How Did The American Revolution Affect Slavery

The revolutionary era inspired many people to adopt new ideals of freedom. In the United States, the American Revolution had an influence on slavery for the following decades. The American Revolution was inspired by the harsh and unjust treatment by the British. Although the colonists fought for freedom, they did not take the enslaved into consideration. The American Revolution impacted slavery, and not in good ways. The contradictory ideals of the American Revolution influenced slavery in a harmful way for the enslaved people. It gave false hope, empty promises, and helped slavery grow.

The American Revolution gave hope to and exploited enslaved people. Towards the beginning of the conflict, African Americans were not allowed to enlist as

The American Revolution caused racist ideas towards African Americans. After the revolution had started, many African Americans and slaves ran away, in hopes of gaining freedom behind British lines. Furthermore, slaves who stayed with their masters blackmailed them in order for better conditions, or buying themselves out (“American Revolution”). However, despite this, these actions would backfire. After America had won the war, the “absence of British restraint on occupying Indian lands in the old Southwest cleared the path for a rapid expansion of slavery: as early as 1790, the slave population of 698,000 considerably exceeded that of the 1770s... But in both the North and the South, whites reconciled support for individual liberty with the continuation of slavery by stigmatizing blacks as racially inferior beings unworthy of freedom. The Revolution thus indirectly contributed to strengthening racist concepts of human nature and freedom in the nineteenth century” (“American Revolution”). The American revolution caused the white population to carry stigma with them from after the war, since many Blacks joined the British. This caused them to be more racist towards them, and indirectly strengthened slavery, as the encyclopedia explains that the population of slaves jumped greatly. Slavery was also justified following the American Revolution. “Slavery was of crucial importance to the national economy. Americans could not have sustained their economic viability, and hence their political independence, without it. Then, too, they believed that liberty rested on property, and, whatever else they might have been, slaves were property” (Busick, Malvasi). Americans did not view slaves as real people, and degraded them to the level of objects, or property. Despite the American Revolution being inspired by Enlightenment ideas, Americans believed that these ideas did not