Two of the sergeants were captured and hung, but I have seen no American
record of this and I don't know what kind of procedure was carried out. It
was likely to have been summary execution - I understand that in such cases
the slaveholder was guaranteed compensation by the state (as distinct from
the general case, where compensation was claimed, and ultimately received,
from the enemy). Note that they were captured as fighting soldiers (I should
day marines), in a situation where captured British forces would have become
prisoners of war, subject to exchange or parole; at other times, when
slaveholders or their representatives were allowed onto British warships in
the Chesapeake to address their (ex-)slaves, there were fruitless attempts
to persuade them to come back home. But you have asked an interesting
question, one that had not occurred to me - and I'll hope to find some kind
of answer when I look tomorrow at Philip J Schwarz's "Twice Condemned",
recommended in another posting by Richard Dixon.

John Weiss

----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 11:12 PM
Subject: Re: Corps of Colonial Marines and Virginia


: John;
:
: Did your research take you to the point of investigating whether any
slaves
: were tried for treason due to their going over to the British side, or
: whether they could have been tried for treason under US law?  Since a
slave
: was considered chattel instead of a human being, I wondered how that
worked.
:
: JDS
:
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