Between Slavery and Freedom by Julie Winch Page A

African-American enlistment during the war. Black men who had served in their masters’ stead pressed hard to make sure that their service did indeed translate into freedom. The region was also still feeling the reverberations from the Great Awakening. Some whites could not square slave ownership with their religious principles. For other owners the motivation was not so much evangelical religion as devotion to the libertarian principles of the Revolution.
    In sharp contrast to the Upper South, the Lower South was largely untouched by religious or philosophical impulses to end slavery. The political leaders of South Carolina and Georgia had made their views abundantlyclear when they had refused to liberate their slaves to fight the British. Once the war was over, they were determined to maintain their control over their remaining slaves. The legislatures of the two states made a few minor concessions to owners who wanted to emancipate one or two favored slaves, but they soon clamped down. Although the economy was no better in the Lower South in the 1780s than it was in the Upper South, slave owners remained firmly committed to the notion that slavery was the natural condition of black people. They also reflected on the fact that whites were in the minority across the region. If they freed their slaves, they feared that black people would take over. They might avenge their sufferings or they might intermarry with whites. Both prospects filled white Georgians and South Carolinians with dread. They did as they had always done. They liberated enslaved people to whom they had ties of blood and affection and did their best to keep the rest in bondage. The free black population did grow in the immediate postwar years as people maneuvered their way out of slavery, formed stable family units and had children who were born free. However, in comparison to the Upper South, where thousands of slaves gained their liberty every year during the 1780s, the free population of the Lower South grew at a very slow rate
    At the national level, liberty for black people proved such a sensitive issue that white politicians backed away from dealing with it. Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence had included a stinging denunciation of King George III for, among other evidence of his wickedness, making war on the peoples of Africa, enslaving them, and dumping them in the American colonies. Many of Jefferson’s fellow delegates to the Continental Congress found his words unsettling. They reasoned, not surprisingly, that if they accepted his draft and did ultimately prevail against the armies of Great Britain, they had committed themselves to doing away with slavery. The offending passage disappeared. However, even in its modified form, the Declaration’s resounding phrases about “all men” being created equal and being entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness heartened black people who heard them or read them. On July 8, 1776, when the High Sheriff of Philadelphia read the Declaration to the populace for the first time, a nine-year-old black child stood in the crowd in the State House Yard and listened intently. The promises enshrined in the document that the Continental Congress had approved four days earlier resonated with James Forten and would continue to do so. As soon as he was old enough, he signed up aboard a patriot privateer. He was captured by the British, rejected a tempting offer to switch sides, and endured months of captivity on a prison-ship. He believed wholeheartedly that the new nation was worth riskinghis life for. Thomas Jefferson and his brethren had spoken so eloquently about freedom. They could hardly continue to hold their fellow Americans in slavery. Forten himself was freeborn, although he sympathized with the enslaved and wanted to see their bondage ended. Equally important to him was the “pursuit of happiness.” He concluded that meant full