February 3, 2018 • 20 mins
Today's classics revisits an episode from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina about James Armistead. He was a slave in Virginia, but got his master's approval to enlist when the Revolutionary War came. Armistead worked as a spy.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. I recently ran into a young listener
of our show who said that her favorite episodes were
the ones that are connected in some way to Hamilton's.
So today we have pulled something Hamilton's adjacent out of
the archives. It is Sarah and Deblina episode on James Armistead,
an enslaved man who worked as a double agent during
(00:23):
the Revolutionary War who's handler was the market A Lafayette.
So let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff you missed
in History Class from house stuff Works dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm
(00:44):
Deblina Chuck for boarding and to Blina. We've covered a
lot of spy stories in the past year, so we
have there's no coincidence, mostly thanks to you. We love
the war spies. I do spies in general, you do.
They always make for some fun stories, they really do,
and and they're another popular listener quest of ours. But
today we're going to venture into the very murky territory
(01:06):
of Revolutionary War spies, and specifically we're going to focus
on the story of James Armistead Lafayette, who was an
enslaved Virginia man who worked for the marketa Lafayette, who
spied on Benedict Arnold, and who even gained the trust
of General Lord Cornwallis. So if that all adds up correctly,
(01:26):
he's a double agent circa eighty one, which is a
pretty impressive feat. But since Armistead's life story or the
details that are available are just a little bit, then
we'll also be talking more about more general espionage during
the American Revolution, George Washington as a spy master, for example,
(01:47):
And since Armistead was a slave, we're also going to
talk about the place of African American slaves and freeman
in the Revolution. Yes, we're gonna be covering a lot
of ground today, but before we get to that, it's
important to note that even though an African American man
occupies one of the most notable spots in the early
American Revolution Christmas Attics, of course, the first person shot
(02:09):
by the British, and the Boston massacre of seventeen seventy,
there are really a lot of misassumptions about the position
of African Americans in general in the Revolution. According to
Noel by Poier, for example, in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Many people assume that African American soldiers were segregated into
all black units if they existed at all, or worked
(02:32):
only as laborers and servants. But that wasn't the case
at all. No state militias and the Continental Army were integrated.
Despite attempts to the contrary. Manpower just simply demanded it.
African Americans also made invaluable spies, both for the rebels
and for the British. They could, for example, work as orderlies,
(02:53):
picking up private conversations and privileged information in the process,
and they could also act as local sides, which gave
them freedom of movement and the ability to pass on information.
So two important jobs there that also double his spy
pretty easily. UM. We'll talk more about the offers made
by each side toward enslaved able bodied men in general,
(03:15):
but for now, it's just enough to say that both
American and British officers would have had full reason to
believe that an enslaved man like Armistead was on their side,
so there wouldn't be an issue of is he double
crossing us? He should be passionately for one side or
the other. Um. And that's because the Americans figured this
they would assume that of us, an enslaved man like
(03:38):
this might be fighting for his country's freedom, might be
fighting for the home he knew, while the British would
assume that he was fighting for his own personal freedom.
And again we're going to get more into the details
on that later, but before we do that, some some
information on Armistead's life. Yes, he was born in New Kent, Virginia,
likely in it perhaps his latest seventeen sixty. According to
(04:03):
some sources, his master was William Armistead, and James worked
as a field hand on a tobacco plantation. In seventeen
eighty one, his master gave him permission to join the
Continental Army, and he was soon teamed up with the
Marquis de Lafayette, the frameless French hero of the Revolution
and a close friend of General George Washington. And with
Lafayette as his handler, Armstead poses an escaped slave and
(04:27):
entered the camp of turncoat Benedict Arnold, who we all
know well, where he worked as a guide and as
an orderly So that was his his start as a spy,
passing on information to Lafayette and uh It's even suggested
that he might have had other orderly's working under him,
you know, so he wasn't the only spy in the camp,
(04:48):
but he had other African American men who would pass
on information to kind of the spy manager by Master Yes,
and and they'd get that that information onto Lafayette. Eventually, though,
Armistead was posted close enough to the camp of General
Lord Cornwallis, and that was of course a big bump
and the sort of information he was receiving, And he
(05:08):
also managed to gain Cornwallis's trust and became one of
his agents, making Armistead at this point a double agent.
