independent of its influence so as to expel it from its jurisdiction. Like the Angel of Death that passed through Egypt, there was no colony that it did not smite with its dark and destroying pinions. The dearest, the sublimest, interests of humanity were prostrated by its defiling touch. It shut out the sunlight of human kindness; it paled the fires of hope; it arrested the development of the branches of men's better natures, and peopled their lower being with base and consuming desires; it placed the "Golden Rule" under the unholy heel of time-servers and selfseekers; it made the Church as secular as the 'Change, and the latter as pious as the former: it was a gigantic system, at war with the civilization of the Roundheads and Puritans, and an intolerable burden to a people who desired to build a new nation in this New World in the West. Part III. THE NEGRO DURING THE REVOLUTION. - CHAPTER XXVI. MILITARY EMPLOYMENT OF NEGROES. 1775-1780. THE "Many black soldiers were in the service during all stages of the war.” - SPARKS. THE COLONIAL STATES IN 1715. — RATIFICATION OF THE NON-IMPORTATION ACT BY THE Southern COLONIES. GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESENTS RESOLUTIONS AGAINST SLAVERY, IN A MEETING AT FAIRFAX COURT-HOUSE, VA. - LETTER WRITTEN BY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN TO DEAN WOODWARD, PERTAINING TO SLAVERY. - Letter tO THE FREEMEN OF VIRGINIA FROM A COMMITTEE, CONCERNING THE SLAVES BROUGHT FROM JAMAICA. - SEVERE TREATMENT OF SLAVES IN THE COLONIES MODIFIED. ADVERTISEMENT IN "THE BOSTON GAZETTE" OF THE RUNAWAY SLAVE CRISPUS ATTUCKS. THE BOSTON MASSACRE. ITS RESults. - · CRISPUS ATTUCKS SHOWS HIS LOYALTY. - HIS SPIRITED LETTER TO THE TORY GOVERNOR OF THE PROVINCE. - SLAVES ADMITTED INTO THE ARMY. THE CONDITION of the ContinentaL ARMY.-Spirited DebaTE IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS, OVER THE DRAUGHT OF A LETTER TO GEN. WASHINGTON. INSTRUCTIONS TO DISCHARGE ALL SLAVES AND FREE NEGROES IN HIS ARMY.-Minutes of the MEETING HELD AT CAMBRIDGE. LORD DUNMORE'S PROCLAMATION. - PREJUDICE IN SOUTHERN COLONIES. NEGROES IN VIRGINIA FLOCK TO THE BRITISH ARMY.- CAUTION TO THE NEGROES PRINTED IN A WILLIAMSBURG PAPER. THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION ANSWERS THE PROCLAMATION OF LORD DUNMORE.. GEN. GREENE, IN A Letter to Gen. WASHINGTON, CALLS ATTENTION TO THE RAISING OF A NEGRO REGIMENT ON STATEN ISLAND. - LETTER FROM A HESSIAN OFFIcer. - Connecticut Legislature on the SUBJECT OF EMPLOYMENT of Negroes AS SOLDIERS. -GEN. VARNUM'S LETTER TO GEN. Washington, SUGGESTING THE EMPLOYMENT OF NEGROES, SENT TO Gov. COOKE. -THE GOVERNOR REFERS VARNUM'S LETTER TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. MINORITY PROTEST AGAINST ENLISTING SLAVES TO SERVE IN THE ARMY. — MASSACHUSETTS tries to secure Legal Enlistments of NEGRO TROOPS. - Letter of THOMAS KENCH TO THE COUNCIL AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, BOSTON, MASS. -NEGROES SERVE IN WHITE ORGANIZATIONS UNTIL THE CLOSE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. - -NEGRO SOLDIERS SERVE IN VIRGINIA. MARYLAND EMPLOY NEGROES. - NEW YORK PASSES AN ACT PROVIDING FOR THE RAISING OF Two COLORED REGIMENTS. WAR IN THE Middle and SOUTHERN COLONIES HAMILTON'S LETTER TO JOHN JAY.-COL. LAURENS'S EFFOrts to raise NEGRO TROOPS IN SOUTH CARolina. -PROCLAMATION OF SIR HENRY CLINTON INDUCING Negroes to desert the REBEL ARMY. LORD CORNWALLIS ISSUES A PROCLAMATION OFFERING PROTECTION TO ALL NEGROES SEEKING HIS COMMAND. - - COL. LAURENS is called TO FRANCE ON IMPORTANT BUSINESS. HIS PLAN FOR SECURING BLACK LEVIES FOR THE SOUTH UPON HIS RETURN. - HIS LETTERS TO GEN. WASHINGTON IN REGARD TO HIS FRUITLESS PLANS. CAPT. DAVID HUMPHREYS RECRUITS A COMPANY OF COLORED INFANTRY IN CONNECTICUT. - RETURN OF NEGROES IN THE ARMY IN 1778. TH HE policy of arming the Negroes early claimed the anxious consideration of the leaders of the colonial army during the American Revolution. England had been crowding her American plantations with slaves at a fearful rate; and, when hos tilities actually began, it was difficult to tell whether the American army or the ministerial army would be able to secure the Negroes as allies. In 1715 the royal governors of the colonies gave the Board of Trade the number of the Negroes in their respective colonies. The slave population was as follows: Sixty years afterwards, when the Revolution had begun, the slave population of the thirteen colonies was as follows: Such a host of beings was not to be despised in a great military struggle. Regarded as a neutral element that could be used simply to feed an army, to perform fatigue duty, and build fortifications, the Negro population was the object of fawning favors of the white colonists. In the NON-IMPORTATION COVENANT, passed by the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, on the 24th of October, 1774, the second resolve indicated the feeling of the representatives of the people on the question of the slavetrade: "2. We will neither import nor purchase, any slave imported after the first day of December next; after which time, we will wholly discontinue the slavetrade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it." I 1 Journal of the Continental Congress. It, with the entire covenant, received the signatures of all the