The Negro in the American Revolution

Rating:
Summary: quarles' efforts worth while
Review: The primary concern of Benjamin Quarles in his work The Negro in the American Revolution is to bring greater attention to the Negro as an overlooked role-player during the revolutionary period. Quarles postulates that the American Negroes actually personified the movement for independence through their own desire for freedom, and were moved to action not by loyalty to any particular flag or place, but rather by a freshly awakened hope for personal independence and individual "unalienable rights". It was logical, Quarles suggests, that the Negro would gravitate toward the side that made the best promise of freedom, even if this side was often the British, the very nation that the white colonists were rebelling against under cries of enslavement. Using extensive research and many specific instances to portray the sentiments of Negroes as a whole, Quarles is successfully able to prove this thesis.