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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Sary Dowdy and I'm Delina chuk Reboarding and Blena.

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Speaker 1: We've covered a lot of spy stories in the past

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Speaker 1: year or so. We have, there's no coincidence, mostly thanks

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Speaker 1: to you. I love the war spies. I do spies

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Speaker 1: in general. You do. They always make first fun stories,

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Speaker 1: they really do. And and there are another popular listener

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Speaker 1: quest of ours. But today we're going to venture into

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Speaker 1: the very murky territory of Revolutionary war spies, and specifically

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Speaker 1: we're going to focus on the story of James Armistead Lafayette,

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Speaker 1: who was an enslaved Virginia man who worked for the

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Speaker 1: market Lafayette, who spied on Benedict Arnold, and who even

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Speaker 1: gained the trust of General Lord Cornwallace. So if that

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Speaker 1: all adds up correctly, he's a double agent circa Sight one,

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Speaker 1: which is a pretty impressive feat. But since Armistead's life

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Speaker 1: story or the details that are available are just a

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Speaker 1: little bit, then we'll also be talking more about more

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Speaker 1: general espionage during the American Revolution. George Washington as a

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Speaker 1: spy master for example, and since Armistead was a slave,

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Speaker 1: we're also going to talk about the place of African

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Speaker 1: American slaves and freemen in the Revolution. Yes, we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be covering a lot of ground today, but before we

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Speaker 1: get to that, it's important to note that even though

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Speaker 1: an African American man occupies one of the most notable

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Speaker 1: spots in the early American Revolution Christmas Attics, of course,

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Speaker 1: the first person shot by the British, and the Boston

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Speaker 1: massacre of seventeen seventy, there are really a lot of

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Speaker 1: misassumptions about the position of African Americans in general in

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Speaker 1: the Revolution, according to noelby Poier, for example, in the

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Speaker 1: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, many people assume that African American soldiers

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Speaker 1: were segregated into all black units, if they existed at all,

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Speaker 1: or worked only as laborers and servants. But that wasn't

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Speaker 1: the case at all. No state militias and the Continental

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Speaker 1: Army were integrated. Despite attempts to the contrary. Manpower just

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Speaker 1: simply demanded it. African Americans also made invaluable spies, both

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Speaker 1: for the rebels and for the British. They could, for example,

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Speaker 1: work as orderlies, picking up private conversations and privileged information

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Speaker 1: in the process, and they could also act as local guides,

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Speaker 1: which gave them freedom of movement and the ability to

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Speaker 1: pass on information. So two important jobs there that also

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Speaker 1: double his spy pretty easily. Um. We'll talk more about

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Speaker 1: the offers made by each side toward enslaved able bodied

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Speaker 1: men in general, but for now, it's just enough to

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Speaker 1: say that both American and British officers would have had

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Speaker 1: full reason to believe that an enslaved man like Armistead

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Speaker 1: was on their side, so there wouldn't be an issue

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Speaker 1: of is he double crossing us? He should be passionately

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Speaker 1: for one side or the other. Um. And that's because

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Speaker 1: the Americans figured this. They would assume that of us,

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Speaker 1: an enslaved man like this might be fighting for his

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Speaker 1: country's freedom, might be fighting for the home he knew,

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Speaker 1: while the British would assume that he was fighting for

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Speaker 1: his own personal freedom. And again we're going to get

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Speaker 1: more into the details on that later, but before we

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Speaker 1: do that, some some information in Armistead's life. Yes, he

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Speaker 1: was born in New Kent, Virginia, likely in seventeen forty eight,

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Speaker 1: but perhaps as latest seventeen sixty. According to some sources,

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Speaker 1: his master was William Armistead, and James worked as a

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Speaker 1: field hand on a tobacco plantation. In seventeen eighty one,

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Speaker 1: his master gave him permission to join the Continental Army,

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Speaker 1: and he was soon teamed up with the Marquis de Lafayette,