delegates from the twelve colonies.1 The delegates from the Southern colonies were greatly distressed concerning the probable attitude of the slave element. They knew that if that ignorant mass of humanity were inflamed by some act of strategy of the enemy, they might sweep their homes and families from the face of the earth. The cruelties of the slave-code, the harsh treatment of Negro slaves, the lack of confidence in the whites everywhere manifested among the blacks, as so many horrid dreams, harassed the minds of slaveholders by day and by night. They did not even possess the courage to ask the slaves to remain silent and passive during the struggle between England and themselves. The sentiment that adorned the speeches of orators, and graced the writings of the colonists, during this period, was "the equality of the rights of all men." And yet the slaves who bore their chains under their eyes, who were denied the commonest rights of humanity, who were rated as chattels and real property, were living witnesses to the insincerity and inconsistency of this declaration. But it is a remarkable fact, that all the Southern colonies, in addition to the action of their delegates, ratified the NonImportation Covenant. The Maryland Convention on the 8th of December, 1774; South Carolina Provincial Congress on the 11th January, 1775; Virginia Convention on the 22d March, 1775; North Carolina Provincial Congress on the 23d of August, 1775; Delaware Assembly on the 25th of March, 1775 (refused by Gov. John Penn); and Georgia, passed the following resolves thereabouts : "1. Resolved, That this Congress will adopt, and carry into execution, all and singular the measures and recommendations of the late Continental Congress. "4. Resolved, That we will neither import or [nor] purchase any slave imported from Africa or elsewhere after this date." Meetings were numerous and spirited throughout the colonies, in which, by resolutions, the people expressed their sentiments in reference to the mother country. On the 18th of July, 1774, at a meeting held in Fairfax Court-House, Virginia, a series of twenty The Hon. Peter Force, in an article to The National Intelligencer, Jan. 16 and 18, 1855, says: "Southern colonies, jointly with all the others, and separately each for itself, did agree to prohibit the importation of slaves, voluntarily and in good faith." Georgia was not represented in this Congress, and, therefore, could not sign. four resolutions was presented by George Washington, chairman of the committee on resolutions, three of which were directed against slavery. "17. Resolved, That it is the opinion of this meeting, that, during our present difficulties and distress, no slaves ought to be imported into any of the British colonies on this continent; and we take this opportunity of declaring our most earnest wishes to see an entire stop for ever put to such a wicked, cruel, and unnatural trade... "21. Resolved, That it is the opinion of this meeting, that this and the other associating colonies should break off all trade, intercourse, and dealings with that colony, province, or town, which shall decline, or refuse to agree to, the plan which shall be adopted by the General Congress. . "24. Resolved, That George Washington and Charles Broadwater, lately elected our representatives to serve in the General Assembly, be appointed to attend the Convention at Williamsburg on the first day of August next, and present these resolves, as the sense of the people of this county upon the measures proper to be taken in the present alarming and dangerous situation of America." Mr. Sparks comments upon the resolutions as follows: : "The draught, from which the resolves are printed, I find among Washington's papers, in the handwriting of George Mason, by whom they were probably drawn up; yet, as they were adopted by the Committee of which Washington was chairman, and reported by him as moderator of the meeting, they may be presumed to express his opinions, formed on a perfect knowledge of the subject, and after cool deliberation. This may indeed be inferred from his letter to Mr. Bryan Fairfax, in which he intimates a doubt only as to the article favoring the idea of a further petition to the king. He was opposed to such a step, believing enough had been done in this way already; but he yielded the point in tenderness to the more wavering resolution of his associates. "These resolves are framed with much care and ability, and exhibit the question then at issue, and the state of public feeling, in a manner so clear and forcible as to give them a special claim to a place in the present work, in addition to the circumstance of their being the matured views of Washington at the outset of the great Revolutionary struggle in which he was to act so conspicuous a part. . . . "Such were the opinions of Washington, and his associates in Virginia, at the beginning of the Revolutionary contest. The seventeenth resolve merits attention, from the pointed manner in which it condemns the slave-trade.” 1 Dr. Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Dean Woodward, dated April 10, 1773, says, "I have since had the satisfaction to learn that a disposition to abolish slavery prevails in North America; that many of the Pennsylvanians have set 'Sparks's Washington, vol. ii. pp. 488-495. |