– Does Prof. Blanton actually have an argument here? Was self-emancipation an understood (if not accepted) part of the Law of Nations, and did this theory influence the ways British officers, American Patriots, and enslaved people thought about military emancipation?

– Was British military emancipation policy a humanitarian act of abolition, or just another weapon in the British arsenal? How committed to freedom were the British? How does the experience of freedpeople after the war shape this analysis?

– How did the experience of military emancipation influence the ways Americans thought about the “problem of slavery” in the revolutionary era? How might these experience have differed in, say, New England and South Carolina? How do you think enslaved people thought about military emancipation?