So he was on the one hand getting information from
the British and informing Lafayette. On the other he was
feeding the British inaccurate information that Lafayette was giving him
reporting back on British movement. So, you know, just the
(05:31):
circle of of information and misinformation going on. The biggest
perk of being a double agent, though, was that freedom
of movement that we mentioned earlier. According to Madison Gray
and Time Magazine, it was during one of these trips
that Armistead discovered that ten thousand British troops were headed
to Yorktown, and this was information that eventually got passed
(05:51):
on to General Washington, and Yorktown was, of course the
turning point of the war. It came after a joint
French American attack on British held New York failed, and
when Congress was bankrupt and enlistments were flagging after years
of war, so things looked pretty bleak at this time. Yeah,
for the for the revolutionary cause, in part because of
(06:18):
this intelligence from Armistead, Washington and Continental soldiers plus four
thousand French soldiers began heading towards Yorktown to meet Cornwallis's men,
and along the way, of course, a French fleet cut
off the British fleet's attempt to rescue Cornwallis's army, leaving
them stranded. And we're not going to go into the
(06:39):
whole history of Yorktown here, but um, the siege began
September one and ultimately ended with Cornwallis's surrender a few
weeks later, and sometime after that the end of the war. Uh.
There's a quote in the in the Gray article that
Dablina mentioned from rex Elis, who's the vice president of
Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Area, and he really emphasized the full
(07:03):
importance of Armistead's part in this victory and said quote,
if he had not given the information that he gave
at the strategic time he did, they would not have
had the intelligence to create the blockade that ended the war.
So I mean certainly speaks for for Armistead's work. Um
an interesting side note here though, especially since Armistead was
(07:27):
a double agent and so clearly helped pivotal yeah, pivotal
point in the war. General Washington was not always a
fan of double agents, even though he has a bit
of a reputation as a spy master. Yes, Washington is
pretty well known for running the Culper Spy Ring in
New York City and for employee Sir James Jay's secret
recipe for invisible ink and his sensitive correspondence. But he
(07:51):
was uncomfortable with the haphazard nature of the game of
of using double agent and just the spy game in general.
You know, different spy working for different people, untrained agents
passing on rumors and gossip as real intelligent. Yeah, he
wanted spies to be centralized under his control. He did.
He wanted everything to be nice and orderly, as you
(08:12):
would expect Washington would. Fortunately, according to Edward langle in
military history. Washington's officers were willing to disobey his orders
and set up their own networks. It was one of
these that finally turned George Washington onto the value of
using a double agent. A former captain in a New
York regiment, Elijah Hunter, who posed as a Tory, infiltrated
(08:35):
General Sir Henry Clinton's camp and was asked in turn
to spy for the British. So when Hunter's handler first
started passing on information to Washington, the General expressed his
general distrust of double agents, which we just talked about.
He said, quote, their situation obliges them to trim a
good deal in order to keep well with both sides,
(08:57):
and the less they have it in their power to
do us mischief, the better, especially if we consider that
the enemy can purchase their fidelity at a higher price
than we can. Okay, that's an astute point to to make,
something to be aware of. Fortunately, though, at least um
for Washington's general trust of double agents, Hunter didn't blow it.
(09:17):
He didn't do any mischief like Washington was concerned about,
became a valuable double agent, and uh sort of opened
Washington up for a little bit of a more decentralized
sort of spy network, something that would allow him to
welcome this information he was getting from Armistead later down
the line back to Armistead's story, though, you would expect
(09:38):
that after his work for Lafayette, after the spectacular turn
as a double agent, his vital service to the war effort,
would be recognized with at the very least his freedom,
But that was not the case. After the war, he
returned to his master, returned to to Virginia, the Virginia
(09:59):
Plan Tation where he had worked and was still a slave.
