Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America

by Douglas R. Egerton

In Death or Liberty , Douglas R. Egerton offers a sweeping chronicle of African American history stretching from Britain's 1763 victory in the Seven Years' War to the election of slaveholder Thomas Jefferson as president in 1800. While American slavery is usually identified with antebellum cotton plantations, Egerton shows that on the eve of the Revolution it encompassed everything from wading in the South Carolina rice fields to carting goods around Manhattan to serving the households of Boston's elite. More important, he recaptures the drama of slaves, freed blacks, and white reformers fighting to make the young nation fulfill its republican slogans. Although this struggle often unfolded in the corridors of power, Egerton pays special attention to what black Americans did for themselves in these decades, and his narrative brims with compelling portraits of forgotten African American activists and rebels, who battled huge odds and succeeded in finding liberty--if never
equality--only in northern states. Egerton concludes that despite the real possibility of peaceful, if gradual, emancipation, the Founders ultimately lacked the courage to end slavery.

Genres: History, American Revolution, American History, Nonfiction, 18th Century, American, Race

342 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2008

About the author

A specialist in the history of late 18th and early 19th-century America, Douglas Egerton is Professor of History at Le Moyne College.

Reviews

[David Nichols · Rating 4 out of 5]

That the American revolutionaries were inconsistent in their application of theory to practice was clearly evident in the case of slavery, an institution the rebels accused Britain of wanting to impose on them, but which they in turn inflicted on African slaves before, during, and after the Revolution. "How is it," Samuel Johnson consequently asked, "that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of negroes?"

In this 2009 monograph, Douglas Egerton does not dispute Johnson's underlying point: that the American Revolution's promise of liberty remained unfulfilled for most African-Americans. The revolutionaries took only a few half-measures against slavery, banning it through slow and "grudging" emancipation laws in the Northern states, and permitting a minority of Southern masters voluntarily to manumit their bondsmen. This movement toward partial abolition was accompanied by "counter-revolutionary" laws banning militia service, voting, and intermarriage for free blacks, and placing new restrictions on slaves in the upper South. The reaction was more or less complete by 1800, when Virginia crushed an attempted rebellion by slaves espousing the ideals of 1776.

African-Americans generally experienced the Revolution as an era of "dashed hopes" (13). Some 20,000 ran away to fight for the British army or for Loyalist militias, but many died of wounds or illness, and the survivors often became paupers and exiles (or were re-enslaved after the war). Slaves in the United States saw their numbers increase to 900,000 by 1800, and their families broken up by sale as masters moved southwest during the first cotton boom. Freedmen, who numbered over 100,000 in 1800, enjoyed slightly better prospects, working for wages in cities and larger towns and establishing their own churches and benevolent societies. However, they commonly used the institutional label "African" to acknowledge the separate identity whites had forced them to assume.

Egerton's story is old news to professional historians, but he tells it clearly and cogently; I wish I had had this book in grad school. A caveat, though: one can make too much of the apparent disconnect between Revolutionary rhetoric and white Americans' willingness to own slaves. It is more useful to note that there were almost no North American critics of slavery (apart from slaves themselves) in 1760, and that just two decades later the institution had come into disrepute throughout the new United States, almost certainly because Revolutionaries who accused Britain of trying to enslave them had made the very concept of slavery much more odious than before. Words sometimes do matter.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read it for a research project...
Had good tidbits of information but was awfully dry... but then again I'm not really a history reader, more of a historical fiction reader.

What really annoyed me was how poorly written it was. Egerton often wrote something and then repeated it almost word for word a paragraph or page latter, as if he forgot he said it already.

The title is witty, but there is nothing in this book that cannot be found in other books. I would suggest Wilkin's Jefferson's Pillow instead.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides]

Not really gripping. Basic point seems to be that Americans of the Revolutionary generation didn't live up to its rhetoric, at least in the matter of how they treated the suppliers of lifelong "unfree labor." (i.e., black people.)

One interesting note: in the northern states slavery seems to have been mostly an urban rather than a rural phenomenon.

[ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to get through and a bit dry, but enlightening enough to make up for it. This book provides a lot of context for the situation people in places like Ferguson find themselves in.

[Vince · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely well documented book. Lots of forgotten American history. The thousands of Americans of African descent who fought in the Revolutionary War thinking that the Declaration of Independence would lead to its natural conclusion and free there brethren. Thousands more joined the British when they were promised freedom from slavery if they fought for the King. Cheated and treated poorly by both sides it's a cautionary tale and if a few more politicians had shown any courage, slavery, after the war could have been phased out and the Civil War avoided. An excellent book if this is an area that interests you and you feel you're know;edge deficient.

[Kate Hornstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every paragraph in this book could be a book in itself. An in-depth look at the promise of liberty for all that fell short for Black Americans (including those who fought on both sides of the War), but inspired many uprisings. That said, I felt the book (for the non-scholarly reader) would have benefitted from some sub-headings within chapters. So much information!

[Lyndsay]

I decided to educate myself in a slightly different way and study up on African Americans during the revolutionary period. This was a very interesting book that detailed how America was in fact founded in racism, and how several of our laws as written were affected by the presence of slavery. It’s a bit dense, but I’d definitely recommend it.

[Cathy Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative and riveting

Excellent book on the contentious subject of slavery in the revolutionary era that tells the story through biographical vignettes of the people involved.