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Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence
A surprising look at the roles of African Americans in the Revolutionary “An elegant and passionate writer, Alan Gilbert pulls no punches.”—Historian We think of the American Revolution as the war for independence from British colonial rule. But, of course, that independence actually applied to only a portion of the American population—African Americans would still be bound in slavery for nearly another century. Drawing on first-person accounts and primary sources, Alan Gilbert asks us to rethink what we know about the Revolutionary War, to realize that while white Americans were fighting for their freedom, many black Americans were joining the British imperial forces to gain theirs. Further, a movement led by sailors—both black and white—pushed strongly for emancipation on the American side. There were actually two wars being waged at a political revolution for independence from Britain, and a social revolution for emancipation and equality—planting the seeds for future freedom. “The personal stories of those who fought on the patriots’ side in an all-black regiment and on the loyalist side in exchange for a promise of freedom are fascinating and informative.”—Booklist
388 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 31, 2015
Enjoyable as a narrative and an academic resource. Gilbert provides meticulous research that may come off as tedious but is ultimately necessary.
The concept of the two distinct revolutions puts American history in perspective. I especially enjoyed the commentary on John Laurens, one of the more admirable figures in early American history and someone I was not aware of before I read this book.
The concept of the two distinct revolutions puts American history in perspective. I especially enjoyed the commentary on John Laurens, one of the more admirable figures in early American history and someone I was not aware of before I read this book.
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October 18, 2015Description: We commonly think of the American Revolution as simply the war for independence from British colonial rule. But, of course, that independence actually applied to only a portion of the American population—African Americans would still be bound in slavery for nearly another century. Alan Gilbert asks us to rethink what we know about the Revolutionary War, to realize that while white Americans were fighting for their freedom, many black Americans were joining the British imperial forces to gain theirs. Further, a movement led by sailors—both black and white—pushed strongly for emancipation on the American side. There were actually two wars being waged at once: a political revolution for independence from Britain and a social revolution for emancipation and equality.
Gilbert presents persuasive evidence that slavery could have been abolished during the Revolution itself if either side had fully pursued the military advantage of freeing slaves and pressing them into combat, and his extensive research also reveals that free blacks on both sides played a crucial and underappreciated role in the actual fighting. Black Patriots and Loyalists contends that the struggle for emancipation was not only basic to the Revolution itself, but was a rousing force that would inspire freedom movements like the abolition societies of the North and the black loyalist pilgrimages for freedom in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone.
Gilbert presents persuasive evidence that slavery could have been abolished during the Revolution itself if either side had fully pursued the military advantage of freeing slaves and pressing them into combat, and his extensive research also reveals that free blacks on both sides played a crucial and underappreciated role in the actual fighting. Black Patriots and Loyalists contends that the struggle for emancipation was not only basic to the Revolution itself, but was a rousing force that would inspire freedom movements like the abolition societies of the North and the black loyalist pilgrimages for freedom in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone.
December 14, 2018
When I read Father Knickerbocker Rebels, I criticised its author for allowing his own viewpoint to so clearly colour his history. That was easy to do because I disagreed with the author's biases, and because in the seventy years since the book was written, historiography had moved on to the point that the way they manifested themselves (Wertenbaker twisting the history so that it better fit his preferred narrative) had become totally unacceptable. It's trickier to make the same criticism of Black Patriots and Loyalists, because I completely agree with the author's viewpoint on the great moral evil that slavery was and racism still is, and because that viewpoint colours Gilbert's accounts in different ways. But nevertheless, the preference throughout the book for describing things using emotive terms like theft, rape and racist--though they're 100% morally correct--prevent the sense of detachment or objectivity that a historian depends on for credibility. Gilbert is also far too fond of "scare quotes", even (bizarrely) when a one-sentence aside about ancient Greek history leads him to making a passing reference to Alexander "the Great".
But this is a good book on an important aspect of the American Revolutionary War that seems to get little attention in the popular arena. A multi-faceted picture emerges of the African American experience of the Revolution:
1. That blacks fought for either side, depending on which was more likely to lead ultimately to their freedom
2. That historians have significantly whitewashed our picture of the Revolutionary War; for instance, there's a credible case that a full quarter of the Continental Army at the Battle of Yorktown were black.
3. That for the most part, for non-whites the American Revolution was a cause of liberty against tyranny, but in their case the side of liberty was the British side, while the Americans represented the continuance of tyranny and oppression; this is why far more blacks (and American Indians) fought for the British than for the Americans.
