“Sixty were found dead in one spot.  At another, thirty Hessians were buried in one grave.  Major-Gen. Greene commanded on the right.  Of the four brigades under his immediate command, Varnum’s, Glover’s, Cornell’s and Greene’s, all suffered severely, but Gen. Varnum’s perhaps the most.  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 for having caused them so much loss."[586]

A few years later the Marquis de Chastellux, writing of this regiment, said,—­

“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; but they are strong, robust men, and those I have seen had a very good appearance.’"[587]

On the 14th of May, 1781, the gallant Col.  Greene was surprised and murdered at Point’s Bridge, New York, but it was not effected until his brave black soldiers had been cut to pieces in defending their leader.  It was one of the most touching and beautiful incidents of the war, and illustrates the self-sacrificing devotion of Negro soldiers to the cause of American liberty.

At a meeting of the Congregational and Presbyterian Anti-Slavery Society, at Francestown, N.H., the Rev. Dr. Harris, himself a Revolutionary soldier, spoke thus complimentarily of the Rhode-Island Negro regiment:—­

“Yes, a regiment of negroes, fighting for our liberty and independence,—­not a white man among them but the officers,—­stationed in this same dangerous and responsible position.  Had they been unfaithful, or driven away before the enemy, all would have been lost. Three times in succession were they attacked, with most desperate valor and fury, by well disciplined and veteran troops, and three times did they successfully repel the assault, and thus preserve our army from capture.  They fought through the war.  They were brave, hardy troops.  They helped to gain our liberty and independence.”

From the opening to the closing scene of the Revolutionary