But here's another interesting side note about Washington. Washington, despite
his growing interest in integrated troops during the war, was
very much four slaves returning to their masters after the
fight was over and not slipping away during the hubbub.
(10:20):
But telling Lee, Washington accepted the fact that this might
not happen. They might not return to their masters. He
even acknowledged that some of his own slaves who had
left during the fight would probably not come back, save
for quote an inclination to return. Yeah. I read a
little bit about this in Kelly and Loos's A History
of African Americans to eighteen eighty and it's almost as though,
(10:43):
or the way they presented it, it's almost as though
George Washington, the property owner, would prefer to have his property,
his human property, restored to him. But George Washington, the rebel,
understood that his slaves might not be willing to see
themselves property anymore, especially after this dramatic war that had
happened in the name of civil liberty. So this is
(11:06):
just to give some some background that this is happening
all over the New Country at this point, whether slaves
are going to return after the chaos of the war.
And Uh, I think it's pretty remarkable that Armistead did
choose to do that. Uh. Nevertheless, though his friends didn't
forget him, so he didn't return to This is not
(11:26):
a sad ending for his story. At least he didn't
return to slavery and live this obscure life. Uh. Fortunately
to his master also supported his eventual manumission. But in
seventeen seven, Armistead was finally granted his freedom by the
state of Virginia, thanks in part to a strong letter
(11:47):
of recommendation from Lafayette, who noted that he was quote
entitled to every reward his situation could admit of Armistead
ended up living out his days in Virginia, farming, marrying,
and eventually having children. After his emancipation, he also took
(12:10):
on Lafayette's name and they met one more time, and
it was during Lafayette's eighteen twenty four final visit to
the US. Lafayette spotted him in a crowd and came
over to embrace him. Armistead Lafayette died in eighteen thirty
or eighteen thirty two, depending on what source you read. Yeah, so,
like I said, a pretty good end to to that story.
(12:33):
But I think the biggest question hanging over it, and
I just hinted it this a minute ago, is why
why did he do it? You know, why did he
fight in the first place? Why after his service did
he return to slavery willingly? And uh, I really enjoyed
listening to a podcast on the Colonial Williamsburg site. They
have a lot on on Armistead, hosted by Richard Josie,
(12:56):
who actually interprets Armstead and Williamsburg. I mean like in character, uh,
he he portrays him. And he said that those were
the two most common questions that visitors to to Williamsburg
asked him, and he said that his answer to the
first question why did Armistead fight in the first place
is country. In his answer to the second why did
(13:18):
he return is his family sense of place. Um, of course,
we can't be sure what motivated Armistead in either of those,
but we can sort of take a look at the
options that were available to able bodied slaves and free
blacks in the rebel colonies at the time of the
American Revolution. And while the options were certainly better during
(13:39):
the Revolution than they had been previously, they were still
pretty bleak. Yeah, the outside of the war, slaves would
have been as aware as anyone of the philosophy behind
the revolution, and they could have certainly hoped for that
the benefits of liberty might extend to them a little bit. Plus,
anyone slave or not can have a connection, I guess,
and an investment in home where they live, where they
(14:01):
were born. Consequently, there was a strong early support for
the war among black slaves and freemen, with men like
Peter Salem, who was a Massachusetts slave freed so that
he could fight. He saw action in Lexington and it conquered.
Or Salem Poor was another freeman who fought at Bunker
Hill and thanks to a decent, although illegal tradition of
(14:24):
some black participation in New England militias. The early Continental
Army actually counted a fair number of black soldiers among
its ranks. But if it hadn't been for the eventual
manpower shortages later in the war that Dablina mentioned earlier,
plus a pretty bold move on the part of the British,
it's likely that black participation in the army would have
(14:46):
been pretty limited because actually, when when George Washington became
Commander in chief of the Continental Army, he even banned
the future enlistment of black men free or otherwise, and
in the southern colonies with black populations out numbering white populations. Uh,
folks were always a little bit leery of anything that
could stir up possible slave rebellions and insurrections. And we've talked,
(15:07):
we've covered quite a few slave rebellions, I think on
the podcast, So most of you probably have a good
background on on those fears that that people had during
the Revolutionary War and after. True in this case, though,
it took a seventeen seventy five proclamation from the Royal
Governor of Virginia, Lord dune More, to really shake things up.
