American History: Meet Slave, American Hero, and Patriot Spy James Armistead Lafayette

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which leftists now love to exploit to push critical race theory and pretend they honor the black heroes of American history. But in my research of recent years, I discovered dozens of black American heroes whose courage and sacrifice shaped this country and who are barely known at all. James Armistead Lafayette went from being a slave to being one of the best spies working for the Americans during the American Revolution.

Armistead Lafayette outwitted British commander Gen. Cornwallis and provided George Washington vital information that contributed to the victory at the Battle of Yorktown. The Marquis de Lafayette paid tribute to Armistead Lafayette’s heroism and intelligence, and the former slave’s story would make an epic movie. Without his work, the Revolution might not have reached a successful conclusion at Yorktown, and history might be very different.

The American Army during the Revolution was racially integrated, and there are numerous black American heroes of the Revolution.

To name just a few, there were Peter Salem and Salem Poor, the heroes of Bunker Hill; Cato, the slave-turned-spy who became a key part of Washington’s Culper Spy Ring; Phillis Wheatley, whose poetry inspired George Washington and Ben Franklin; and the racially integrated regiments whose daring deeds marked them down in history as Washington’s Indispensables and Immortals. But perhaps the greatest black hero of the American Revolution was a man whose spy work was essential for the Patriot victory at Yorktown, which ended the war and definitively defeated Great Britain.

According to America Battlefield Trust, James Armistead was born into slavery circa 1760, and lived much of his life on a New Kent, Virginia, plantation. Armistead, as was common at the time, took his last name from his master, William Armistead. James was working as a clerk for William Armistead, ATI relates, as William managed Virginia’s military supplies during the Revolution. William, upon request, gave James permission in 1781 to enlist in the French Allied units under the command of the famed Marquis de Lafayette. While serving in the French Allied units, James Armistead was sent by Lafayette to British Gen. Lord Cornwallis’s headquarters as a spy.

James Armistead posed as a runaway slave, according to American Battlefield Trust. Since a number of runaway slaves sought protection from the British during the Revolution, hoping for freedom (the British did promise freedom to many slaves to spite the Americans), and since Armistead was a “native Virginian with extensive knowledge of the terrain, the British received him without suspicion,” as American Battlefield Trust relates. Armistead thus achieved a feat that was rare even among George Washington’s talented spy network; that is, Armistead became a double agent who had direct access to the “center of the British War Department” in America.

Not long ago I listened to an unabridged audiobook about The Culper Ring and the rest of The General's spy network.

May as well give it a full plug:

George Washington's Secret Six
by Brian Kilmeade & Don Yaeger
Read by Brian Kilmeade
Penguin Audio
ISBN 978-0-7352-0943-5

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