Final bookquote #8- The Yorktown Hidden from View-Book release on July 31!

Between five and six thousand enslaved Black laborers had fled to the British lines at Yorktown and Gloucester, and they performed the most backbreaking work—construction of the fortifications. But their fate was about to take an even more terrible turn. Infected with smallpox and combined with dwindling provisions, they no longer were a valuable asset to the British. Cornwallis forced them out of camp and beyond the British lines, where they either died or fell into the hands of Virginia slave catchers and other officials. Rochambeau’s aide-de-camp, Comte de Lauberdière, noted in his diary that “Lord Cornwallis, seeing his hour had come, so to speak, no longer wanted useless mouths in his place. He sent away more than 300 Negroes, negresses or little negroes (who had been stolen), all naked and without a single piece of bread.” This scene made an indelible impression on Joseph Plumb Martin, who was haunted by it decades after the fact. He recorded: “During the siege, we saw in the woods herds of Negroes which Lord Cornwallis (after he inveigled them, from their proprietors) in love and pity to them, and turned adrift, with no other recompense for their confidence in his humanity, than the small pox for their bounty and starvation and death for their wages. They might be seen scattered about in every direction, dead and dying, with pieces of ears of burnt Indian corn in the hands and mouths, even of those who were dead.” The inhumanity was appalling, and surely most rank-and-file soldiers felt squeamish at the sight of such human devastation.

State agent David Ross organized the roundup of all the Blacks who had been released by Cornwallis during the siege and began re-enslaving them, returning them to their rightful owners. Washington cooperated with his efforts. He wrote Ross on the 24th and told him that “the Negroes that have been retaken, from whatever State, whose Owners do not appear, should all be treated in the same Manner, & sent into the Country to work for their Victuals & Clothes, & advertised in the States they came from.”  Joseph Plumb Martin noted in his diary that “after the siege ended many of the owners of these deluded creatures came to our camp and engaged some of our men to take them up, generally offering a guinea a head for them. Some of our Sappers and Miners took several of them that belonged to a Col. Banister; when he applied for them, they refused to deliver them to him unless he would promise not to punish them. He said he had no intention of punishing them, that he did not blame them at all, the blame lay on Lord Cornwallis.” 

  After essentially winning the war, Washington was actively involved in the roundup of these enslaved Blacks, many of them on death’s door with no food, shelter, or medical care. The elation of an American victory after six long years and freedom from British tyranny for all time, fails to jibe with this concerted action to collect enslaved persons and return them to their owners. Blacks had performed supremely under atrocious conditions, doing tedious and backbreaking work on fortifications that would protect white soldiers from enemy assaults. In his general orders of October 25, Washington informed the troops that “Negroes and Mulattoes the property of Citizens of these States have concealed themselves on board ships in the harbor, that some still continue to attach themselves to British Officers . . . and impose themselves upon the officers of the French and American Armies as Freemen and to make their escapes in that manner.” Blacks became a useless commodity and were “to be delivered to the Guards.” It was abundantly clear that for Washington the natural law Jefferson had espoused in the Declaration of Independence did not apply to Black people.