By Russell Roberts.
Since early grade school children learn about the Battle of Bunker Hill in the American Revolution. However, things often left out of the history of the battle – include the key role played by a former African-American slave named Peter Salem.
His reward was to die in a poorhouse.
Salem, born in about 1750 in Framingham, Mass, was born into bondage and owned by Jeremiah Belknap. As the American Revolution approached, Belknap sold Salem to Lawson Buckminister, and with the dawn of the war, Buckminister permitted Salem – a crack shot with a rifle – to enlist in the Massachusetts Minutemen. Upon his enlistment, Buckminister freed Salem.
The role of African-Americans in the American Revolution is historically ignored, but no one has been more injured by this than Peter Salem, who served with distinction at the battles of Concord, Saratoga, and Stony Point. Yet it was at Bunker Hill that he made his greatest contribution.
It was June 17, 1775 when British forces from occupied Boston began pressuring the Americans in their positions over-looking the city. The British tried twice to take the American positions, but the Colonials drove them back, including Peter Salem, who poured hot lead into the British forces. Finally, with the Colonials running short of ammunition, the British regrouped for a third assault. Rallying his troops, British Major John Pitcairn rose up and shouted, “The day is ours,” and commanded the Colonials to surrender.
Peter Salem’s response was to shoot Pitcairn dead.
With one of their key officers dead, the British forces milled about in confusion. Salem had answered their demands with a defiant “No,” and in the process, had spoken for all the Americans fighting the British.
Although the British eventually took the positions when the Colonials ran out of ammunition and had to retreat, but Salem’s defiant shot was considered so critical that after the war his rifle was carefully preserved and given to the Bunker Hill museum collection, where it exists to this day. Many believe that Salem is portrayed at the far right in John Trumbull’s famous Bunker Hill painting, “The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill.”
After serving so gallantly in the war, Salem worked as a cane weaver and built a cabin in Leicester, Massachusetts. Although he was a hero, he died alone, and forgotten in a public poorhouse in 1816. Today, no one remembers him or his contribution to the American Revolution.
Featured Photo Credit: www.michaelarnoldart.com
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