So desperate was Washington for manpower that he reversed an earlier edict prohibiting free blacks from reenlisting, essentially daring skeptical white southerners in Congress to overrule him. They did not, given his convictions that victory could depend on “which side can arm the Negroes faster” and that black volunteers spurned by the American army might join the British. For now, slaves were barred from the ranks. Roughly five thousand African Americans would eventually serve in the Continental Army, a more integrated national force than would exist for nearly two centuries.
