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Isaac Makos Isaac Makos is an Interpretive Supervisor at George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

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Roles of Native Americans during the Revolution

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Native Americans served both the Crown and the colonists during the Revolutionary War. The civil war among European settlers created civil war and strife among…

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Learn about the women from the American Revolution including roles such as spies, nurses, camp followers, and soldiers. Also, famous women who played an important part in the war.

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Learn about African Americans during the Civil War including soldiers and regiments. Famous patriots such as Crispus Attucks, James Armistead, William Lee, and Peter Salem.

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Learn about the Sons of Liberty of the American Revolution including how they got their name, important members, protests, the Stamp Act, the Boston Tea Party, and interesting facts.

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Famous Speeches: Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death"

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Famous Speeches: Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death"

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Mohawk Indian Thayendanega, also known as Joseph Brant, served in the British army as an interpreter of native languages during the Revolutionary War.

While the previous explorations of African American and white female experience suggest both the gains and limitations produced in the Revolutionary Era, from the perspective of almost all Native Americans the American Revolution was an unmitigated disaster. At the start of the war Patriots worked hard to try and ensure Indian neutrality, for Indians could provide strategic military assistance that might decide the struggle. Gradually, however, it became clear to most native groups, that an independent America posed a far greater threat to their interests and way of life than a continued British presence that restrained American westward expansion.

Cherokees and Creeks (among others tribes) in the southern interior and most Iroquois nations in the northern interior provided crucial support to the British war effort. With remarkably few exceptions, Native American support for the British was close to universal.

This drawing shows an Iroquois warrior dressed for battle.

The experience of the Iroquois Confederacy in current-day northern New York provides a clear example of the consequences of the Revolution for American Indians. The Iroquois represented an alliance of six different native groups who had responded to the dramatic changes of the colonial era more successfully than most other Indians in the eastern third of North America. Their political alliance, which had begun to take shape in the 15th- century, even before the arrival of European colonists, was the most durable factor in their persistence in spite of the disastrous changes brought on by European contact. During the American Revolution, the Confederacy fell apart for the first time since its creation as different Iroquois groups fought against one another.

The Mohawk chief Thayendanegea (known to Anglo-Americans as Joseph Brant) was the most important Iroquois leader in the Revolutionary Era. He convinced four of the six Iroquois nations to join him in an alliance with the British and was instrumental in leading combined Indian, British, and Loyalist forces on punishing raids in western New York and Pennsylvania in 1778 and 1779. These were countered by a devastating Patriot campaign into Iroquois country that was explicitly directed by General Washington to both engage warriors in battle and to destroy all Indian towns and crops so as to limit the military threat posed by the Indian-British alliance.

In spite of significant Native American aid to the British, the European treaty negotiations that concluded the war in 1783 had no native representatives. Although Ohio and Iroquois Indians had not surrendered nor suffered a final military defeat, the United States claimed that its victory over the British meant a victory over Indians as well. Not surprisingly, due to their lack of representation during treaty negotiations, Native Americans received very poor treatment in the diplomatic arrangements. The British retained their North American holdings north and west of the Great Lakes, but granted the new American republic all land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. In fact, this region was largely unsettled by whites and mostly inhabited by Native Americans. As a Wea Indian complained about the failed military alliance with the British, "In endeavoring to assist you it seems we have wrought our own ruin." Even groups like the Oneida, one of the Iroquois nations that allied with the Americans, were forced to give up traditional lands with other native groups.

When British General John Burgoyne marched from Canada to Albany, some of the Native American warriors he enlisted began killing settlers. When the news of Jane McCrea's murder reached major cities, many young Americans enlisted to fight.

Despite the sweeping setback to Native Americans represented by the American Revolution, native groups in the trans-Appalachian west would remain a vital force and a significant military threat to the new United States. Relying on support from Spanish colonists in New Orleans as well as assistance from the British at Fort Detroit, varied native groups continued to resist Anglo-American incursions late into the 19th century.

This ongoing resistance resulted in treaties with the United States that would much later be the basis for redressing some illegal losses of Indian lands. Although the meaning of the Revolution for most Native American groups was disastrous, their continued struggle for autonomy, independence, and full legal treatment resulted in partial victories at a much later date. In some ways, this native struggle showed a more thorough commitment to certain revolutionary principles than that demonstrated by the Patriots themselves.

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The Daughters of Liberty was the formal female association that was formed in 1765 to protest the Stamp Act, and later the Townshend Acts, and was a general term for women who identified themselves as fighting for liberty during the American Revolution.

Activities

The main task of the Daughters of Liberty was to protest the Stamp Act and Townshend Acts through aiding the Sons of Liberty in boycotts and non-importation movements prior to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. The Daughters of Liberty participated in spinning bees, helping to produce homespun cloth for colonists to wear instead of British textiles. Women were also used as the enforcers of these movements because they were the ones responsible for purchasing goods for their households. They saw it as their duty to make sure that fellow Patriots were staying true to their word about boycotting British goods.

The Daughters of Liberty are also well known for their boycott of British tea after the Tea Act was passed and the British East India Company was given a virtual monopoly on colonial tea. They began drinking what was later known as "liberty tea." Leaves from raspberries or black tea were commonly used as tea substitutes so people could still enjoy tea while refusing to buy goods imported through Britain.

Chapters of the Daughters of Liberty throughout the colonies participated in the war effort by melting down metal for bullets and helping to sew soldiers' uniforms. the famed leader of the Sons of Liberty, Samuel Adams is reported as saying, "With ladies on our side, we can make every Tory tremble."

Women associated with the Daughters of Liberty

Sarah Bradlee Fulton is most known for her role in the 1773 Boston Tea Party. She is credited with coming up with the idea that Tea Party participants should wear Mohawk disguises to avoid detection from British officials. This suggestion earned her the nickname, "Mother of the Tea Party." She was an active member of the Daughters of Liberty throughout the Revolution, and in later years, she helped to coordinate volunteer nurses to assist with the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Sarah Franklin Bache was a Daughter of Liberty and the daughter of diplomat Benjamin Franklin. Other than her parentage, she is most known for helping to outfit American Soldiers in 1780.

Martha Washington, wife of George Washington and First Lady of the United States, joined General Washington during long winter encampments where she was instrumental in providing as much as she could for soldiers.

Esther de Berdt is best known for creating the Patriot organization, The Ladies of Philadelphia in 1778, which was dedicated to raising money for food and clothing for the Continental Army. Even though she was born in London, she became alienated from Britain by the crown's actions toward the colonies and decided to fully support the Patriot cause. She is also the author of "Sentiments of an American Woman," an essay that intended to rouse colonial women to join the fight against the British. She was able to use her marriage to Joseph Reed to help her gain more influence and resources.

Deborah Sampson later emerged as a symbol for female involvement in the Revolutionary War. Rather than supporting the war effort from the outside, she dressed as a man and fought in the war under the name Robert Shurtlieff. She fought in 1781 and her future husband was eventually awarded a pension for her service in the war, albeit after his death.

Elizabeth Nichols Dyar mixed and applied paint to the men of the Boston Tea Party. She is buried at the Elizabeth Nichols Dyar Memorial in Phillips, Maine, where she lived with her husband Joseph Dyar.

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The Daughters of Liberty was the formal female association that was formed in 1765 to protest the Stamp Act, and later the Townshend Acts, and was a general term for women who identified themselves as fighting for liberty during the American Revolution.

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Kids learn about the history of slavery during colonial America including indentured servants, the first enslaved people, how they lived, how the enslaved were treated, and the jobs they did.

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This is an article on the formation, role, and effects of the Sons of Liberty.

Sons of Liberty

Who were They?

The Sons of Liberty was a secret organized founded in response to the 1765 Stamp Act that required colonists to pay a tax on printed documents. The Stamp Acts was issued to help the British recoup the financial burden incurred for prosecuting the French and Indian War. The origins of the Sons of Liberty is unclear, but the organization worked in both Boston and New York. Its purpose was to protect the rights of colonists and to protest British taxes. Samuel Adams is often credited with founding the Sons of Liberty. The motto of the Sons of Liberty was "no taxation without representation."

Planning Chaos at the The Liberty Tree

The first known protest organized by the Sons of Liberty occurred on August 14, 1765. Under the "Liberty Tree," a popular meeting place for the Sons of Liberty, supporters hung an effigy of tax collector Andrew Oliver from the tree. Those in attendance took turns punching it and stomping on it. Before long, the effigy was dragged through the streets of Boston while bystanders cheered and jeered. The mob next struck at Oliver's home, which was thoroughly destroyed. Oliver resigned his position as a tax collector three days later. On August 26, the Sons of Liberty destroyed the home of the unpopular lieutenant governor, Thomas Hutchinson.

Tar and Feathering

As the path to war became clear, the Sons of Liberty used mob rule and intimidation as powerful weapons against British agents and Loyalists. In some cases, members of the Sons of Liberty were reported to have tarred and feathered perceived enemies such as tax collectors and customs officers. Tarring and feathering involved pouring hot pine tar on a person before covering them in feathers. Although certainly painful and embarrassing, tarring and feathering was not fatal.

Boston Tea Party

The Sons of Liberty are best known for staging the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, in protest of the Tea Act, which allowed a British company a monopoly over the tea trade. In the Boston Tea Party, members of the Sons of Liberty dressed up as Indians, boarded a British tea vessel called Dartmouth, and flung its entire load of tea into Boston Harbor. The "party" and the resulting Intolerable Acts passed by Parliament as a punishment, were among the primary causes of the coming war.

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The Sons of Liberty was a secret organized founded in response to the 1765 Stamp Act that required colonists to pay a tax on printed documents.

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Time Machine (1773): The Boston Tea Party

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Time Machine (1773): The Boston Tea Party

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Time Machine (1770): The Boston Massacre

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Time Machine (1770): The Boston Massacre

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Southeastern Indians participated in the American Revolution for a variety of reasons and with varying results. Throughout the colonial period in North America, wars between European powers forced Indian peoples to choose sides or find ways to stay neutral, and the American Revolution was no exception. Most of the southeastern Indians who fought in the war supported Britain against the United States or Spain, but some gave aid to the Americans and the Spanish. For example, the Catawbas fought on the American side, but the Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctaws generally supported Britain. Many factions and individuals among the South's Indian groups also pursued their own policies and actions, however, based on what they perceived to be their best interests. Thus no southeastern Indian group can be accurately termed "pro-British," "pro-American," or "pro-Spanish" because none blindly followed orders from any single foreign power.
Cherokees
In the Southeast, the American Revolution proved most disastrous for the Cherokees. With a population of about 8,500, the Cherokees began sending out war parties against outlying white settlements in the Carolinas and Georgia in the spring of 1776 in retaliation for illegal encroachments on their lands. Their primary leader was a young warrior named Dragging Canoe (Tsi'yugûnsi'ny), the son of the venerable Cherokee chief Attakullakulla. Dragging Canoe had warned other Cherokees and the British at the signing of the Sycamore Shoals Treaty in March 1775 in eastern Tennessee that the Cherokees should resist any further encroachments on their land or risk being overrun. The willingness of Dragging Canoe and other warriors to take the fight to white settlers stemmed in part from a generational split among the Cherokees: young warriors increasingly distrusted their elders' abilities to prevent further land loss. After initial successes in their attacks, the Cherokees soon witnessed four American armies from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia invade nearly all their villages during the summer and fall of 1776. Cherokee chiefs sued for peace in spring 1777 and agreed to still more land cessions, while Dragging Canoe and hundreds of other Cherokees moved south and west to establish new villages on Chickamauga Creek. There they became known as the Chickamauga Cherokees and continued to resist the Americans.
Catawbas
The Catawbas, whose villages and few hundred people were located in the Piedmont area along the border of South Carolina and North Carolina and were surrounded by pro-American settlers, took up arms against the British as early as 1775. Their warriors participated in numerous key battles throughout the South, recaptured enslaved people who had escaped, and assisted the Americans in fighting the Cherokees. When the British invaded the South in 1780, the Catawba villages temporarily became a refuge for American troops. But the Catawbas were soon forced by British troops to flee their homes and move north into Virginia. The British burned the Catawba villages and confiscated all of their cattle and other possessions. In 1782, however, after Gen. Charles Cornwallis's surrender to the Americans and the French at Yorktown, the Catawbas returned home, and a grateful South Carolina paid the Indians for their services. The Catawbas also secured a state-recognized reservation in their traditional homeland as a result of their support for the American side, which they still occupy today.
Creeks
As one of the South's largest Indian groups, with a population of around 15,000, the Creeks could have dramatically affected the direction of the war in the South. Factionalism played a role in preventing a unified Creek stance, however, because Creek towns were divided among the Upper Towns and Lower Towns, with each group pursuing its own foreign policies. Access to European manufactured goods through the deerskin trade concerned the Creeks more than any other single issue, with American and British traders seeking Creek deerskins and loyalties. The Revolutionary War both threatened the viability of the trade and provided opportunities for Creek men to acquire trade goods by providing military services, especially on behalf of Britain against Spain during the Mobile and Pensacola campaigns of 1780-81. Still other Creeks, most notably the mixed-race leader Alexander McGillivray, used the Anglo-American conflict to strengthen their political positions by taking leadership roles in diplomacy. McGillivray continued to gather political power and influence among the Creeks in dealings with the United States after the war. Yet, the Creeks never employed their large population in significant sustained fighting during the war, preferring to protect their sovereignty and trade through cautious participation.
Choctaws
As with the Creeks, Choctaw concerns during the American Revolution centered around keeping access to European trade goods. Additionally, the Choctaws were one the South's largest Indian groups with a population of around 15,000 that was divided among 50 villages in three distinct and independent political divisions. At the start of the Revolutionary War, the British hired Choctaw warriors to patrol the Mississippi River against American attacks. Despite these efforts, in February 1778 American Army captain James Willing led an expedition down the Mississippi River that attacked British settlements all the way to New Orleans. The British responded the only way they could-by organizing a force of Choctaw Indians to march to the British-held town of Natchez, Mississippi, and protect the town. The Choctaw force of 155 men never fought against the Americans, who had retreated to Spanish New Orleans, but they did convince Natchez residents to remain pro-British. When Spain declared war on Britain in 1779, hundreds of Choctaw warriors helped the British defend Mobile in 1780 and Pensacola in 1780-81, even as a much smaller number of Choctaws supported Spain. Ultimately, British forces in those towns surrendered to Spain, and the Choctaws were left after the war seeking trade with Spain, the United States, and individual American states.
Chickasaws
The Chickasaws were Britain's staunchest southeastern allies throughout the eighteenth century. Though at about 4,000 their numbers were significantly fewer than the Choctaws and Creeks, the Chickasaws also patrolled the Mississippi River to prevent American attacks, and some of their warriors engaged in fighting against American colonel George Rogers Clark's forces in present-day Illinois. The Chickasaws also sent small groups of warriors to assist Britain in defending Mobile and Pensacola against Spain. Most famously, Chickasaw chiefs responded to a threat from the state of Virginia to stay out of the war by challenging Virginia forces to meet them halfway between Virginia and their north Mississippi homeland and suffer defeat, as had all Chickasaw enemies in the eighteenth century. After the war, the Chickasaws also sought trade relations with Spain and the new United States.
Additional Resources
Bunn, Mike. Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era. Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2020.

Calloway, Colin G. The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

O'Brien, Greg. Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 1750-1830. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

O'Donnell, James H., III. Southern Indians in the American Revolution. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1973.

Wood, Peter H. "George Washington, Dragging Canoe, and Southeastern Indian Resistance." In George Washington's South, edited by Tamara Harvey and Greg O'Brien. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004.

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Southeastern Indians and the American Revolution - Encyclopedia of Alabama

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Southeastern Indians participated in the American Revolution for a variety of reasons and with varying results. Throughout the colonial period in North America, wars between European powers forced Indian peoples to choose sides or find ways to stay neutral, and the American Revolution was no exception.

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Women played critical roles in the American Revolution and subsequent War for Independence. Historian Cokie Roberts considers these women our Founding Mothers.

Women like Abigail Adams, the wife of Massachusetts Congressional Delegate John Adams, influenced politics as did Mercy Otis Warren. It was Abigail Adams who famously and voluminously corresponded with her husband while he was in Philadelphia, reminding him that in the new form of government that was being established he should "remember the ladies" or they too, would foment a revolution of their own. Warren, just as politically astute as Adams, was a prolific writer, not only recording her thoughts about the confluence of events swirling around Boston but also dabbling in playwriting. She was a fierce devotee to the patriot cause, writing in December 1774, four months before the war broke out at Lexington and Concord, "America stands armed with resolution and virtue, but she still recoils at the idea of drawing the sword against the nation from whence she derived her origin." In 1805 she published History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution.

Women often followed their husbands in the Continental Army. These women, known as camp followers, often tended to the domestic side of army organization, washing, cooking, mending clothes, and providing medical help when necessary. Sometimes they were flung into the vortex of battle. Such was the case of Mary Ludwig Hays, better known as Molly Pitcher, who earned fame at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778. Hays first brought soldiers water from a local well to quench their thirst on an extremely hot and humid day and then replaced her wounded husband at his artillery piece, firing at the oncoming British. In a similar vein, Margaret Corbin was severely wounded during the British assault on Fort Washington in November 1776 and left for dead alongside her husband, also an artilleryman, until she was attended by a physician. She lived, though her wounds left her permanently disabled. History recalls her as the first American female to receive a soldier's lifetime pension after the war.

Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved African American living in Boston, took up the pen and wrote poetry, becoming one of the first published female authors in America and the first African American woman to be published. Her 1773 collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was popular on both sides of the Atlantic. Her poems focused on patriotism and human virtues. She even wrote a poem about George Washington, "To His Excellency, George Washington" in 1775, which she personally read to him at his Cambridge headquarters in 1776 while he was with the Continental Army in Massachusetts besieging the British. Her visit was the result of an invitation from Washington. Wheatley obtained her freedom upon the death of her master in 1778.

New York teenager Sybil Ludington, was the female equivalent of Paul Revere, though she rode twice as far as Revere and in a driving rainstorm in April, 1777. Her ride took her through Putnam and Dutchess Counties, New York where she roused local militia to fight a British force that had attacked nearby Danbury, Connecticut. The Daughters of the American Revolution erected a heroic equestrian statue to Ludington in Carmel, New York along the forty-mile route she traveled.

The story of one of the most famous revolutionary women, Betsy Ross, is likely just that - a story. Ross is often credited with sewing the first American flag, thirteen red and white stripes with thirteen stars in a field of blue in the corner. Subsequent research, however, shows that the story only surfaced around the Centennial, 1876, and was promoted by Ross's grandson William Canby. Given that Congress passed the Flag Act in June of 1777, nearly a year after Ross is purported to have made the flag, the story is likely apocryphal.

As wives of the common soldier often followed the Continental Army so, too, did the wives of general officers. General Henry Knox, the Continental Army's Artillery Commander married the vivacious and popular Bostonian Lucy Flucker, the daughter of Bostonian Loyalists. Once she and Henry were married, all ties between her and her family were cut. Henry and Lucy were devoted to one another and she would join him whenever she could while he was on campaign. She endured the bitter encampment at Valley Forge and became fast friends with the wife of General Nathanael Greene, the equally popular Kitty. George Washington's wife, Martha Custis, spent every winter with her husband wherever the army was camped. In fact, once George Washington left his beloved Mount Vernon estate in 1775 to attend the 2nd Continental Congress in Philadelphia, he did not return to his home until 1781, as the combined American and French Army maneuvered south from the city of New York to Yorktown, Virginia, where the war was eventually won. The wives of generals were as equally helpful in matters of caring and providing compassion to sick and wounded soldiers, as were the wives of the common soldiers.

Ordinary women also endured the horrors of the battlefield when those fights came to their doorstep. Sally Kellogg of Vermont and her family escaped the gods of War in 1776 when the War for Independence found its way into the northern reaches of upstate New York and Benedict Arnold's makeshift fleet and the British Navy clashed on Lake Champlain during the Battle of Valcour Island. As the Kellogg family made good its escape by water, Sally's family "fell in between Arnold's fleet and the British fleet," she later recalled. As the family rowed to safety at Fort Ticonderoga, the exchange of gunfire between ships could be seen and heard Sally recalled, "but happy for us the balls went over us. We heard them whis." Nevertheless, the war continued to follow the Kellogg family. A year later, after having relocated to Bennington, Vermont the Kelloggss were once more forced to be witnesses to carnage and once again upon recollection Sally claimed the results were, "a sight to behold. There was not a house [in Bennington's vicinity] but was stowed full of wounded.

Not unlike women eighty years later who disguised themselves as men to serve in the armies of the Civil War, women of the Revolutionary Era also itched to get into the fight, do their part for the cause, and be engaged in a historical moment. One of the best examples of a woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in the Continental Army was Deborah Sampson from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Amazingly, she also has a paper trail concerning her combat service in the army, where she fought under the alias of Robert Shurtliff, the name of her deceased brother, in the light infantry company of the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment. She mustered into service in the spring of 1782 and saw action in Westchester County, New York just north of the City of New York where she was wounded in her thigh and forehead. Not wanting her identity to be revealed during medical care she permitted physicians to treat her head wound and then slipped out of the field hospital unnoticed, where she extracted one of the bullets from her thigh with a penknife and sewing needle. The other bullet was lodged too deep and her leg never fully healed. Her identity was finally revealed during the summer of 1783 when she contracted a fever while on duty in Philadelphia. The physician who treated her kept her secret and cared for her. After the Treaty of Paris, she was given an honorable discharge from the army by Henry Knox. Like other veterans of the Continental Army, she was continually petitioning the state and federal government for her service pension. She later married and had three children settling down in Sharon, Massachusetts. To help make ends meet she often gave public lectures about her wartime service. By the time she died in 1827, she was collecting minimal pensions for her service from Massachusetts and the federal government. In her memory a statue stands today outside the public library, in Sharon, honoring her Revolutionary War service and sacrifices.

Many women of all stripes and from all backgrounds recognized the value of the American cause and stepped up to serve the cause of the new nation as best they could.

Further Reading:

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Women played critical roles in the American Revolution and subsequent War for Independence. Historian Cokie Roberts considers these women our Founding...

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ative Americans and blacks fought on both sides during the American Revolution. Native American participation began in the earliest days of the conflict when, in March of 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress accepted an offer from the Stockbridge Indians to form a company of "minutemen" (armed soldiers who promised to be ready in a minute to defend the colonies against the British).

In the face of war, the Continental Congress wrestled hard with the trying issue of Anglo-Indian relations. Congress was well aware that a close relationship existed between Great Britain and some Native groups, especially the powerful Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy (an association of six tribes: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. The first five of the tribes originated in present-day New York. The Tuscarora came from North Carolina.) Congress also knew that Native Americans had many grievances against the colonists: white settlers had threatened their people and stolen their land. If large numbers of Indians chose to side with the British, such an alliance could easily contribute to America's defeat.

Realizing they were not likely to secure cooperation from most Native Americans in a war, Congress hoped to at least gain a promise of neutrality (noninvolvement) from them ( see Chapter 4: The Roots of Rebellion [1763-1769]). On August 25, 1775, four commissioners appointed by Congress met with the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy near Albany, New York, and delivered a speech, stating, in part: "Brothers and friends!... This is a family quarrel between us [the white colonists] and Old England. You Indians are not concerned in it. We don't wish you to take up the hatchet against the king's troops. We desire you to remain at home, and not join on either side, but keep the hatchet buried deep."

The Six Nations agreed to pledge neutrality. In the fall of 1775, the Western Nations (the Shawnee, Wyandot, and others) also agreed to remain neutral.

Other tribes took advantage of wartime to express their hostility toward Americans. The Cherokee, for example, staged an uprising in 1776 against settlers in Georgia and the Carolinas, but they were soon put down by American soldiers. Seven years later, the Cherokee lost much of their land in the treaty that ended the Revolutionary War.

Even some of the nations in the Iroquois Confederacy ended up taking sides in the war-despite their earlier pledges of neutrality. Most supported the British, although some favored the Americans. During the terrible winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania (1777-78), for example, the Oneida people brought corn to George Washington's troops, boosting their spirits and helping to ensure their survival ( see Chapter 10: The Agonizing Path to Victory [1777-1778]).

Heavy participation by Indians on the British side began back in 1776, when the British under General John Burgoyne (1722-1792) were chasing the Americans out of Canada. Burgoyne urged the Six Nations to "take up the hatchet" against the Americans; he is said to have accompanied the urging with gifts and alcohol.

Burgoyne anticipated problems with his Indian recruits and tried to head them off with a famous speech he made on June 23, 1777. In his speech (quoted in Mark M. Boatner III's Encyclopedia of the American Revolution) he urged the Indians to fight "humanely." "I positively forbid bloodshed,

when you are not opposed in arms," he declared. "Aged men, women, children and prisoners must be held sacred from the knife or hatchet, even in the time of actual conflict.... [Y]oushall be allowed to take the scalps of the dead when killed by your fire and in fair opposition; but on no account ... are they to be taken [otherwise]." (Note that North American Indian warriors often cut part of the scalp and hair from a defeated enemy as a souvenir of victory. This ancient custom was also seen as a way to capture a dead person's spirit, making it impossible for the victim to haunt his or her killer.)

Most of the Indians listening to Burgoyne's speech probably couldn't understand his English. The entire address was considered quite amusing in America and Great Britain - especially laughable was the thought that the Indians would change their fighting style to suit the British. (Many of Burgoyne's Indians deserted when he tried to make them fight his way.) But the laughter turned to outrage when news broke of the murder of Jane McCrea.

The Jane McCrea tragedy

McCrea was a young American woman who was engaged to one of General Burgoyne's soldiers. While on her way to meet her fiancé at Fort Edward, New York, in July 1777, she was apparently taken by a band of Burgoyne's Indians. Two days later, McCrea's scalped and bullet-ridden body was found near Fort Edward. Exactly what happened to the young woman remains a mystery. A tremendous uproar followed, and the tragic story of Jane McCrea grew into a legend.

Americans were horrified by the thought of a combined British- Indian invasion; inflamed by the tragedy of Jane McCrea, many rushed to join the fight against Burgoyne.

Violence escalates

The American Revolution had a profound effect on the longstanding harmony that had characterized the Iroquois Confederacy. Pro-British Iroquois tribes proved to be the greatest Native menace to the American cause when they participated with Loyalists (Americans loyal to Great Britain) in a series of raids on frontier communities in 1778-79. The most famous of the raids were the Wyoming Valley (Pennsylvania) Massacre of July 3-4, 1778 and the Cherry Valley (New York) Massacre of November 11, 1778.

For the Indians, as for Americans, the conflict had become a civil war. Brother fought against brother, and many brave warriors lost their lives. One of the survivors was Mohawk chief Joseph Brant (1742-1807; Indian name Thayendanegea, meaning "bundle of sticks"), a staunch supporter of the British. He had established a reputation for himself as a brilliant soldier and spokesperson for his people. Brant led his warriors

in lightning-fast raids on frontier rebel targets. His very name filled the patriots with terror. Although he acted with white Loyalists, Brant took most of the blame for the horrid Cherry Valley Massacre, in which many innocent men, women, and children were slaughtered. American forces retaliated by burning Indian villages.

The postwar fate of Native Americans

In the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution, the British gave up to the Americans all Indian lands as far west as the Mississippi River. This left pro-British Indians at the mercy of Americans, who were not inclined to be generous. It was generally believed that by helping the British, the Indian tribes gave up their rights to land within the United States. The new nation felt it was justified in forcing the Indians to retire to Canada or to the unknown areas beyond the Mississippi.

Joseph Brant, his Mohawks, and some other Indians relocated to Canada, where they continue to live today. Over the years, the Indians who remained in America were forced to give up most of their land. Even the two Iroquois nations who had fought with the Americans-the Oneida and the Tuscarora-were persuaded to sell their lands and move west as more and more whites intruded on their territory.

America's black soldiers

Between 8,000 and 10,000 blacks served in the Continental army at one time or another, comprising about a quarter of America's armed forces ( see Chapter 7: Assembling an Army [1775-1776]). When the army was finally disbanded in 1783, about 5,000 so-called free blacks were told they could return

home. In reality, some of the 5,000 were slaves, but the need for soldiers had been so critical that no questions were asked when slaves claimed to be free men and sought to join the military.

After Congress set quotas-the number of soldiers each state was required to provide-some slaves were bought and freed by states that could not meet their quotas; they were then sent to serve with white soldiers in the Continental army. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island met their quo tas by buying and freeing slaves and forming all-black units.

The Rhode Island Regiment, consisting of ninety-five slaves and thirty free blacks, distinguished itself at the Battle of Rhode Island in August 1778. When Count de Rochambeau, a French general, arrived in Rhode Island in 1780 to begin train ing French and American troops, one of his aides remarked that the Rhode Island Regiment was "the most neatly dressed, the best under arms, and the most precise in its maneuvers" of all the American soldiers.

Virginia slaves in the Revolution

Southern states, fearing slave uprisings, resisted the enlistment of black soldiers until late in the war. Virginia, the colony with the largest number of slaves in its population, would not allow slaves to carry weapons. Instead, in 1780 Virginia voted to meet its quota by offering rewards to any white man who enlisted for the duration of the war. The reward would be 300 acres of land and the choice of either a healthy

black male slave between the ages of ten and thirty, or money.

Some Virginia slaveowners sent slaves to serve in the army in their place, promising them their freedom as a reward. Hundreds of these black soldiers returned to Virginia after the war, expecting to be freed. Upon their return, though, many were forced back into slavery. This was so obviously unjust that in 1783, Virginia's lawmaking body passed a bill aimed at slaveowners who, "contrary to principles of justice and to their own solemn promise," kept those black former soldiers as slaves.

Slavery weighs against the colonies

From the beginning of the Revolutionary War, black slaves took advantage of the wartime confusion to escape from their owners by the thousands. Many ran to the British.

An English court's 1772 decision in a lawsuit brought by an American slave probably swayed many slaves to support the British in the American Revolution. The case involved James Somersett, a black slave who was taken from Virginia to England by his owner, Charles Steuart. Somersett ran away, was captured, and was sent in chains on a ship bound for Jamaica (an island in the West Indies where slaves worked on sugar plantations). On board the ship, Somersett sued for his freedom. In June 1772, English Lord Chief Justice William Mansfield (1705-1793) issued his decision in the Somersett case, stating that slavery "is so odious [hateful], that nothing can be suffered to support it." He declared that because English law did not allow or approve of slavery, "the black [and any other slave who set foot in England] must be discharged [set free]".

In September, when news of Judge Mansfield's decision reached the colonies and the ears of black slaves, a period of unrest followed. This was especially true in Virginia, where 250,000 slaves were concentrated (the total population of the colonies was about 1.5 million; about one-third of colonial people were slaves). The Mansfield decision outlawed slavery in England, not in the colonies, but this did not matter to American slaves. Thinking that King George was on their side, many slaves ran away, hoping to get to England-and freedom. Their owners lived in constant fear of a slave revolt.

In 1775, with Revolutionary War battles already fought, Dunmore, the British-appointed governor of Virginia, added to slaveowners' fears by proclaiming that he intended to free rebel-owned slaves who would take up arms against their white owners. By December of that year, about 300 runaway slaves had joined Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment, as the military unit was called. (Ethiopian is an outdated term for black Africans.) Within six months, at least 800 more slaves had joined up with Dunmore. Outraged Virginia lawmakers responded by ordering the death penalty to "all Negro or other Slaves, conspiring to rebel" against their owners.

William Howe (1729-1814), the general in charge of British forces in America, finally put an end to the use of slaves in King George's army. It is impossible to know how many free blacks and slaves joined the British side, but certainly many more would have served if the British had allowed them to. For in a country where talk of freedom was widespread, many blacks were enslaved and would continue to be long after the American Revolution ended in 1783.

Runaway Southern slaves, many of them children, also served in the German military units hired by King George III. Hundreds served the British and Germans as laborers, servants,

drummers, fifers (flute players), and even as soldiers. When the war was over, some former American slaves- along with their wives and children- went to Germany with their employers. Some of the French took advantage of the confusion at war's end to reenslave many blacks and sell them in the West Indies.

Blacks in the postwar years

After the American Revolution ended in 1783, pro-British former slaves could not stay in America. The new United States was still a slaveowning country. Runaway black slaves who had fought for the British became the targets of hatred by white Americans. They could not go to the West Indies because the economy of those islands depended on slave labor; there was no room there for large numbers of free blacks who might stir up the slaves. Nor could they go to London and other major cities in Britain because of the severe economic problems plaguing these areas in the postwar period.

The British felt that the problem could be solved by sending the former slaves to Nova Scotia, the easternmost part of the Canadian wilderness owned by Great Britain. An unknown number of pro-British blacks, together with thousands of British ex-soldiers looking for a new life, descended on the sparsely populated land in the mid-1780s. They were not welcomed warmly by Nova Scotians. Finally, in 1790, a former slave by the name of Thomas Peters sailed to London with a petition signed by several hundred black families. The petition sought assistance from the British government for the blacks living in Nova Scotia. In response, arrangements were made for them to sail from Nova Scotia to the western coast of Africa, where sympathetic English citizens were establishing a safe haven for Britain's poor free blacks.

On January 15, 1792, a fleet of British ships set sail from Nova Scotia's Halifax harbor carrying several thousand people of African descent to the newly founded western African coastal settlement. This settlement, then known as Liberia (meaning "freedom"), is now the nation of Sierra Leone; its capital city is called Freetown. For more than half a century after the first blacks arrived there, many more black Americans would give up hope of obtaining freedom and equality at home and, like thousands before them, set sail for West Africa.

For More Information

Books

Nardo, Don, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Braving the New World:1619-1784: From the Arrival of the Enslaved Africans to the End of the American Revolution. Milestones in Black American History Series. New York: Chelsea House, 1995.

Periodicals

"Black Soldiers Fought for Freedom during the Revolution." Philadelphia Tribune, February 9, 1999.

Web Sites

"History of the Black U.S. Soldier." [Online] Available http://www.cyberessays.com/History/143.htm (accessed on August 2, 1999).

Sources

Books

Boatner, Mark M. III. "McCrea Atrocity," "Burgoyne's Proclamation," and "Indians in the Colonial Wars and in the Revolution." Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994.

Franklin, Benjamin. Benjamin Franklin: Writings. New York: Library of America, 1987.

Greene, Robert Ewell. Black Defenders of America. Chicago: Johnson Publishing, 1974.

Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. New York: Harper Collins, 1997.

Lyons, Oren R., and John C. Mohawk, eds. Exiled in the Land of the Free:Democracy, Indian Nations, and the U.S. Constitution. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 1992, pp. 102-4, 196, 246, 253, 257-64.

