James
Armistead, (c1759-1830) a slave, began his service with General Lafayette during 1781,
when the young general was commanding
forces pitted against General Cornwallis,
to whose victory over General
Gates in South Carolina many American slaves, who
had joined the British on their promise of freedom, had contributed.
Trying desperately to raise
four hundred laborers, teamsters, and badly needed cavalry mounts,
Lafayette had advised General Washington that "nothing but
a treaty of alliance with the Negroes can find us dragoon Horses
[because] it is by this means the enemy have so formidable a Cavalry."
And it was during this period, with Cornwallis still formidable
and the Americans badly in need of intelligence as to his strength
and strategy, that James Armistead sought his master's permission
to join Lafayette.
His owner consenting, Armistead
enlisted and served the future hero of the French Revolution so
effectively that after the war the general was to state that his
spying activities were "industriously collected and more
faithfully delivered." Armistead had carried out important
commissions so effectively that the general recommended him as
worthy of "every reward his situation could admit of."
The brevity of Lafayette's
testimonial understated his intelligent agent's resourcefulness.
Taking advantage of British eagerness for Negro aid, Armistead
had risked his life by pretending to supply Cornwallis with information
damaging to the Americans -- a bit of playacting so perfectly
performed that not until the defeated Cornwallis encountered him
in Lafayette's headquarters was the black man's true loyalty and
identity revealed.
The rest is irony. In
1786, Armistead, who by now expressed his continuing admiration
for the marquis by calling himself James Armistead Lafayette,
was rewarded for his services to the Revolution by being emancipated
at the expense of the General Assembly of Virginia. In 1818,
still free, but little changed in circumstance, the old ex-spy
successfully petitioned the state for relief, acquiring after
thirty years a veteran's pension.
The essential incongruity
of his position was, however, unchanged. Although a recognized
veteran of the Revolution and a free man, he was not a citizen.
He had, nevertheless, emerged somewhat from the shadow in
which he had stood in earlier years. And in 1824, during
Lafayette's visit to Virginia, Armistead's now aging features
were to share once more the general's glory.
John B. Martin, an artist
as skilled in delineating a revolutionary veteran who was an ex-slave
and spy as one who became chief justice of the Supreme Court (John
Marshall), painted Armistead's portrait. Proud and dignified,
he appears with his highly individualized features forcefully
drawn, a dark, ruggedly handsome man looking out at the viewer
with quizzical expression. He wears a white neckcloth, his
blue military coat bearing no medals is simply adorned with bright
buttons embossed with the American eagle. Asserting an individual
identity earned at the repeated risk of his life, James Armistead
Lafayette affirmed an unshakable faith in the ideal democracy.
His portrait now hangs in the Valentine Museum at Richmond,
Virginia.
(See Bibliography Below)
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Author: Ralph Ellison. Picture Credit: Valentine Museum, Richmond, Virginia Bibliography: Ellison, Ralph., The Patriots, edited
by Virginius Dabney (1975).
James Armistead Lafayette
