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African Americans In The Revolutionary War

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African Americans In The Revolutionary War

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Throughout American history - even from the colonial period, when many blacks were brought overseas as slaves - people of African descent have played a crucial role in the fighting for the country's independence. Although the exact numbers are unclear, many African Americans were involved on both sides of the Revolutionary War.

African Americans on the Front Lines

The first African slaves arrived in the American colonies in 1619, and were almost immediately put into military service to fight against the Native Americans defending their land. Both free blacks and slaves enlisted in local militias, serving alongside their white neighbors, until 1775, when General George Washington took command of the Continental Army.

Washington, himself a slave owner from Virginia, saw no need to continue the practice of enlisting black Americans. Rather than keeping them in the ranks, he released, through General Horatio Gates, an order in July 1775 saying, "You are not to enlist any deserter from the Ministerial [British] army, nor any stroller, negro, or vagabond, or person suspected of being an enemy to the liberty of America." Like many of his compatriots, including Thomas Jefferson, Washington did not see the fight for American independence as being relevant to the freedom of black slaves.

In October of that same year, Washington convened a council to re-evaluate the order against blacks in the military. The council opted to continue the ban on African American service, voting unanimously to "reject all Slaves, and by a great Majority to reject Negroes altogether."

Lord Dunmore's Proclamation

The British, however, had no such aversion to enlisting people of color. John Murray, the 4th Earl of Dunmore and the last British governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation in November 1775 essentially emancipating any rebel-owned slave who was willing to take up arms on behalf of the Crown. His formal offer of freedom to both slaves and indentured servants was in response to an impending attack on the capital city of Williamsburg.

Hundreds of slaves enlisted in the British Army in response, and Dunmore christened the new batch of soldiers his " Ethiopan Regiment." Although the move was controversial, particularly among Loyalist landowners fearing armed rebellion by their slaves, it was the first mass emancipation of American slaves, predating Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation by nearly a century.

By the end of 1775, Washington changed his mind and decided to allow the enlistment of free men of color, although he stood firm on not permitting slaves into the army.

Meanwhile, the naval service had no qualms at all about allowing African Americans to enlist. The duty was long and hazardous, and there was a shortage of volunteers of any skin color as crewmen. Blacks served in both the Navy and the newly formed Marine Corps.

Although enlistment records are not clear, primarily because they do not contain information about skin color, scholars estimate that at any given time, approximately ten percent of rebel troops were men of color.

Crispus Attucks

Historians generally agree that Crispus Attucks was the first casualty of the American Revolution. Attucks is believed to have been the son of an African slave and a Nattuck woman named Nancy Attucks. It is likely that he was the focus of an advertisement placed in the Boston Gazette in 1750, which read, "Ran away from his Master William Brown from Framingham, on the 30th of Sept. last, a Molatto Fellow, about 27 Years of age, named Crispas, 6 Feet two Inches high, short curl'd Hair, his Knees nearer together than common: had on a light colour'd Bearskin Coat." William Brown offered ten pounds for the return of his slave.

Attucks escaped to Nantucket, where he took a position on a whaling ship. In March 1770, he and a number of other sailors were in Boston, and an altercation broke out between a group of colonists and a British sentry. Townspeople spilled into the streets, as did the British 29th Regiment. Attucks and a number of other men approached with clubs in their hands, and at some point, the British soldiers fired upon the crowd.

Attucks was the first of five Americans to be killed; with two shots to his chest, he died almost immediately. The event soon became known as the Boston Massacre, and with his death, Attucks became a martyr to the revolutionary cause.

Peter Salem

Peter Salem distinguished himself for his bravery at the Battle of Bunker Hill, in which he was credited with the shooting of British officer Major John Pitcairn. Salem was presented to George Washington after the battle, and commended for his service. A former slave, he had been freed by his owner after the battle at Lexington Green so that he could enlist with the 6th Massachusetts to fight the British.

Although not much is known about Peter Salem prior to his enlistment, American painter John Trumbull captured his deeds at Bunker Hill for posterity, in the famous work The Death of General Warren at the Battle at Bunker's Hill. The painting depicts the death of General Joseph Warren, as well as Pitcairn, in battle. On the very far right of the work a black soldier holds a musket, and some believe this to be an image of Peter Salem, although he could also be a slave named Asaba Grosvenor.

Barzillai Lew

Born to a free black couple in Massachusetts, Barzillai (pronounced BAR-zeel-ya) Lew was a musician who played the fife, drum, and fiddle. He enlisted in Captain Thomas Farrington's Company during the French and Indian War, and is believed to have been present at the British capture of Montreal. After his enlistment, Lew worked as a cooper, and purchased the freedom of Dinah Bowman for four hundred pounds. Dinah became his wife.

In May 1775, two months before Washington's ban on black enlistment, Lew joined the 27th Massachusetts as both a soldier and part of the fife and drum corps. He fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and was present at Fort Ticonderoga in 1777 when British General John Burgoyne surrendered to General Gates.

Phyllis Wheatley

It wasn't just men of color who contributed to the Revolutionary War. A number of women distinguished themselves as well. Phyllis Wheatley was born in Africa, stolen from her home in Gambia, and brought to the colonies as a slave during her childhood. Purchased by Boston businessman John Wheatley, she was educated and eventually recognized for her skill as a poet. A number of abolitionists saw Phyllis Wheatley as a perfect example for their cause, and often used her work to illustrate their testimony that blacks could be intellectual and artistic.

A devout Christian, Wheatley often used Biblical symbolism in her work, and in particular in her social commentary on the evils of slavery. Her poem On Being Brought from Africa to America reminded readers that Africans should be considered as part of the Christian faith, and thus treated equally and by Biblical principals.

When George Washington heard about her poem His Excellency, George Washington, he invited her to read it for him in person in his camp at Cambridge, near the Charles River. Wheatley was manumitted by her owners in 1774.

Mammy Kate

Although her true name has been lost to history, a woman nicknamed Mammy Kate was enslaved by the family of Colonel Steven Heard, who would later go on to become the governor of Georgia. In 1779, following the Battle of Kettle Creek, Heard was captured by the British and sentenced to hang, but Kate followed him to prison, claiming she was there to take care of his laundry - not an uncommon thing at the time.

Kate, who by all accounts was a good-sized and sturdy woman, arrived with a large basket. She told the sentry she was there to collect Heard's soiled clothing, and managed to smuggle her small-statured owner out of prison, tucked safely away in the basket. Following their escape, Heard manumitted Kate, but she continued to live and work on his plantation with her husband and children. Of note, when she died, Kate left her nine children to Heard's descendants.

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How African Americans Contributed to the Revolutionary War Effort

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Throughout American history - even from the colonial period, when many blacks were brought overseas as slaves - people of African descent have played a crucial role in the fighting for the country's independence. Although the exact numbers are unclear, many African Americans were involved on both sides of the Revolutionary War.

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The biggest misconception is that black Americans were invisible during the American Revolution, and that they did not participate in direct action towards American independence. The reasons for these misconceptions largely stem from nineteenth century efforts to whitewash history as slavery became a far more divisive issue. Efforts continued into the twentieth century as the Lost Cause narrative relegated African American contributions to our history as secondary footnotes when necessary for discussion. It wouldn't be until the 1960s where a new school of researchers, historians and scholars peeled back the layers of neglect, and rediscovered the impact these early Americans indeed had on significant events during the American Revolution. Since then, hundreds of excellent works have been produced that show and explain just how vital these Americans were and remain to our understanding of how we became a nation through revolution.

To be fair, it would not be accurate to suggest black Americans were commanding troops on the battlefield, nor should we sensationalize their actual contributions and place during the Revolutionary War. Participation was largely contingent on several main factors, chief among them the necessity for aiding the existing army in the field. Both the Continental and British armies would employ blacks into the ranks for this reason. Fighting for emancipation or for liberty, particularly in the case of the American Cause, was not the driver for enlisting them into service. But it also would be inaccurate to state that many Continental officers didn't advocate for their freedoms in the name of liberty. The best we can do is separate the motives of both sides in using black support where it could best aide each army, sometimes at the expense of these individuals, and sometimes to their eventual goal of achieving freedom for themselves.

Looking at the American side, black Americans were in thick of it from the very first minutes of the revolution. Whether we want to point to Crispus Attucks being the first man shot down at the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, or the actions of minutemen assembling from the hills around Lexington and Concord, the evidence is plain and clear that black citizens rallied to defend their mixed communities from the British army. Individuals like Peter Salem, Lemuel Hayes, Barzillai Lew, and Salem Poor, among other noted participants, were eyewitness to events because they were fighting in them. The Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, is of specific importance because Salem Poor was officially recognized by his superiors for mortally wounding British Lieutenant-Colonel James Abercrombie, the highest-ranking officer to die in the battle.

The first calls for suppressing visible black enlistment came with the influx of officers and soldiers from colonies outside of New England. While many of the Massachusetts men were farmers, many more were sailors and port workers accustomed to interracial employment and cooperation. This was not the case with arriving soldiers from Virginia and elsewhere, as those black workers in the South were more likely to be enslaved than those in Boston. Gen. George Washington, himself a slave owner and understanding of these sentiments, also understood the need for a continental force that identified beyond regional differences. This is not to suggest he immediately welcomed black soldiers in the army, but for us to understand that even Washington, as wary as he was with the look of armed black men, was desperate for capable armed men. African Americans who had been fighting in Massachusetts were grandfathered into the army after new rules went into effect on July 10, 1775, which barred both free and enslaved black Americans from enlistment.

This would not last long. As stated, Washington, along with the sentiments of fellow Southern officers and soldiers, was not induced to arm enslaved black Americans as it presented a clear conundrum for the institution of chattel slavery. But Washington was also desperate for men, and as the events of 1776-77 played out, he soon relented and gradually became supportive of arming free citizens, regardless of their skin color. Further prodding by a handful of animated junior officers pushed Washington in the last remaining years of the war. Chief among these officers was John Laurens, son of Continental Congress president Henry Laurens; Alexander Hamilton, a skillful aide-to-camp of Washington's inner circle, and the Marques de Lafayette, the young Frenchman whose zeal for liberty and faith in the commander in chief brought him under the wing of Washington like no other. Along with a handful of others, these officers became vocally supportive of allowing black Americans to fight in the army. And when it came to arming slaves, John Laurens was unequaled in his quest to raise regiments within South Carolina and Georgia in 1780-81. These efforts proved futile against the ruling plantation gentry, but they clearly signaled a contradiction that the American Revolution presented: who was eligible for this liberty and freedom we speak to fight for? Their effect surely spread as even American general Nathanael Greene, himself a slave owner, was advocating the arming of slaves to battle proxy loyalist raiders in South Carolina.

