Happy Saturday, everybody. I recently ran into a young listener of our show who said that her favorite episodes were the ones that are connected in some way to Hamilton's. So today we have pulled something Hamilton's adjacent out of the archives. It is Sarah and Deblina episode on James Armistead, an enslaved man who worked as a double agent during the Revolutionary War who's handler was the market A Lafayette. So let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chuck for boarding and to Blina. We've covered a lot of spy stories in the past year, so we have there's no coincidence, mostly thanks to you. We love the war spies. I do spies in general, you do. They always make for some fun stories, they really do, and and they're another popular listener quest of ours. But today we're going to venture into the very murky territory of Revolutionary War spies, and specifically we're going to focus on the story of James Armistead Lafayette, who was an enslaved Virginia man who worked for the marketa Lafayette, who spied on Benedict Arnold, and who even gained the trust of General Lord Cornwallis. So if that all adds up correctly, he's a double agent circa eighty one, which is a pretty impressive feat. But since Armistead's life story or the details that are available are just a little bit, then we'll also be talking more about more general espionage during the American Revolution, George Washington as a spy master, for example, And since Armistead was a slave, we're also going to talk about the place of African American slaves and freeman in the Revolution. Yes, we're gonna be covering a lot of ground today, but before we get to that, it's important to note that even though an African American man occupies one of the most notable spots in the early American Revolution Christmas Attics, of course, the first person shot by the British, and the Boston massacre of seventeen seventy, there are really a lot of misassumptions about the position of African Americans in general in the Revolution. According to Noel by Poier, for example, in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Many people assume that African American soldiers were segregated into all black units if they existed at all, or worked only as laborers and servants. But that wasn't the case at all. No state militias and the Continental Army were integrated. Despite attempts to the contrary. Manpower just simply demanded it. African Americans also made invaluable spies, both for the rebels and for the British. They could, for example, work as orderlies, picking up private conversations and privileged information in the process, and they could also act as local sides, which gave them freedom of movement and the ability to pass on information. So two important jobs there that also double his spy pretty easily. UM. We'll talk more about the offers made by each side toward enslaved able bodied men in general, but for now, it's just enough to say that both American and British officers would have had full reason to believe that an enslaved man like Armistead was on their side, so there wouldn't be an issue of is he double crossing us? He should be passionately for one side or the other. Um. And that's because the Americans figured this they would assume that of us, an enslaved man like this might be fighting for his country's freedom, might be fighting for the home he knew, while the British would assume that he was fighting for his own personal freedom. And again we're going to get more into the details on that later, but before we do that, some some information on Armistead's life. Yes, he was born in New Kent, Virginia, likely in it perhaps his latest seventeen sixty. According to some sources, his master was William Armistead, and James worked as a field hand on a tobacco plantation. In seventeen eighty one, his master gave him permission to join the Continental Army, and he was soon teamed up with the Marquis de Lafayette, the frameless French hero of the Revolution and a close friend of General George Washington. And with Lafayette as his handler, Armstead poses an escaped slave and entered the camp of turncoat Benedict Arnold, who we all know well, where he worked as a guide and as an orderly So that was his his start as a spy, passing on information to Lafayette and uh It's even suggested that he might have had other orderly's working under him, you know, so he wasn't the only spy in the camp, but he had other African American men who would pass on information to kind of the spy manager by Master Yes, and and they'd get that that information onto Lafayette. Eventually, though, Armistead was posted close enough to the camp of General Lord Cornwallis, and that was of course a big bump and the sort of information he was receiving, And he also managed to gain Cornwallis's trust and became one of his agents, making Armistead at this point a double agent. So he was on the one hand getting information from the British and informing Lafayette. On the other he was feeding the British inaccurate information that Lafayette was giving him reporting back on British movement. So, you know, just the circle of of information and misinformation going on. The biggest perk of being a double agent, though, was that freedom of movement that we mentioned earlier. According to Madison Gray and Time Magazine, it was during one of these trips that Armistead discovered that