Northeast Cold Case

In 1776, as British troops occupied Long Island, hundreds of families fled across Long Island Sound to Connecticut in the dead of night. We remember them as “refugees” – but what happened to the people they enslaved?

Welcome to Episode 4 of the Revolutionary Refugees series. This episode, “Freedom, Flight, and Betrayal: Enslaved People in the Long Island Crisis”, looks at the evacuation from Long Island through the eyes of the enslaved:

• Who was forced onto the boats, and who was left behind or sold.
  
• How some used the chaos to run toward British lines and the promise of freedom.
  
• What it meant to arrive in Connecticut, a Patriot colony where slavery was still legal.