Prior to the actual war of 1812 and one of the most conspicuous causes leading to it, was the attack on the Chesapeake, an American war vessel.  Here the Negro in the Navy figured in a most remarkable degree.  The vessel was hailed, fired upon and forced to strike her colors by the British.  She was boarded, searched and four persons taken from the crew charged with desertion from the English navy.  Three of these were Negroes and one white.  The charge against the Negroes could not have been very strong, for they were dismissed, while the white man was hanged.

The naval history of our second war with Great Britain is replete with incidents concerning the participation of the Negro.  Mackenzie’s history of the life of Commodore Perry states that at the famed battle of Lake Erie, fully ten percent of the American crews were blacks.  Perry spoke highly of their bravery and good conduct.  He said they seemed to be absolutely insensible to danger.  His fighters were a motley collection of blacks, soldiers and boys.  Nearly all had been afflicted with sickness.  Mackenzie says that when the defeated British commander was brought aboard the “Niagara” and beheld the sickly and parti-colored beings around him, an expression of chagrin escaped him at having been conquered by such men.

The following extract is from a letter written by Commodore Nathaniel Shaler of the armed schooner “Governor Tompkins”, dated January 1, 1813.  Speaking of a fight with a British frigate, he said: 

“The name of one of my poor fellows who was killed ought to be registered in the book of fame and remembered with reverence as long as bravery is considered a virtue.  He was a black man by the name of John Johnson.  A twenty-four-pound shot struck him in the hip and tore away all the lower part of his body.  In this state the poor brave fellow lay on the deck and several times exclaimed to his shipmates:  ‘Fire away, boys; don’t haul the colors down.’  Another black man by the name of John Davis was struck in much the same way.  He fell near me and several times requested to be thrown overboard, saying he was only in the way of the others.  When America has such tars, she has little to fear from the tyrants of the ocean.”

With the history fresh in mind of the successful Negro insurrection in St. Domingo, bringing out so conspicuous a military and administrative genius as Toussaint L’Ouverture, it is not surprising that the services of Negroes as soldiers were not only welcomed, but solicited by various states during the War of 1812.  Excepting the battle of New Orleans, almost all the martial glory of the struggle was on the water.  New York, however, passed a special act of the legislature and organized two regiments of Negro troops, while there was heavy recruiting in other states.