Were the Virginia Slaves Loyalists or Revolutionaries in the Revolutionary War?

Obviously, there is no moral basis for slavery as seen through modern eyes, and the enslaved considered it "wrong" from the beginning. However unpleasant we may find the story, slavery has to be examined if you expect to understand why Virginia evolved as it did in the colonial era.

The Tidewater Virginians depended upon free labor; slavery was essential to their plantation economy and fully accepted within the colonial culture. Tobacco was a labor-intensive crop which wore out the soil in only a few years (in the days before artificial fertilizers). Virginians had lots of available land, and the limiting factor was labor. Importing Africans (often after they had been "seasoned" or proven resistant to disease after a stay on Caribbean Islands) would not have been sufficient - the planters needed very cheap labor.

Creating a legal framework for slavery, so no wages had to be paid for agricultural labor, was the solution to this problem. The Virginians made sure that slavery became a lifetime condition, and that children of slaves would also be slaves for life.

The Spanish, who faced a similar challenge with their colonial estates, crafted the encomienda system to regulate the use of Natives for labor. Under pressure from the Catholic Church, however, the Spanish did not establish hereditary slavery for Native Americans. Instead, a system of peonage evolved that was equally odious to modern morals.

By 1775, the House of Burgesses was totally committed to retaining slavery as a fundamental part of Virginia society. By the time of the American Revolution, Virginia politicians had been crafting slave codes for a century. They created new law governing slavery, based in part on practices on Caribbean islands - because slavery was not part of the common law in England.

Lord Mansfield ruled in the Somerset Case in 1772 that a slave purchased in Virginia became a free man when transported to England. In Lord Mansfield's opinion, "It [slavery] is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law. "Positive law" meant that Parliament must specifically authorize slavery in order for it to be legal in England.

When the gentry chose to fight for colonial rights, they wrote a constitution for the new, independent state. The Virginia Convention that approved the constitution in June, 1776 was an elected body that had replaced the House of Burgesses. However, they chose to adopt the new fundamental law without submitting it to a vote of the people - and even then, the slaves would not have been permitted to vote.

George Mason crafted the language that allowed the convention to declare that the white residents of the colony should be politically free from England without allowing the black slaves to gain personal freedom. The first sentence in his Declaration of Rights claims:

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

His key phrase was "when they enter into a state of society." The slaves were more in a state of nature, not full members of society, and therefore slavery could continue unaltered while Virginia fought for liberty. If the western Virginians were inclined to be loyalists because they were opposed to economic domination by the Tidewater planters... imagine the incentive for the slaves to support the British.

Lord Dunmore recognized that the slaves would be willing to support the British forces in hopes of gaining freedom. He issued a proclamation on November 7, 1775 saying in part:

And I do hereby further declare all indented Servants, Negroes, or others, (appertaining to Rebels,) free that are able and willing to bear Arms, they joining His MAJESTY'S Troops as soon as may be, foe the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper Sense of their Duty, to His MAJESTY'S Crown and Dignity.

Dunmore assembled his Ethiopian Regiment, which fought at the battle of Great Bridge. Some managed to flee with Dunmore to New York in 1776. When Sir George Collier raided Hampton Roads in 1779, 518 blacks managed to flee Virginia when he withdrew.¹

However, many ex-slaves still hoping for freedom via the British were severely disappointed when General Leslie withdrew from Portsmouth in 1780. "Leslie's departure several hundred blacks who had fled to the British lines stranded because there was no room for them in the fleet."² In October, 1781, at the end of the American Revolution, Cornwallis forced the blacks still with his army to move outside of his protected perimeter. They had to hide from the bombardment of Yorktown in the small no-man's land between the British and American/French lines, or accept re-enslavement by surrendering to the Americans.

Links

• African Americans at Williamsburg, especially
  • Letter Regarding Dunmore's Proclamation
  • Runaway Advertisements
  • The Diary of Colonel Landon Carter

References

Quarles, Benjamin, The Negro in the American Revolution