Part 3 (2/2)
Within fifteen miles of them lay the city of Philadelphia and the British army. These gloomy circ.u.mstances overshadowed the recent victory at Bennington, and the surrender of Burgoyne. Under these circ.u.mstances, the difficulty of recruiting the patriot army may be easily imagined. A general enlistment bill had failed to pa.s.s the legislature in the spring, because, perhaps, the spirit of the patriots were up at the time; but now they were down, and the advocates of arming negroes sought the opportunity of carrying their plan. It was not attempted in Connecticut, but in the General a.s.sembly of Rhode Island an act was pa.s.sed for the purpose. Here are some of the princ.i.p.al provisions of this act:
”_It is Voted and Resolved_, That every able-bodied negro, mulatto, or Indian man slave in this State, may enlist into either of the said two battalions to serve during the continuance of the present war with Great Britain; that every slave so enlisted shall be ent.i.tled to receive all the bounties, wages, encouragements allowed by the Continental Congress to any soldier enlisted into their service.
”_It is further Voted and Resolved_, That every slave so enlisting shall, upon his pa.s.sing muster before Col.
Christopher Greene, be immediately discharged from the service of his master or mistress, and be absolutely free, as though he had never been enc.u.mbered with any kind of servitude or slavery. And in case such slave shall, by sickness or otherwise, be unable to maintain himself, he shall not be chargable to his master or mistress, but shall be supported at the expense of the State.
”And whereas slaves have been by the laws deemed the property of their owners; and therefore compensation ought to be made to the owners for the loss of their service,--
”_It is further Voted and Resolved_, That there be allowed, and paid by this State to the owners, for every such slave so enlisting, a sum according to his worth at a price not exceeding one hundred and twenty pounds for the most valuable slave, and in proportion for a slave of less value; _Provided_ the owner of said slave shall deliver up to the officer who shall enlist him the clothes of said slave; or otherwise he shall not be ent.i.tled to said sum.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ON PICKET]
To speak of the gallantry of the negro soldiers recalls the recollection of some of their daring deeds at Red Bank, where four hundred men met and repulsed, after a terrible, sanguinary struggle, fifteen hundred Hessian troops led by Count Donop.
”The glory of the defence of Red Bank, which has been p.r.o.nounced one of the most heroic actions of the war, belongs in reality to black men; yet who now hears them spoken of in connection with it? Among the traits which distinguished the black regiment was devotion to their officers. In the attack made upon the American lines, near Croton river, on the 13th of May, 1781, Col. Greene, the commander of the regiment, was cut down and mortally wounded; but the sabres of the enemy only reached him through the bodies of his faithful blacks, who gathered around him to protect him, _and every one of whom was killed_.”
Now the negro began to take the field; not scattered here and there throughout the army, filling up the shattered ranks of white regiments, but in organizations composed entirely of men of their own race, officered, however, by white officers, men of high social and military character and standing. The success of the measure in Rhode Island, emboldened the effort in Ma.s.sachusetts, where the advocates of separate negro organizations had been laboring zealously for its accomplishment.
Officers of the army in the field, expressed their desire to be placed in command of negro troops, in separate and distinct organizations.
Every effort, however, up to this time to induce Ma.s.sachusetts to consent to the proposition had failed. Rhode Island alone sent her negro regiments to the field, whose gallantry during the war more than met the most sanguine expectations of their warmest friends, and fully merited the trust and confidence of the State and country. As the struggle proceeded, re-enforcements were more frequently in demand; but recruits were scarce, and the question of arming negroes became again prominent in the colonies and the army.
In April, 1778, Thomas Kench, then serving in an artillery regiment, addressed letters to the Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature urging the enlistment of negroes. He wrote:
”A re-enforcement can quickly be raised of two or three hundred men. Will your honors grant the liberty, and give me the command of the party? And what I refer to is negroes.
We have divers of them in our service, mixed with white men.
But I think it would be more proper to raise a body by themselves, than to have them intermixed with the white men; and their ambition would entirely be to outdo the white men in every measure that the fortunes of war calls a soldier to endure. And I could rely with dependence upon them in the field of battle or to any post that I was sent to defend with them; and they would think themselves happy could they gain their freedom by bearing a part of subduing the enemy that is invading our land, and clear a peaceful inheritance for their masters, and posterity yet to come, that they are now slaves to.”
The letter from which this extract was made was duly referred to a joint committee ”to consider the same and report.” Some days later ”a resolution of the General a.s.sembly of Rhode Island for enlisting negroes in the public service” was referred to the same committee. They duly reported the draft of a law, differing little from the Rhode Island Resolution. A separate organization of negro companies, by Kench, does not appear to have been deemed advisable at that time. The usage was continued of ”taking,” in the words of Kench, ”negroes in our service, intermixed with the white men.”
