The Revolution

At the onset of the American revolution, there were roughly 500,000 African Americans living in the colonies and roughly 90% of them were enslaved. Black Americans keenly observed the irony of a nation pursuing independence while simultaneously clinging to the institution of slavery and called attention to the contradiction. 

In the 1770s, Phyllis Wheatley (1753-1784) was a young black writer who made this point clear. Born in Africa, and purchased in 1761, the Wheatleys recognized Phyllis’s intelligence and taught her how to read and write, even allowing her to flourish as a young poet. In her poem on tyranny and slavery, published in 1772, Wheatley describes her misery of being snatched away from her family, the cruelties that characterized her adolescence, and the sorrows that plagued her parents. But when it to her hopes for American revolutionaries, she wondered, “And can I then but pray, Others may never feel tyrannic sway?” Like most American Revolutionaries, Wheatley interpreted British tyranny as a form of slavery. [2]

Thousands of black Americans fought in the Revolutionary War. Although reasons varied, most fought for the cause of advancing liberty in whatever form. Crispus Attucks (1723-1770) was a prominent figure, considered the first person killed in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. Attucks, an African American, became a symbol of the struggle for freedom and equality. After the outbreak of war, George Washington initially believed it would be imprudent to arm enslaved Africans, who might fight alongside their armed masters. This policy changed, however, after Lord Dumore’s proclamation on November 7, 1775 that recruited many black fighters and to promising freedom to slaves who would abandon their slave masters and join British efforts. Eventually, the Continental Congress lifted the ban on black Americans in the army in hopes of securing victory. Black Americans joined the patriots, hopeful that a liberated nation would fully uphold the principles of liberty.

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When Americans maintained a commitment to slavery well after the war, Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806), a free black mathematician, was sure to highlight the hypocrisy. In a letter rebuking Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Banneker wrote, “sir, how pitiable is it to reflect that, although you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of Mankind, and others equal an impartial distribution of these rights and privileges which he had conferred upon them, did you should at the same time counteract His mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence, so numerous apart of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you so professedly detested in others" [3]. Whether through artistic expression or through direct confrontation, black Americans identified the ironies of slavery in a land premised on freedom and equality. 

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Native Americans were also involved in the war efforts. Like black Americans, Native loyalty depended on pre-existing relationships. For example, the Oneida people sided with the colonial cause due to their previous relationship with the Colony of Connecticut. In the “Oneida Declaration of Neutrality, 1775,” delivered through Captain Solomon Ahhaunnauwaumut, the tribe addressed the colonists as “brothers,” and declared, “whenever I see your blood running, you will soon find me about to revenge my brother’s blood…Only point out to me where your enemies keep, and that is all I shall want to know.”  For the tribal captain and his fellow Oneidans, the colonists needed to point locate the enemies as the tribe would take care of the rest that is to “fight in my own Indian way.” [4]

Whereas the Oneidans allied with the colonists, the Lenape tribe sided with the British over their disdain for colonists. Writing to his fellow “Christian native Americans at Gnadenhutten in 1781,” Lenape Chief Buckongahelas sought to persuade their alliance towards the British in light of “cruel acts” committed by the colonists. Describing the British-Patriot relationship to that of father-son, the colonists had violated his fellow Indians “in encroaching on their lands, stealing their property, shoot at, and murdering without cause, men, women, and children—Yes! Even murdering those, who at all times had been friendly to them…” [5]

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The patriots gained victory over the British with the assistance of both black and native Americans. Although each group had disagreements over their alliances, both black and native Americans fought with the patriots in the Revolutionary War. Ironically, however, the new nation's founding documents had precluded their full involvement in society as the United States of America took shape.