ABSTRACT By the early decades of the nineteenth century, the Revolutionary rallying cries of liberty and equality rang false to the more than 1.5 million black individuals living in bondage throughout the new United States. Drury Scott, a free black veteran of the American Revolution, represents an example of the contradictions of Revolutionary rhetoric and the promotion of race-based slavery in the new nation. When he stood before the Fayette County, Kentucky Circuit Court on the first day of July 1820, Scott, made an important political statement: That even though his rights had been restricted based on his skin color over the years since the war’s end, he still deserved “the support of his country” as a veteran of the Revolution and his dedication to the Patriot cause. This project seeks to place black military service at the center of questions over race, citizenship, freedom, and the nature of the republic both during and after the conflict. My approach focuses on pension documents, originally filed in local county courthouses throughout the new nation. These rich resources demonstrate the ways that free people of color understood the meaning of the Revolution at a time when state legislatures passed laws that restricted their freedoms and secured the institution of race- based slavery. The project argues that black veterans and their widows actively engaged in the creation of local memory of the war by recounting their war stories. County level documents also suggest that veterans and their families had a complex understanding of the legal system and utilized local paradigms of gender and race to protect their limited rights. The pension application process not only offers insight on the development of the relationship between local, state, and federal authorities concerning race, gender, and legal standing through the creation and implementation of the first federal pensions. By considering the pension process as claims to masculinity, femininity, respect, and reputation, particularly in southern communities, the project demonstrates that connections to the American Revolution provided a means for African-American men and women to fight for their families and their limited freedoms in a country bent on race-based slavery. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the faculty at Tulane University, none more important than my committee members, Dr. Randy J. Sparks, Dr. Emily Clark, and Dr. R. Blakeslee Gilpin. Dr. Sparks shaped my graduate experience in innumerable ways. He taught how to think and write about history more deeply, and how to handle the stresses of researching and completing a dissertation. His office was always upon to me for lengthy discussions about my research and he was always able to make sense out of the roughest of drafts. Dr. Clark was one of the first professors I met at Tulane, and, from the very beginning, she pushed me to think differently about my own evidence even as she pointed me in the direction of more. In many ways, this dissertation began in a heated discussion during her course, "American Revolutions." She fostered my ideas from the very start. She is utterly selfless, accepting short deadlines for revisions and always available to help me navigate through the stresses of graduate school. Dr. Gilpin always provided a smiling face in Hebert Hall. His courses taught me to take historical memory more seriously in my inquiries into the lives of black veterans. Professors Kris Lane and Justin Wolfe have offered numerous suggestions and support that have strengthened my study. This project has benefited greatly from generous financial support. The History Department, The Center for Ethics and Public Affairs, and the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University provided invaluable financial support for tuition, research, and conference trips. I have received a substantial five-year fellowship, the Monroe Fellowship, The Murphy Institute Writing Fellowship, as well as a Summer Merit ii Fellowship Award. I have also received research grants from the Virginia Historical Society as well as the Archie K. Davis Fellowship at the North Caroliniana Society. My interest in race in the antebellum South began as an undergraduate at Lynchburg College, where I found incredible support from faculty members. Dr. Kirt von Daacke nurtured this project at its earliest stages and his constant mentorship continued even after I graduated. His classes inspired me to become a historian and his emotional support throughout eight years of graduate school cannot be overstated. I hope I have made him proud to be connected with this project. My parents, Dorothy and Steve Schmidt, have supported my academic growth my entire life. I dedicate this work to them. iii LIST OF TABLES 1.1. List of Known African American Sailors onboard the Dragon…………………. 53 iv LIST OF FIGURES 1.1. Map of Abraham Goff’s (Bedford County, Virginia) military career in the Tenth Virginia ……………………………………………………………………...….. 244 1.2. Map of Jim Capers’ (Pike County, Alabama) military career in the Fourth South Carolina ………………………………………………………………………….. 