ten thousand British troops were headed to Yorktown, and this was information that eventually got passed on to General Washington, and Yorktown was, of course the turning point of the war. It came after a joint French American attack on British held New York failed, and when Congress was bankrupt and enlistments were flagging after years of war, so things looked pretty bleak at this time. Yeah, for the for the revolutionary cause, in part because of this intelligence from Armistead, Washington and Continental soldiers plus four thousand French soldiers began heading towards Yorktown to meet Cornwallis's men, and along the way, of course, a French fleet cut off the British fleet's attempt to rescue Cornwallis's army, leaving them stranded. And we're not going to go into the whole history of Yorktown here, but um, the siege began September one and ultimately ended with Cornwallis's surrender a few weeks later, and sometime after that the end of the war. Uh. There's a quote in the in the Gray article that Dablina mentioned from rex Elis, who's the vice president of Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Area, and he really emphasized the full importance of Armistead's part in this victory and said quote, if he had not given the information that he gave at the strategic time he did, they would not have had the intelligence to create the blockade that ended the war. So I mean certainly speaks for for Armistead's work. Um an interesting side note here though, especially since Armistead was a double agent and so clearly helped pivotal yeah, pivotal point in the war. General Washington was not always a fan of double agents, even though he has a bit of a reputation as a spy master. Yes, Washington is pretty well known for running the Culper Spy Ring in New York City and for employee Sir James Jay's secret recipe for invisible ink and his sensitive correspondence. But he was uncomfortable with the haphazard nature of the game of of using double agent and just the spy game in general. You know, different spy working for different people, untrained agents passing on rumors and gossip as real intelligent. Yeah, he wanted spies to be centralized under his control. He did. He wanted everything to be nice and orderly, as you would expect Washington would. Fortunately, according to Edward langle in military history. Washington's officers were willing to disobey his orders and set up their own networks. It was one of these that finally turned George Washington onto the value of using a double agent. A former captain in a New York regiment, Elijah Hunter, who posed as a Tory, infiltrated General Sir Henry Clinton's camp and was asked in turn to spy for the British. So when Hunter's handler first started passing on information to Washington, the General expressed his general distrust of double agents, which we just talked about. He said, quote, their situation obliges them to trim a good deal in order to keep well with both sides, and the less they have it in their power to do us mischief, the better, especially if we consider that the enemy can purchase their fidelity at a higher price than we can. Okay, that's an astute point to to make, something to be aware of. Fortunately, though, at least um for Washington's general trust of double agents, Hunter didn't blow it. He didn't do any mischief like Washington was concerned about, became a valuable double agent, and uh sort of opened Washington up for a little bit of a more decentralized sort of spy network, something that would allow him to welcome this information he was getting from Armistead later down the line back to Armistead's story, though, you would expect that after his work for Lafayette, after the spectacular turn as a double agent, his vital service to the war effort, would be recognized with at the very least his freedom, But that was not the case. After the war, he returned to his master, returned to to Virginia, the Virginia Plan Tation where he had worked and was still a slave. But here's another interesting side note about Washington. Washington, despite his growing interest in integrated troops during the war, was very much four slaves returning to their masters after the fight was over and not slipping away during the hubbub. But telling Lee, Washington accepted the fact that this might not happen. They might not return to their masters. He even acknowledged that some of his own slaves who had left during the fight would probably not come back, save for quote an inclination to return. Yeah. I read a little bit about this in Kelly and Loos's A History of African Americans to eighteen eighty and it's almost as though, or the way they presented it, it's almost as though George Washington, the property owner, would prefer to have his property, his human property, restored to him. But George Washington, the rebel, understood that his slaves might not be willing to see themselves property anymore, especially after this dramatic war that had happened in the name of civil liberty. So this is just to give some some background that this is happening all over the New Country at this point, whether slaves are going to return after the chaos of the war. And Uh, I think it's pretty remarkable that Armistead did choose to do that. Uh. Nevertheless, though his friends didn't forget him, so he didn't return to This is not a sad ending for his story. At least he didn't