Lemuel Haynes is featured on a new U.S. Postal Service stamp as part of its Figures of the American Revolution series, which honors 25 individuals who played important roles during the period. Photo by Mark Bushnell Lemuel Haynes was of two minds about the American Revolution. He was outraged by the stark hypocrisy of some of the rebellion’s leaders, slaveholders who condemned the British government for impinging on their freedoms. At the same time, however, he risked his life for the revolutionary cause.  Haynes, a minuteman, preacher and longtime Vermonter, may be little remembered by most Americans today, but he is featured on a recently released U.S. postage stamp. Haynes is one of 25 “Figures of the American Revolution” being honored. His portrait on the sheet of stamps is surrounded by better-known figures, including Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry and the Marquis de Lafayette. The series highlights others worthy of note, such as Mercy Otis Warren, a writer who chronicled the Revolution; Agwalongdongwas, an Oneida leader who helped rally support for the American cause; and Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man to serve in the Continental Army. Drawn into a ‘dreadfull tragedy’ Lemuel Haynes was born under challenging circumstances. Then, as now, parentage could determine one’s life prospects. Haynes never knew either of his parents. Conceived during a tryst, Haynes was born in West Hartford, Connecticut, in 1753, his father already having left. His mother soon abandoned the infant.  His parents’ identities remain a mystery to historians. According to contemporary accounts, his father was African American and his mother white. One theory holds that she was a Scottish-born servant who worked for a family named Haynes; another claims she was a young woman from a prominent family who sought refuge in the Haynes household during a scandalous pregnancy. Either way, the baby was given the last name of Haynes, though he didn’t remain in the household for long. The Hayneses gave the baby away to a family named Rose, who left West Hartford to settle in the western Massachusetts town of Granville. The Roses, who already had one son and five daughters, didn’t adopt Haynes. Instead, they took him on as an indentured servant, a common practice in Colonial America under which an orphaned, impoverished or out-of-wedlock child was taken into a household and provided room, board and a basic education in exchange for labor until the child turned 21.  From a young age, Haynes worked long hours on the Roses’ farm. As members of a settler family, the other children probably did too. Haynes remembered being treated well by the Roses, especially by the mother, Elizabeth. He later said, “I remember it was a saying among the neighbors, that she loved Lemuel more than her own children.”   The Roses encouraged Haynes to get an education, a challenge on what was then the Western frontier. Haynes learned to read, studied on his own when he found time, and attended school whenever the Rose children did, which was infrequently. The head of the household, Deacon David Rose, recognized Haynes’ intelligence and came to rely on him for the important task of negotiating with horse traders. The Roses’ household was pious, the deacon and his family regularly discussing religious matters and reading sermons aloud. Haynes began to consider a career in the ministry.  Life in Massachusetts felt particularly tenuous in 1774, the year that Haynes turned 21 and his indentured servitude ended. Responding to the Boston Tea Party, which took place in December of the previous year, the British Parliament enacted the so-called Coercive Acts. Among other things, the new laws closed Boston’s harbor, required colonists to house British troops, and banned town meetings, at which much of the protest against the Crown had been organized. Sympathizing with the Colonial cause, Haynes joined his town’s militia.  When word reached Granville of the April 19, 1775, British attacks on Lexington and Concord, Haynes’ unit mobilized and marched to Boston. There, Granville’s minutemen joined other militias at the siege of Boston, which successfully contained British forces in the area.  Shocked by the violence unleashed against colonists by British soldiers, Haynes penned an epic poem, “Battle of Lexington,” to document the “dreadfull tragedy.” The poem reads, in part: For Liberty, each Freeman StrivesAs it’s a Gift of GodAnd for it willing yield their LivesAnd Seal it with their Blood He called on England to “let thy Fury cease/At this convulsive Hour” and “Consult those Things that make for Peace/Nor foster haughty Power.” An etched portrait of Lemuel Haynes serves as the frontispiece of the 1837 book “Sketches of the Life and Character of the Rev. Lemuel Haynes.” Wikimedia Commons The Granville unit’s stay in Boston lasted less than a month. Such a short enlistment period was common for a variety of reasons: Militiamen were typically farmers or craftsmen who could not afford to be away long; those militia members felt most loyal to defending their own communities; and Colonial society was deeply suspicious of standing armies, fearing that they gave too much power to whoever paid them. If militia service was often short, it was also sporadic. Like many men, Haynes returned to service when needed. In 1776, he enlisted with his local Hampshire County militia and marched north to aid in the defense of Fort Ticonderoga, which had been captured the previous year by forces led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold. Haynes’ service at the fort was cut short when he contracted typhus and was invalided out of the army. Sometime during that year, Haynes encountered the Declaration of Independence. Historian Pauline Meier noted that the declaration’s first paragraph resonated with white colonists, who believed fervently that the time had come “for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.”  