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Speaker 1: the famous French hero of the Revolution and a close

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Speaker 1: friend of General George Washington. And with Lafayette as his handler,

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Speaker 1: Armstead poses an escaped slave and entered the camp of

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Speaker 1: turncoat Benedict Arnold, who we all know well, where he

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Speaker 1: worked as a guide and as an order link. So

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Speaker 1: that was his his start as a spy, passing on

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Speaker 1: information to Lafayette. And uh, it's even suggested that he

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Speaker 1: might have had other orderlies working under him, you know,

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Speaker 1: so he wasn't the only spy in the camp. That

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Speaker 1: he had other African American men who would pass on

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Speaker 1: information to the spy manager by master. Yes, and and

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Speaker 1: I get that that information onto Lafayette eventually, though, Armistead

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Speaker 1: was posted close enough to the camp of General Lord Cornwallace,

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Speaker 1: and that was of course a big bump and the

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Speaker 1: sort of information he was receiving, and he also managed

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Speaker 1: to gain Cornwallace's trust and became one of his agents,

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Speaker 1: making Armistead at this point a double agent. So he

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Speaker 1: was on the one hand getting information from the British

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Speaker 1: and informing Lafayette. On the other he was feeding the

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Speaker 1: British inaccurate information that Lafayette was giving him reporting back

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Speaker 1: on British movement. So you know, just the circle of

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Speaker 1: information and misinformation going on. The biggest perk of being

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Speaker 1: a double agent, though, was that freedom of movement that

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Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier. According to Madison Gray and Time Magazine,

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Speaker 1: it was during one of these trips that Armistead discovered

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Speaker 1: that ten thousand British troops were headed to Yorktown, and

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Speaker 1: this was information that eventually got passed on to General Washington,

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Speaker 1: and Yorktown was of course the turning point of the war.

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Speaker 1: It came after a joint French American attack on British

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Speaker 1: held New York failed, and when Congress was bankrupt and

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Speaker 1: enlistments were flagging after years of war, so things looked

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Speaker 1: pretty bleak at this time for the for the revolutionary cause,

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Speaker 1: But in part because of this intelligence from Armistead, Washington

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Speaker 1: and Continental soldiers plus four thousand French soldiers began heading

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Speaker 1: towards Yorktown to meet Cornwallis's men, and along the way,

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Speaker 1: of course, that a French fleet cut off the British

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Speaker 1: fleet's attempt to rescue Cornwallis's arm, leaving them stranded. And

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Speaker 1: we're not going to go into the whole history of

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Speaker 1: Yorktown here, but um, the siege began September one and

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Speaker 1: ultimately ended with Cornwallis's surrender a few weeks later, and

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Speaker 1: sometime after that the end of the war. Uh. There's

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Speaker 1: a quote in the in the Gray article that Dablina

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Speaker 1: mentioned from rex Ellis, who's the vice president of Colonial

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Speaker 1: Williamsburg's Historic Area, and he really emphasized the full importance

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Speaker 1: of Armistead's part in this victory and said quote, if

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Speaker 1: he had not given the information that he gave at

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Speaker 1: the strategic time he did, they would not have had

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Speaker 1: the intelligence to create the blockade that ended the war. So,

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Speaker 1: I mean certainly speaks for for Armistead's work. Um. An

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Speaker 1: interesting side note here, though, especially since Armistead was a

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Speaker 1: double agent and so clearly helped pivotal, yeah, pivotal point

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Speaker 1: in the war. General Washington was not always a fan

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Speaker 1: of double agents, even though he has a bit of

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Speaker 1: a reputation as a spy master. Yes, Washington is pretty

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Speaker 1: well known for running the Culper spy ring in New

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Speaker 1: York City and for employee Sir James Jay's secret recipe

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Speaker 1: for invisible ink and his sensitive correspondence. But he was

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Speaker 1: uncomfortable with the haphazard nature of the game of of

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Speaker 1: using double agent, and just the spy game in general.

