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AfRiCAN AMeRiCANS iN THe RevoluTioNARy WAR 7 Greene’s army. At 3:00 p.m. Greene escorted Governor John Mathewes and other officials into the city. For South Carolina, the war was over. After thirty months of bloody fighting and brutal occupation, South Carolinians were once again in control of their own affairs—thanks to Nathanael Greene and local partisan leaders. The war may have begun and ended in Charleston, but it was won in the forests and swamps of the backcountry. From Ninety Six to Charleston the countryside was in ruins. Dwellings, farm buildings , and mills had been burned. Fields had been abandoned and had become overgrown. Livestock had been taken by one side or the other. There were thirty thousand fewer slaves in the state than there had been in 1775. The state’s economy was in shambles. Not only were the means of production damaged or destroyed, but individuals and the state faced huge debts. South Carolina, with a white population of less than 100,000, had spent $5.4 million on the war effort. In spite of the difficulties facing it, the state had regularly met its financial obligations to the Continental Congress. In 1783 it was the only state to pay its requisition in full. The financial losses were nothing compared to the personal ones. In 1783 a visitor noted the large number of widows in Charleston, but there were far more in the backcountry. In Ninety Six District it was estimated that there were at least twelve hundred widows. The American Revolution in South Carolina was a bloody, desperate struggle—America ’s first civil war. Because of the nature of the conflict, it is impossible to know exactly how many Carolinians perished. However, of the total number of American casualties for the entire war, 18 percent of those killed and 31 percent of those wounded fell in South Carolina during the last two years of fighting. Given the material and human losses, it is no small wonder that the American historian George Bancroft would write:“Left mainly to her own resources, it was through the depths of wretchedness that her sons were to bring her back to her place in the republic . . . having suffered more, and dared more, and achieved more than the men of any other state.” Walter Edgar Buchanan, John. The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas. New York: Wiley, 1997. Edgar, Walter. Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned the Tide of the American Revolution. New York: Morrow, 2001. McCrady, Edward. The History of South Carolina in the Revolution. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1901–1902.  African Americans in the Revolutionary War. African Americans contributed to both the American and British causes during the Revolutionary War as laborers, soldiers, sailors, guides, teamsters, cooks, and spies. While it is impossible to know the exact number, it has been traditionally accepted that as many as five thousand African Americans served in the American forces. Perhaps as many as 80,000 to 100,000 slaves either escaped during the war, were taken by the British, or fled with Loyalists and British soldiers afterward. A few hundred of these served in the British ranks. African Americans joined the American or British armies under many different motives and circumstances. Slaves joined when promised freedom for their service, or were seized by one side or the other, or served as substitutes 8 AfRiCAN AMeRiCANS iN THe RevoluTioNARy WAR for their owners. Slaveowners were sometimes paid for the labor their slaves provided, but in other instances slaves were seized as military necessity required. Free blacks joined to enhance their status in the community or for monetary reward. When serving as soldiers, African Americans were usually integrated into the ranks. However, the colonies raised a few segregated regiments such as the First Rhode Island Regiment and the black regiment raised by Governor Lord Dunmore of Virginia for the British. At the beginning of the war, South Carolina patriots attempted to keep slaves on the plantations by passing a law instituting the death penalty for any slave who joined the British . Meanwhile, two South Carolina delegates to the Continental Congress, Edward Rutledge and Thomas Lynch, worked to have the free African Americans who had joined the ranks of the Continental army discharged and excluded from any future enlistments. But other South Carolinians such as Henry and John Laurens were in favor of African Americans serving and of giving slaves their freedom in...

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