At the beginning of the war, free black citizens could and did join the ranks of the Continental army. This was when the existence of the army was still coming together; there was no official order and decorum established yet of who could join. We also must understand that black soldiers were not segregated from white soldiers. The only instance of segregation came with the raising of the First Rhode Island Regiment under Colonel Christopher Greene. Famed for their bright white dress, they were one of several regiments to participate in the defense of Rhode Island in August 1778. This segregation effort was not done to shun black participation, but rather to prove that blacks could fight as well as whites. Their regiment aside, the vast majority of the remaining black Americans who served in the Continental army did so fully integrated within other regiments and units. But most black soldiers were not armed recruits; they were cooks, laborers, craftsman, drummers, flag-bearers, couriers and medical assistants. We can document the instances where individual black soldiers fought in battle under arms, such as the storming of Redoubt 10 at Yorktown in October 1781, but it would not be accurate to claim that every regiment had black soldiers marching with muskets shoulder-to-shoulder with white soldiers. In some cases, regiments did have more black soldiers than others, making them a visible presence for eyewitnesses to account for. This is where we've gotten the assumption that one-fifth of the Continental army at Yorktown was black, the observation made by a visiting European officer. Records show that only about 5,000 black soldiers fought for American independence with the army over the eight years of war. But we also must remember that the Continental Army was never larger than 15,000 strong at any given time, and that the army became divided into four separate entities by 1780: northern, main, southern, and western. Having a detachment of three hundred men with less than fifty of whom were black is not insignificant, nor should we assume it was that way for purely racial reasons.

A large portion of black Americans enlisted in the army, but a sizable amount, particularly those who were enslaved, were signed up by their masters to serve in their place. It was not uncommon for wealthy people to pay an individual to be their substitute if drafted into service, as was the case later in the Civil War. Despite the ban of enlisting slaves into the army, those serving in place of their masters were taken. When policies loosened, and individual states began recruiting whoever they could get to satisfy muster rolls for the army, more enslaved people filled the ranks of the army. In some instances, it was difficult to find white Americans willing to enlist; it was also far more common that black Americans did not own property to tend to, making them more suited for the military. We also know that many who escaped their plantations also passed as free black Americans. There was some suspicion of this going on, and some states demanded that black enlistees showed proof of their legal status upon registering. But the Continental Congress, Washington, and others generally approved of the enlistments. The same approval can be said of those black Americans who joined the Continental Navy. Whereas the sight of armed black soldiers held a menacing position with many white Americans, no such thought was given to black sailors aboard merchant vessels. Between centuries of employment on the high seas, and the noted presence of black workers in shipyards throughout the continent, it was simply a far more accepted position for them to be in. And the navy, more desperate for men than even the Continental army, literally could not say no.

Turning our attention to how the British coerced black Americans into service, one must begin with Lord Dunmore's proclamation in 1775 that stipulated all enslaved persons in Virginia who escaped and joined up with the British/Loyalist forces would thereby be legally freed. As much as some of us might want to presume this was done as a motion of pure abolitionism, it was, in fact, a way of creating chaos among the Virginian and southern plantation ecosystem. As Virginia's royal governor, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore was deliberately trying to intimidate rebels from organizing; this would hopefully keep them busy. Perhaps nothing stirred fears more among ruling white perpetrators of slavery than the thought of their black slaves rising up and overthrowing their masters with lethal force. A handful of insurrections had already ingrained themselves into colonial memory, so these fears were not entirely unjustified. Nevertheless, Lord Dunmore's proclamation stoked these embedded nightmares among the ruling elite, and within months of its public debut, hundreds of enslaved black men were joining the British side in support of fighting for their freedom. The immediately effects, though, were far more mixed than hoped. The first regiment of black troops fell victim to smallpox while others who expected to be armed were in fact given laborer positions aiding the British army. Dunmore's proclamation would later inspire Sir Henry Clinton, the commanding general of British forces in America, to issue his own decree known as the Philipsburg Proclamation. Unlike the Virginian's move, by 1779, the war was not going well for the British, and Clinton sought to reroute the campaign into the South. Knowing that the enslaved population far outnumbered the free population of white civilians, Clinton sought to destabilize the southern states by offering freedom to any enslaved person who escaped their rebel masters and came to the British side. Rather than being an abolitionist-at-heart, Clinton's plan hoped to inspire the collapse of rebel support in the South. While this did not happen, it did create the atmosphere for fierce partisan warfare among neighbors and inspired upwards of 100,000 enslaved black Americans to flee their plantations. Throughout the revolution, most black Americans, free and enslaved, believed the British held a better argument for liberty than the Americans did, which explains why so many risked all to flee to them. In some cases, the British army seized slaves for themselves. By war's end, the British had the logistical nightmare of trying to transport not just their defeated army, but also loyalist citizens who wished to leave the United States, and now freed slaves looking for a new life out of bondage in America.

In many ways, the British army used eager black participants as secondary supporters to the main forces. This is not to suggest there weren't armed black men fighting within the British ranks. It's only to suggest that such examples were few and far between, mostly left to loyalist raiding parties that were informal and not part of the regular army. Examples of black regiments within the British army show up during the early years of the war in the northern states, and during the Southern Campaign in 1780-81. As stated, the primary task of military-age black men was not to fight in the army, but to serve as support staff for it. Laborers dug ditches and assembled redoubts for the army, most notably at Yorktown. Others were given a gruesome fate: dying of smallpox, many were intentionally left near rebel farms and routes of the American forces in Virginia. Others, like their counterparts on the American side, spied for the British where possible.

In this brief overview of African American participation during the Revolutionary War, we should be aware of a few things. There were black men who served in the armies as soldiers and black men who served for the armies as support. There were also countless black women and children who aided and supported both armies as well. The role of camp follower is for another discussion, however. Both free and enslaved men fought for American independence and for the British attempt to squash the rebellion. Most black Americans supported the British for reasons we know, but many served with the Continental Army because they believed in what the revolution presumably stood for. Some decided to serve for person reasons, detached from skin color while others served precisely for the color of their skin. The complexities are part of the reason why these stories have remained on the margins of our general knowledge of the time period. The lack of simplicity leaves many to fumble the truth. To see contradiction befall many of these explanations is to first see with clarity how the principles that drove the American Revolution were what would undo slavery's legitimacy within the United States. Among even those men fighting for liberty, it became difficult to explain how some people were destined for freedom and others were destined for bondage. For African Americans, the choice has always been freedom, and the many who served during the American Revolution is further proof of how much they were willing to sacrifice to obtain it.

Further Reading

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Fighting For Freedom: African Americans Choose Sides During the American Revolution

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The biggest misconception is that black Americans were invisible during the American Revolution, and that they did not participate in direct action towards...

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Give Me Liberty: African Americans in the Revolutionary War

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William Lee
A valet who endured seven years of war alongside George Washington

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Paths to Freedom: African Americans and the American Revolution | BRIdge from the Past

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Peter Salem's Revolutionary Story | Black American Heroes

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Women, Native Americans, and African Americans During the Revolutionary War

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Women, Native Americans, and African Americans During the Revolutionary War

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U.S. History | Women, Native Americans, and African Americans during the American Revolution

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Women played critical roles in the American Revolution and subsequent War for Independence. Historian Cokie Roberts considers these women our Founding Mothers.

Women like Abigail Adams, the wife of Massachusetts Congressional Delegate John Adams, influenced politics as did Mercy Otis Warren. It was Abigail Adams who famously and voluminously corresponded with her husband while he was in Philadelphia, reminding him that in the new form of government that was being established he should "remember the ladies" or they too, would foment a revolution of their own. Warren, just as politically astute as Adams, was a prolific writer, not only recording her thoughts about the confluence of events swirling around Boston but also dabbling in playwriting. She was a fierce devotee to the patriot cause, writing in December 1774, four months before the war broke out at Lexington and Concord, "America stands armed with resolution and virtue, but she still recoils at the idea of drawing the sword against the nation from whence she derived her origin." In 1805 she published History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution.

Women often followed their husbands in the Continental Army. These women, known as camp followers, often tended to the domestic side of army organization, washing, cooking, mending clothes, and providing medical help when necessary. Sometimes they were flung into the vortex of battle. Such was the case of Mary Ludwig Hays, better known as Molly Pitcher, who earned fame at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778. Hays first brought soldiers water from a local well to quench their thirst on an extremely hot and humid day and then replaced her wounded husband at his artillery piece, firing at the oncoming British. In a similar vein, Margaret Corbin was severely wounded during the British assault on Fort Washington in November 1776 and left for dead alongside her husband, also an artilleryman, until she was attended by a physician. She lived, though her wounds left her permanently disabled. History recalls her as the first American female to receive a soldier's lifetime pension after the war.

Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved African American living in Boston, took up the pen and wrote poetry, becoming one of the first published female authors in America and the first African American woman to be published. Her 1773 collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was popular on both sides of the Atlantic. Her poems focused on patriotism and human virtues. She even wrote a poem about George Washington, "To His Excellency, George Washington" in 1775, which she personally read to him at his Cambridge headquarters in 1776 while he was with the Continental Army in Massachusetts besieging the British. Her visit was the result of an invitation from Washington. Wheatley obtained her freedom upon the death of her master in 1778.

New York teenager Sybil Ludington, was the female equivalent of Paul Revere, though she rode twice as far as Revere and in a driving rainstorm in April, 1777. Her ride took her through Putnam and Dutchess Counties, New York where she roused local militia to fight a British force that had attacked nearby Danbury, Connecticut. The Daughters of the American Revolution erected a heroic equestrian statue to Ludington in Carmel, New York along the forty-mile route she traveled.

The story of one of the most famous revolutionary women, Betsy Ross, is likely just that - a story. Ross is often credited with sewing the first American flag, thirteen red and white stripes with thirteen stars in a field of blue in the corner. Subsequent research, however, shows that the story only surfaced around the Centennial, 1876, and was promoted by Ross's grandson William Canby. Given that Congress passed the Flag Act in June of 1777, nearly a year after Ross is purported to have made the flag, the story is likely apocryphal.

As wives of the common soldier often followed the Continental Army so, too, did the wives of general officers. General Henry Knox, the Continental Army's Artillery Commander married the vivacious and popular Bostonian Lucy Flucker, the daughter of Bostonian Loyalists. Once she and Henry were married, all ties between her and her family were cut. Henry and Lucy were devoted to one another and she would join him whenever she could while he was on campaign. She endured the bitter encampment at Valley Forge and became fast friends with the wife of General Nathanael Greene, the equally popular Kitty. George Washington's wife, Martha Custis, spent every winter with her husband wherever the army was camped. In fact, once George Washington left his beloved Mount Vernon estate in 1775 to attend the 2nd Continental Congress in Philadelphia, he did not return to his home until 1781, as the combined American and French Army maneuvered south from the city of New York to Yorktown, Virginia, where the war was eventually won. The wives of generals were as equally helpful in matters of caring and providing compassion to sick and wounded soldiers, as were the wives of the common soldiers.

