<P> Burned villages and crops, murdered chiefs, divided councils and civil wars, migrations, towns and forts choked with refugees, economic disruption, breaking of ancient traditions, losses in battle and to disease and hunger, betrayal to their enemies, all made the American Revolution one of the darkest periods in American Indian history . </P> <P> The British did not give up their forts in the West until 1796 in what is now the eastern Midwest, stretching from Ohio to Wisconsin; they kept alive the dream of forming a satellite Indian nation there, which they called a Neutral Indian Zone . That goal was one of the causes of the War of 1812 . </P> <P> Free blacks in the North and South fought on both sides of the Revolution, but most fought for the Patriots . Gary Nash reports that there were about 9,000 black Patriots, counting the Continental Army and Navy, state militia units, privateers, wagoneers in the Army, servants to officers, and spies . Ray Raphael notes that thousands did join the Loyalist cause, but "a far larger number, free as well as slave, tried to further their interests by siding with the patriots ." Crispus Attucks was shot dead by British soldiers in the Boston Massacre in 1770 and is an iconic martyr to Patriots . Both sides offered freedom and re-settlement to slaves who were willing to fight for them, recruiting slaves whose owners supported the opposing cause . </P> <P> Many black slaves sided with the Loyalists . Tens of thousands in the South used the turmoil of war to escape, and the southern plantation economies of South Carolina and Georgia especially were disrupted . During the Revolution, the British tried to turn slavery against the Americans . Historian David Brion Davis explains the difficulties with a policy of wholesale arming of the slaves: </P>

Who benefited the most from the american revolution and its immediate aftermath