By: Robert S. Davis
Today's Americans might be surprised to learn that during the Revolutionary War period, enslaved African Americans did not always join the British in hopes of emancipation. Enslaved persons often chose to remain with their families and their homes. Historian Gary B. Nash noted that Black Americans acted to serve the Revolution faster than whites and they served longer likely because “liberty” and “slavery” meant something very personal to them.
German Baron Ludwig von Closen described one-quarter of Washington’s army as “Negro” at Yorktown in 1782. A return of Washington’s army on August 24, 1778, supports that claim, with 755 Black soldiers among 7,600 men, or 10% of the whole.
Some of the enslaved men, including 500 Virginians, enlisted in the Continentals in place of their masters, on promises of freedom upon the end of the war. The Commonwealth of Virginia guaranteed its emancipations.
African Americans served in the Revolution from the very beginning. Crispus Attucks, both African American and Native American, died in the Boston Massacre of 1770 as the first casualty of the American Revolution.
African American enlistments grew after the first two years of the war. “It serves as no coincidence,” historian Patrick F. Moriarty wrote, "that as the reverence toward the American soldier diminished, the tendency to accept Blacks into the armed service increased.”
"Crispus Attucks," by Herschel Levit, mural at the Recorder of Deeds building, Washington, D.C.
LOC
All states had Black soldiers. One might say that George Washington led the most racially integrated American army until the Vietnam War.
These Americans were not invisible. One historian noted that French officers at Yorktown described their rags and their poor treatment. German soldier Georg-Daniel Flohr noted that African Americans made up much of the dead from the successful attack on a redoubt at Yorktown. Their service in the Revolution, however, almost immediately became lost to public memory except, perhaps, in notable paintings of the war.
As examples, John Blake White depicted the enslaved Oscar in his famous 1810 painting of South Carolina patriot Francis Marion. William Ranney included Collin in his 1845 work on the Battle of Cowpens. Emanuel Gottlieb Luetz, in his iconic "Washington Crossing the Delaware" (1851), painted an African American soldier in the boat with Washington. John Trumbull’s "The Battle at Bunker’s Hill" includes an African American servant.
"Lafayette at Yorktown" by Jean-Baptiste Le Paon, c. 1783. James Armistead, right, was an enslaved African American who served during the Revolutionary War under the Marquis de Lafayette.
Public Domain
Since 1984, three efforts to raise money for a Washington, D.C., monument to African American participation in the Revolution (first proposed in 1919) have so far failed, but there has been some recognition. In 2012, the city of Washington, Georgia, erected the Black Revolutionary Patriot Monument, the first memorial to African American Revolutionary soldiers. It has a bust of Patriot spy James Armistead Lafayette and tells the story of disabled hero Austin Dabney.