Ordinary women also endured the horrors of the battlefield when those fights came to their doorstep. Sally Kellogg of Vermont and her family escaped the gods of War in 1776 when the War for Independence found its way into the northern reaches of upstate New York and Benedict Arnold's makeshift fleet and the British Navy clashed on Lake Champlain during the Battle of Valcour Island. As the Kellogg family made good its escape by water, Sally's family "fell in between Arnold's fleet and the British fleet," she later recalled. As the family rowed to safety at Fort Ticonderoga, the exchange of gunfire between ships could be seen and heard Sally recalled, "but happy for us the balls went over us. We heard them whis." Nevertheless, the war continued to follow the Kellogg family. A year later, after having relocated to Bennington, Vermont the Kelloggss were once more forced to be witnesses to carnage and once again upon recollection Sally claimed the results were, "a sight to behold. There was not a house [in Bennington's vicinity] but was stowed full of wounded.

Not unlike women eighty years later who disguised themselves as men to serve in the armies of the Civil War, women of the Revolutionary Era also itched to get into the fight, do their part for the cause, and be engaged in a historical moment. One of the best examples of a woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in the Continental Army was Deborah Sampson from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Amazingly, she also has a paper trail concerning her combat service in the army, where she fought under the alias of Robert Shurtliff, the name of her deceased brother, in the light infantry company of the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment. She mustered into service in the spring of 1782 and saw action in Westchester County, New York just north of the City of New York where she was wounded in her thigh and forehead. Not wanting her identity to be revealed during medical care she permitted physicians to treat her head wound and then slipped out of the field hospital unnoticed, where she extracted one of the bullets from her thigh with a penknife and sewing needle. The other bullet was lodged too deep and her leg never fully healed. Her identity was finally revealed during the summer of 1783 when she contracted a fever while on duty in Philadelphia. The physician who treated her kept her secret and cared for her. After the Treaty of Paris, she was given an honorable discharge from the army by Henry Knox. Like other veterans of the Continental Army, she was continually petitioning the state and federal government for her service pension. She later married and had three children settling down in Sharon, Massachusetts. To help make ends meet she often gave public lectures about her wartime service. By the time she died in 1827, she was collecting minimal pensions for her service from Massachusetts and the federal government. In her memory a statue stands today outside the public library, in Sharon, honoring her Revolutionary War service and sacrifices.

Many women of all stripes and from all backgrounds recognized the value of the American cause and stepped up to serve the cause of the new nation as best they could.

Further Reading:

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Women played critical roles in the American Revolution and subsequent War for Independence. Historian Cokie Roberts considers these women our Founding...

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10 Facts: Women in the Revolutionary War

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10 Facts: Women in the Revolutionary War

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Often known as camp followers, it was common for women and children to follow the army. Each woman had their own motivations for following the armies: most were the wives, daughters, and/or mothers of male soldiers and wanted to stay close to their loved ones. Others did so in order to provide for themselves, looking for food and protection because they were no longer able to support themselves after their men left for war. There were even provisions for providing these families army rations as they slogged along on the various campaigns.

Her identity was finally revealed during the summer of 1783 when she contracted a fever while on duty in Philadelphia. After the Treaty of Paris, she was given an honorable discharge from the army. She went on to marry and had three children, settling down back in Massachusetts. To help make ends meet, she often gave public lectures about her wartime service. By the time she died in 1827, she was collecting minimal pensions for her service from Massachusetts and the federal government.

One of the most famous was a British spy named Ann Bates. Living as a schoolteacher with her husband in Philadelphia when the war broke out, she followed her husband to New York City in June of 1778, when he left to fight with the British Army. It was there she took up the mantle of spy and throughout July and August of 1778, disguised herself as a peddler to spy on Washington's army at White Plans, New York. On her return from each mission, she provided information on the number of soldiers, amount of artillery, level of supplies, and any murmurings of troop movements to her British allies.

Women like Abigail Adams, the wife of Massachusetts Congressional Delegate John Adams, influenced politics as did Mercy Otis Warren. It was Abigail Adams who famously and voluminously corresponded with her husband while he was in Philadelphia, reminding him that in the new form of government that was being established he should "remember the ladies" or they too, would foment a revolution of their own. Warren, just as politically astute as Adams, was a prolific writer, not only recording her thoughts about the confluence of events swirling around Boston but also dabbling in playwriting. She was a fierce devotee to the patriot cause, writing in December 1774, four months before the war broke out at Lexington and Concord, "America stands armed with resolution and virtue, but she still recoils at the idea of drawing the sword against the nation from whence she derived her origin."

Whether publishing their own stories or the stories of others, there are several women who wrote compelling historical narratives about the war. In 1805, Mercy Otis Warren published History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution. In 1827, Ann Darragh, daughter of American spy Lydia Darragh, published the story of her mother's work. Deborah Sampson, the woman who disguised herself as her deceased brother in order to fight with the army, gave public lectures on her life as a Continental soldier. By providing their dynamic and diverse narrative to the wealth of other male narratives, they give modern historians a richer understanding of a history nearly 250 years old.

Ordinary women also endured the horrors of the battlefield when those fights came to their doorstep. Sally Kellogg of Vermont and her family escaped the gods of War in 1776 when the War for Independence found its way into the northern reaches of upstate New York and Benedict Arnold's makeshift fleet and the British Navy clashed on Lake Champlain during the Battle of Valcour Island. As the Kellogg family made good its escape by water, Sally's family "fell in between Arnold's fleet and the British fleet," she later recalled. As the family rowed to safety at Fort Ticonderoga, the exchange of gunfire between ships could be seen and heard Sally recalled, "but happy for us the balls went over us. We heard them whis." Nevertheless, the war continued to follow the Kellogg family. A year later, after having relocated to Bennington, Vermont the Kelloggs were once more forced to be witnesses to carnage, and once again upon recollection, Sally claimed the results were, "a sight to behold. There was not a house [in Bennington's vicinity] but was stowed full of wounded."

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10 Facts: Women During the Revolutionary War

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Fact #1: Women followed the armies and provided a sense of normality to military camps. Often known as camp followers, it was common for women and children...

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Women took on many roles in the Revolutionary War. Some of these roles were traditional while others were unconventional and even scandalous for the time.

From supportive jobs like nurses, cooks and maids to more direct roles such as secret soldiers and spies, these Daughters of Liberty did more than their share to help win America's independence.

Here's an overview of these roles as well as a look at the famous women of the Revolutionary War who performed them:

Nurses:

Although nurses were not used much during the early days of the war, they became more prevalent in 1777.

According to the book, The Revolutionary War, many nurses were originally camp followers: wives, daughters and mothers of male soldiers who followed the army looking for food and protection because they were no longer able to support themselves after the men left for war:

"In early 1777, Washington asked his commanding officers to 'assist Regimental Surgeons in procuring as many Women of the Army [camp followers] as can be prevailed on to serve as Nurses to them who will be paid the usual price.' Later after the reorganization of the Continental army medical staff, one hospital matron and ten nurses were allocated for every hundred sick and wounded men. Nurses were to receive 0.24 cents a day plus one full food ration. The matrons, being in a more supervisory position, got more than twice that rate at 0.50 cents a day plus the full ration."

While surgeons and surgeon mates performed most of the skilled medical duties, female nurses did mostly custodial work, feeding and bathing patients, emptying chamber pots, cleaning hospital wards and occasionally cooking.

According to the book It's Our Military Too! Women and the U.S. Military, female nurses often came up with new inventions to help treat and care for patients:

"Nurses introduced innovations, however, to keep patients comfortable and help them recover, including stone hot-water bottles, combination lamps and food-warmers, varying sizes of china feeding cups, and 'go-chairs' (wheelchairs) and fan chairs (wheelchairs with fans.) A popular part of the patient's diet provided by nurses was warm 'pap' (milk in which oatmeal had been cooked and strained and to which beaten egg yolks, butter, and orange flavor were added) and beef tea, an extract of beef juices."

Despite the opportunity for food and pay, many women were reluctant to take nursing jobs since the mortality rate in hospitals for the sick as well as for the caregivers was exceptionally high. Some women were not easily scared though and became nurses anyway, despite the risk.

One such nurse was Mary Waters, a Dublin native who immigrated to Philadelphia in 1766 and became an army nurse after the war broke out. A biography was even written about Waters in 1791, but it was never published.

Another famous nurse was Mary Pricely who served as a nurse on colonial warships, such as the ship the Defense in 1777.

According to the book It's Our Military Too!, a survey was conducted at the end of the war and found that seven matrons and 30 nurses were serving the military in seven hospitals and were caring for over 4,000 men.

After the war was over, patient care reverted back to regimental surgeons and surgeon's mates with occasional assistance from military wives and laundresses.

Seamstresses, Cooks and Maids:

Some of the most common roles for women in the Revolutionary War were cooks, maids, laundresses, water bearers and seamstresses for the army. This was the first time women held these jobs in the military since these positions were usually reserved for male soldiers.

Much like the nursing positions, the American army often recruited the many female camp followers to fill these jobs. Since most of these women were poor wives, mothers and daughters who were accustomed to doing housework, they were well suited for the positions.

One such camp follower was Margaret Corbin of Philadelphia. Corbin followed her husband, John, to the army when he enlisted in the First Company of the Pennsylvania Artillery as a matross, someone who loads and fires cannons.

During the Battle of Fort Washington in November of 1776, Margaret Corbin was with her husband on the battlefield when he was suddenly killed. Since his cannon was then unmanned, Margaret Corbin took his place and continued firing until she was wounded herself.

The colonists lost that battle and Corbin was captured but was later released. Corbin became the first woman to earn a pension for her service in the Revolutionary War. The legend of Molly Pitcher is believed to have been based on Corbin.

Soldiers:

Although women were not allowed to join the military at the time, many women still served as secret soldiers during the Revolutionary War.

These female soldiers usually disguised themselves as men by cutting their hair, binding their breasts with bandages and adopting masculine names.

Their motivations for signing up vary but, since most of these women were young, unmarried and poor, many of them joined in order to earn money for their families as well as for the rare opportunity to fight for America's independence.

It's not surprising that since the American Revolution began in Massachusetts, many of these women soldiers were from Massachusetts.

Some of these women soldiers include Deborah Sampson from Plympton, Mass, who fought in New York under the alias Robert Shurtliff in 1781 and served for over a year before she was discovered.

Another female soldier was Ann (or Nancy) Bailey of Boston who enlisted in 1777 under the alias Sam Gay and was promoted to Corporal before her true identity was discovered just a few weeks later, resulting in her arrest and imprisonment.

After her release, Bailey signed up again and served as a soldier for a few weeks before she was discovered and jailed again, according to the book The Revolutionary War.

