the evacuation of Charleston 241 Negroes and their
families were taken off to St. Lucia in one transport, the Scimitar."[26]
Yet in Georgia it is believed that the loss of Negroes was much greater,
probably three fourths or seven eighths of all in the State. There the
British were more successful in organizing and making use of Negroes. One
third of the 600 men by whom Fort Cornwallis was garrisoned at the siege
of Augusta were Negroes. So effective were some of these Negroes trained
by the British in Georgia that a corps of fugitive slaves calling
themselves the "King of England's Soldiers," so harassed the people on
both sides of the Savannah River, even after the Revolution, that it was
feared that a general insurrection of the slaves there would follow as a
result of this most dangerous and best disciplined band of marauders that
ever infested its borders.[27]

The leaders of the Revolution, therefore, quickly receded from their
radical position of excluding Negroes from the army. Informed that the
free Negroes who had served in the ranks in New England were sorely
displeased at their exclusion from the service, and fearing that they
might join the enemy, Washington departed, late in 1775, from the
established policy of the staff and gave the recruiting officers leave to
accept such Negroes, promising to lay the matter before the Continental
Congress, which he did not doubt would approve it.[28] Upon the receipt of
this communication the matter was referred to a committee composed of
Wythe, Adams and Wilson, who recommended that free Negroes who had served
faithfully in the army at Cambridge might be reenlisted but no others.[29]
In taking action on such communications thereafter the Continental
Congress followed the policy of leaving the matter to the various States,
which were then jealously mindful of their rights.

Sane leaders generally approved the enlistment of black troops. General
Thomas thought so well of the proposition that he wrote John Adams in
1775, expressing his surprise that any prejudice against it should
exist.[30] Samuel Hopkins said in 1776 that something should be speedily
done with respect to the slaves to prevent their turning against the
Americans. He was of the opinion that the way to counteract the tendency
of the Negroes to join the British was not to restrain them by force and
severity but by public acts to set the slaves free and encourage them to
labor and take arms in defense of the