What factors contributed to the increasing number of free African Americans in North America after the revolution? Where in North America did these individual factors have the MOST and the LEAST influence in increasing the free African American population

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

An ideal answer will:
1. Note that slaves escaped southern plantations during the war.
2. Note that many slaves who served in the American and British military became free African Americans, including those living in British Canada, after the war.
3. Assert that state laws and constitutions and court cases in states such as Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York prohibiting slavery also contributed to the increasing numbers of free African Americans.
4. Discuss the consideration by slave owners in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina of the rhetoric of freedom and the need to modify the tyranny of slavery in letting some of their slaves become free.
5. Discuss how other economic changes such as the Northwest Ordinance of 1789 and new employment options for African Americans increased the number of free blacks in America.
6. Discuss how the creation of an internal slave market by some planters in Virginia and Maryland to increase their wealth hampered the increases in the number of free blacks spurred by other economic factors.
7. Discuss how even the gradual manumission of slaves in states such as South Carolina and Georgia was frozen by the successful determination of the plantation elite in these states to reestablish a way of life that depended on slavery.
8. Provide a concise and effective conclusion.