Peter's War: A New England Slave Boy and the American Revolution

by Joyce Lee Malcolm

Overview

A riveting narrative of a New England slave boy caught up in the American Revolution

A boy named Peter, born to a slave in Massachusetts in 1763, was sold nineteen months later to a childless white couple there. This book recounts the fascinating history of how the American Revolution came to Peter's small town, how he joined the revolutionary army at the age of twelve, and how he participated in the battles of Bunker Hill and Yorktown and witnessed the surrender at Saratoga.

Joyce Lee Malcolm describes Peter’s home life in rural New England, which became increasingly unhappy as he grew aware of racial differences and prejudices. She then relates how he and other blacks, slave and free, joined the war to achieve their own independence. Malcolm juxtaposes Peter’s life in the patriot armies with that of the life of Titus, a New Jersey slave who fled to the British in 1775 and reemerged as a feared guerrilla leader.

A remarkable feat of investigation, Peter’s biography illuminates many themes in American history: race relations in New England, the prelude to and military history of the Revolutionary War, and the varied experience of black soldiers who fought on both sides.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300168068
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	11/30/2010
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Joyce Lee Malcolm is professor of law at George Mason University School of Law. She lives in Alexandria, VA.

Read an Excerpt

Peter's War

A New England Slave Boy and the American Revolution

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By Joyce Lee Malcolm

Yale University Press

Copyright © 2009 Joyce Malcolm
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-11930-5

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Chapter One

The Hardship Sale

We had lived together as a family of brothers for several years ... had shared with each other the hardships, dangers, and sufferings incident to a soldier's life; had sympathized with each other in trouble and sickness; had assisted in bearing each other's burdens or strove to make them lighter by council and advice ... we were young men and had warm hearts. I question if there was a corps in the army that parted with more regret than ours did, the New Englanders in particular. Ah! It was a serious time. Joseph Plumb Martin Ordinary Courage: The Revolutionary War Adventures of Joseph Plumb Martin (narrative published 1830)

ON THE LONG WALK HOME to Lincoln, Massachusetts, that bleak December of 1783, Peter had, for the first time in a long while, ample leisure to reflect. Not that there wasn't constant danger for a black soldier trudging the nearly 230 miles to eastern Massachusetts. Once the regiment descended from its headquarters at West Point, with its commanding view of the majestic Hudson, the soldiers found themselves immersed in the chaoticaftermath of the war, the bitterness, destruction, and deep divisions it had left. They were never certain what welcome they would receive as they approached another cluster of houses, another neat farmhouse, banked with firewood for the winter, its windows glowing invitingly, another bustling roadside inn, the sounds of local banter carrying out onto the darkening road.

The first part of their journey had been the most dangerous. The loyalties of New Yorkers were sharply split. The state had been among the last to sign the Declaration of Independence. Its great city of New York was the only capital that remained under British control throughout the war, its population swelling from twenty thousand in 1775 to fifty thousand during the war as Loyalists and fugitive slaves flocked to put themselves under British protection. Twice during those years it had nearly been destroyed by fire. Even after the British surrender at Yorktown, bands of Loyalists and slaves sallied out from New York to loot, kill, and burn villages in the so-called neutral ground of New Jersey. New York was also the state with the greatest number of slaves north of the Chesapeake. Many from the region had fled to the British on the promise of freedom. Now kidnappers were out in force, on the lookout for fugitive slaves or any blacks they could sell as slaves. Thieves were eager to snatch the modest discharge money in Peter's pocket, which, along with his musket and tattered uniform, was his final reward for eight years of service. All in all it was fortunate that Congress insisted the disbanded soldiers be accompanied by their officers. Of course, Congress was not worried about the hazard faced by the soldiers, black or white, but was nervous about the danger battle-hardened veterans posed to civilians. Still, traveling together for the last time was a comfort.

The residents of the rich farmlands of Connecticut were more hospitable, but even there many resented the demands Congress had made on them for men and provisions. Some had carried on an illicit trade with the British in New York, happy to be paid in solid currency. Their sour looks and turned backs when they saw Peter's troop made their views plain. It was a relief to reach the woods and rolling fields of central Massachusetts. The New England landscape was not at its best in December. Its glorious autumn foliage was past, with only the oaks clinging to their leathery brown leaves. The fields were frozen and bare. The grain had been harvested, corn cut, pumpkins cooked, apples picked. It was a landscape painted in shades of brown and gray, punctuated by white birch and the dull green of pine trees, a landscape awaiting the softening touch of snow. But the people were welcoming and had contributed a disproportionate number of men to the cause.

As Peter and his comrades hurried to reach their destinations before the onset of winter snows, their numbers steadily dwindled. At nearly every crossroad some men veered off, eager to walk old, familiar roads toward their homes and families and another life.

