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The North American War of Independence in 1776 was a great war of national liberation waged by the American people against British colonial rule and the first bourgeois revolution in American history.
As oppressed slaves, black Americans heroically participated in the struggle against British colonialism in order to fight for their own liberation, and made great historical contributions to winning the independence of the United States and the birth of the United States of America.
However, the War of Independence did not liberate the blacks. The bourgeoisie and plantation owners stole the fruits of victory, and the first Constitution of the United States confirmed the legal existence of black slavery, and black slaves were still thrown into the abyss of misery.
History ruthlessly pierces the hypocrisy of the "natural human rights" proclaimed by the bourgeoisie in the Declaration of Independence, showing that the bourgeoisie does not and cannot achieve true emancipation of blacks.
Obviously, discussing the issue of blacks in the American Revolutionary War is of great significance for understanding the history and current situation of the black liberation movement in the United States.
Where did the blacks in the American Revolutionary War come from
The sale and enslavement of blacks by British colonialists was the historical root cause of the deep suffering of black slaves in the North American colonies.
The reasons why blacks actively participated in the war of independence against Britain should be discussed in terms of British colonial activities in North America.
British colonization in North America began in the early seventeenth century. From 1607 to 1732, British colonists established thirteen colonies on the North American continent, using the most brutal and brutal means of violence to carry out colonial plunder.
The colonial economy established by the British colonists on the North American continent began along the path of plantation slavery. This colonial economy became the source of wealth for the British colonists.
The sale and enslavement of blacks was particularly cruel, becoming one of the darkest pages in American history.
The land issue was one of the main goals of the early colonial activities of the British colonists. In order to obtain large tracts of land to be cultivated, they used the most barbaric means to exterminate and drive out the indigenous Indians, seizing from them farmland and hunting grounds, thereby appropriating the vast and rich lands of North America for themselves.
The king gave large tracts of land as "territories" to his favored courtiers and nobles, making these "owners" the emperors of the colony.
The serious consequence of land grabbing was the high concentration of large tracts of land in the hands of a very small number of plantation owners, and the land to be cultivated became the main place for slavery. This is a historical cause of the black land problem in the United States and the formation of the "black belt" in the South.
By the eve of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, more than 500,000 black slaves had reached a population of more than three million in the British North American colonies.
By this time, the black slavery system on the southern plantations had been established. This plantation slave economy was entirely a commercial economy produced for sale.
The British colonists forced the plantation to produce the raw materials and food it needed to meet the needs of the British and European capitalist markets.
Here, plantation slaveholders are essentially big capitalist farmers. • The capitalist economic feature of plantation slavery makes the issue of black slavery a prominent issue in American history.
The British colonists employed various slave laws that suppressed and controlled blacks. Slave owners could kill slaves at will, black slaves were deprived of all personal freedom, and the life of black slaves was simply inferior to that of cattle and horses, and they engaged in eighteen or nine hours of heavy labor every day under conditions of lack of clothing and hunger.
In the War of Independence, blacks threw themselves into the torrent of the War of Independence with the hope of liberation.
When black slaves who joined the Continental Revolutionary Army were honored for their combat merits and occasionally rewarded, their earnest goal was to redeem them as free men. The revolutionary spirit and courageous heroism that they grew up from the long struggle of resistance were even more radiated in the War of Independence.
Together with the broad masses of the American people, the blacks formed a wave of anger in the anti-British struggle, which finally drove the British colonists from the North American continent and ushered in the birth of the United States of America.
The exploits of blacks in the American Revolutionary War
The historical merits of blacks in the War of Independence were prominently manifested in the role of blacks as the main force in the revolutionary war.
Long before the outbreak of the War of Independence, blacks were at the forefront of the huge anti-British movement of the people in the North American colonies, together with the broad masses of the people.
In the "Boston Massacre" on March 5, 1777, the first person to be shot and killed by British colonists was a black man named Artalux. He became one of the first revolutionary martyrs to heroically take up his life in the struggle against the British. His memorial statue still stands on the commons of Boston.
During the war, blacks joined the army, which played a major role in changing Washington's difficult situation of undermen. From 1775 to 1783, there were about 8,000 to 10,000 black soldiers in the Continental Revolutionary Army under Washington's command, and at least 5,000 black soldiers fought on the front lines.
In 1778, there were an average of 54 black fighters in each battalion in the mainland revolutionary army, and some even formed black teams alone. Negroes fought not only in the infantry, but also in the artillery, in the navy.
