(bright music) - Hello, I'm Steve Kendall.

Welcome to "The Journal."

As we celebrate America's 250th birthday, many unknown or little known stories are part of that history.

We're joined today by Dr.

Shirley Green to discuss Black Soldiers of the American Revolution.

Welcome to Journal Dr.

Green.

Appreciate you being here.

Talk a little bit about the fact, we've seen in American culture, pop culture, references to soldiers that were black, that fought in the American Revolution, but kind of give us a broader view of what that was like.

And then you've written a book that details some history that's very closely related to you.

We can talk about as well.

But let's talk about black soldiers in the American Revolution fought on both sides for varying reasons.

Sometimes not of their own volition, but just kind of talk about what that was like for a black soldier who suddenly found themselves in a battle between the British and the Americans.

- Well, first off, you probably need to understand what motivated black men to fight on either side during the Revolutionary War.

And historian Ira Berlin probably puts it best, most succinctly, is that if you were a enslaved man, you would fight for whichever side would grant you your liberty and your freedom.

If you were a free man or a freed man before the war started, you would fight for whatever side would grant you equality that would treat you the same way that they treated their white counterparts.

So that's the basis.

That's the baseline.

If you're talking about allegiances and what motivated these black men to fight.

On the American side, there were the traditionally accepted number for the number of black soldiers or black men who fought with the continental army is 5,000.

And that's a pretty large number.

But recent research, recent scholarship indicates that the number might be much larger.

The Daughters of the American Revolution, the national chapter in Washington, DC did a inventory, a survey several years ago, a couple of decades ago now, and they counted at least 6,600 soldiers of African and Native American descent that served with the Continentals during the war.

And even more recent scholarship is pushing that number up to 8,000 black men who served either in the continental army or in the state brigades or local militias during the war.

So that number has grown throughout as a result of recent research and scholarship.

- Now, for enslaved black people, black soldiers, were they compelled by the people that, in that case owned them in that time to go to war with, if someone volunteered, did they bring along one of their servants or whatever?

How did that work for some of the black people involved?

- That did happen.

If you had white commissioned officers who served with the continental army, they did bring along their valets, their servants, their enslaved people along to war with them.

George Washington did that as well.

So that did happen.

And there were many states that allowed substitution where if you were drafted as a soldier, that you could find a substitute to serve for you, on behalf of you.

And a lot of people were able to get enslaved people to serve as their substitutes during the war as well.

- Now, there's a story that hasn't gotten a lot of attention.

Do we know maybe roughly how many people found themselves in that situation where, I guess for them, they see that as a better opportunity to be away from the life they were living?

Or was it just a matter of, "I need the money or I need to get away from where I'm at?"

What was the motivation for that other than, "Serve for me"?

Did they get paid in some way?

Or how were they were compensated for that?

- Well, sometimes they were compensated with money, and most of the time, if you were enslaved man, you were compensated in lieu of your freedom.

So if you served, you were allowed to gain your freedom after the war.

Now, that didn't happen all the time.

Sometimes they were promised freedom and they did not necessarily gain their freedom after the war.

And there were a couple incidents of that occurring as well.

There's a Connecticut individual who served as a substitute for his enslaver and was not granted his freedom.

And then there was a gentleman in New Hampshire that happened to as well.

So you can find that kind of information sometimes in the pension records of these soldiers.

- Now, did we have an integrated service army at that point, or was it as unfortunately we know, for a good portion of our existence, was there segregation even under those circumstances?

- That is a great question and that is a really interesting question because at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army was an integrated fighting force.

And it did not change, and we can talk about this later, but it did become segregated later during the existence of the continental Army.

And just to kind of give you some numbers, I know I threw out the 5,000 to 8,000 number earlier, but there was an inventory taken in 1778 by the Continental Army, ordered by General Washington, and they counted right around 755 black soldiers that were serving in August of 1778 among 2000 about, no, excuse me, 21,000 rank and file soldiers.

So they were a smaller percentage of the fighting force, and they were integrated, they served at integrated companies and integrated regiments during the war.

Now, but that would change and things would change throughout the Revolutionary War in terms of the Continental Army's policy on whether they were gonna allow black men to serve in the Army and what their service would look like.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Yeah.

