African American Patriots in the Revolution

In 1775, Jacob Francis, a native of New Jersey, signed a one-year enlistment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that proved to be a particularly eventful stint. He followed General George Washington down to New York, fought at the Battle of Long Island, fled with the army across the Hudson River, and from his tent in Westchester County could hear the enemy Hessian soldiers only one-quarter mile away. He fought at the Battle of White Plains and then decamped with the army down the length of New Jersey and across the Delaware River when his enlistment was up. But he stayed on, re-crossed the treacherously icy river, and surprised the enemy at the famous raid on Trenton, New Jersey, on December 26, 1776. Like all soldiers, however, most of his time was spent between battles. Fifty years later, a fellow soldier in Francis’s company related that after a reconnaissance mission, Francis rode into camp at the front of his unit sporting a cow’s tail on the back of his head in imitation of the fashion of gentlemen officers who wore a queue. Delighted with his caper, his comrades promptly “elected Francis as their leader.” For his fourteen months of service, he got only three months of pay. Still, Jacob Francis served intermittently in militia units around his mother’s home in New Jersey until the end of the war.[1]

Mark Murry of Martin County, North Carolina, marched south with his integrated unit in 1780 to confront the British army that had just captured Charleston, South Carolina. When Murry’s unit reached the Great Pee Dee River, “some gentlemen of the neighborhood” requested of his officers that the soldiers linger another day so they could provide an entertainment for the county by staging a mock battle. The next day, a Sunday, “large crowds came composed of Ladies and Gentlemen” who were treated to a “sham battle.” This reenactment kept Murry’s regiment from participating in the Battle of Camden, South Carolina, a disaster for the Americans. During the course of the war, Murry signed up three times, once as a substitute for a drafted man.[2]

Robin Starr of Litchfield County, Connecticut, was a “during the war man” because he signed up for the war’s duration in January 1777. He had had some military experience on Lake Champlain before committing himself for the war’s duration. He then fought at Danbury, Germantown, Monmouth, Norwalk, and Yorktown. Wounded in the first and last battles of his service, he was also part of the elite light infantry that scaled the cliffs of what was thought to be an impregnable British position at the Battle of Stony Point on the Hudson River. He received a discharge signed by George Washington with a Badge of Merit. Having served six years, he earned two Badges of Distinction (one for each three-year period), which he wore on the left shoulder of his uniform coat.[3]

Jacob Francis, Mark Murry, and Robin Starr, along with approximately 5,000 other soldiers in the American Revolution, were men of color. Sharing much of the same experiences as White men, these Black veterans nevertheless encountered their own distinct challenges. Mark Murry, a light mulatto freeman, refused to act as a servant to a White officer and had to appeal up the chain of command to remain a combat soldier. It was common practice for White officers to tap men of color to tend to their needs.

Jacob Francis went by two names during the war. He used a master’s surname (Hulick) when serving under Washington. But once told by his mother his real surname, the soldier identified with his father thereafter and became a Francis. Many men of color changed their surname to denote their new status as men fighting for their country’s cause. After the war, Jacob Francis married a woman he had to buy out of slavery.

The much-decorated Robin Starr who had earned awards for service that most White soldiers never achieved, and bore the scars of serving on the battlefields of the Revolution, lived to see his state of Connecticut write a new constitution in 1818 that banned all men of color from voting. Mark Murry and Jacob Francis joined Starr in being expelled from full citizenship in the nineteenth century by the states they had fought for in the moment of crisis.[4]

What They Shared

All born in the 1750s, Francis from the middle colonies, Murry from the South, and Starr from New England grew up in a world that did not question slavery. Aside from a few Quakers and a handful of Black people who were allowed to resort to the courts, slavery was a given in everyday life. The institution existed in every colony of what would become the United States. Thomas Jefferson said slavery was a part of the monotonous course of daily life. That all changed when fighting broke out between the colonists and the mother country. Enslaved people could not be ignored in war, particularly when they accounted for twenty percent of the population. The British were the first to realize this and act on it. In 1775, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation offering immediate freedom to all indentured servants, Blacks, “or others” belonging to rebels, who would promptly bear arms in the interest of quelling the insurgents. Here was a power center offering freedom to the enslaved, even eventually taking in women and children.[5]

The patriot side extended no such comparable offer to African Americans. In fact, the Continental Congress forbade enlisting men of color, whether free or enslaved. In short order, African American veterans of the early New England battles demanded that they be reinstated. Washington described them as being “much dissatisfied” and advised the Congress that soldiers who felt “discarded” could “seek employ elsewhere.” Both the national Congress and most state legislatures eventually opened up enlistment to all healthy men. But in the first couple of years of the war, African Americans had to fight to be able to fight on the American side.[6]

Why Did They Enlist?

