The African American Soldier:

From Crispus Attucks to Colin Powell

Michael L. Lanning

• Editorial: Citadel Press
• Año: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780806536606
• Categoría: Social Sciences
• Categoría: Social Science Biographies

More than five thousand blacks joined the rebel Americans in the war as soldiers, sailors, and marines; many more supported the rebellion as laborers. Their service went largely unrecognized and unrecorded. Few letters, journals, or other narratives by blacks about the Revolution exist because whites had denied most African Americans an education. White historians of the period, and for years after the war, ignored the contributions and impact of thousands of blacks participants for several reasons. First of all, prejudices were so deeply ingrained that it did not even occur to most whites of the time that blacks had played a significant role either as individuals who fought or labored or as a segment of the population that affected decisions. Prejudices also prevented some who did witness the contributions of African Americans from honestly reporting that blacks could perform equally with whites on the battlefield if given the opportunity. Others did not mention blacks because of the difficulty of explaining why the United States kept half a million men, women, and children enslaved while fighting for independence and liberty." From Defenders of Liberty, by Lt. Col. Michael Lee Lanning (Ret.)

1

Colonial Days and the Revolutionary War

THE YEAR WAS 1770. Although it was six years before the American Revolutionary War, Boston colonists were already chafing under the presence of the garrison of British soldiers stationed by the Crown in their port city. The lingering winter weather and the arrogance of the redcoat soldiers made tempers short and the desire for change strong.

Warming himself near a fire and listening to the litany of complaints from his companions on the early evening of March 5, Crispus Attucks, too, was ready for action. As a runaway slave who had eluded capture for twenty years, Attucks knew firsthand about the unfair treatment of which the colonists spoke and the acts of rebellion about which they dreamed. At forty-seven, he was a veteran of both, a man who had escaped bondage to find his freedom on the hazardous and arduous high seas. Awaiting a break in the weather before his ship could sail, Attucks understood the risks of defiance better than most of those who were, in the comfort of the fire’s warming radiance, recounting the British injustices against the Americans.

Suddenly, the group became aware of excited voices and the ringing of the town’s alarm bell. Attucks was the first out the door to investigate the commotion. In the snow-covered streets he saw colonists clustered near the British garrison. In loud voices and with animated movements, the men seemed to be arguing among themselves, some pointing at the British, others trying to pull them away. As Attucks moved toward the center of the disturbance on King Street, some of the American colonists began to flee.

Attucks stopped the first man he met. In an agitated voice the colonist told Attucks that a British soldier had refused to pay a barber after receiving a haircut. The young man had pursued the soldier into the street, demanding his money. The soldier laughed and knocked the youth to the ground. Outraged witnesses came to the support of the barber, only to have more soldiers arrive and threaten to kill them all. Incensed at the audacity of the threat, the colonists had begun verbally attacking the soldiers as they marched back to their barracks. The jeering crowd had grown but was undecided as to what to do. As Attucks watched, the colonists began reluctantly to retreat.

Angered by the story and the attitude of the British, the short, stocky Attucks advanced toward the garrison, determinedly pushing his way through the hesitant crowd and urging them to stand against the soldiers. With a leader at their helm, the colonists turned once more and followed Attucks to the customhouse. The crowd swelled and began hurling snowballs and rocks at the sentinels, who, terrified by the crowd’s mood, called for reinforcements.

With the colonists behind him, Attucks led the confrontation, throwing snowballs and anything else he could find on the street at the concentrated redcoats. At one point, he picked up a stick, which he menacingly wielded like a club as he dared the British soldiers to fire. Spurred on by the bravery of the curly-haired African American, the colonists unleashed even more obscenities and missiles against the soldiers.

The disciplined customhouse guards endured the chaos, knowing they could shoot only on orders from their officers or from the civil magistrate. Even the arrival of their captain, Thomas Preston, who tried in vain to disperse the crowd, did not quell the flurry of thrown objects and verbal abuse. Lack of action by the British served only to inflame the Bostonians further.

With at least a dozen men behind him, Attucks confronted the soldiers by striking their muskets with his stick. When the British captain stepped forward, Attucks swung his club at the officer’s head. In warding off the blow, Preston bumped into one of his soldiers, causing him to drop his weapon.