Marrin, Albert. The War for Independence: The Story of the American Revolution. New York: Atheneum, 1988.

Ploski, Harry A., and James Williams, eds. "Blacks in Colonial and Revolutionary America" and "Black Servicemen and the Military Establishment." In Reference Library of Black America, Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 1990, pp. 795-830.

Trevelyan, George Otto. The American Revolution. Edited by Richard B. Morris. New York: David McKay Co., 1964.

Washburn, Wilcomb E. "The American Revolution and Its Aftermath." In The Indian in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

Williams, T. Harry. The History of American Wars from 1745 to 1918. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981, pp. 3-82.

Web Sites

Selig, Robert A. "Black Soldiers of the Revolution." [Online] Available http://americanrevolution.org/blk.html (accessed on July 14, 1999).

White Views of Native Americans

As uninformed and stereotypical as it sounds to us today, it was common for eighteenth-century Americans to refer to Indians as "savages." Not all colonial Americans held Indians in such low regard, however. Founding Father John Adams, like many other colonists, grew up near Native American families in Massachusetts and considered them good neighbors. Benjamin Franklin admired the Indians and had high praise for the Iroquois Confederacy, whose form of government was the inspiration for the democratic (government by the people) ideals in the Articles of Confederation (1781) and its successor, the Constitution of the United States (1789). In his 1783 essay "Remarks Concerning the Savages of North-America," Franklin wrote: "Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the Perfection of Civility; they think the same of theirs."

Crispus Attucks (c. 1723-1770) has been called the first black American to die for his country. Attucks, who was thought to be of African, Native American, and white ancestry, was probably born on an Indian reservation near Framingham, Massachusetts. The details of his youth are uncertain, but he is believed to have been a Christian, may have once been a slave, and was known to have worked on the Boston docks. The story of his death in the Boston Massacre ( see Chapter 5: On the Brink of War [1770-1774]) has become a legend.

According to Black Defenders of America author Robert Ewell Greene, eyewitness accounts of events on the night of March 5, 1770 place Attucks at the head of a mob of "wrathful townsfolk" ready to attack British soldiers. "[C]rying out, 'Let us drive out these ribalds [pronounced RIB-uldz; crude, offensive, unprincipled persons; rascals]. They have no business here,' Attucks and his followers proceeded to assault British soldiers" with snowballs, rocks, and pieces of ice; some sources say that he and about thirty of his sailor friends were armed with heavy clubs.

Attucks and his comrades continued taunting the redcoats. Finally, a riot broke out, and Attucks began assaulting British soldiers with either a club or a gun he had seized in the scuffle. Voices in the crowd cried to the redcoats, "Why don't you fire?" Hearing this, a soldier who had been knocked to the ground opened fire as he arose. Attucks was killed by bullets to the chest.

Newspapers of the day used the incident to illustrate how the British were threatening American liberties, but few people in the colonies defended the rioting. The Sons of Liberty claimed no responsibility for planning it; some Sons, in fact, had urged the crowd to go home. The question remains: Were Attucks and his fallen companions heroes slaughtered in the quest for justice or rioters killed in mob violence?

A Trusted Spy

French soldiers had worked with blacks for years because the French controlled land in Africa. The Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834), a close associate of General George Washington during the American Revolution, enlisted a black Virginian to act as a spy for him. The man was called James Armistead because he was the "property" of a slaveowner named William Armistead. His reports about enemy activities proved so useful, and he won such high praise from Lafayette, that the Virginia legislature eventually granted James his freedom. Lafayette returned to America in 1824 and looked up his old comrade. By that time James was calling himself James Lafayette.

Austin Dabney, Black Soldier in the American Revolution

Austin Dabney was a mulatto (pronounced muh-LAH-toe; a person of mixed white and black [then called Negro] racial heritage) and a slave. Slave status was transferred through mothers to their children. Since his mother was black, it did not matter if Dabney's father were free; it was his fate to be a slave. Dabney was sent to serve in the Revolutionary War in the place of his white owner. (This was a common and legal practice of the day, however unfair it may seem to us today.) He served bravely in the war against the British until the day he was wounded and given up for dead on the battlefield.

On February 4, 1779, while fighting the battle of Kettle Creek, Georgia, Dabney received a crippling musket shot to the thigh. He would have died there if he had not been found and rescued by a white American farmer named Giles Harris. Harris took Dabney to his home and nursed him back to health. In return, Austin Dabney-at this point a free black man-devoted the rest of his life to the Harris family, working for Harris and his children on the farm and even saving up his money to help finance a law school education for Harris's eldest son. Dabney later received a land grant for his service in the war. He and the Harrises are believed to have farmed that land together for several years before moving to Georgia's Pike County in 1826. Dabney died in Zebulon, Georgia.

Sources: Robert Ewell Greene, Black Defenders of America, 1775-1973. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1974, pp. 8-9. From George R. Gilmer, Sketches of the First Settlers of Upper Georgia. Baltimore: Baltimore Genealogical Publishing Co.,1965. Courtesy of Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, GA. Also see Scott, Carole E. "Georgia's Black Revolutionary Patriots." [Online] Available http://www.westga.edu/~cscott/dabney.html (accessed on January 19, 2000).

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native americans and blacks in the american revolution native americans and blacks fought on both sides during the american revolution.

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Native Americans and Blacks in the American Revolution

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ative Americans and blacks fought on both sides during the American Revolution. Native American participation began in the earliest days of the conflict when, in March of 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress accepted an offer from the Stockbridge Indians to form a company of "minutemen" (armed soldiers who promised to be ready in a minute to defend the colonies against the British).

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The Sons of Liberty was an unofficial, often underground protest group in colonial America. Begun in New England, the group soon had members in all 13 Colonies. Its most famous act was the Boston Tea Party.

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Kids learn about the Boston Tea Party major event in the American Revolutionary War.

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Learn about the Boston Massacre where five colonies were killed by the British. Major event in the American Revolutionary War.

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Indians and the American Revolution

The late Wilcomb E. Washburn was one of America's most versatile and accomplished historians, receiving his Ph.D. (American Civilization) from Harvard University in 1955. This is the annotated text of a presentation he made here in Riverside, CA during the time he was Director of American Studies at the Smithsonian Institution. The author of more than sixty books and articles, he was noted for his expertise concerning the history of Virginia and the American Indian. Works include The Indian in America (1975) and The Assault on Indian Tribalism: The General Allotment Law (Dawes Act) of 1887 (1975).

The role of the American Indian during the American Revolution was a shadowy and tragic one, symbolized by Benjamin West's painting, now in the National Gallery of Art, of Colonel Guy Johnson, the British superintendent of Indian affairs in the North, and Joseph Brant, the great Mohawk warrior. It was a shadowy role, but an important one. It was shadowy not only because the Indian operated physically from the interior forests of North America and made his presence felt suddenly and violently on the seaboard settlements, but because the Indian was present also in the subconscious mind of the colonists as a central ingredient in the conflict with the Mother Country.

After a century and a half of exploration and settlement, the English colonists, in 1763, were finally masters of the coastal areas of North America. With rapidly growing populations they now turned inward away from the sea to a larger destiny. The Great War for Empire in the 1750s and 1760s had resulted in the expulsion of the French political and military presence from the interior. The powerful Indian nations who lived in the region were now unable to play one European power off against the other. Their conflicts with the English would now be conducted without benefit of European allies. The need to coordinate British power in America in the face of the French threat had led, in 1755, to the appointment of a superintendent of Indian affairs for the northern department, an office to which Sir William Johnson was appointed. In 1756 a similar superintendency for the southern colonies was established, with Sir Edmond Atkin as superintendent. The superintendents operated in subordination to the commander-in-chief of British forces in America. While not taking the conduct of Indian relations entirely out of the hands of the colonial governors and assemblies, the existence of these new colonial officers marked a significant diminution of the powers inherited and assumed by the individual English colonies.

With the conclusion of the Great War for Empire, the English government applied further controls over colonial freedom to act, particularly in restricting settlement westward within the chartered limits of the colonies. By the Proclamation of 1763, the lands beyond the Appalachian mountain chain were declared off limits to colonial governments, the lands being "reserved" to the Indians under the cognizance of the British Crown which reasserted its sovereignty and control over the area. Although the anger of the colonies was tempered by the knowledge that the freeze was a temporary measure and not necessarily permanent, it marked another example of the tightening noose placed by the home government over colonial freedom of action.

In their dealings with the Indian nations, the English authorities utilized the treaty form of negotiation in which solemn covenants were entered into as between equals. During the period 1763 to 1775, a series of boundaries between the colonists and the Indians of the interior were created from Lake Ontario to Florida, confirming in the minds of Indians (and of many colonists) the belief that the Indian country was closed to speculation and settlement by the increasingly aggressive colonists.

Lord Dunmore's War of 1774 marked the beginning of the breakdown of the arrangements by which the seaboard colonies and the Indian nations of the interior were to be kept apart. Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, sought to seize the abandoned Fort Pitt, captured from the French during the Great War for Empire, in support of Virginia's charter claims. Dunmore's move into the trans-Allegheny areas of western Pennsylvania (Virginia's charter claims were to the west and northwest) led to war with the Delawares and Shawnees. The conflict triggered a response from the Iroquois to the north who stood in the relation of elder brothers to the Shawnees and Delawares. Superintendent of Indian Affairs Johnson worked diligently to keep the Iroquois out of war. He pointed out that the Six Nations (who comprised the Iroquois Confederacy) had renewed and confirmed the "Covenant Chain subsusting between us" at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, October 26, 1768. But the Iroquois demanded to know why whites were not honoring the former treaties and boundary lines and were moving beyond the mountains into the Ohio River valley. While arguing in council to forestall Iroquois involvement in Dunmore's War, Johnson on July 11, 1774, died and was succeeded by his nephew and son-in-law, Guy Johnson. Guy Johnson was relieved when, in a series of conferences culminating in a great meeting at Onondaga in October 1774, the Iroquois decided to ratify the pledge to remain at peace with the English and to persuade the Shawnees to settle their differences with the Virginians. Joseph Brant (left, in a portrait by Gilbert Stuart), a Mohawk graduate of Eleazar Wheelock's Indian School at Lebanon, Connecticut (later moved to Hanover, New Hampshire, where it became known as Dartmouth College), was particularly persuasive in these conferences. 2

Whether one seeks to explain the subsequent break as a direct consequence of the British government's attempt to stymie colonial land speculation and expansion, or merely indirectly related to it, there is no doubt that British restrictions on colonial freedom of action in this as in other fields helped to convince the colonists that violent reaction might be the preferable alternative. Violence was not long in coming. When the citizens of Boston threw overboard English tea (while, interestingly, dressed as Indians), the English government responded by closing the Port of Boston. In explaining the growing crisis to the Iroquois at a conference in January 1775, Guy Johnson asserted that:

In July 1775, the Continental Congress proposed a plan similar to the superintendencies created by the Crown for managing Indian affairs except that three geographical departments instead of two were created. Commissioners were appointed for each department. The Congress also drafted a talk which could be delivered by the commissioners to any tribes in their district. The talk asserted that:

Not until the summer of 1776 did either the Americans or British formally and officially attempt to involve the Iroquois, the most powerful northern nation, on their side. Informal approaches, however, were made with increasing frequency. In July 1775, Ethan Allen, of Vermont, sent a message to the Iroquois urging them to shun the King's side. Allen asserted:

The Iroquois at first resisted the blandishments of both sides. As a Seneca warrior put it, in reply to the warnings against the Americans made by Colonel John Butler, who acted for Colonel Johnson in the latter's absence:

Although the Indians refused to be swayed by either side at this time, uncertainty as to how they might be affected by the struggle caused bitter divisions to be formed among them.

In the inland areas of the South, even more powerful Indian nations existed than in the North The Southeastern nations could muster 14,000 warriors: 3,000 each among the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Creeks, plus 5,000 hardy Chickasaws.. The southern Indians had been subjected to the same encroachments by the colonists that the northern Indians had experienced. By the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River in March 1775, the Transylvania Company had obtained a title of sorts to much of present day Kentucky and middle Tennessee. But the Cherokee chief Dragging Canoe had stalked out of the negotiations, warning that any attempt to settle the area would turn the land dark and bloody.

The patriots, who had appointed commissioners to deal with the Indians as prescribed by the Continental Congress, sought to persuade the natives that the King's agents were now superseded by themselves. In April 1776 a conference was held with representatives of the Cherokees, but most of the tribe absented themselves. The colonial representatives urged the Cherokees (and, in a later conference, the Creeks) to remain neutral and not be swayed by British arms or arguments. The American case was not persuasive and, in May 1776, a delegation from the north composed of Shawnees, Delawares, and Mohawks, arrived among the Cherokees and convinced them to take up the tomahawk against the encroaching Americans. Devastation soon followed on the frontier. The response of the southern colonies was similar to that in the North. Devastating strikes were made by American armies against the Cherokees. Like the Iroquois, the Cherokees chose to let their country be ravaged rather than attempt to engage the American columns in pitched battles. Instead, they retired further west and watched the colonial soldiers destroy their crops and houses. Like the Iroquois, though to a lesser degree, the Cherokees were riven by factional strife on how best to confront the deteriorating situation.

Thomas Jefferson's reaction to the Cherokee attacks on the frontier expressed his sense of the seriousness of the situation:

Although huge amounts of goods were annually provided Britain's Indian agents for use in keeping her Indian alliances firm (£75,000 sterling in 1778 for the southern Indians alone), few results were evident to an increasingly skeptical Parliament. In March 1779, in considering a money bill, heated comments about the apparently fruitless expenditures of such sums were made. Yet Indian goods continued to be vital in maintaining Indian support. As one observer put it, "Reason and Rhetoric will fall to the Ground unless supported by Strouds and Duffells. Liberality is alone with Indians true Eloquence without which Demosthenes and Cicero or the more modern orators Burke and Barre might harangue in vain."

In March 1781, a Spanish fleet again appeared off Pensacola with a 4000 man army which overmatched 1500 British soldiers, 400 Choctaws, and 100 Creeks. After fierce fighting, in which the Indian allies of the British distinguished themselves, the garrison capitulated May 8, 1781. The fall of Pensacola was soon followed by the fall of Augusta and Savannah. British collapse in the South was imminent and the King's Indian allies were forced to choose their future course. The Cherokees and Chickasaws sought to negotiate peace with the Americans. The Creeks continued to stand with the British; the Choctaws wavered. When the British finally evacuated St. Augustine in 1783, they were astonished to find that numbers of their Indian allies sought to join them. As one Indian talk put it, "If the English mean to abandon the Land, we will accompany them - We cannot take a Virginian or Spaniard by the hand -We cannot look them in the face." The commandant of the garrison expressed his amazement at the Indian attitude:

Neither the Iroquois, nor the Indians of the Old Northwest, nor those of the South, tamely accepted colonial assertions of sovereignty by right of conquest. Although most of the powerful nations which had hitherto held back the tide of English expansion had chosen the wrong side in the Revolution, they still possessed land and power only partially diminished by the war. The British government, embarrassed by the reproaches of their erstwhile allies, continued to hold the forts of the Old Northwest and to provide trade goods and sympathy to their Indian allies though refusing military aid for a renewed attack against the Americans. Attempts by American forces to impose their will on the Indians confirmed the fact that the Indians had not been conquered by the Americans during the Revolution, for these attempts were repeatedly frustrated. In 1790, General James Harmar's expedition into the Maumee Valley resulted in an embarassing failure. In 1791, General Arthur St. Clair's army was similarly defeated by the Indians near Fort Wayne, Indiana. In the South, McGillivray of the Creeks played off Spanish and American authorities, finally negotiating a treaty with the United States in New York in 1790. In 1794, General Anthony Wayne finally did manage to defeat the Northwest Indians at Fallen Timbers. But the resistance and strength of the natives had refuted the notion that conquest could be asserted rather than won.

With the formation of the Constitution and the establishment of a new government, Secretary of War Henry Knox, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, and President George Washington formulated a policy of honor and good will toward the native Americans. As expressed in the Northwest Ordinance, the policy asserted that:

Yet the passions engendered by the American Revolution, despite the good will expressed in the formal policy enunciated by the government, was to lead to bitter and violent confrontations on the frontier. The bloody ground of Kentucky was to be repeated in region after region as the undisciplined and unregulated expansion of the American people got underway. In the end the Indian was the loser. That he would have been a loser even if the King had repressed the rebellion is probable; but his decline would not have been so swift or so bitter.

1. I have discussed the early English charters in my "Red Man's Land/White Man'sLaw: A Study of the Past and Present Status of the American Indian" (New York, 1971).

2. Barbara Graymont, "The Iroquois in the American Revolution" (Syracuse, New York, 1972), pp. 48-50.

3. Francis Jennings, "The Imperial Revolution: The American Revolution as a Tripartite Struggle for Sovereignty," unpublished paper delivered at The Newberry Library Conference on the American Indian and the American Revolution, February 1975.

4. Quoted in Graymont, The Iroquois, p. 57.

5. James H. O'Donnell III, "The World Turned Upside-Down: The American Revolution as a Catastrophe for Native Americans," unpublished paper delivered at the Newberry Library Conference on the American Indian and the American Revolution, February 1975.

