THE NEGRO SOLDIER'S CONTRIBUTION IN THE
                WARS OF THE UNITED STATES

    By Rev. W. Spencer Carpenter, Pastor of Allen A. M. E.
                 Church, Philadelphia, Pa.

            AS A SOLDIER, the American Negro equals any
            soldier in the world, and this fact will be admitted
            by any unbiased  historian or student of, this
            world's events in time of peace or of war.  When,
            on March 5, 1770, the roar of British musketry in
            Boston  awoke  the  suffering  colonists  to  the
            knowledge  that  American      Independence  was
            born, history opened her book of freedom, and,
with the blood of martyrdom, wrote on its pages as the purchase-
price of American liberty, the name of a Negro, Crispus Attucks,
who was the first American to fall, the first American to die for the
making of this country free.
    In 1775, when the Revolutionary War began, the Negro took his
place beside the white man in the ranks and fought until the war
ended. Not less than three thousand Negroes were enlisted under
Gen. Washington, and, according to a foreign officer who was with
Burgoyne at the time of his surrrender, "no regiment could be seen
in which there were not Negroes in abundance." In this war Con-
necticut raised a Negro battalion and Rhode Island raised an entire
regiment of Negroes, emancipating them before she would permit
them to fight for freedom.
    At the battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775, the Negro soldiers
fought side by side with their white comrades, and although the British
troops won that battle, they paid dearly for their victory. At one
moment when victory hung over the British troops, Major Pitcairn,
their leader, mounting an eminence, cried, "The day is ours!" Not
this, however, for a Negro soldier, Peter Salem, rushed forth, and,
with deliberate aim, fired at Major Pitcairn and killed him. If, instead
of being unmarked, the Bunker Hill Monument at Charlestown, Mass.,
held inscribed the names of its heroes, the name of Peter Salem would
head the list.
   Another Negro who participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill was
                              215




			

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 29, Num. 3

Negro Soldier's Contribution in the Wars of the U.S.

Spencer

Volume:  29
Issue Number:  03
Page Number:  215
Date:  01/1913