ganda, Bradley points out that for most whites, blacks were believed and were often depicted in the patriotic press as possessing "an innate nature that was libidinous, immoderate, and prone to crime" (7). Although free blacks were later allowed to enlist as soldiers in the North, a Council of War under George Washington decided in July 1775 to bar all blacks from the Continental Army on the grounds that their loyalty was suspect. That fear was further stoked by the invitation of British Governor of Virginia Lord Dunsmore in November 1775 to free any slaves who supported the British cause. In summing up American attitudes toward slavery in the 1780s, Froehling said "the master passion of the age was not extending liberty to blacks but with erecting republics for whites" (129). In the North, significant numbers of colonists disliked slavery, but Collier and Collier said many of them opposed slavery "not always for humanitarian reasons," but because of "fear of low wage competition" and their belief that "the horde of blacks in the South was a threat to the
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