Instantly, Attucks seized the musket. The soldier also grabbed for the gun, and the two struggled for control. In wresting the weapon from Attucks, the soldier stumbled and fell. While he was down, the colonists, now confident that the British would do nothing, turned their chants to “Why don’t you fire? Why don’t you fire?” Attucks, leaning on his stick, mockingly stared at the fallen redcoat. Humiliated, the British soldier regained his feet and fired directly into Attucks. Instantly, the other soldiers also opened fire.

When Attucks fell dead from two bullets in his chest, he became the first American to die in the course of events which would lead to independence for the United States. The colonists declared Crispus Attucks a hero, for he took action against the British when others were willing only to talk; he stood against subjugation when others were willing to submit; he sacrificed his life for freedom when others were willing to live under hellish conditions.

The irony of his heroism was that as a Black man, Crispus Attucks would not have enjoyed the benefits of American independence had he lived. Although he knew this, he was willing to give his life for the good of the country. In so doing, he joined a long line of other African Americans who would also sacrifice themselves for freedoms and benefits they as individuals could not enjoy.

African Americans have always played a significant role in the military history of the United States. Their participation in, and contributions to, pivotal events parallel those of other Americans even before the Revolutionary War. For almost five centuries, Black Americans have been an integral part of the development of the Americas, fighting and sometimes dying in pursuit of a better life. In the case of the United States, African Americans have participated in every American conflict, often forced to struggle for the right to fight for their country. Ironically, like Crispus Attucks, many Black Americans have sacrificed themselves for the American cause in war while equality remained beyond their reach in peace, withheld by prejudice and ignorance.

The contributions made by African Americans in the New World began with the first European explorations. At least one man of African heritage, Pedro Alonso Niño, sailed with Christopher Columbus on his 1492 voyage of discovery. Another Black sailor, Diego el Negro, accompanied Columbus on his last voyage to the New World in July 1502. In subsequent Spanish explorations, Africans served the military expeditions as servants, laborers, and soldiers. When Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed Central America to reach the Pacific Ocean, at least thirty Black men occupied his ranks. Africans also accompanied Hernán Cortes in his conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico in 1519 and assisted Francisco Pizarro in conquering the Incas and Peru in 1533.

Enslaved Africans arrived in great numbers in the western hemisphere as the Spanish settled the Caribbean Islands, their first foothold in colonizing the Americas. It is not surprising that Black people were an integral part of subsequent Spanish conquests.

The first Africans to arrive in North America did so as a part of a brief effort by Spain to establish a colony near the mouth of the Pee Dee River in present-day South Carolina. Details are sketchy, but records indicate that one hundred slaves accompanied five hundred Spaniards to establish a settlement in 1526. In a matter of only a few months, the effort failed, and the survivors returned to Spanish island communities in the Caribbean. Some accounts attribute the failure of the colony to an uprising by the slaves, but no factual information remains to substantiate this claim.

The most significant Black man in the early explorations of North America arrived via shipwreck on the southeast coast of what is now Texas in 1528. Among the survivors were the expedition’s leader, Cabeza de Vaca, the Spanish soldier Dorentes, and his Black slave Esteban, who quickly became “twice a slave” when local Indians captured all the castaways. Eventually, Esteban, de Vaca, Dorentes, and several others escaped overland to Mexico City, arriving there after a journey of eight years.

Esteban remained a slave, but his skills in Indian sign language, learned while a captive, led to his earning another “first” in the New World. In 1536, Esteban, acting as a scout and interpreter for expeditions into the American Southwest, became the first non-Indian to visit what would become New Mexico and Arizona. Three years later, Esteban returned to the Southwest as a guide for Spaniards seeking the fabled “seven golden Cities of Cibola.” Esteban found no gold but did reach the Zuñi village of Hawikuh in New Mexico, where the Indians, angered at the intrusion, executed him.

Unlike the Spanish, who had developed a slave system in the Caribbean, English settlers establishing colonies along the East Coast brought no Africans—slave or free—with them. Not until a little more than a decade after the first English settlement in America at Jamestown did the first Africans arrive among the English. Slaves joined the colony on August 20, 1619, when a Dutch ship anchored at the Virginia colony and offered twenty individuals, recently captured in Africa, in exchange for provisions.

Initially, the small population of slaves represented no threat to the white majority. In fact, the number of Africans in the North American colonies increased so slowly that it was not until 1638 that the first slaves appeared on the auction block in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The enslaved Black population provided what the whites perceived as reinforcements from the real threat to the colonies—the Native American Indians. During this time the colonial militias welcomed both free and slave Africans into their ranks to repel Native American attacks and to join the occasional offensive operations against Indian villages. As the slave population increased, however, the subjugated Black people, many of whom were now trained in arms and military procedures, themselves became a threat to the whites. In 1639 the General Assembly of Virginia passed the first act in American history excluding Black men from military service, declaring, “All persons except Negroes to be provided with arms and ammunition or be fined at pleasure of the Governor and Council.”