Some women didn't disguise themselves or join the military but instead armed themselves and took to the streets, such as Prudence Cummings Wright did in Pepperell after two suspected Tory spies came through her town and she recruited a group of armed women to capture them.

Spies:

Many women also served as spies during the American Revolution, although it is not known how many.

According to the National Women's History Museum website, most of these female spies worked as cooks and maids for the British and American military camps where they eavesdropped on conversations about troop movements, military plans, supply shortages and deliveries.

Since the war was fought on farms, city streets and the front yards of many American's homes, these spies easily carried the messages and supplies they gathered to neighboring houses and farms without detection.

Not much is known about the women spies in Massachusetts since the American army didn't have a central spy system during the Siege of Boston like it did when the war later moved on to New York.

There, the army set up the Culper Spy Ring and even devised the code name "355" specifically for women or women spies working within the ring.

One famous female revolutionary spy was Hannah Blair, a Quaker from North Carolina. Blair had a farm where she would hide and protect patriots, supplied food and medical help to soldiers hiding in the woods from loyalist raiders, mended uniforms and carried secret messages.

When loyalists in the area discovered what she was doing, they burned her farm down. Fortunately, Congress compensated her for her loss after the war by issuing her a pension for her service.

These roles are just some of the many ways women participated in the Revolutionary War. Either as nurses, maids, spies or soldiers, these women stepped out of the safety and security of their traditional roles in society and risked their lives to serve their country.

While some of them were recognized and rewarded for their sacrifices with military pensions and pay, many were not. A few of them, such as Deborah Sampson, even published memoirs about their activities during the war, yet most of these women's stories remain untold.

Sources:
It's Our Military Too!: Women and the U.S. Military. Temple University, 1996.
Frank, Lisa Tendrich. An Encyclopedia of American Women at War: From the Home Front to the Battlefields. ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2013.
Kneib, Martha. Women Soldiers, Spies, and Patriots of the American Revolution. The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc, 2004.
Neimeyer, Charles Patrick. The Revolutionary War. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007.
"Revolutionary War Spies." National Women's History Museum, www.nwhm.org/articles/revolutionary-spies
"Women in the U.S. Army." The United States Army, www.army.mil/women/history
"Women's Service in the Revolutionary Army." The Colonial Williamsburg Official History & Citizenship Site, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume7/nov08/women_revarmy.cfm

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The Roles of Women in the Revolutionary War - History of Massachusetts Blog

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Women took on many roles in the Revolutionary War. Some of these roles were traditional while others were unconventional and even scandalous for the time. From supportive jobs like nurses, cooks and maids to more direct roles such as secret soldiers and spies, these Daughters of Liberty did more than...

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9 Women Who Helped Win the American Revolution

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9 Women Who Helped Win the American Revolution

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The men who led the American Revolution- George Washington, Sam and John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Ethan Allen, and countless others-are well-known. But a number of women aided them in securing a victory over the British. Women played vital roles in the Revolution, serving as soldiers, raising morale, and even spying on the enemy.

In 1783, a young soldier named Robert Shurtlieff took ill, just another man sickened by the "brain fever" outbreak sweeping through the troops stationed in Philadelphia at that time. After a short struggle with the illness, Shurtlieff appeared near death. A doctor checked the man's pulse, then rested a hand on his chest to see if he was still breathing.

He was-and the doctor was in for a surprise. Shurtlieff (sometimes listed as Shurtleff) wasn't a man at all, but a woman who had bound her chest and disguised herself to become a soldier.

Robert Shurtlieff had been invented three years earlier by Deborah Samson (sometimes spelled Sampson), a 20-something girl recently freed from indenture on a farm. A dedicated patriot, she was determined to join the Continental Army, and enlisted in the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment.

Samson took well to Army life. So well, in fact, that her fellow soldiers teased her for being unable to grow a beard by calling her " Molly," but apparently never suspected the truth behind the name. She was injured in battle several times, always refusing medical care for fear that her secret would be discovered.

When it finally was, the doctor who learned her true identity (and whose niece was falling in love with "Robert"), nursed her back to health and then sent Samson with a letter for General John Paterson, her superior. Samson was not allowed to stay in the forces, but the Continental Army did arrange an honorable discharge and enough money to get her home.

Samson wasn't satisfied with this metaphorical pat on the head. She went on to lecture about her time in the Army, and demanded back pay for her service. She got it in 1792. And in 1805, Congress voted to grant her a pension as a war veteran. Most recently, she was declared Massachusetts' official state heroine, with May 23 as her official day.

The women of Pepperell, Massachusetts were a patriotic bunch. When they learned of the Boston Tea Party, they burned their tea leaves on the town common.

So when Pepperell's men marched off to war, it's not surprising that the women decided to form their own militia to protect the remaining townspeople. Prudence "Prue" Cummings Wright, who had just lost two children, was elected the leader of " Mrs. David Wright's Guard."

The women wore their husbands' clothing and carried weapons ranging from muskets to farm tools. The militia had formed, in part, because Wright had heard her British-sympathizing brother talk to a friend about smuggling information from Canada to Boston. So, on the day the two were set to cross Pepperell, the militia met them at the one bridge the spies could cross.

The women confiscated their documents and held them prisoner overnight while their messages were forwarded to the Committee of Safety for review. The two men were exiled from the area, and Wright's brother never returned.

On the evening of April 26, 1777, Colonel Henry Ludington received bad news.

British forces led by Major General William Tryon had landed on the coast of Connecticut and marched to Danbury, where they destroyed Continental Army supplies. Colonel Ludington was being asked to gather his militia and march for Danbury, 25 miles away. However, Ludington also needed to stay at his farm to brief the men as they arrived and prepare for the march.

His eldest child, 16-year-old Sybil, volunteered to rouse the militia. She rode out at 9 p.m. on the start of a 40-mile circuit, knocking on farm doors and shouting that the British were in Danbury. Each of the men she woke gathered nearby militiamen and headed for the Ludington homestead, where the colonel was waiting.

Ludington rode through the night, waking dozens of her father's men. She had to avoid bandits and British sympathizers on her route, but she returned home safely. Most of Colonel Ludington's militia gathered and marched to Danbury. They were too late to save the town from British torches, but they did manage to harry the British soldiers all the way back to Long Island Sound.

George Washington maintained a large spy network, including a number of agents in British-occupied Philadelphia. According to her descendants, one of these was Lydia Darragh, a Quaker woman whose home became a meeting place for British officers.

Family legend has it that she often hid in a closet adjoining the room the officers met in, then smuggled word of their plans to her son, who served in the Revolutionary forces. Sometimes she sewed the messages into button covers or hid them in needle books.

If the stories are true, her spying career saved the lives of thousands of Revolutionary soldiers, including Washington himself. Sometime in early December, British officers meeting in Darragh's home discussed information they'd received that the colonists, led by Washington, were in Whitemarsh. They would launch a surprise attack, they decided. Darragh overheard the plans, then concocted a lie that she needed to purchase flour from a mill outside the city. She was given a pass by the British, then headed straight for the Revolutionary leaders, where she passed the information to an officer in Washington's army.

Thanks to Darragh's intelligence, the colonists were prepared for the Redcoats and, after a few skirmishes, the British retreated back into Philadelphia. Unfortunately, historians have been unable to verify many of the family tales surrounding Darragh's espionage.

Patience Lovell Wright was born in the Colonies, on Long Island. She and her family later moved to Bordentown, New Jersey, where she married a Quaker farmer. However, he died in 1769, and while she was able to stay in her home, she wasn't able to inherit any of his other property. She began sculpting in wax to support herself.

Wright and her sister Rachel, who had also been widowed, opened waxworks houses in Manhattan and Philadelphia, but Wright wanted more. After meeting Jane Mecom, the sister of Benjamin Franklin, she traveled to London, where she quickly won over British high society with her artistic skills and plainspoken ways. She even had the opportunity to meet King George and Queen Charlotte.

Wright began gathering sensitive information during her London sculpting sessions and sent it back to patriot leaders in the Colonies, supposedly encased in her wax sculptures. She also took the Colonies' case directly to the king and queen, finding a supporter in William Pitt.

Wright was a little too vocally supportive of the Colonies, however. Once open warfare broke out, the higher-ups of London society began distancing themselves from her, and she eventually retreated to Paris. She also fell out of favor with the Americans as well, and the Founding Fathers stopped responding to her letters. She returned to London after the war's end, on her way home to the newly founded United States. But she never made it back to America-she died in London a few days after a fall.

In a battle against the Creeks, Nanye'hi earned the title of Beloved Woman, giving her a leadership role among the Cherokee. When her husband was killed in the skirmish, she picked up his rifle and led a rout of the enemy. Among her duties as a Beloved Woman was watching over prisoners captured by the Cherokee in raids and warfare. This would become key to her ability to help the Americans during the Revolutionary War.

During the French and Indian War, the Cherokee sided with the British, and that didn't change when the Americans declared independence. The British took advantage of this, encouraging the Cherokee to attack American settlements. Some of the Cherokee were against warfare, but others, tired of the encroaching American settlers taking more of their land, were only too happy to fight.

Historians aren't sure why Nanye'hi chose to side with the Americans. It may have been out of practicality-many Cherokee leaders wanted to drive the white settlers out, but Nanye'hi may have sought to keep things civil with their new, close neighbors, or worried about retaliation if the British lost. Regardless of her motives, whenever Nanye'hi learned of a coming Cherokee attack on the nearby settlers, she freed American prisoners so they might return home with warnings. One of these prisoners was Lydia Bean, a woman rescued by Nanye'hi from being burned at the stake. While Bean was with the Cherokee, the two women reportedly traded skills such as making butter.

After the war, Nanye'hi helped negotiate peace with the new United States, though she's believed to have later urged the Cherokee not to cede any more land to the Americans, and take up arms if necessary.

On July 4, 1780, George Washington received a letter from Esther DeBerdt Reed, whose husband knew the general. In the letter, she reported that she and the ladies of Philadelphia had raised $300,000, and asked how it should be spent.

Reed had come to the Colonies with her widowed mother only 10 years earlier, but had quickly set out becoming active in the political and social life of Pennsylvania, eventually rising to the role of Pennsylvania's First Lady. Reed and her husband had entertained notables among the American cause, including Washington himself. So when Reed learned that the soldiers in the Continental Army were hungry and in need of good, warm clothing, she decided she would help.

She gathered other political women, and they went door to door in Philadelphia, asking for donations. While a good deal of the $300,000 they collected was devalued paper currency, they also received coin and in-kind donations such as leather trousers. At Washington's urging, they spent the donations on linen cloth and set out to sew shirts.

Reed died suddenly of a fever in the fall of 1780, but her friend Sarah Franklin Bache, the daughter of Benjamin Franklin, took up the work. The women sewed 2000 shirts for Washington's men.

