The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom

By Glenn David Brasher

In the Peninsula Campaign of spring 1862, Union general George B. McClellan failed in his plan to capture the Confederate capital and bring a quick end to the conflict. But the campaign saw something new in the war--the participation of African Americans in ways that were critical to the Union offensive. Ultimately, that participation influenced Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation at the end of that year. Glenn David Brasher's unique narrative history delves into African American involvement in this pivotal military event, demonstrating that blacks contributed essential manpower and provided intelligence that shaped the campaign's military tactics and strategy and that their activities helped to convince many Northerners that emancipation was a military necessity.

Drawing on the voices of Northern soldiers, civilians, politicians, and abolitionists as well as Southern soldiers, slaveholders, and the enslaved, Brasher focuses on the slaves themselves, whose actions showed that they understood from the outset that the war was about their freedom. As Brasher convincingly shows, the Peninsula Campaign was more important in affecting the decision for emancipation than the Battle of Antietam.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Release date: Apr 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9780807882528

Glenn David Brasher

Glenn David Brasher is instructor of history at the University of Alabama.

Book preview

The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation

Civil War America

Gary W. Gallagher, Peter S. Carmichael,

Caroline E. Janney, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean, editors

The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation

African Americans & the Fight for Freedom

Glenn David Brasher

The University of North Carolina Press

Chapel Hill

This book was published with the assistance of the Fred W. Morrison

Fund for Southern Studies of the University of North Carolina Press.

© 2012 The University of North Carolina Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Set in Arnhem and The Serif types

by Rebecca Evans

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data to come

Brasher, Glenn David.

The Peninsula Campaign and the necessity of emancipation: African Americans and the fight for freedom/Glenn David Brasher.—1st ed.

p. cm.—(Civil War America)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8078-3544-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4696-1750-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Peninsular Campaign, 1862. 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Participation, African American. 3. Slaves—Emancipation—United States. I. Title.

E473.6.B73 2012 973.7'415—dc23 2011036321

16 15 14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1

For them …

Contents

Introduction: An Evening on Malvern Hill

1 Preludes: War, Slavery, and the Virginia Peninsula

2 Contraband of War: April–July 1861

3 War Is a Swift Educator: July–December 1861

4 The Best Informed Residents in Virginia: December 1861–April 1862

5 The Monuments to Negro Labor: April–May 1862

6 Those by Whom These Relations Are Broken: May 1862

7 An Invaluable Ally: Late May–July 1862

8 A Higher Destiny: July 1862

Conclusion: Monarchs of All They Survey

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index

Illustrations and Maps

Illustrations

The Seat of War in Southeastern Virginia / 8

Slaves at Foller’s House, Cumberland Landing, Virginia / 23

Bridge and main entrance to Fort Monroe / 36

The (Fort) Monroe Doctrine / 38

Stampede of Slaves / 59

Ruins of Hampton / 61

Morning Mustering of the Contrabands / 80

Allen’s farmhouse, near Yorktown, Virginia / 106

Confederate fortifications at Yorktown / 108

Southern Chivalry / 114

Union troops examine portions of the abandoned Confederate works at Yorktown / 122

Intelligent Contraband / 127

The Reliable Contraband / 131

A View in Williamsburg, Va. / 135

Union soldiers and slaves interact at Foller’s farm / 147

Group of contrabands at Allen’s farmhouse / 160

Richard Slaughter / 165

Supply vessels at anchor, White House, Virginia, 1862 / 166

Allan Pinkerton and staff converse with an African American man / 168

A Consistent Negrophobist / 213

Harrison’s Landing during the Union occupation / 216

Westover House / 218

Maps

The Army of the Potomac’s advance on Richmond / 124

The Seven Days Battles / 184

Introduction

An Evening on Malvern Hill

On July 1, 2001, 139 years after the Battle of Malvern Hill, I stood before a small crowd that had gathered to tour the site. It was my seventh year as a seasonal park ranger for the Richmond National Battlefield Park, and I had spent untold hours walking the ground and researching the fighting. I was capable of providing the visitors with what most came for: descriptions of troop movements, anecdotal stories of bravery, and heartrending tales of sacrifice. However, I planned to offer more than the standard battlefield tour.