return to slavery and live this obscure life. Uh. Fortunately to his master also supported his eventual manumission. But in seventeen seven, Armistead was finally granted his freedom by the state of Virginia, thanks in part to a strong letter of recommendation from Lafayette, who noted that he was quote entitled to every reward his situation could admit of Armistead ended up living out his days in Virginia, farming, marrying, and eventually having children. After his emancipation, he also took on Lafayette's name and they met one more time, and it was during Lafayette's eighteen twenty four final visit to the US. Lafayette spotted him in a crowd and came over to embrace him. Armistead Lafayette died in eighteen thirty or eighteen thirty two, depending on what source you read. Yeah, so, like I said, a pretty good end to to that story. But I think the biggest question hanging over it, and I just hinted it this a minute ago, is why why did he do it? You know, why did he fight in the first place? Why after his service did he return to slavery willingly? And uh, I really enjoyed listening to a podcast on the Colonial Williamsburg site. They have a lot on on Armistead, hosted by Richard Josie, who actually interprets Armstead and Williamsburg. I mean like in character, uh, he he portrays him. And he said that those were the two most common questions that visitors to to Williamsburg asked him, and he said that his answer to the first question why did Armistead fight in the first place is country. In his answer to the second why did he return is his family sense of place. Um, of course, we can't be sure what motivated Armistead in either of those, but we can sort of take a look at the options that were available to able bodied slaves and free blacks in the rebel colonies at the time of the American Revolution. And while the options were certainly better during the Revolution than they had been previously, they were still pretty bleak. Yeah, the outside of the war, slaves would have been as aware as anyone of the philosophy behind the revolution, and they could have certainly hoped for that the benefits of liberty might extend to them a little bit. Plus, anyone slave or not can have a connection, I guess, and an investment in home where they live, where they were born. Consequently, there was a strong early support for the war among black slaves and freemen, with men like Peter Salem, who was a Massachusetts slave freed so that he could fight. He saw action in Lexington and it conquered. Or Salem Poor was another freeman who fought at Bunker Hill and thanks to a decent, although illegal tradition of some black participation in New England militias. The early Continental Army actually counted a fair number of black soldiers among its ranks. But if it hadn't been for the eventual manpower shortages later in the war that Dablina mentioned earlier, plus a pretty bold move on the part of the British, it's likely that black participation in the army would have been pretty limited because actually, when when George Washington became Commander in chief of the Continental Army, he even banned the future enlistment of black men free or otherwise, and in the southern colonies with black populations out numbering white populations. Uh, folks were always a little bit leery of anything that could stir up possible slave rebellions and insurrections. And we've talked, we've covered quite a few slave rebellions, I think on the podcast, So most of you probably have a good background on on those fears that that people had during the Revolutionary War and after. True in this case, though, it took a seventeen seventy five proclamation from the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord dune More, to really shake things up. He promised freedom to the slaves of rebel masters if they joined the British. That plus the simple need for states to fill continental army recruitment quotas with basically anyone they could get, was enough for the rules to start being overlooked. Rhode Island, for example, even authorized slave enlistment in seventeen seventy eight. And of course too many slaves saw Dunmore's offer as an opportunity. I mean that that's why it was such a problem for the patriot side. If you're going to be turning away men who can just go sign up up with the British, that's probably a bad move. But yeah, many slaves saw Dunmore's offer as a chance out of slavery. According to Kelly and Lewis, again, up to twenty thousand African Americans served the British during the war, which was a number way higher than I was expecting to see. Uh. The stakes were raised, though, so it didn't just become an issue of if you serve a rebel master, you can possibly get your freedom if you fight for the British. In seventeen seventy nine, Sir Henry Clinton, who was the Commander in chief of British forces in America, issued a proclamation that any blacks captured with Patriot forces would be sold for a profit. So now, if you are deciding to throw in your luck with the Patriot cause and you're caught, you're just going to be sold again. And that actually gives a pretty good indication that Lord Dunmore's earlier offer freedom shouldn't be taken as a human rights gesture. It was debated in Great Britain as possibly shameful in so much as it could turn slaves on their masters. Some even feared that it would create general rebellion. After all, from their