In 1656, Massachusetts followed Virginia’s lead and excluded Black men from service in the colonial militia. Connecticut did likewise after a joint uprising of the Indian and Black populations near Hartford in 1661. By the end of the seventeenth century, all of the colonies had officially excluded Black men from serving in the military. Some of them did amend the restrictions and allowed free Black people and a few slaves to serve as drummers, fifers, cooks, and laborers as well as in other unarmed positions.

In terms of self-protection, the whites’ precautions were not without foundation, for the enslaved understandably did not accept their bondage peacefully or willingly. In 1663 the first recorded slave uprising in the English colonies occurred in Gloucester County, Virginia. For the next hundred years, more than 250 slave revolts occurred throughout the colonies. The whites routinely put down the rebellions by ruthlessly torturing and killing the instigators. Except for a few African communities, whose citizens, known as Maroons, maintained their freedom in remote mountain or swamp villages, no attempts at gaining freedom were successful.

Despite their potential threat to the whites, Black men did fight in the militias during the various conflicts with the Indians, and later against the French, in the first half of the eighteenth century, when white colonists either rescinded or ignored the various laws restricting African Americans from active military service. As would be the model for centuries to come, Black men served in armed positions when white Americans felt threatened by outside enemies, fighting and dying for a culture that did not recognize them as equals.

Few of the accomplishments of Black Americans of the time found their way into recorded history, but what records do exist show that Black men served loyally and well. Black soldiers fought and died in the colonial militia in King William’s War (1689), Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713), and in numerous campaigns against the Indians of various magnitude. In some cases, slaves who distinguished themselves in battle became freemen. During fights against Indians in 1703, South Carolina offered emancipation to any slave who killed or captured one or more of the hostiles. The state, “at the charge of the public,” compensated the slaves’ owners. In most instances, however, at the conclusion of the crisis, Black soldiers found themselves once more disarmed and returned to their masters.

During the Seven Years’ War of 1756–1763 Black men joined the colonial militias in support of the British against the French and their Indian allies. Once again, most of these Black men served in support positions as laborers and wagoners; only a few acted as scouts and regular soldiers. The slaves received pay equal to that of their white fellow soldiers but had to surrender all or part of the wages to their owners. As in the past, some Black men gained their freedom for honorable service, but the majority of the slave-soldiers returned to bondage at the end of the hostilities.

The only place where any degree of real racial equality existed in pre–Revolutionary War America was at sea. Again, circumstances rather than any compassion among the white majority were responsible. Conditions aboard merchant and fishing vessels as well as on military privateers were so intolerable that many white sailors deserted. Free Black people and runaway slaves welcomed the opportunity for employment regardless of the conditions and shared mostly equal pay as part of integrated crews.

By 1775 the total population of the English colonies in America was about 3 million, 600,000 of whom were Africans or of African descent. In the southern colonies, where agricultural field crops benefited the most from indentured labor, slaves constituted almost 40 percent of the population. With so many held in bondage, the potential of a slave rebellion kept the white population so fearful that few African Americans received any military training.

Except for the threat of a slave uprising and the occasional use of Black Americans in the militia when the situation warranted, white Americans appeared to pay little attention to the overall question of slavery other than its favorable impact on the economic development of the colonies and the enrichment of the colonists. Not until they themselves began to feel oppressed by increased control and taxation by Great Britain did some Americans begin to question their own position as oppressors and the morality of owning fellow human beings.

Despite their harsh treatment and continued enslavement, many African Americans “closed ranks”—as did Crispus Attucks—with the white colonists as the Revolutionary War neared. When the smoke cleared on Boston’s King Street that March day in 1770, Attucks and four white patriots lay dead. The Boston Massacre became a rallying point for those opposing British rule and an anniversary marked by ceremony both during and after the Revolutionary War. In 1889 the city dedicated the Crispus Attucks Monument on Boston Common.

Despite the death of Attucks and the service of slaves in the militias, the efforts and stated purpose to free the colonies from Great Britain provided neither freedom nor equality for African Americans. Initial drafts of the Declaration of Independence in 1775 contained language damning slavery and extending freedom to all. However, because of objections from the southern delegations, the final version, which stated that all men are created equal and guaranteed “certain unalienable rights . . . life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to all, did not apply to enslaved or free African Americans.

