Washington [145]
During the summer Washington pretty much dismissed blacks as riffraff, halting the enlistment of “any deserter from the ministerial army, nor any stroller, negro, or vagabond.”34 For a large southern slaveholder, the idea of arming blacks stirred up uncomfortable fantasies of slave revolts. But Washington had to reckon with the tolerance of his New England men, who had accepted blacks as stout-hearted comrades at Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill. A black man, Peter Salem, had fought so heroically at Bunker Hill that he had been brought to Washington’s attention. Nonetheless at an October war council, Washington and his generals voted unanimously “to reject all slaves and by a great majority to reject Negroes altogether.”35 A month later Washington made this exclusionary policy explicit: “Neither Negroes, boys unable to bear arms, nor old men unfit to endure the fatigues of the campaign are to be enlisted.”36 By lumping healthy black soldiers with boys and old men, Washington insinuated that they were inferior and could be counted on only as a last resort.
On November 7 Lord Dunmore announced that slaves or indentured servants who had fled from their rebel masters could join his Royal Ethiopian Regiment and win their freedom. Eight hundred slaves soon flocked to his banner and were clad in British uniforms with the motto “Liberty to Slaves” stitched across them.37 For the first wave of escapees, such liberty proved deceptive: many died of smallpox on ships cruising Virginia’s rivers. In early December Lund Washington informed the commander in chief of the “dreaded proclamation” and conjectured that, while white indentured servants at Mount Vernon might be tempted to escape, he didn’t worry about the slaves. Washington already loathed Lord Dunmore, having recently observed that if “one of our bullets a[i]med for him, the world would be happily rid of a monster.”38 Outraged by his slave proclamation, he warned Richard Henry Lee that if “that man is not crushed before spring, he will become the most formidable enemy America has.”39 In an odd twist of self-serving logic, Washington branded Dunmore an “arch traitor to the rights of humanity.”40
Whatever his personal trepidation as a slave owner, Washington knew he couldn’t afford to cast off able-bodied men, even if they happened to be black. The Revolution forced him to contemplate thoughts that would have seemed unthinkable a year earlier. Even as he fumed about Lord Dunmore, in late December 1775 he dashed off a letter to John Hancock stating that “it has been represented to me that the free Negroes who have served in this army are very much dissatisfied at being discarded. As it is to be apprehended that they may seek employ in the ministerial army, I have presumed to depart from the resolution respecting them and have given licence for their being enlisted.”41 Two weeks later the Congress ratified this extraordinary decision and allowed free blacks to reenlist. Plainly Washington had acted under duress. He urgently needed more men before enlistments expired at year’s end and feared that black soldiers might defect to the British. At the same time, he was forced to recognize the competence of black soldiers. Whatever his motivations, it was a water-shed moment in American history, opening the way for approximately five thousand blacks to serve in the Continental Army, making it the most integrated American fighting force before the Vietnam War. At various times, blacks would make up anywhere from 6 to 12 percent of Washington’s army.42 Already the Revolutionary War was proving a laboratory for new ideas that operated outside the confines of the slavery system. Everyone felt the new force of liberty in whose name