4. That the British weren't the great emancipators of the American Revolution out of any sort of moral conviction, but from pragmatism--they recruited the slaves of the Patriot side because it was a really effective way to hurt the Patriot cause. Be that as it may, when the war reached its conclusion, the British leaders in North America felt honour bound to protect the blacks who had served the Crown during the war and went out of their way to remove Africans from American territory and foil American attempts to reenslave them.
5. That the war led to something of an upsurge in white abolitionism on both sides of the Atlantic, though it obviously wasn't enough to end the slave trade or end slavery in the American South or the British West Indies.
Gilbert is clearly not a specialist in eighteenth century history. He's unfamiliar with words like "batteau" or "octoroon"; he calculates the number of black soldiers in the British Army by counting the number of women and children with the army because, he says, British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries didn't bring their families with them on campaign (in fact, it was an extremely common practice for redcoats to be followed by their women and children; regiments of the time couldn't have functioned without their services as laundresses, cooks and baggage minders); he refers to Benjamin Harrison as "a future president" (Benjamin Harrison was president of the United States from 1889-93, so it would have been especially impressive if he, rather than his great-grandfather of the same name, were a Virginia planter who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776). Perhaps it's this lack of familiarity with the time that leads him to assert, repeatedly through the book, that either side could have won the war without much effort at all if they had simply decided to abolish slavery and field an army from the thousands of black recruits this would have generated.
It sounds like I'm being harsh on the book, so I'll end with this: I first got a copy through the University of Chicago's free ebook of the month programme, but somewhere along the line, that e-dition vanished off my Kobo, so when I sat down to read the book, I had to pay $12 for a new copy. I don't regret having to pay full price for a book I already owned, and I'm glad I own it once again, because I learnt a lot.
But this is a good book on an important aspect of the American Revolutionary War that seems to get little attention in the popular arena. A multi-faceted picture emerges of the African American experience of the Revolution:
1. That blacks fought for either side, depending on which was more likely to lead ultimately to their freedom
2. That historians have significantly whitewashed our picture of the Revolutionary War; for instance, there's a credible case that a full quarter of the Continental Army at the Battle of Yorktown were black.
3. That for the most part, for non-whites the American Revolution was a cause of liberty against tyranny, but in their case the side of liberty was the British side, while the Americans represented the continuance of tyranny and oppression; this is why far more blacks (and American Indians) fought for the British than for the Americans.
4. That the British weren't the great emancipators of the American Revolution out of any sort of moral conviction, but from pragmatism--they recruited the slaves of the Patriot side because it was a really effective way to hurt the Patriot cause. Be that as it may, when the war reached its conclusion, the British leaders in North America felt honour bound to protect the blacks who had served the Crown during the war and went out of their way to remove Africans from American territory and foil American attempts to reenslave them.
5. That the war led to something of an upsurge in white abolitionism on both sides of the Atlantic, though it obviously wasn't enough to end the slave trade or end slavery in the American South or the British West Indies.
Gilbert is clearly not a specialist in eighteenth century history. He's unfamiliar with words like "batteau" or "octoroon"; he calculates the number of black soldiers in the British Army by counting the number of women and children with the army because, he says, British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries didn't bring their families with them on campaign (in fact, it was an extremely common practice for redcoats to be followed by their women and children; regiments of the time couldn't have functioned without their services as laundresses, cooks and baggage minders); he refers to Benjamin Harrison as "a future president" (Benjamin Harrison was president of the United States from 1889-93, so it would have been especially impressive if he, rather than his great-grandfather of the same name, were a Virginia planter who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776). Perhaps it's this lack of familiarity with the time that leads him to assert, repeatedly through the book, that either side could have won the war without much effort at all if they had simply decided to abolish slavery and field an army from the thousands of black recruits this would have generated.
It sounds like I'm being harsh on the book, so I'll end with this: I first got a copy through the University of Chicago's free ebook of the month programme, but somewhere along the line, that e-dition vanished off my Kobo, so when I sat down to read the book, I had to pay $12 for a new copy. I don't regret having to pay full price for a book I already owned, and I'm glad I own it once again, because I learnt a lot.
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October 18, 2015Free download available at University of Chicago Press.
“Most of us think we know the story of the American Revolution, but after reading Alan Gilbert’s amazing book I realize that what most of us know is less than half of the story.”—Hilary Putnam, Harvard University.
“Most of us think we know the story of the American Revolution, but after reading Alan Gilbert’s amazing book I realize that what most of us know is less than half of the story.”—Hilary Putnam, Harvard University.