Weeks earlier, the park’s supervisory ranger, Michael J. Andrus, had asked me to lead the anniversary tour. He had suggested that I discuss the battle as more than just the climactic engagement of the 1862 Peninsula Campaign. He knew that I had researched the connections between Virginia slavery and the Richmond battles, and he wanted the tour to include more content than just guns and glory. Andrus hoped visitors would leave with a better understanding of why Northerners and Southerners slaughtered each other on that field in such horrific numbers and how the battles around Richmond had affected the institution of slavery.

I knew what Andrus was looking for, and why. In the early 1990s, the National Park Service had received much criticism for doing little more at its battlefields than explaining who shot whom and where. Understanding that many adult Americans receive much of their continuing education at the national parks, a 1998 meeting of park superintendents resolved to expand historic interpretation at Civil War battlefield sites. The agency also asked teams of professional historians to evaluate these sites and make recommendations. Richmond National Battlefield Park was one of many locations the scholars criticized for having embarrassingly outdated exhibits that failed to offer visitors a broader understanding of the Civil War. The Park Service accepted these assessments, and soon many battlefield sites began the process of overhauling their interpretations.¹ Richmond National Battlefield Park eventually opened a state-of-the-art visitors’ center at the site of the historic Tredegar Iron Works, and it impressively adhered to the Park Service’s new goals.

Nevertheless, for many observers the changes were not occurring rapidly enough, and they correctly pointed out that the Park Service’s battlefield interpretations still did not reflect the centrality of slavery to the American Civil War. An African American congressman who had visited many battlefield parks, for example, was distressed to find that most did not "address the interests of all the American people. In reaction, in 1999 the House approved an amendment to an appropriations bill that required all federally funded battlefield sites to educate its visitors about slavery’s role in causing the Civil War and its impact if any, at the individual battle sites."²

This directive created considerable controversy, but even as a white Alabamian I could appreciate Congress’s action. I always found it disturbing that although the Civil War was a crucial event in African American history, very few blacks ever visited the battlefields. When encountering the infrequent black visitor, I often asked about this apparent indifference to Civil War history among the African American community. The answer was usually the same—despite movies such as Glory, much of Civil War popular culture tended to glorify the Confederacy and largely ignored any African American role in the war.³ Sadly, this trend has continued even into the era of our first black president. In early 2010, the governor of Virginia proclaimed a revival of the state’s Confederate History Month and in doing so failed to acknowledge the South’s fight to preserve slavery. Responding to widespread criticism for the omission, the governor stated that his proclamation had only mentioned those issues that were most significant for Virginians.⁴

Thus, the National Park Service has hardly been alone in lagging behind in its interpretations of the Civil War, and the Peninsula Campaign in particular has suffered from relative neglect. Although hundreds of works have been written about the Battle of Gettysburg, the events from April to July 1862 have received far less attention. For years, four books dominated the subject, only two of which took the Peninsula Campaign as the central topic. Furthermore, three of the books presented the event only from the Confederate perspective. Not until 1992, with the publication of Stephen Sears’s To the Gates of Richmond, was there a truly comprehensive study of the campaign.⁵ Since then, several fine studies have appeared, including collections of essays by both Gary W. Gallagher and William J. Miller, a campaign study by Kevin Dougherty and J. Michael Moore, and a detailed examination of the Seven Days Battles by Brian K. Burton. Nevertheless, with the exception of several excellent essays in Gallagher’s book (most notably by James Marten and William A. Blair), these works focused almost exclusively on military aspects of the campaign.⁶

Drawing on knowledge gleaned from such sources, however, I was able to craft a tour that met my supervisor’s expectations. After greeting the visitors, I explained that in the spring of 1862 the Army of the Potomac, under the command of General George B. McClellan, had slowly advanced up the Virginia Peninsula toward Richmond. Arriving just outside the city, it outnumbered the southern army defending the Confederate capital. Yet during a week of almost continuous fighting initiated by General Robert E. Lee, the Confederates used bold and aggressive attacks to drive the northern army away from the city and south toward the James River. Before it could reach the safety of Union gunboats, however, the Army of the Potomac had to fend off one last Rebel attack. Pointing to the high ground on Malvern Hill, I explained to my audience how it provided the Federals with an exceptionally strong defensive position.

