For most of the region’s slaves, the question of whether to join the patriots, the loyalists, or stay neutral had no simple answer. And the answer changed dramatically as the war went on.  Early on, fighting for British may have seemed the best choice: in 1775, the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, made the surprising move of offering freedom to any slave who fled a patriot-owned plantation and fought for the British. But DuVal reminds us that, for slaves, individual freedom carried tremendous trade-offs, particularly the loss of one’s family. Even after the British military extended Dunmore’s offer to Georgia’s slaves in 1778, the same drawbacks remained: only men of a certain age could fight—but what would happen to their families? And what if the British lost?

In the southeast, Spain’s comparatively less onerous system of slavery further complicated slaves’ options. Under slave law in Spanish Louisiana and the pre-British Floridas, slaves could sue their owner if they violated Spain’s relatively more protective slave laws; they could also fix a price to buy their own freedom. Nor was the British offer of freedom for service novel—Spain had been doing the same for decades. As a result, when Spain formally entered the war on the patriots’ side, it was anyone’s guess what slaves would do.

To illustrate some of the decisions slaves made, DuVal has done a remarkable job finding stories like the one of Petit Jean, whose work for Spanish forces was critical to the patriots’ success. Jean had lived as a slave in Mobile, part of West Florida, long before the British took it from Spain in 1763. His knowledge of the British and Spanish slave systems may have made him less quick to jump on the British offer of freedom for service. Instead, when the Spanish seized Mobile in 1780, he began acting as a courier for Spanish troops. Like other slaves in the region, he may have used the rival British offer of freedom as leverage against the Spanish. Jean not only got Spanish authorities to guarantee his freedom in 1782, but also the promise that he could buy his wife’s freedom, too.