James Armistead Lafayette

James Armistead was born into slavery in New Kent County, Virginia, in approximately 1748, the property of William Armistead of the Virginia gentry. The details of his early life before the Revolution are largely unrecorded, as was true of most enslaved people in the colonial Chesapeake. What is known is that by 1781, as the war's final campaign moved into Virginia, James obtained his master's permission to serve with the Continental forces under the Marquis de Lafayette, who was commanding American troops in the region as Cornwallis maneuvered through the Virginia countryside.

James served Lafayette not as a conventional soldier but as a spy operating behind British lines — one of the most dangerous roles in the entire conflict. He gained access to the British camps, including Cornwallis's headquarters, where he was treated as a runaway enslaved man willing to serve the Crown and was used by the British to carry messages and gather information about American positions. While performing this service for the British, he was simultaneously conveying intelligence about British troop dispositions, strength, and movements back to Lafayette. The information he provided helped the American command understand Cornwallis's intentions and positions during the weeks before the Yorktown siege that ended the war's active fighting. His double role required not only extraordinary courage but a sustained capacity to perform deception under conditions where discovery meant certain death. Lafayette later wrote a testimonial attesting to James's service and the value of the intelligence he had provided.

Despite his service, James returned to slavery after the war — the legislation freeing military veterans applied only to free Black men, not to enslaved people. He petitioned the Virginia General Assembly for his freedom, supported by Lafayette's testimony, and was manumitted in 1787. He took the surname Lafayette in honor of the man who had helped secure his freedom, and he and the Marquis met again in 1824 when Lafayette made his celebrated return visit to America. James Armistead Lafayette lived as a free farmer in Virginia until his death in 1830, a figure whose service demonstrated that the cause of American liberty was advanced by people whom that cause was not yet prepared to fully liberate.