point of view, they thought, what's to keep slaves of loyalist masters from leaving a freedom? If freedom is a state. Yeah, that's the most obvious point to me. If if you're considering neighboring plantations, for example, in the slaves on one plantation belonged to a rebel master and they can go fight the British, the slaves on the next plantation are supposed to stay there and still be slaves. That seems like a rebellion could easily start that way. Of course, the British didn't want to end slavery or encourage revolution that would disrupt the labor structure of their American and Caribbean colonies. And for slaves tempted by the promise of freedom, redcoat service often meant poor rations and clothing, backbreaking work, death from camp diseases. Yeah, so it really done. Moore's proclamation should be seen as something is a way to increase enlistment rather than a statement on slavery. But uh, with with all of these problems to consider here, threats of enslavement, sale, backbreaking labor from all sides, it's not too surprising that many slaves didn't join either side, you know. They they simply tried to stay out of the fight, stay at home, or take the opportunity to just leave too. And there's all this chaos happening. Another remarkable statistic from from the book I mentioned earlier, Up to one third of Georgia's slave population just left during the revolutionary war. Some slaves joined guerrilla units, some formed interracial bands that capitalized on the chaos that was going on, and some just lived in the wilderness. So people finding a finding a third way here essentially um, but I found it. I was glad to learn more about armistead story. And he's one who listeners have suggested in the past as a great example of a double agent. It because his biography is so difficult to to flesh out many details on and we found that before with some of these spies, by by very nature of spying, there's often not a great record left behind. Um. But I think it's a good thing because we got to learn more about what the options were for African American slaved in tree during the American Revolution. Thank you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic. Since this is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook U r L or something similar during the course of the show, that may be obsolete now. So here's our current contact information. We are at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com, and then we're at Missed in the History all over social media that is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, and Instagram. Thanks again for listen, ng for moralness and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com. MHM

Happy Saturday, everybody. I recently ran into a young listener of our show who said that her favorite episodes were the ones that are connected in some way to Hamilton's. So today we have pulled something Hamilton's adjacent out of the archives. It is Sarah and Deblina episode on James Armistead, an enslaved man who worked as a double agent during the Revolutionary War who's handler was the market A Lafayette. So let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chuck for boarding and to Blina. We've covered a lot of spy stories in the past year, so we have there's no coincidence, mostly thanks to you. We love the war spies. I do spies in general, you do. They always make for some fun stories, they really do, and and they're another popular listener quest of ours. But today we're going to venture into the very murky territory of Revolutionary War spies, and specifically we're going to focus on the story of James Armistead Lafayette, who was an enslaved Virginia man who worked for the marketa Lafayette, who spied on Benedict Arnold, and who even gained the trust of General Lord Cornwallis. So if that all adds up correctly, he's a double agent circa eighty one, which is a pretty impressive feat. But since Armistead's life story or the details that are available are just a little bit, then we'll also be talking more about more general espionage during the American Revolution, George Washington as a spy master, for example, And since Armistead was a slave, we're also going to talk about the place of African American slaves and freeman in the Revolution. Yes, we're gonna be covering a lot of ground today, but before we get to that, it's important to note that even though an African American man occupies one of the most notable spots in the early American Revolution Christmas Attics, of course, the first person shot by the British, and the Boston massacre of seventeen seventy, there are really a lot of misassumptions about the position of African Americans in general in the Revolution. According to Noel by Poier, for example, in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Many people assume that African American soldiers were segregated into all black units if they existed at all, or worked only as laborers and servants. But that wasn't the case at all. No state militias and the Continental Army were integrated. Despite attempts to the contrary. Manpower just simply demanded it. African Americans also made invaluable spies, both for the rebels and for the British. They could, for example, work as orderlies, picking up private conversations and privileged information in the process, and they could also act as local sides, which gave them freedom of