(15:28):
He promised freedom to the slaves of rebel masters if
they joined the British. That plus the simple need for
states to fill continental army recruitment quotas with basically anyone
they could get, was enough for the rules to start
being overlooked. Rhode Island, for example, even authorized slave enlistment
in seventeen seventy eight. And of course too many slaves
(15:49):
saw Dunmore's offer as an opportunity. I mean that that's
why it was such a problem for the patriot side.
If you're going to be turning away men who can
just go sign up up with the British, that's probably
a bad move. But yeah, many slaves saw Dunmore's offer
as a chance out of slavery. According to Kelly and Lewis, again,
(16:10):
up to twenty thousand African Americans served the British during
the war, which was a number way higher than I
was expecting to see. Uh. The stakes were raised, though,
so it didn't just become an issue of if you
serve a rebel master, you can possibly get your freedom
if you fight for the British. In seventeen seventy nine,
Sir Henry Clinton, who was the Commander in chief of
(16:32):
British forces in America, issued a proclamation that any blacks
captured with Patriot forces would be sold for a profit.
So now, if you are deciding to throw in your
luck with the Patriot cause and you're caught, you're just
going to be sold again. And that actually gives a
pretty good indication that Lord Dunmore's earlier offer freedom shouldn't
(16:53):
be taken as a human rights gesture. It was debated
in Great Britain as possibly shameful in so much as
it could turn slaves on their masters. Some even feared
that it would create general rebellion. After all, from their
point of view, they thought, what's to keep slaves of
loyalist masters from leaving a freedom? If freedom is a state. Yeah,
that's the most obvious point to me. If if you're
(17:16):
considering neighboring plantations, for example, in the slaves on one
plantation belonged to a rebel master and they can go
fight the British, the slaves on the next plantation are
supposed to stay there and still be slaves. That seems
like a rebellion could easily start that way. Of course,
the British didn't want to end slavery or encourage revolution
(17:38):
that would disrupt the labor structure of their American and
Caribbean colonies. And for slaves tempted by the promise of freedom,
redcoat service often meant poor rations and clothing, backbreaking work,
death from camp diseases. Yeah, so it really done. Moore's
proclamation should be seen as something is a way to
increase enlistment rather than a statement on slavery. But uh,
(18:00):
with with all of these problems to consider here, threats
of enslavement, sale, backbreaking labor from all sides, it's not
too surprising that many slaves didn't join either side, you know.
They they simply tried to stay out of the fight,
stay at home, or take the opportunity to just leave too.
(18:22):
And there's all this chaos happening. Another remarkable statistic from
from the book I mentioned earlier, Up to one third
of Georgia's slave population just left during the revolutionary war.
Some slaves joined guerrilla units, some formed interracial bands that
capitalized on the chaos that was going on, and some
(18:43):
just lived in the wilderness. So people finding a finding
a third way here essentially um, but I found it.
I was glad to learn more about armistead story. And
he's one who listeners have suggested in the past as
a great example of a double agent. It because his
biography is so difficult to to flesh out many details
(19:06):
on and we found that before with some of these spies,
by by very nature of spying, there's often not a
great record left behind. Um. But I think it's a
good thing because we got to learn more about what
the options were for African American slaved in tree during
(19:26):
the American Revolution. Thank you so much for joining us
for this Saturday classic. Since this is out of the archive,
if you heard an email address or a Facebook U
r L or something similar during the course of the show,
that may be obsolete now. So here's our current contact information.
