Justene Hill Edwards

But if we look at this from the lives and experiences of the enslaved, there's always been abolitionism, right?

They were the first abolitionists, as the historian Manisha Sinha has said.

But the Revolutionary War and the revolution really accelerates these kind of diverging and converging conversations about the founding of a new nation, the very kind of human access to freedom and emancipation, the idea of political inclusion all collides in this period around the kind of politics of the revolution.

If we look at the revolutionary period through the experiences of the enslaved, ideas of patriotism become even more complex because above all, the enslaved wanted freedom for themselves and their families, and they would fight on the side of those who would give it to them.

And so there were enslaved men and women who fought and defended the patriot side, who fought and defended the loyalist side based on who they thought would give them freedom and emancipate them.

And there were some who didn't believe that their side would give them freedom, would recognize their emancipated status.

And so they then fled west.

Or they fled to places like Canada.

Nova Scotia was a major goal point for many enslaved men and women who wanted to really claim their freedom for themselves.

Sure.

We have places like Virginia.

We have the Carolinas.

We have Georgia, who are...

making massive investments in the expansion of the plantation economy.

At the same time, though, because of the language of revolution, we have colonies in states like Pennsylvania, Rhode Island.

who are going down the path of gradually emancipating the enslaved populations of their colonies and then states.

And so Pennsylvania, for example, was the first state to abolish slavery or gradually abolish slavery with gradual emancipation in 1780.

Vermont comes into the Union as a free state in 1777.

And so we have really kind of colonies and states north of Pennsylvania who are making strategic choices to gradually end slavery.

At the same time as places like Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia are starting to kind of see how to invest more and more in the kind of benefits and profits of slavery.