On the 5th of March 1776, Washington repaired to the intrenchments.

"Remember" said he, "It is the 5th of March, and avenge the death of your brethren." In the introduction to a book entitled "The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution" by William C.Nell, a Negro historian, Harriet Beecher Stowe said in 1855: "The colored race have been generally considered by their enemies, and sometimes even by their friends, as deficient in energy and courage.

Their virtues have been supposed to be principally negative ones." Speaking of the incidents in Mr.Nell's collection she says: "They will redeem the character of the race from this misconception and show how much injustice there may often be in a generally accepted idea".

Continuing, she says: "In considering the services of the colored patriots of the Revolution, we are to reflect upon them as far more magnanimous, because rendered to a nation which did not acknowledge them as citizens and equals, and in whose interests and prosperity they had less at stake.

It was not for their own land they fought, not even for a land which had adopted them, but for a land which had enslaved them, and whose laws, even in freedom, oftener oppressed than protected.