Camaraderie, commitment to a cause, adventure, and financial considerations all figured into White and Black men’s decisions to join or stay in military service. But for Black men, these reasons took on a different slant by dint of their position in society. For example, a Black recruit could eye the enlistment bounties of cash and land as a way to buy his own freedom or the freedom of a family member. Adventure too looked a shade different to an African American recruit. The rush of seeing faraway places would have been all the more exciting to men whose mobility had been the most limited before the war. While laws opened the way for Black participation in the war, the men themselves had to make the decision. First of all, they had a real alternative with the British army. They then had to calculate the odds that states and masters would live up to their word, and that they themselves as soldiers would survive to reap the benefits. And the soaring words on the revolutionary side might have led Black recruits to believe that their service would bring a better world to their families and communities. None of these scenarios was a foregone conclusion when African American men made their marks on enlistment papers.[7]

War Experiences

African American soldiers served longer stints than did their White counterparts, and did so for the most part in integrated companies of militia and the army. Only Rhode Island created an all-Black regiment by briefly offering freedom to slaves who served until the end of the war. A few other companies were peopled exclusively by Black rank and file, but all officers in these units were White. The fact that African Americans served in integrated units did not mean that they lived an integrated daily life. An African American friend of Primus Lane recalled that “Prime and myself were frequently together we both being black men.” Primus Lane spent a part of his service as a waiter to a White officer. Black men more often served as wagon drivers and servants than did White men. Still, most shared the physical danger of engaging with the enemy. Southern states’ laws like those of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina tried to detach Black men from guns by limiting their service to support duties. But evidence on the ground as provided by the pension records indicate that southern Black men were in the thick of battle. More southerners noted being wounded than soldiers from north of the Pennsylvania-Maryland border. Morgan Griffin’s daughter claimed that her father was wounded seven times while a South Carolina soldier. Elisha Hunt of North Carolina lost his right arm at Charleston. Tim Jones of Virginia lost his leg at Yorktown.[8]

The army offered sparse rations, drafty quarters, and considerable danger but the uniform also meant mobility, adventure, and the opportunity of teaming with White countrymen in pursuit of a lofty goal. Military service also provided an outlet for men to be forceful, to take initiative, and to engage in aggressive behavior. Record Prime, a poor freeman from North Carolina, described how he and his brothers-in-arms “whipped the British and Tories.” Another veteran from New Jersey, Oliver Cromwell, informed the Pension Office in 1818 that “we knocked the British about lively” at Trenton and Princeton.[9]

The veterans’ children and grandchildren who joined the early Black abolition movement repeatedly cited the sacrifice of Black men in the American Revolution. After the war, these veterans mounted a frontal assault in their local courthouses to claim their pensions, proclaiming themselves worthy in a post-war society that went about systematically demeaning anyone of their skin color. The vets made sure that no one was going to deny them their place in the formation of the nation. The struggle of ’76 was an ongoing one for these veterans, and they passed it along to further generations who labored, and who continue to labor, to realize the promises of the great revolutionary documents.[10]

Some Thoughts on the Classroom

The basic sources for my book and this article are the Revolutionary War Pension Records. They are the closest thing to Black men’s voices from the era of the American Revolution. In most books to date, Black men are seen through the eyes of White people, through the laws, and on lists. Because so few sources exist with African American testimonies, Black soldiers are almost exclusively seen as a group. The Revolutionary War Pension Records help to individualize them and to illuminate their experiences. A lively conversation can be had in the classroom by asking students to enumerate the benefits as well as the limitations of this source.

Another exercise in class could involve asking students to assess the options available to African American men in 1776 and then to choose one (e.g., stay at home; join the Brits; run away; join the Continentals), giving specific reasons for their decision.

Another conversation could be had about George Washington’s reaction to Dunmore’s Proclamation (see footnote 5).

In an AP class, one might assign each student to do research on an individual veteran. The pension records are available on Ancestry.com. The teacher could read through the records and choose soldiers who had differing experiences during the war. Many pensions are brief and matter-of-fact, so the student’s job would be to flesh out the soldier’s story. A soldier might be a White immigrant from Ireland who fought in the Connecticut line, participated in the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown, and was promoted to corporal. So the student would have to do a bit of research on the Connecticut units (perhaps the enlistment laws there), the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown, the experience of immigrants in the army, and the role of corporals in a company.

Another student might have the pension of an enslaved African American in Rhode Island who participated in the siege of Yorktown and was wounded. So the student would have to discuss the all-Black regiment from Rhode Island, recount what happened at Yorktown, and describe the state of battlefield medicine. This exercise allows students to get to know a real person who lived through the Revolution.

The pensions also give a snapshot of the veterans’ lives in the nineteenth century. The Revolutionary War Pension Act of 1818 required pensioners to submit to the government a list of all of their possessions—a real eye opener concerning people of color. Pensions also include the depositions of war comrades who write about the pension applicant. Widows too often write about their husbands, most often about their marriages.

Judith Van Buskirk is professor of history at the State University of New York, Cortland. She is the author of Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017) and Generous Enemies: Patriots and Loyalists in Revolutionary New York (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).