There had been no grand military parade when the Continental Army was disbanded. Most of the men had been sent home in June. But their general's moving farewell to his remaining veterans stuck in the memory. Washington addressed Peter and his companions, men branded then and since as the dregs of the country, as those he held most dear. He recalled their "unparalleled perseverance" through "almost every possible suffering and discouragement" and marveled how men from such different parts of the continent had become "one patriotic band of Brothers." "Who," he asked, "will exclude them from the rights of Citizens and the fruits of their labor?" Who indeed, the blacks among them must have wondered. At the last, Washington recommended them all to their grateful country and prayed "to the God of Armies" that they, who had secured innumerable blessings for others, might find justice here and Heaven's favor hereafter.

* * *

It was fortunate the journey to Lincoln took so long because in the course of it Peter had to become a civilian again. The mile after slow mile, interspersed with bluff and poignant farewells, provided time to put the hardships, friendships, losses, and exhilaration of army life behind him, to try to blot out wrenching scenes of southern blacks abandoned by the British, and the amazing sight of some three thousand northern blacks setting sail on British ships for Canada and freedom. It was time to consider what awaited him at his journey's end. Thoughts of Lincoln conjured up a lost world, growing up in the comfortable Nelson home that looked out on the bustle of the Great Road to Boston. Back came memories of his families, white and black, of adventures with friends, of daily prayers, farmwork, and school. In many ways his childhood was little different from that of other New England farm boys of the time. Sometimes, it had been easy to forget the difference between slave and free and, beyond that, the racial barrier that made him always the outsider. The early, awkward adjustment his owners, Josiah and Elizabeth, had raising a young child for the first time, let alone a black child, would be lost on him but the later, awkward adjustment would not. He had gone off to war as a boy of twelve, proudly striding at Josiah's side. But the childish, peaceful world he had known before the war had changed irrevocably and so had he. The army had become his family. It was uncertain whether there was any place for him in Lincoln, but it was all the home he now had.

* * *

Peter had been sold to the Nelsons on January 29, 1765. He was just over a year and a half. He would have remembered none of it. But constant reminding, by those who did remember, who wanted him to remember, would have seared the event into his soul. He could never forget, nor could they.

Documents of the sale of slaves in New England are rare. Most must have been prudently discarded long ago. Yet for more than two centuries the single, frayed sheet of paper that recorded the sale of Peter, mute testament to the singular story that was his life, lay amid the handful of deeds and other papers carefully saved by the farm family that bought him. Now boxed with these papers, alongside shelf upon shelf of identical boxes of family papers in the vault of the Lincoln town archives, the portal into Peter's existence hangs on this one intriguing, enigmatic, and, for him, humiliating document.

The bill of sale described him simply as a nineteen-month-old "neagro servant boy named Peter." The sale of so young a child, without his mother, was extraordinary. True, New Englanders believed slave children ought to be purchased young, to ensure that they would have the proper upbringing and be thoroughly instructed in Christian virtues. Yet seldom this young. Sometimes the death of the mother occasioned the sale, but there had been no death here. Apart from the wrenching sadness of the separation of mother and child, which the Puritan community and Peter's owners certainly appreciated, the sale clashed with another Puritan virtue-it was improvident. Peter would have to be sold cheaply or even given away. In the South, where large numbers of slaves lived on the same property, owners were happy to have children. These were their future workers and ultimately valuable. An older Negro woman was assigned to look after the young children of slaves while their parents worked. But in Massachusetts there were few, if any, people who owned large numbers of slaves. Someone, black or white, would have to devote years of care to Peter before he deserved the designation "servant." It was cheaper to buy a grown slave who would be useful at once. Why had this premature, painful sale occurred? And who would be willing to buy the toddler and take on the considerable responsibility of raising him?

The answer lies in a further mystery, for it was the owners of Peter's father, Deacon Joshua Brooks of Lincoln, and his wife, Mary, who sold the little boy, not the family that owned his mother. Lexington church records provide a clue to why Peter was sold at so tender an age, and sold by his father's owner. They record Peter's baptism before the church congregation on the morning of October 2, 1763. Since the Nelson family attended the Lexington rather than the Lincoln congregational church, Josiah and Elizabeth were almost surely among the worshippers on that fall day as the Reverend Jonas Clarke, watched anxiously by Peggy and Jupiter, cradled their tiny baby in his arms and blessed him. Josiah and Elizabeth along with the rest of the congregation agreed to help raise the little infant in the knowledge of God, the couple not yet aware how personal that responsibility would become.

But there is more in the records. On November 6, 1763, slightly more than a month after Peter's baptism, Peggy and Jupiter were back in church, this time to baptize a daughter, also named Peggy. They were the parents of twins. That explains why Jupiter's master came to own Peter. Each master claimed one child. Peggy had to part with her son but was able to keep her small daughter for a few years longer. Girls were quieter than boys, and little Peggy would eventually be able to help her mother with her household duties.