Having described the military situation that existed on July 1, 1862, I expanded the focus of the tour by explaining the political context. As the Peninsula Campaign was reaching its climax, Northerners were sharply divided over the issue of emancipation, and General McClellan insisted that the war could be won without resorting to such a radical measure. With his army just outside of the capital of the Confederacy, it appeared that he might be correct. Therefore, I informed the group, the outcome of the Seven Days Battles would likely determine the fate of the institution of slavery. As I ventured into this discussion, I noticed some members of my audience becoming visibly disturbed. Not surprisingly, I saw no black faces in the crowd.

As we set off down the trail, the group was no doubt relieved to discover that I was adept at describing the fighting. I explained the confused orders, the failure of Confederate artillery, and the role of the terrain. As we followed in the footsteps of southern soldiers, I used their words to convey the hell of charging into Union artillery and the futility of the assault. Upon reaching the Union side of the field, I put a human face on the staggering casualty rates and explained why, despite its victory, the Union army continued its retreat to a new base on the James River. The Federals would not be as close to the southern capital again until 1864.

My audience seemed riveted, but as the sun began to set, shadows crept over the battlefield, becoming my cue to conclude the presentation. Had McClellan captured the Confederate capital in the summer of 1862, I told my audience, this might have shortened the war and saved thousands of lives. Returning to the slavery issue, I maintained that an end to the war at that time would likely have left the institution largely intact. I explained that because McClellan’s failure to capture Richmond exasperated Northerners, many began to see the necessity for radical measures. Just weeks after the battle, Lincoln presented the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. Therefore, I concluded, the Peninsula Campaign that culminated at Malvern Hill had played a pivotal role in ending slavery. This analysis was a standard interpretation; historians have long recognized that the Peninsula Campaign’s results influenced Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.⁷

The audience members applauded my efforts, although I suspected their accolades were mostly in appreciation of the details I had supplied about the fighting. As most headed for their cars, the usual number of visitors asked more questions and engaged in conversation. I received no questions or comments about the slavery element of my tour. Nevertheless, Andrus praised me for effectively incorporating slavery into the presentation. The Richmond National Battlefield Park’s superintendent had also attended, and she too was pleased. The tour had gone well.

I was not satisfied, however. True, I had brought slavery into the discussion of the battlefield, but not the slaves themselves. I knew that African Americans had helped the Union army locate the best roads to the James River, and yet when discussing the logistics of the battle, I had failed to mention this fact. To some degree, the two armies were on Malvern Hill because of information supplied by slaves. Certainly, this made them important actors in the story, not just passive individuals who stood to benefit the most from the campaign.

I came to see that the problem with my tour and the military studies on which it was based was that they left the role of Virginia slaves and free blacks in the Peninsula Campaign largely unexplored. This book attempts to fill that void, uncovering the ways in which Virginia blacks were involved in one of the largest campaigns of the American Civil War. In doing so, the work blends military, social, and political history.⁸

Examining the efforts of African Americans in the Civil War has a long history in its own right. In the years following the war, writers such as William Wells Brown, George Washington Williams, and Joseph T. Wilson chronicled black participation in the conflict. They passionately argued that members of their race did not simply have freedom handed to them but that they were instrumental in winning it for themselves.⁹ Professional historians such as Herbert Aptheker, Bell Irvin Wiley, Benjamin Quarles, Ervin Jordan, and James McPherson have added detail and nuance to that central argument. In addition, Dudley Taylor Cornish, Joseph T. Glatthaar, and Noah Trudeau have produced excellent works that detail the Union decision to organize black troops, the relationships between black soldiers and their white officers, and the combat experiences of black regiments. Perhaps most notably, Ira Berlin and the editors of the Freedmen and Southern Society project have effectively demonstrated how the actions of Africans Americans influenced changes in Union war policy and significantly affected the purposes and outcomes of the war.¹⁰

What scholars have not done is examine the ways in which the activities of African Americans shaped the course of particular campaigns. Because the Peninsula Campaign played a crucial role in bringing about emancipation, it is important to uncover the degree to which blacks were a part of the campaign’s history. In this study, I argue that African Americans influenced the strategy and tactics of both the Union and Confederate armies before and during the campaign and helped shape its results. More important, I maintain that the ways in which African Americans participated in the campaign helped prepare Northerners to accept emancipation as a military necessity.

