25. All Men Are Created Equal?
The offer of freedom to black slaves by the British authorities struck slaveholders such as Thomas Jefferson as monstrous. It convinced many of the undecided amongst their ranks to side with the Patriots. In a nod to that sentiment, the Declaration of Independence, despite the “All men are created equal” part, assails the British for offering the colonists’ slaves an opportunity to secure that equality.
In 1779, General Henry Clinton, the British commander in chief in America, went even further than Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s British governor. Clinton issued the Phillipsburg Proclamation, which decreed that any slaves who fled their rebel masters and made it to British lines were free. It further enraged slaveholders, and cemented their commitment to the Patriot cause.