Jupiter's owners were a respectable, God-fearing couple, as Joshua Brooks's proud title, "deacon," made plain to all. They were prominent in the community, members of the extensive and prosperous Brooks clan that clustered in such numbers on both sides of the boundary between Lincoln and Concord, its neighbor to the west, that the area was designated Brooksville. Although the deacon and his wife, out of courtesy to their slave, Jupiter, would have journeyed to Lexington to attend Peter's baptism in the Lexington church, Joshua and Mary would have seen little of him since. Peter would not have recognized them. Nor had Peter seen his father very often, for his parents were owned by different families and lived in different towns.

Peter's mother belonged to William Reed, Esquire, long-serving member of the Massachusetts Bay general assembly representing the good people of Lexington, the substantial town bordering Lincoln on the east, toward Boston. Reed was a lawyer and justice of the peace, captain of militia, veteran of the recently concluded French and Indian War, and father of ten. That year he was also the moderator of the Lexington town meeting. He and his wife, Sarah, were even more distinguished than the Brookses. Peter had been born in their home. They were an older couple and did not need or want a small, lively black toddler underfoot, pestering them and his mother, keeping her from her work. None of the extensive Reed family of Lexington was interested in having Peter either. Nor were Joshua and Mary Brooks, Jupiter's owners, willing to keep Peter. With seven grown children with families of their own, Joshua and Mary had both done more than their share of childrearing. None of the Brooks children were interested in taking Peter, even for the sake of sparing their parents this unpleasant transaction. However, a buyer had been found. And so, on a wintry Tuesday in January, Jupiter had fetched his tiny son from Lexington and brought him to the Brooks's comfortable home, to a house full of strangers, to be sold to Josiah Nelson, a local farmer, and his wife, Elizabeth. Josiah had agreed to pay four pounds cash for the little boy, the going rate for a cow and her calf.

* * *

Nine years before this sale, "with the consent of their masters," Peggy and Jupiter had married. It was a fine, traditional wedding in the Lexington meetinghouse, the church Peggy attended every Sunday with the Reeds. As custom dictated, the banns announcing the couple's intention to wed had been posted on three successive Sundays before the ceremony. Everyone in the congregation knew of the impending union. Massachusetts law, unlike that of the southern colonies, recognized slave marriages. Masters were encouraged to consent to the unions. Indeed, the Puritan community was in agreement that it was far better for adult slaves to marry than to be tempted into promiscuity. They were pleased to recognize the unions and to accept the children born of these families into their congregations, there to be baptized and molded into upstanding members of the Christian community. But the black bride and groom were still slaves, and their convenience was unlikely to have been uppermost in anyone's mind but their own. In the case of Peggy and Jupiter, theirs was a long-distance marriage.

Long-distance marriages were common of necessity among the slaves in the rural townships of eighteenth-century New England. The African- American community was small and scattered. Few people owned more than one or two slaves to help in the fields or the kitchen. A town might have only ten or fifteen altogether. Marriages like Peggy and Jupiter's meant a fair amount of travel, usually for the husband, if the couple were to see each other. In their case it was some four miles, but other couples could be separated by much greater distances. Sometimes, of course, the chance to travel was a welcome break for Jupiter. It was an opportunity to leave the farm and work, if only briefly, a chance to be on his own, to travel alone, to see other places and meet other people. But he could not always be spared from work, and the notoriously erratic New England weather would often interfere. In poor weather, along muddy or snow-covered roads, a journey of even a few miles, almost always on foot, could be daunting and treacherous. Eventually, husband and wife might manage to live together through a sale or emancipation. Emancipation, however, was tricky from the owner's point of view. He not only lost a valuable asset, but Massachusetts law insisted he post fifty pounds sterling, a substantial bond, to ensure that a freed slave would not become a burden on the local community. So Peggy and Jupiter lived apart and hoped.

Although the children of slave marriages would eventually become valuable, they were not welcome. Indeed, in the New England colonies and New York, slave women who were barren were preferred. Ironically, it was the close relationship between New Englanders and their slaves that made the babies a problem. Slaves and their owners usually lived in the same house. They worked together, ate together at the family table, gathered together, morning and evening, to pray. This kinder, family-like arrangement made it more likely that Negro children would be separated from their parents since their presence was keenly and continually felt within the confines of household life. At nineteen months Peter was weaned, walking, and full of energy.

