The American Revolution: Freedom and Contradictions

The Road to Revolution

Wealthy speculators, notably in Virginia, had made secret land deals that were now void. After Britain won the French and Indian War (Seven Years’ War) in 1763, colonists expected big rewards. They saw the lands won from France west of the Appalachians as theirs for the taking.

Instead, King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763, drawing a line along the Appalachians and forbidding settlements beyond it. To the Crown, this was a practical move: British leaders hoped to prevent costly wars with Native American nations (like Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763) and to keep western farmers under economic control. But colonists were furious. Many veterans felt they had “earned” this land by fighting in the war. Wealthy speculators, including George Washington, had made secret land deals that were now void. George Washington himself had petitions rejected. To ordinary settlers and frontiersmen, the White American colonists largely ignored the Proclamation line, pressing westward onto native land despite the King’s orders.

After the French and Indian War in the Ohio and Kentucky regions, settlers like Daniel Boone began to cross illegally, leading to clashes with Native nations who found their homes seiged by white settlers. For white colonists, “liberty” increasingly meant free rein to dispossess Native peoples of their land.

Another key factor on the eve of the American Revolution was Slavery. Slavery was central to the colonial economy and social order. By 1763 there were nearly a half million enslaved Africans in the British colonies. Planters in Virginia, the Carolinas, and elsewhere depended on enslaved labor to make enormous profits from tobacco and rice. Northern merchants made money from the slave trade directly through the building and insuring of slave ships and the processing and exporting of slave-produce. Many colonial leaders – including Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, and Patrick Henry – were slaveholders or allies of slaveholders. When British policies hinted at curbing slavery, alarm grew among these men.

British jurists in 1772 ruled in Somerset v. Stewart that slavery had no legal basis in England, a decision that abolitionists used to cheer and slaveowners feared it would spread to the colonies. London also flirted with ideas of gradual abolition in its Caribbean colonies. To white elites in the American Colonies, this looked threatening. Many reasoned that only by throwing off British rule could they safeguard “their property.” The language of “liberty” in 1776 would, ironically, be written largely by men defending slavery. Economic self-interest thus played a huge role: revolting colonists wanted unfettered control over land and forced labor.

Britain’s post-1763 policies deepened the sense of grievance. New taxes and trade restrictions (Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, Tea Act) were framed by Americans as threats to their rights, but they also fed into this broader story. American merchants disliked British control of trade, and farmers chafed under taxes that they believed financed wars not of their making.

Peoples of War

When fighting erupted in 1775, loyalties fell largely along interests. In general, most white male property-holders in the thirteen colonies sided with the revolution. They formed militias and the Continental Army to break from Britain. Many wanted self-government to take more native land, keep profiting from the slave trade and be free of British taxes. A smaller but significant number of colonists – merchants, Anglican clergy, recent immigrants, and those with ties to Britain – remained Loyalists. They opposed revolution, expecting Britain to protect order and property.

Native nations watched warily. In 1763, they had seen Americans pour into their lands; now they faced open revolt from some colonists. Most Native peoples knew that the rebel colonists (Patriots) were the real threat to their land, since Patriots coveted western expansion and the British sought to restrict that expansion. The British, by contrast, had at least promised to limit settlement (Proclamation of 1763) and often traded with tribes. When war came, many tribes sided with the British. Mohawk leader Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) and his Haudenoshonee warriors fought alongside British General Burgoyne in 1777. Other Haudenoshonee nations like the Cayuga and Seneca also joined the Crown’s side. In the southern backcountry, Cherokee and Creek factions fought for Britain, hoping a British victory would check American settlers.

The Oneida and Tuscarora of the Haudenoshonee Confederacy, and a few frontier tribes, sided with the Americans – often because they had good relations with local colonial neighbors or were converted by missionaries who preferred peace with colonists. But these were exceptions.

George Washington and Congress sometimes reneged on promises of friendly treatment. The famous Sullivan Campaign of 1779 was a Patriot attack that burned dozens of Haudenosaunee villages.

The war offered a dramatic choice for enslaved African Americans. Many saw an opportunity for freedom by fleeing to the British. In 1775–1776, Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s royal governor, boldly promised freedom to any slave who ran away and joined the British army. Later, Sir Henry Clinton in New York issued a similar proclamation (1779) liberating any slave of rebels. As a result, tens of thousands of enslaved people escaped to British lines (some estimates suggest up to 25% of all slaves). The British formed units like the Ethiopian Regiment and the Black Pioneers (laborers), putting many former slaves to work in camps and some, particularly by 1780, even in battle. One dramatic example: around 1780 when British troops occupied Charleston, they marched armed black troops into the city. The sight of former slaves in British uniforms terrified local slaveholders.

By contrast, the Patriot side largely shunned African Americans. Early in the war, Washington barred new black enlistments to avoid upsetting slaveholding southern allies. Only when manpower ran short did Congress authorize some states (like Rhode Island and Massachusetts) to recruit black soldiers. Even then, these men often had to buy their freedom. Still, about 5,000 African Americans – enslaved or free – fought for the Continental Army.

