Minority Soldiers Fighting in the American Revolution by Eric Reeder

Author:Eric Reeder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC

James, shown here in his later years, was skilled at obtaining secret British information and giving it to America.

Many of Lafayette’s troops had been killed in battles led by Cornwallis. Therefore, Lafayette needed very trustworthy information about the movements and plans of enemy British troops to defeat them. When Armistead learned helpful information, he was able to send it back to Lafayette secretly. Armistead put his life in danger by being a spy and gathering secret information to help the Americans.

Benedict Arnold also trusted James Armistead enough that he sometimes asked him to help guide British troops around the local area. This also made it easier to travel freely between the American and British camps. Because the British military officers trusted him, they sometimes discussed their plans and strategies for defeating the Americans right in front of him. Armistead would deliver reports to other spies on the side of America or to Lafayette himself.

Armistead would sometimes go to Lafayette’s camp himself to deliver critical information that he had gained from the British through surreptitiously spying on them. Often, however, sometimes daily, messengers from Lafayette’s camp would secretly meet Lafayette as he was out and get information from him to take back to the Americans. There may have even been other messengers and spies for the Americans who served the British as double-agents and who could also have delivered information for Armistead. We cannot, however, be sure of this. (It is noteworthy that it may have also been possible for Armistead, with the freedom that he had during the war, to escape from service and from slavery altogether, although he did not do this.)

One way that James Armistead helped Lafayette was by repeating to the general the conversations among British military leaders that he overheard while he served as a waiter at the headquarters of General Charles Cornwallis, stationed in Yorktown. He also carried other messages back and forth. He was even able to smuggle papers from General Cornwallis’s command center so that General Lafayette would know more about the plans of the British.

Armistead and the Yorktown Campaign

During the summer of 1781, General George Washington requested that General Lafayette provide as much information as possible about the British army’s plans and strategies, as well as about the people fighting for them and their equipment.

When Benedict Arnold and his men went farther north, so did Armistead. At that point he was able to get close to General Cornwallis’s camp and learn useful details about the plans of the British. James Armistead continued spying for the Americans while acting as a servant at Cornwallis’s camp during the Yorktown campaign. He gave information to General Lafayette that sealed the British army’s fate at Yorktown.

At one point, it is likely that Armistead learned the British naval fleet was planning to relocate ten thousand soldiers to Yorktown, Virginia, and that they were going to have a central command location there. It seems that Armistead was able to provide Lafayette and George Washington with extremely detailed information about the plans the British had.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.