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Speaker 1: You know, different spies working for different people, untrained agents

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Speaker 1: passing on rumors and gossip as real intelligent Yeah, he

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Speaker 1: wanted spies to be centralized under his control. He did.

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Speaker 1: He wanted everything to be nice and orderly, as you

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Speaker 1: would expect Washington would. Fortunately, according to Edward Langle in

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Speaker 1: Military History, Washington's officers were willing to disobey his orders

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Speaker 1: and set up their own networks. It was one of

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Speaker 1: these that finally turned George Washington onto the value of

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Speaker 1: using a double agent. A former captain in a New

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Speaker 1: York regiment, Elijah Hunter, who posed as a Tory, infiltrated

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Speaker 1: General Sir Henry Clinton's camp and was asked in turn

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Speaker 1: to spy for the British. So when Hunter's handler first

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Speaker 1: started passing on information to Washington, the General expressed his

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Speaker 1: general distrust of double agents, which we just talked about.

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Speaker 1: He said, quote, their situation obliges them to trim a

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Speaker 1: good deal in order to keep well with both sides,

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Speaker 1: and the less they have it in their power to

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Speaker 1: do us mischief, the better, especially if we consider that

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Speaker 1: the enemy can purchase their fidelity at a higher price

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Speaker 1: than we can. Okay, that's an astute point to to make,

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Speaker 1: something to be aware of. Fortunately, though, at least um

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Speaker 1: for Washington's general trust of double agents, Hunter didn't blow it.

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Speaker 1: He didn't do any mischief like Washington was concerned about,

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Speaker 1: became a valuable double agent, and uh sort of opened

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Speaker 1: Washington up for a little bit of a more decentralized

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Speaker 1: sort of spy network, something that would allow him to

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Speaker 1: welcome this information he was getting from Armistead. Later down

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Speaker 1: the line back to armistead story, though, you would expect

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Speaker 1: that after his work for Lafayette, after the spectacular turn

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Speaker 1: as a double agent, his vital service to the war

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Speaker 1: effort would be recognized with at the very least his freedom,

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Speaker 1: But that was not the case. After the war, he

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Speaker 1: returned to his master, returned to to Virginia. The Virginia Plantation,

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Speaker 1: where he had worked and was still a slave. But

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Speaker 1: here's another interesting side note about Washington. Washington, despite his

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Speaker 1: growing interest in integrated troops during the war, was very

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Speaker 1: much four slaves returning to their masters after the fight

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Speaker 1: was over and not slipping away during the hubbub. But

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Speaker 1: telling Lee, Washington accepted the fact that this might not happen,

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Speaker 1: They might not return to their masters. He even acknowledged

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Speaker 1: that some of his own slaves who had left during

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Speaker 1: the fight would probably not come back, save for quote

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Speaker 1: an inclination to return. I read a little bit about

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Speaker 1: this and Kelly and Loos's a History of African Americans

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Speaker 1: to eighteen eighty, and it's almost as though, or the

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Speaker 1: way they presented it, it's almost as though George Washington,

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Speaker 1: the property owner, would prefer to have his property, his

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Speaker 1: human property, restored to him. But George Washington, the rebel,

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Speaker 1: understood that his slaves might not be willing to see

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Speaker 1: themselves as property anymore, especially after this dramatic war that

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Speaker 1: had happened in the name of civil liberty. So this

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Speaker 1: is just to give some some background that this is

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Speaker 1: happening all over the New Country at this point. Whether

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Speaker 1: slaves are going to return after the chaos of the war,

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Speaker 1: and UH, I think it's pretty remarkable that Armistead did

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Speaker 1: choose to do that. Uh. Nevertheless, though his friends didn't

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Speaker 1: forget him, so he didn't return to This is not

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Speaker 1: a sad ending for his story. At least he didn't

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Speaker 1: return to slavery and and live this obscure life. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Fortunately to his master also supported his eventual manu mission.

