Is This the Land of Liberty? Soldiers and Slavery in the War of American Independence

What did slavery look like to combatants in the Revolutionary War – White and Black, American and European – as they traveled between regions? Join Dr. Jake Ruddiman, associate professor of History at Wake Forest University, as he explores this and related questions. The war carried soldiers far from their homes and exposed them to unfamiliar slave societies. What did they see and what did they record? The war profoundly disrupted slavery, spreading charged rhetoric about liberty, levying new demands with mobilization, and opening opportunities for freedom-seekers. What did Black Americans encountering soldiers or traveling with armies see? What new relationships could they make? How did these observations and relationships then shape the course of the war? And what were the relationships between wartime experiences and new streams of pro- and anti-slavery argument? Answers to these questions connect the War of Independence with the generational transformations of the American Revolution.