The Revolution in Black and White

Abstract:The American Revolution in Black and White compares Black and white responses to the American colonists’ struggle for freedom from British domination. Focused on colonists who rallied in support of independence, it contends that although Americans on both sides of the color line mobilized around natural rights ideology, Black and white patriots were far too divided by race and class to understand the revolutionary rhetoric they embraced the same way. While Jefferson and other slave-holding patriot leaders saw declaring independence as a natter of state-making, Black patriots such as New Englander Lemuel Haynes pushed for a more expansive understanding of the colonist’s struggle for political freedom, and read the Declaration of Independence as a liberty-making document.