8. George Washington’s Slave Who Fought For the British
Harry Washington was born in Gambia, circa 1740. Enslaved and transported across the Atlantic, he ended up getting purchased by George Washington, who put him to work draining swamps in southeast Virginia. After years of toil in appalling conditions, Harry was taken to Washington’s plantation, Mount Vernon, and tasked with looking after the horses. He escaped in 1771, but was recaptured a few weeks later. When the Revolutionary War started in 1775, Virginia’s governor offered slaves their freedom if they fought for the British.
Mount Vernon’s manager assembled the plantation’s slaves, and urged them to trust the benevolence of slavery’s paternalism over the precarious dangers of freedom. Harry preferred the dangers of freedom over the benevolence of slavery, and risking savage penalties if caught, he fled, and enlisted with the British. He rose to the rank of corporal, and participated in the British invasion of South Carolina. There, corporal Harry Washington was placed in charge of a pioneer unit in Charleston, in 1781. After the war, he was evacuated to Nova Scotia, and later joined the first group of colonial black migrants who were returned to Africa, settling in Sierra Leone.