And that's not where Reed's story ended. She was also the author of an anonymously published broadsheet entitled " Sentiments of an American Woman." The treatise encouraged politically minded women to show their patriotism by offering material support to American soldiers, and inspired movements similar to the one in Philadelphia throughout the Colonies.

Agent 355 is one of the most mysterious figures of the American Revolution. After more than 200 years, her identity is still unknown.

A member of the Culper spy ring, 355 reported to Abraham Woodhull, who went by the alias of Samuel Culper Sr. However, she may have been closer to his fictitious "son," merchant Robert Townsend, a.k.a. Samuel Culper Jr. Agent 355 may have been a family member or maid in a well-regarded Loyalist family in New York City, which would have allowed her contact with high-ranking British officers.

It's likely that she was someone particularly close to Major John Andre, who led the British intelligence efforts. The intelligence she passed to the Culper ring was detailed when Andre was in New York, and sparse when he was not.

Whoever she was, she helped to uncover American General Benedict Arnold 's plans to betray the Revolution, and Andre, his contact, was arrested by the colonists. The fort at West Point, which Arnold had schemed to turn over to the British, was saved. Andre was eventually hanged, but Arnold escaped capture and joined the British as planned.

This is where records become murky. According to one legend, Arnold turned over the names of several Patriot spies, including Agent 355. She was captured and held on a British prison ship, where she died-though not before giving birth to a son, Robert Townsend Jr.

Because no one knows who she is, her fate can't be confirmed. While a number of women were held on the prison ships and the Culper ring had several female members, none can be definitively identified as 355.

During the Revolution, women followed along behind the armies on both sides. These camp followers, often the wives or female relatives of soldiers, did laundry, mended clothing, cooked and took on other chores in exchange for food and shelter. However, a few ventured out of the camps and onto the battlefield. Margaret Corbin was one of them.

Corbin's husband handled ammunition for a cannon, and she assisted him. In the fall of 1776, they were stationed at Fort Washington, New York, when the fort was attacked by British troops. The man operating the cannon was killed, and Corbin's husband quickly took his place, with Corbin taking over the ammunition duties.

Then Corbin's husband was struck down by enemy fire and killed, too. Without a pause, Corbin worked the cannon, firing it until she was struck by grapeshot that mangled her chest and left arm.

In 1779, the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania awarded Corbin a $30 stipend in exchange for her service. They also recommended that the Board of War grant her a soldier's pension, and the board complied. The Continental Congress gave her a monthly stipend of half an active-duty soldier's pay. Corbin and Deborah Samson were the only women to receive federal pensions for their service in the Revolution.

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9 Women Who Helped Win the American Revolution

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Women played vital roles in the Revolution, serving as soldiers, raising morale, and even spying on the enemy.

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Women, Native Americans, and African Americans during the American Revolution

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Women, Native Americans, and African Americans during the American Revolution

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U.S. History | Women, Native Americans, and African Americans during the American Revolution

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Heroines of the American Revolution You've Never Heard Of

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Heroines of the American Revolution You've Never Heard Of

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Heroines Of The American Revolution You've Never Heard Of

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The Role of Women in the War of Independence

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The Role of Women in the War of Independence

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What role did Women play in the American Revolution?

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Women, Native Americans, and African Americans during the American Revolution

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Women, Native Americans, and African Americans during the American Revolution

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U.S. History | Women, Native Americans, and African Americans during the American Revolution

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Roles of Native Americans during the Revolution

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Roles of Native Americans during the Revolution

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Isaac Makos Isaac Makos is an Interpretive Supervisor at George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

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Roles of Native Americans during the Revolution

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Native Americans served both the Crown and the colonists during the Revolutionary War. The civil war among European settlers created civil war and strife among…

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How were Native Americans Affected by the Revolution?

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How were Native Americans Affected by the Revolution?

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How Were Native Americans Affected by the Revolution?

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Discover how the American Revolution affected Native American populations, both during and after the war took place.

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Native Americans in the Revolutionary War: Who Did They Side With?

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Native Americans in the Revolutionary War: Who Did They Side With?

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Native Americans in the Revolutionary War: Who Did They Side With?

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Everyone knows there was a clear split between colonists during the American Revolution. What’s often overlooked is the turmoil Indigenous Americans faced in choosing which side to support.

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Liberty Exhibit Big Idea 5: Native American Soldiers and Scouts

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Learn more about the different strategies Native American communities and nations chose as some tried to remain neutral, others actively sided with the British, and a smaller number allied with the Revolutionaries.

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Native Americans in the Revolutionary War

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Native Americans in the Revolutionary War

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Native Americans in the Revolutionary War

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Choosing Sides: Native Americans in the Revolutionary War

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Choosing Sides: Native Americans in the Revolutionary War

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Choosing Sides: Native Americans in the Revolutionary War

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Peter Harris: The Catawba Who Fought for Independence

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Peter Harris: The Catawba Who Fought for Independence

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Peter Harris: The Catawba Who Fought For Independence

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10 Famous Loyalists of the American Revolution

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10 Famous Loyalists of the American Revolution

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10 Most Famous Loyalists of the American Revolution - Have Fun With History

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During the American Revolutionary War, there were a number of American colonists who stayed loyal to the British Crown and were known as Loyalists, Tories, Royalists, or King's Men. Patriots, who backed the revolution, saw them as "persons antagonistic to the rights of America" and opposed them.

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Tories were colonists who helped and even fought with the British during the American Revolutionary War. Also known as Loyalists for their loyalty to the British crown, their contention with the Whigs (Patriots) was so intense that their savage fighting can justly be called America's first civil war.

The American Revolution ... was not a straight battle between Americans and the British. The colonists themselves were divided. In fact Dr [ sic] Wallace Brown went as far as to call it more of a civil war than the 1861-1865 hostilities. (Gail Saunders, Bahamian Loyalists and Their Slaves [MacMillan Education LTD, London and Oxford: 1983] p. 1)

I am going to do something out of the ordinary for Revolutionary-War.net and begin by recommending a book and a web site. The writing of Thomas B. Allen, author of Tories: Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War, is so captivating and thorough that there is no way that we will be able to improve on it.

The research and plethora of quotes in his book and on his web site are exhilarating for people that love history like we do. Such excellent writing deserves to be commended and recommended.

He introduces the subject of the Loyalists at ToriesFightingForTheKing.com with flourish:

The Revolution is usually portrayed as a conflict between the Patriots and the British. But there is another narrative: the bloody fighting between Americans, a civil war whose savagery shocked even battle-hardened Redcoats and Hessians. As debate and protests evolved into war, mudslinging and rhetorical arguments between Rebels and Tories evolved into tar-and-feathering, house-burning, and lynching.

That said, here we provide a shorter and hopefully just as interesting overview of the Loyalists before, during, and after the American Revolutionary War.

Number of Tories

Tories fighting with Patriots, photo from History of the United States by Charles A. and Mary R. Beard; public domain
There is no good way to determine what percentage of the colonists remained loyal to Britain. Charles and Mary Beard's History of the United States gives the evidence as cited by both the Patriots and the Tories:

By one process or another, those who were to be citizens of the new republic were separated from those who preferred to be subjects of King George. Just what proportion of the Americans favored independence and what share remained loyal to the British monarchy there is no way of knowing. The question of revolution was not submitted to popular vote, and on the point of numbers we have conflicting evidence. On the patriot side, there is the testimony of a careful and informed observer, John Adams, who asserted that two-thirds of the people were for the American cause and not more than one-third opposed the Revolution at all stages.

On behalf of the loyalists, or Tories as they were popularly known, extravagant claims were made. Joseph Galloway, who had been a member of the first Continental Congress and had fled to England when he saw its temper, testified before a committee of Parliament in 1779 that not one-fifth of the American people supported the insurrection and that "many more than four-fifths of the people prefer a union with Great Britain upon constitutional principles to independence." At the same time General Robertson, who had lived in America twenty-four years, declared that "more than two-thirds of the people would prefer the king's government to the Congress' tyranny." In an address to the king in that year a committee of American loyalists asserted that "the number of Americans in his Majesty's army exceeded the number of troops enlisted by Congress to oppose them."

~(Charles A. & Mary R. Beard, History of the United States [The MacMillan Company, NY:1921])

That is the evidence as presented in the Beard's History of the United States, but in the two sections that follow, also primarily taken from their book, it is plain to see that the Tories could not have been even a majority, much less over 80% of the population.

Tories were clearly outnumbered prior to the war. It is the only way the state governments could have separated them out of the population to imprison or expel them.

When the first Continental Congress agreed not to allow the importation of British goods, it provided for the creation of local committees to enforce the rules. ... Before these bodies those who persisted in buying British goods were summoned and warned or punished according to circumstances. As soon as the new state constitutions were put into effect, local committees set to work in the same way to ferret out all who were not outspoken in their support of the new order of things.( ibid.)

The persecution of the Tories which began in earnest after 1774 was terrible. Each State passed legislation requiring inhabitants to take oaths to the new United States or be deemed traitors. Some Loyalists had their property confiscated; others were socially ostracized and their businesses boycotted. (Gail Saunders, op. cit. p. 2)

Patriot mobs treated them even more cruelly.

The work of the official agencies ... was sometimes supplemented by mob violence. A few Tories were hanged without trial, and others were tarred and feathered. One was placed upon a cake of ice and held there "until his loyalty to King George might cool." (Beard, op. cit.)

Surely this did not happen because the Loyalists feared to defend themselves, for when the British arrived they took up arms in droves.

Act prohibiting Tories from returning to Massachusetts
public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Without being outnumbered, they could not have been intimidated by state governments. Tories the highest members of society. They held many important positions in both government and society in the colonies, and their allegiance was to the king and Parliament. If they had been the majority there would have been no revolution, for they could easily have prevented it.

When General Howe evacuated Boston, more than a thousand people fled with him. This great company, according to a careful historian, "formed the aristocracy of the province by virtue of their official rank; of their dignified callings and professions; of their hereditary wealth and of their culture." The act of banishment passed by Massachusetts in 1778, listing over 300 Tories, "reads like the social register of the oldest and noblest families of New England," more than one out of five being graduates of Harvard College. The same was true of New York and Philadelphia; namely, that the leading loyalists were prominent officials of the old order, clergymen and wealthy merchants. ( ibid.)

Clearly a batch of Loyalists that "formed the aristocracy of the province by virtue of their official rank," and who were also a majority, could not have been driven from their homes, imprisoned, or run out by mobs.

But they were. The Beards even refer to the conquest of the Loyalists as something The Tories themselves knew was "inevitable."

With passion the loyalists fought against the inevitable or with anguish of heart they left as refugees for a life of uncertainty in Canada or the mother country. ( ibid.)