6. James H. O'Donnell III, "Southern Indians in the American Revolution" (Knoxville, 1973), quoted p. 23..

7. Quoted in Graymont, The Iroquois, p. 68.

8. Quoted in Ibid.

9. Quoted in Ibid., p. 99.

10. Ibid., pp. 122-123.

11. Ibid., p. 138.

12. Ibid., pp. 149-151.

13. Quoted in Ibid., p. 192.

14. O'Donnell, Southern Indians, pp. 8,13.

15. Ibid., pp. 37-38.

16. Ibid., pp. 40-41.

17. Ibid., pp. 42-53.

18. Ibid., Preface, ix.

19. Ibid., pp. 80-81.

20. Ibid., pp. 89-91.

21. Quoted in Ibid., p. 101.

22. Ibid., pp. 95-96.

23. Ibid., pp. 98-99.

24. Ibid., pp. 113-117.

25. Ibid., pp. 125-129.

26. Quoted in Ibid., p. 131.

27. Graymont, The Iroquois, pp. 259-262

28. Richard B. Morris, "The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence" (New York, 1965), pp.321-322, 419-420.

29. Quoted in Wilcomb E. Washburn, "Indian in America" (New York, 1975), p. 100.

30. Ibid., p. 163.

31. Quoted in Washburn, "Red Man's Land/White Man's Law", p. 53.

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Indians and the American Revolution The late Wilcomb E. Washburn was one of America's most versatile and accomplished historians, receiving his Ph.D. (American Civilization) from Harvard University in 1955. This is the annotated text of a presentation he made here in Riverside, CA during the time he was Director of American Studies at the Smithsonian Institution.

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The Sons of Liberty were a grassroots group of instigators and provocateurs in colonial America who used an extreme form of civil disobedience-threats, and in some cases actual violence-to intimidate loyalists and outrage the British government. The goal of the radicals was to push moderate colonial leaders into a confrontation with the British Crown.

The Sons marked one of their early victories in December 1765. The Stamp Act-the first tax imposed directly on American colonists by the British government-had only been in effect for a month, when a group of Boston merchants and craftsmen sent a letter to Andrew Oliver, the newly-appointed official collector of stamps. The group informed Oliver that he was to show up the next day at noon at the Liberty Tree in the city's South End to publicly resign.

"Provided that you comply with the above, you shall be treated with the greatest Politeness and Humanity," the letter explained. The message left to Oliver's imagination what terrible fate might befall him if he didn't comply.

Oliver didn't need much persuading. He appeared as demanded, walking through the streets of Boston in a driving rainstorm and quit his job, to the cheers of a crowd of 2,000 people.

It was an exhibition of the fearsome clout of the Sons of Liberty. The Sons likely formed from a secretive group of nine Boston-based patriots who called themselves the Loyal Nine. The first Sons chapters sprung up in Boston and New York City, but other cells soon appeared in other colonies as well.

The group may have taken its name from a speech given in Parliament by Isaac Barre, an Irish member sympathetic to the colonists, who warned that the British government's behavior "has caused the blood of these sons of liberty to recoil within them."

Their most famous act of disobedience was destroying 92,000 pounds of British tea in Boston Harbor in December 1773. The Boston Tea Party, as the act would become known, was one of the key events that pushed the colonies and the British government toward war.

Prominent Leaders Included Samuel Adams, John Hancock

The Sons' most prominent leader was Samuel Adams, the son of a wealthy brewer who was more interested in radical rabble-rousing than commerce. Adams wrote his masters thesis at Harvard on the lawfulness of resisting British rule. While George Washington eventually led the war effort against the British, "the truth is that there might not have been a fight to begin with had it not been for the work of Sam Adams," writes historian Les Standiford.

Another key member was John Hancock, who later was immortalized by his flamboyant signature on the Declaration of Independence. James Otis, Paul Revere, Benedict Arnold, and Dr. Benjamin Rush, among others, were also involved in the group.

Adams and Hancock in particular were so loathed and feared by the British that when General Thomas Gage offered amnesty to Bostonians who stopped their resistance in 1775, he made a point of excluding the two men, "whose offences are of too flagitious a nature" not to be punished severely.

It's not hard to understand why Gage took a hard line against them. After forming in the summer of 1765, the Boston Sons chapter marched through the streets and burned stamp officer Oliver's effigy, and then broke into and looted his house. When Massachusetts Lt. Gov. and Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson, a loyalist, declined to renounce the Stamp Act, they similarly looted and destroyed his house as well.

The Sons didn't stop there. After Parliament passed the Townshend Acts in 1767, which imposed import duties on goods such as china and glass, Adams organized a boycott to keep British goods out of Massachusetts altogether. According to Adams biographer Dennis Fradin, the Sons enforced the boycott by sending boys to smash the windows and smear excrement on the walls of local shops that didn't comply. If that didn't work, the proprietor faced the risk of being kidnapped and tarred and feathered, a painful, humiliating torture that could leave lasting scars.

"Violence was not necessarily accepted as a regular feature of politics, but there was an understanding that it might be part of politics as a last resort," explains Benjamin L. Carp a historian at Brooklyn College and author of the 2010 book Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America.

During this time, the Sons' core views evolved, Carp says. They rejected the British notion that they had fought the French and Indian War on behalf of the colonists, and that as a result, the Americans were obligated to pay for continued upkeep of British soldiers in North America. But beyond that, they also rejected the authority of the British Parliament to make laws for Americans. Most of all, they argued the British government could not compel Americans to pay taxes.

Their overarching goals similarly shifted over time. "At the outset, most Sons of Liberty only wanted something limited-for Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act," Carp explains. "But over time, more and more Sons of Liberty became convinced that independence was the answer."

The Boston Tea Party

Parliament's passage in December 1773 of the Tea Act, which propped up the financially struggling British East India Company by giving it a virtual monopoly on selling tea to the colonies, pushed the Sons to become even more brazen. The law threatened the livelihood of the American merchants who had been importing tea from Dutch traders. The Sons couldn't let that stand.

"I don't think the Bostonians set out to destroy property. I think they felt it was a last resort," Carp says. "Their first preference would have been to send the tea back. But when the merchants (consignees) were unwilling, the ship captains were unwilling-it would have ruined them-and the governor was unwilling to bend the rules for them, they felt they had no choice."

"If they'd allowed the tea to land, they knew that customers wouldn't be able to resist it-so they would have paid the tax on it AND let a monopoly company, the East India Company, muscle into the local market," Carp says.

The Bostonians also knew that if they let the tea be unloaded, they'd lose standing in the eyes of other Sons of Liberty groups in New York, Philadelphia and other places, he notes.

The Sons' defiance of the British not only helped spur the Revolutionary War, it also fostered an American tradition of grassroots activism that various activist groups have applied over the centuries to push for change.

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Most famous for their role in the Boston Tea Party, the Sons of Liberty used grassroots activism to push back against British rule.

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2023 MrNussbaum.com is a copyright of the Nussbaum Education Network,LLC.

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Mr. Nussbaum - Mob Etiquette? The Surprising Rules of the Boston Tea Party

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In what came be to known as the Boston Tea Party, members of the Sons of Liberty, dressed as Indians, boarded three British tea ships, confiscated 342 chests of tea, and proceeded to unceremoniously dump them into Boston Harbor.

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The Causes of the Revolutionary War: Boston Massacre

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The Causes of the Revolutionary War: Boston Massacre

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The situation in Boston grew more tense by the day. Local skirmishes between townspeople and British soldiers (Redcoats) increased in frequency as did belligerence toward British soldiers. Rumors abounded throughout the city about possible attacks by soldiers or by the Sons of Liberty.

The Cause

On Monday night March 5, 1770, an American (patriot) began harassing a Redcoat named John Goldfinch standing guard. Another Redcoat nearby, named Hugh White, joined Goldfinch to defend him. White became agitated with the harassment and struck the patriot in the face with his musket. As the patriot cried out in pain, a mob of fifty or so Bostonians gathered. Goldfinch retreated to the nearby Custom House and pointed his musket toward the angry crowd.

The Situation Escalates

The mob began throwing chunks of ice at White and shouted "Kill him!" Meanwhile, other mobs were forming on Boston's streets. Those mobs began pelting other Redcoats with chunks of ice. British officers on the scene ordered soldiers back to their barracks, and several had to be subdued by officers to prevent them from firing into the angry crowd. The mob surrounding Hugh White, however, grew until he was surrounded by over 400 angry Bostonians. White's shouts for reinforcements were answered by British Captain Thomas Preston and several other soldiers who entered the emotional mob.

Preston tried to march the British soldiers from the Custom House back to the Main Guard, but his path was blocked by the mob of patriots. Despite his demands for the dispersal of the crowd, the mob responded with more insults and ice chunks. When the British justice of the peace tried to read the Riot Act, which would subject all members of the mob to prosecution once it was read, the mob forced him to retreat by throwing snowballs and ice chunks at him.

The Unthinkable!

The mob continued to provoke the soldiers and challenged them to fire. Members of the mob grew more and more violent and began striking the muskets and bayonets of the Redcoats with clubs. Despite his attempts to prevent bloodshed, Captain Preston was losing control of his soldiers who were growing increasingly threatened by the angry mob. Suddenly, someone in the crowd hurled a club which hit British soldier Hugh Montgomery and knocked him to the ground. Montgomery rose and fired into the crowd. Hearing the shot, the mob lunged at Preston and his men, wielding their clubs at them. For the next few minutes, the scene became a chaotic battle in which Preston's men fired into the crowd to avoid being beaten. The soldiers were able to fend off the mob which soon dispersed. When it did disperse, the bodies of several patriots lay dead or wounded on the ground. Preston and his soldiers formed a defensive line with guns drawn to protect themselves from another assault.

The Aftermath, Trial, and Surprising Effect

Later that evening, Preston and his soldiers were arrested and accused of murder. In the ensuing trial almost all were acquitted (judged not-guilty), as the deaths had occurred in self-defense. Additionally, Parliament repealed the Townshend Act, and removed all taxes except for the tax on tea. Despite the anger in Boston over the massacre, American merchants began importing British goods again and the push for independence seemed to fizzle.

Boston Massacre Articles and Activities

Articles

Printable Activities

Boston Massacre Reading Comprehension - This resource includes a historical passage and ten multiple choice questions.

Boston Massacre Virtual History Teacher - Students play the role of a virtual history teacher and must grade responses to three questions about the Boston Massacre. Each response is incomplete, and students must fill in the missing information in the "response" section. Students can use the Boston Massacre narrative for reference.

Boston Massacre: Fact or Fiction? - This fun activity requires students to read a Boston Massacre passage and then, to sort 11 statements into those that are facts and those that are fiction.

Crispus Attucks Reading Comprehension - This Revolutionary War/American Revolution resource includes a historical passage and seven multiple choice questions.

Propaganda in Revolutionary America - This activity requires students to examine the famous Paul Revere hyperbolic engraving depicting the Boston Massacre before the Revolutionary War. How was Paul Revere's depiction of the Boston Massacre different from what really happened?

Crispus Attucks Fact or Fiction - This fun activity requires students to read a Crispus Attucks passage and then, to sort 11 statements into those that are facts and those that are fiction.

Crispus Attucks Virtual History Teacher - Students play the role of a virtual history teacher and must grade responses to three questions about the life of Crispus Attucks. Each response is incomplete, and students must fill in the missing information in the "response" section. It's designed to reinforce the importance of elaboration. Students can use the Crispus Attucks biography for reference.

Crispus Attucks Printable Activities Bundle - This bundle is FREE for subscribers to MrN 365. It includes all seven printable activities on Crispus Attucks available on mrnussbaum.com. It is also available on Teachers Pay Teachers for $2.25. Click this link to purchase from Teachers Pay Teachers.

Crispus Attucks Text Elements - Paragraph Headings - This printable activity requires students to match the five different headings to their correct paragraphs.

Online Activities

Boston Massacre Online Reading Comprehension - This resource includes a historical passage and ten multiple choice questions. It gives immediate feedback and a score report.

Boston Massacre Correct-me Passage - This fun activity requires students to correct a passage about the Boston Massacre that has eight factual errors. Students first must discover the errors, then click on them and select the correct answer from the drop down menu.

Boston Massacre: Fact or Fiction? - This fun activity requires students to read a Boston Massacre passage and then, to sort 11 statements into those that are facts and those that are fiction. The program gives immediate feedback.

Famous Images in History Jigsaw Puzzle: Revere's the Bloody Massacre - This awesome jigsaw allows students to make their own jigsaw pieces, or, allow the program to auto-cut pieces.

Boston Massacre Power Point Presentaton - This 14-slide power point presentation explains all about the Boston Massacre and its causes and effects. Perfect for American Revolution learning.

Not Boring Jeopardy: Revolutionary War - This is a "jeopardy" like game on the American Revolution.. It's super fun for classrooms, individuals, or small teams, totally customizable. Uncheck "teams take turns" to make it more exciting for kids.

Crispus Attucks: Fact or Fiction? - This fun activity requires students to read a Crispus Attucks passage and then, to sort 11 statements into those that are facts and those that are fiction. The program gives immediate feedback.

Crispus Attucks: Correct-me Passage - This fun activity requires students to correct a passage about the life of Crispus Attucks that has eight factual errors. Students first must discover the errors, then click on them and select the correct answer from the drop down menu.

Crispus Attucks Cloze Reading - This online cloze reading exercise requires students to type the words from the word bank into the correct fields in the paragraph. It gives immediate feedback.

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Causes of the Revolutionary War - Boston Massacre

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The situation in Boston grew more tense by the day. Local skirmishes between townspeople and British soldiers (Redcoats) increased in frequency as did belligerence toward British soldiers.

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ative Americans and blacks fought on both sides during the American Revolution. Native American participation began in the earliest days of the conflict when, in March of 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress accepted an offer from the Stockbridge Indians to form a company of "minutemen" (armed soldiers who promised to be ready in a minute to defend the colonies against the British).

In the face of war, the Continental Congress wrestled hard with the trying issue of Anglo-Indian relations. Congress was well aware that a close relationship existed between Great Britain and some Native groups, especially the powerful Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy (an association of six tribes: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. The first five of the tribes originated in present-day New York. The Tuscarora came from North Carolina.) Congress also knew that Native Americans had many grievances against the colonists: white settlers had threatened their people and stolen their land. If large numbers of Indians chose to side with the British, such an alliance could easily contribute to America's defeat.

Realizing they were not likely to secure cooperation from most Native Americans in a war, Congress hoped to at least gain a promise of neutrality (noninvolvement) from them ( see Chapter 4: The Roots of Rebellion [1763-1769]). On August 25, 1775, four commissioners appointed by Congress met with the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy near Albany, New York, and delivered a speech, stating, in part: "Brothers and friends!... This is a family quarrel between us [the white colonists] and Old England. You Indians are not concerned in it. We don't wish you to take up the hatchet against the king's troops. We desire you to remain at home, and not join on either side, but keep the hatchet buried deep."

The Six Nations agreed to pledge neutrality. In the fall of 1775, the Western Nations (the Shawnee, Wyandot, and others) also agreed to remain neutral.

Other tribes took advantage of wartime to express their hostility toward Americans. The Cherokee, for example, staged an uprising in 1776 against settlers in Georgia and the Carolinas, but they were soon put down by American soldiers. Seven years later, the Cherokee lost much of their land in the treaty that ended the Revolutionary War.

Even some of the nations in the Iroquois Confederacy ended up taking sides in the war-despite their earlier pledges of neutrality. Most supported the British, although some favored the Americans. During the terrible winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania (1777-78), for example, the Oneida people brought corn to George Washington's troops, boosting their spirits and helping to ensure their survival ( see Chapter 10: The Agonizing Path to Victory [1777-1778]).

Heavy participation by Indians on the British side began back in 1776, when the British under General John Burgoyne (1722-1792) were chasing the Americans out of Canada. Burgoyne urged the Six Nations to "take up the hatchet" against the Americans; he is said to have accompanied the urging with gifts and alcohol.

Burgoyne anticipated problems with his Indian recruits and tried to head them off with a famous speech he made on June 23, 1777. In his speech (quoted in Mark M. Boatner III's Encyclopedia of the American Revolution) he urged the Indians to fight "humanely." "I positively forbid bloodshed,

when you are not opposed in arms," he declared. "Aged men, women, children and prisoners must be held sacred from the knife or hatchet, even in the time of actual conflict.... [Y]oushall be allowed to take the scalps of the dead when killed by your fire and in fair opposition; but on no account ... are they to be taken [otherwise]." (Note that North American Indian warriors often cut part of the scalp and hair from a defeated enemy as a souvenir of victory. This ancient custom was also seen as a way to capture a dead person's spirit, making it impossible for the victim to haunt his or her killer.)

Most of the Indians listening to Burgoyne's speech probably couldn't understand his English. The entire address was considered quite amusing in America and Great Britain - especially laughable was the thought that the Indians would change their fighting style to suit the British. (Many of Burgoyne's Indians deserted when he tried to make them fight his way.) But the laughter turned to outrage when news broke of the murder of Jane McCrea.

The Jane McCrea tragedy

McCrea was a young American woman who was engaged to one of General Burgoyne's soldiers. While on her way to meet her fiancé at Fort Edward, New York, in July 1777, she was apparently taken by a band of Burgoyne's Indians. Two days later, McCrea's scalped and bullet-ridden body was found near Fort Edward. Exactly what happened to the young woman remains a mystery. A tremendous uproar followed, and the tragic story of Jane McCrea grew into a legend.

Americans were horrified by the thought of a combined British- Indian invasion; inflamed by the tragedy of Jane McCrea, many rushed to join the fight against Burgoyne.