(19:47):
We are at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com,
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thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
MHM
Happy Saturday, everybody. I recently ran into a young listener
of our show who said that her favorite episodes were
the ones that are connected in some way to Hamilton's.
So today we have pulled something Hamilton's adjacent out of
the archives. It is Sarah and Deblina episode on James Armistead,
an enslaved man who worked as a double agent during
(00:23):
the Revolutionary War who's handler was the market A Lafayette.
So let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff you missed
in History Class from house stuff Works dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm
(00:44):
Deblina Chuck for boarding and to Blina. We've covered a
lot of spy stories in the past year, so we
have there's no coincidence, mostly thanks to you. We love
the war spies. I do spies in general, you do.
They always make for some fun stories, they really do,
and and they're another popular listener quest of ours. But
today we're going to venture into the very murky territory
(01:06):
of Revolutionary War spies, and specifically we're going to focus
on the story of James Armistead Lafayette, who was an
enslaved Virginia man who worked for the marketa Lafayette, who
spied on Benedict Arnold, and who even gained the trust
of General Lord Cornwallis. So if that all adds up correctly,
(01:26):
he's a double agent circa eighty one, which is a
pretty impressive feat. But since Armistead's life story or the
details that are available are just a little bit, then
we'll also be talking more about more general espionage during
the American Revolution, George Washington as a spy master, for example,
(01:47):
And since Armistead was a slave, we're also going to
talk about the place of African American slaves and freeman
in the Revolution. Yes, we're gonna be covering a lot
of ground today, but before we get to that, it's
important to note that even though an African American man
occupies one of the most notable spots in the early
American Revolution Christmas Attics, of course, the first person shot
(02:09):
by the British, and the Boston massacre of seventeen seventy,
there are really a lot of misassumptions about the position
of African Americans in general in the Revolution. According to
Noel by Poier, for example, in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Many people assume that African American soldiers were segregated into
all black units if they existed at all, or worked
(02:32):
only as laborers and servants. But that wasn't the case
at all. No state militias and the Continental Army were integrated.
Despite attempts to the contrary. Manpower just simply demanded it.
African Americans also made invaluable spies, both for the rebels
and for the British. They could, for example, work as orderlies,
(02:53):
picking up private conversations and privileged information in the process,
and they could also act as local sides, which gave
them freedom of movement and the ability to pass on information.
So two important jobs there that also double his spy
pretty easily. UM. We'll talk more about the offers made
by each side toward enslaved able bodied men in general,
(03:15):
but for now, it's just enough to say that both
American and British officers would have had full reason to
believe that an enslaved man like Armistead was on their side,
so there wouldn't be an issue of is he double
crossing us? He should be passionately for one side or
the other. Um. And that's because the Americans figured this
they would assume that of us, an enslaved man like
(03:38):
this might be fighting for his country's freedom, might be
fighting for the home he knew, while the British would
assume that he was fighting for his own personal freedom.
And again we're going to get more into the details
on that later, but before we do that, some some
information on Armistead's life. Yes, he was born in New Kent, Virginia,
likely in it perhaps his latest seventeen sixty. According to
(04:03):
some sources, his master was William Armistead, and James worked
as a field hand on a tobacco plantation. In seventeen
eighty one, his master gave him permission to join the
Continental Army, and he was soon teamed up with the
Marquis de Lafayette, the frameless French hero of the Revolution
and a close friend of General George Washington. And with
Lafayette as his handler, Armstead poses an escaped slave and
(04:27):
entered the camp of turncoat Benedict Arnold, who we all
know well, where he worked as a guide and as
an orderly So that was his his start as a spy,
passing on information to Lafayette and uh It's even suggested
that he might have had other orderly's working under him,
you know, so he wasn't the only spy in the camp,
(04:48):
but he had other African American men who would pass
on information to kind of the spy manager by Master Yes,
and and they'd get that that information onto Lafayette. Eventually, though,
Armistead was posted close enough to the camp of General
Lord Cornwallis, and that was of course a big bump
and the sort of information he was receiving, And he
(05:08):
also managed to gain Cornwallis's trust and became one of
his agents, making Armistead at this point a double agent.
