Slaves exploited crises among their rulers and shifted alliances strategically during the American Revolution.

Evidence

Rebellious slaves had always been attentive to the crises among their exploiters, and any momentary advantage, whether it be a master’s absence for a few days, the French-Indian War, or a nationalist rebellion, was likely to be seized. And on those rare occasions when the slaves perceived the appearance of a powerful ally, as with the British during the 1770s, the consequences could be dramatic: “Contemporaries estimated that the South lost as many as 55,000 bondsmen,” Crow suggests. Many evacuated with the British or were emancipated. Others simply attempted to pass as free Blacks. By 1775, the leaders of the Continental Army had been compelled to compete with the British authorities for Blacks both for their efforts on land and sea. And though some fractions of the ruling class continued to resist the enlargement of the slave soldiery—notably the state legislatures of Georgia and South Carolina—in the end more Blacks were enlisted as combatants by the nationalists than by their British opponents. After the war, however, the British military proved to be the more faithful ally of the slave soldiers. Not surprisingly, then, in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Virginia, the 1780s and the 1790s were times of rebellion in the young “republic.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 720