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Speaker 1: But in seventeen eighty seven, Armistead was finally granted his

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Speaker 1: freedom by the state of Virginia, thanks in part to

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Speaker 1: a strong letter of recommendation from Lafayette, who noted that

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Speaker 1: he was quote entitled to every reward his situation could

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Speaker 1: admit of. Armistead ended up living out his days in Virginia, farming, marrying,

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Speaker 1: and eventually having children. After his emancipation, he also took

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Speaker 1: on Lafayette's name and they met one more time, and

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Speaker 1: it was during Lafayette's eighteen twenty four final visit to

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Speaker 1: the US Lafayette spotted him in a crowd and came

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Speaker 1: over to embrace him. Armistead Lafayette died in eighteen thirty

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Speaker 1: or eighteen thirty two, depending on what source you read. Yeah, so,

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Speaker 1: like I said, a pretty good end to to that story.

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Speaker 1: But I think the biggest question hanging over it, and

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Speaker 1: I just hinted it this a minute ago, is why

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Speaker 1: why did he do it? You know, why did he

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Speaker 1: fight in the first place? Why after his service did

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Speaker 1: he return to slavery? Willingly? And uh? I really enjoyed

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Speaker 1: listening to a podcast on the Colonial Williamsburg SITEY have

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Speaker 1: a lot on on Armiston, hosted by Richard Josie, who

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Speaker 1: actually interprets Armstead and Williamsburg, I mean like in character, uh,

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Speaker 1: he he portrays him. And he said that those were

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Speaker 1: the two most common questions that visitors to to Williamsburg

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Speaker 1: asked him. And he said that his answer to the

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Speaker 1: first question, why did Armistead fight in the first place,

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Speaker 1: his country, and his answer to the second why did

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Speaker 1: he return is his family sense of place. Um. Of course,

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Speaker 1: we can't be sure what motivated Armistead in either of those,

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Speaker 1: but we can't sort of take a look at the

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Speaker 1: options that were available to able bodied slaves and free

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Speaker 1: blacks in the rebel colonies at the time of the

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Speaker 1: American Revolution, and while the options were certainly better during

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Speaker 1: the Revolution than they had been previously, they were still

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Speaker 1: pretty bleak. The outside of the war, slaves would have

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Speaker 1: been as aware as anyone of the philosophy behind the revolution,

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Speaker 1: and they could have certainly hoped for that the benefits

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Speaker 1: of liberty might extend to them a little bit. Plus,

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Speaker 1: anyone slave or not can have a connection, I guess,

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Speaker 1: in an investment in home where they live, where they

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Speaker 1: were born. Consequently, there was a strong early support for

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Speaker 1: the war among black slaves and freeman, with men like

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Speaker 1: Peter Salem, who was in Massachusetts slave freed so that

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Speaker 1: he could fight. He saw action in Lexington and it conquered.

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Speaker 1: Or Salem Poor was another freeman who fought at Bunker Hill,

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Speaker 1: And thanks to a decent, although illegal tradition of sound

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Speaker 1: black participation in New England militious, the early Continental Army

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Speaker 1: actually counted a fair number of black soldiers among its ranks.

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Speaker 1: But if it hadn't been for the eventual manpower shortages

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Speaker 1: later in the war that Dablina mentioned earlier, plus a

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Speaker 1: pretty bold move on the part of the British, it's

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Speaker 1: likely up black participation in the army would have been

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Speaker 1: pretty limited. Because actually, when when George Washington became commander

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Speaker 1: in chief of the Continental Army. He even banned the

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Speaker 1: future enlistment of black men, free or otherwise, and in

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Speaker 1: the southern colonies with black populations out numbering white populations. Uh,

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Speaker 1: folks were always a little bit leery of anything that

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Speaker 1: could stir up possible slave rebellions and insurrections. And we've talked,

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Speaker 1: we've covered quite a few slave rebellions, I think on

