250 and Counting

Tag: African-American History

  • The Birth of the Black Loyalists–November 14, 1775

    Cover art for November 14, 1775: art depicting a member of Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment. Original artist is unknown but this image is frequently used to represent those soldiers.

    Lord Dunmore issued his Proclamation just a week earlier, but the response was much stronger than anticipated, probably because—who knew!—people hate being slaves.

    While the Proclamation only applied to the Virginia colony, because Dunmore had no authority conferred upon him anywhere else, a huge number of slaves and otherwise indentured servants from throughout the thirteen colonies fled to the British side of the lines.

    (We have to say “throughout” because slavery was a thing in the north at this point; it just wasn’t nearly as common as in the south.)

    This led to thousands of “American” blacks living ex-patriate lives throughout the British Empire after the Revolution.

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  • Dis-Integrated–November 12, 1775

    Cover art for November 12, 1775: "Soldiers in the First Rhode Island Regiment /Varnum's Black Regiment," Frank Quagan, c. 1976.

    It should come as a surprise to nobody that America has a troubled relationship with its past when it comes to race relations.

    It may come as surprise to you that our Founding Fathers had a complex relationship with their present when it comes to race relations. Yes, many of them owned slaves, but a significant percentage of those men had committed to freeing them at some point.

    The problem was, that point was rather nebulous. And there was a lot of ambiguity when it came to the question of how to deal with both slaves and free Blacks at that time. As we noted a couple of days ago, Lord Dunmore had a pretty good idea to free any Blacks who chose to fight on the British side. Unfortunately it was rather poorly executed and soldiers were killed, died of smallpox, or returned to their masters. Very few of them remained free. It also never occurred to Dunmore that women and children might be interested in the deal, too.

    The idea crossed George Washington’s mind, too. Until it un-crossed it, then crossed it again.

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  • October 8, 1775: The War Gets Whiter

    Cover art for October 8, 1775: Portrait of James Fayette in 1784 by John Blennerhasset Martin. Fayette joined the Continental forces as a spy under Lafayette.

    When the war first started, the Continental Army took on all comers, largely because they didn’t have a lot of choice. Frankly, they needed whatever bodies they could get.

    But it was around this time in 1775 that George Washington and his advisers decided that they could afford to get choosier about their recruits, So they decided not to take on any more Black soldiers. What’s more, soldiers who were already there would not be permitted to re-enlist.

    Eventually—in a couple of years—they’d reverse their stance, for the same reason they took on the Black soldiers in the first place. They were getting low on manpower,

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