Black Patriots at the Battle of Cowpens

Image from the National Park Service's page.

On a bitterly cold Wednesday morning, January 17, 1781, more than two thousand men fought the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina. They were a diverse group, and the National Park Service can document a number of Black men who fought on the American side.

The documented men

The names the Park Service can document are:

• Julius Cesar
• Lemerick Farr
• Andrew Ferguson
• Fortune Freeman
• Gideon Griffen and Morgan Griffen
• Drury Harris and Edward Harris
• Allen Jeffers, Berry Jeffers and Osborne Jeffers
• Andrew Peeleg
• Dick Pickens
• Record Primes (or Primus Record)

Little is known about most of them, but what survives is revealing.

What the records say

Andrew Ferguson, born in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, was about 15 at Cowpens. In his pension application he said he arrived too late for the Battle of Kings Mountain, and described how, while they were at the Pacolet River, the British under Tarleton came upon them; Morgan marched them toward the Cowpens, where "we made a stand and whipped the British completely." He fought next at Guilford Courthouse, where he was wounded in the head. He settled in Indiana after the war and died in 1855, and was buried in an unmarked grave; in 1984 the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a marker on it.

Edward Harris filed for a pension on November 19, 1852, while living in Richland District, South Carolina. He and his parents were free Black people. He served in the 3rd South Carolina Regiment under Capt. Richard Brown and Col. Thompson, and later in the militia, fighting at Savannah, Stono, Charleston, Hanging Rock, Camden, Cowpens and Eutaw Springs. He said he served alongside his cousin Drury Harris, Gideon and Morgan Griffen, and Berry, Allen and Osborne Jeffers; Berry and Osborne were brothers.

Dick Pickens was a servant of Andrew Pickens and stayed in the rear during the battle. Afterward he found a "dead" British officer and began pulling off his boots, since Colonel Pickens needed a new pair. The officer stirred and asked what was happening, agreed he no longer needed the boots, and asked for a drink of water, a trade Dick Pickens gladly made.

Primes Record, or Record Primus, a free man of color, applied for a pension on December 16, 1846, at 86, while living in Roane County, Tennessee. He said he enlisted in 1777 and served under Captains Garter, Abbott and Locke and Colonel Williams, and for a time as Col. Thomas Carson's waiter. Captured at Charleston and paroled, he broke parole to rejoin the army, was captured and released again at Gum Swamp, and was wounded in the head at Camden. He said he also fought at Kings Mountain, Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse and Eutaw Springs and was at the siege of Yorktown. His claim was denied because he could not prove the required six months of service.

The servant in Ranney's painting

William Ranney's painting Battle of Cowpens shows the famous sword fight between William Washington and Banastre Tarleton, in which Washington's servant, known as Ball, Collins or Collin, rode up and saved Washington's life by firing a pistol at the British officer. Because most waiters were Black, Ranney painted him that way. But the servant apparently never filed for a pension, and Washington left no papers about his own role or anyone else's, so the Park Service cannot document him.

Further reading

• Edwin C. Bearss, Battle of Cowpens: A Documented Narrative and Troop Movement Maps (1993)
• Lawrence E. Babits, A Devil of a Whipping (1998)
• Thomas J. Fleming, "Downright Fighting": The Story of Cowpens (U.S. Department of the Interior, 1988)
• Robert Green, Black Courage 1775–1783 (National Society Daughters of the American Revolution)
• Sidney Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan, The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution (1989)
• Bobby G. Moss, The Patriots at the Cowpens (rev. ed., 1994)
• Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (1996)
• John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 (2nd ed., 1998)
• South Carolina Department of Archives and History: http://scdah.sc.gov/

Sources

• National Park Service, Cowpens National Battlefield, "Patriot Minorities at the Battle of Cowpens": https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/patriot-minorities-at-the-battle-of-cowpens.htm
• The NPS page says it can document fifteen Black men at Cowpens but lists fourteen names; this page gives no count.