So he was on the one hand getting information from
the British and informing Lafayette. On the other he was
feeding the British inaccurate information that Lafayette was giving him
reporting back on British movement. So, you know, just the
(05:31):
circle of of information and misinformation going on. The biggest
perk of being a double agent, though, was that freedom
of movement that we mentioned earlier. According to Madison Gray
and Time Magazine, it was during one of these trips
that Armistead discovered that ten thousand British troops were headed
to Yorktown, and this was information that eventually got passed
(05:51):
on to General Washington, and Yorktown was, of course the
turning point of the war. It came after a joint
French American attack on British held New York failed, and
when Congress was bankrupt and enlistments were flagging after years
of war, so things looked pretty bleak at this time. Yeah,
for the for the revolutionary cause, in part because of
(06:18):
this intelligence from Armistead, Washington and Continental soldiers plus four
thousand French soldiers began heading towards Yorktown to meet Cornwallis's men,
and along the way, of course, a French fleet cut
off the British fleet's attempt to rescue Cornwallis's army, leaving
them stranded. And we're not going to go into the
(06:39):
whole history of Yorktown here, but um, the siege began
September one and ultimately ended with Cornwallis's surrender a few
weeks later, and sometime after that the end of the war. Uh.
There's a quote in the in the Gray article that
Dablina mentioned from rex Elis, who's the vice president of
Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Area, and he really emphasized the full
(07:03):
importance of Armistead's part in this victory and said quote,
if he had not given the information that he gave
at the strategic time he did, they would not have
had the intelligence to create the blockade that ended the war.
So I mean certainly speaks for for Armistead's work. Um
an interesting side note here though, especially since Armistead was
(07:27):
a double agent and so clearly helped pivotal yeah, pivotal
point in the war. General Washington was not always a
fan of double agents, even though he has a bit
of a reputation as a spy master. Yes, Washington is
pretty well known for running the Culper Spy Ring in
New York City and for employee Sir James Jay's secret
recipe for invisible ink and his sensitive correspondence. But he
(07:51):
was uncomfortable with the haphazard nature of the game of
of using double agent and just the spy game in general.
You know, different spy working for different people, untrained agents
passing on rumors and gossip as real intelligent. Yeah, he
wanted spies to be centralized under his control. He did.
He wanted everything to be nice and orderly, as you
(08:12):
would expect Washington would. Fortunately, according to Edward langle in
military history. Washington's officers were willing to disobey his orders
and set up their own networks. It was one of
these that finally turned George Washington onto the value of
using a double agent. A former captain in a New
York regiment, Elijah Hunter, who posed as a Tory, infiltrated
(08:35):
General Sir Henry Clinton's camp and was asked in turn
to spy for the British. So when Hunter's handler first
started passing on information to Washington, the General expressed his
general distrust of double agents, which we just talked about.
He said, quote, their situation obliges them to trim a
good deal in order to keep well with both sides,
(08:57):
and the less they have it in their power to
do us mischief, the better, especially if we consider that
the enemy can purchase their fidelity at a higher price
than we can. Okay, that's an astute point to to make,
something to be aware of. Fortunately, though, at least um
for Washington's general trust of double agents, Hunter didn't blow it.
(09:17):
He didn't do any mischief like Washington was concerned about,
became a valuable double agent, and uh sort of opened
Washington up for a little bit of a more decentralized
sort of spy network, something that would allow him to
welcome this information he was getting from Armistead later down
the line back to Armistead's story, though, you would expect
(09:38):
that after his work for Lafayette, after the spectacular turn
as a double agent, his vital service to the war effort,
would be recognized with at the very least his freedom,
But that was not the case. After the war, he
returned to his master, returned to to Virginia, the Virginia
(09:59):
Plan Tation where he had worked and was still a slave.
