Professor of Mystery [Email him]
Your last night's letter writer wrote that his family, and blacks generally
have fought for this country in every war since the Revolution. We were at the Boston Tea Party and in Philadelphia.In fact, a historical analysis of the Revolutionary War reveals that most blacks in America were likely to side with the Crown. Cornwallis raised levies from the plantation slaves as porters and servants for the British regiments sent to crush the Patriots.
I understand that General Sir Henry Clinton in New York was favorable to blacks. Indeed Sierra Leone, Canada, London, etc ended up as destinations for blacks who sided with the Crown.
This is understandable as the major plantation owners were invariably Patriots. The decision of blacks in Slavery to side with the Crown was quite rational and justifiable.
The abstract and abstruse arguments among the white Britons and white Americans were irrelevant to the travails of the field hand and house servants. The handful of black patriots can be largely discounted as an anomaly. Poor Old Gerry, he sounds like a Stepson of the Revolution.
