Subsequent developments showed that these misgivings were justified. In
July, 1776, General Greene learned on Long Island that the British were
about to organize in that vicinity a regiment of Negroes aggregating
200.[22] Taking as a pretext the enrollment of Negroes in the Continental
Army, Sir Henry Clinton proclaimed from Philipsburgh in 1779 that all
Negroes taken in arms or upon any military duty should be purchased from
the captors for the public service, and that every Negro who would desert
the "Rebel Standard" should have full security to follow within the
British lines any occupation which he might think proper.[23] In 1781
General Greene reported to Washington from North Carolina that the British
there had undertaken to embody immediately two regiments of Negroes.[24]
They were operating just as aggressively farther South. "It has been
computed by good judges," says Ramsey, "that between the years 1775 and
1783 the State of South Carolina lost 25,000 Negroes,[25] that is, one
fifth of all the slaves, and a little more than half as many as its entire
white population. At the evacuation of Charleston 241 Negroes and their
families were taken off to St. Lucia in one transport, the Scimitar."[26]
Yet in Georgia it is believed that the loss of Negroes was much greater,
probably three fourths or seven eighths of all in the State. There the
British were more successful in organizing and making use of Negroes. One
third of the 600 men by whom Fort Cornwallis was garrisoned at the siege
of Augusta were Negroes. So effective were some of these Negroes trained
by the British in Georgia that a corps of fugitive slaves calling
themselves the "King of England's Soldiers," so harassed the people on
both sides of the Savannah River, even after the Revolution, that it was
feared that a general insurrection of the slaves there would follow as a
result of this most dangerous and best disciplined band of marauders that
ever infested its borders.[27]