The Negro as a Soldier.—Battle of Bunker Hill—Gallantry of Negro Soldiers.—Peter Salem, the Intrepid Black Soldier.—Bunker-hill Monument.—The Negro Salem Poor distinguishes himself by Deeds of Desperate Valor.—Capture of Gen. Lee.—Capture of Gen. Prescott—Battle of Rhode Island.—Col. Greene commands a Negro Regiment.—Murder of Col. Greene in 1781.—The Valor of the Negro Soldiers.
AS soldiers the Negroes went far beyond the most liberal expectations of their stanchest friends. Associated with white men, many of whom were superior gentlemen, and nearly all of whom were brave and enthusiastic, the Negro soldiers of the American army became worthy of the cause they fought to sustain. Col. Alexander Hamilton had said, "their natural faculties are as good as ours;" and the assertion was supported by their splendid behavior on all the battle-fields of the Revolution. Endowed by nature with a poetic element, faithful to trusts, abiding in friendships, bound by the golden threads of attachment to places and persons, enthusiastic in personal endeavor, sentimental and chivalric, they made hardy and intrepid soldiers. The daring, boisterous enthusiasm with which they sprang to arms disarmed racial prejudice of its sting, and made friends of foes.
Their cheerfulness in camp, their celerity in the performance of fatigue-duty, their patient endurance of heat and cold, hunger and thirst, and their bold efficiency in battle, made them welcome companions everywhere they went. The officers who frowned at their presence in the army at first, early learned, from experience, that they were the equals of any troops in the army for severe service in camp, and excellent fighting in the field.
The battle of Bunker Hill was one of the earliest and most important of the Revolution. Negro soldiers were in the action of the 17th of June, 1775, and nobly did their duty. Speaking of this engagement, Bancroft says,—
"Nor should history forget to record that, as in the army at Cambridge, so also in this gallant band, the free negroes of the colony had their representatives."[578]
Two Negro soldiers especially distinguished themselves, and rendered the cause of the colonists great service. Major Pitcairn was a gallant officer of the British marines. He led the charge against the redoubt, crying exultingly, "The day is ours!" His sudden appearance and his commanding air at first startled the men immediately before him. They neither answered nor fired, probably not being exactly certain what was next to be done. At this critical moment, a Negro soldier stepped forward, and, aiming his musket directly at the major's bosom, blew him through.[579] Who was this intrepid black soldier, who at a critical moment stepped to the front, and with certain aim brought down the incarnate enemy of the colonists? What was his name, and whence came he to battle? His name was Peter Salem, a private in Col Nixon's regiment of the Continental Army.
"He was born in Framingham [Massachusetts], and was held as a slave, probably until he joined the army: whereby, if not before, he became free. ... Peter served faithfully as a soldier, during the war."[580]
Perhaps Salem was then a slave: probably he thought of the chains and stripes from whence he had come, of the liberty to be purchased in the ordeals of war, and felt it his duty to show himself worthy of his position as an American soldier. He proved that his shots were as effective as those of a white soldier, and that he was not wanting in any of the elements that go to make up the valiant soldier. Significant indeed that a Negro was the first to open the hostilities between Great Britain and the colonies,—the first to pour out his blood as a precious libation on the altar of a people's rights; and that here, at Bunker Hill, when the crimson and fiery tide of battle seemed to be running hard against the small band of colonists, a Negro soldier's steady musket brought down the haughty form of the arch-rebel, and turned victory to the weak! England had loaded the African with chains, and doomed him to perpetual bondage in the North-American colonies; and when she came to forge political chains, in the flames of fratricidal war, for an English-speaking people, the Negro, whom she had grievously wronged, was first to meet her soldiers, and welcome them to a hospitable grave.