Freemasonry In The American Revolution

During the American War of Independence, when American liberals in the North worked with slaveowners in the south in the struggle against Britain, the British, although they themselves owned black slaves in the West Indies and were engaged in the slave trade, encouraged the slaves of the revolutionaries in Georgia and South Carolina to escape from their masters and join the British garrisons in the ports they held, to work there as labourers. They accepted some of these runaway slaves as members of the British military Freemasons' lodge, though no African-American had been allowed to join any American lodge. - Jasper Ridley