The First American Army

by Bruce Chadwick

  African American soldiers were needed because in 1778 states found it hard to recruit white residents for troop strengths mandated by Congress. One state, Rhode Island, had such trouble signing up soldiers that it even created an all-black regiment and assigned some of its better soldiers to come home to train its members. It was the most prominent of three black regiments fighting for America. One small group, the American Bucks, was raised in Massachusetts and a third, the Black Brigade of Saint Domingue, from Haiti, fought with the French army in Georgia in 1779.

  Sometime during the morning of March 26, 1778, newly promoted Sergeant Jeremiah Greenman, sent home to Providence from Valley Forge to recruit troops, picked up a copy of the Providence Gazette and read a notice published in its pages by his commanding officer, Colonel Christopher Greene. Colonel Greene ordered all of the new recruits for Rhode Island’s two regiments to report to East Greenwich, twenty miles south on the western side of Narragansett Bay, for the spring campaign. The weather had been unusually mild during the past two weeks, but a few hours after Greenman put down the newspaper the sky darkened and, the sergeant wrote, “it began to snow very fast indeed.”

  The next day, Jeremiah Greenman found himself marching through several inches of snow in hilly Providence toward East Greenwich to undertake one of the most unusual, and historic, assignments of the war. He had been selected by his commanding officer as one of the drillmasters to train America’s first permanent regiment of all-black troops, the First Rhode Island.

  Greenman thought little about the assignment. He trained the black recruits on how to parade, maneuver on the battlefield, load, fire, and care for muskets. The more than two hundred men in his regiment were given their guns on April 15. Arming former slaves meant little to Greenman, who remarked casually in his journal that “we got our guns draw’d,” and nothing more.

  George Washington, who held mixed feelings about freeing slaves all of his life, did not initially want “a black corps,” as he later wrote General William Heath and others.1 Now, though, needing as many trained men as he could obtain, he had changed his mind, albeit reluctantly, and was happy to have men from among Rhode Island’s 2,671 slaves.2

  Washington recognized them as a huge pool from which to enlist much needed troops. He wanted this new all-black unit in Rhode Island to succeed, too, and so he put it under the command of Greene, a relative of his trusted aide, Nathanael Greene.

  Washington had seen the reliability of black soldiers during the French and Indian War, when he served as a colonial officer under British General William Braddock, the head of a British army in Virginia in 1755.3 One New Hampshire black, Robert Miller, fought for the colonial militia that was part of the British army in that war; twenty years later his son fought in the Continental Army against the British.4

  The coming of the Revolution gave antislavery forces their greatest ammunition. Rev. Samuel Allinson, of New Jersey, used that argument in a letter to Patrick Henry, reminding him that it would be “the lasting disgrace” of Congress not to grant freedom to blacks “if they should spend so much time to secure their own liberties and leave no vestige of their regard to those of their fellow men in bondage to themselves.” Congressional delegate James Otis wrote that “those who barter away other men’s liberty will soon care little for their own.” 5

  One of the voices against slavery belonged to George Washington, who had spoken out against it several times during the previous decade. He introduced a bill to halt the transportation of slaves to Virginia in the 1760s. In 1774, he introduced, with his friend George Fairfax, “resolves,” or formal proposals, on the issue. In them, again, Washington called for curbs on slavery, describing bondage as a “wicked, cruel, and unnatural trade.” Later, connecting the Revolution to slavery, he wrote that Americans had to free themselves from England or be turned into as “tame and abject slaves as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway,” adding that the blacks were “poor wretches.”6 It was no surprise then, when he badly needed troops, that George Washington turned to the slave population of the states and offered freedom as an inducement.

  Most African Americans fought in integrated units that were raised in the different states. Their number depended on their geographical location and the population of blacks, freedmen and slaves, in that area. One rural county in Connecticut had just one black soldier, but a company from New York City had eleven on its muster of fifty-nine.7 A New Hampshire company’s roster was 15 percent black.8 At one point in 1777, nearly one-third of all the American troops at Fort Ticonderoga under General Anthony Wayne were black.9 By the time the Americans had tightened their noose around the British in Boston in the summer of 1775, there were several hundred black troops in the twenty-thousandman army.

  Hundreds of black freedmen joined the army, too. Some did believe strongly in the cause of independence for America. More importantly, many felt that victory over the British would mean freedom for any relatives still in bondage, and a general freedom for all blacks. Some black soldiers were motivated by a sense of adventure, just like white troops. Money was a reason for the enlistment of the black freedmen, too. Most were recruited after the winter of 1778, when Continental currency had been severely devalued. Congress and the states offered many soldiers who signed up later in the war one hundred acres of land instead of the worthless paper money. That much land was a huge incentive for black freedmen who had no land, little money, and usually had trouble landing jobs.

  One of the first Americans to die for independence was Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave, who was one of five men shot and killed during the Boston Massacre in 1770. Black involvement in the war itself began in the very first battle, at Lexington, Massachusetts, as several African American minutemen fought against the British army. Several black soldiers participated in the battle of Bunker Hill. Peter Salem became the most famous of them when he was depicted in the famous painting of the battle by artist John Trumbull.