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Speaker 1: the podcast, so most of you probably have a good

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Speaker 1: background on on those fears that that people had during

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Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War and after. True in this case, though,

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Speaker 1: it took a seventeen proclamation from the Royal Governor of Virginia,

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Speaker 1: Lord done More to really shake things up. He promised

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Speaker 1: freedom to the slaves of rebel masters if they joined

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Speaker 1: the British. That plus the simple need for states to

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Speaker 1: fill Continental Army recruitment quotas with basically anyone they could get,

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Speaker 1: was enough for the rules to start being overlooked. Rhode Island,

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Speaker 1: for example, even authorized slave enlistment in seventeen seventy eight,

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Speaker 1: And of course too many slaves saw Dunmore's offer as

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Speaker 1: an opportunity. I mean that that's why it was such

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Speaker 1: a problem for the Patriot side. If you're going to

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Speaker 1: be turning away men who can just go sign up

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Speaker 1: with the British. Uh, that's probably a bad move. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: many slaves saw Dunmore's offer as a chance out of slavery.

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Speaker 1: According to Kelly and Lewis, again, up to twenty thousand

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Speaker 1: African Americans served the British during the war, which was

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Speaker 1: a number way higher than I was expecting to see. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The stix were raised, though, so it didn't just become

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Speaker 1: an issue of if you serve a rebel master, you

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Speaker 1: can possibly get your freedom if you fight for the British.

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Speaker 1: In seventeen seventy nine, Sir Henry Clinton, who was the

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Speaker 1: Commander in chief of British forces in America, issued a

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Speaker 1: proclamation that any blacks captured with Patriot forces would be

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Speaker 1: sold for a profit. So now, if you are deciding

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Speaker 1: to throw in your luck with the Patriot cause and

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Speaker 1: you're caught, you're just going to be sold again. And

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Speaker 1: that actually gives a pretty good indication that Lord Dunmore's

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Speaker 1: earlier offer freedom shouldn't be taken as a human rights gesture.

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Speaker 1: It was debated in Great Britain as possibly shameful. In

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Speaker 1: so much as it could turn slaves on their masters.

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Speaker 1: Some even feared that it would create general rebellion. After all,

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Speaker 1: from their point of view, they thought, what's to keep

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Speaker 1: slaves of loyalist masters from leaving a freedom if freedom

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Speaker 1: is a state. Yeah, that's the most obvious point to me.

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Speaker 1: If if you're considering neighboring plantations, for example, in the

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Speaker 1: slaves on one plantation belonged to a rebel master and

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Speaker 1: they can go fight the British, the slaves on the

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Speaker 1: next plantation are supposed to stay there and still be slaves.

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Speaker 1: That seems like a rebellion could easily start that way.

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Speaker 1: Of course, the British didn't want to end slavery or

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Speaker 1: encourage revolution that would disrupt the labor structure of their

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Speaker 1: American and Caribbean colonies. And for slaves tempted, but a

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Speaker 1: promise of freedom redcoat service often meant poor rations and clothing,

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Speaker 1: backbreaking work, death from camp diseases. Yeah, so it really done.

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Speaker 1: More's proclamation should be seen as something is a way

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Speaker 1: to increase enlistment rather than a statement on slavery. But um,

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Speaker 1: with with all of these problems, to consider your threats

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Speaker 1: of enslavement sale backbreaking labor from all sides. It's not

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Speaker 1: too surprising that many slaves didn't join either side, you know.

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Speaker 1: They they simply tried to stay out of the fight,

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Speaker 1: stay at home, or take the opportunity to just leave too,

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Speaker 1: and there's all this chaos happening. Another remarkable statistic from

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Speaker 1: from the book I mentioned earlier, up to one third

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Speaker 1: of Georgia's slave population just left during the Revolutionary War.

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Speaker 1: Some slaves joined guerrilla units, some formed interracial bands that

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Speaker 1: capitalized on the chaos that was going on, and some

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Speaker 1: just lived in the wilderness. So people finding a finding

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Speaker 1: a third way here essentially. Um but I found it.