But here's another interesting side note about Washington. Washington, despite
his growing interest in integrated troops during the war, was
very much four slaves returning to their masters after the
fight was over and not slipping away during the hubbub.
(10:20):
But telling Lee, Washington accepted the fact that this might
not happen. They might not return to their masters. He
even acknowledged that some of his own slaves who had
left during the fight would probably not come back, save
for quote an inclination to return. Yeah. I read a
little bit about this in Kelly and Loos's A History
of African Americans to eighteen eighty and it's almost as though,
(10:43):
or the way they presented it, it's almost as though
George Washington, the property owner, would prefer to have his property,
his human property, restored to him. But George Washington, the rebel,
understood that his slaves might not be willing to see
themselves property anymore, especially after this dramatic war that had
happened in the name of civil liberty. So this is
(11:06):
just to give some some background that this is happening
all over the New Country at this point, whether slaves
are going to return after the chaos of the war.
And Uh, I think it's pretty remarkable that Armistead did
choose to do that. Uh. Nevertheless, though his friends didn't
forget him, so he didn't return to This is not
(11:26):
a sad ending for his story. At least he didn't
return to slavery and live this obscure life. Uh. Fortunately
to his master also supported his eventual manumission. But in
seventeen seven, Armistead was finally granted his freedom by the
state of Virginia, thanks in part to a strong letter
(11:47):
of recommendation from Lafayette, who noted that he was quote
entitled to every reward his situation could admit of Armistead
ended up living out his days in Virginia, farming, marrying,
and eventually having children. After his emancipation, he also took
(12:10):
on Lafayette's name and they met one more time, and
it was during Lafayette's eighteen twenty four final visit to
the US. Lafayette spotted him in a crowd and came
over to embrace him. Armistead Lafayette died in eighteen thirty
or eighteen thirty two, depending on what source you read. Yeah, so,
like I said, a pretty good end to to that story.
(12:33):
But I think the biggest question hanging over it, and
I just hinted it this a minute ago, is why
why did he do it? You know, why did he
fight in the first place? Why after his service did
he return to slavery willingly? And uh, I really enjoyed
listening to a podcast on the Colonial Williamsburg site. They
have a lot on on Armistead, hosted by Richard Josie,
(12:56):
who actually interprets Armstead and Williamsburg. I mean like in character, uh,
he he portrays him. And he said that those were
the two most common questions that visitors to to Williamsburg
asked him, and he said that his answer to the
first question why did Armistead fight in the first place
is country. In his answer to the second why did
(13:18):
he return is his family sense of place. Um, of course,
we can't be sure what motivated Armistead in either of those,
but we can sort of take a look at the
options that were available to able bodied slaves and free
blacks in the rebel colonies at the time of the
American Revolution. And while the options were certainly better during
(13:39):
the Revolution than they had been previously, they were still
pretty bleak. Yeah, the outside of the war, slaves would
have been as aware as anyone of the philosophy behind
the revolution, and they could have certainly hoped for that
the benefits of liberty might extend to them a little bit. Plus,
anyone slave or not can have a connection, I guess,
and an investment in home where they live, where they
(14:01):
were born. Consequently, there was a strong early support for
the war among black slaves and freemen, with men like
Peter Salem, who was a Massachusetts slave freed so that
he could fight. He saw action in Lexington and it conquered.
Or Salem Poor was another freeman who fought at Bunker
Hill and thanks to a decent, although illegal tradition of
(14:24):
some black participation in New England militias. The early Continental
Army actually counted a fair number of black soldiers among
its ranks. But if it hadn't been for the eventual
manpower shortages later in the war that Dablina mentioned earlier,
plus a pretty bold move on the part of the British,
it's likely that black participation in the army would have
(14:46):
been pretty limited because actually, when when George Washington became
Commander in chief of the Continental Army, he even banned
the future enlistment of black men free or otherwise, and
in the southern colonies with black populations out numbering white populations. Uh,
folks were always a little bit leery of anything that
could stir up possible slave rebellions and insurrections. And we've talked,
(15:07):
we've covered quite a few slave rebellions, I think on
the podcast, So most of you probably have a good
background on on those fears that that people had during
the Revolutionary War and after. True in this case, though,
it took a seventeen seventy five proclamation from the Royal
Governor of Virginia, Lord dune More, to really shake things up.
