A number of blacks received their freedom as a result of their fighting in the American Army. Other blacks, particularly in the South, received their freedom by fighting for the British against their patriot masters. Thousands of blacks took advantage of the dislocations caused by the war to run away from their owners. Further, the democratic and egalitarian sentiments spawned by the Revolution led northern states to begin the gradual emancipation of slaves within their borders. While southern states did not abolish slavery as a result of the revolution, some individual slave-owners, such as George Washington, voluntarily emancipated their slaves. By the late 1700s, sufficient numbers of free blacks were present in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston, and in rural areas in upper South states such as Maryland, as to permit the emergence of a black community with its own distinct culture and institutions.
After the Revolutionary War, free northern blacks formed institutions that have continued to influence African American life to the present day. The first independent black churches date from this period; the most well known example is the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church founded by Richard Allen in Philadelphia in the mid-1790s.
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