Female Slavery - Revolutionary Era

Revolutionary Era

Related Wikipedia article: African Americans in the Revolutionary War

During the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) enslaved women served on both sides, the Loyalist army as well as the Patriots', as nurses, laundresses, and cooks. But as historian Carol Berkin writes, "African American loyalties were to their own future, not to Congress or to king." Enslaved women could be found in army camps and as camp followers. They worked building roads, constructing fortifications, and laundering uniforms, "but they remained slaves rather than refugees. Masters usually hired these women out to the military, sometimes hiring out their children as well." Enslaved women could also be found working in the shops, homes, fields, and plantations of every American colony. It is estimated that by 1770, there were more than 47,000 enslaved black in the northern colonies, almost 20,000 of them in New York. More than 320,000 slaves worked in the Chesapeake colonies, making 37 percent of the population of the region African or African American. Over 187,000 of these slaves were in Virginia. In the Lower South there were more than 92,000 slaves. South Carolina alone had over 75,000 slaves, and by 1770 planters there were importing 4,000 Africans a year. In many counties in the Lower South, the slave population outnumbered the white. Although service in the military did not guarantee enslaved people their freedom, black men had the opportunity to escape slavery by enlisting in the army and men and women could run away. Men were more likely to run away, as pregnant women, mothers, and women who nursed their elderly parents or friends seldom abandoned those who depended on them. As many people deserted their plantations in South Carolina, there were not enough field hands to plant or harvest crops, and as food grew scarce the blacks who remained behind suffered from starvation or enemy attack. The British issued certificates of manumission to more than 914 women as reward for serving on the Loyalist army. But many women who had won their freedom lost it again "through violence and trickery and the venality of men entrusted with their care." Others who managed to secure their freedom faced racial prejudice, discrimination, and poverty. When loyalist plantations were captured, enslaved women were often taken and sold for the soldiers' profit. One of the most well-known voices for freedom around the Revolutionary era was Phillis Wheatley of Massachusetts. She was a slave for most of her life but was given freedom by her own master. Educated in Latin, Greek, and English, Wheatley wrote a collection of poems which asserted that Africans, as children of God just like Europeans, deserved respect and freedom. In 1777, Vermont drafted their state constitution which prohibited the institution of slavery. In 1780 Massachusetts a judge declared slavery to be unconstitutional according to the state's bill of rights which declared "all men...free and equal." This led to an increase of enslaved men and women suing for their freedom in New England. Also in 1780 in Pennsylvania, the legislature enacted "a gradual emancipation law that directly connected the ideals of the Revolution with the rights of the African Americans to freedom." In the South, the immediate legacy of the Revolution was increased manumission, but with the invention of the cotton gin and the opening up of southwestern lands to cotton and sugar production, attitudes toward emancipation hardened and white legislators passed harsher laws regulating African American lives.