The Tories Fight Back

While the Tories were under persecution before the war, once the war began they had opportunity to defend themselves.

The Tories who remained in America joined the British army by the thousands or in other ways aided the royal cause. Those who were skillful with the pen assailed the patriots in editorials, rhymes, satires, and political catechisms. They declared that the members of Congress were "obscure, pettifogging attorneys, bankrupt shopkeepers, outlawed smugglers, etc." ( ibid.)

The Tories After the Revolutionary War

As we know, even with the help of the Loyalists, the British lost the war. After the war, however, they continued to provide land in Canada to the Tories:

The greatest reward for loyalty came in the form of grants of land in the Canadian wilderness. As many as 100,000 Loyalists eventually migrated to Canada. (ToriesFightingForTheKing.com)

Others simply fled. Estimates are that between 80,000 and 100,000 Loyalists fled to the West Indies, and a few went to Great Britain, besides the 100,000 that received land in Canada.

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Tories | Loyalists to the King, Facts, Information & History

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Tories were colonists who helped and even fought with the British during the American Revolutionary War. Also known as Loyalists for their loyalty to the British crown, their contention with the Whigs (Patriots) was so intense that their savage fighting can justly be called America's first civil war. The American Revolution ...

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What Happened to British Loyalists After the War?

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What Happened to British Loyalists After the War?

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It's July Fourth weekend - a time that many Americans dedicate to celebrating democracy and the birth of the United States. But more than two centuries ago, when the Revolutionary War ended with an American victory, not everyone was celebrating.

It's estimated that between 15 and 20 percent of the population back then still remained loyal to the British Crown. Naturally, they weren't so thrilled by the climactic British surrender at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, which effectively sealed the fate of King George's attempt to keep the colonists in line.

So what became of these loyalists who suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of history? To answer that question, NPR's Rachel Martin spoke with Maya Jasanoff, a professor of history at Harvard University.

Interview Highlights
On what it was like to be a British loyalist during the American revolution
There were definitely instances of people being beaten up on by gangs who would come to their house and harass them for being on the wrong side. It has to be said that some loyalists certainly were able to just kind of lie low and go about their business and try to not say too much about politics. But if you were living on the front lines of these advancing armies going back and forth across the colonies, it could be really a difficult choice and a difficult situation to be in.
On the lives of loyalists after the war
The fighting actually continued, in the backcountry of the South in particular. And it was in regions like that that loyalists still tried to fight for the empire that they believed in. ...

It's a part of the war that we tend to not think too much about or learn about in school. But there was a lot of bloodshed, and particularly in the South. And gangs of revolutionaries, gangs of loyalists, would attack each other, go to each other's plantations. In fact, some of the big battles in the South happened after the surrender at Yorktown.

So, what all of this means is that there was a climate of violence and a climate of fear for many loyalists. And it meant that when the peace negotiations were going on, they were really concerned about what kinds of protections they might have in the new United States. And during this period, many of them felt that the protections that the U.S. was offering were not promises that they could really get behind.

And so, when the British pulled out in city after city in the United States, up to tens of thousands of loyalists sometimes went with the retreating army to Britain and other parts of the British Empire. ... About half of the loyalists who left the United States ended up going north to Canada, settling in the province of Nova Scotia and also becoming pioneering settlers in the province of New Brunswick.
On how history books commemorate the loyalists
On the American side, of course, they're losers. And history is, as we know, written by the winners. So there's not much place for the loyalists - especially the loyalists who left - in standard American history.

But the British also have a kind of complicated relationship to the loyalists. And I think the reason is that the British have a complicated relationship to the Revolutionary War and to the United States, which is a place that they wanted to hold on to and failed to. And the loyalists were, at times, a very uneasy reminder of this defeat.

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What Happened To British Loyalists After The Revolutionary War?

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Not everyone celebrated when the British surrendered at Yorktown. About a fifth of all colonists remained loyal to the Crown; for them, the American victory spelled exodus and, often, more violence.

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The Revolutionary War was also in many ways a civil war. Approximately one-fifth of Americans supported Britain during the Revolution, although their exact numbers are uncertain due to the inherent difficulty in determining who qualified as a "Loyalist." After the war's conclusion, the British Parliament used a four-part scheme for determining which exiles were entitled to compensation for losses sustained in support of the king's government. Those entitled to the greatest compensation were individuals who had fought against the revolutionaries, lost property, faced physical assault, or had been forced into exile as a result of their behavior.

Overt Loyalists are easier for historians to track. These Loyalists expressed their political dissent in some unambiguous manner, writing letters in support of Parliamentary action, spying on their rebel neighbors, defying the non-importation agreements, or fighting in the king's forces. However, many other colonists disapproved of the Patriot protests, or opposed American independence, but were quieter in their opposition.

Patriot opponents found the Loyalists's motives easy to explain: they were "self-interested men," greedy parasites who profited from the imperial connection, or weak and cowardly individuals who feared anarchy more than they appreciated liberty. The truth was more complex. Aside from Crown officials, who did generally side with what they called the "friends of government," there was not a common determinant for who ended up on the Loyalist side. The Loyalists came from every social class in colonial society, every occupation, and every region on the continent.

Loyalist individuals were inspired to action or inaction by a variety of motives, only some of which had to do with ideological concerns. Crown officials might have become Loyalists because their careers were dependent on royal patronage-or because they better understood imperial politics, enough to discount claims of a grand British plot to reduce America to slavery. Other Loyalists, particularly individuals who had run afoul of patriot mobs, may well have been fearful of society tumbling into anarchy and "mob rule"-a legitimate fear in an era of limited coercive government control.

Many ordinary citizens, inclined to neutrality, were reluctantly forced to choose between the two sides by unfolding events. The Patriots' use of non-importation agreements and loyalty oaths in the late 1760s and 1770s pushed many neutrals into active opposition. During the military conflict, the occupation of territory also put pressure on the inhabitants to choose a side, as neutrals tended to be harassed by both armies.

Personal decisions might have little to do with one's views on imperial policies. A significant number of pacifist Pennsylvania Quakers were forced into the Loyalist camp by Patriot demands for military service, even though their political views were often neutral or even sympathetic to the rebels' cause. Some decisions were driven primarily by economic concerns. Tenants in upstate New York, crushed by high wartime taxes and high rents imposed by Patriot landlords, staged insurrections that coincided with the British invasion of the area.

Ethnic prejudice could also factor into the decision. In New England, recent Scottish immigrants faced considerable prejudice from the largely Anglo populace. This tended to make them less sympathetic to anti-British demonstrations led by many of their old antagonists. Many Native American groups, including five of the six Nations of the Iroquois, joined the British side because they believed British government would be more likely to honor their land claims than an independent United States. Finally, British promises of freedom in exchange for military service lured thousands of slaves away from Patriot plantations.

The British loss of the American Revolution meant that many Loyalists would never return to America. Between 60,000 and 80,000 Americans left the country by 1783. Around 7500 of them settled in Great Britain, while others made homes in the Caribbean, Spanish Florida, or Canada, or alternatively attempted to return to the United States. Most Loyalists faced considerable hardship in their new homes. Although Parliament attempted to recompense them for their losses, many suffered from poverty and homesickness. Most tragic was the fate of the thousands of Black loyalists. Most ended their lives dying of disease or in poverty in Canada or England, or were resold into slavery in the Caribbean.

Even after the war's conclusion, many Loyalists remained gloomy about the new nation's prospects. In February of 1786, merchant James Clarke wrote of his lost home in Newport: "My Attachment to our native Country is so fervent and sincere that I could freely give up my Life, and Ten Thousand more if I posses them, could I restore dear Rhode Island to its former happy, happy Situation." Others lived to regret their choice. Massachusetts merchant Samuel Curwen, writing from Exeter, England in early 1777, admitted that he now would have faced "insults, reproaches and perhaps a dress of tar and feathers" rather than his present life of exile. He concluded, "Wherever I turn mine eyes I see ruin and misery all around me."

Shannon Duffy, Ph.D. Texas State University

Notes 1. Cassandra Pybus estimates that of the approximately twenty thousand slaves who fled to British lines over the course of the war, only around two thousand successfully gained their freedom at war's end. Pybus, "Jefferson's Faulty Math: The Question of Slave Defections in the American Revolution." WMQ 62, no. 2 (Apr. 2005): 243-64.

2. "James Clarke to Miss Coggeshall, Halifax, 5 February 1786," quoted in Crary, The Price of Loyalty, 446-7.

3. "Samuel Curwen to Jonathan Sewall, 19 January 1777," The Journal of Samuel Curwen, Loyalist, edited by Andrew Oliver (Salem: Essex Institute, 1972): vol. 1, 295, footnote 3.

Bibliography: Brown, Wallace. The King's Friends: The Composition and Motives of the American Loyalist Claimants. Providence, R.I., 1965.

Calhoon, Robert M., Timothy M. Barnes, and George A. Rawlyk, eds. Loyalists and Community in North America. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994.

Crary, Catherine S., ed. The Price of Loyalty: Tory Writings from the Revolutionary Era. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1973.

Glatthaar, Joseph T. and James Kirby Martin. Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution. New York: Hill & Wang, 2006.

Humphrey, Thomas J. "Conflicting Independence: Land Tenancy and the American Revolution." Journal of the Early Republic 28, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 159-82.

Jasanoff, Maya. Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.

Nicolson, Colin. "A Plan 'To Banish All the Scotchmen': Victimization and Political Mobilization in Pre-Revolutionary Boston," Massachusetts Historical Review 9 (2007): 55-102.

Norton, Mary Beth. The British-Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England, 1774-1789. Boston, Little, Brown, 1972.

-----. "The Fate of Some Black Loyalists of the American Revolution." Journal of Negro History 58, no. 4 (Oct. 1973): 402-426.

Pybus, Cassandra. Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty. Boston: Beacon Press. 2006.

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The Revolutionary War was also in many ways a civil war. Approximately one-fifth of Americans supported?

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Black Loyalists Fought for their Freedom

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Black Loyalists Fought for their Freedom

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The story of the Black Loyalists of the American Revolution is the story of a people stolen into slavery who are given the chance to fight for their freedom, exact revenge on cruel masters, and establish one of the first free black settlements on the continent. It's also a story of broken promises, racial discord and the lengths to which people will go to find a better life. And it's a nearly forgotten chapter in North American history.

When the American Colonies declared independence in 1776, African slaves made up 20 percent of the colonial population. The population of South Carolina was 60 percent slaves, and Virginia was 40 percent, mostly toiling on large plantations. (Slavery was not just a Southern institution then - in some Northern cities like Boston, slaves made up 20 percent of the population.) Even before the War for Independence officially began, the British tried to recruit American slaves to rise up and fight against their "rebel" plantation owners. "Loyalist" was the term given to people in the American Colonies who supported Britain.

