War Viewed through a Filter

The American Revolution was started primarily by landowners, lawyers, and merchants, which by law in 1775 were almost all Christian males of European descent. Not surprisingly, all of the war’s first historians were also white Christian males, so those histories were written from that perspective. This makes it difficult to find stories about people who do not fit that description, including women (covered on a separate page).

Many of the leaders in the fight for freedom ironically forced Africans, Native Americans, and their descendants to work for them on pain of torture, and sometimes join them on campaign. The slave trade and labor stolen from those humans provided a significant amount of the money required for the war, and freed up slaveholders to fight. Tragically, these enslaved people’s names are mostly lost to history. We mention them whenever they do appear.

Africans and African-Americans