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Harry Washington, Freedom Fighter [1]

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Date: 2023-06-18

George Washington is celebrated across the United States as the “Father of the Country,” the military leader of the colonial war for independence, and as the first President of the new nation. There is a Washington Monument in Washington DC. The State of Washington, 31 counties, and 88 cities and towns are named after him, and Washington’s image is on the one-dollar bill and the quarter coin.

Few people remember Harry Washington, who was also a Revolutionary War freedom fighter. On Juneteenth we need to remember people like Harry Washington. Unlike George Washington, Harry Washington, who had been enslaved by George at his Mount Vernon plantation, fought for freedom by fighting for the British.

Harry Washington was born in West Africa near the Gambia River around 1740. After capture and enslavement, he was purchased by George Washington in 1763. He originally worked draining the Great Dismal Swamp in southeastern Virginia on the North Carolina border, but three years later was sent to George Washington’s main plantation at Mount Vernon where Harry Washington was assigned to care for the estate’s horses.

Harry Washington escaped from Mount Vernon and enslavement in 1771 at about the age of 31 but he was recaptured. George Washington placed runaway slave ads in local newspapers and paid £1.16, about $250, for his return. Five years later, in July 1776, Henry Washington escaped again. He headed for the British lines after the British governor of Virginia promised freedom to any enslaved African who fought for the British. Henry Washington was one of twelve enslaved Africans who escaped from the Mount Vernon plantation at the start of the American Revolution and one of approximately 20,000 freedom-seekers who fought for the British during the war.

Harry Washington fought in the British Ethiopian Regiment and Black Pioneers wearing a uniform with the inscription “Liberty to Slaves.” Corporal Washington was in the Black Pioneers when they helped construct British fortifications in New York City. He and the Black Pioneers were in Charleston, South Carolina when the war ended after the Battle of Yorktown in 1781.

After the war, General George Washington and other slaveholders attempted to reacquire formerly enslaved Africans who had escaped to the British lines and the insisted on the inclusion of a clause in the 1783 Treaty of Paris preventing the British from “carrying away any Negroes or other property of the American inhabitants.” Enforcing this clause would have returned Corporal Washington to enslavement. However, the enslavers were stymied when the British negotiator, Guy Carleton, declared that Africans who fought for the British had been freed, were not “property at the time,” and would be evacuated with the rest of the British army.

On July 31, 1783, Corporal Harry Washington left New York City on the ship L’Abondance and was transported to Nova Scotia in modern day Canada. The Book of Negroes was a list of the formerly enslaved Africans who left New York City with the British. Harry Washington was listed as being 43-years old. Harry Washington remained in Nova Scotia until 1792 when he and about 1,200 other formerly enslaved people helped establish a new British colony in Sierra Leone. Harry Washington had returned full cycle to Africa, the continent of his birth

In Freetown, Sierra Leone, Harry Washington was a successful farmer and remained a freedom fighter. In 1800, at the age of sixty, he was arrested and put on trial with co-conspirators who were demanding self-determination for the British colony. As a result of the trial, Harry Washington was banished from the British colony and forced to live in an undeveloped area across the Sierra Leone River.

A brief video about Harry Washington is included in the PBS series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/18/2176198/-Harry-Washington-Freedom-Fighter

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