December 17, 2017
This is an incredibly deeply researched book that provides a great understanding of how blacks reacted to the American Revolution. Most books have focused on the blacks that served with Washington's armies; Gilbert does that (a complete description of Laurens' efforts to get South Carolina to free and enlist blacks against the British, for example) but his focus is really on the Loyalist participation, involving many thousands of blacks fleeing slavery and the American political inability to deal with it. Although the rhetoric is Marxist, the facts are extensive and well documented; you don't need to adopt Gilbert's "two revolutions" argument to understand the basic nature of black participation on both sides, and on their own side. I do wish there were more tables and fewer pages and paragraphs of counts of people doing things, it makes the book less readable, as does some of the fulsome language, but the research speaks for itself.
September 26, 2017
Great book with some fascinating (& well documented) facts that weren't taught in my history class...
Despite George Washington’s desperation to recover slaves, Henry Washington (one of George Washington's many slaves) had escaped him and now immigrated to Africa.
Where blacks imagined the king as liberator, whites saw only a tyrant
A slave who had belonged to George Washington, escaped to the English under Dunmore in the summer of 1775. Desiring vengeance, George Washington’s cousin and manager, wrote that if the slave he comes to Mt Vernon, raising the rest, "I will shoot him, that will be some Satisfaction."
He labeled Governor Dunmore ,the emancipator of Virginian slaves, Washington called an “Arch Traitor to the Rights of Humanity” for what amounted to Washington’s own crimes.
Despite George Washington’s desperation to recover slaves, Henry Washington (one of George Washington's many slaves) had escaped him and now immigrated to Africa.
Where blacks imagined the king as liberator, whites saw only a tyrant
A slave who had belonged to George Washington, escaped to the English under Dunmore in the summer of 1775. Desiring vengeance, George Washington’s cousin and manager, wrote that if the slave he comes to Mt Vernon, raising the rest, "I will shoot him, that will be some Satisfaction."
He labeled Governor Dunmore ,the emancipator of Virginian slaves, Washington called an “Arch Traitor to the Rights of Humanity” for what amounted to Washington’s own crimes.
December 1, 2025
Gilbert puts the Revolution into an international context and suggests that the yearning for freedom by the enslaved people in the colonies spread widely through the black diaspora that had been freed. In Nova Scotia, the black loyalists who faced racial discrimination fought to have the same rights as British subjects and to end bondage in any overseas British territory (216-218). The black diasporas had planted seeds of freedom in Sierra Leone, Nova Scotia, and the Abolitionist Societies of the North. By contextualizing the war internationally, he can contribute to Atlantic history of race; it is a fresh perspective on how the Revolution both shaped and was shaped by a more extensive global struggle for freedom.
March 12, 2022
Challenging, but worth the effort.
Incredibly well researched. Worth reading. A legitimate history of how slaves and freemen were used by both sides during the revolutionary war and the period following. Not a high level commentary or woke version of history. This is a dense, challenging read relying on primary sources. Even skimming I learned new things about the war and 18th century culture I wasn’t previously aware of. It’s worth 5 stars on content. I gave it 4 because it was so densely packed with information, I found it a challenging read. I also think it was worth the effort.
Incredibly well researched. Worth reading. A legitimate history of how slaves and freemen were used by both sides during the revolutionary war and the period following. Not a high level commentary or woke version of history. This is a dense, challenging read relying on primary sources. Even skimming I learned new things about the war and 18th century culture I wasn’t previously aware of. It’s worth 5 stars on content. I gave it 4 because it was so densely packed with information, I found it a challenging read. I also think it was worth the effort.
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July 19, 2018So in the musical Hamilton (aka the only and every thing that I love), this exchange occurs as the cast narrates the conclusion (warning: profanity) of the Battle of Yorktown:
Gilbert's book traces black participation in the two concurrent (and sometimes contradictory) revolutions: American's freedom from Britain, and black Americans' freedom from slavery. Probably unsurprisingly, the short summary is this: the Patriot and the Loyalist sides both challenged and reinforced slavery in their pursuit of victory, for reasons both pragmatic and principled, and both sides incorporated blacks in their military, but to different extents and with lackluster documentation. Despite the latter, Gilbert writes a thoroughly researched account--and account it is; Gilbert discusses documentation and then analyzes and defends his interpretations well. It's very readable but also a very dry read at times because of So Many Lists, So Many Stories. It got reeeaally dry at times. Since Gilbert's a political theorist and not a historian by training, I had actually expected more political theory (that's my academic background), but this is definitely a history.