  Blacks were in the first militia raised in the southern states, too. British troops found that out in 1775 in a heated battle at a bridge over the Elizabeth River in Virginia. There they encountered a black freedman named Billy Flora. The American regiment moved back into a breastwork, leaving wooden planks over the river. Flora was the last sentinel to run back over the bridge after firing what he thought was a final volley at the British. He realized that the planks could be used by the British to cross the water, too, and began to pull them up. He soon found himself in a hail of musket balls. Flora dislodged the planks, dragging them to the American side of the river as the English fired furiously at him. As he slowly backed off, he began to fire away at the British. Eyewitnesses said he wound up firing eight volleys at the enemy. Flora, who later purchased the freedom of his family, returned to the army in the war of 1812 as an old man, and fought against the British once more.10

  The presence of black troops in the military during the early days of the war disturbed many public officials. There were several reasons for this. First, many complained that the black freedmen who signed up were really not free, but runaway slaves who lied about their identity. Second, plantation owners in the South and subsistence farmers in the North said that they could not run their businesses without slave labor. Third, and most importantly, many feared bands of black soldiers with guns would start civil insurrections. This fear was greatest among planters in the South who owned large numbers of slaves. It was so great in Maryland that the governor issued hundreds of muskets and pistols to local counties to distribute to planters to defend themselves in case a slave rebellion began. In South Carolina, the Council on Safety posted warnings against slave uprisings.11

  The black soldiers in the American army may have earned their freedom, but they rarely garnered the respect of the white officers. Lt. Alex Graydon wrote that the Negroes in a Massachusetts regiment he saw “had a disagreeable, degrading effect” on the entire army.12 A captain at Fort Ticonderoga wrote that the American regiments comprised “the strangest mixture
of Negroes, Indians, and whites, with old men and mere children, which together with a nasty lousy appearance make a most shocking spectacle” and made him “sick of the service.”13 General Philip Schuyler wrote that the black soldiers “disgrace our arms.”14 General William Heath had no complaints about the black troops under his command, but did not believe that they should be mixed with white soldiers.15 John Adams complained that the army had too many Negroes.16 One New England company’s officer wrote that everyone in his community was opposed to the British except “lunatics, idiots, and Negroes.” Another company permitted its men to vote on whether or not blacks willing to enlist would be permitted to do so.17 Opposition to blacks in the service became so loud that by the end of the summer of 1775 all of the state legislatures took steps to halt their enlistment. Independence was going to be won for white people by white people.

  All of that changed toward the end of that year thanks to two former acquaintances, Virginia’s royal governor, John Murray, the Earl of Dunmore, and George Washington. The two men had dined together, played cards, and gone hunting for several years before the outbreak of the war. Washington became the head of the American army and Dunmore found himself an embattled royal governor.

  As 1776 approached, Lord Dunmore felt threatened as his entire colony appeared to be in rebellion. He was so apprehensive that he fled the lavish brick governor’s palace in Williamsburg, with its impressive courtyard and lovely gardens, and took refuge on a British warship in nearby Norfolk harbor. He needed troops, lots of them, to protect the Crown’s stake in Virginia.

  On November 7, 1775, Dunmore stunned the colonists by issuing a proclamation guaranteeing immediate freedom to all slaves who ran away from their masters and joined his British forces. This was the worst possible event for slaveholders in Virginia and nearby states, whose populations consisted predominantly of black slaves. Not only would the British forces swell tenfold and grow into a slave army, but the planters would be ruined economically without slave labor. And, worse, angry slaves in uniform might kill their former owners, whom all assumed they despised.

  Congress, too, was appalled. It was encountering great difficulty raising troops and keeping soldiers in the army. Now Dunmore was giving thousands of slaves a chance to win freedom by soldiering muskets for the enemy. Virginia alone had some two hundred thousand slaves. Congress ordered the committee of safety in Virginia to do all it could to resist Dunmore.18 Congress asked the same of Washington, who wrote that “if that man [Dunmore] is not crushed before spring, he will become the most formidable enemy America has.”19

  The Virginia slaves fled their plantations and fought for the king in return for freedom, everyone knew but few admitted, because if they stayed where they were they would remain in bondage. Rev. Henry Muhlenberg wrote in his diary of a conversation he overhead between two black servants who worked for an English family leaving Philadelphia. “They secretly wished that the British army might win, for then all Negro slaves will gain their freedom. It is said that this sentiment is almost universal among the Negroes in America.”20

  The patriots in Virginia reacted swiftly, using the pages of the Virginia Gazette to carry out a campaign of intimidation against any slaves thinking of joining forces with Lord Dunmore. Slaves were told in a series of letters to the editor that only able-bodied young adult males would be accepted as soldiers and any others who volunteered but were unfit would remain slaves, but now to the British, who would sell them to British planters in the West Indies. Their families might be held hostage. Letter writers reminded slaves, too, that the punishment for running away could be death and that any slave captured in a British uniform would be executed.21

