Fallen Heroes (Photograph by Susan Klopfer)
Dear Mr. Buchanan,
While doing civil rights research in the Mississippi Delta for my book, Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, I soon learned how African Americans have fought valiantly in American wars. They have been true patriots. Recently in your feeble attempt to malign all African Americans, you stated that black soldiers had never made significant contributions in battles fought and won by this country.
So, let's put this nonsense to rest, starting with the Indian and Revolutionary wars. My references are cited at the end of each section. Mr. Buchanan, you need to go back and read your history books. I'm surprised you don't know better. You are usually better informed.
Early and Revolutionary Wars
IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES greater restrictions were placed on blacks serving in the military, but in time of emergency blacks were permitted and sometimes forced to serve in military units. In 1730 blacks fought the Natchez Indians for the French. And in 1736, a Spanish force was assembled in Mobile to again fight the Natchez. Accompanying them was a separate company of blacks with those who were freed serving as officers. This represents the first occasion Blacks served as officers in a colonial military unit.
Despite this earlier history of black participation, the growing fear of armed slave revolts during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) at first influenced General George Washington to turn down initial requests by blacks to fight in the Revolutionary army. Some enslaved escaped, moving over to help the British, but the larger number of Africans, both free and enslaved, sided with the patriots.
Those 3,000 to 4,000 African Americans who fought with the British (about 5,000 fought on the Patriot side) achieved freedom by escaping to Canada, Britain, or the British colonies in the West Indies; some of the black soldiers who fled to the West Indies ended up being re-enslaved, while those who while those who went to Canada were mistreated yet went on to establish the colony of Sierra Leone in Africa (later becoming Sri Lanka).
Washington finally allowed the enlistment of free blacks into the Continental Army in January 1776 when it was to his benefit and if they had “prior experience.” He later extended enlistment to all free and enslaved blacks the following year to help fill the depleted ranks as the states constantly failed to meet their quotas.
Maryland was the only Southern state permitting slaves to enlist; in 1779 Congress offered slave masters in South Carolina and Georgia $100 for each slave they provided to the army, the legislatures of both states refused the offer and so the greatest number of African American soldiers in the American army came from the North:
African Americans in New England rallied to the patriot cause and were part of the militia forces that were organized into the new Continental Army. Approximately 5 percent of the American soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775) were black. New England blacks mostly served in integrated units and received the same pay as whites, although no African American is known to have held a rank higher than corporal. Comparisons among muster rolls and church, census, and other records have recently helped identify many black soldiers.
Additionally, various eyewitness accounts provide some indication of the level of African Americans' participation during the war. Baron von Closen, a member of Rochambeau's French army at Yorktown, wrote in July 1781 that "A quarter of them [the American army] are Negroes, merry, confident and sturdy."
After Spain declared war against Great Britain in June of 1779, Count Bernardo de Gálvez, the governor of Louisiana, seized three British Mississippi River outposts: Manchac, Baton Rouge, and Natchez. Were any southern black soldiers involved? As researchers continue to look over these records, perhaps they will discover evidence of so. Regardless, one irony of the Revolutionary War is that it changed the attitudes of some white Americans who were uncomfortable with enslaving others – while complaining about the British who were trying to “enslave” them.
Some black leaders tried to benefit from this ideological shift and soon petitioned state legislatures in an effort to end slavery. (How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes? Samuel Johnson, English writer and dictionary maker questioned.)
Many individual slave owners in both the North and South freed their slaves; an estimated 100,000 blacks or about 20 percent of the entire black population became free
“Money problems” birthed this nation. At the end of the Revolutionary War and faced with about $70 million in domestic and foreign debts, the confederated states came together to draft the United States Constitution. The “pursuit of happiness” language that Jefferson crafted for the Declaration of Independence did not carry over. The United States instead adopted a structure that denied blacks the right to citizenship and counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for Congressional representation.
The commercial value of slaves to Southern planters of sugar cane, cotton, rice, and tobacco and to Northern and European shippers, manufacturers and merchants was too great to lose. This factor, blinding many in both the North and South to the immorality of slavery, helped stir up political jealousy and sectional fears of the power white Southerners might acquire in control of the Union; the Civil War would be an end result.
Notes
Ronald L. F. Davis, “The Black Experience in Natchez, 1720-1880,” (Eastern National 1999). Davis cites John G. Clark, “New Orleans – 1718-1812: An Economic History,” (Baton Rouge, La., 1970), 3-158. Fort Rosalie, named in honor of the wife of a French minister, was one of several garrisons erected by the company to protect the plantation district in the making.
Gloria J. McCalum, “African Ancestry in Mississippi,” Genealogical Resources on the Internet Guide to African Ancestored Research updated January 8, 2003.
Ray Raphael “A People’s History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence,” Howard Zinn, series editor, (New York: Perennial 2001), 369-370.
Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 1961).
Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, eds., “Slavery and Freedom in the Era of the American Revolution,” (Charlottesville, Virginia: University Press of Virginia for the United States Capitol Historical Society, 1983)
John W. Pulis, ed. “Moving on: Black Loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World,” (New York: Garland Pub., 1999).
Next: Civil War History, How African Americans Contributed
From Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited
