Free Between Slavery and Freedom by Julie Winch

learned that the peace treaty that officially ended hostilities stipulated that slaves must be returned to their owners. They crowded on to British ships, pleading to go somewhere—anywhere—where they could be free. Sometimes they met with a sympathetic hearing. Realizing what was going on, George Washington raced to New York and insisted to the British commander, Sir Guy Carleton, that the terms of surrender required him to hand over all the runaways who were within British lines. Carleton refused, maintaining that the British had made a pledge of freedom to the slaves who sided with them and he intended to honor that pledge.
    At least 10,000 black people, and perhaps as many as 20,000, left with the British. For some it was only a brief respite. British officers who were far less honorable than Carleton re-enslaved them. Other black loyalists were more fortunate. Hundreds headed to England and tried to build new lives for themselves there. Many more went to the West Indies where they resettled as free people, although maintaining one’s liberty in the midst of a slave-holding society was fraught with difficulties. By far the largest contingent found a dubious freedom in Nova Scotia. The failure of the British authorities to provide for them as generously as they provided for white loyalists prompted the black loyalists to petition the government in London for relief, and led to a mass exodus to Britain’s new West African colony of Sierra Leone. However, enough black Americans remained in Nova Scotia to establish their own communities, some of which survive to this day. Few black loyalists received pensions because the British government considered it payment enough that they were no longer slaves. A black man needed to prove that he had been free before the war to have any hope of getting a penny for his services to the king.
    On the patriot side, some black men returned from the battlefield only to have their masters on whose behalf they had fought reclaim them as slaves. Others came back to enjoy their freedom, and in some instances with enough money to buy their loved ones out of bondage. They returned with tales totell, and with valuable military or naval experience. In most instances, they had fought alongside white men. Ironically, few black men who had fought in the Revolution had done so in all-black units. Not until the Korean War would the United States have such a racially integrated fighting force.
    Black veterans had often traveled far from home. They had met people from many different backgrounds and they had endured all kinds of hardships—hunger, exposure to the elements, inadequate clothing, and harsh discipline, along with separation from friends and family. For the majority, whether they had been free before they enlisted or whether they had been enslaved, these were hardships with which they were already painfully familiar. The home front to which these men returned was very different from the one they had left. The war and their role in it had led to a period of profound change for themselves, their families, the entire black population, and the nation as a whole. For some black people the war and its aftermath meant freedom and the chance to achieve a measure of social and economic independence. For others it saw the betrayal of a dream.
    The war for black liberty would continue long after the British surrender and long after the thirteen newly independent states had united to form a new nation. Nonetheless, the American Revolution had an important impact on slavery. Prior to the Revolution, slavery existed in all of the British colonies of North America. During and after the Revolution, many of the newly emerging states in the North took steps to end the system, either by abolishing slavery in their state constitutions or by adopting gradual abolition laws.
    Vermont was the first state to outlaw slavery in its state constitution. The fact that slavery had historically played a