slaves Archives - Journal of the American Revolution

News Posted on April 14, 2021April 15, 2021

The Discovery of an Important Letter from a Soldier of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment

Last spring, the Varnum Memorial Armory Museum in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, announced its discovery of a handwritten letter from a formerly enslaved man who had gained his freedom by enlisting in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment during the Revolutionary War. The letter, written in 1781, is one of only a few known existing letters […]

by Christian McBurney

News Posted on August 18, 2020August 14, 2020

How Did John Adams Respond to Abigail’s “Remember the Ladies”?

Women in all states won the universal right to vote one hundred years ago through the ratification of the United States Constitution’s 19th Amendment in 1920. Though women in Seneca Falls, New York, launched the women’s rights movement in 1848 when they claimed that the Declaration of Independence applied to women in the Declaration of […]

by Jane Hampton Cook

News Posted on July 25, 2019July 21, 2019

The Constitution Counted Free Women and Children—And It Mattered

As adopted by the Constitutional Convention, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution mandated that the population numbers forming the basis for calculating representation in the House of Representatives would “be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding […]

by Andrew M. Schocket

News Posted on May 3, 2019May 3, 2019

This Week on Dispatches: Todd Braisted on Discovering Barnard E. Griffiths, Queen’s Ranger, Emancipated Slave

Dispatches can now be easily accessed on the JAR main menu. Host Brady Crytzer discusses historian Todd Braisted’s remarkable discovery of a slave who was emancipated by John Graves Simcoe, commander of the Loyalist regiment, Queen’s Rangers, who went on to distinguish himself in battle, and ended up as a free man with a pension […]

by Editors

News Posted on February 21, 2019February 21, 2019

Bernard E. Griffiths: Trumpeter Barney of the Queen’s Rangers, Chelsea Pensioner—and Freed Slave

The period of the American Revolution does not afford many accounts of individual rank and file soldiers’ exploits, particularly on the side British side. The filing of some 80,000 pension applications in the United States makes it much easier to learn of a soldier’s activities during the war, whether it be the mundane task of […]

by Todd W. Braisted

News Posted on November 5, 2018November 4, 2018

Interview with Ramin Ganeshram, author of The General’s Cook: A Novel

JAR: In a nutshell, can you give us a basic overview of The General’s Cook? RG: The General’s Cook is about George Washington’s enslaved chef, Hercules, a man who was known in his own time for his skills in the kitchen. I often call him America’s first celebrity chef. By period accounts, he was something like an […]

by Nichole Louise

News Posted on February 21, 2017February 15, 2017

Preventing Slave Insurrection in South Carolina & Georgia, 1775-1776

As the colonies of South Carolina and Georgia moved closer to open rebellion against Great Britain in the summer of 1775, leaders of the revolutionary movement found themselves facing a host of potential threats. In addition to the numerous loyalists in both colonies, the tribes of pro-British Indians on their frontiers, and the possibility of […]

by Jim Piecuch

News Posted on December 2, 2016November 26, 2017

The “P” is for Profit: Revolutionary War Privateers and the Slave Trade

The American Revolutionary War was fought largely by armies on the North American continent, however, like waves in a pond the conflict inevitably rippled out across the Atlantic world. The flow of people, supplies, and information was crucial to waging war across the Atlantic, and they were linked by who could control the sea. While […]

by Michael Thomin

News Posted on June 19, 2014August 28, 2016

William Lee & Oney Judge: A Look at George Washington & Slavery

George Washington was a slave owner for his entire life, a fact that surprises many of his fellow citizens more than 200 years after his death. When they find out, people respond to this information in surprising ways. A visitor from California to a historic site in Virginia sat down in shock when upon learning […]

by Mary V. Thompson

News Posted on October 3, 2013February 26, 2014

Could America Have Thrived Without Slavery?

Could the new nation have thrived economically if slavery had been abolished when the colonies won independence? Probably would have thrived even more. Tobacco economy was bust by the 1770s, Virginia and Maryland had too many slaves, freeing them would have pushed Virginians into other economic fields, led more into the Ohio territory (where […]

by Editors

News Posted on July 5, 2013August 28, 2016

Austin Dabney: Georgia’s African American Hero of the Revolution

George Rockingham Gilmer wrote a heroic saga of the life, service, and sacrifices of Austin Dabney, an African American Georgia Revolutionary War hero. He first published it anonymously in 1849 and reprinted it under his name in a pamphlet in 1851 and in George White’s Historical Collections of Georgia in 1854. Gilmer included it in […]

by Robert Scott Davis

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