Tag: African American Soldiers

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Nineteenth-Century Remembrances of Black Revolutionary Veterans: Thomas Carney, Maryland Continental Soldier

John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish establish the first African American newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, in New York in 1827. The paper circulated in eleven states, the District of Columbia, Haiti, Europe, and Canada. The same year, Sarah Mapps Douglass, a Black educator and contributor to The Anglo African, an early Black paper, established a school for […]

by John Rees
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The American Revolution in Alexandria, Virginia: Upheaval in George Washington’s Hometown

Alexandria, Virginia, is well known as George Washington’s hometown, but its role during the American Revolution is not widely understood. Like the rest of Northern Virginia, Alexandria was largely spared the fierce warfare that raged across the country. Nonetheless, the Revolution profoundly affected the community. Founded in 1749 along the Potomac River, Alexandria was a […]

by Kieran J. O'Keefe
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This Week on Dispatches: John Rees on African American Soldiers in the American Revolution

On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews author and JAR contributor John Rees on the enlightening history of African American soldiers in the American Revolution, based on his book “They Were Good Soldiers:” African Americans Serving in the Continental Army, 1775–1783. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published by the Journal of the […]

by Editors
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‘They Were Good Soldiers’: African Americans Serving in the Continental Army, 1775–1783

They Were Good Soldiers: African-Americans Serving in the Continental Army, 1775-1783 by John U. Rees (Solihull, England: Helion & Company, 2019) John U. Rees addresses an interesting yet difficult subject in his recent work, ‘They Were Good Soldiers’: African-Americans Serving in the Continental Army, 1775-1783. Rees and others interested in the lives and experiences of the common […]

by Patrick H. Hannum
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Revisiting B. E. Griffiths: Former Slave, Queen’s Ranger, and “Son of Africa”

In a recent article, Todd Braisted reconstructed the remarkable story of a black Loyalist soldier, “Trumpeter Barney” of the Queen’s Rangers.[1] Through meticulous archival work, Braisted established that Barney, a runaway slave who joined the British at the siege of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780, was the same man as Barnard E. Griffiths, who was […]

by Stephen Brumwell
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Bernard E. Griffiths: Trumpeter Barney of the Queen’s Rangers, Chelsea Pensioner—and Freed Slave

The period of the American Revolution does not afford many accounts of individual rank and file soldiers’ exploits, particularly on the side British side. The filing of some 80,000 pension applications in the United States makes it much easier to learn of a soldier’s activities during the war, whether it be the mundane task of […]

by Todd W. Braisted
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Peter Salem? Salem Poor? Who Killed Major John Pitcairn?

Maj. John Pitcairn of the British marines became notorious among New Englanders after the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress published depositions from dozens of men declaring that he had ordered light infantrymen to fire on the peaceful Lexington militia company. (Modern historians discount those claims, agreeing that […]

by J. L. Bell