tes excluded slaves from service, they did not
exclude free blacks from enlisting in the militia. Virginia allowed free
blacks to enlist after July 1775. This enticed slaves to run away and
enlist as free blacks, a practice the assembly tried to halt by requiring
all black enlistees to have certificates of freedom. Then an odd reversal
occurred after 1779 when the state began to conscript white males into
the militia. Taking advantage of the provision in the draft law allowing
draftees to send substitutes, some slave owners offered their slaves as
substitutes. This was as far as the enlistment of slaves went. James
Madison proposed in 1780 that the state purchase slaves, free them, and
make them soldiers. The legislature rejected the plan. On the other hand,
the state did buy some slaves to work in shipyards, on shipboard, and in
state-run factories.[45]

[45] For a fuller discussion of black Virginians in the
Revolution, see Luther P. Jackson, Virginia Negro Soldiers and
Sailors in the Revolutionary War (Norfolk, 1944), and Benjamin
Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (University of
North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1961).

The actual number of black Virginians in the service is unknown.
Historians Luther Jackson and Benjamin Quarles suggest there were several
hundred in the army and at least 140 in the small Virginia navy. Usually
these men were orderlies, drummers, and support troops. In the navy they
frequently served as river pilots. There were exceptions like freeman
John Banks of Goochland, who fought as a cavalryman under Colonel Bland
for two years, the well-known spy James Lafayette, who performed
invaluable work for Lafayette in the closing days of the war, or John de
Baptist, a sailor who served with distinction on the Dragon.

Peace did not bring freedom for the slaves in the services. The
state-owned slaves were resold. Free men who had enlisted in the service
were entitled to and did receive enlistment and pay bounties due all
soldiers. Slaves whose masters had offered them as substitutes had a more
difficult time. Some slave owners tried to reclaim them as slaves even
though the Virginia law explicitly permitted the enlistment only of free
men. Fortunately, Governor Benjamin Harrison was enraged by this
duplicity at what he called a repudiation of the "common principles of
justice and humanity" and prevailed upon the legislature "to pass an act
giving to these u