act directing the
emancipation of certain slaves, who had served as soldiers of the State,
and for the emancipation of the slave Aberdeen.

James Armistead during the war acted as a scout and spy for LaFayette
during his campaign in Virginia, and at one time gave information of an
intended surprise to be made upon the forces of the Marquis, thereby
saving probably a rout of the army. Armistead, after the surrender of
Cornwallis at Yorktown, was returned to his master three years after the
close of the war. He was manumitted by especial act of the Virginia
Legislature, whose attention was called to the worthiness of the service
rendered by Armistead.

The opposition to the employment of negroes as soldiers, by the
persistency of its advocates and the bravery of those who were then
serving in white regiments, was finally overcome, so that their
enlistment became general and regulated by law. Companies, battalions
and regiments of negro troops soon entered the field and the struggle
for independence and liberty, giving to the cause the reality of
freedmen's fight. For three years the army had been fighting under the
smart of defeats, with an occasional signal victory, but now the tide
was about to be turned against the English. The colonists had witnessed
the heroism of the negro in Virginia at Great Bridge, and at Norfolk; in
Massachusetts at Boston and Bunker Hill, fighting, in the former, for
freedom under the British flag, in the latter for liberty, under the
banner of the colonies. The echoing shouts of the whites fell heavily
upon the ears of the black people; they caught the strain as by martial
instinct, and reverberated the appeal, "_Liberty and Independence_."

The negro's ancestors were not slaves, so upon the altar of their hearts
the fire of liberty was re-kindled by the utterances of the white
colonists. They heard Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, whose eloquence
vehemently aroused their compatriots, and, like them, they too resolved
to be free. They held no regular organized meetings; at the North they
assembled with their white fellow-citizens; at the South each balmy gale
that swept along the banks of the rivers were laden with the negro's
ejaculations for freedom, and each breast was resolute and determined.
The advocates and friends of the measure for arming all men for freedom,
were on the alert, and now the condition of the army was such as to
enable them to press the necessity of the measure upon the