Estimates have appeared in print for generations that 3,000 to 5,000 Black soldiers served in the American military in the Revolution. These claims seldom offer documentation, being instead what historian Michael Lanning defined as only a “general consensus” of the number of African American patriots. Lack of records, reliance on anecdotal evidence, and other factors […]
What inspired you to start researching and writing about the Revolution? In 1974, Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia began a state internship program. I was the state’s first history intern. Because I was at that time a cadet at North Georgia College, I chose the battle of Kettle Creek, a military topic of which I knew […]
George Rockingham Gilmer wrote a heroic saga of the life, service, and sacrifices of Austin Dabney, an African American Georgia Revolutionary War hero. He first published it anonymously in 1849 and reprinted it under his name in a pamphlet in 1851 and in George White’s Historical Collections of Georgia in 1854. Gilmer included it in […]
