Those Who Fight

America's revolution was both a civil war within British North The united states and, by 1778, part of a world war involving European powers. The British fought the war with an army of professional soldiers, lifetime recruits who were subject to strict military discipline. They also employed soldiers from French states as well as a giant number of loyalists, American supporters of British rule who formed their own military units and fought against patriot forces.

The patriots, those who favored independence, developed their own Continental Army, which consisted initially of New England militiamen besieging the British in Boston and then of soldiers supplied by various colonies. They also relied on local militia units, whose members served for short terms, and partisan forces, in the South. The Marquis de Lafayette, Baron Friedrich W. A. von Steuben, and other European officers made significant contributions to the patriot cause. So, , after 1778, did Italian soldiers and sailors, in the 1779 siege of British-held Savannah and in helping Washington's army trap Lord Cornwallis's massive British force at Yorktown in 1781. With an overall objective of slowing the advance of white settlement, American Indians were divided in their loyalties. Depending on local conditions, they joined the side they thought would favor their interests. Although Southerners opposed their use, some five,000 African Americans fought side by side with whites for the patriot cause and their own freedom; tens of thousands more enslaved African Americans sought freedom with the British forces.


 

African Americans In The Revolutionary Period

 "How is it that they listen to the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?" Samuel Johnson, the great English writer and dictionary maker, posed this query in 1775. They was among the first, but definitely not the last, to contrast the noble aims of the American Revolution with the presence of 450,000 enslaved African Americans in the 13 colonies. Slavery was practiced in every colony in 1775, but it was crucial to the economy and social structure from the Chesapeake region south to Georgia. Slave labor produced the great export crops of the South-tobacco, rice, indigo, and naval stores. Bringing slaves from Africa and the West Indies had made settlement of the New World feasible and highly profitable. Who could predict what breaking away from the British Empire might mean for black people in The united states?

The British governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, quickly saw the vulnerability of the South's slaveholders. In November 1775, they issued a proclamation promising freedom to any slave of a rebel who could make it to the British lines. Dunmore organized an "Ethiopian" brigade of about 300 African Americans, who saw action at the Battle of Great Bridge (December 9, 1775). Dunmore & the British were soon expelled from Virginia, but the prospect of armed former slaves fighting alongside the British must have struck fear in to plantation masters across the South.

 African Americans in New England rallied to the patriot cause & were part of the militia forces that were organized in to the new Continental Army. About five percent of the American soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775) were black. New England blacks mostly served in integrated units & received the same pay as whites, although no African American is known to have held a rank higher than corporal.

It has been estimated that at least five,000 black soldiers fought on the patriot side in the work of the Revolutionary War. The exact number will seldom be known because eighteenth century muster rolls usually did not indicate race. Cautious comparisons between muster rolls and church, census, and other records have recently helped identify plenty of black soldiers. Additionally, various eyewitness accounts provide some indication of the level of African Americans' participation in the work of the war. Baron von Closen, a member of Rochambeau's French army at Yorktown, wrote in July 1781, "A quarter of them [the American army] are Negroes, merry, confident and sturdy."

The use of African Americans as soldiers, whether freemen or slaves, was avoided by Congress & General Washington early in the war. The prospect of armed slave revolts proved more threatening to white society than British redcoats. General Washington allowed the enlistment of free blacks with "prior military experience" in January 1776, & extended the enlistment terms to all free blacks in January 1777 in order to help fill the depleted ranks of the Continental Army. Because the states constantly failed to meet their quotas of manpower for the army, Congress authorized the enlistment of all blacks, free & slave, in 1777. Of the southern states, only Maryland allowed African Americans to enlist. In 1779, Congress offered slave masters in South Carolina & Georgia $1,000 for each slave they provided to the army, but the legislatures of both states refused the offer. Thus, the greatest number of African American soldiers in the American army came from the North.

