Existing comment:
African Virginians 1775
By the time of the American Revolution, over 186,000 enslaved blacks lived in Virginia. Most worked on the larger plantations in Tidewater and Piedmont.
The Revolution and African Virginians:
The rhetoric of the American Revolution about liberty and equality, though not intended for African Virginians, was heard by them nonetheless. The irony of fighting for liberty while owning slaves troubled some whites, and for a time it seemed that something would be done. When no proposal proved economically acceptable to slaveowners, some slaves too matters into their own hands.
Like whites, African Virginians were divided by the Revolution, unsure which was the path to freedom. In November 1775, the last royal governor, Lord Dunmore, proclaimed the freedom of any slave who would join the British cause. Thousands of black Virginians did. A smaller number served with the American forces. In 1789, the Virginia legislature freed Caesar, a slave of the Tarrant family, who had piloted the Patriot, a Virginia vessel on which other black seamen also served. For his services as a spy and guide, Saul Matthews was praised by such generals as baron von Steuben and Nathaniel Greene.
The Commonwealth acted ambivalently. In 1778, Virginia outlawed the slave trade, but two years later the legislature voted to reward Revolutionary War veterans with three hundred acres of land -- and a slave. In 1782, when the General Assembly allowed slaveowners to free their slaves, a minority did -- often religious evangelicals. But outright abolition seemed too costly, and the momentum for reform died out.
Some black Virginians decided to act. In 1800 and 1802, two slave rebellions were planned. Both were betrayed by informers. Gabriel, leader of the first revolt, had been owned by a friend of Patrick Henry, whose famous words the slave rebels intended to invert and put on a banner -- "Death or Liberty." Another slave revolt, led by Nat Turner in 1831, was symbolically scheduled for July 4. |