And were they typically infantry men, line fighters, or were they moved into other positions?

What roles did they play?

Probably everything I'm guessing, but- - Well, if we go back to the very beginning of the war, if we go back to the battles of Lexington and Concord, you had black men who served as militia members and served as minute men and fought at those initial battles at Lexington and Concord.

One of the individuals that was wounded at the Battle of Lexington was an individual by the name of Prince Estabrook.

And he was an enslaved person to an individual that lived in Lexington during that period of time.

So you did have these individuals who served from the very beginning of the war, Lexington, Concord, and at the batter of Bunker Hill.

And then as General Washington comes on the scene in the summer of 1775, and he has to create this continental army out of this mixture of militia groups that are laying siege to Boston at this particular period of time.

As he's creating this continental army, he gives instructions to his recruiting officers, those individuals that he charged with enlisting men to come into the new continental army.

That they were not to enlist any black soldiers, any black men.

And that would change over a period of time because of different things that were starting to occur.

But initially, general Washington's aim was to not to enlist any more black men into those militia groups and into the new continental army.

He did allow those soldiers that were already serving as part of those militia groups to continue to serve.

But he did not want to enlist any more black men.

- Okay.

Well, we come back.

Let's find out what the rationale for that was.

because that's interesting because obviously we had people there.

I'm guessing we'll find out that some of it was they just needed more bodies.

But that's unfortunately- - [Dr.

Green] Definitely.

- Yeah.

That's a yeah.

So we'll be back in just a moment.

Dr.

Shirley Green, adjunct professor, department of History at BGSU, also the author of "Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color" back in just a moment here on "The Journal."

Thank you for staying with us on "The Journal."

Our guest is Dr.

Shirley Green, who is really giving us a great education on the American Revolution in general, and the service of black revolutionary soldiers.

So George Washington comes on the scene, he's got all these militia from all these different places, all with different sets of rules and ways of doing things.

And he tries to make an army.

But one of the things he does is, as you mentioned at the end of that last segment is say, "Okay, from now on, we're not going to enlist any more black soldiers."

So what was his rationale for that?

Because obviously it had been okay up to that point, it had been working, it appears.

So why did he decide to change that?

- Many of the militia groups that were surrounding and leading siege to Boston when George Washington comes on the scene were from New England.

So they had a different mindset than the colony of Virginia that George Washington came from.

And part of his fear was to, he did not want to, he was sensitive to the fears of southern slave holders about having formerly enslaved, freed or free black men allowed to be arms bearers in the continental army.

So he was concerned about that.

So that was his initial order.

But that would change.

And it changed as a result of many things.

Of course, manpower needs to actually staff this army.

But one of the things that happened pretty early on in November of 1775 was that the Royal Governor of Virginia, a guy by the name of Lord Dunmore, his real name was John Murray.

He issued a proclamation.

Right.

So he is the royal governor, of course, is fighting on the side of the king and on the side of the British.

And he issued a proclamation that allowed for, that called for anyone coming to the British cause any enslaved man, black man coming to the British cause and Native American as well.

Because they were also enslaved during this period of time, if you came to the British cause and actually fought for the British side, that you would gain your freedom.

It's called Dunmore's proclamation.

- Okay.

- And it, of course, opened up a wave of fugitives enslaved people running to the British cause.

Many of them men.

And he was also able to put together, as a result of that, put together an Ethiopian regiment as Lord Dunmore called it.

And they fought against the American troops during several key battles early in the war in Virginia.

So as a result of Lord Dunmore doing that, George Washington has to react to that.

The continental Congress has to react to that.

And they allow, initially they allow the reenlistment of veteran black soldiers who fought at the initial battles.

And then after that, a year later, they allowed for the enlistment of free black men to fight for the continental- - Because they saw the handwriting on the wall there.

That that was an incredible motivating factor.

You would be freed if you fought for the British.

And they won, of course.

That was the balancing act.

But they said, "Well, wait a minute."

Strangely enough, oddly enough, people are going, "Oh, this sounds like a much better deal over here than what you're offering me."

So does that sort of then start to balance out then the blacks start to move to the American side as well?

Or is it still?

