Alan Gilbert > Quotes

“Committed only to royal victory, rather than to abolition, Clinton distinguished blacks who fled from rebels from those who escaped Tories. He sometimes returned ex-slaves to Loyalist masters.74 Furthermore, he instructed Cornwallis, his successor in South Carolina, “to make such arrangements as will discourage . . . [slaves of Tories] joining us.”75 Yet even slaves of Tories still escaped to the British forces. And Clinton instructed Major General Alexander Leslie, a British commander in Charleston, to assign the vast number of blacks who had answered his proclamation to any job except soldiering. Clinton’s directive to Leslie echoes the imperial racism exemplified by the likes of Captain Ewald. As a contrast, the French Jacobins, responding to the Saint Domingue insurrection in one sweeping 1794 measure, would abolish slavery throughout the French colonies.”
― Alan Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence