time the enemy, with desperate courage and
increased strength, attempted to assail the redoubt, and
would have carried it but for the timely aid of two
continental battalions despatched by Sullivan to support his
almost exhausted troops. It was in repelling these furious
onsets, that the newly raised black regiment, under Col.
Greene, distinguished itself by deeds of desperate valor.
Posted behind a thicket in the valley, they three times
drove back the Hessians who charged repeatedly down the hill
to dislodge them; and so determined were the enemy in these
successive charges, that the day after the battle the
Hessian colonel, upon whom this duty had devolved, applied
to exchange his command and go to New York, because he dared
not lead his regiment again to battle, lest his men should
shoot him for having caused them so much loss."[586]

A few years later the Marquis de Chastellux, writing of this regiment,
said,--

"The 5th [of January, 1781] I did not set out till eleven,
although I had thirty miles' journey to Lebanon. At the
passage to the ferry, I met with a detachment of the
Rhode-Island regiment, the same corps we had with us all
the last summer, but they have since been recruited and
clothed. The greatest part of them are negroes or mulattoes;
but they are strong, robust men, and those I have seen had a
very good appearance.'"[587]

On the 14th of May, 1781, the gallant Col. Greene was surprised and
murdered at Point's Bridge, New York, but it was not effected until
his brave black soldiers had been cut to pieces in defending their
leader. It was one of the most touching and beautiful incidents of the
war, and illustrates the self-sacrificing devotion of Negro soldiers
to the cause of American liberty.

At a meeting of the Congregational and Presbyterian Anti-Slavery
Society, at Francestown, N.H., the Rev. Dr. Harris, himself a
Revolutionary soldier, spoke thus complimentarily of the Rhode-Island
Negro regiment:--

"Yes, a regiment of _negroes_, fighting for _our_ liberty
and independence,--not a white man among them but the
officers,--stationed in this same dangerous and responsible
position. Had they been unfaithful, or driven away before
the enemy, all would have been lost. _Three times in
succession_ were they attacked, with most desperate valor
and fury,