245 v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………………… ii LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………………....... iv LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………..... v INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………… 1 CHAPTER 1: TO FIGHT OUR COMMON ENEMY: THE ENLISTMENT OF BLACK TROOPS IN COLONIAL ARMED FORCES………….……………………….... 18 CHAPTER 2: COMRADES IN ARMS: RACE, KINSHIP, AND FRIENDSHIP IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMED FORCES………………………………………………. 51 CHAPTER 3: RETURNING HOME: SOLDIERS’ LIVES AFTER THE WAR…………… 74 CHAPTER 4: SUPPORT OF HIS COUNTRY: FEDERAL PENSION LEGISLATION AND BLACK REVOLUTIONARY WAR VETERANS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY…………………… 101 CHAPTER 5: REVOLUTIONARY WAR WIDOWS: PENSION APPLICATIONS, RACE, GENDER, AND LEGAL CULTURE IN ANTEBELLUM VIRGINIA…………………………………………… 141 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………..... 184 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………….... 204 INTRODUCTION In 1780, a young free black man named Andrew Ferguson found himself captured by British troops in the rural Virginia countryside. Once abducted, two British soldiers whipped Ferguson and his father repeatedly with a cat-o-nine tails. After the violent encounter, the two men made their escape and met General Nathanael Green, a leader of the Patriot forces under General George Washington’s command. When they related their story of imprisonment and torture, Ferguson recalled Green’s response: “[he] toled [sic] us that if the British ever got us again they would kill us and he had better draft us and so he … told us we should go with him and must fight the British.”1 Ferguson went on to engage in several battles in the southern campaign, including the Battle at Allegany, where he faced British forces led by his former British captors, and at King’s Mountain, a skirmish just outside of Cow-Pens, Guilford, and Eutaw Springs. In 1781, he sustained a head injury in action at Guilford, South Carolina that kept him out of action for a month while doctors treated him at the iron works. He was discharged later in that same year but after he left the army, his head injury worsened, and he returned to the iron works to 1 Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files (National Archives Microfilm Publication M804), roll 966, Andrew Ferguson, S32243. Hereafter, all federal pension documents will be cited as RWP, microfilm roll number, name of veteran, pension number. For a short biography of Andrew Ferguson and his father, see Paul Heinegg, List of Free African Americans in the Revolution: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware, http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/revolution.htm. 1 recover until a friend sent someone to help him travel back to his home in Virginia in November 1781.2 Over fifty years later, when he stood before the Probate Judge of Monroe County, Indiana, and petitioned for his pension, Andrew Ferguson swore that day in 1838 to his free status, and the judge labeled him a free “colored man” in the petition that would later be sent to the War Department.3 Ferguson’s petition is similar to thousands of others sent from Revolutionary War veterans, black and white, from all across the country in the 1820s and 1830s. He included everything he could remember about the battles in which he participated, including specific details such as names of leaders and other service members. He also described the informal nature of his discharge, “Gen. Green said he would take all our names down and we should get our pay…he gave me some kind of a ticket or other which I have long ago lost.”4 Veterans like Ferguson needed the details of their wartime experiences in order to prove their service because many lost their official paperwork—if they even received it in the first place. Though his petition looks very similar to those submitted by white veterans, Ferguson’s story of capture by the British stands out among the crowd of petitions. For Ferguson, who was a free man prior to the first shots fired at Lexington and Concord, the physical assault with the cat-o-nine tails meant more than just the pain of tearing the flesh on his back. It was also a deeply symbolic gesture, a reminder of his vulnerability in a racialized world, of how easily the line between enslaved and free could be broken for 2 RWP, roll 966, Andrew Ferguson, S32243, 6. 3 Ibid. 4 RWP, roll 966, Ferguson, Andrew, S32243. 2 someone with black skin. It hammered home the precarious position of being a free black man in a society that fully accepted and promoted race-based slavery. The British, who are historically associated with the beginnings of abolitionism and small-scale emancipation after Lord Dunmore’s 1775 Proclamation offered freedom to all slaves or indentured servants who bore arms for royal forces, were not allies in Ferguson’s eyes. From his standpoint, they were his enemy and they had the power to reduce a free man to slavery with one lash.