The negroes of Boston and their abolition friends, rather insisted upon the intermingling of the races in the army, believing that this course had a greater tendency to destroy slavery, and the inequality of rights among the blacks and whites; though it deprived the negroes, as we now see, of receiving due credit for their valor, save in a few individual cases. It was not in Ma.s.sachusetts alone, but in many other States that the same idea prevailed; and now the facts connected with the services of the negroes are to be gathered only in fragments, from the histories of villages and towns, or among the archives of the State, in a disconnected and unsatisfactory form.
The legislature of New York, two months after the murder of Col. Greene and his faithful negro troops at Point's Bridge, in that State, by the British, pa.s.sed an act (March, 1781) looking to the raising of two regiments. The sixth section of the act reads as follows:
”And it is further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that any person who shall deliver one or more of his able-bodied male slaves to any warrant officer, as aforesaid, to serve in either of the above regiments or independent corps, and produce a certificate thereof, signed by any person authorized to muster and receive the men to be raised by virtue of this act, and produce such certificate to the Surveyor-General, shall, for every male slave so entered and mustered as aforesaid, be ent.i.tled to the location and grant of one right, in manner as in and by this act is directed; and shall be, and hereby is discharged from any further maintenance of such slave, any law to the contrary notwithstanding. And such slave so entering as aforesaid, who shall serve for the term of three years or until regularly discharged, shall, immediately after such service or discharge, be, and is hereby declared to be, a free man of this State.”
In 1821, in the convention which revised the const.i.tution of New York, Mr. Clark, speaking in favor of allowing negroes to vote, said in the course of his remarks:
”My honorable colleague has told us, that, as the colored people are not required to contribute to the protection or defence of the State, they are not ent.i.tled to an equal partic.i.p.ation in the privileges of its citizens. But, Sir, whose fault is this? Have they ever refused to do military duty when called upon? It is haughtily asked, Who will stand in the ranks shoulder to shoulder with a negro? I answer, No one, in time of peace; no one, when your musters and trainings are looked upon as mere pastimes; no one, when your militia will shoulder their muskets and march to their trainings with as much unconcern as they would go to a sumptuous entertainment or a splendid ball. But, Sir, when the hour of danger approaches, your white 'militia' are just as willing that the man of color should be set up as a mark to be shot at by the enemy, as to be set up themselves. In the War of the Revolution, these people helped to fight your battles by land and by sea. Some of your States were glad to turn out corps of colored men, and to stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with them.
”In your late war, they contributed largely towards some of your most splendid victories. On Lakes Erie and Champlain, where your fleets triumphed over a foe superior in numbers and engines of death, they were manned, in a large proportion, with men of color. And, in this very house, in the fall of 1814, a bill pa.s.sed, receiving the approbation of all the branches of your government, authorizing the Governor to accept the services of a corps of two thousand free people of color. Sir, these were times which tried men's souls. In these times it was no sporting matter to bear arms. These were times, when a man who shouldered his musket did not know but he bared his bosom to receive a death wound from the enemy ere he laid it aside; and in these times, these people were found as ready and as willing to volunteer in your service as any other. They were not compelled to go; they were not drafted. No, your pride had placed them beyond your compulsory power. But there was no necessity for its exercise; they were volunteers; yes, Sir, volunteers to defend that very country from the inroads and ravages of a ruthless and vindictive foe, which had treated them with insult, degradation and slavery.
”Volunteers are the best of soldiers. Give me the men, whatever be their complexion, that willingly volunteer, and not those who are compelled to turn out. Such men do not fight from necessity, nor from mercenary motives, but from principle.”
Hon. Mr. Martindale, who represented a District of the State of New York, in Congress in 1828, thus speaks of the negro soldiers:
”Slaves, or negroes who have been slaves, were enlisted as soldiers in the War of the Revolution; and I myself saw a battalion of them, as fine martial-looking men as I ever saw, attached to the Northern army.”
Up to this time the East had been the theatre of the war, with now and then a battle in some one of the Middle Colonies, but the British discovering that the people of the South acted indifferently in maintaining and recruiting the army, transferred their operations to that section. Maryland then stood as a middle State or Colony. Her statesmen, seeing the threatened danger of the invasion of Pennsylvania, endeavored to prepare to meet it, and taking council from her sister States at the East, accepted the negro as a soldier. In June, 1781, John Cadwater, writing from Annapolis, Md., to Gen. Was.h.i.+ngton, says:
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