In 1775 the British royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, issued a stunning "emancipation proclamation" promising freedom and land to all slaves who would take up arms against their rebel masters. Dunmore was looking for manpower to put down an armed rebellion in Virginia, and he found it. Between 800 and 2,000 slaves and indentured servants fled their plantations and joined with the British, including a hard-fighting militia that would become known as Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment. The Ethiopian Regiment marched to battle in uniforms inscribed with the insignia "Liberty to Slaves."

Dunmore's proclamation was the "first mass emancipation in American history," says Isaac Saney, a history professor at Saint Mary's University in Nova Scotia. It happened nearly 90 years before Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, ending slavery in areas not under the control of the United States government.

When the tides turned against the British in 1779, they issued a second emancipation called the Philipsburg Proclamation, which extended the promise of freedom and land to any slave who would cross the British lines without the requirement to fight. The move, says Saney, was a form of economic warfare against the colonies.

"Escaping Africans would weaken the rebel economy," says Saney. "You'd have this mass emancipation taking place, and the colonists would now have to expend resources to guard the plantations, instead of using them in battle."

An estimated 12,000 slaves of African descent fought for the British, but the war was lost. When the British surrendered in 1783, one of the central points of contention, Saney says, was "the return of what George Washington deems 'U.S. property,' which are the enslaved Africans."

After the Revolutionary War

The British commander-in-chief Guy Carleton kept his word and negotiated "certificates of freedom" for all so-called Black Loyalists who had joined the British ranks before the surrender, under one condition: They had to leave the country. Carleton's men carefully recorded the names of 3,000 newly freed men and women in what's known as the Book of Negroes, and then put them on ships heading to Nova Scotia, then a British-ruled Canadian province.

Nova Scotia in the late 18th century was known as "Nova Scarcity." When 40,000 white and black loyalists fled to Nova Scotia in 1783 - including 1,232 slaves of white loyalists - they tripled the native population and completely overwhelmed the province's meager resources. The newly freed Black Loyalists, far from receiving their just rewards in a new home, found themselves last in line for land, and exploited as cheap labor.

Widespread poverty and underemployment across Nova Scotia brewed distrust among whites, who blamed the cheap African labor for stealing their jobs. Racial tensions erupted into violence, says Saney, when a black preacher named David George baptized a white woman, sparking what many believe is one of the first race riots in North America. The 1784 violence raged for months, claiming many black homes and lives until troops were finally sent in from the capital Halifax.

The Black Loyalists repeatedly petitioned the Crown to keep its promises from the war, eventually sending the emissary Thomas Peters all the way to London to make the case in person. Peters got nowhere with royal officials, but did meet with a group of British abolitionists who were launching a social experiment in Sierra Leone, West Africa, a sanctuary for victims of the slave trade. They convinced Peters that the best place for the freed slaves was back in Africa.

In 1792, 15 ships sailed from Halifax harbor in Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone carrying 1,196 Black Loyalists who had "voted with their feet against broken promises of land and freedom," says Saney, who calls it the maiden voyage of the "Back to Africa" movement. Those who stayed behind in Nova Scotia largely settled in the village of Birchtown, named for Samuel Birch, one of the British generals who signed the original certificates of freedom.

Black Loyalists Today

Jason Farmer is a ninth-generation descendent of the Black Loyalists who first settled Birchtown. Farmer can trace his roots back to Jupiter Farmer - one of five Jupiters in the Book of Negroes, and an escaped slave from Brunswick, New Jersey. Jupiter married a woman named (yes) Venus and established a continuous line of the Farmer family that has remained in the Birchtown area for more than 230 years.

Farmer is an interpreter at the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre & Historical Site in Nova Scotia, where he's proud to share the remarkable story of his ancestors, who dared to escape the plantations and join with an occupying army to win their freedom, only to continue to fight for true freedom and equality in a new land.

"It's an unknown history right here in Nova Scotia," says Farmer, who particularly enjoys telling the story of Black Loyalists to fellow Nova Scotians of African descent. "They're amazed. It's powerful. Some of them can't even sit there and listen to it all. They have to take breaks. Some of them cry." Some 20,000 black people live in Nova Scotia today, most of whom are descended from the Black Loyalists.

Saney the historian says that the legacy of the Black Loyalists is of a persecuted people exercising black agency.

"These are people who took their fate and their destiny into their own hands," Saney says. "Just to get to the British side took a lot of courage, skill and ingenuity. The fact that so many of them chose to fight - and saw themselves as not only defending their freedom, but participating in the liberation of others - speaks the breadth and depth of their conception of agency, but also as part of a collective struggle for freedom."

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Black Loyalists Fought for Their Freedom During the American Revolution

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The story of the Black Loyalists of the American Revolution is the story of a people stolen into slavery who are given the chance to fight for their freedom, exact revenge on cruel masters, and establish one of the first free black settlements on the continent.

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Who Were Loyalists During the American Revolutionary War?

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Who Were Loyalists During the American Revolutionary War?

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Who Were Loyalists During the American Revolutionary War? | History Brought To Life

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Loyalists in the American Revolution, by Professor Jack Rakove

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Why Be a Loyalist?: Anti-Patriot Motivations

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The Black Loyalists: From the American Revolution to the Sierra Leone Migration

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In a way, the American Revolution began with acts of espionage. Even a month before "the shot heard 'round the world" Thomas Gage, the royal governor of Massachusetts, sent two subordinates to travel to Concord in March 1775 to gather information about patriots' intentions and stockpiles of supplies and weapons. When British troops finally headed to Concord in April, their march was hardly the surprise that was intended-did someone close to the royal governor alert the patriots of their approach?

During the American Revolution, both the British and patriot armies employed spies to gather information about the enemy. Both armies relied on spies to gather information on troop strength and morale, access to and availability of munitions and supplies and intended plans to march or attack. British commanders found intelligence gathered by loyalist sympathizers useful, which often included details about geography and terrain unfamiliar to the British army. Some spies served for long periods or even the duration of the war, while others performed only singular acts of espionage when duty called, or when opportunities presented themselves. Both armies also mounted misinformation campaigns, purposefully leaking false intelligence for the enemy to find.

General George Washington was keenly aware of the importance of espionage during the war. In 1777 he wrote to Colonel Elias Dayton, "The necessity of procuring good Intelligence is apparent & need not be further urged -- All that remains for me to add is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible." British General Charles Cornwallis, too, understood the importance of clandestine intelligence gathering and is reported to have exclaimed, "Ah, you rogue!" upon the realization that his own trusted spy was, in fact, a double-agent for Washington. It is clear that Washington's tactics were no match for British intelligence agents, one of whom later said, "Washington did not really outfight the British. He simply out-spied us."

At the start of the war, Washington quickly recognized both the importance of counterintelligence and stopping intelligence gathering by the enemy, as well as placing his own spies behind enemy lines. In June 1776, Washington placed John Jay at the head of New York's newly created Committee on Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies. Jay's directive from Washington was to "close the regular channels of intelligence from the city." One of the first agents acting on behalf of the patriots was Nathan Hale, who volunteered to spy on the British on Long Island in September 1776. Quickly captured, the British hanged Hale as a spy. A witness reported that Hale uttered a patriotic sympathy in his last breath: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

As Washington was quick to employ spies for his own benefit, he was also menaced by spies and fake intelligence coming from British agents and loyalist sympathizers. For years during the war, Washington was particularly vexed by New Jersey loyalist James Moody. Though James was routinely able to intercept official correspondence and even some of Washington's own letters, officials could never try him as a spy. When Moody was finally captured in 1780 Washington wrote, "It is a pity but that Villian Moody could be apprehended lurking in the Country, in a manner that would bring him under the description of a Spy. When he was taken before, he was in Arms-in his proper uniform...it was, therefore, a matter of great doubt whether he could be considered otherwise than a prisoner of War." Moody escaped and later wrote his memoir as a loyalist spy and recruiter during the war.

Many spy rings were active during the American Revolution, but perhaps the most famous is the Culper Spy Ring, comprised of a group of civilian and military officials working together to gather intelligence for Washington while the British army occupied New York. Under the direction of Benjamin Tallmadge, agents Abraham Woodhull, Caleb Brewster, Anna Strong, Austin Roe, and others spied on the British beginning in 1778 and for the duration of the war. The agents choose pseudonyms-Tallmadge was known as "John Bolton," while Woodhull became known as Samuel Culper, the namesake of the group. Tallmadge also devised a numerical substitution system, with numbers standing in for words, locations, and important names (for example, Washington's numerical code was 711). The spy ring employed systematic tactics of dead drops, codes were hidden in plain sight (a petticoat hanging from Anna Strong's clothesline could indicate the location of a meeting or that a message was available at a dead drop), and even messages written in invisible ink with ciphers and coded letters. Washington himself was active in directing the agents' secret communications. From his headquarters at West Point in September 1779, Washington wrote to Tallmadge instructing agents to write messages with invisible ink on pocketbooks, almanacs, or pamphlets, which British agents were less likely to search than common letters. The Culper Ring was extremely successful and is responsible for uncovering a British plan to bombard the French fleet off the coast of Rhode Island.

Historians also credit the Culper Ring with uncovering Benedict Arnold's treasonous turn to the British and, indirectly, exposing Major John André, Arnold's British accomplice and head of the British secret service in America. After rendezvousing with Arnold regarding plans for the British to capture West Point André, dressed in civilian attire, was stopped and questioned by three patriot militiamen. André aroused the men's suspicions and upon searching his person, the militiamen found a map of West Point and other incriminating papers hidden in André's boot. George Washington ordered him to be hanged, possibly in retaliation for the treatment of Nathan Hale at the hands of the British. In an emotional and very public affair, André was hanged on October 2, 1780, with thousands of onlookers in attendance.

While André attempted to hide intelligence in his boots, British General William Howe sent a secret message to General John Burgoyne rolled up and hidden inside a large quill. Patience Lovell Wright, an America-born artist living in London, sent secret messages across the Atlantic hidden in the wax busts she sculpted. Wright corresponded with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, and kept them informed of the gossip and plans she overheard among the inner circles of king and Parliament. Wright sent messages through her sister Rachel as well, who later wrote of her sister's exploits, "how did she make her Cuntry[sic] her whole attention, her Letters gave us ye first alarm...she sent Letters in buttons & pictures heads to me, ye first in Congress attended Constantly to me for them in that perilous hour."

