[4] _The Columbian Gazette_, II, 742-743.

[5] Delany, "Condition of the Colored People," 111.

[6] C. G. Woodson, "The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861."




THE NEGRO SOLDIER IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION



The facts as to the participation of Negroes in the American Revolution
have received the attention of several writers. Yet not one of them has
made a scientific presentation of the facts which they have discovered.
These historians have failed to consider the bearing of the status of the
free Negro during the colonial period, the meaning of the Revolution to the
Negro, and what the service of the Negro soldiers first enlisted effected
in changing the attitude of the people toward the blacks throughout the
original thirteen colonies.

To a person who has lived in the nineteenth or twentieth century it would
seem incredible that Negroes, the majority of whom were then slaves, should
have been allowed to fight in the Continental Army. The layman here may
forget that during the eighteenth century slavery was a patriarchal
institution rather than the economic plantation system as it developed
after the multiplication of mechanical appliances, which brought about the
world-wide industrial revolution. During the eighteenth century a number of
slaves brought closely into contact with their masters were gradually