The Virginia planter, however, had never been to New England, and he would have been shocked at the sight of black men in the ranks. At the time, he held some one hundred people in bondage, and his colony’s laws decreed twenty lashes—“well laid on”—for any person of color who carried a weapon. The punishment for using one against a white person was death.
The general’s discomfort with black soldiers overwhelmed his desperate need for troops against the massive British force in Boston, even as much of his army prepared to go home when their contracts expired at year’s end. On November 12, the general forbade any black men from joining the army or re-enlisting, a decree made official policy two weeks later by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
Then Washington made a sudden about-face that would echo down through the next two and a half centuries. In December, word arrived from Virginia that his former friend and the colony’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, had proclaimed freedom to any patriot-owned person who would fight for King George III. Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, were said to be flocking to his banner to join what was called the Ethiopian Regiment. Within days of learning this alarming news, Washington reversed himself.
“It has been represented to me that the free negroes who have Served in this Army, are very much dissatisfied at being discarded,” he explained to John Hancock on New Year’s Eve. Rather than push them to join the enemy, he decided to allow black men to continue their service. Congress immediately backed that change of policy, ordering on January 16 “that the free Negroes, who have served faithfully in the army at Cambridge, may be re-enlisted therein, but no others.”
That cemented the integration of the Continental Army. Washington came to appreciate the value of his black troops, and the following year convinced Congress to allow any free person to enlist. The general also welcomed Catholics—then widely despised—as well as members of the Stockbridge-Mohawk, Oneida, Tuscarora, and other indigenous tribes. The highest-ranking non-white officer was Akiatonharonkwen, also known as Louis Cook, the son of a black man and Abenaki mother. Enslaved people, however, remained largely excluded, though Rhode Island in 1778 freed those in bondage who joined the war effort; many fought in the First Rhode Island Regiment until the last major battle at Yorktown.
By war’s end, some 10,000 black and Indians troops had fought to secure independence, and Washington’s army was the most integrated U.S. force until the Korean War.