Robert Selig

Four days after the 19 April 1775 Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress resolved “that an army of 30,000 men be immediately raised” out of volunteers from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Taking Massachusetts’ lead, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, voted in turn on 14 June to raise “six companies of expert rifflemen … in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia.” As soon as they were ready the men were to “join the army near Boston.” Though neither of these laws defined race or color criteria for military service, the racial and ethnic make-up of the army assembling near Boston mirrors largely the militias of the four New England states, where some 17,000 (in 1790) mostly free African-Americans constituted roughly 1.7 percent of the population.