In the course of time there arose an urgent need for the Negro in the army.  The army reached the point when almost all sorts of soldiers were acceptable.  In 1778 General Varnum induced General Washington to send certain officers from Valley Forge to Rhode Island to enlist a battalion of Negroes to fill the depleted ranks of that State.[38] Setting forth in the preamble that “history affords us frequent precedents of the wisest, freest and bravest nations having liberated their slaves and enlisted them as soldiers to fight in defense of their country,” the Rhode Island Assembly resolved to raise a regiment of slaves, who were to be freed upon their enlistment, their owners to be paid by the State according to the valuation of a committee.  Further light was thrown upon this action in the statement of Governor Cooke, who in reporting the action of the Assembly to Washington boasted that liberty was given to every effective slave to don the uniform and that upon his passing muster he became absolutely free and entitled to all the wages, bounties and encouragements given to any other soldier.[39]

The State of New Hampshire enlisted Negroes and gave to those who served three years the same bounty offered others.  This bounty was turned over to their masters as the price of the slaves in return for which their owners issued bills of sale and certificates of freedom.[40] In this way slavery practically passed out in New Hampshire.  This affair did not proceed so smoothly as this in Massachusetts.  In 1778 that legislature had a committee report in favor of raising a regiment of mulattoes and Negroes.  This action was taken as a result upon receiving an urgent letter from Thomas Kench, a member of an artillery regiment serving on Castle Island.  Kench referred to the fact that there were divers of Negroes in the battalions mixed with white men, but he thought that the blacks would have a better esprit de corps should they be organized in companies by themselves.  But the feeling that slaves should not fight the battles of freemen and a confusion of the question of enlistment with that of emancipation for which Massachusetts was not then prepared,[41] led to a heated debate in the Massachusetts Council and finally to blows in the coffee houses in lower Boston.  In such an excited state of affairs no further action was taken.  Finding recruiting difficult it is said that Connecticut undertook to raise a colored regiment[42] and in 1781 New York, offering the usual land bounty which would go to the masters to purchase the slaves, promised freedom to all slaves who would enlist for the time of three years.[43] Maryland provided in 1780 that each unit of L16,000 of property should furnish one recruit who might be either a freeman or a slave, and in 1781 resolved to raise 750 Negroes to be incorporated with the other troops.[44]