movement and the ability to pass on information. So two important jobs there that also double his spy pretty easily. UM. We'll talk more about the offers made by each side toward enslaved able bodied men in general, but for now, it's just enough to say that both American and British officers would have had full reason to believe that an enslaved man like Armistead was on their side, so there wouldn't be an issue of is he double crossing us? He should be passionately for one side or the other. Um. And that's because the Americans figured this they would assume that of us, an enslaved man like this might be fighting for his country's freedom, might be fighting for the home he knew, while the British would assume that he was fighting for his own personal freedom. And again we're going to get more into the details on that later, but before we do that, some some information on Armistead's life. Yes, he was born in New Kent, Virginia, likely in it perhaps his latest seventeen sixty. According to some sources, his master was William Armistead, and James worked as a field hand on a tobacco plantation. In seventeen eighty one, his master gave him permission to join the Continental Army, and he was soon teamed up with the Marquis de Lafayette, the frameless French hero of the Revolution and a close friend of General George Washington. And with Lafayette as his handler, Armstead poses an escaped slave and entered the camp of turncoat Benedict Arnold, who we all know well, where he worked as a guide and as an orderly So that was his his start as a spy, passing on information to Lafayette and uh It's even suggested that he might have had other orderly's working under him, you know, so he wasn't the only spy in the camp, but he had other African American men who would pass on information to kind of the spy manager by Master Yes, and and they'd get that that information onto Lafayette. Eventually, though, Armistead was posted close enough to the camp of General Lord Cornwallis, and that was of course a big bump and the sort of information he was receiving, And he also managed to gain Cornwallis's trust and became one of his agents, making Armistead at this point a double agent. So he was on the one hand getting information from the British and informing Lafayette. On the other he was feeding the British inaccurate information that Lafayette was giving him reporting back on British movement. So, you know, just the circle of of information and misinformation going on. The biggest perk of being a double agent, though, was that freedom of movement that we mentioned earlier. According to Madison Gray and Time Magazine, it was during one of these trips that Armistead discovered that ten thousand British troops were headed to Yorktown, and this was information that eventually got passed on to General Washington, and Yorktown was, of course the turning point of the war. It came after a joint French American attack on British held New York failed, and when Congress was bankrupt and enlistments were flagging after years of war, so things looked pretty bleak at this time. Yeah, for the for the revolutionary cause, in part because of this intelligence from Armistead, Washington and Continental soldiers plus four thousand French soldiers began heading towards Yorktown to meet Cornwallis's men, and along the way, of course, a French fleet cut off the British fleet's attempt to rescue Cornwallis's army, leaving them stranded. And we're not going to go into the whole history of Yorktown here, but um, the siege began September one and ultimately ended with Cornwallis's surrender a few weeks later, and sometime after that the end of the war. Uh. There's a quote in the in the Gray article that Dablina mentioned from rex Elis, who's the vice president of Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Area, and he really emphasized the full importance of Armistead's part in this victory and said quote, if he had not given the information that he gave at the strategic time he did, they would not have had the intelligence to create the blockade that ended the war. So I mean certainly speaks for for Armistead's work. Um an interesting side note here though, especially since Armistead was a double agent and so clearly helped pivotal yeah, pivotal point in the war. General Washington was not always a fan of double agents, even though he has a bit of a reputation as a spy master. Yes, Washington is pretty well known for running the Culper Spy Ring in New York City and for employee Sir James Jay's secret recipe for invisible ink and his sensitive correspondence. But he was uncomfortable with the haphazard nature of the game of of using double agent and just the spy game in general. You know, different spy working for different people, untrained agents passing on rumors and gossip as real intelligent. Yeah, he wanted spies to be centralized under his control. He did. He wanted everything to be nice and orderly, as you would expect Washington would. Fortunately, according to Edward langle in military history. Washington's officers were willing to disobey his orders and set up their own networks. It was one of these that finally turned George Washington onto the value of using a double agent. A former captain in a New York regiment, Elijah Hunter, who posed as a Tory, infiltrated General Sir Henry Clinton's camp and was asked in turn to spy for the British. So