Moore, librarian of the New York Historical Society, discusses the role of African Americans in the Revolutionary War -- the wrangling over whether to allow Black troops to be armed and to fight, especially in the southern states -- and the formation of Black units from both northern and southern colonies.

Excerpt from Historical Notes on the Employment of Negroes in the American Army of the Revolution The employment of negroes became a subject of importance at an early stage of the American War of Independence. The British naturally regarded slavery as an element of weakness in the condition of the colonies, in which the slaves were numerous, and laid their plans to gain the blacks, and induce them to take up arms against their masters, by promising them their liberty, on this condition. One of the earliest and most powerful American Writers against Slavery (the famous Dr. Hopkins) wrote thus in 1776: "God is so ordering it in his providence, that it seems absolutely necessary something should speedily be done with respect to the slaves among us, in order to our safety, and to prevent their turning against us in our present struggle, in order to get their liberty. Our oppressors have planned to gain the blacks, and induce them to take up arms against us, by promising them liberty on this condition; and this plan they are prosecuting to the utmost of their power, by which means they have persuaded numbers to join them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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“This is a brilliant book that I believe will make a very valuable and original contribution to the way scholars understand the use of language in the era of the American Revolution and the origin and limited nature of Revolutionary era anti-slavery sentiment.” —Robert Olwell, author of Master, Slaves, and Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740–1790 In the American revolutionary era, the antislavery rhetoric of certain founding fathers often took on a life of its own. The distinctions they drew between the British imperial order and the bright dawn of liberty in a new American republic seemed, at times, to compel the freedom of the slaves as well as the freedom of white colonists. But Peter A. Dorsey shows that this rhetoric was often more strategic than principled, and he argues that understanding this ploy helps to explain why an early antislavery movement failed to achieve its goals once the American Revolution was over. In Common Bondage, Dorsey examines how patriots and those who opposed them understood slavery within a broader tradition of revolutionary thought. Especially prominent in the rhetoric and reality of the eighteenth century, this fluid concept was applied to a wide variety of events and values and was constantly being redefined. Dorsey explains the classical meaning of rhetoric as “to persuade” but notes that it can also mean “to mask” or “to mislead.” He shows how these different senses of the word merged, as revolutionary rhetoric was used to achieve limited ends. By examining the figurative extension of slavery in revolutionary rhetoric, Dorsey recaptures the transforming energy of the ideas it promoted and points toward a better understanding of the regressive aftermath. The resulting composite psychology of the slave-holding culture that existed during the country's formative years allows us to better trace the development of American racism. Peter A. Dorsey is the chair of the English Department at Mt. Saint Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Maryland. He is the author of Sacred Estrangement: The Rhetoric of Conversion in Modern American Autobiography.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The life and times of the thirty-second President who was reelected four times.