War, Culture and Society, 1750-1850

This book focuses on the American Revolution’s first Black soldiers. While Patriots in New England dumped tea in Boston Harbor and fought British Regulars at Lexington and Concord, something else was going on further south at the start of the Revolutionary War. In Hampton Roads, Virginia, enslaved people understood that the emerging conflict presented an opportunity to challenge their unfreedom and to fight for liberty for themselves. With the help of the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, thousands of slaves ran away, took up arms, and formed the all-Black Ethiopian Regiment in a new military experiment in 1775 and 1776. In exchange for their freedom from slavery, slaves would join the Ethiopian Regiment and test the boundaries of Revolutionary American society. They would also ensure that the Revolutionary War would become something greater than independence from Great Britain: they would ensure that the war would be about slavery itself.