Violence escalates

The American Revolution had a profound effect on the longstanding harmony that had characterized the Iroquois Confederacy. Pro-British Iroquois tribes proved to be the greatest Native menace to the American cause when they participated with Loyalists (Americans loyal to Great Britain) in a series of raids on frontier communities in 1778-79. The most famous of the raids were the Wyoming Valley (Pennsylvania) Massacre of July 3-4, 1778 and the Cherry Valley (New York) Massacre of November 11, 1778.

For the Indians, as for Americans, the conflict had become a civil war. Brother fought against brother, and many brave warriors lost their lives. One of the survivors was Mohawk chief Joseph Brant (1742-1807; Indian name Thayendanegea, meaning "bundle of sticks"), a staunch supporter of the British. He had established a reputation for himself as a brilliant soldier and spokesperson for his people. Brant led his warriors

in lightning-fast raids on frontier rebel targets. His very name filled the patriots with terror. Although he acted with white Loyalists, Brant took most of the blame for the horrid Cherry Valley Massacre, in which many innocent men, women, and children were slaughtered. American forces retaliated by burning Indian villages.

The postwar fate of Native Americans

In the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution, the British gave up to the Americans all Indian lands as far west as the Mississippi River. This left pro-British Indians at the mercy of Americans, who were not inclined to be generous. It was generally believed that by helping the British, the Indian tribes gave up their rights to land within the United States. The new nation felt it was justified in forcing the Indians to retire to Canada or to the unknown areas beyond the Mississippi.

Joseph Brant, his Mohawks, and some other Indians relocated to Canada, where they continue to live today. Over the years, the Indians who remained in America were forced to give up most of their land. Even the two Iroquois nations who had fought with the Americans-the Oneida and the Tuscarora-were persuaded to sell their lands and move west as more and more whites intruded on their territory.

America's black soldiers

Between 8,000 and 10,000 blacks served in the Continental army at one time or another, comprising about a quarter of America's armed forces ( see Chapter 7: Assembling an Army [1775-1776]). When the army was finally disbanded in 1783, about 5,000 so-called free blacks were told they could return

home. In reality, some of the 5,000 were slaves, but the need for soldiers had been so critical that no questions were asked when slaves claimed to be free men and sought to join the military.

After Congress set quotas-the number of soldiers each state was required to provide-some slaves were bought and freed by states that could not meet their quotas; they were then sent to serve with white soldiers in the Continental army. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island met their quo tas by buying and freeing slaves and forming all-black units.

The Rhode Island Regiment, consisting of ninety-five slaves and thirty free blacks, distinguished itself at the Battle of Rhode Island in August 1778. When Count de Rochambeau, a French general, arrived in Rhode Island in 1780 to begin train ing French and American troops, one of his aides remarked that the Rhode Island Regiment was "the most neatly dressed, the best under arms, and the most precise in its maneuvers" of all the American soldiers.

Virginia slaves in the Revolution

Southern states, fearing slave uprisings, resisted the enlistment of black soldiers until late in the war. Virginia, the colony with the largest number of slaves in its population, would not allow slaves to carry weapons. Instead, in 1780 Virginia voted to meet its quota by offering rewards to any white man who enlisted for the duration of the war. The reward would be 300 acres of land and the choice of either a healthy

black male slave between the ages of ten and thirty, or money.

Some Virginia slaveowners sent slaves to serve in the army in their place, promising them their freedom as a reward. Hundreds of these black soldiers returned to Virginia after the war, expecting to be freed. Upon their return, though, many were forced back into slavery. This was so obviously unjust that in 1783, Virginia's lawmaking body passed a bill aimed at slaveowners who, "contrary to principles of justice and to their own solemn promise," kept those black former soldiers as slaves.

Slavery weighs against the colonies

From the beginning of the Revolutionary War, black slaves took advantage of the wartime confusion to escape from their owners by the thousands. Many ran to the British.

An English court's 1772 decision in a lawsuit brought by an American slave probably swayed many slaves to support the British in the American Revolution. The case involved James Somersett, a black slave who was taken from Virginia to England by his owner, Charles Steuart. Somersett ran away, was captured, and was sent in chains on a ship bound for Jamaica (an island in the West Indies where slaves worked on sugar plantations). On board the ship, Somersett sued for his freedom. In June 1772, English Lord Chief Justice William Mansfield (1705-1793) issued his decision in the Somersett case, stating that slavery "is so odious [hateful], that nothing can be suffered to support it." He declared that because English law did not allow or approve of slavery, "the black [and any other slave who set foot in England] must be discharged [set free]".

In September, when news of Judge Mansfield's decision reached the colonies and the ears of black slaves, a period of unrest followed. This was especially true in Virginia, where 250,000 slaves were concentrated (the total population of the colonies was about 1.5 million; about one-third of colonial people were slaves). The Mansfield decision outlawed slavery in England, not in the colonies, but this did not matter to American slaves. Thinking that King George was on their side, many slaves ran away, hoping to get to England-and freedom. Their owners lived in constant fear of a slave revolt.

In 1775, with Revolutionary War battles already fought, Dunmore, the British-appointed governor of Virginia, added to slaveowners' fears by proclaiming that he intended to free rebel-owned slaves who would take up arms against their white owners. By December of that year, about 300 runaway slaves had joined Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment, as the military unit was called. (Ethiopian is an outdated term for black Africans.) Within six months, at least 800 more slaves had joined up with Dunmore. Outraged Virginia lawmakers responded by ordering the death penalty to "all Negro or other Slaves, conspiring to rebel" against their owners.

William Howe (1729-1814), the general in charge of British forces in America, finally put an end to the use of slaves in King George's army. It is impossible to know how many free blacks and slaves joined the British side, but certainly many more would have served if the British had allowed them to. For in a country where talk of freedom was widespread, many blacks were enslaved and would continue to be long after the American Revolution ended in 1783.

Runaway Southern slaves, many of them children, also served in the German military units hired by King George III. Hundreds served the British and Germans as laborers, servants,

drummers, fifers (flute players), and even as soldiers. When the war was over, some former American slaves- along with their wives and children- went to Germany with their employers. Some of the French took advantage of the confusion at war's end to reenslave many blacks and sell them in the West Indies.

Blacks in the postwar years

After the American Revolution ended in 1783, pro-British former slaves could not stay in America. The new United States was still a slaveowning country. Runaway black slaves who had fought for the British became the targets of hatred by white Americans. They could not go to the West Indies because the economy of those islands depended on slave labor; there was no room there for large numbers of free blacks who might stir up the slaves. Nor could they go to London and other major cities in Britain because of the severe economic problems plaguing these areas in the postwar period.

The British felt that the problem could be solved by sending the former slaves to Nova Scotia, the easternmost part of the Canadian wilderness owned by Great Britain. An unknown number of pro-British blacks, together with thousands of British ex-soldiers looking for a new life, descended on the sparsely populated land in the mid-1780s. They were not welcomed warmly by Nova Scotians. Finally, in 1790, a former slave by the name of Thomas Peters sailed to London with a petition signed by several hundred black families. The petition sought assistance from the British government for the blacks living in Nova Scotia. In response, arrangements were made for them to sail from Nova Scotia to the western coast of Africa, where sympathetic English citizens were establishing a safe haven for Britain's poor free blacks.

On January 15, 1792, a fleet of British ships set sail from Nova Scotia's Halifax harbor carrying several thousand people of African descent to the newly founded western African coastal settlement. This settlement, then known as Liberia (meaning "freedom"), is now the nation of Sierra Leone; its capital city is called Freetown. For more than half a century after the first blacks arrived there, many more black Americans would give up hope of obtaining freedom and equality at home and, like thousands before them, set sail for West Africa.

For More Information

Books

Nardo, Don, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Braving the New World:1619-1784: From the Arrival of the Enslaved Africans to the End of the American Revolution. Milestones in Black American History Series. New York: Chelsea House, 1995.

Periodicals

"Black Soldiers Fought for Freedom during the Revolution." Philadelphia Tribune, February 9, 1999.

Web Sites

"History of the Black U.S. Soldier." [Online] Available http://www.cyberessays.com/History/143.htm (accessed on August 2, 1999).

Sources

Books

Boatner, Mark M. III. "McCrea Atrocity," "Burgoyne's Proclamation," and "Indians in the Colonial Wars and in the Revolution." Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994.

Franklin, Benjamin. Benjamin Franklin: Writings. New York: Library of America, 1987.

Greene, Robert Ewell. Black Defenders of America. Chicago: Johnson Publishing, 1974.

Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. New York: Harper Collins, 1997.

Lyons, Oren R., and John C. Mohawk, eds. Exiled in the Land of the Free:Democracy, Indian Nations, and the U.S. Constitution. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 1992, pp. 102-4, 196, 246, 253, 257-64.

Marrin, Albert. The War for Independence: The Story of the American Revolution. New York: Atheneum, 1988.

Ploski, Harry A., and James Williams, eds. "Blacks in Colonial and Revolutionary America" and "Black Servicemen and the Military Establishment." In Reference Library of Black America, Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 1990, pp. 795-830.

Trevelyan, George Otto. The American Revolution. Edited by Richard B. Morris. New York: David McKay Co., 1964.

Washburn, Wilcomb E. "The American Revolution and Its Aftermath." In The Indian in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

Williams, T. Harry. The History of American Wars from 1745 to 1918. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981, pp. 3-82.

Web Sites

Selig, Robert A. "Black Soldiers of the Revolution." [Online] Available http://americanrevolution.org/blk.html (accessed on July 14, 1999).

White Views of Native Americans

As uninformed and stereotypical as it sounds to us today, it was common for eighteenth-century Americans to refer to Indians as "savages." Not all colonial Americans held Indians in such low regard, however. Founding Father John Adams, like many other colonists, grew up near Native American families in Massachusetts and considered them good neighbors. Benjamin Franklin admired the Indians and had high praise for the Iroquois Confederacy, whose form of government was the inspiration for the democratic (government by the people) ideals in the Articles of Confederation (1781) and its successor, the Constitution of the United States (1789). In his 1783 essay "Remarks Concerning the Savages of North-America," Franklin wrote: "Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the Perfection of Civility; they think the same of theirs."

Crispus Attucks (c. 1723-1770) has been called the first black American to die for his country. Attucks, who was thought to be of African, Native American, and white ancestry, was probably born on an Indian reservation near Framingham, Massachusetts. The details of his youth are uncertain, but he is believed to have been a Christian, may have once been a slave, and was known to have worked on the Boston docks. The story of his death in the Boston Massacre ( see Chapter 5: On the Brink of War [1770-1774]) has become a legend.

According to Black Defenders of America author Robert Ewell Greene, eyewitness accounts of events on the night of March 5, 1770 place Attucks at the head of a mob of "wrathful townsfolk" ready to attack British soldiers. "[C]rying out, 'Let us drive out these ribalds [pronounced RIB-uldz; crude, offensive, unprincipled persons; rascals]. They have no business here,' Attucks and his followers proceeded to assault British soldiers" with snowballs, rocks, and pieces of ice; some sources say that he and about thirty of his sailor friends were armed with heavy clubs.

Attucks and his comrades continued taunting the redcoats. Finally, a riot broke out, and Attucks began assaulting British soldiers with either a club or a gun he had seized in the scuffle. Voices in the crowd cried to the redcoats, "Why don't you fire?" Hearing this, a soldier who had been knocked to the ground opened fire as he arose. Attucks was killed by bullets to the chest.

Newspapers of the day used the incident to illustrate how the British were threatening American liberties, but few people in the colonies defended the rioting. The Sons of Liberty claimed no responsibility for planning it; some Sons, in fact, had urged the crowd to go home. The question remains: Were Attucks and his fallen companions heroes slaughtered in the quest for justice or rioters killed in mob violence?

A Trusted Spy

French soldiers had worked with blacks for years because the French controlled land in Africa. The Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834), a close associate of General George Washington during the American Revolution, enlisted a black Virginian to act as a spy for him. The man was called James Armistead because he was the "property" of a slaveowner named William Armistead. His reports about enemy activities proved so useful, and he won such high praise from Lafayette, that the Virginia legislature eventually granted James his freedom. Lafayette returned to America in 1824 and looked up his old comrade. By that time James was calling himself James Lafayette.

Austin Dabney, Black Soldier in the American Revolution

Austin Dabney was a mulatto (pronounced muh-LAH-toe; a person of mixed white and black [then called Negro] racial heritage) and a slave. Slave status was transferred through mothers to their children. Since his mother was black, it did not matter if Dabney's father were free; it was his fate to be a slave. Dabney was sent to serve in the Revolutionary War in the place of his white owner. (This was a common and legal practice of the day, however unfair it may seem to us today.) He served bravely in the war against the British until the day he was wounded and given up for dead on the battlefield.

On February 4, 1779, while fighting the battle of Kettle Creek, Georgia, Dabney received a crippling musket shot to the thigh. He would have died there if he had not been found and rescued by a white American farmer named Giles Harris. Harris took Dabney to his home and nursed him back to health. In return, Austin Dabney-at this point a free black man-devoted the rest of his life to the Harris family, working for Harris and his children on the farm and even saving up his money to help finance a law school education for Harris's eldest son. Dabney later received a land grant for his service in the war. He and the Harrises are believed to have farmed that land together for several years before moving to Georgia's Pike County in 1826. Dabney died in Zebulon, Georgia.

Sources: Robert Ewell Greene, Black Defenders of America, 1775-1973. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1974, pp. 8-9. From George R. Gilmer, Sketches of the First Settlers of Upper Georgia. Baltimore: Baltimore Genealogical Publishing Co.,1965. Courtesy of Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, GA. Also see Scott, Carole E. "Georgia's Black Revolutionary Patriots." [Online] Available http://www.westga.edu/~cscott/dabney.html (accessed on January 19, 2000).

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native americans and blacks in the american revolution native americans and blacks fought on both sides during the american revolution.

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Native Americans and Blacks in the American Revolution

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ative Americans and blacks fought on both sides during the American Revolution. Native American participation began in the earliest days of the conflict when, in March of 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress accepted an offer from the Stockbridge Indians to form a company of "minutemen" (armed soldiers who promised to be ready in a minute to defend the colonies against the British).

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The Sons of Liberty

In Boston in early summer of 1765 a group of shopkeepers and artisans who called themselves The Loyal Nine, began preparing for agitation against the Stamp Act. As that group grew, it came to be known as the Sons of Liberty. And grow it did! These were not the leading men of Boston, but rather workers and tradesmen. It was unseemly that they would be so agitated by a parliamentary act. Though their ranks did not include Samuel and John Adams, the fact may have been a result of a mutually beneficial agreement. The Adams' and other radical members of the legislature were daily in the public eye; they could not afford to be too closely associated with violence, neither could the secretive Sons of Liberty afford much public exposure. However, amongst the members were two men who could generate much public sentiment about the Act. Benjamin Edes, a printer, and John Gill of the Boston Gazette produced a steady stream of news and opinion. Within a very short time a group of some two thousand men had been organized under Ebenezer McIntosh, a South Boston shoemaker.

The first widely known acts of the Sons took place on August 14, 1765, when an effigy of Andrew Oliver (who was to be commissioned Distributor of Stamps for Massachusetts) was found hanging in a tree on Newbury street, along with a large boot with a devil climbing out of it. The boot was a play on the name of the Earl of Bute and the whole display was intended to establish an evil connection between Oliver and the Stamp Act. The sheriffs were told to remove the display but protested in fear of their lives, for a large crowd had formed at the scene. Before the evening a mob burned Oliver's property on Kilby street, then moved on to his house. There they beheaded the effigy and stoned the house as its occupants looked out in horror. They then moved to nearby Fort Hill were they built a large fire and burned what was left of the effigy. Most of the crowd dissipated at that point, however McIntosh and crew, then under cover of darkness, ransacked Oliver's abandoned home until midnight. On that evening it became very clear who ruled Boston. The British Militia, the Sheriffs and Justices, kept a low profile. No one dared respond to such violent force.

By the end of that year the Sons of Liberty existed in every colony. Their most popular objective was to force Stamp Distributors throughout the colonies to resign. The groups also applied pressure to any Merchants who did not comply with the non-importation associations. Wherever these groups existed they were either directed in secret by leading men in the community or actually lead by them. However, there were opportunists everywhere, too, who would use the name Sons of Liberty to carry out acts of revenge and other violence not related to the cause. For example, in South Carolina a group of sailors, calling themselves The Sons of Liberty, formed a mob to coerce money from people on the streets*. Such behavior could certainly undermine the cause, so the Sons spent a great deal of time policing themselves and pretenders. This was the origin on names such as "True Sons," and "True-born Sons" of Liberty.

The success of these movements in undermining the Stamp Act cannot be attributed to violence alone. Their most effective work was performed in newsprint. A great many of the Sons were printers and publishers themselves and even those who were not, were sympathetic to the cause. It was they who would pay the most in duties, after all. Nearly every newspaper in the colonies carried daily reports of the activities of the Sons. Accounts of the most dramatic escapades spread throughout the colonies. In one most remarkable incident, an account of the Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions was printed far and wide. It is not certain how many of the editors who reprinted it were aware of the status of the resolutions, but seven were printed, while only five actually passed (the fifth was in fact rescinded the day after adoption.) The ultimate effect of such propaganda was to embolden both citizens and Legislatures in every colony. When the Stamp Act became effective on the 1st of November, 1765, nearly all of these papers went right on publishing without the required Stamp.