As any good battlefield tour guide knows, the words of the participants themselves make for a more compelling story. I have constructed a narrative based on military records and correspondence, soldier and civilian diaries, letters, and memoirs, political speeches, the WPA (Works Progress Administration) slave interviews, material from Lincoln’s cabinet members, abolitionist publications, and various other barometers of northern public opinion. This work quotes heavily from Civil War era newspapers. These sources frequently provided inaccurate information about events, but they are enormously important for telling us what people at the time believed was happening and their immediate reactions to news from the front.

A note of caution. This study quotes from primary sources in which people claim to have witnessed or heard rumors of African Americans fighting in Confederate armies. Such evidence can easily be misread, especially because some writers have used it to argue that many blacks voluntarily supported the Confederacy, and thus the South did not fight to defend the institution of slavery.¹¹ One historian has fittingly labeled this misguided thesis the black confederate legend. However, because such modern-day Lost Cause arguments are flawed and based on questionable logic and because the evidence is usually anecdotal and hearsay in nature, many professional historians have too quickly dismissed any claims that blacks fought with the Confederates. As a result, we often do not quite know what to make of such testimonials.¹²

The accounts presented here are varied; they come from newspaper correspondents, interviews with slaves conducted by northern intelligence officers, Union soldier diaries and letters, and, to a much smaller degree, Confederate recollections (some recorded just days after the events). Taken individually, one could question the reliability of each source. Collectively, however, the sheer number tells us that in fact, to at least some small degree, this was happening early in the war. When contemporaries maintained that Southerners were using blacks in combat roles, they were not manufacturing it out of the whole cloth.

However, this work emphatically rejects claims of widespread slave support for the Confederacy. Instead, I maintain that the few slaves who may have fought alongside their masters did so because their owners had cajoled or forced them, impressed their labor, hinted at possible rewards, and deceived them about the intentions of Union troops. In order to understand the choices made by African Americans at the start of the Civil War, a brief overview of the historic relationship between war and slavery is necessary. The first chapter demonstrates that it should not be surprising to find slaves willingly or unwillingly fighting alongside those who held them in bondage. In fact, this was common throughout the history of the world in various times and locales, including previous wars fought on the Virginia Peninsula.

More important, one primary goal of this work is to demonstrate how in pushing for emancipation, some abolitionists and radical Republicans widely publicized these stories of blacks fighting alongside their masters. In propaganda-like fashion they greatly exaggerated these incidents to further their agenda, and thus they were the first to give these reports more credence and attention than they may have deserved. It is profoundly ironic that modern Confederate apologists now use these emancipationist exaggerations to support their own interpretations of southern motives.

Instead of ignoring or explaining away these accounts, this book takes them out of the hands of those who attempt to use them to glorify the Confederacy, puts them back into the context of the emancipation debate in which they first appeared, and in doing so reveals their true importance. While these sources do not prove black support for the South, they do illuminate one large reason why Northerners came to embrace emancipation as a war aim.

As much as possible, I have attempted to highlight the activities of African Americans. The actions and choices of slaves and free blacks are the backbone of the work, demonstrating that their involvement in the campaign mattered a great deal. One of the problems with a bottom-up approach, however, is that historians often overemphasize the importance of their subjects and devalue the influence of political and military leaders who wielded significant power. In an attempt to challenge traditional interpretations and methods, some historians portray such leaders and other elites as merely carried along by social and cultural forces put in motion through the agency of the lower ranks of society. Historians such as Vincent Harding and Barbara J. Fields have advanced the thesis that by fleeing to Union lines, slaves forced emancipation upon Union officers, Congress, and ultimately the president. In short, this self-emancipation thesis argues that the slaves freed themselves.¹³

Although this work emphasizes the role of African Americans, I do not attempt to argue that the activities of slaves and free blacks were the primary force that determined the outcome of the Peninsula Campaign and brought about the liberation of slaves. As this study reveals, generals and other officers made strategic and tactical decisions that helped shape the military course of the war; and the Union army, abolitionists, politicians, and other leaders were crucial to emancipation. Had the Union army uniformly turned away runaway slaves at the start of the conflict, had McClellan captured Richmond in 1862, had abolitionists and radicals not passionately and convincingly argued that it was a military necessity to free the slaves, and had Lincoln not come to agree, the course of both the war and emancipation would have been quite different. Nevertheless, I maintain that the actions of slaves made the military necessity argument more persuasive. This work demonstrates that no one individual, group, or historical force freed the slaves and reveals that a convergence of many factors, contingencies, and individual efforts produced emancipation.

