enlightened and later emancipated. Such freedmen, in the absence of any
laws to the contrary, exercised political rights,[1] among which was that
of bearing arms. Negroes served not only in the American Revolution, but in
every war of consequence during the colonial period. There were masters who
sent slaves to the front to do menial labor and to fight in the places of
their owners. Then there were slaves who, finding it easier to take
occasional chances with bullets than to bear the lash, ran away from their
masters and served as privateers or enlisted as freemen.[2] The newspapers
of the colonial period often mentioned these facts in their advertisements
of fugitive slaves. In 1760 a master had considerable difficulty with a
slave who escaped from New England into New Jersey, where he said he would
enlist in the provincial service.[3] Advertising for his mulatto servant,
who was brought up in Rhode Island, James Richardson of Stonington said
that the fugitive had served as a soldier the previous summer.[4] A few
free Negroes found their way into the colonial militia along with white
soldiers. This passed, of course, not without some opposition, as in the
case of Massachusetts. In 1656 that colony excluded Negroes and Indians
from the militia, and according to Governor Bradstreet's report to the
Board of Trade in 1680 and subsequent action taken by that colony in 1775
and 1776, it adhered to this policy.[5]

Favorable as this condition of Negroes during the colonial period seemed,
the situation became still more desirable during the Revolution itself.
This upheaval was social as well as political. Aristocracy was suddenly
humiliated and the man in the common walks of life found himself in power,
grappling with problems which he had long desired to solve. Sprung from the
indentured servant poor white class, the new rulers had more sympathy for
the man farthest down. The slaves, therefore, received more consideration.
In the heat of the excitement of war the system lost almost all of its
rigor, the slave codes in some cases falling into desuetude. The contest