In the early months of 1766 there was such chaos that many of the royal governors had gone into hiding. The Sheriffs and Militia that they might have counted on to keep the peace were mostly members of the Sons of Liberty. Governors were afraid to unlock the weapons stores. Few royal troops were available and they were vastly outnumbered in any case. The Sons of Liberty had displaced the royal government in nearly every colony. The Stamp Act Congress had concluded its business, but there was little hope that its petition to Gr. Britain would be heard. Correspondence between the various groups began, toward the mutual support and defense of the cause. It was expected that eventually British troops would land and attempt to reassert control. So it was that the first efforts to unite the colonies were not undertaken by their respective legislatures, but by these independent radical groups. The various Sons throughout the colonies began to correspond and develop a larger organization.

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In Boston in early summer of 1765 a group of shopkeepers and artisans who called themselves The Loyal Nine, began preparing for agitation against the Stamp Act. As that group grew, it came to be known as the Sons of Liberty. And grow it did!

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Native Americans' participation in the Revolutionary War - and particularly George Washington's Delaware River crossing - is a sometimes overlooked topic. And it has a complex answer.

"It's convenient to think of everyone from that time falling into two basic camps, the Americans and the British (Loyalists), but there were lots of different groups caught in the middle, with Native Americans being one of them," says Katherine Becnel, Washington Crossing Historic Park's volunteer coordinator and a former gallery educator at the Museum of the American Revolution.

Native Involvement in the Conflict

Initially, Native Americans were discouraged from getting involved in the fighting, Becnel says. Both sides perceived the war in its early days as a "family squabble." But as the war dragged on, outside help became necessary on both sides. Native Americans seemed a natural ally to both: the colonists traded with them, and the British fought alongside them in the French and Indian War (1754-1763).

"At a certain point, the Native Americans began trying to figure out which side was best positioned to protect their land, or whether it was in their best interest to remain neutral," Becnel says. "If they remained neutral, there was no guarantee it would be respected by either side."

Some Native Americans featured prominently in the war. One of the most notable was Colonel Joseph Louis Cook (Akiatonharónkwen), who became the highest-ranking Native American in the Continental Army.

"Based on the parts of his timeline that we know, it's possible that he was part of the crossing, but we can't say for sure. There's nothing to confirm it," Becnel says.

Although there is no known record of a Native American participating in the crossing or fighting during the Ten Crucial Days, that doesn't mean none did. We do know that Native Americans lived in Bucks County at that time. But they were hiding in plain sight.

Indigenous People in Colonial-Era Pennsylvania

The Walking Purchase was a highly questionable land transaction negotiated between agents for the sons of William Penn and the Lenape Nation in 1737. It resulted in a huge swath of southeastern Pennsylvania (along the Delaware River) being opened to European settlement. In the process, the indigenous Lenape were forced to leave.

"The Walking Purchase was absolutely devastating," says Adam Waterbear DePaul, M.Ed., the storykeeper for the tribal council of the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania. "Our intent was to give some land to William Penn's sons for a small family settlement. We ended up losing the equivalent of Rhode Island."

According to DePaul, almost immediately after the agreement was signed, bounties were issued for Lenape scalps, children included.

"There were many things going on, but it's safe to say that was our single largest awakening to the reality that our relationship with the colonists had changed," he says. "Following the Walking Purchase, and not necessarily because of it, we as a people felt threatened and frightened and saw the colonists as enemies."

The Lenape Nation in Pennsylvania

Not every member of the Lenape Nation was forced to flee. Women could remain as the wives of colonists. "The colonists valued their skill and arduous work ethic in farming the local land, which was still somewhat foreign to them," DePaul explains.

To be allowed to remain, the Lenape women needed to publicly disavow their heritage. They couldn't speak the language, dress traditionally, or practice any ceremonies. On the census, they had to identify as white.

"They developed a system of hiding and assimilating into colonial culture and passing traditions through families in secret," DePaul says. "They survived by doing everything they could not to be on the government's radar."

The ramifications continue to this day. In order for a Native American nation to be federally recognized, it must have maintained a continuous relationship with the federal government since the country's inception. Because the Lenape who remained in Bucks County did not, the tribes that eventually resettled in Oklahoma are considered the last remnants of the Lenape Nation. A reality, DePaul says, that has further fractured the Lenape.

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Native Americans' Involvement in the Revolutionary War - Washington Crossing Historic Park

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Native Americans' participation in the Revolutionary War - and particularly George Washington's Delaware River crossing - is a sometimes overlooked topic. And it has a complex answer.

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Eyewitness Account of The Boston Tea Party

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Eyewitness Account of The Boston Tea Party

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The tea destroyed was contained in three ships, lying near each other at what was called at that time Griffin's wharf, and were surrounded by armed ships of war, the commanders of which had publicly declared that if the rebels, as they were pleased to style the Bostonians, should not withdraw their opposition to the landing of the tea before a certain day, the 17th day of December, 1773, they should on that day force it on shore, under the cover of their cannon's mouth.

On the day preceding the seventeenth, there was a meeting of the citizens of the county of Suffolk, convened at one of the churches in Boston, for the purpose of consulting on what measures might be considered expedient to prevent the landing of the tea, or secure the people from the collection of the duty. At that meeting a committee was appointed to wait on Governor Hutchinson, and request him to inform them whether he would take any measures to satisfy the people on the object of the meeting.

To the first application of this committee, the Governor told them he would give them a definite answer by five o'clock in the afternoon. At the hour appointed, the committee again repaired to the Governor's house, and on inquiry found he had gone to his country seat at Milton, a distance of about six miles. When the committee returned and informed the meeting of the absence of the Governor, there was a confused murmur among the members, and the meeting was immediately dissolved, many of them crying out, "Let every man do his duty, and be true to his country"; and there was a general huzza for Griffin's wharf.

It was now evening, and I immediately dressed myself in the costume of an Indian, equipped with a small hatchet, which I and my associates denominated the tomahawk, with which, and a club, after having painted my face and hands with coal dust in the shop of a blacksmith, I repaired to Griffin's wharf, where the ships lay that contained the tea. When I first appeared in the street after being thus disguised, I fell in with many who were dressed, equipped and painted as I was, and who fell in with me and marched in order to the place of our destination.

When we arrived at the wharf, there were three of our number who assumed an authority to direct our operations, to which we readily submitted. They divided us into three parties, for the purpose of boarding the three ships which contained the tea at the same time. The name of him who commanded the division to which I was assigned was Leonard Pitt. The names of the other commanders I never knew.

We were immediately ordered by the respective commanders to board all the ships at the same time, which we promptly obeyed. The commander of the division to which I belonged, as soon as we were on board the ship appointed me boatswain, and ordered me to go to the captain and demand of him the keys to the hatches and a dozen candles. I made the demand accordingly, and the captain promptly replied, and delivered the articles; but requested me at the same time to do no damage to the ship or rigging.

We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard, and we immediately proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of the water.

In about three hours from the time we went on board, we had thus broken and thrown overboard every tea chest to be found in the ship, while those in the other ships were disposing of the tea in the same way, at the same time. We were surrounded bv British armed ships, but no attempt was made to resist us.

We then quietly retired to our several places of residence, without having any conversation with each other, or taking any measures to discover who were our associates; nor do I recollect of our having had the knowledge of the name of a single individual concerned in that affair, except that of Leonard Pitt, the commander of my division, whom I have mentioned. There appeared to be an understanding that each individual should volunteer his services, keep his own secret, and risk the consequence for himself. No disorder took place during that transaction, and it was observed at that time that the stillest night ensued that Boston had enjoyed for many months.

During the time we were throwing the tea overboard, there were several attempts made by some of the citizens of Boston and its vicinity to carry off small quantities of it for their family use. To effect that object, they would watch their opportunity to snatch up a handful from the deck, where it became plentifully scattered, and put it into their pockets.

One Captain O'Connor, whom I well knew, came on board for that purpose, and when he supposed he was not noticed, filled his pockets, and also the lining of his coat. But I had detected him and gave information to the captain of what he was doing. We were ordered to take him into custody, and just as he was stepping from the vessel, I seized him by the skirt of his coat, and in attempting to pull him back, I tore it off; but, springing forward, by a rapid effort he made his escape. He had, however, to run a gauntlet through the crowd upon the wharf nine each one, as he passed, giving him a kick or a stroke.

Another attempt was made to save a little tea from the ruins of the cargo by a tall, aged man who wore a large cocked hat and white wig, which was fashionable at that time. He had sleightly slipped a little into his pocket, but being detected, they seized him and, taking his hat and wig from his head, threw them, together with the tea, of which they had emptied his pockets, into the water. In consideration of his advanced age, he was permitted to escape, with now and then a slight kick.

The next morning, after we had cleared the ships of the tea, it was discovered that very considerable quantities of it were floating upon the surface of the water; and to prevent the possibility of any of its being saved for use, a number of small boats were manned by sailors and citizens, who rowed them into those parts of the harbor wherever the tea was visible, and by beating it with oars and paddles so thoroughly drenched it as to render its entire destruction inevitable.
- George Hewes

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The tea destroyed was contained in three ships, lying near each other at what was called at that time Griffin's wharf, and were surrounded by armed ships of war, the commanders of which had publicly declared that if the rebels, as they were pleased to style the Bostonians, should not withdraw their opposition to the landing of the tea before a certain day, the 17th day of December, 1773, they should on that day force it on shore, under the cover of their cannon's mouth.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The tea destroyed was contained in three ships, lying near each other at what was called at that time Griffin's wharf, and were surrounded by armed ships of war, the commanders of which had publicly declared that if the rebels, as they were pleased to style the Bostonians, should not withdraw their opposition to the landing of the tea before a certain day, the 17th day of December, 1773, they should on that day force it on shore, under the cover of their cannon's mouth.

On the day preceding the seventeenth, there was a meeting of the citizens of the county of Suffolk, convened at one of the churches in Boston, for the purpose of consulting on what measures might be considered expedient to prevent the landing of the tea, or secure the people from the collection of the duty. At that meeting a committee was appointed to wait on Governor Hutchinson, and request him to inform them whether he would take any measures to satisfy the people on the object of the meeting.

To the first application of this committee, the Governor told them he would give them a definite answer by five o'clock in the afternoon. At the hour appointed, the committee again repaired to the Governor's house, and on inquiry found he had gone to his country seat at Milton, a distance of about six miles. When the committee returned and informed the meeting of the absence of the Governor, there was a confused murmur among the members, and the meeting was immediately dissolved, many of them crying out, "Let every man do his duty, and be true to his country"; and there was a general huzza for Griffin's wharf.

It was now evening, and I immediately dressed myself in the costume of an Indian, equipped with a small hatchet, which I and my associates denominated the tomahawk, with which, and a club, after having painted my face and hands with coal dust in the shop of a blacksmith, I repaired to Griffin's wharf, where the ships lay that contained the tea. When I first appeared in the street after being thus disguised, I fell in with many who were dressed, equipped and painted as I was, and who fell in with me and marched in order to the place of our destination.

When we arrived at the wharf, there were three of our number who assumed an authority to direct our operations, to which we readily submitted. They divided us into three parties, for the purpose of boarding the three ships which contained the tea at the same time. The name of him who commanded the division to which I was assigned was Leonard Pitt. The names of the other commanders I never knew.

We were immediately ordered by the respective commanders to board all the ships at the same time, which we promptly obeyed. The commander of the division to which I belonged, as soon as we were on board the ship appointed me boatswain, and ordered me to go to the captain and demand of him the keys to the hatches and a dozen candles. I made the demand accordingly, and the captain promptly replied, and delivered the articles; but requested me at the same time to do no damage to the ship or rigging.

We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard, and we immediately proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of the water.

In about three hours from the time we went on board, we had thus broken and thrown overboard every tea chest to be found in the ship, while those in the other ships were disposing of the tea in the same way, at the same time. We were surrounded bv British armed ships, but no attempt was made to resist us.

We then quietly retired to our several places of residence, without having any conversation with each other, or taking any measures to discover who were our associates; nor do I recollect of our having had the knowledge of the name of a single individual concerned in that affair, except that of Leonard Pitt, the commander of my division, whom I have mentioned. There appeared to be an understanding that each individual should volunteer his services, keep his own secret, and risk the consequence for himself. No disorder took place during that transaction, and it was observed at that time that the stillest night ensued that Boston had enjoyed for many months.

During the time we were throwing the tea overboard, there were several attempts made by some of the citizens of Boston and its vicinity to carry off small quantities of it for their family use. To effect that object, they would watch their opportunity to snatch up a handful from the deck, where it became plentifully scattered, and put it into their pockets.

One Captain O'Connor, whom I well knew, came on board for that purpose, and when he supposed he was not noticed, filled his pockets, and also the lining of his coat. But I had detected him and gave information to the captain of what he was doing. We were ordered to take him into custody, and just as he was stepping from the vessel, I seized him by the skirt of his coat, and in attempting to pull him back, I tore it off; but, springing forward, by a rapid effort he made his escape. He had, however, to run a gauntlet through the crowd upon the wharf nine each one, as he passed, giving him a kick or a stroke.

Another attempt was made to save a little tea from the ruins of the cargo by a tall, aged man who wore a large cocked hat and white wig, which was fashionable at that time. He had sleightly slipped a little into his pocket, but being detected, they seized him and, taking his hat and wig from his head, threw them, together with the tea, of which they had emptied his pockets, into the water. In consideration of his advanced age, he was permitted to escape, with now and then a slight kick.

The next morning, after we had cleared the ships of the tea, it was discovered that very considerable quantities of it were floating upon the surface of the water; and to prevent the possibility of any of its being saved for use, a number of small boats were manned by sailors and citizens, who rowed them into those parts of the harbor wherever the tea was visible, and by beating it with oars and paddles so thoroughly drenched it as to render its entire destruction inevitable.
- George Hewes

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The tea destroyed was contained in three ships, lying near each other at what was called at that time Griffin's wharf, and were surrounded by armed ships of war, the commanders of which had publicly declared that if the rebels, as they were pleased to style the Bostonians, should not withdraw their opposition to the landing of the tea before a certain day, the 17th day of December, 1773, they should on that day force it on shore, under the cover of their cannon's mouth.

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The Boston Tea Party, which involved the willful destruction of 342 crates of British tea, proved a significant development on the path to the American Revolution.

The Boston Tea Party, which occurred on December 16, 1773 and was known to contemporaries as the Destruction of the Tea, was a direct response to British taxation policies in the North American colonies.

The British response to the Boston Tea Party was to impose even more stringent policies on the Massachusetts colony. The Coercive Acts levied fines for the destroyed tea, sent British troops to Boston, and rewrote the colonial charter of Massachusetts, giving broadly expanded powers to the royally appointed governor.

British taxation policies

After the conclusion of the Seven Years' War in 1763, the British Empire was in financial distress. Though the British had won the war, they had spent vast amounts of blood and treasure in the process. At the end of the war, the British Parliament sought to replenish its depleted coffers by taxing the North American colonies.

When the British Prime Minister, Lord North, proposed the Tea Act in May 1773, he was not even thinking of the North American colonies, but rather of the East India Company, which had assumed control over India. In exchange for the power to appoint its governors, North loaned the company £1.5 million-the equivalent of about $270 million today. North also granted the company a monopoly on the right to sell tea in the North American colonies.

The Boston Tea Party

As the British authorized the shipment of thousands of pounds of tea to its colonies in North America-Boston, Charleston, New York City, and Philadelphia-colonial tea merchants protested.

In Boston, Governor Thomas Hutchinson, a pro-British Loyalist, demanded that the ships be allowed to dock and that colonial merchants pay the duties on the cargo. Boston was the center of colonial revolutionary fervor, and its radicals did not take kindly to Hutchinson's demands. The Sons of Liberty, a secret society formed by radical colonists to protest British taxation policies after the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, spearheaded the opposition to the Tea Act.

On December 16, 1773 at Griffin's Wharf, a group of approximately 50 Bostonians disguised as Native Americans boarded the ships Beaver, Dartmouth, and Eleanor, and proceeded to dump 342 crates of tea into the Boston harbor. In doing so, they destroyed almost 10 thousand pounds sterling worth of tea-worth about $1.7 million today-that belonged to the British East India Company. The incident, referred to at the time by John Adams as the Destruction of the Tea, would not become known as the Boston Tea Party for another fifty years.

Paul Revere carried the news of the destruction of the tea to New York, which in turn refused to allow the British ships to unload. In Philadelphia, as well, townspeople gathered to turn the British ships away from harbor. In Charleston, the ship was docked, but customs officials seized the cargo.

The British empire strikes back

Instead of reforming their tax policies or accommodating the demands of the colonists, the British responded to the incident by passing the Coercive Acts, which shut down Boston's port, modified the charter of Massachusetts-effectively shutting down the colony's legislative assembly-and sent British troops under General Thomas Gage to occupy Boston.

Gage was appointed governor, with broadly expanded powers to appoint local sheriffs, lodge troops in private homes, and deny townspeople permission to hold meetings. In response, the colonies called for a continental congress. The First Continental Congress convened in the autumn of 1774 and approved a general boycott of British goods. The stage was set for the ultimate showdown between the British and the colonies in the American War for Independence.

What do you think?

How would you describe British tax policies in the colonies?

How important do you think the Boston Tea Party was in the ultimate outbreak of war between Britain and its North American colonies?

Why do you think the British refused to back down in the face of opposition to its policies?

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On March 5, 1770 an angry altercation between British soldiers and American colonists inflamed passions that would eventually lead to revolution.

Boston, Massachusetts was a hotbed of radical revolutionary thought and activity leading up to 1770.

