ose it, and for having violated thereby the
"most sacred rights of life and liberty of a distant people, who never
offended him, captivating them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to
incur miserable death in their transportation thither." This passage,
according to Jefferson's account, "was struck out in complaisance to South
Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation
of slaves and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northern
brethren also I believe," Jefferson continued, "felt a little tender under
these censures, for though their people have very few slaves themselves,
yet they have been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."[1] By
reason of the general stress upon the inherent liberty of all men, however,
the question of negro status, despite its omission from the Declaration,
was an inevitable corollary to that of American independence.

[Footnote 1: Herbert Friedenwald, _The Declaration of Independence_ (New
York, 1904), pp. 130, 272.]

Negroes had a barely appreciable share in precipitating the Revolution
and in waging the war. The "Boston Massacre" was occasioned in part by an
insult offered by a slave to a British soldier two days before; and in that
celebrated affray itself, Crispus Attucks, a mulatto slave, was one of the
five inhabitants of Boston slain. During the course of the war free negro
and slave enlistments were encouraged by law in the states where racial
control was not reckoned vital, and they were informally permitted in the
rest. The British also utilized this resource in some degree. As early as
November 7, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the ousted royal governor of Virginia,
issued a proclamation offering freedom to all slaves "appertaining to
rebels" who would join him "for the more speedy reducing this colony to a
proper sense of their duty to his Majesty's crown and dignity."[2] In reply
the Virginia press warned the negroes against British perfidy; and the
revolutionary government, while announcing the penalties for servile
revolt, promised freedom to such as would promptly desert the British
standard. Some hundreds of negroes appear to have joined Dunmore, but they
did not save him from being driven away.[3]

[Footnote 2: _American Archives_, Force ed., fourth series, III, 1385.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., III, 1387; IV, 84, 85; V, 160, 162.]

When several years afterward military operations were transferred to the
extreme South, where the