  Despite these threats, hundreds of slaves fled and traveled to Norfolk to join the British army to gain their freedom. It was worth the risk. Along with them came some twenty thousand other slaves. These men, women, and children were not interested in military service; they simply wanted the Redcoats to protect them. Their departure crippled the labor forces at southern plantations, but the number of refugees dramatically slowed down the Redcoats as they followed the British during the campaign in the southern states.22

  Dunmore’s slaves were honored by the British. They were given an official title, the Ethiopian Regiment, and had a motto: “Liberty for slaves.” They fought hard in engagements against local militia and in one engagement two slaves in British uniforms even captured an American colonel. One British company consisted of ninety former slaves and thirty British regulars.23 These early successes inspired even more slaves to flee their plantations and join Dunmore’s forces, housed on his fleet of ships. Within months, nearly eight hundred slaves were in British uniforms.

  In the end, Dunmore’s slave soldiers were annihilated, but not by the Continental Army. By housing hundreds of men in close quarters on small, badly ventilated ships—and not providing much clothing beyond the uniform—Dunmore had created a classic environment for smallpox. The dreaded disease that had decimated the American army in Canada earlier that winter struck the slave army the British had recruited in June 1776. The disease spread rapidly in the close quarters of the ship holds and the sick infected the healthy. Dunmore had bombarded and burned Norfolk a few months earlier and was not a popular man there, so he sailed away, desperate to find any harbor to unload his diseased slaves, but no one would take them. Dunmore sent some of his ships with healthy slaves north, to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Several dozen of those members of the Ethiopian Regiment fought with Sir Henry Clinton’s army. The rest of Dunmore’s black regiment had to sail all the way to British-occupied Bermuda to find a safe harbor. There, his dream of a slave army dissipated. More than half of his eight hundred slave soldiers had perished from smallpox by the time his fleet anchored and most of the others wound up back in slavery in the West Indies.

  Not all of the American slaves who obtained freedom in the ranks of the British army fought for Dunmore. One group of fifteen men enslaved on a Maryland plantation stole a planter’s small boat and sailed it to a British frigate. One British regiment in New York had a corps of black drummer boys. Several slaves who were horsemen fought for a British cavalry troop. At the end of the war, the British evacuated their army to Halifax, taking with them several hundred black soldiers.24

  At the same time that Dunmore was recruiting his army, before Christmas 1775, George Washington made up his mind to overturn the decision of his generals to end black enlistments and permitted recruiters to sign up black soldiers wherever they could find them. He needed men, any men, because nearly half his army had returned home at the end of 1775. The offer of freedom for military service was alluring and from late 1777 on hundreds of black soldiers joined the army. Although there are no reliable figures on black enlistment, it has been estimated that over five thousand black freedmen or slaves fought for the Continental Army. More than seven hundred were said to have participated in the battle of Monmouth alone (about 6 percent of the American force there), one of the critical engagements of the war. In addition, blacks served as boat pilots and spies.

  Several African American fathers and sons in slavery signed up together and fought in the same company. Slave brothers enlisted together. Black freedmen fought alongside their white neighbors in county companies. In a few companies a slave given freedom to join the army fought in the same company as his former master.

  Most black soldiers served their entire term in the Continental Army, which ranged from eight months in the early years of the war to three years in its second half, but some remained in the army for five or six years and a few for the entire length of the war, even until peace arrived in 1783. Many who fought until the very end were awarded the Badge of Merit and had their discharge papers personally signed by George Washington.

  Many black soldiers did not leave the army even when they had an understandable reason to do so. Primas Coffin, said to be a superb violinist while the slave of a New Hampshire minister, joined the Second New Hampshire regiment in February 1777
and fought at Fort Ticonderoga, Saratoga, Monmouth, and the 1779 campaign against the Indians. He was married while on furlough in the spring of 1779, an event that motivated many soldiers to leave the army, but Coffin rejoined the regiment after a few weeks and then, when his time was up, reenlisted and stayed in the army for two more years.25

  The black freedmen enlisted under their legal names, but most of the slaves enlisted under their actual first name but owner’s last name. Some, such as William Griffith, were enlisted as simply “William Negro.”26

  Congress, the army, and state and county governments entered several financial schemes in addition to freedom to procure black troops. Any black freedman who entered the service was given a bounty, just like white recruits. The owner of a slave who left bondage to fight in the Revolution was paid a bounty by either the state or Congress for his loss, usually $100 and sometimes equal to the market value of the slave. Some states, such as New York, even added five hundred acres of farmland as an inducement for owners.

  A common practice to recruit as many troops as possible involved the substitution system used by states. Under it, a man drafted by his militia company could pay another to serve in his place. This was sometimes used by many wealthy merchants or southern planters to avoid service. One powerful new inducement to recruit black slaves was to let an owner use his slave as his substitute without paying him.27