Soldiers of African Descent at Fort Schuyler and in the Mohawk Valley

A Continental soldier of African descent, dressed like other soldiers of the New York Line regiments. National Park Service / T. Payton, 1997.

Hard to see, but there

It's hard to say for certain how many soldiers of African descent served at Fort Schuyler (Stanwix), but people of color played an integral, often overlooked part in early America — the Revolution included. A few, such as Cato Harris and Garret Van Schaick, have been linked to the fort; others remain unknown.

Slavery in New York

Slavery in New York began under the Dutch, and by the Revolution New York had more enslaved people than any other Northern state. At the start of the war, about 500,000 people of African descent lived in the colonies, out of about 2.1 million, and some 450,000 (90%) were enslaved; free Black people were only 2.4% of the population. Prominent upstate families — the Schuylers, Herkimers, Van Schaicks and Johnsons — held enslaved people as "property." There were more enslaved people in New York at the war's end than at its start, and slavery wasn't abolished in the state until 1827.

Lost records

Official records of free and enslaved people of color are scarce, and scarcer still for those who joined the Continental Army or New York militias. Many of the state's Revolutionary War records — muster, descriptive and pension rolls — burned in fires in Albany in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Some survivors were compiled in the 1970s; others survived because they were kept in other states.

Serving side by side

Soldiers of African descent served in units across the 13 states, mostly integrated into the main army; the U.S. military didn't segregate by color until the War of 1812, and stayed segregated until 1947. At least 5,000 soldiers and sailors of African descent, free and enslaved, served the Revolutionary cause.

Why they joined can't be known for each man. Some likely joined for the same reasons as white soldiers; others were enslaved and made to serve for their enslavers; still more joined to escape slavery. On March 20, 1781, New York let enslavers send men to serve on the frontier in return for 500 acres of bounty land; after three years (or a regular discharge), the enslaved man was to be freed. Many served under Colonel Marinus Willett.

Their pay was often taken by their enslavers. After the war, most never received a pension; some were returned to slavery; some were refused pensions because they had served while enslaved — even decades later, when their white comrades and widows had long collected theirs.

The Oswego expedition

In the winter of 1782–83, the 1st Rhode Island Regiment — the famed "Black Regiment" — joined Willett's troops, part of a force of nearly 500, to take British Fort Ontario at Oswego. They marched up the Mohawk Valley past the ruins of Fort Schuyler, crossed frozen Oneida Lake on sleighs, and built ladders to scale the fort's walls, but a wrong turn through deep snow and swamp brought them to the fort after sunrise, too late to surprise it. They turned back. Men died in the snow, many were maimed by frostbite.

American soldiers at the siege of Yorktown, by Jean-Baptiste-Antoine DeVerger, watercolor, 1781 — soldiers of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment shown on equal footing with their white comrades.

Some of the men

These men were verified to have served in units tied to Fort Schuyler, and so most likely served at the fort or in the Mohawk Valley.

• Colonel Louis Cook (Atayataghlonghta): born near Saratoga about 1740 to an Abenaki mother and an African father, and adopted into a Mohawk community in Canada, he fought British rule nearly all his life — with the French at Fort Oswego in the 1750s, then as the highest-ranking Native and African officer in the Continental Army, at the Battle of Oriskany and elsewhere. In 1784 he negotiated for the Oneidas at the remains of Fort Stanwix. In his 70s he fought the British again in the War of 1812, dying of battle wounds in October 1814.
• Garret Van Schaick, enslaved, 1st New York: born about 1764, he went to Fort Schuyler several times as a servant of his enslaver, Colonel Goose Van Schaick. He died in Monroe County, New York, on May 16, 1829, aged 65.
• James Weeks/Green, 2nd New York: a free man, 5'8", who enlisted in 1778 at 19, was discharged at Fort Schuyler in December 1780 after serving as a wagoner, and reenlisted in 1782. After the war he married and raised a family; his pension applications of 1818 and 1824 were refused — the second because he couldn't pay for the paperwork — until one was granted in May 1825, at about $8 a month.
• Peter Green, enslaved, 2nd New York: born in Africa about 1751 and kidnapped as a child, he enlisted in 1782 and is believed to have won his freedom by his service. He settled in Colrain, Massachusetts, received a pension, married Violette, also born in Africa, and had two sons. He died in 1836; his headstone stands in the Brick School Cemetery.
• Cato Harris, 2nd New York: perhaps from the Baltimore area, he was at Fort Schuyler from February 1781 until the fort burned that June, then at Fort Herkimer. He fought at Yorktown, saw the British surrender on October 19, 1781, and died on the march home on November 27, 1781, possibly crossing the stormy Delaware River.
• Cato Moulton, drummer, 4th New York: enlisted in 1777, he wintered at Valley Forge, served in the Mohawk Valley and on the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign of 1779, and was furloughed in 1780, never to return.
• Benjamin Lattimore, 5th New York: born free in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1761, he fought at the Battle of Manhattan, was captured at Fort Montgomery and forced to work as a house servant for a British officer, was recaptured by Americans, and fought at Newtown in 1779. In Albany he became a cartman, grocer and property owner and a leader of its Black community — helping found the first Albany School for Educating People of Color and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and chairing the committee to celebrate the abolition of slavery in the state in 1827. Despite being born free, he had to prove in court in 1820 that he was not an escaped slave. He died in 1838.
• Cato Green, enslaved, 1st Rhode Island: born in what is now Guinea, enslaved in Rhode Island, he enlisted in 1778 "to obtain his freedom," fought at Yorktown, survived the Oswego expedition unhurt, and was honorably discharged in 1783. He was granted a pension in 1818; in 1820 he applied again, too old to work, owning little more than a bed, a table and four chairs.
• Reuben Roberts, 1st Rhode Island: frostbite on the Oswego march left him lame. In 1818, poor and in debt, he was granted $80 a year — a life-changing sum. He died in 1838.
• Prince Vaughan, 1st Rhode Island: his feet were frozen on the Oswego expedition, leaving him disabled. He shined shoes and ran an oyster stand in New York City; in 1818 his goods were worth $1.82, and he was granted $8 a month. He died in 1820.
• Henry Bakeman, Willett's Levies: he enlisted at about 16 in 1781, after British and Mohawk forces destroyed his village of Stone Arabia. Crippled by frostbite on the Oswego march, he later ran a ferry at Oswego Falls (now Fulton), received a certificate of freedom in 1819, and died in 1835. The Daughters of the American Revolution placed a memorial stone for him in Mt. Adnah Cemetery.

An American militiaman of African descent. National Park Service.

Many others are known only from enlistment rolls — among them Cask Africa, Pomp Williams, Caesar Haight, Pomp Lamb, Cesar Dunmore, Caesar Flood, Primus Wiley, Elisha Baker, Prince Bent, William Frank, Jack, Ransom Brazillia, Boston, Prince Cato, Jube Robins, Prime Thompson, Walter, Minck, Prince Sackett, Jack Thompson/Swartwout, Tunes Terwilliger and Solomon White. Several were enlisted on behalf of their enslavers, who collected their pay. Many carried names others chose for them. They served a nation that kept them and their descendants in the shadows for nearly two more centuries.

Sources

Based on "African Descended Soldiers at Fort Schuyler & in the Mohawk Valley," Fort Stanwix National Monument, National Park Service, drawing on Revolutionary War service and pension records in the National Archives and other sources; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source dates the Oswego expedition variously to January 1782, January 1783 and February 1783, and gives ages that don't fit some birth dates; this page gives the winter of 1782–83 and leaves the ages out. John Trumbull's study of Colonel Louis (Yale University Art Gallery) is not reproduced.