Women did not officially fight, but played crucial support roles. On farms and in towns, women produced food and clothing, nursed the wounded, ran family businesses, and organized aid societies. Philadelphia’s Esther Reed led a Ladies Association that raised huge sums (hundreds of thousands of Continental dollars) to supply the Continental Army. Groups like the Daughters of Liberty urged boycotts of British goods. Some women even disguised themselves to spy or smuggle guns. But despite these contributions, women remained second-class. Colonial law (the rule of coverture) still meant married women had no independent legal rights. They couldn’t vote or hold office, and husbands controlled family property. Not surprisingly, the new states gave women no political power after 1783.

Patriots’ rhetoric about consent of the governed and “no taxation without representation” was compelling, but in practice it meshed with the material interests of colonists: keeping imperial taxes low, dropping British trade restrictions, and opening land and slavery. Many American founders were influenced by Enlightenment ideals, but the driving force for popular rebellion was often economic goals of expanding slavery and native removal.

Peace Reifies White Supremecy

In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, Britain formally recognized U.S. independence. Britain also ceded huge western lands (all territory east of the Mississippi) to the United States. Notably, the treaty said nothing about Native Americans; land claims that formerly belonged to Britain were simply handed over to the U.S., even though many of those lands were still home to tribes. In practice, this meant white settlers instantly eyed these lands for farming and settlement. Americans now had legal title on paper to vast territories – lands many colonists had been eyeing for years. Congress proclaimed that Native lands should not be taken without consent – a promise soon broken.

In the new United States, political power was largely in the hands of white men who owned land. They celebrated that they were no longer subject to British rule or taxes. Independence meant that men like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and countless other elites could now govern themselves. Socially and politically, rich white colonial men gained control of the new government and society.

Virtually all Native American nations lost territory after the war. Those who had allied with the British found themselves abandoned. At the peace conference, British negotiators gave away Indian lands without negotiating with the tribes. American settlers poured into the Ohio Valley and the Old Northwest. Even tribes that had stayed neutral or sided with the Americans fared poorly. For example, New York’s Oneida had fought for the Patriot cause, but still were pressured to cede most of their lands in subsequent deals. Violent removal was common: wars like the Northwest Indian War (1785–1795) saw allied tribes of the Great Lakes and Ohio region initially push back American forces, but ultimately lose and sign the Treaty of Greenville (1795), giving the U.S. almost all of present-day Ohio. In all cases, Revolutionary leaders’ promises of liberty and justice did not extend to Indians.

The Revolution was actually a moment of mass escape for many enslaved people, but it did not abolish slavery. Thousands of slaves ran away and joined the British army, often ending up evacuated to Nova Scotia or the Caribbean after the war. (For example, one South Carolina couple, Boston and Violet King, escaped via New York and were sent as free people to Birchtown, Nova Scotia) In the North, some states began gradual emancipation in the 1780s (Pennsylvania in 1780, Massachusetts effectively by 1783). But in the South, slavery was strengthened: cotton would soon become king, and plantation owners in Georgia and the Carolinas looked forward to westward expansion with slave labor. Slavery was so profitable that southern legislatures actually tightened slave codes, fearing rebellions. In short, while tens of thousands of slaves had won freedom from the British side, the Revolution’s main effect was to preserve slavery for another eighty years. Most enslavers among the Patriots kept their slaves, and the new U.S. government (with slavery protected in the Constitution by the Three-Fifths Clause and fugitive slave rules) was largely shaped by slaveholders.

For women in 1783, daily life was hardly transformed. Women had done much to support the war, but after the victory they were expected to return to their traditional roles. Legally, nothing changed: in the new states, wives still could not vote, hold office, or have property without their husband’s consent. Abigail Adams famously begged John Adams to “remember the ladies” when framing new laws, but he declined. Some new ideas like “Republican Motherhood” emerged – the idea that women should be educated to raise virtuous citizens – and a few women intellectuals began writing about rights. But this was the very beginning of a long struggle. In every state, political rights stayed firmly in male hands.

Thus, the Revolution’s contradiction is clear. Its rallying cry was universal rights and liberty, yet in practice, it was a revolution for white male Americans to secure land, wealth, and political power. Native nations and African-descended peoples mostly suffered: Native Americans lost huge tracts of their homeland regardless of their choices, and most African Americans remained enslaved or second-class.

Selected Sources:

• Mount Vernon Digital Encyclopedia, “Proclamation Line of 1763”mountvernon.orgmountvernon.org.

• Edward St. Germain, “How Were Native Americans Affected by the Revolution?”, AmericanRevolution.org.

• Lumen Learning, U.S. History I: chapters “Identity During the Revolution” (sections on Africans and Native Americans) and “Women and the War”courses.lumenlearning.comcourses.lumenlearning.com.

• Digital History (University of Houston), “Slavery, the American Revolution, and the Constitution”digitalhistory.uh.edudigitalhistory.uh.edu.

• American Battlefield Trust (Adam Zielinski), “Slavery in the Colonies: The British Position on Slavery in the Era of Revolution”battlefields.orgbattlefields.org.

• Graham Russell Gao Hodges, “African Americans in Exile after the American Revolution”, History Now (Gilder Lehrman Institute, 2021) – discussing Black Loyalists and migration.

• PBS/WGBH Africans in America, Part 2 “Boston King” profile – a narrative of an enslaved man who joined the British and later emigrated as a free person.