Hamilton, Slavery, and African Americans During the Revolutionary Era

In common with his contemporaries, Hamilton’s essays in 1774 and 1775 supporting colonial resistance to British taxation and eventually advocating independence argued that the Mother Country threatened white colonists with “slavery.” He was silent on the far more horrific matter of Black bondage. During the American Revolution, young Hamilton’s most significant effort against Black slavery consisted in writing a letter in 1779 to John Jay, president of the Continental Congress, supporting his friend Colonel John Laurens’ abortive proposal to organize regiments of enslaved Blacks to fight the British in the Carolinas and Georgia, where the Patriots were suffering defeats, winning liberty if they survived. Hamilton himself did not initiate this idea, nor did he volunteer. Hamilton’s letter to Jay, in which he argued that Blacks’ “natural abilities” and tendency to obey orders, which they had learned from being enslaved, made them ideal soldiers for Laurens’ objectives, was the most substantive antislavery endeavor he made during his public career.