when Hunter's handler first started passing on information to Washington, the General expressed his general distrust of double agents, which we just talked about. He said, quote, their situation obliges them to trim a good deal in order to keep well with both sides, and the less they have it in their power to do us mischief, the better, especially if we consider that the enemy can purchase their fidelity at a higher price than we can. Okay, that's an astute point to to make, something to be aware of. Fortunately, though, at least um for Washington's general trust of double agents, Hunter didn't blow it. He didn't do any mischief like Washington was concerned about, became a valuable double agent, and uh sort of opened Washington up for a little bit of a more decentralized sort of spy network, something that would allow him to welcome this information he was getting from Armistead later down the line back to Armistead's story, though, you would expect that after his work for Lafayette, after the spectacular turn as a double agent, his vital service to the war effort, would be recognized with at the very least his freedom, But that was not the case. After the war, he returned to his master, returned to to Virginia, the Virginia Plan Tation where he had worked and was still a slave. But here's another interesting side note about Washington. Washington, despite his growing interest in integrated troops during the war, was very much four slaves returning to their masters after the fight was over and not slipping away during the hubbub. But telling Lee, Washington accepted the fact that this might not happen. They might not return to their masters. He even acknowledged that some of his own slaves who had left during the fight would probably not come back, save for quote an inclination to return. Yeah. I read a little bit about this in Kelly and Loos's A History of African Americans to eighteen eighty and it's almost as though, or the way they presented it, it's almost as though George Washington, the property owner, would prefer to have his property, his human property, restored to him. But George Washington, the rebel, understood that his slaves might not be willing to see themselves property anymore, especially after this dramatic war that had happened in the name of civil liberty. So this is just to give some some background that this is happening all over the New Country at this point, whether slaves are going to return after the chaos of the war. And Uh, I think it's pretty remarkable that Armistead did choose to do that. Uh. Nevertheless, though his friends didn't forget him, so he didn't return to This is not a sad ending for his story. At least he didn't return to slavery and live this obscure life. Uh. Fortunately to his master also supported his eventual manumission. But in seventeen seven, Armistead was finally granted his freedom by the state of Virginia, thanks in part to a strong letter of recommendation from Lafayette, who noted that he was quote entitled to every reward his situation could admit of Armistead ended up living out his days in Virginia, farming, marrying, and eventually having children. After his emancipation, he also took on Lafayette's name and they met one more time, and it was during Lafayette's eighteen twenty four final visit to the US. Lafayette spotted him in a crowd and came over to embrace him. Armistead Lafayette died in eighteen thirty or eighteen thirty two, depending on what source you read. Yeah, so, like I said, a pretty good end to to that story. But I think the biggest question hanging over it, and I just hinted it this a minute ago, is why why did he do it? You know, why did he fight in the first place? Why after his service did he return to slavery willingly? And uh, I really enjoyed listening to a podcast on the Colonial Williamsburg site. They have a lot on on Armistead, hosted by Richard Josie, who actually interprets Armstead and Williamsburg. I mean like in character, uh, he he portrays him. And he said that those were the two most common questions that visitors to to Williamsburg asked him, and he said that his answer to the first question why did Armistead fight in the first place is country. In his answer to the second why did he return is his family sense of place. Um, of course, we can't be sure what motivated Armistead in either of those, but we can sort of take a look at the options that were available to able bodied slaves and free blacks in the rebel colonies at the time of the American Revolution. And while the options were certainly better during the Revolution than they had been previously, they were still pretty bleak. Yeah, the outside of the war, slaves would have been as aware as anyone of the philosophy behind the revolution, and they could have certainly hoped for that the benefits of liberty might extend to them a little bit. Plus, anyone slave or not can have a connection, I guess, and an investment in home where they live, where they were born. Consequently, there was a strong early support for the war among black slaves and freemen, with men like Peter Salem, who was a Massachusetts slave freed so that he could fight. He saw action in Lexington and it conquered. Or Salem Poor was another freeman who fought at Bunker Hill and thanks to a decent, although illegal tradition of some black participation in New England militias. The early Continental