Throughout the course of the war, black fighters always fought the enemy resolutely and bravely. Blacks took part in almost every major battle. Especially in important battles such as Long Island, Mount Bunk, and Savannah, blacks performed particularly well.
They fought bravely and well, repeatedly achieved combat merits, and the first shots of the War of Independence were fired in Lexington. As soon as the war broke out, blacks immediately went into battle. In the Battle of Lexington, the black Prince Eastbullock was the first to rush to the enemy position and became one of the soldiers who died heroically.
Two months later, at the famous Battle of Mount Bunker, Washington's army engaged in a vicious battle with the British. The black heroic warrior Peter Salem charged ahead, chanting the slogan "Victory is ours" and heroically killing the enemy. In this battle, he personally killed a British major.
The victories in the two battles of Lexington and Bunkershan strengthened the belief of the people of the North American colonies in victory in the war against Britain and stimulated the fighting enthusiasm of the masses.
In the War of Independence, black slaves always regarded the struggle for emancipation as the main goal of their struggle, and in addition to fleeing, they repeatedly plotted uprisings and legal struggles against the perverse actions of plantation slave owners in order to fight for personal freedom.
One of the most important slave uprisings during the Revolutionary War was the murders of black slaves in Pitt, Beaufort, and Craven counties that shook South Carolina in July 1775.
The uprising was leaked, brutally suppressed by plantation slave owners, and dozens of black slaves were arrested and killed. Although the uprising failed, it dealt a heavy blow to the reactionary spirit of the plantation slave owners. The rulers called the uprising a "terrible and miserable plan carefully arranged."
The plantation slave owners were terrified and terrified in the face of this continuous black subordination.
In short, throughout the War of Independence, the blacks fought bravely and bravely for freedom and liberation, which not only contributed to the victory of the national liberation war, but also opened the way for their own liberation.
The resistance struggle of black slaves had a far-reaching impact, which promoted the rise of the post-war black slave armed uprising storm and promoted the upsurge of the national abolitionist movement, thus advancing the American history opened by the Revolutionary War to a new and higher stage, fully demonstrating the great power and historical role of blacks.
The War of Independence did not really liberate blacks
The War of Independence enabled the North American colonies to gain independence from British domination, but the bourgeoisie and plantation slave owners reaped the fruits of victory, while the broad masses of the American people, especially black slaves, who were the main force of the revolution, continued to suffer oppression and exploitation.
Black slavery was not abolished, but legalized. The bourgeois revolution led black slaves to the gates of freedom, but gave them a closed door. This is a wonderful irony of the "natural human rights" that the bourgeoisie proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence.
The failure of the War of Independence to liberate the blacks was of course due to the historical conditions of the time, but it was mainly due to the class limitations of the bourgeoisie and plantation owners.
From the perspective of the class limitations of the leaders of the revolution, the American national bourgeoisie on the one hand acted as the main leading force of the American nation in the war against national oppression and for national independence, defending national independence and national rights; On the other hand, the bourgeoisie "distrusts and discriminates against and oppresses ethnic minorities against other nationalities" and "cannot unite millions of exploited working people around the bourgeoisie for a certain period of time."
We know that among the leaders of the revolution, such as Washington, Jefferson, etc., were themselves plantation owners. Following the trend of history and relying on the power of the people, they finally enabled a small country with a population of only 3 million to defeat a military power with a population of 30,000, and indeed deserved to be the founding father of the United States of America, worthy of being an outstanding bourgeois politician, and worthy of being the leader of the national independence movement.
From the viewpoint of historical materialism, their historical merits should be fully affirmed. However, their inherent class limitations meant that they could not truly emancipate blacks.
The failure of the War of Independence to liberate blacks has made the issue of the emancipation of blacks in the United States a prominent issue in American history and a matter of concern and sympathy for the people of the whole world.
Even after the Civil War, blacks were still discriminated against by racism and were at the bottom of American society, "The oppression of blacks in the United States is a shame for the American Republic." ”
Comrade Mao Zedong profoundly pointed out in his 1963 Statement on Supporting the Just Struggle of American Negroes Against US Imperialist Racial Discrimination:
"The evil colonial and imperialist system flourished with the enslavement and trafficking of blacks, and it will surely end with the complete emancipation of the black race."
The struggle of black Americans today to oppose racial discrimination and fight for complete liberation will surely make greater contributions to the history of the United States and the cause of human progress.
Bibliography:
[1] Huang Shaoxiang, A History of Early American Development, People's Publishing House, 1957,
[2] William Foster, Negroes in American History, Triptych Books, 1960,
[3] Harry Heywood, The Emancipation of the Negro, World Knowledge Service, 1954