One night in July 1775, slave Joseph Harris slipped from his Hampton home and made it to the HMS Fowey, anchored in the York River. Colonists and British forces had already clashed in the north at Lexington and Concord. Now, Virginians were seething after Lord Dunmore, the Colonys royal governor, had hinted about freeing the Colonys slaves and arming them to fight with the British.

Dunmores headquarters was now the Fowey, and Harris knew hed have a chance at freedom if he could work with him. He was a harbor pilot and knew the local waters better than any other man.

The British welcomed him and others who followed, and in late October the Royal Navy attacked Hampton in the Souths first contest of the Revolutionary War.

Much has been written about slaves who found freedom along the Underground Railroad or who jumped behind Union lines during the Civil War in the 1860s.

But their fight for freedom started a century before. It is being explored in the Hampton History Museums latest exhibition, Give Me Liberty: Fugitive Slaves and the Long Revolution Against Slavery. It looks at the lives of more than 30 fugitive Hampton slaves who became known as Black Loyalists and joined the British navy and army during the Revolution. During the War of 1812, they were called refugees.

The yearlong exhibition includes artifacts such as the swivel gun from the HMS Liberty, a British ship that ran aground in Hampton a month before the attack on the town. The exhibit also includes items on loan from Europe and Canada, where thousands of African Americans settled after the wars.

Beth Austin, registrar with the Hampton museum, said it wanted to resurrect Harris story after the institution produced a re-enactment two years ago and realized it was little-discussed history. The museum had also received donated documents that shed light on the role of escapees during the War of 1812.

We realized the story of slave resistance is something thats a much bigger story than maybe weve told before, and the usual story that gets told, Austin said. We wanted to connect the dots and draw the line of the revolutionary movement.

A portrait of Olaudah Equiano, a leader in England's abolition movement or his friend and fellow abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano is part of exhibit titled "Give Me Liberty: Fugitive Slaves and the Long Revolution Against Slavery." The exhibit opened Feb. 25, 2017, at the Hampton History Museum. According to a title under the portrait "He was also well-connected to the Black Atlantic. He traveled widely as an enslaved sailor, a free man, and in the Royal Navy. He settled in London and worked tirelessly as an antislavery activist. The man in this portrait is unidentified but probably Equiano or his friend and fellow abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano.

The exhibition shows how the local waterways made escape and passing along information among slaves easier. It also explores how the talk of resistance and revolution among Colonists ignited the subjugated population. Then, as slaves took responsibility for their freedom, more Virginia Colonials wanted theirs from Britain. But they did not want to end slavery.

It highlights the more complicated story of the Revolution, Austin said.

Slaves ran, knowing they would return to harsher circumstances if caught. But the idea of a better existence was enough. For many, however, that wouldnt come to pass.

More than half a million African Americans lived in the 13 Colonies by 1775, most of them enslaved, most born here.

The British attack on Hampton wasnt simply to quell the rebels fervor, Austin said. It was tinged with the issue of slavery.

When the Liberty beached in a hurricane that September 1775, Harris helped the British commander on board flee with the help of a slave. Local patriots then pillaged the ship and burned it. The British demanded their supplies back, but Hampton fighters refused: The British needed to return their slaves.

The British not only said no but attacked in late October and also skirmished with militia across the water in Norfolk.

In November, Dunmore stayed true to his threat and issued a proclamation offering freedom to slaves or indentured servants in the Colony who would fight for the Crown. Within a month, hundreds flocked to the British, with some slaves coming from as far away as New Jersey, said Jason Farmer, senior interpreter for The Black Loyalist Heritage Centre in Birchtown, Nova Scotia. These escapees formed Dunmores Ethiopian Regiment.

In December, the unit, whose shirts bore the words Liberty to Slaves, joined the British in attacking rebels at the Battle of Great Bridge in present-day Chesapeake. Repelled, the British retreated to Norfolk, but African American men continued to join the ranks.

Tom Davidson, senior curator with the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, said its impossible to know how many enslaved people fought with the British. It is estimated that as many as 80,000 to 100,000 looked for sanctuary with the British, but that includes women and children.

