King was one of an estimated one hundred thousand Africans who temporarily or permanently escaped enslavement during the Revolutionary War—as many as escaped on the Underground Railroad during its entire history of existence.12 Twenty-five thousand escapees were from South Carolina alone. This mass self-emancipation worked specifically because the slaves who freed themselves were not loyal to a team. As early Black historian George W. Williams wrote in 1883, when people spoke of Black patriotism in the American Revolution, “Negroes were rated as chattel property by both armies and both
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