Declaration Of Independence Dbq Essay

The American War of Independence, better known today as the Revolutionary War, happened between 1775 and 1783. The initial goal in this was to defeat the British after tensions rose because they wanted to raise revenue by taxation in the colonies. In response, the colonies wanted independence from Great Britain. Of course, this was a trigger to the overall war and how it truly all began. The battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill is where we get into the conversation of black Americans’ engagement in the Revolutionary War. Men aged from sixteen to sixty, white and, surprisingly, black, all fought in this event–a war for rights. The Declaration of Independence stated that “all men are created equal”, but the treatment of the blacks conveyed otherwise.

These were, in fact, seen as their property, and they were termed this by law as well. He basically dehumanized them when that statement Jefferson made was put into the Declaration of Independence. However, he was against slavery, but he felt he would have no impact in the ridding of slave trade. Jefferson did halt the international slave trade, but there was still a big slave market within the states that he could do nothing about after his thoughts against the slave trade were removed from the Declaration of Independence. He had many things up against him that he believed made it impossible for slave trade, as a whole, to end, specifically, the tension it would cause between blacks and whites. His idea was that the damage had already been done, and there was nothing he could do to change

They were helping the same people that subjected them to such terrible things, from not being about to bathe to not being fed for long periods of time to beatings to extreme labor. These were events you would think the average human would not endure and still go on to support their oppressors. Another fact that intrigued me was that a lot of these slaves thought that they had a better chance at freedom if they were on the side of the British. Around eight-hundred runaway slaves fought for the British, despite being hesitant of arming blacks. The last, and perhaps, the most surprising thing that I did not realize about black Americans’ roles in the Revolutionary War was the amount that were willing to fight. By the year 1783, thousands of them had served!

The support the African Americans bestowed in this duration is one way they gained their freedoms in the future of the United States and, somewhat, trust. They gained a sense of hope in the social interaction between blacks and whites. Also, it is extremely important to be cognizant of just how many of these people died during this period. One hundred thousand had either escaped, were killed, or died within these eight years. That equates to twelve thousand, and five hundred per year, which is a considerable amount of people. This was the ultimate “plight” in the Revolutionary time period for African