Today on the Glenn Beck Program on Fox News, Glenn Beck hosted part 2 of the African American Founders on Founders' Friday. The guest on his program was David Barton, president of Wallbuilders. Beck and Barton were discussing some of the blacks who served during the American Revolutionary War such as Caesar Glover, Richard Allen, and Absalom Jones, to name a few. Barton was showing some obituaries of black soldiers who died. Some black veteran soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War received a pension while alive and a full military funeral when they died. On this post, I'm going to feature six other African Americans who fought in the American War for Independence.
1. Lemuel Haynes - Lemuel Haynes (1753-1833) was an influential African American religious leader who argued against slavery. He was born in West Hartford, Connecticut, to a reportedly Caucasain mother of some status and a man named Haynes, who was said to be "of some form of African extraction." At the age of five months, he was given over to indentured servitude in Granville, Massachusetts. Although serving as an agricultural worker, part of the agreement required educating him. Through accompanying his masters to church, he became exposed to Calvinistic thought and religiosity. At about 20 years of age, he saw the Aurora Borealis and fearing he was approaching of the Day of Judgment, as a result, he soon accepted Christianity. He was freed in 1774 when his indentured servitude expired. He joined the minutemen of Granville. In 1775 he marched with his militia company to Roxbury, Massachusetts, following the news of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. In 1776, he accompanied them in the garrisoning of the recently captured Fort Ticonderoga. He returned to his previous labors in Granville after the northern campaign of the American War for Independence. After the American Revolution, he began to write extensively, criticizing the slave trade and slavery. He also began to prepare sermons for family prayer and write theologically about life. The Scripture, abolitionism, and republicanism impacted his published writings. In 1780, he became a Calvinist minister in Vermont. He was the first black in America to serve as pastor of a White Congregation, Rutland's West Parish for 30 years starting in 1783.
2. Cato Mead - The only known Black Revolutionary War veteran buried west of the Mississippi River, Cato Mead (1761-1846) is buried in or near Montrose, Iowa. According to histornain Barbara MacLeish, who is researching a book on Mead, says he joined the 4th Connecticut Regiment commanded by Colonel John Durkee of Norwich, Connecticut in 1776 or 1777. It wasn't entirely clear if Mead was a former slave. He served at Valley Forge from December 1777 to June 1778, where he contracted smallpox, spending two months in a Pennsylvania hospital.
3. Jehu Grant - He was born as a slave in Rhode Island. He lived in Narrangansett in 1777, when he ran away from his master and served in various capacities in the Continental Army for eight months during the Revolutionary War. His situation was discovered and he was turned to his master, who later sold him to a man named Grant. In 1832, the U.S. Congress enacted the first Comprehensive Pension Act, which granted an annual stipend to any veteran of the Revolutionary War who could prove his service. At the time of his pension application, he was 80 years old and blind. He made an appeal with the assistance of his neighbor. He was denied because he was technically a slave during the time of the war.
4. James Forten - (1766-1842) Forten was an African American abolitionist and wealthy businessman. He worked at many jobs including dentistry, carpentry, pastor, and minutemen. At the age of 15, during the Revolutionary War, Forten served on the privateer Royal Louis, where he invented a device to handle ship sails. Upon the ship's capture by British forces, Forten's friendship with the son of the ship's captain Beasley enabled him to be treated as a regular prisoner of war rather than being forced into slavery. He was sent to the English Rison ship Jersey. After the War, Forten was apprenticed as a sailmaker. In 1786 he became a shop foreman. In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante listed James Forten on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
5. Absalom Jones - (1746-1818) He was an African American abolitionist and clergyman. After founding a black congregation in 1794, in 1804 he was the first African American ordained as a priest in the Epispocal Church of the U.S. He is listed on the Episcopal calendar of saints and blessed under the date of his decease February 13, in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. He was born into slavery in Delaware in 1746. He became a lay minister for black members in the interracial congregation of St. George's Methodist Church. Together, with Richard Allen, he was one of the first African Americans licensed to preach by the Methodist Church.
6. Seymour Burr - (1754/1762-1837) Burr was an African American slave in the Connecticut colony in the North American British colonies and the U.S. He was owned by the brother of Colonel Aaron Burr, who was also named Seymour. He enlisted in the Massachusetts Seventh Regiment, led by Colonel John Brooks. He fought at Bunker Hill and at Fort Catskill, and suffered through a long winter at Valley Forge.
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