The footnotes are extensive and also sometimes wonderful, as that's where Gilbert manages to contain his polite and professional comments that challenge other researchers for their racism and for their other blinders. (He footnotes a passage of his that basically calls b.s. on white slaveowners claiming their slaves loved them sincerely, and in this footnote, dutifully references a historian who has previously argued otherwise, and calmly adds, "but I am skeptical.") There was one time in his own text that I was kind of taken aback (Gilbert compared Colonel Tye to a mountain lion, in a positive fashion, which I thought was weird and an unnecessary dehumanization when no one else was getting their skills compared to an animal's), but for the most part, Gilbert wrote from a solidly and unapologetic anti-racist position.
And, yeah, I learned a lot from this book and I can recommend it for a learning experience but not necessarily a reading experience (although, read the footnotes if you do read this, they're lovely). It's a good non-fiction read-along with or follow-up to The Book of Negroes. Given the difficulty many Americans have as conceptualizing the Civil War as about slavery, it's probably not an easy sell to demonstrate the extent of how the Revolutionary War was about (for whites) protecting the practice of slavery (I mean, I came to the book pretty cynical and I was still surprised by the extent), and how the Patriots come off even worse than the British in this corner of Great Hypocrisies in History, but I hope this book does get read, and that the stories in here are part of what we think about when we think about American liberty.
JOHN LAURENSAs of this writing, the Genius annotations for these two lines discuss the rich interpretations of this exchange, and I thought it's a good illustration for the complexity of what the American Revolutionary War meant for black Americans at the time, both free and enslaved, soldier and civilian--and what it might mean for present day Americans and the historical traditions we revere, retell, reject. (I've been thinking a lot about this because of Hamilton. I decided to read this book because of Hamilton, actually.)
Black and white soldiers wonder alike if this really means freedom
GEORGE WASHINGTON
Not. Yet
Gilbert's book traces black participation in the two concurrent (and sometimes contradictory) revolutions: American's freedom from Britain, and black Americans' freedom from slavery. Probably unsurprisingly, the short summary is this: the Patriot and the Loyalist sides both challenged and reinforced slavery in their pursuit of victory, for reasons both pragmatic and principled, and both sides incorporated blacks in their military, but to different extents and with lackluster documentation. Despite the latter, Gilbert writes a thoroughly researched account--and account it is; Gilbert discusses documentation and then analyzes and defends his interpretations well. It's very readable but also a very dry read at times because of So Many Lists, So Many Stories. It got reeeaally dry at times. Since Gilbert's a political theorist and not a historian by training, I had actually expected more political theory (that's my academic background), but this is definitely a history.
The footnotes are extensive and also sometimes wonderful, as that's where Gilbert manages to contain his polite and professional comments that challenge other researchers for their racism and for their other blinders. (He footnotes a passage of his that basically calls b.s. on white slaveowners claiming their slaves loved them sincerely, and in this footnote, dutifully references a historian who has previously argued otherwise, and calmly adds, "but I am skeptical.") There was one time in his own text that I was kind of taken aback (Gilbert compared Colonel Tye to a mountain lion, in a positive fashion, which I thought was weird and an unnecessary dehumanization when no one else was getting their skills compared to an animal's), but for the most part, Gilbert wrote from a solidly and unapologetic anti-racist position.
And, yeah, I learned a lot from this book and I can recommend it for a learning experience but not necessarily a reading experience (although, read the footnotes if you do read this, they're lovely). It's a good non-fiction read-along with or follow-up to The Book of Negroes. Given the difficulty many Americans have as conceptualizing the Civil War as about slavery, it's probably not an easy sell to demonstrate the extent of how the Revolutionary War was about (for whites) protecting the practice of slavery (I mean, I came to the book pretty cynical and I was still surprised by the extent), and how the Patriots come off even worse than the British in this corner of Great Hypocrisies in History, but I hope this book does get read, and that the stories in here are part of what we think about when we think about American liberty.
January 23, 2013
I wanted to like this book, and elements of it were very interesting, but ultimately I found it to be a better work research than of writing. The stories Gilbert related were often thought-provoking, but the book is very inconsistent. The tone shifts wildly from engaging story-telling to judgmental preachiness to numbingly dry (and stereotypically academic) repetition of inessential details.
March 8, 2014
A fresh, comprehensive, and new take on racial dynamics in the civil war. Biased because the author was my professor.
March 7, 2016
probably better than it was. important with "quotations" mini-read and with cell UofC free book
April 14, 2017
This is a densely documented account of the complex involvement black people had in fighting on both sides for the American Revolution. It documents loads of instances of bad faith among patriots (including "founding fathers") who were tremendously reluctant to let slaves free to fight for freedom, as well as the British tactic of freeing slaves to fight patriots. Both sides have minimized the role blacks played, and neither side was willing to support black freedom in principle alone. Exceptionally detailed and researched, this book adds depth and complexity for anyone thinking about revolution and the history of the American Revolution.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews