It was the distinguished service of two battalions of 500 Negroes that elicited this eulogy from the Commander in Chief of the forces engaged in the second war with England.
Commodore Perry used equally forcible language in his praise of the bravery and conduct of the Negroes under his command at the battle of Lake Erie. He said that Negro soldiers seemed to be absolutely insensible to danger.
There were about 3,000 Negroes employed in the Revolutionary War by General Washington. An equal or greater number were employed by the British.
Some of the most heroic deeds of the war for Independence were performed by the men of color. Major Pitcairn, in charge of the British forces at the battle of Bunker Hill, was killed by a Negro named Peter Salem. A petition was drawn by some of the principal officers of the American Army to secure recognition by the Massachusetts Colony for Solomon Poor, a Negro, for distinguished service at the battle of Bunker Hill. Crispus Attucks, a Negro, was the first American to become a martyr in the Boston massacre.
The Black Legion of Count D’Estaing saved the defeated American and French Army from complete annihilation at the siege of Savannah on October 9, 1779, by covering the retreat and repulsing the charge of the British.
In every war fought on American soil, the Negroes whenever allowed to participate, have displayed a courage and heroism that is not only a credit to the race but a credit to mankind.
In poetry and literature, as well as war, the Negro has arisen to distinction. Indeed, the first woman, either white or black, to attain to literary distinction in this country was a Negro, a slave at that.
She was Phyllis Wheatly of Boston, who wrote poems on various subjects, religious and moral, of high literary value. One of the poems was addressed to General Washington and was appreciated by him as reference to it by him was made in a letter to Joseph Reed under date of February 10, 1776. Through the endorsement of several men distinguished in literature her poems were collected and published in London under the title, “Poems of Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, by Phyllis Wheatly, a Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatly of Boston, in New England.”
Paul Lawrence Dunbar, born in 1872, was a noted Negro poet.
William Stanley Braithwaite, author of “The Book of Georgian Verse” and the reviewer of poetry appearing in the standard magazines is classed among the geniuses of American verse writers.