(ominous music) - When we talk about legacies after the Revolutionary War, there are men who fought in the revolution and go on to become politicians.

And we remember them, we remember the Madisons, and we remember the Washington, the Monroes who's wounded at Trenton.

And then there were others who fight the revolution and go back to being ordinary people.

The example set by people like James Lafayette who rose above their station.

Nobody expected him to be the hero that he really was.

(ominous music) - When I arrived in Virginia in the Tidewater, I was in great need of supplies.

I met with the head of the public stalls, a man by the name of William Armistead.

Transporting the supplies was one of his enslaved men, a man by the name of James Armistead.

I soon discovered that James was a very intelligent and resourceful man.

- Lafayette began to develop concepts of how he was going to fight the battle of Cornwallis and one of the things he knew he needed was intelligence.

- I asked his master if James could serve with me as a spy.

This could be in golden opportunity that if James was able to make his way across enemy lines, ingratiate himself with the enemy, he could listen to everything they say because they would simply speak freely in front of the enslaved.

- This was a very dangerous job.

Spies were not protected by the laws of war.

If he was caught, he would've been hung immediately without a trial and without any ceremony, and nobody would've ever known that he was caught.

He would've just stopped appearing back in Lafayette's Camp.

(ominous music) James went to work initially for Benedict Arnold who by now is the general in the British service.

- To infiltrate Benedict Arnold, I had to pose as a runaway slave.

If you had fought for the British side, you could receive your freedom.

My part of being a spy was to make sure that they thought I was actually on their side.

In two or three weeks, I was serving tea to Benedict Arnold during his strategy meetings, and I would take that information and feed it back to the Marquis de Lafayette.

- He first began spying on the Turncoat Benedict Arnold.

He then began spying upon his replacement General Phillips and ultimately Lord Cornwallis.

- James was on the inner circle and Cornwallis asked him to be a double agent.

He asked James to go spy on the Americans.

- When James informed me of this fact, we laughed and laughed and laughed.

Soon I would give James disinformation false information and relay it back to Cornwallis Camp.

- I fed him false information about where the Marquis de Lafayette was, and I gave the Marquis de Lafayette true information about Yorktown.

And when he got to Yorktown, he was trapped on all three sides.

- So James intelligence was key to securing the victory at Yorktown.

- For James, the war ends on October 19th, 1781 in Yorktown with Cornwallis's surrender.

And he returned to the Armistead Plantation in New Kent County and returned to his master, and I dare say friend William Armistead.

In 1783, the Virginia State legislature passed an act that provided that any enslavement who had fought for independence would be freed.

- But I was a spy.

I never beared arms or never wore a uniform... So a spy wasn't given the same privileges as a fighting man.

So I had to actually petition for my freedom.

- James made his petition to the Virginia legislature and it was rejected because he had not carried arms.

- That I think really struck Lafayette that this man that had risked everything to support the American cause after the war is sent back to slavery.

- So that is when I would write a letter on behalf of James and there I spoke of all of the efforts that James had made and that he should be entitled to his freedom as a result.

- It is because of that letter that James is ultimately given his freedom and a pension in land.

- $40 a year was my pension and William Armistead gave me two parcels of line.

- In 1824, President Monroe invites Lafayette to come back to the country for what becomes ultimately a 13 month tour of every single state in the union.

- James was living in Richmond.

He wanted to go visit Lafayette in Yorktown during his trip, but he couldn't afford the journey from Richmond to Yorktown.

That tells us how poor he was at that point in time.

There's an article that appeared in the the Richmond Times that describes the fact that this hero of the American Revolution seeks to be reunited or have a visit with his mentor from the revolution.

And he has such a great history.

Wouldn't people be willing to donate to help him afford the trip?

And in fact, they did.

The people of Richmond did donate for his trip, bought him a new suit to clothes so that he was able to go visit Lafayette in Yorktown.

- Thousands and thousands of people were among the people that were had come to see this great mind, this hero of two worlds and I was able to be in that crowd.

- I saw him in the crowd.

And there we embraced, we wept, we spoke of our lives over those 43 years.

Indeed it was a grand moment.

- And that story made the Norfolk Newspaper.

Some of these things are really well documented and it really is a touching story to see that, you know, almost 40 years later that they're still familiar to each other.

He did not fade into obscurity in his elder years.

He was remembered as a hero of the revolution.

An incredible sense of devotion and a willingness to take a chance that life could get better if the words of that declaration came true after the war.

That is the ultimate mark of a hero willing to take that gamble.

- [Voiceover] This has been Revolution 250 Stories from the First Shore.

To learn more about this and other events of the Revolutionary age of America, visit whro.org/usa250.