"A third time the enemy, with desperate courage and increased strength, attempted to assail the redoubt, and would have carried it, but for the timely aid of two Continental battalions despatched by Sullivan to support his almost exhausted troops. It was in repelling these furious onsets that the newly-raised black regiment, under Col. Greene, distinguished itself by deeds of desperate valor. Posted behind a thicket in the valley, they three times drove back the Hessians, who charged repeatedly down the hill to dislodge them; and so determined were the enemy in these successive charges that the day after the battle, the Hessian colonel, upon whom this duty had devolved, applied to exchange his command, and go to New York, because he dared not lead his regiment again to battle, lest his men should shoot him by having caused them so much loss."—Arnold’s History of Rhode Island, Vol. II, pp. 427, 428. Three years later, these soldiers are thus mentioned by the Marquis de Chastellux: "The 5th (of January, 1781), I did not set out till eleven, although I had thirty miles’ journey to Lebanon. At the passage to the ferry, I met with a detachment of the Rhode Island regiment—the same corps we had with us all the last summer; but they have since been recruited and clothed. The greatest part of them are Negroes, or mulattoes; they are strong, robust men, and those I have seen had a very good appearance." When Colonel Greene was surprised and murdered near Point Bridge, New York, on the 14th of May, 1781, his colored soldiers heroically defended him till they were cut to pieces; and the Negro reached him over the dead bodies of his faithful Negroes. That large numbers of Negroes were enrolled in the army, and served faithfully as soldiers during the whole period of the war of the revolution, may be regarded as a well-established historical fact, and it should be borne in mind that the enlistment was not confined, by any means, to those who had before enjoyed the privileges of free citizens. Very many slaves were offered to and received by the army, on the condition that they were to be emancipated either at the time of enlistment, or when they had served out the term of their enlistment. The inconsistency of keeping in slavery any person who had taken up arms for the defence of our national liberty had led to the passing of an order forbidding slaves, as such, to be received as soldiers. That colored men were equally serviceable in the last war with Great Britain is true, as the following historical document will show: "GEN. JACKSON’S PROCLAMATION TO THE NEGROES. "Headquarters, Seventh Military District, "MOBILE, September 21st, 1814. "To the Free Colored Inhabitants of Louisiana:—