- Well, if you're still still about an enslaved population, the enslaved population is still gonna run to the British side because they're gonna be granted their freedom.

Because George Washington is only opening up the army to free black men.

But that would also change down the road as well.

- Well, and then the other thing is too, I guess you would probably look at it, I mean, I'm thinking that, "If I know who the Americans are, and I know what they've been doing to me."

- [Dr.

Green] Right, right.

- The British may off, you know, "I guess I'll trust them to do, they'll say what they're gonna do," but sort of like you knew what you were gonna get with the Americans.

They weren't offering you a freedom.

Had not been offering you freedom generally.

The British, at least there was a possibility they would do that if they lived up to their word and won the war.

- And that's something that Ken Burns in the documentary, "The American Revolution" points out.

That you had indigenous people and people of African descent and how they made their allegiances and alliances during the war.

And it goes back to what Ira Berlin said that the enslaved were looking for the side that granted them their freedom, and then freedmen were looking for the side that granted them their equality.

- And as we go through the war, and you mentioned the fact too, that it initially, this was an integrated army.

Then it became segregated.

Did that eventually then come back around the other way?

Or did the unit stay segregated till the war was won?

- Well, what happened, and this is where my ancestors coming to the picture, and this involves the Rhode Island regiments.

Rhode Island is a small state and throughout the war, they had trouble enlisting and getting enough men to fulfill the commitment that they made to the continental Congress that they would have a certain number of, in, excuse me, enlisted men serving.

And the continental Congress tasked them to come up with two infantry regiments, the first and second Rhode Island regiment And my ancestors, as a result of the change in the rules, when they allowed free men to come into Continental service, because my two ancestors, William and Ben Frank, were both free men.

They were born free.

They were allowed to come into the Continental Army at that point in time.

And they enlisted in the second Rhode Island regiment.

So the first and second Rhode Island regiments coming outta New England, they were integrated regiments.

White, black and Native American soldiers all served together.

They go in, they fight a major battle in 1777 at Red Bank, and after that battle, they go to winner encampment at Valley Forge.

- [Steve] Okay.

Yeah.

- And everything you've heard about Valley Forge is true.

It was brutal.

- [Steve] Worse than we even could imagine.

- Right.

It was very brutal.

And as a result of that, they lost a lot of men.

The Rhode Island regiment, the continental army in its entirety, lost a lot of men.

But in particularly the Rhode Island regiments, the first and second lost a lot of men to death, illness, desertion, end of their enlistments.

And they needed to come up with a way to fill both of those two regiments.

By the end of about, I think at the end of December, 1777, in the beginning of that following year, January, 1778, they barely had enough soldiers at camp in Valley Forge to serve, to fill one regiment.

So the commander who was in charge of the Rhode Island regiments, a guy by the name of James Varnum, decided to recommend to General Washington that they could go back home to their home state of Rhode Island and at least raise enough soldiers, from the enslavement ranks to make up another regiment.

And that's what they did.

The Rhode Island General Assembly passed the Slave Enlistment Act of 1778 in February of that year.

And they were able to, and that allowed them to enlist formerly enslaved men to serve in the Rhode Island regiments.

- And one of the things too, you mentioned, and you've referenced several times, we like to think in our minds that slavery is only a factor in the South.

The reality was that across New England, the Northern States, people were enslaved as well.

And that's because we look at it eventually, maybe because of the Civil War as a north versus south.

But people were enslaved in the North.

It wasn't unusual, probably wasn't.

It was just the norm.

- [Dr.

Green] It was the norm.

- It's just that we, I guess from a public relations point of view, it became more of a problem for the South because of the Civil War.

But the reality was, as you've mentioned several times, northern states were bringing enslaved people in as well.

- And General Varnum understood the makeup of his home state.

And he knew that he could raise a battalion of formerly enslaved men.

He knew he could come up with enough men to fill a regiment.

So he was able to do that.

They were able to enslave, not enslave, they were able to enlist around a hundred formerly enslaved men to serve in the Rhode Island regiments.

But this is where it gets tricky.

Because instead of just dispersing those individuals into both of the regimens, for some reason or another, they decided to segregate the Rhode Island regiments.