This work concludes that the issue of slaves fleeing to Union lines was less important in the debate over emancipation than was the military contribution of African Americans to both the North and the South. This argument adds another dimension to our understanding of the Peninsula Campaign and its role in bringing freedom to slaves, concluding that the event was more important for bringing about emancipation than was the Battle of Antietam. By demonstrating the ways that blacks affected the outcome of the campaign and how Union leaders used those activities to push for the military necessity of emancipation, I hope to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the role that blacks played in winning their freedom. In short, the story that follows is the one I wish I had been better prepared to tell that evening on Malvern Hill.

The Seat of War in Southeastern Virginia. On April 9, 1862, the Philadelphia Enquirer provided its readers with this map of the Virginia Peninsula and Richmond and surrounding areas.

1

Preludes

War, Slavery, and the Virginia Peninsula

In May 1862, a debate raged in the U.S. Congress as the Army of the Potomac prepared to attack the capital of the Confederacy. For months, radical Republicans had insisted that because slaves were a Confederate asset it was a military necessity to liberate them. Slaves labored for the southern army, and several congressmen also claimed that Rebel troops were using some blacks in combat. Ohio’s abolitionist senator Benjamin Wade, for example, was outraged to see black regiments put forward to shoot down my sons who are in the war … [and to] see these black chattels thrust forth in front of their ‘chivalrous’ owners to shoot down, murder, and destroy our men. Such allegations were not new—many Northerners had widely published and discussed these controversial and provocative claims since the early days of the war. At the same time, however, several congressmen pointed out that slaves on the Virginia Peninsula were demonstrating their desire to aid the Union army by providing military intelligence and labor. Referring to the American Revolution to illustrate his point, New York representative Charles B. Sedgwick summarized the military rationale for emancipation by maintaining that when fighting an enemy that possessed slaves, no civilized nation ever failed to weaken its opponent and strengthen itself by proclaim[ing] the freedom of the slaves.¹

As Sedgwick pointed out, the Peninsula Campaign is only one example of the connection between war and slavery. During the Civil War, Northerners were shocked to hear reports of slaves fighting alongside their masters. They should not have been surprised to find slaves laboring and fighting on both sides of the conflict, however. Throughout history, warfare has frequently served as a means of emancipation, and although most often slaves have gained freedom by aiding their masters’ enemies, they frequently have done so by demonstrating loyalty to their owners.

We had used them to good advantage

For as long as slavery has existed, warfare has been one of the primary liberators of slaves. For example, during the Persian and Peloponnesian wars of the ancient world, slaves gained their freedom either by fighting for their masters or by joining the invaders. During the Punic Wars, even the Romans offered freedom to their slaves if they would fight for the Republic. In the fifteenth century, the Portuguese began the transatlantic African slave trade, and they ironically led the way in offering freedom to their African slaves as a reward for military service. During the seventeenth century, slaves won their freedom fighting for both sides as the Dutch and the Portuguese sought control over Brazil. In the Caribbean, all the European powers offered freedom to slaves who would fight. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, for example, the British army recruited and employed large numbers of blacks in the region. As a result, thousands received their freedom by fighting for the side that had previously held them in bondage.²

In contrast, slaves in the pre-Revolutionary North American colonies seldom served in the military. In 1619, a Dutch ship brought the first Africans known to have arrived in the British North American colonies to the Virginia Peninsula. Planters there attempted to solve the young colony’s labor shortage by importing both slaves and indentured servants. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, the supply of indentured servants dramatically declined and death rates stabilized, making slaves a better investment than servants. As the number of slaves rapidly expanded, Virginia and the other southern colonies increasingly enacted laws that placed restrictions on the black population and drew significant color lines between the races. Because of economic self-interest, sensitivity to property rights, and the obvious fear of arming slaves, most colonial legislatures forbade the regular military enlistment of Africans.³

