James Armistead Lafayette was a Continental Army double agent tasked with spying on the British during the Revolutionary War. He was born into slavery and enslaved by William Armistead, a Virginia man supportive of the Patriot cause. James joined the Continental Army under the Marquis de Lafayette, a French military officer with staunchly anti-slavery views. After Lord Dunmore, the British royal governor of colonial Virginia, declared that any enslaved men who joined the British Army would be granted freedom, Lafayette instructed James to pose as a runaway enslaved person to infiltrate the British Army as a spy.
James successfully joined the British Army under Lord Cornwallis; he then offered the British his services as spy and began feeding the Brits false information while relaying critical intelligence on British military movements back to the Continental Army. Thanks to James’s information, the Continental Army was able to properly time their strike on Yorktown, securing victory over the British in what would be the final major battle of the Revolutionary War.
Though many enslaved Continental Army troops were granted their freedom in recognition of their service during the Revolutionary War, because James was a spy and not a soldier, he remained enslaved until Lafayette himself intervened on his behalf. After being freed in 1787, James added “Lafayette” to his surname in honor of the French military officer and spent the remaining years of his life a successful farmer in Virginia before passing away some time between 1830 and 1832.
