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 […]
Editor’s note: Originally published in JAR in May 2013, this important article about the contribution of African Americans to our nation’s liberty was written by the late Thomas Fleming (1927–2017). African Americans participated in the American Revolution from its first day. That is another reason why it is shameful that for a long time, they […]
A previous article featured ten graves of Americans who served in the Revolutionary War, chosen primarily because of their elaborate monuments. Most of them were for high-ranking leaders: generals and admirals. Here we present ten gravesites of common soldiers, including seven individual gravesites and three mass graves. It is based largely on my own knowledge […]
Part of the highly revisionist history of the American Revolution that developed in nineteenth century was an apparent obsession with identifying individual sharpshooter heroes who had brought down key individuals during the war’s important battles. Never mind that no one made any such claims when the events actually occurred, no forensic techniques existed to analyze […]