Wartime necessity, however, led to occasional black enlistments. For example, during the War of Spanish Succession (Queen Anne’s War), with the South Carolina frontier threatened by isolated Indian raids, the colonial legislature authorized stout negro men to be enlisted in the militia. As an incentive, lawmakers decreed that any slave who killed or captured a member of the enemy’s forces or was wounded while fighting for the colony would be freed. South Carolina repeated this offer a few times over the next few decades during times of military crisis, freeing those few slaves who fought alongside their masters. However, the Stono Rebellion in 1739 put an abrupt end to the idea of arming slaves. For the next two decades, few colonies allowed blacks to serve in the militia.⁴

Nevertheless, at the outbreak of the Seven Years War, white colonists called upon blacks yet again. For the most part, this service was limited to the northern colonies, but there were instances in which southern militia units also resorted to the practice of using blacks. In addition, British general Edward Braddock carried slaves from the Virginia Peninsula with him during his campaign into Pennsylvania. The black men fought side by side with the white soldiers and suffered casualties. Later in the war, George Washington used black laborers to construct defenses on the Virginia frontier.⁵

At the start of the American Revolution, a small group of slaves from the Virginia Peninsula appeared at the governor’s house in Williamsburg and offered to help suppress the impending rebellion of their masters. Lord Dunmore sent them away, but the slaves had confirmed his belief that if a rebellion occurred he could count all slaves on the side of the Government. The royal governor later declared all indented servants, Negroes, or others, free, that are able and willing to bear arms.⁶

As a result, some blacks made their way down the Peninsula to the sheltering arms of Dunmore’s forces. Talk of a Negro stampede led to increased patrols and other measures to prevent a mass exodus of slaves. Masters told their slaves that the British were no friends of the black man and would only sell them to the West Indies, where they would endure much harsher conditions. Nevertheless, despite the increased vigilance of whites, within a week of the proclamation approximately 300 blacks had evaded the patrols and made it behind British lines. Dunmore quickly put them to work in small-scale raiding, and they saw action at the Battle of Great Bridge, where they performed admirably. In time, the regiment grew to perhaps as many as 800 black soldiers. Aside from their limited role in combat, Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment engaged in foraging for supplies badly needed by the troops stationed on ships in Chesapeake Bay.⁷

Dunmore’s military use of slaves infuriated white Americans, but as in other wars, the colonists eventually proved willing to raise black troops themselves. Many colonial legislatures initially opposed the use of slaves, but once the crisis worsened, and especially after the British offered freedom to slaves who would join them, the northern colonies began to see the value in enlisting both free blacks and slaves in their militia units. The southern colonies, however, rarely allowed blacks to serve in the militia. Nevertheless, as early as December 1775, manpower shortages led Washington to accept the enlistment of black troops into the Continental army, especially because he feared that if African Americans were not allowed to serve, they [might] Seek employ in the [British] Army. At any given time during the war, between 6 and 12 percent of Washington’s forces were black. Many of these were slaves who eventually earned their freedom by serving with Patriot troops.⁸

Even Virginia found uses for blacks in the war against the British. Like most of the southern states, Virginia opposed using slaves in their militia units but did allow the enlistment of free blacks. Many of them enlisted as substitutes for whites who chose to buy their way out of military service. In addition, white owners often passed their slaves off as free men, placed them on the militia rolls as their substitutes, and thus avoided the draft. Other slaves ran away from their owners and pretended to be free men in order to enlist. African Americans served in the various Virginia units of the Continental army, fighting side by side with white soldiers in each of Washington’s major engagements. Black men also acted as spies, gathering intelligence behind British lines by posing as runaways. In addition, Virginia authorized the military to purchase and hire slaves to help construct forts and other defenses.⁹

Nevertheless, the British were far more successful at exploiting Virginia’s black labor. Lord Dunmore’s promise of freedom eventually became official British policy, and thus when Lord Cornwallis arrived on the Virginia Peninsula in 1781, his troops brought hundreds of blacks they had gathered in the southern states. So many runaways accompanied Cornwallis that one Hessian officer recalled, perhaps with some exaggeration, that every soldier had his Negro who carried his provisions and bundles. On his march up from North Carolina, Cornwallis had used African Americans to forage, and now he put these black laborers to work on the fortification of the lower Peninsula around Portsmouth, Gloucester, and Yorktown.¹⁰

