Egerton, Douglas R. Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America. New York: Oxford, 2009.

Summary
This book looks at how tens of thousands Africans and African Americans, from the Seven Years’ War in 1763 to the election of slaveholder Thomas Jefferson as president in 1800, waged their own struggle for independence. Before the century was over, the revolution, together with the changing economy of northern states, served to “eradicate slave labor in half of the new Republic” and weakened it in the border of the south. At the same time, white elites reconstituted slavery, especially in the south, to help the economy recover. Just at the moment that the founders trumpeted the success of a revolution, slavery expanded rapidly in the frontier South and Black Americans, Egerton contends, were not passive to this process; they '''helped shaped the politics of the early republic''' through their demands and actions, such as Crispus Attucks fight for the ideal of liberty and Gabriel’s Rebellion.

Example: Experiences of Quok Walker, a black slave in Worcester, MA. after being denied his freedom (though promised by his previous owner), didn’t run away as most escaped slaves would have, but turned to the courts and hired Levi Lincoln. He filed suit for damages as well as assault and battery in the local court of common please. Walker assumed his freedom in the post-1776 world and thus turned to the courts not for freedom, but for receiving justice for the damages against him (Walker vs. Jennison). While acknowledging the economic shifts in the north and weakening demand for slave labor Egerton argues that activists like Walker, combined with the assistant of such whites as Lincoln forced every state Supreme Court or legislature north of Delaware to eliminate slavery.

See also: Linda Kerber, Ashli White