Although they faced exclusion from the objectives of the American Revolution, Black Americans participated in the war from its very beginnings. Several Black militiamen were among those firing the “shot[s] heard round the world” at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. One of the first Americans to fall at Lexington Green was Prince Estabrook, a Black soldier in Capt. John Parker’s company of Minutemen.

With the Revolutionary War now officially begun, the Committee of Safety (also known as the Hancock and Warren Committee), which orchestrated the early efforts of the rebellion, met in May 1775 to determine the role of African Americans in the rebel military. The committee determined that while free Black men could serve, slaves could not, because their service would be “inconsistent with the principles that are to be supported, and reflect dishonor on this Colony.”

Black men already in uniform remained on duty, however. While their numbers, both slave and freemen, were small, their bravery and impact were enormous. For example, some reports from the Battle ofBunker Hill on June 17, 1775, credit Peter Salem, a former slave freed shortly before the battle, with killing the British assault force commander Major John Pitcairn with a musket shot.

While Salem’s accomplishments at Bunker Hill lack official substantiation, the brave service of fellow Black soldier Salem Poor is well documented. Following the battle, Poor received praise from his white commanders when they reported that he “behaved like an experienced officer as well as an excellent soldier.” He also received an official commendation for his performance in a report to the Massachusetts Bay General Court, dated December 5, 1775: “We would only beg leave to say, in the person of this said Negro centers a brave and gallant soldier.”

Despite the number of Black militiamen in the Revolution’s early battles, African Americans had not yet officially gained the right to join the fight for American independence. On June 17, 1775, while the Battle of Bunker Hill raged in Boston, the Continental Congress assumed jurisdiction of the various colonial militias and formed the Continental Army, with Gen. George Washington as commander in chief. Washington, a Virginia slave owner, who disliked the idea of Black slaves or freemen serving with whites, excluded them from his ranks. On July 9, 1775, Washington’s adjutant general issued orders to recruiters not to enlist “any deserter from the Ministerial (British) army, nor any stroller, Negro, or vagabond” in the Continental Army.

During the next three months the numbers of the Continental Army dwindled due to casualties, desertions, and completed enlistments; as a result, Washington and his staff met to reconsider the enrollment of Black men. Prejudices, however, continued to prevail over practicality. By a unanimous decision on October 8, Washington and his staff agreed to continue to exclude slaves from enlistment. By a large majority, they also concurred with the decision not to permit the enlistment of free Black men. A few weeks later, the Continental Congress backed Washington and his staff and stated that Black Americans, free or enslaved, should be “rejected altogether” from the army. On November 12, 1775, Washington issued an official order preventing the enlistment of Black men and allowing those currently in uniform to remain only until their current enlistments expired. State and local militias across the newly declared United States of America followed suit.

The whites’ reasons for denying Black Americans the right to fight for their country’s freedom ranged from personal prejudice to economic considerations. Many American whites, particularly those in the South, considered Black people subhuman, inferior, and cowardly and refused to serve with them as equals. Although Black soldiers fought bravely in all the early battles of the Revolution, white soldiers responded angrily to the taunts of the regular British soldiers, who shouted jingles about their African American comrades:

The rebel clowns, oh! what a sight
Too awkward was the figure
’Twas yonder stood a pious wight
And here and there a nigger.

White slave owners had no intention of giving up what they considered their private property for the war. They preferred to keep their “chattel” in the fields earning them a profit rather than risk their lives on the battlefield.

Not all Americans agreed with the policies of prohibiting Black men from the military. Freemen argued for the right to serve, and many slaves expressed their desire for the privilege to fight. Some officers within the army shared these sentiments. In an October 24, 1775, letter to John Adams, Gen. John Thomas wrote that he supported such enlistments because Black Americans “have proved themselves brave.”

Whereas Black men faced exclusion from the white American militias, they found themselves welcomed into the British ranks for two reasons: Firstly, the British were happy to recruit African Americans to augment their personnel shortages that resulted from worldwide commitments of the empire. Secondly, the British sensed how divisive slavery was among the white Americans and wished to exploit the weakness.

On November 7, 1775, John Murray, the earl of Dunmore and the royal governor of Colonial Virginia, issued a proclamation, “I do hereby . . . declare all indentured servants, Negroes, or others (appertaining to the rebels) free, that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining His Majesty’s troops, as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this Colony to p...