So the Frank Brothers, my ancestors, were serving in the second Rhode Island regiment during that period of time, when this new wave of formerly enslaved men come into the regiments, they decided to move all of the black soldiers and Native American soldiers from the second Rhode Island regiment into the first Rhode Island regiment, and all the white soldiers from the first over to the second.

And now we have segregation in the military.

- Okay.

Yeah.

Well, we come back, you've introduced this to your brothers a little bit, your relatives.

Let's talk about that because there's an incredible story there.

And it highlights too that the individuals that are involved, because we've talked about people now sort of en mass as Rhode Island soldiers, black soldiers, continental soldiers, that kind of thing.

But you have two family members who started out the same way, but then took somewhat different paths along the way.

So we come back, we'll talk about the focus of your book back in just a moment with Dr.

Shirley Green here on "The Journal."

You're with us on "The Journal."

Our guest is Dr.

Shirley Green, author of the book, "Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color" We've been talking in general about the American Revolution and black and Native Americans who served on both sides for a variety of motivations.

We touched on that last segment about the book that you've written, which is about your family members.

And I know we were talking before the show that you were surprised to realize as you found out that you had relatives that fought in the American Revolution.

They were black soldiers.

Talk about the motivation for your book, and then let's talk about that story in general.

Because it's an incredible story about two brothers, both, as you mentioned now are in the Continental Army.

And then things change a little bit.

But let's talk about your story and how you decided to find out about this.

- Well, I think that we left off talking about William and Ben serving in the second Rhode Island regiment.

And then during the winter of Valley Forge of 1777 to 1778, how their assignment was changed from the second Rhode Island regiment to the first Rhode Island regiment with other black soldiers and Native American soldiers.

And that regiment, that first Rhode Island regiment became known as the Black Regiment.

But I started on my research about William and Ben Frank, the Frank Brothers innocently enough.

And I was taking an undergraduate class at the University of Toledo.

And I was an African American history class and the instructor, started talking about the first great wave of emancipation after the American Revolution.

And she talked about a group of individuals called black loyalists who remained loyal to the British side.

And at the end of the war, they evacuated some of them to Nova Scotia.

And as soon as she said Nova Scotia, I went, "Wait a minute."

My grandfather, yeah.

My maternal grandfather was born and raised in Nova Scotia, Canada.

And I always believed that his family, his ancestors got there by the way of the Underground Railroad seeking freedom from enslave and meant in United States.

But that wasn't the case.

And after that class, I went home and called up my uncle Ben Franklin.

And he said, "No, here's the story."

And the Franklin oral tradition is this, the way that it was explained to me by my Uncle Benny, was that the first Franklin man came to the United States by, from the west coast of Africa by way of Haiti Santo Domingo at the time, and made his way to Rhode Island.

And then two of his descendants fought in the Revolutionary War out of the state of Rhode Island in the Black Regiment.

- Ah, okay.

- And that's the story I was given, which is a great story.

And I didn't learn it until I was much older.

But the problem with that story is, it did not explain how the ancestors originally got to Nova Scotia.

Because how do you make a connection between two men that fought in the black regiment to someone living in Nova Scotia?

- Nova Scotia?

Yeah.

- So what happened is this, and this is what the book details.

The book details how the service of these two young men, William and Ben Frank, start together in the second Rhode Island regiment.

They are reassigned to the first Rhode Island regiment And now they are experiencing segregation in the Army.

They fight a major battle at the Battle of Rhode Island after their change of assignment.

And then they are assigned to shore patrol.

They are assigned away from the main force of the continental army.

And it may be perceived that they were starting to be treated differently now because they are now just with other black soldiers and Native American soldiers.

And at one point in time, the younger brother, Ben, gets married and during war and they are not getting paid.

Of course we know the story about the fact that the continental soldiers were not treated fairly.

They didn't get paid, they didn't have the right equipment until later in the war.

And at one point, Ben makes the decision, after fighting two major battles, and they're both battles they have to retreat.

He decides that he is no longer gonna fight for the American side.

And he leaves to the British cause, he goes to the British side.

His older brother William stays and fights with the Continentals until the end of the war.

He served for a total of six years, the older brother did.

And the younger brother just kind of disappears in the records.

