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regiment was recruited from Rhode Island. This regiment distinguished itself in the Battle of Rhode Island on August 29, 1778." (Wilson 22) Between 1775 to 1781 there weren't any battles without Black participants. Black soldiers fought for the colonies at Lexington, Concord, Ticonderoga, White Plains, Benington, Brandywine, Saratoga, Savannah, and Yorktown. There were two Blacks, Prince Whipple and Oliver Cromwell, with Washington when he crossed the Delaware River on Christmas Day in 1776. "Some won recognition and a place in the history of the War of Independence by their outstanding service, although most have remained anonymous." (Craine 43) Unfortunately despite Afro-Americans' contributions to the war effort and the large amount of dead Blacks, few had gained their freedom. The War for Independence was just the first of a list of wars Afro-Americans would have a chance to participate in. The second American war fought with Afro-American help was the War of 1812. As Martin Delany put it, the Afro-American were "as ready and as willing to volunteer in your service as any other... and Blacks were not compelled to go; they were not draughted. They were volunteers." (Wilson 47) Black Americans fought the British on land and sea, and they "were particularly conspicuous in the various naval battles fought on the Great Lakes under the command of Oliver H. Perry." (Mullen 16) At least one-tenth of the crews of the fleet on the lake region were African American. Captain Perry, like Washington, objected to the appointment of Blacks to his naval ships. But after the Battle of Lake Erie, Captain Perry was "unstinting" in Afro-American praise as men who "seemed insensible to danger." (Fowler 46) After the Battle of Lake Erie the New York legislature authorized the forming of two Black regiments. These regiments included slaves with their masters' permission, and two battalions of Black soldiers were enlisted for New Orleans and its surrounding area. The mobilization for New Orleans was particularly significant because it was there on September 21,1814, three months before the Battle of New Orleans, that General Andrew Jackson issued his proclamation "To the Free Colored Inhabitants of Louisiana." In that proclamation, Jackson, who needed to augment and strengthen his forces, called upon the free Blacks of Louisiana, which of course was a slave state, to answer the appeal of their country. In the appeal he confessed that "the policy of the United States in barring Negroes from the service had been a mistaken one." (Mullen 16) The United States won the War of 1812. The slaves who had been enlisted by their masters in the American army found themselves re-enslaved after the war was over and the United States had no further needs of their military services. The Afro-American thus found himself as a servant to the White masters until the Civil War. The third and most important war Black Americans fought in was the American Civil War. Deven though this war eventually resulted in the ending of slavery it was began between "Northern industrialists and Southern Slave owners to determine who would have hegemony over the federal government and who would be able to expand into the new territories of the West" (Mullen 18). The question of slavery would come later. "When the Civil War began, blacks weren't allowed to fight in the Union army." (Utley 18) Unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln was more concerned with political relations tha