In contrast, Meier said, Black people viewed the declaration’s second paragraph as its key point: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Haynes wrote his own treatise, apparently also in 1776, in which he argued that the institution of slavery violated natural law. Historians are unsure whether Haynes wrote his tract before or after reading the declaration. His treatise, titled “Liberty Further Extended: Or Free Thoughts on the Illegality of Slave-Keeping,” was not published during his lifetime.  He wrote that although his fellow revolutionaries were “zealous to maintain” their rights, it was essential that they realize that a “greater oppression” was being inflicted upon enslaved people. After all, wasn’t freedom “equally as precious to a Black man, as it is to a white one, and Bondage Equally as intolerable to the one as it is to the other?”  Haynes wrote, “Every one of those unfortunate men who are pretended to be Slaves, has a right to Be Declared free, for he never Lost his Liberty; he could not Lose it.” ‘An ambassador of God’ During the late 1770s, Haynes supported himself by working as a farmhand and a teacher’s assistant, while also studying Greek and Latin. The languages were required for those, like Haynes, who aspired to become Congregational ministers. Once he completed his studies in 1780, the parishioners of a new Congregational church in Granville called him to be their preacher, making Haynes the first known African American ever to lead an all-white congregation. Five years later, he became the first Black person ordained by a religious organization in North America. One of his parishioners, a white schoolteacher named Elizabeth Babbitt, became an admirer. The pair courted, but since Haynes was biracial, it was socially unacceptable for him to ask Babbitt to marry him. So she popped the question. After consulting his fellow preachers to gauge the reaction of other whites, Haynes accepted. (The couple would have 10 children and remain married for 50 years, until his death.) In 1787, Haynes served on a preaching circuit that took him into what was then the Republic of Vermont, where his passionate sermons caught people’s attention. The West Parish congregation in West Rutland asked Haynes to serve as their full-time pastor. He held the position for 30 years. That didn’t mean he found universal acceptance. Years later, one church member recalled being taunted by boys from another church who mocked Haynes with racial slurs. Racial prejudice didn’t stop Haynes from becoming a success. Under his leadership, the West Rutland congregation grew from 46 members to more than 300.  People remembered him for his quick, sometimes acerbic wit. When another minister’s papers were lost in a fire, Haynes supposedly suggested they had produced more light in the blaze than they ever had from the pulpit. Another time, two boys greeted him in the street by saying, “Father Haynes, have you heard the good news? The Devil is dead!” Haynes patted the boys on the head and said, “Oh, you poor fatherless children! What will become of you?” But in church, Haynes seldom joked. An acquaintance said, “When he ascended the pulpit, it was with a gravity which seemed to indicate that he felt the amazing weight of his charge as an ambassador of God to dying men.”  A painting depicts Rev. Lemuel Haynes preaching from the pulpit. The image, which was painted onto a tray, is in the collection of the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. It is believed to have been painted circa 1835-40, shortly after Haynes’ death. Courtesy of the RISD Museum, Providence, RI A fellow minister remembered Haynes’ remarkably quick mind: “His enunciation, though remarkably clear, was extremely rapid; a delightful flow of words and thoughts, as if they were crowding each other for utterance.” That “delightful flow of words” won Haynes admirers throughout the Northeast. He was regularly invited to be a visiting preacher or to deliver a sermon on holidays, including Independence Day or George Washington’s birthday. Haynes wrote a widely read attack on Universalism’s belief in universal salvation and received an honorary master’s degree from Middlebury College. After three decades of leading his West Rutland congregation, Haynes sensed he was no longer wanted. He submitted his resignation, and the congregation accepted. Haynes later explained to a friend that after 30 years, his congregation had discovered it had a Black preacher. Although racism might have been the cause, it also might have been a case of a preacher and his congregation growing apart, a common occurrence in early America. Some of Haynes’ religious beliefs, particularly his traditional Calvinist view that only a select few would attain salvation, may have fallen out of favor with new, younger members of his congregation. After departing West Rutland, Haynes went on to a three-year stint in Manchester, then finished his career after 11 years in South Granville, New York, just over the border from West Pawlet. Haynes fought his entire life to overcome the disadvantages of his obscure birth and of racial prejudice. Despite those struggles, he eventually found broad professional and social acceptance. Perhaps fearing losing that acceptance, Haynes seldom spoke out in later years on the most important racial issue of the day, slavery. Although he avoided the subject of race, Haynes’ prominent achievements made everyone who encountered him confront the issue at some level. As one scholar suggested, his very presence and example made those who knew him “better Christians” and better people. Read the story on VTDigger here: Then Again: Lemuel Haynes — a minuteman, preacher and longtime Vermonter — puts his stamp on history again. ...read more read less