And the next time that I find him in the records is he's a member of a black loyalist wave of individuals that is leaving New York at the end of the war making their way to Nova Scotia.

- Ah, okay.

So that's how that connection starts.

So did the two brothers ever reconcile?

What happens?

Because obviously that's two different approaches.

So the brother that stayed in the Army, where did he then go?

What happened?

- Yeah.

He served until the end of the war.

He was able to get his land bounty at the end of the war.

A lot of the soldiers signed up to serve for consistent pay, which never occurred.

- [Steve] Never showed up.

- But they also signed up for enlistment bonuses, and they also signed up to obtain land at the end of the war.

And the older brother, William Frank, did get his land bounty, but he decided not to move out to the Firelands, this area.

- Okay.

Here in this area in northwest Ohio.

- Right.

He decided to sell his portion of the land to a land speculator.

And he moved back home, to his hometown of Johnston, Rhode Island.

And family oral tradition states that after a period of time he moved he and his family down to Louisiana.

- Ah, okay.

Yeah.

Now, the brother in Nova Scotia, does he stay in Nova Scotia then his entire life, or?

- [Dr.

Green] Yes he does.

- He does.

Okay.

- He stays in Nova Scotia for the rest of his life.

He settles in communities with other black loyalists.

He remarries and he has nine children that survive into adulthood.

- [Steve] Wow.

- Yeah.

He does.

- [Steve] So full life.

- He has a full life.

And then one of his descendants is my grandfather who was born and raised in Nova Scotia, Canada.

- I mean, did you ever think, and we've got just a couple of minutes here, did you ever think about, when you started even looking into this or thinking about it, that you would find this kind of a story?

I mean, what did you expect to find?

Did you have an idea of what you thought you were gonna find?

And they're like, "Oh, look at this."

It's totally, not totally different, but it's not what I thought it was going to be.

- I had no clue.

I had no clue.

I mean, we found the Frank Brothers in the military records of the Continental Army.

- [Steve] Yeah.

And that's where- - But I could not understand how we went from being in the continental army to living in Nova Scotia, Canada.

And then trying to make that connection was a little difficult.

But we were able to look into the records and make that connection with the help of local historians in particular in Nova Scotia.

- [Steve] Wow.

Wow.

It's incredible story.

And I guess, the other thing is too, it puts names and faces to stories about the war because the Revolutionary War isn't one that there's a lot of, there aren't any photos around obviously.

- [Dr.

Green] No, there aren't.

- And so you have to kind of use, as you said, a lot of oral history and then go to the records.

And I'm always amazed when I see how diligently things were recorded back then, because- - [Dr.

Green] Right.

- We think of it as not being a time where things were taken care of that way.

And yet, as you said, you can go in and find, you can start to trace where they were in the military and that eventually where they ended up.

And that's a pretty incredible thing.

And a lot of hard work goes into that, obviously, too.

- [Dr.

Green] It can be a little difficult trying to trace people of color in the Colonial Revolutionary era records.

What was lucky for me in my research is that they served in the military.

And the military records are there, they're a little bit more precise.

So it was interesting to do the study.

It was wonderful finding out about William and Ben Frank, and it was really interesting trying to understand the motivation for service and then the motivation to leave.

- [Steve] Right.

Right.

Yeah.

And it's a quintessential American story.

I mean, it's, yeah.

And I say it puts it, it brings it home to what families were and what the people were then.

So, great story.

- And I think the one thing that I usually get questioned about is how do you know that Ben Frank is Ben Frank in The Ben Frank in the Black Regiment is the Ben Frank who lives in Nova Scotia, Canada.

And I remind people that the story about the oral tradition about these two young men that fought in the Revolutionary War comes from the Nova Scotia side.

So how would he know if he didn't know.

- Exactly.

Yep.

That seals the deal right there.

Well, thank you so much for coming on.

It's a great story.

Your book sounds like a wonderful read.

People should look for it.

It's called, "Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color" And it tells a story about the American Revolution from a perspective people who were there basically, as you found out, right.

And lived the whole array of what was going on.

And so thank you so much for being on.

Appreciate it.

- Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

- Great.

You can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 PM on WBGU PBS.

We'll see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

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