With the Americas small population of citizens and large number of slaves this helped tremendously. The Americas only contained about 6.5 million people by the year of 1776 and “only 1 million were Europeans. The remaining 5.5 million were African.” (Dodson) By the time of the Revolutionary War, many slaves wanted to receive their freedom. Political leaders such as Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens wanted to make that possible, while also benefitting from it. They made many battalions saying that if the slaves fought on the Americans side that they could receive their freedom, and to get plantation owners to agree with this was by warning “if they didn't offer the slaves their freedom, Britain would.”