In March 1770, British soldiers stationed in Boston opened fire on a crowd, killing five townspeople and infuriating locals.

What became known as the Boston Massacre intensified anti-British sentiment and proved a pivotal event leading up to the American Revolution.

Boston, cradle of revolution

Even before the event that went down in history as the Boston Massacre, Boston, Massachusetts was a center of radical revolutionary ideas and sentiment. The colonists had endured years of conflict with British officials, and the number of people living in poverty and/or unemployed was growing in the city. With so many idle young men competing for work, there was bound to be trouble as British rule became more onerous.

After the Seven Years' War had drained Britain's coffers, the royal government imposed tighter controls over its North American colonies in order to raise revenues. When customs officials complained about the difficulties of collecting from disobedient colonists, Britain sent troops to impose order. The arrival of British soldiers in October 1768 heightened tensions in a city already on the edge of an uprising.

Over the next two years, Boston existed in a state of virtual British military occupation-one out of three men in the city was a Redcoat, a common nickname for British soldiers due to the color of their uniforms. Radical townspeople and idle young men harassed the soldiers, leading to numerous skirmishes and scuffles.

The Boston Massacre

In March 1770, British officials ordered the removal of all occupants of the Boston Manufactory House-a halfway house for people living in poverty, those who were ill, and those who were homeless-so that a regiment of British soldiers could be garrisoned there. The Manufactory House's homeless occupants put up a resistance, and the British backed down, but other confrontations ensued.

On March 5th, one such confrontation turned violent. As a mob of angry townspeople encircled a British sentry shouting insults and throwing rocks and sticks, nervous Redcoats opened fire into the crowd, killing five Bostonians and wounding several others. One of the victims was Crispus Attucks, a free sailor of African and Native American descent who has gone down in history as the first casualty of the American Revolution.

Local newspapers eulogized Attucks and the others as martyrs to British tyranny. Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, two of Boston's most influential revolutionaries, proved adept propagandists. Revere is known for producing the most famous depiction of the incident-though in reality he merely copied the original engraving by young Boston-area artist Henry Pelham. The image was published in the Boston Gazette and circulated widely, stoking the flames of anti-British anger and revolutionary righteousness. Pro-British Loyalists promoted an alternate narrative, accusing agitators in the crowd of deliberately provoking the incident. Nevertheless, the radical narrative proved far more influential.

The colonists did not want to give the British a pretext for retaliation, and so preparations were made to ensure a fair trial. A young lawyer named John Adams, despite his commitment to the revolutionary cause, agreed to defend the Redcoats, all but two of whom were acquitted.

Even though British troops were recalled from Boston, the incident inflamed hostilities and intensified revolutionary sentiment among the colonists. For the revolutionaries, the so-called massacre demonstrated the corrupting influence of standing armies and the tyranny of the British. It was a major signpost on the road to revolution; indeed, John Adams later claimed that the "foundation of American independence was laid" that fateful day of March 5, 1770.

What do you think?

Why do you think the incident in March 1770 happened in Boston and not somewhere else?

In your opinion, was the Boston Massacre truly a massacre? Who do you think was at fault for the incident?

How important was the Boston Massacre in the events leading up to the American Revolution?

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Herschel Levit painted the mural, "Crispus Attucks," at the Recorder of Deeds building, DC, in 1943.
Library of Congress

Crispus Attucks, a sailor of mixed African and Indigenous ancestry, died in Boston on March 5, 1770 after British soldiers fired two musket balls into his chest. ¹ His death and that of four other men at the hands of the 29 th Regiment became known as the Boston Massacre. Death instantly transformed Attucks from an anonymous sailor into a martyr for a burgeoning revolutionary cause.

The life of Crispus Attucks is far less documented than his death. Early coverage and investigations into the details of the Massacre refer to Attucks as Michael Johnson, ² a name he may have used as an intentional alias. After uncovering his actual name, newspapers published a few details about his life, notably his profession, a sailor; his birth in Framingham, Massachusetts; his current residence of New Providence in the Bahamas; and his ship's destination of North Carolina. ³ His last name, "Attucks," is of Indigenous origin, deriving from the Natick word for "deer." ⁴ Witness testimony during the Massacre trial interchangeably used "mulatto" or "Indian" to describe Attucks, indicating his mixed African and Indigenous birth. ⁵ His first name reflects the trend in the colonial era of enslavers forcing an Ancient Roman name onto their enslaved people. ⁶ Attucks shares the name "Crispus" with the son of Emperor Constantine. ⁷ He also appears in a 1750 advertisement in the Boston Gazette. William Brown of Framingham placed an advertisement to call for the return of a twenty-seven year old escaped enslaved man named "Crispas," described as a six foot two inch "mulatto." ⁸ Contemporary sources at the time of his death do not identify Attucks as enslaved or formerly enslaved. How and when he gained his freedom is unknown, but it is possible that Attucks used the name Michael Johnson to protect himself from a return to slavery.

On March 5, 1770, witnesses placed Attucks at the head of a group of sailors brandishing clubs and marching toward King Street. A crowd formed around a small group of British soldiers, hurling snowballs, ice balls, and insults at the men. Observers noted Attucks leaned his tall frame on his cordwood club. ⁹ Amid the chaos, Private Montgomery and the rest of the soldiers fired into the crowd. Two musket balls ripped through Attucks chest, killing him instantly. ¹⁰ In the following days, the people of Boston held a funeral procession for the victims of the massacre. Because Attucks and fellow victim and sailor James Caldwell had no family or home in Boston, their bodies lay in state at Faneuil Hall. ¹¹

Defending the soldiers in the subsequent trial, John Adams painted Attucks and the rest of those killed as aggressors to justify the killing. He played to the jury's prejudices about race and class, describing those in the crowd as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes, and mulattos, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars." ¹² In other words, those in the crowd were young, lower-class, Black, Irish, or sailors from out of town. Adams' argument led to an acquittal for the Captain and all but two of the soldiers.

Town officials buried the victims of the Massacre in the Granary Burying Ground. Today, they share a headstone facing toward Tremont Street.

In the 19 th century, abolitionists in Boston, led by William Cooper Nell, held up the death of Attucks as the first martyr of the American Revolution. Nell's seminal work, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, fought the erasure of Black people from the story of the American Revolution. Nell led this work with the story of Crispus Attucks, highlighting his death as the first in the cause for liberty. ¹³ Though Black Bostonians have commemorated the anniversary of Attucks' death since at least the 1850s, ¹⁴ it took until the early twentieth century when activists, including William Monroe Trotter, pushed the city of Boston to officially recognize March 5 as Crispus Attucks Day, ¹⁵ a tradition which continues to the present day.

Learn More...
Revolutionary Spaces - Reflecting Attucks Virtual Exhibit
Footnotes

1. "Boston March 12," Pennsylvania Gazette, March 22, 1770, 2.

2. "Mortuary Notice," The Boston News-Letter, March 15, 1770.

3. "Boston March 12" Pennsylvania Gazette, March 22, 1770, 2.

4. James Hammond Trumbull, "Natick Dictionary" (United States: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1903), 243.

5. William Weems, John Adams, Frederic Kidder, History of the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770: Consisting of the Narrative of the Town, the Trial of the Soldiers: and a Historical Introduction, Containing Unpublished Documents of John Adams, and Explanatory Notes (United States: J. Munsell, 1870), 134.

6. Classicisms in the Black Atlantic (United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2020), 14.

7. David Woods, "On the Death of the Empress Fausta," in Greece and Rome 45 (1) (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 70-86, doi:10.1093/gr/45.1.70.

8. "Advertisement," Boston Gazette, October 2, 1750, 2.

9. Weems, Adams, Kidder, History of the Boston Massacre, 6.

10. "To the Printers," Boston Gazette, December 31, 1770.

11. Boston Post-Boy, March 12, 1770, 3.

12. Weems, Adams, Kidder, History of the Boston Massacre, 255.

13. William Cooper Nell, Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution: With Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons: to which is Added a Brief Survey of the Condition and Prospects of Colored Americans (United States: R.F. Wallcut, 1855), 14.

14. "The Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770," The Liberator, March 12, 1858, 1.

15. "Pay Tribute to Attucks on Anniversary of Massacre," The Boston Globe, March 5, 1928, 19.

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Crispus Attucks (U.S. National Park Service)

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Crispus Attucks, a sailor of mixed African and Indigenous ancestry, died in Boston on March 5, 1770 after British soldiers fired two musket balls into his chest. 1 His death and that of four other men at the hands of the 29 th Regiment became known as the Boston Massacre.

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On the banks of Lake Glenida in Carmel, New York, stands a dramatic and animated equestrian statue of the female Paul Revere of the American Revolution. 16-year-old Sybil Ludington sits astride her steed, Star. Ludington made her ride on April 26, 1777, during a driving rainstorm, traveling forty miles, and unlike Revere, avoiding capture. She learned that the British were planning to attack nearby Danbury, Connecticut the location of a stockpile of provisions for Continental Army. Her father, Henry, was a Colonel in the militia in command of 400 men. Not unlike Revere who two years earlier roused the communities outside of Boston to British troops being on the march to seize arms, Ludington spurred her horse, prodding him with a stick to raise the alarm in Putnam County, New York. The British however were successful in their raid on Danbury, but roused by Ludington's alarm, the Patriots encountered the British at nearby Ridgefield, Connecticut and were successful in driving them back to Long Island Sound. Unlike Revere who had a patriotic poem written about him by a famous poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ludington remained obscured in history until in 1961 the Daughters of the American Revolution commissioned noted sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington to replicate Ludington in bronze.

In 1784, a year after America achieved its independence, Ludington married Edmond Ogden bearing him a son, named Henry, after her father. She died at the age of 77 and was interred in the same cemetery as her beloved father. Not unlike other less known figures of the American Revolution, Ludington was honored with a postage stamp during the Bicentennial in the Contributors to the Cause series.

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On the banks of Lake Glenida in Carmel, New York, stands a dramatic and animated equestrian statue of the female Paul Revere of the American Revolution. 16-year-old Sybil Ludington sits astride her steed, Star. Ludington made her ride on April 26, 1777, during a driving rainstorm, traveling forty miles, and unlike Revere, avoiding capture.

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Deborah Sampson is best known for disguising herself as a man to serve in the Continental Army from May 1782 to October 1783. She was also one of the first women to receive a pension for her military service and the first woman to go on a national lecture tour of the United States.

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Women supported the American Revolution by making homespun cloth, working to produce goods and services to help the army, and even serving as spies.

Women performed crucial tasks in the American Revolution, organizing fundraising drives, supplying the troops, working in the military camps, and tending to the wounded soldiers.

One of the most common ways that women supported the war effort was by making homespun, home-made cloth that took on revolutionary symbolism after the colonies imposed boycotts on British goods, including textiles.

Some women even acted as spies, and there is at least one documented case of a woman disguising herself as a man to fight in the war.

The American Revolution

By the time the British imposed the Coercive Acts, or the Intolerable Acts, as they became known in the North American colonies, revolutionary sentiment and activism had been on the rise.

The Coercive Acts, passed in 1774 as punishment for the Boston Tea Party, during which Boston radicals dumped over 300 crates of British tea into the harbor, was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back of continued loyalty to the mother country. These acts convinced many colonists that they could no longer afford to live under the increasingly tyrannical rule of the British and contributed to uniting the colonies in opposition to continued colonial control.

The Daughters of Liberty and homespun

After the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, the Daughters of Liberty was formed. Established in 1765, the organization was comprised solely of women who sought to demonstrate their loyalty to the revolutionary cause by boycotting British goods and making their own. Martha Washington, wife of George Washington, was one of the most prominent Daughters of Liberty.

Not only were women at the forefront of efforts to impose boycotts on British goods, they also spearheaded domestic production efforts. Because most textiles in the colonies were imported from Britain, weaving homespun cloth became an act of political rebellion. The Daughters of Liberty made public demonstrations of their spinning, such as the one at Newport, Rhode Island, where 92 women gathered in a meeting-house and produced 170 skeins of yarn.

What do you think?

What was so subversive about homespun?

In your opinion, what was the most important way that women contributed to the American Revolution?

How do you think women's wartime service might have affected their view of gender roles in the post-revolutionary period?

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Women in the American Revolution (article) | Khan Academy

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Often known as camp followers, it was common for women and children to follow the army. Each woman had their own motivations for following the armies: most were the wives, daughters, and/or mothers of male soldiers and wanted to stay close to their loved ones. Others did so in order to provide for themselves, looking for food and protection because they were no longer able to support themselves after their men left for war. There were even provisions for providing these families army rations as they slogged along on the various campaigns.

Her identity was finally revealed during the summer of 1783 when she contracted a fever while on duty in Philadelphia. After the Treaty of Paris, she was given an honorable discharge from the army. She went on to marry and had three children, settling down back in Massachusetts. To help make ends meet, she often gave public lectures about her wartime service. By the time she died in 1827, she was collecting minimal pensions for her service from Massachusetts and the federal government.

One of the most famous was a British spy named Ann Bates. Living as a schoolteacher with her husband in Philadelphia when the war broke out, she followed her husband to New York City in June of 1778, when he left to fight with the British Army. It was there she took up the mantle of spy and throughout July and August of 1778, disguised herself as a peddler to spy on Washington's army at White Plans, New York. On her return from each mission, she provided information on the number of soldiers, amount of artillery, level of supplies, and any murmurings of troop movements to her British allies.

Women like Abigail Adams, the wife of Massachusetts Congressional Delegate John Adams, influenced politics as did Mercy Otis Warren. It was Abigail Adams who famously and voluminously corresponded with her husband while he was in Philadelphia, reminding him that in the new form of government that was being established he should "remember the ladies" or they too, would foment a revolution of their own. Warren, just as politically astute as Adams, was a prolific writer, not only recording her thoughts about the confluence of events swirling around Boston but also dabbling in playwriting. She was a fierce devotee to the patriot cause, writing in December 1774, four months before the war broke out at Lexington and Concord, "America stands armed with resolution and virtue, but she still recoils at the idea of drawing the sword against the nation from whence she derived her origin."

Whether publishing their own stories or the stories of others, there are several women who wrote compelling historical narratives about the war. In 1805, Mercy Otis Warren published History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution. In 1827, Ann Darragh, daughter of American spy Lydia Darragh, published the story of her mother's work. Deborah Sampson, the woman who disguised herself as her deceased brother in order to fight with the army, gave public lectures on her life as a Continental soldier. By providing their dynamic and diverse narrative to the wealth of other male narratives, they give modern historians a richer understanding of a history nearly 250 years old.

Ordinary women also endured the horrors of the battlefield when those fights came to their doorstep. Sally Kellogg of Vermont and her family escaped the gods of War in 1776 when the War for Independence found its way into the northern reaches of upstate New York and Benedict Arnold's makeshift fleet and the British Navy clashed on Lake Champlain during the Battle of Valcour Island. As the Kellogg family made good its escape by water, Sally's family "fell in between Arnold's fleet and the British fleet," she later recalled. As the family rowed to safety at Fort Ticonderoga, the exchange of gunfire between ships could be seen and heard Sally recalled, "but happy for us the balls went over us. We heard them whis." Nevertheless, the war continued to follow the Kellogg family. A year later, after having relocated to Bennington, Vermont the Kelloggs were once more forced to be witnesses to carnage, and once again upon recollection, Sally claimed the results were, "a sight to behold. There was not a house [in Bennington's vicinity] but was stowed full of wounded."

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10 Facts: Women During the Revolutionary War

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Fact #1: Women followed the armies and provided a sense of normality to military camps. Often known as camp followers, it was common for women and children...

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The American Revolutionary War for Kids: Learn About the Revolutionary War for Children - FreeSchool

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The Sons of Liberty were a group of people in Boston at the time of the American Revolution. They were led by Samuel Adams, James Otis, and Paul Revere. Other well-known members included Benedict Arnold and Patrick Henry. They were in favor of rights of colonial Americans, which meant they often did not like the British. Some people thought the Sons of Liberty were a mob. The Sons of Liberty were the main group involved in the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party.

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The Sons of Liberty were a group of people in Boston at the time of the American Revolution. They were led by Samuel Adams, James Otis, and Paul Revere. Other well-known members included Benedict Arnold and Patrick Henry. They were in favor of rights of colonial Americans, which meant they often did not like the British.

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Women of the American Revolution: The Real Unsung Heroes

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Tea, Taxes, and The American Revolution: Crash Course World History #28

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Paul Revere for Kids | American Revolutionary Hero

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Liberty's Kids 105 - The Midnight Ride with Paul Revere & William Dawes | History Cartoons for Kids

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The Midnight Ride was the alert to the American colonial militia in April 1775 to the approach of British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord.

The ride occurred on the night of April 18, 1775, immediately before the battles of Lexington and Concord, the first engagements of the American Revolutionary War. In the preceding weeks, British Army activity indicated a planned crackdown on the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, then based in Concord. Paul Revere and William Dawes prepared the alert, which began when Robert Newman, sexton of Boston's North Church, used a lantern signal to alert colonists in Charlestown to the Army's advance by way of the Charles River. Revere and Dawes then rode to meet John Hancock and Samuel Adams in Lexington, alerting up to 40 other riders along the way. Revere and Dawes then headed towards Concord with Samuel Prescott. The three were captured by British troops in Lincoln. Prescott and Dawes escaped but Revere was returned to Lexington and freed after questioning. By giving the Colonists advance warning of the British Army's actions, the ride played a crucial role in the Colonists' victory in the subsequent battles.