Eventually, the Patriots hemmed Cornwallis into his lines around Yorktown, and the fateful siege by American forces began. Inside the British lines were 4,000 to 5,000 blacks who had taken refuge with the redcoats and constructed the fortifications standing between them and their former masters. Meanwhile, the Continental army and navy also benefited from the services of hundreds of blacks. No less than white Americans, blacks who fought in the American Revolution were committed to bettering their condition. For some, that meant casting their lot with the side that had openly offered freedom—the British—while others sided with those who had enslaved them—the Patriots. Whichever side gave them the best hope of obtaining the inalienable rights that Jefferson spoke of was likely to find a willing recruit.¹¹

As conditions inside besieged Yorktown grew bleaker and provisions scarcer, Cornwallis decided that he could no longer keep the blacks within his lines. Sadly, the men and women who had rushed to his banner, who had foraged for him, acted as servants for his troops, and helped construct the lines that protected him, were now forced out and back into the hands of their former masters. One Hessian officer watched in shame and later recalled how we had used them to good advantage and set them free, and now, with fear and trembling, they had to face the reward of their cruel masters.¹²

Washington ordered the slaves returned to their owners and opened up the lines so that masters could reclaim their property. He also decreed that any unclaimed blacks should be put to work immediately and that advertisements be placed to help locate their owners. After Cornwallis’s surrender and the evacuation of British troops from Yorktown, Americans discovered the ravages that smallpox had inflicted upon many of the blacks who had been with the redcoats. The town and its surroundings contained the bodies of the barely living and the dead.¹³

During the American Revolution, African Americans had willingly gambled by using the war to gain their freedom. Aside from the slaves that were with Cornwallis, the British carried most of these runaways to freedom when they withdrew, but the sight of slaves being returned to the mercy of their vindictive owners at Yorktown, as well as the hundreds of smallpox-ridden bodies stacked for burial, graphically demonstrates that the gamble had not paid off for many of the slaves who had sided with their masters’ enemy.

Ironically, however, the American victory resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of free blacks in Virginia. Many of the thousands of slaves who had escaped during the war managed to avoid recapture and now passed themselves off as free men. Other slaves were given their freedom as a reward for supporting the Patriot cause. The Virginia legislature, disturbed by reports that owners who had used their slaves during the war as conscript substitutes were now re-enslaving them, declared that such acts were contrary to the principles of justice and passed legislation that freed all such men. In addition, for those masters who were troubled by the philosophical incompatibility of fighting for freedom while denying it to others, many southern states made it easier for them to free their slaves. Repealing a fifty-nine-year-old law, Virginia made it possible for owners to liberate their slaves by will or deed. Most slaves who were freed had demonstrated loyalty to their masters during the Revolutionary War.¹⁴

The Peninsula’s slaves were able to again use war as a means of liberation during the War of 1812. For a second time, the area became the target of British raiding parties designed to stir up the slave population. The memory of the redcoats acting as liberators during the Revolution perhaps lingered in the slave community, and the British again extended the offer of freedom to anyone who would rally to their flag.¹⁵

In the spring of 1813, British forces began a series of hit-and-run raids along the Virginia coastline designed to damage the American economy and cause general chaos that would disrupt the collaboration of state militia units with the American army. The British offered runaways the chance to enlist in a special regiment or be transported to British possessions in the West Indies. From the beginning, the redcoats underestimated how many blacks would accept such an offer. Throughout the summer of 1813, escapees crowded the decks of British ships. Transports carried most of these slaves to the West Indies, but many demonstrated a desire to fight. One British captain claimed that some slaves came aboard declaring, Me free man, me go cut massa’s throat, give me a musket.¹⁶

In the spring and summer of 1814, the British presence in the region suddenly increased, and a new commander, Sir Alexander Cochrane, took charge of blockading the coast. The commander established a camp on Tangier Island in the Chesapeake to receive runaway slaves. With black labor used to fortify the position with entrenchments, the camp became a base of operations for the British. Cochrane trained and equipped a number of these