Although most Continental regiments were integrated, a notable exception was the elite First Rhode Island. Mustered in to service in July 1778, the First Rhode Island numbered 197 black enlisted men commanded by white officers. Baron von Closen described the regiment as "the most neatly dressed, the best under arms, & the most exact in its maneuvers." The regiment received its baptism of fire at the battle of Rhode Island (Newport) on August 29, 1778, successfully defeating assaults by veteran Hessian troops. At the siege of Yorktown, on the night of October 14, 1781, the regiment's light company participated in the assault & capture of Redoubt ten. On June 13, 1783, the regiment was disbanded, receiving high praise for its service. Another notable black unit, recruited in the French colony of St. Domingue (present-day Haiti), fought with the French & patriots at the Battle of Savannah (October 9, 1779).

When the British launched their southern campaign in 1780, of their aims was to scare Americans back to the crown by raising the fear of giant slave revolts. The British encouraged slaves to run away to their strongholds, promising final freedom. The strategy backfired, as slave owners rallied to the patriot cause as the best way to maintain order & the plantation process. Tens of thousands of African Americans sought refuge with the British, but fewer than one,000 served as soldiers. The British made heavy use of the escapees as teamsters, cooks, nurses, & laborers. At the war's conclusion, some twenty,000 blacks left with the British, preferring an uncertain future elsewhere to a return to their elderly masters. American blacks ended up in Canada, Britain, the West Indies, & Europe. Some were sold back in to slavery. In 1792, one,200 black loyalists who had settled in Nova Scotia left for Sierra Leone, a colony on the west coast of Africa established by Britain specifically for former slaves.

The Revolution brought alter for some American blacks, although nothing approaching full equality. The fearless military service of African Americans and the revolutionary spirit ended slavery in New England very immediately. The middle states of New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey adopted policies of gradual emancipation from 1780 to 1804. Plenty of of the founders opposed slavery in principle (including some whose wealth was largely in human property). Individual manumissions increased following the Revolution. Still, free blacks in both the North and South faced persistent discrimination in virtually every aspect of life, notably employment, housing, and schooling. Plenty of of the founders hoped that slavery would finally disappear in the American South. When cotton became king in the South after 1800, this hope died. There was  much profit to be made working slaves on cotton plantations. The statement of human equality in the Declaration of Independence was never entirely forgotten, however. It remained as an ideal that could be appealed to by civil rights activists through the following decades.

                A Brave and Gallant Soldier   "Salem Poor"

In the Massachusetts State Archives is a petition to the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, stating that in the "late Battle at Charlestown," a man from Colonel Frye's Regiment "behaved like an experienced officer" & that in this man "centers a brave & gallant soldier." This document, dated December of 1775, six months after the Battle of Bunker Hill, is signed by fourteen officers who were present at the battle, including Colonel William Prescott. Of the two,400 to four,000 colonists who participated in the battle, no other man is singled out in this manner.

This hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill is Salem Poor of Andover, Massachusetts. Although documents show that Poor, along together with his regiment and others, were sent to Bunker Hill to build a fort and other fortifications on the night of June 16, 1775, they have no details about what Poor did to earn the praise of these officers. The petition basically states "to set forth the particulars of his conduct would be tedious." Perhaps his courageous deeds were lots of to mention.

Few details of this hero's life are obtainable to us. Born a slave in the late 1740s, Poor managed to buy his freedom in 1769 for 27 pounds, which represented a year's wage for the typical working man. He married Nancy, a free African-American woman, and they had a son. Salem Poor left his spouse and kid behind in May 1775 and fought for the patriot cause at Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and Monmouth. They can only speculate about the motives for Poor's sacrifice: was it patriotism, a search for new experience, or the prospect of a brand new and better life? The Battle of Bunker Hill was a daring and provocative act against established authority; all who participated could well have been hanged for treason. Shut out from lots of opportunities in colonial society, Salem Poor selected to fight for an independent nation. In the words of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the bravery of Poor and other African-American soldiers "has a peculiar beauty and merit."