Working The Revolution

slavery was by this time a way of life for southern aristocrats and plantation owners. While most southerners owned no bondsmen, the slave population in a number of colonies equaled or outnumbered that of the freeborn. In Virginia, about half of the population were black slaves; slaves comprised two-thirds South Carolina's inhabitants. And the nature of their work is no mystery. While some slaves were indeed highly skilled and specialized in a number of southern cities, the bulk of them worked in tobacco, rice, indigo, and cotton fields producing the products that would make the South's white aristocracy richer.⁹

Slaves labored, too, at gaining freedom - particularly those in the American South. "All slaves," writes Ray Raphael, "suffered under the climate of fear and repression" in the South when the war began. Despite the risks to be taken, many "sought to turn the Revolution to their advantage." He continues, saying that

It was a pivotal time for those held in bondage. As white patriots and loyalists squabbled over the fate of the British Empire in North America, and as each side tried to capitalize on the specter of "domestick" [sic] insurrections, African Americans experienced the political conflict of 1775 directly and personally.¹⁰

Working to utilize the Revolution's rhetoric of freedom to their own advantage, thousands of slaves would serve in military units on both sides - essentially fighting for their own freedom. They served in the Continental Army's earliest units and helped to mobilize against the British in 1775. All were volunteers, serving with the understanding that military service would render them free once the war was over.¹¹ Those who served on the side of the British also had the bait of freedom dangled in front of them. Lord Dunmore's famous 1775 proclamation in Virginia announced that all "indented Servants, Negroes, or others" were free if they "are able and willing tobear Arms," "joining HIS MAJESTY'S troops as soon as may be...."¹² This proclamation "triggered a mass escape," in Raphael's words, that "by the end of November newspapers were announcing that 'boatloads of slaves' had tried to reach the British ships."¹³ Tens of thousands would eventually serve for the British by war's end.

Among all those who contributed significantly to the Revolution through labor, perhaps no other was more integral to the cause than the labor of women. They worked at home on the farms, in the shops, for local textile plants. They gave birth

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