James Armistead Lafayette: Spies Of The American Revolutionary War

Footnotes Key A(1) B(2) C(3) D(4) E(5) F(6) G(7) H(8) I(9) J(10) K(11)
Spies, when you think of them in modern times, you think of cool gadgets and cars and saving the world. But during the period of the American Revolutionary War, spies used pen, paper and their minds. In fact, he didn’t have any gadgets but helped end the war. This man was called James Armistead Lafayette. James was born in Virginia around 1748 and worked under William Armistead as a slave. With his slave owners permission, he was enlisted in the American Army under General Lafayette and posed as a runaway slave in order to obtain intelligence the British army camps. With the risks he took as a spy to gather information, James Armistead Lafayette helped turn the tides so

James knew all the back routes of Virginia without a map; a critical asset that the British needed terribly. James was accepted into the British army and served under General Cornwallis. Ironically, Cornwallis asked James to spy on the American army! James was now a double agent. He would spy on the British. He did this successfully because the British officers thought that he wouldn’t understand their “military talk.” The officers “freely discussed their raids in front of him ignoring james as just another irrelevant Negro.” James would then tell Marquis de Lafayette all of Cornwallis’s plans and then he would return to the British camps and tell Cornwallis false troop locations and high troop numbers In a report to Lafayette James reported ““The Ennemy Have 60 Sails of Vessels into York River—the largest a 50 guns ship two 36 frigats—about Seven other Armed Vessels.” He also reported that “It Appears they Have in that Number Merchant Men Some of Whom Dutch prizes. The Men of War Are Very thinly Manned. On Board the other Vessels there Are Almost No Sailors.” He got all of this from listening to the officers who unknowingly talked about their numbers in front of an “irrelevant