General

Why Did Enslaved African Americans Fight for the British?

November 7, 20264 min read

A British navy ship anchored in a misty Virginia river at dawn as small boats row toward it, with a plantation house among the trees on the far bank.

When the American Revolution began, the colonists said they were fighting for liberty. For enslaved African Americans, the question was blunter: which side would actually set them free? Many decided it was the British, and they were willing to risk everything to reach British lines. This is why they chose that side, how many did, and what happened to them afterward.

The offer that started it: Dunmore's Proclamation

On November 7, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation. It offered freedom to the enslaved people and indentured servants of rebel owners if they joined British forces. Dunmore's aim was military: he was trying to hold Virginia for the Crown, and he promised freedom to those enslaved men of rebel owners who fought for him.

The response was fast. According to PBS, about 300 Black men joined the unit that became known as the Ethiopian Regiment within a month, and probably no more than 800 eventually succeeded in joining. Mount Vernon's digital encyclopedia puts the regiment at nearly 800 before it was disbanded. Other sources give higher figures for the runaways who answered the call, so the exact count is uncertain.

What happened to the Ethiopian Regiment

The unit fought at Great Bridge in December 1775, but smallpox soon did more damage than any battle. The regiment was disbanded in 1776 after heavy losses. Some survivors went on to form the Black Pioneers, a non-combat unit that did construction work for the British Army. The story shows both sides of the offer: it was real, and it was often deadly.

Why choose the British side?

Freedom was the reason, and the reasons it was believable are worth separating:

The British put it in writing. Dunmore's proclamation named the condition and the reward.
The Patriots were cautious about arming Black men. The Continental Army technically barred Black recruits from November 12, 1775, until February 23, 1778. Patriot slaveholders also worried that armed enslaved people might turn on them, and that military service would eventually mean freedom.
The Patriots were fighting for their own liberty while holding others in bondage. An enslaved person could notice that contradiction without any help from a pamphlet.

The Patriots changed their mind too

The Patriot side did not stay closed. In February 1778, the Rhode Island Assembly passed a Slave Enlistment Act that promised freedom to enslaved men who enlisted, and paid their owners the market value of each man. The 1st Rhode Island Regiment that resulted included about 140 Black soldiers, the highest proportion of any Continental Army unit.

Some leaders supported this for strategic reasons. Alexander Hamilton and Nathanael Greene argued that the promise of freedom would draw recruits and secure their loyalty. By the time Washington lifted his ban, most Continental regiments already had at least one Black soldier. So the choice was not a simple one between a loyal and a disloyal side: both armies offered freedom to some, for their own military reasons.

How many people went to the British?

This is where the sources disagree most. One widely repeated estimate is that the promise of freedom led around 20,000 enslaved men to flee and enlist with British forces, but figures for the whole war vary and depend on how you count soldiers, laborers and families. The better documented number is smaller: the Book of Negroes, a list compiled by British commandant Samuel Birch in New York, enrolled over 3,000 Black Loyalists seeking freedom certificates, and perhaps as many as 5,000 may have left. A settlement in Nova Scotia was named Birchtown after him.

Was the promise kept?

Often, but not always, and rarely without cost. The British did not always keep their promises, and many Black Loyalists ended up poor or were denied the same benefits as white soldiers. On the Patriot side, one source notes that the promise of freedom was kept in the sense that men were freed, but they faced hard lives afterward. Some veterans handed their pension and enlistment bounties to their former owners to repay their freedom, and others had to petition for pay that Congress owed them.

Fighting for the British was a choice about freedom, not about empire

It is tempting to read this as loyalty to the Crown, but that does not match what the sources show. People who left plantations for British lines were choosing the side that offered freedom at that moment, and many of them made that choice under danger of recapture, disease and punishment. When the same offer came from Rhode Island, some chose the other side. The most useful way to see it is through the choice itself: freedom was the question, and each army answered it only when it was useful.