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Speaker 1: I was glad to learn more about armistead story. And

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Speaker 1: he's one who listeners have suggested in the past as

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Speaker 1: a great example of a double agent. But because his

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Speaker 1: biography is so difficult to to flesh out many details

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Speaker 1: on and we found that before with some of these spies,

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Speaker 1: by the very nature of flying, there's often not a

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Speaker 1: great record left behind. Um But I think it's a

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Speaker 1: good thing because we got to learn more about what

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Speaker 1: the options were for African American slaved and free during

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Speaker 1: the American Revolution. It was really interesting to learn about

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Speaker 1: it from this perspective, since we're so focused, especially where

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Speaker 1: we live, and on the Civil War and the history

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Speaker 1: of the Civil War and the role of African Americans

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Speaker 1: slaves in that. So this was something different. Yes, and

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Speaker 1: and um I enjoyed it too, for the very reason

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Speaker 1: I just mentioned that we have covered so many slave

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Speaker 1: rebellions and possible uprisings. I thought it was neat to

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Speaker 1: learn about one where it didn't happen, but people were

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Speaker 1: so concerned that it could. Uh. So again, a fun

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Speaker 1: one to research, and thank you guys who suggested James

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Speaker 1: Armstead in the first place. But before we move on

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Speaker 1: to our later show segment, I thought we'd include a

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Speaker 1: quote from Abigail Adams to her husband John Adams. UM.

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Speaker 1: It just seemed fitting to a lot of times, it's

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Speaker 1: hard to reconcile the um philosophy behind the American Revolution

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Speaker 1: to what happened in the next decades leading out to

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Speaker 1: the Civil War. UM, but it's important to note that

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Speaker 1: some people realize that that philosophy didn't always reconcile with

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Speaker 1: what was happening. Abigail Adams wrote, quote, I wish most

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Speaker 1: sincerely there was not a slave in the Province. It

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Speaker 1: always appeared a most equitous scheme to me to fight

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Speaker 1: ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from

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Speaker 1: those who have as good a right to freedom as

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Speaker 1: we have. Um. So fortunately we can say, at least

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Speaker 1: in James Armistead's case, that he did get his freedom

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Speaker 1: through his revolutionary war servant. M all right, we have

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Speaker 1: some listener mail today, Sarah, We do have some listener mail.

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Speaker 1: It is from Jared and he was writing in reference

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Speaker 1: to our Johnstown flood episode. He wrote, today I had

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Speaker 1: the pleasure of listening to the Johnstown Flood podcast. It

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Speaker 1: just so happens that I work in the shadow of

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Speaker 1: the stone bridge that stopped the debris and water during

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Speaker 1: the flood. Every day I got the honor of driving

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Speaker 1: under the bridge. After several years of this, one forgets

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Speaker 1: how many suffered and perished on that spot. Thank you

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Speaker 1: for the somber reminder. And Jared also attached a picture

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Speaker 1: of the bridge that he took, so we got to

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Speaker 1: see ourselves. It's always need to hear from people who

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Speaker 1: live in the places where we're talking about. Yeah. Often

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Speaker 1: they have just a photo to offer, as Jared did,

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Speaker 1: or they have another aspect of the story to offer

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Speaker 1: that we didn't include, So thank you Jared for sending

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Speaker 1: that along. We appreciate all the emails that you guys

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Speaker 1: send us and all the notes that you send us

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Speaker 1: on social media. If you'd like to do that, we

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Speaker 1: are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also

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Speaker 1: on Facebook and you can find us on Twitter at

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Speaker 1: missing History. And if you want to learn a little

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Speaker 1: bit more about the Revolutionary War, we do have an

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Speaker 1: image gallery on the subject. You can beat in color

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Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War Pictures Gallery and find that by searching

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Speaker 1: our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics because

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Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com and the NAP