Like Patience, many spies in the Revolution were civilians. As armies occupied major cities and took over the homes and farms of colonists, men and women overheard or otherwise chanced upon information and risked their lives to get messages to colonial leaders and generals. In 1777, British troops occupied the Philadelphia home of Quaker Lydia Darragh, who hid in a closet to eavesdrop on a secret meeting pertaining to a surprise attack on Washington's troops. Darragh obtained a pass to travel through the city and met with patriots at the Rising Sun Tavern, whom she informed of the plan. Though she was later questioned by British authorities when it became evident the attack was not a surprise, she was never suspected. There are many stories similar to Lydia's, in which women were able to pass messages across the enemy lines. When Deborah Champion hid papers in her saddlebag to deliver them to Washington for her father, the fact that she was a woman caused a British soldier to dismiss her as suspicious. According to one source, the soldier glanced at Deborah and said, "you are only an old woman anyway," and let her on her way to complete her mission. However, Champion's tale of delivering a letter to Washington may not be entirely accurate. While some daring acts of espionage have been documented and corroborated by primary sources, far more survive in the form of local and family legend or lore.

A more documented instance of civilian espionage is the New York tailor Hercules Mulligan. By 1775 Mulligan was a well-known tailor who catered to patriots and loyalists alike, and even served British soldiers. When British soldiers arrived at his tailor shop, Mulligan took an active interest in their needs, and learned much about the activities or planned activities of the troops. For example, if a customer needed coat repairs completed in a matter of days, Mulligan could inform Washington that the British were planning to move. While Mulligan communicated directly with the British inside his shop, his slave Cato took the intelligence to Washington. Under the guise of delivering clothing or packages, Cato passed under the unsuspecting eyes of enemy soldiers in his way. Cato was just one of many African Americans, enslaved and free, who spied during the war.

Famously, an enslaved man named James Armistead infiltrated Cornwallis' camp at Yorktown and communicated with the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette, in turn, wrote to Washington of his well-placed "friend," who acted as "servant to Cornwallis," and looked through his papers, was present at dinners and important meetings, and saw first-hand the health and supply of British troops on the eve of 1781's Siege of Yorktown. Some historians believe that Cornwallis asked James to spy for the British, making James a double agent. A 19th-century anecdote describes the scene of Cornwallis recognizing James at Lafayette's and Washington's side after the surrender at Yorktown. Realizing he had been had, Cornwallis is reported to have exclaimed, "Ah you rogue, then you have been playing me a trick all this time!" James likely was not the only spy who helped ensure the patriot victory at Yorktown in 1781. Even before the Continental Army turned south, Washington used his network to leak false information about his plans to meet Cornwallis in Virginia. The Marquis de Lafayette also embarked on a false information campaign, and sent a soldier into Cornwallis's camp posed as a deserter to feed him fake news about the Continental Army.

Just as spies may have influenced the events of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, spies helped ensure the patriot victory at Yorktown in 1781. Whether informants were civilians or military officials or soldiers, long acting in the service of their country or seizing unique opportunities, spies undoubtedly played a crucial role in the American Revolution.

Further Reading:

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In a way, the American Revolution began with acts of espionage. Even a month before "the shot heard 'round the world" Thomas Gage, the royal governor of Massachusetts, sent two subordinates to travel to Concord in March 1775 to gather information about patriots' intentions and stockpiles of supplies and weapons.

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Learn more about some of the spies that aided the Patriot cause during the American Revolution.

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Spies, Dead Drops, and Invisible Ink: An Interview with John Nagy

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Learn about spying and espionage during the American Revolution. Here is an interview conducted by staff of George Washington’s Mount Vernon with John A. Nagy, one of America’s leading scholars on the subject.

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Women accomplished extraordinary things to advance their cause during the revolution.

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The Culper Spy Ring - Facts, Code & Importance

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The Culper Spy Ring was a small group of men and women gathered in 1778 by a young cavalry officer named Benjamin Tallmadge from his hometown of Setauket, Long Island. Tallmadge's homegrown network became the most effective of any intelligence-gathering operation on either side during the Revolutionary War.

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Even 250 years after the events of the American Revolution, there is much that historians are still piecing together about the activities of spies during the war-including the identities of the men and women who risked their lives for the British and patriot armies. Much more is known about the activities of free, white spies during the American Revolution-little is known about the enslaved and free Black spies who acted during the war. Even the earliest source of information about the activities of African Americans during the war, William C. Nell's The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution , published in Boston in 1855, fails to mention activities of espionage in its pages. Regardless, African Americans-both free and enslaved-had difficult choices to make during the era of the Revolution. Some chose to support the British, while others fought with or supported patriot armies. Often, their choice hinged on supporting the side that offered their best chance at freedom from enslavement. Sometimes, though, enslaved and free African Americans received no compensation or reward for their service. Those Black Americans who spied during the war often did so-at great personal risk-for little reward.

Many acts of espionage or information gathering we owe to unnamed agents-enslaved African Americans who had opportunities to see and hear, but who were not deemed a threat by their very status as an enslaved person. It is not difficult to imagine enslaved men and women working in the homes where officers, soldiers, and the political elite freely discussed their plans within earshot of an enslaved man attending his owner or an enslaved woman serving at the table. But they were not simply passive bystanders-they shared the information they heard. There is plenty of historical evidence to suggest this was occurring, and that officers became aware of the potential problem it caused. A patriot army officer in Newport, Rhode Island was well aware of the threat this posed, and attempted to "put an end to the communication by the Negroes."

Some historians credit an enslaved man in Newport, Rhode Island as being the first African-American spy of the American Revolution. Quaco, sometimes referred to as Quaco Honeyman, was enslaved by James Honeyman, a loyalist. At various times during the war, the British occupied Newport, and the population of enslaved African Americans there were frequent and keen observers of both the patriot and British officers, often overhearing important and secretive plans. This may have been the case with Quaco, whom historians believe may have been rented out by his loyalist owner for the use of British and loyalist officers and soldiers. One early history of the war in New England written in 1839 includes an account of what may describe Quaco's activities in giving intelligence regarding General Richard Prescott: "Quam [sic], the negro who had been employed in the kitchen of Mr. Overing, had carried a very perfect account of the situation of the General in the house." Soon after in 1777, the general was captured by patriot forces.

The intelligence given by Quaco enabled the raid to be successful. The Rhode Island General Assembly acknowledged as much in 1782, stating "the information he (then) gave rendered great and essential service to this state and the public in general." Quaco's situation is an interesting one, wherein during the course of the war he petitioned the Rhode Island General Assembly to change his legal status from that of enslaved to free. Owing to the intelligence he provided on behalf of the patriot cause-especially in the face of his owner's loyalist ideology-Quaco was granted his freedom.

Throughout the war, New England was rife with intelligence activities, even before General George Washington instigated the Culper Spy Ring in 1778. One spy whose activities are quite well-known is Hercules Mulligan , an Irish-born tailor who immigrated to New York City in 1746. His British and loyalist clientele often inadvertently divulged important information, such as their expected length of time in the city, when they would be moving with the army, and to where, et cetera. Mulligan knew the importance of the information and needed to get it to patriot leaders, but how? The answer was Cato, an enslaved man whom Mulligan owned and who worked with him in his shop. Under the guise of delivering clothing or packages, Cato passed under the unsuspecting eyes of enemy soldiers in his way. Cato is one of many African-American accomplices in the network of patriot espionage.

Perhaps the most well-known Black spy of the American Revolution is James Armistead Lafayette . Born enslaved in Virginia, the French General Marquis de Lafayette recruited him to spy for the patriots in the summer of 1781. With the permission of his owner, James infiltrated General Charles Cornwallis' camp at Yorktown. James may have pretended to be a runaway slave seeking his freedom with the British army. He earned Cornwallis' trust, and found himself able to look at the General's papers, took note of troop size and the health and morale of the soldiers, and communicated all he learned back to Lafayette. In turn, Lafayette wrote all of this to Washington, who would eventually defeat Cornwallis at the Siege of Yorktown in October. Some historians believe that James was actually acting as a double agent, leading Cornwallis to believe he would spy for the British army, all the while giving Cornwallis false intelligence about the patriots. After the Siege of Yorktown , James was still enslaved. Though he had provided critical intelligence that led to the allied army's victory at Yorktown, James had to petition the Virginia Assembly multiple times for his freedom. Upon learning James was still enslaved, the Marquis de Lafayette wrote an affidavit attesting to his patriotic service. When the Virginia Assembly finally granted his freedom, James took the surname Lafayette in honor of the Marquis.

James was not the only enslaved African America operating in the midst of the armies' Yorktown campaign. Saul Matthews, a Black man enslaved by Thomas Matthews, gathered information on Cornwallis' army while the British moved closer to Yorktown on the eve of the Siege. Saul was recruited by Virginia militia colonel Josiah Parker, who later proclaimed that Saul "deserved the applause of his country." Similar to James, though Saul provided crucial intelligence that ultimately led to a major and decisive patriot victory, he was not immediately granted his freedom. Saul continued to be enslaved for at least a decade after the war. The Virginia Assembly did not grant his freedom until 1792.

Enslaved African Americans continued to gather intelligence and as spies for the duration of the war. In 1783 the South Carolina assembly honored the activities of an enslaved man named Antigua. Antigua "was employed for the purposes of procuring information of the enemy's movements and designs," by the former governor of South Carolina, John Rutledge. The legislature further testified that "Antigua always executed the commissions with which he was intrusted with diligence and fidelity, and obtained very considerable and important information from within the enemy's lines, frequently at the risk of his life." Antiqua was given his freedom, but the legislature went even further, and granted freedom to his wife, Hagar, and their child.

While many of the stories of enslaved African Americans acting as spies are readily verifiable by primary source evidence, such as acts of state legislatures granting them their freedom, other stories are firmly in the realm of anecdote or even myth. One such story is that Pompey Lamb and his escapades at the battle of Stoney Point in 1779. In his Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution Benjamin Lossing recounted how "a negro slave belonging to a Captain Lamb" enabled General Anthony Wayne 's army to advance towards the British position undetected. Lossing claims to have spoken to "an old ferryman at Stony Point," who offered that he knew the gentleman in question and provided further accounts that Pompey had become a regular in the British fort by way of selling fruit. He would be welcomed into the British stronghold and "became a favorite with the officers, who had no suspicion that he was regularly reporting every thing to his Whig master." However, this account his largely anecdotal and historians debate Pompey Lamb's activities, though his actual existence is not necessarily in question.

While stories like Pompey's have not proven to be verifiable, his story is a reminder that there is much we still don't know about the services and activities of Black spies of the American Revolution. Unlike the stories of James Lafayette, Cato, and Saul Matthews that have been found in primary source documents, there may be many more unknown stories of the courageous activities of Black spies of the American Revolution, waiting to be discovered.

Further Reading:

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Even 250 years after the events of the American Revolution, there is much that historians are still piecing together about the activities of spies during...

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The Culper Spy Ring: Path through History

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The Culper Spy Ring: Path through History

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The Culper Spy Ring: Path through History

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Who Was Peggy Shippen: The "It Girl" Spy

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Who Was Peggy Shippen: The "It Girl" Spy

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Who Was Peggy Shippen: The "It Girl" Spy