The ride has been commemorated in a range of cultural depictions, most notably Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1861 poem, " Paul Revere's Ride", which has shaped popular memory of the event.

Background

When British Army activity on April 7, 1775, suggested the possibility of troop movements, Joseph Warren sent Revere to warn the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, then sitting in Concord, the site of one of the larger caches of Patriot military supplies. After receiving the warning, Concord residents began moving the military supplies away from the town.

One week later, on April 14, General Gage received instructions from Secretary of State William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth (dispatched on January 27), to disarm the rebels, who were known to have hidden weapons in Concord, among other locations, and to imprison the rebellion's leaders, especially Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Dartmouth gave Gage considerable discretion in his commands. Gage issued orders to Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith to proceed from Boston "with utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy... all Military stores.... But you will take care that the soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants or hurt private property." Gage did not issue written orders for the arrest of rebel leaders, as he feared doing so might spark an uprising.

Between 9 and 10 p.m. on the night of April 18, 1775, Joseph Warren told Revere and William Dawes that the king's troops were about to embark in boats from Boston bound for Cambridge and the road to Lexington and Concord. Warren's intelligence suggested that the most likely objectives of the regulars' movements later that night would be the capture of Adams and Hancock. They did not worry about the possibility of regulars marching to Concord, since the supplies at Concord were safe, but they did think their leaders in Lexington were unaware of the potential danger that night. Revere and Dawes were sent out to warn them and to alert colonial militias in nearby towns.

Preparation

In the days before April 18, Revere had instructed Robert Newman, the sexton of the North Church, to send a signal by lantern to alert colonists in Charlestown as to the movements of the troops when the information became known. In what is well known today by the phrase "one if by land, two if by sea", one lantern in the steeple would signal the army's choice of the land route while two lanterns would signal the route "by water" across the Charles River (the movements would ultimately take the water route, and therefore two lanterns were placed in the steeple). Revere first gave instructions to send the signal to Charlestown. He then crossed the Charles River by rowboat, slipping past the British warship HMS Somerset at anchor. Crossings were banned at that hour, but Revere safely landed in Charlestown and rode to Lexington, avoiding a British patrol and later warning almost every house along the route. The Charlestown colonists dispatched additional riders to the north.

Riding through present-day Somerville, Medford, and Arlington, Revere warned patriots along his route, many of whom set out on horseback to deliver warnings of their own. By the end of the night there were probably as many as 40 riders throughout Middlesex County carrying the news of the army's advance. Revere did not shout the phrase later attributed to him ("The British are coming!"): his mission depended on secrecy, the countryside was filled with British army patrols, and most of the Massachusetts colonists (who were predominantly English in ethnic origin) still considered themselves British. Revere's warning, according to eyewitness accounts of the ride and Revere's own descriptions, was "The Regulars are coming out." Revere arrived in Lexington around midnight, with Dawes arriving about a half-hour later. They met with Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were spending the night with Hancock's relatives (in what is now called the Hancock-Clarke House), and they spent a great deal of time discussing plans of action upon receiving the news. They believed that the forces leaving the city were too large for the sole task of arresting two men and that Concord was the main target. The Lexington men dispatched riders to the surrounding towns, and Revere and Dawes continued along the road to Concord accompanied by Samuel Prescott, a doctor who happened to be in Lexington "returning from a lady friend's house at the awkward hour of 1 a.m."

The ride of the three men triggered a flexible system of "alarm and muster" that had been carefully developed months before, in reaction to the colonists' impotent response to the Powder Alarm of September 1774. This system was an improved version of an old network of widespread notification and fast deployment of local militia forces in times of emergency. The colonists had periodically used this system all the way back to the early years of Indian wars in the colony, before it fell into disuse in the French and Indian War. In addition to other express riders delivering messages, bells, drums, alarm guns, bonfires, and a trumpet were used for rapid communication from town to town, notifying the rebels in dozens of eastern Massachusetts villages that they should muster their militias because the regulars in numbers greater than 500 were leaving Boston with possible hostile intentions. This system was so effective that people in towns 25 miles (40 km) from Boston were aware of the army's movements while they were still unloading boats in Cambridge. Unlike in the Powder Alarm, the alarm raised by the three riders successfully allowed the militia to confront the British troops in Concord, and then harry them all the way back to Boston.

Revere, Dawes, and Prescott were detained by a British Army patrol in Lincoln at a roadblock on the way to Concord. Prescott jumped his horse over a wall and escaped into the woods; he eventually reached Concord. Dawes also escaped, though he fell off his horse not long after and did not complete the ride.

Revere was captured and questioned by the British soldiers at gunpoint. He told them of the army's movement from Boston, and that British army troops would be in some danger if they approached Lexington, because of the large number of hostile militia gathered there. He and other captives taken by the patrol were still escorted east toward Lexington, until about a half mile from Lexington they heard a gunshot. The British major demanded Revere explain the gunfire, and Revere replied it was a signal to "alarm the country". As the group drew closer to Lexington, the town bell began to clang rapidly, upon which one of the captives proclaimed to the British soldiers: "The bell's a'ringing! The town's alarmed, and you're all dead men!" The British soldiers gathered and decided not to press further towards Lexington but instead to free the prisoners and head back to warn their commanders. The British confiscated Revere's horse and rode off to warn the approaching army column. Revere walked to Rev. Jonas Clarke's house, where Hancock and Adams were staying. As the battle on Lexington Green unfolded, Revere assisted Hancock and his family in their escape from Lexington, helping to carry a trunk of Hancock's papers.

Longfellow's poem

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow popularized Paul Revere in " Paul Revere's Ride", a poem first published in 1861, over 40 years after Revere's death, and reprinted in 1863 as part of Tales of a Wayside Inn. The poem opens:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year

Longfellow's poem is not historically accurate, but the inaccuracies were deliberate. Longfellow had researched the historical event, using such works as George Bancroft's History of the United States, but he changed the facts for poetic effect. The poem was one of a series in which he sought to create American legends; earlier examples include The Song of Hiawatha (1855) and The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858). Longfellow was successful in creating a legend: Revere's stature rose significantly in the years following the poem's publication.

Parts of the ride route in Massachusetts are now posted with signs marked "Revere's Ride". The route follows Main Street in Charlestown, Broadway and Main Street in Somerville, Main Street and High Street in Medford, Medford Street to Arlington center, and Massachusetts Avenue the rest of the way through Lexington and into Lincoln. Revere's ride is reenacted annually.

Contrary to popular belief, Revere and Dawes were not the only riders; however, they were the only two to be noted in the poem. Samuel Prescott and Israel Bissell were also tasked to undertake the mission, Bissell being the person to ride the farthest distance of all.

The rock group Paul Revere and the Raiders had considerable popularity from the mid-1960s through the early-1970s. The band's namesake and organist was born Paul Revere Dick, named after Revere. The song "Me and Paul Revere", written by musician Steve Martin and performed with his bluegrass group Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers, was inspired by the tale of Paul Revere's ride and told from the point of view of Revere's horse, Brown Beauty.

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Paul Revere's Midnight Ride Facts for Kids

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The Midnight Ride was the alert to the American colonial militia in April 1775 to the approach of British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord. The ride occurred on the night of April 18, 1775, immediately before the battles of Lexington and Concord, the first engagements of the American Revolutionary War.

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Kids learn about Paul Revere's famous ride of warning the patriots about the British; major event in the American Revolutionary War.

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In 1774 and 1775, the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Massachusetts Committee of Safety employed Paul Revere as an express rider to carry news, messages, and copies of important documents as far away as New York and Philadelphia.

On the evening of April 18, 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren summoned Paul Revere and gave him the task of riding to Lexington, Massachusetts, with the news that British soldiers stationed in Boston were about to march into the countryside northwest of the town. According to Warren, these troops planned to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, two leaders of the Sons of Liberty, who were staying at a house in Lexington. It was thought they would then continue on to the town of Concord, to capture or destroy military stores - gunpowder, ammunition, and several cannon - that had been stockpiled there. In fact, the British troops had no orders to arrest anyone - Dr. Warren's intelligence on this point was faulty - but they were very much on a major mission out of Boston. Revere contacted an unidentified friend (probably Robert Newman, the sexton of Christ Church in Boston's North End) and instructed him to hold two lit lanterns in the tower of Christ Church (now called the Old North Church) as a signal to fellow Sons of Liberty across the Charles River in case Revere was unable to leave town.

The two lanterns were a predetermined signal stating that the British troops planned to row "by sea" across the Charles River to Cambridge, rather than march "by land" out Boston Neck.

Revere then stopped by his own house to pick up his boots and overcoat, and proceeded the short distance to Boston's North End waterfront. There two friends rowed him across the river to Charlestown. Slipping past the British warship HMS Somerset in the darkness, Revere landed safely. After informing Colonel Conant and other local Sons of Liberty about recent events in Boston and verifying that they had seen his signals in the North Church tower, Revere borrowed a horse from John Larkin, a Charlestown merchant and a patriot sympathizer. While there, a member of the Committee of Safety named Richard Devens warned Revere that there were a number of British patrols in the area who might try to intercept him.

At about eleven o'clock Revere set off on horseback. After narrowly avoiding capture just outside of Charlestown, Revere changed his planned route and rode through Medford, where he alarmed Isaac Hall, the captain of the local militia, informing him of the British movements. He then alarmed almost all the houses from Medford, through Menotomy (today's Arlington) - carefully avoiding the Royall Mansion whose property he rode through (Isaac Royall was a well-known Loyalist) - and arrived in Lexington sometime after midnight.

In Lexington, as he approached the house where Adams and Hancock were staying, Sergeant Monroe, acting as a guard outside the house, requested that he not make so much noise. "Noise!" cried Revere, "You'll have noise enough before long. The regulars are coming out!" According to tradition, John Hancock, who was still awake, heard Revere's voice and said "Come in, Revere! We're not afraid of you". He entered the house and delivered his message.

About half past twelve, William Dawes, who had traveled the longer land route out of Boston Neck, arrived in Lexington carrying the same message as Revere. After both men "refreshed themselves" (i.e. had something to eat and drink), they decided to continue on to Concord, Massachusetts, to verify that the military stores were properly dispersed and hidden away. A short distance outside of Lexington, they were overtaken by Dr. Samuel Prescott, who they determined was a fellow "high Son of Liberty." A short time later, a British patrol intercepted all three men. Prescott and Dawes escaped; Revere was held for some time, questioned, and let go. Before he was released, however, his horse was confiscated to replace the tired mount of a British sergeant. Left alone on the road, Revere returned to Lexington on foot in time to witness the latter part of the battle on Lexington Green.

This story comes from several accounts written by Paul Revere after his Midnight Ride. To see one of them in his own handwriting, with a transcription, visit "Revere's Own Words." To find all the answers to your Midnight Ride questions, see our Frequently Asked Questions page.

For more information and an interactive map experience, view our Midnight Ride Map. You can also "Recreate the Ride" on your own!

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In 1774 and 1775, the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Massachusetts Committee of Safety employed Paul Revere as an express rider to carry news, messages, and copies of important documents as far away as New York and Philadelphia.

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(1761-1839). As a girl of only 16, Sybil Ludington made a valiant ride to spread the word of an impending British attack during the American Revolution. Her hometown in New York was renamed in her honor.

Ludington was born on April 5, 1761, in Fredericksburg (now Ludingtonville), New York. She was the daughter of Henry Ludington, a New York militia officer and later an aide to General George Washington. On April 26, 1777, a messenger reached the Ludington house with news of Governor William Tryon's attack on nearby Danbury, Connecticut, where the munitions and stores for the militia of the entire region were stored. Colonel Ludington immediately began to organize the local militia. The messenger and his horse being exhausted, Sybil volunteered to rouse the countryside for the fight. Through the night the 16-year-old girl rode her horse nearly 40 miles (65 kilometers) on unfamiliar roads, spreading the alarm. She covered about twice the distance that Paul Revere did on his famous ride. Sybil died on February 26, 1839, in Unadilla, New York.

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(1761-1839). As a girl of only 16, Sybil Ludington made a valiant ride to spread the word of an impending British attack during the American Revolution. Her hometown in New...

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Sybil Ludington (April 5, 1761 - February 26, 1839) was a heroine of the American Revolutionary War. She was the daughter of Colonel Henry Ludington. In 1773 he joined the rebel cause. He was the colonel of the local regiment. Sybil Ludington became famous for her night ride on April 26, 1777 to alert American colonial forces to the approach of the British Regulars. Her action was similar to the ride of Paul Revere. She rode more than twice the distance of Revere. She was only 16 years old at the time of her ride.

Images for kids

Close-up of smaller version of statue by Anna Hyatt Huntington. Offner Museum, Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina

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Sybil Ludington (April 5, 1761 - February 26, 1839) was a heroine of the American Revolutionary War. She was the daughter of Colonel Henry Ludington. In 1773 he joined the rebel cause. He was the colonel of the local regiment.

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Women had many roles in the American Revolution. Some were "Camp followers" equivalent to Military service Units (food, nursing, repairing clothing, etc). Many helped organize boycotts of British goods.

Others took a more active role:

Images for kids

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Women in the American Revolution Facts for Kids

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Women had many roles in the American Revolution. Some were "Camp followers" equivalent to Military service Units (food, nursing, repairing clothing, etc). Many helped organize boycotts of British goods. Others took a more active role:

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During the American Revolution, approximately 20,000 African Americans joined the British side and became known as Black Loyalists. 9,000 joined the American side and were called Black Patriots. Some of these were freemen and some were slaves who had been promised their freedom.

African-American Patriots

Many free African Americans believed that the colonies should be free from England's controlling rule. They became known as the Black Patriots. One of the most famous of these was Crispus Attucks. He is believed to be the first person that was killed at the Boston Massacre. Some black men had already enlisted as Minutemen at this time. Minutemen were to be called upon if the British troops who were stationed in Boston began attacking the colonies. Both free and enslaved Africans had served in private militias that defended themselves against attacks by Native Americans.

Black men fought with the American colonies' Patriot forces beginning with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the very first battle of the Revolutionary War. Other famous battles in which African-American soldiers fought include the Battle of Bunker Hill, Tyron's Raid, and the Siege of Yorktown.

African-American Loyalists

A total of approximately 20,000 Africans fought for the British army. Most of the men did not fight when the British army was fighting in the North. However, when manpower was low, the loyalists used Black men to fight for the British in the South - in Savannah, Augusta, and Charleston.

Lord Dunmore, who was the royal (British) governor of Virginia, promised freedom for slaves who were willing to fight for Britain. The slaves that joined the British side had "Liberty to Slaves" sewn onto their uniforms and became known as Black Loyalists.

African-American Sailors

Some African Americans signed on to serve in the navies. Even in the Southern colonies, where they were not in favor of putting guns into the hands of slaves, black men piloted and used the weapons on ships. Some African Americans even served as captains of the ships.

Black Regiment of Rhode Island

In 1778, Rhode Island was having trouble recruiting white soldiers and decided to try enlisting black men. The Rhode Island Assembly voted to allow it, and the 1st Rhode Island Regiment became the only regiment of the Continental Army to consist of mostly black soldiers.

Fate of Black Loyalists

After the last British ship left Savannah, 5,000 enslaved African Americans traveled with their Loyalist masters to Jamaica or St. Augustine. About 300 black people in Savannah did not leave because they were afraid that they would not have the freedom they were promised.

The British left Charleston a year later, taking more than 5,000 black men with them. More than half of them were enslaved by the Loyalists. Some were given land.

In the North, the British created book of people who had escaped slavery and called it the Book of Negroes. The book listed the details of their slavery, their escape, and their service to the British. If the British agreed that the former enslaved person had done enough for Britain, they were given a certificate giving them permission to travel out of New York. In this way, many black men, women, and children resettled in Nova Scotia, Canada.

About 200 formerly enslaved people were taken to London to live as free people. People in England who were in favor of black men being free made a colony in West Africa for them. Freetown was the first settlement established in what became the colony of Sierra Leone. Many from Canada moved to West Africa as well.

Fate of Black Patriots

The African American Patriots who served in the Continental Army did not receive rewards after the war. Many state legislatures banned all black people, free and enslaved, from military service. North Carolina was among the states that allowed free people of color (people of mixed African, European, and sometimes Native American descent) to serve in their militias and carry weapons. In 1792, the United States Congress stated that only "free able-bodied white male citizens" were allowed to serve in the military.

In 1789, free black men were allowed to vote in five of the thirteen states. This showed that they were considered citizens of both their states and the United States.

Many enslaved men who fought in the war gained their freedom. Some men's owners took back their promise of freedom and made the men be their slaves again.

Within the first twenty years after the American Revolution, the Northern states abolished (got rid of) slavery. By 1840, virtually all African Americans in the North were free. The South, however, held onto their "right" to own slaves until the ratification (approval) of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution in December of 1865.

Quick facts about African Americans in the Revolutionary War

African-American men who fought for the American colonies were called Black Patriots.

African-American men who fought for the British were called Black Loyalists.

The 1st Rhode Island Regiment was made up of mostly black soldiers.

Both Black Patriots and Black Loyalists were promised their freedom as a way to get them to fight in the war.

After the war, some Patriots and Loyalists were able to gain their freedom and settle elsewhere. Others were taken back by their former masters, who broke their promises to set their slaves free as payment for fighting in the war.

African Americans were no longer allowed to be slaves when the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution was Ratification ratified in December of 1865.

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African Americans in the Revolutionary War Facts for Kids

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Learn African Americans in the Revolutionary War facts for kids