/or exploitation. Slaves were quickly identified as pawns for the advancement of each side in the battle between Loyalists and the Patriots. For example, “there were also many blacks who gave the Patriots the benefit of the doubt when they listened and read of their war as a war for liberty…By contrast, the proclamation of John Murray, Lord Dunmore, the last Colonial governor of Virginia, from HMS William on November 7, 1775, unequivocally promised outright liberty to all slaves escaping from Rebel plantations, reaching British lines and serving in some capacity with the army”. (Schama)

With slaves holding a formidable percentage of the population of plantation colonies and even port cities, a prudent Patriot or British leader could not deny that these humans, denied of freedom (and the pursuit of happiness), would seek to side with whomever they saw most likely to grant them their freedom, whether that be the promise of a court case an entire ocean away, or the romantic movement of the Patriot.






Africans in America. Author Unknown. Online video. Video.YouTube.com. 2006. < http://www.youtube.com/v/CgqHwzS9HKM>.

Faragher, John, et al. Out of Many - A History of the American People. Fifth Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. 2006.

Schama, Simon. "Dirty little secret: to see the Revolutionary War through the eyes of slaves is to better understand why so many of them fought for the crown.(PRESENCE OF MIND)." Smithsonian 37.2 (May 2006): 102(8). Expanded Academic ASAP. Thomson Gale. CCL Diablo Valley College. 7 July 2007
URL HERE.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. HarperCollins Publishers; New York, New York. 2005.