Hessians." Williams says: "The black regiment was one of three that
prevented the enemy from turning the flank of the American army. These
black troops were doubtless regarded as the weak spot of the line, but
they were not."

The colony of Massachusetts alone furnished 67,907 men for the
Revolutionary War, while all the colonies together south of
Pennsylvania furnished but 50,493, hence the sentiment prevailing in
Massachusetts would naturally be very powerful in determining any
question pertaining to the army. When the country sprang to arms in
response to that shot fired at Lexington, the echoes of which,
poetically speaking, were heard around the world, the free Negroes of
every Northern colony rallied with their white neighbors. They were in
the fight at Lexington and at Bunker Hill, but when Washington came to
take command of the army he soon gave orders that no Negroes should be
enlisted. He was sustained in this position by a council of war and by
a committee of conference in which were representatives from Rhode
Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and it was agreed that Negroes
be rejected altogether. The American Negro's persistency in pressing
himself where he is not _wanted_ but where he is _eminently needed_
began right there. Within six weeks so many colored men applied for
enlistment, and those that had been put out of the army raised such a
clamor that Washington changed his policy, and the Negro, who of all
America's population contended for the privilege of shouldering a gun
to fight for American liberty, was allowed a place in the Continental
Army, the first national army organized on this soil, ante-dating the
national flag. The Negro soldier helped to evolve the national
standard and was in the ranks of the fighting men over whom it first
unfolded its broad stripes and glittering stars.