Army actually counted a fair number of black soldiers among its ranks. But if it hadn't been for the eventual manpower shortages later in the war that Dablina mentioned earlier, plus a pretty bold move on the part of the British, it's likely that black participation in the army would have been pretty limited because actually, when when George Washington became Commander in chief of the Continental Army, he even banned the future enlistment of black men free or otherwise, and in the southern colonies with black populations out numbering white populations. Uh, folks were always a little bit leery of anything that could stir up possible slave rebellions and insurrections. And we've talked, we've covered quite a few slave rebellions, I think on the podcast, So most of you probably have a good background on on those fears that that people had during the Revolutionary War and after. True in this case, though, it took a seventeen seventy five proclamation from the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord dune More, to really shake things up. He promised freedom to the slaves of rebel masters if they joined the British. That plus the simple need for states to fill continental army recruitment quotas with basically anyone they could get, was enough for the rules to start being overlooked. Rhode Island, for example, even authorized slave enlistment in seventeen seventy eight. And of course too many slaves saw Dunmore's offer as an opportunity. I mean that that's why it was such a problem for the patriot side. If you're going to be turning away men who can just go sign up up with the British, that's probably a bad move. But yeah, many slaves saw Dunmore's offer as a chance out of slavery. According to Kelly and Lewis, again, up to twenty thousand African Americans served the British during the war, which was a number way higher than I was expecting to see. Uh. The stakes were raised, though, so it didn't just become an issue of if you serve a rebel master, you can possibly get your freedom if you fight for the British. In seventeen seventy nine, Sir Henry Clinton, who was the Commander in chief of British forces in America, issued a proclamation that any blacks captured with Patriot forces would be sold for a profit. So now, if you are deciding to throw in your luck with the Patriot cause and you're caught, you're just going to be sold again. And that actually gives a pretty good indication that Lord Dunmore's earlier offer freedom shouldn't be taken as a human rights gesture. It was debated in Great Britain as possibly shameful in so much as it could turn slaves on their masters. Some even feared that it would create general rebellion. After all, from their point of view, they thought, what's to keep slaves of loyalist masters from leaving a freedom? If freedom is a state. Yeah, that's the most obvious point to me. If if you're considering neighboring plantations, for example, in the slaves on one plantation belonged to a rebel master and they can go fight the British, the slaves on the next plantation are supposed to stay there and still be slaves. That seems like a rebellion could easily start that way. Of course, the British didn't want to end slavery or encourage revolution that would disrupt the labor structure of their American and Caribbean colonies. And for slaves tempted by the promise of freedom, redcoat service often meant poor rations and clothing, backbreaking work, death from camp diseases. Yeah, so it really done. Moore's proclamation should be seen as something is a way to increase enlistment rather than a statement on slavery. But uh, with with all of these problems to consider here, threats of enslavement, sale, backbreaking labor from all sides, it's not too surprising that many slaves didn't join either side, you know. They they simply tried to stay out of the fight, stay at home, or take the opportunity to just leave too. And there's all this chaos happening. Another remarkable statistic from from the book I mentioned earlier, Up to one third of Georgia's slave population just left during the revolutionary war. Some slaves joined guerrilla units, some formed interracial bands that capitalized on the chaos that was going on, and some just lived in the wilderness. So people finding a finding a third way here essentially um, but I found it. I was glad to learn more about armistead story. And he's one who listeners have suggested in the past as a great example of a double agent. It because his biography is so difficult to to flesh out many details on and we found that before with some of these spies, by by very nature of spying, there's often not a great record left behind. Um. But I think it's a good thing because we got to learn more about what the options were for African American slaved in tree during the American Revolution. Thank you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic. Since this is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook U r L or something similar during the course of the show, that may be obsolete now. So here's our current contact information. We are at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com, and then we're at Missed in the History all over social media that is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, and Instagram. Thanks again for listen, ng for moralness and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com. MHM