Ed Ayres, historian at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, said most of the African American men who fled were used in support roles, such as cooking food and building reinforcements.

The British were as reluctant to give arms to the blacks as the South was during the Civil War, Ayres said.

In 1779, a British declaration out of New York offered freedom to enslaved people throughout the Colonies in exchange for their help. Promises of resettlement and land came later. Thousands swarmed to join the ranks.

The exhibition has a panel about a slave known only as Tom. He escaped from his Hampton master but was recaptured after the Battle of Hampton and sent to work in lead mines in Fincastle, Va. He was later sold in Antigua in 1776 by the state to buy gunpowder and war supplies.

Joseph Harris, who had joined the Royal Navy, died within a year of his escape, likely from disease.

Many of the members of the Ethiopian Regiment, Ayres said, died from smallpox once they mingled with the British, who had been exposed to it back in England. Those English who survived smallpox had a natural inoculation.

Still, the enslaved left, including women and children, who were of little use to the British.

Historical accounts describe British Maj. Gen. Charles Cornwallis and his troops developing an entourage of women and children as his men moved through Virginia in 1781, Ayres said. Cornwallis marched to Portsmouth seeking to establish a base but thought the area was too swampy. He then moved to fortify Yorktown.

He basically left the women and children in Portsmouth, Ayres said. You can bet the minute they left, the Virginians took them back and put them into slavery.

The siege of Yorktown began in September, and the British were surrounded by Colonial forces and their French allies. As supplies got low, the British expelled the former slaves and left them to be re-enslaved or killed by unsympathetic Colonials.

Weve treated these people very cruelly, a British soldier wrote in his journal, Ayres said.

After the British surrendered, Black Loyalists evacuated with them, primarily from New York. Some slaveholders, including Gen. George Washington, demanded their property back.

Washington and others were denied.

The names of the Black Loyalists were written in the Book of Negroes. It included information on each person, like Rachel Fox, 42, thin weakly wench, formerly slave to James Moorfield, late of Norfolk, Virginia; came from thence with Lord Dunmore.

Replica of the homes Black Loyalists would have built once they resettled in Birchtown, Nova Scotia after the Revolutionary War. It is called a pit house and starts by diggin a hole in the ground and using what could be found around them for the roof.

Black Loyalists were put on ships and deposited wherever the ships landed, a few in England and some in the West Indies, but more than 3,500 went to Canada. Most settled in Birchtown, Nova Scotia, which became the largest settlement of free blacks outside of Africa.

The promises of land did not come to pass. Heads of households were to get land for farming and a smaller lot for a home, with supplies from the British until they could live independently. The British dispersed land by rank and, first, to white loyalists who had also left the states. Former slaves were on the last rung; only about a third got land, and it wasnt the full amount promised, said Farmer, the Canadian historian. They were often left with the dregs, land too rocky to farm. In 1792, about a third left to go to a colony being established in Sierra Leone in Africa.

That community became the countys current capital Freetown.

When the British and Americans came to blows again in 1812, slaves again were offered freedom by the British.

In 1813, Bray and Milly Cooper of Hampton were the property of John Cooper, who had recently died. The couple and their five children fled on July 18 to two British ships. Other Cooper slaves ran, too. Coopers widow got on one of the ships and tried to talk Bray and Milly into returning. They wouldnt and later settled in Nova Scotia.

More than 4,000 slaves found freedom during the short-lived war. The refugees produced another wave of migration for Nova Scotia, Farmer said. About 2,000 settled in an area of Preston, about 2 hours north of Birchtown. Others were taken to Trinidad, where they were each given 16 acres of land. They called themselves Merikans.

Farmer descends from a Black Loyalist, a slave who had escaped from bondage in New Jersey. He learned that one of his ancestors, Jupiter, changed his last name from his masters Harmer to Farmer once he made a home in Nova Scotia.

It was a pattern among escapees.

They were trying to forget about their old life, a life of enslavement, he said, and start a new one where they would be free.

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"Give Me Liberty": Exhibit highlights how African Americans fought for freedom during the Revolution - Virginian-Pilot