Black Self-Emancipation, Gradual Emancipation, and the Underground Railroad in the Northern Colonies and States, 1763–1804

Abstract

This chapter explores the extent, meaning, and impact of enslaved African-American flight during the era of the American Revolution. Its temporal boundaries range roughly from 1763, the onset of Revolutionary activities and discourses, to state-level “First Emancipation,” to the last act of Gradual Emancipation in New Jersey in 1804. Geographically, the article covers the Atlantic seaboard colonies and later states. The chapter argues that black self-emancipation via flight—including individual actions but also the mass movements of the Revolutionary Black Loyalists—was the single greatest method for enslaved people to gain freedom in this rapidly changing political landscape. Slave flight indeed had a profound impact on that landscape and affected American construction of slave laws during the Revolutionary Era.