Peggy and Jupiter had been married seven years before Peter's birth. There is no evidence that they had any children before he and his sister were born. It is unclear why. Peggy may have been as young as fifteen at the time of her marriage. In an era when puberty was several years later than it is in the modern world, this would mean that it could have been some time before she could bear children. It is more likely that the couple did not want to have children who would almost certainly be sold to another family. Or it might simply have been that their opportunities to spend time together had been limited. If that had been the case, Peggy's pregnancy may have been the result of war. Peter's birth coincided with the conclusion of the French and Indian War in which Peggy's owner served. It is tempting to suspect that Reed's absence allowed the couple a greater opportunity to be together. Jupiter's help around the Reed home would be welcome while William was away.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Peter's War by Joyce Lee Malcolm Copyright © 2009 by Joyce Malcolm. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface ix

Chapter 1 The Hardship Sale 1

Chapter 2 Growing Pains 11

Chapter 3 The Four Horsemen 25

Chapter 4 In the Crosshairs 41

Chapter 5 The Killing 58

Chapter 6 Answering the Call 74

Chapter 7 Another Call, Another Answer 87

Chapter 8 Home Fires and Campfires 95

Chapter 9 The Ethiopian Regiment 109

Chapter 10 A Motherless Child 118

Chapter 11 Getting Back, Getting Even 134

Chapter 12 The Year of Possibilities 144

Chapter 13 Trials and Tribulations 163

Chapter 14 An Eye for an Eye 175

Chapter 15 Free at Last 183

Chapter 16 The Winter Soldier 195

Chapter 17 Final Battles 211

Afterword 226

Essay on Sources 235

Index 243

Editorial Reviews

Malcolm (law, George Mason Univ.) vividly recounts the Revolutionary War experiences of slaves such as Peter Nelson, who at age 12 enlisted in the Massachusetts militia and participated in some of the war's most famous battles. Malcolm's deep research, including into primary sources, sheds light on slaves' wartime involvement, chronicling the stories of men who bravely and willingly fought alongside free whites not knowing whether their efforts toward victory would result in their own eventual freedom. Malcolm describes in grim and poignant detail the vastly different wartime experiences of three slaves-Peter; his father, Jupiter; and unrelated Southern slave Titus, who joined the British army and engaged in guerrilla warfare against American slaves and their owners. Using the three slaves' stories as a narrative fulcrum, Malcolm provides a succinct but satisfying overview of the entire war. Major historical figures such as George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and John Adams play key roles in this narrative, but the author's focus is on the unknown and forgotten participants. She has assembled an engagingly written and incisive book, valuable to both scholars and informed general readers. Recommended for history collections in academic and large public libraries.
—Douglas King

Library Journal

The life of a young Massachusetts slave who fought for his freedom in the Revolutionary War. Malcolm (Law/George Mason Univ.; Guns and Violence: The English Experience, 2002, etc.) begins with Peter's bill of sale, dated 1765. He was just 19 months old, and it was unheard of for a child so young to be sold without his mother. Intrigued by the implications of this document, the author investigated further and uncovered the tale of a heroic, conflicted boy whose dream was to live as a free man with his parents and twin sister. At age 12, as nearby Concord Road filled with the sights and sounds of battle, Peter joined the patriot army. In clear, engaging language, Malcolm reconstructs the surroundings, relationships and political atmosphere of the Revolution: the toil of New England farm life, the battles at Bunker Hill and Yorktown, Commander George Washington and traitor Benedict Arnold. Peter's tale comes to life in rich detail and provides a new perspective on this era of change-that of a black soldier. His shifting identity-slave boy, adolescent soldier, free man-reflects the mercurial nature of the colonial Congress as it evolved toward eventual victory against the British. Peter, too, ultimately earned his freedom; his final enlistment was rewarded with emancipation. Other slaves would not be so lucky. In counterpoint to Peter's story, the author introduces Titus, a slave from New Jersey who defected to the British, lured by the false promise of freedom once the war was over. The new American government did not abolish slavery either, despite any optimism it might have instilled in colonial slaves during the war. Malcolm seamlessly captures the intersection of personal, political andmilitary strategy. History buffs will revel in Peter's never-before-told story, which makes a vivid addition to Revolutionary War literature.

Kirkus Reviews

"A well-written and important contribution to our understanding of the black experience during the Revolution."—Edward Rugemer, Yale University

Edward Rugemer

“In this deeply researched and generously wrought book, Joyce Lee Malcolm penetrates the past’s shadows and helps us recover the life of an American boy relegated to obscurity—until now.”—Wilfred M. McClay, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Wilfred M. McClay

“From the fogs of war and hidden records, Joyce Lee Malcolm has retrieved this amazing story of slavery and freedom in the midst of the American Revolution. With graceful, old-fashioned narrative style, Malcolm tells the story of Peter, an African American youth whose footprints traversed many battlefronts of the Revolution. Peter's voice is elusive, but his life left many traces. He saw and fought the war, returned to his Massachusetts home, lived and worked as a farmer, and died far too young. This book is a marvelous example of what can be learned from heretofore unknown people, and a beautifully-told tale about the ugliest underside of American history.”—David W. Blight, author of A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation

David W. Blight