(15:28):
He promised freedom to the slaves of rebel masters if
they joined the British. That plus the simple need for
states to fill continental army recruitment quotas with basically anyone
they could get, was enough for the rules to start
being overlooked. Rhode Island, for example, even authorized slave enlistment
in seventeen seventy eight. And of course too many slaves
(15:49):
saw Dunmore's offer as an opportunity. I mean that that's
why it was such a problem for the patriot side.
If you're going to be turning away men who can
just go sign up up with the British, that's probably
a bad move. But yeah, many slaves saw Dunmore's offer
as a chance out of slavery. According to Kelly and Lewis, again,
(16:10):
up to twenty thousand African Americans served the British during
the war, which was a number way higher than I
was expecting to see. Uh. The stakes were raised, though,
so it didn't just become an issue of if you
serve a rebel master, you can possibly get your freedom
if you fight for the British. In seventeen seventy nine,
Sir Henry Clinton, who was the Commander in chief of
(16:32):
British forces in America, issued a proclamation that any blacks
captured with Patriot forces would be sold for a profit.
So now, if you are deciding to throw in your
luck with the Patriot cause and you're caught, you're just
going to be sold again. And that actually gives a
pretty good indication that Lord Dunmore's earlier offer freedom shouldn't
(16:53):
be taken as a human rights gesture. It was debated
in Great Britain as possibly shameful in so much as
it could turn slaves on their masters. Some even feared
that it would create general rebellion. After all, from their
point of view, they thought, what's to keep slaves of
loyalist masters from leaving a freedom? If freedom is a state. Yeah,
that's the most obvious point to me. If if you're
(17:16):
considering neighboring plantations, for example, in the slaves on one
plantation belonged to a rebel master and they can go
fight the British, the slaves on the next plantation are
supposed to stay there and still be slaves. That seems
like a rebellion could easily start that way. Of course,
the British didn't want to end slavery or encourage revolution
(17:38):
that would disrupt the labor structure of their American and
Caribbean colonies. And for slaves tempted by the promise of freedom,
redcoat service often meant poor rations and clothing, backbreaking work,
death from camp diseases. Yeah, so it really done. Moore's
proclamation should be seen as something is a way to
increase enlistment rather than a statement on slavery. But uh,
(18:00):
with with all of these problems to consider here, threats
of enslavement, sale, backbreaking labor from all sides, it's not
too surprising that many slaves didn't join either side, you know.
They they simply tried to stay out of the fight,
stay at home, or take the opportunity to just leave too.
(18:22):
And there's all this chaos happening. Another remarkable statistic from
from the book I mentioned earlier, Up to one third
of Georgia's slave population just left during the revolutionary war.
Some slaves joined guerrilla units, some formed interracial bands that
capitalized on the chaos that was going on, and some
(18:43):
just lived in the wilderness. So people finding a finding
a third way here essentially um, but I found it.
I was glad to learn more about armistead story. And
he's one who listeners have suggested in the past as
a great example of a double agent. It because his
biography is so difficult to to flesh out many details
(19:06):
on and we found that before with some of these spies,
by by very nature of spying, there's often not a
great record left behind. Um. But I think it's a
good thing because we got to learn more about what
the options were for African American slaved in tree during
(19:26):
the American Revolution. Thank you so much for joining us
for this Saturday classic. Since this is out of the archive,
if you heard an email address or a Facebook U
r L or something similar during the course of the show,
that may be obsolete now. So here's our current contact information.
(19:47):
We are at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com,
and then we're at Missed in the History all over
social media that is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest,
and Instagram. Thanks again for listen, ng for moralness and
thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
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