By December 1, nearly three hundred slaves had enlisted in what became known as Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment. On the 9th, Dunmore, whose forces now numbered six hundred, felt confident of victory when he again faced a rebel force. The engagement took place at Great Bridge, which spanned the Elizabeth River some ten miles below Norfolk. On one side of the river the British had constructed a fortification and emplaced artillery, while the Virginians had dug in on the other. Duped by a black spy into believing that the Patriots’ position was weak, Dunmore ordered an attack supported by artillery fire. As confident Redcoats advanced across the bridge, the Patriots held their fire. Then, when the British were within fifty yards of the decoy force of a hundred men, they let loose a hail of musketry. The volley put the British to flight. Shortly thereafter, deciding that prudence was the greater part of valor, Dunmore took as many Tory families as he could aboard his fleet of ships and, abandoning Norfolk, left the Virginia mainland to the rebels.

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From this point on, Dunmore employed his black soldiers as pilots on small craft that raided river settlements and plantations and as foragers when provisions ran low. Early in the new year, however, Dunmore was alarmed to discover that a smallpox epidemic was carrying off ‘an incredible number of our people, especially blacks.’ By early June, his Ethiopian Regiment had been reduced in strength to 150, despite the daily arrival of six to eight new volunteers. The next month, the British withdrew to Saint George’s Island in the Potomac River, scuttled more than half of their 103 vessels, and then sailed down the river and out of harm’s way.

According to Quarles: ‘The Negro who fled to [Dunmore] was actuated by the same love of liberty for which the colonists avowedly broke with the mother country. To the slave, the lordship’s proclamation was an invitation to the fellowship of the free….’ Meanwhile, as the crucial part played by a black informant in the battle of Great Bridge indicates, many Virginia slaves–for one reason or another, including loyalty to their masters and, no doubt, fear of what might happen to those they left behind or to themselves if they were caught–resisted the temptation to go over to the British.

While the spy who helped dupe the British at Great Bridge remains anonymous, another black spy who played an even more important part in the war received a certificate attesting to his services and sat for a portrait. His name was James Armistead, and the story of how he became ‘James Lafayette’ is fascinating.

James enlisted, with his owner’s permission, in mid-March 1781, shortly after the marquis de Lafayette arrived in Williamsburg at the head of three light-infantry regiments made up of New England and New Jersey Continentals. The troops were tired and dispirited.

Lafayette’s mission was to put a stop to the havoc that was being wreaked throughout Virginia by the forces under the command of the hated turncoat Benedict Arnold. Soon, however, the audacious Frenchman who had set out in pursuit of Arnold found himself being chased by Lord Charles Cornwallis, who was leading a force of some five thousand soldiers. Moreover, Cornwallis had a cavalry force of eight hundred men, mounted on stolen Virginia thoroughbreds, whereas Lafayette had only fifty poorly mounted men. Under these circumstances, the best Lafayette could do was to elude the larger force, while–to keep up the spirit of the Virginians–making it look as if Cornwallis were running from him.

To survive in this cat-and-mouse situation, Lafayette needed reliable information about enemy plans. James Armistead provided it. First, he got inside Arnold’s camp working as an orderly and guide. Then he reported everything he learned to runners who took the information back to Lafayette. When Arnold returned to the North, Armistead became a waiter at Lord Cornwallis’ headquarters and again, almost daily, provided enough inside information to allow Lafayette to camp close to Cornwallis without being detected. Had the American force been discovered, there is little doubt that it would have been put to flight, if not utterly destroyed. And without that army, it is unlikely that the joint Franco-American operation that led to Cornwallis’ entrapment at Yorktown could have been successfully accomplished.

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