America’s First Black Regiment Fought the British

The 1st Rhode Island Regiment occupies a singular place in American military history: it is widely regarded as the first Black battalion fielded by the United States, formed during the American Revolution when the Continental Army was bleeding soldiers faster than it could replace them. What is less often told is that the regiment’s story sits at the intersection of three intertwined histories — African American, European colonial, and Native American. The Slave Enlistment Act of February 1778, passed by the Rhode Island General Assembly, promised freedom to any enslaved man accepted into the regiment, and the recruiting net that General James Mitchell Varnum cast explicitly included free Black men and Indian men alongside the enslaved. On Aquidneck Island, in the Narragansett homeland, that promise was tested in battle — and the men who carried it included Indigenous soldiers whose own nations had already endured a century of colonial warfare.

The Crisis That Forced the Door Open

The 1st Rhode Island Regiment did not emerge from enlightened policy. It emerged from desperation. In late 1777, General George Washington wrote to Congress that ‘no less than 2,898 men now in camp [are] unfit because they are barefoot and otherwise naked.’ Disease killed nearly 2,000 soldiers during the winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. When bounties of land and money failed to draw enough white volunteers, Congress imposed a draft quota on each state based on population.

Rhode Island — the smallest state, with a population under 60,000 on the eve of the Revolution — was required to fill two battalions. It could not. In December 1777, Varnum, an attorney and one of Washington’s most trusted officers, proposed raising a battalion of enslaved men, free Black men, and Indian men. Washington forwarded the proposal to the Rhode Island General Assembly without tacit approval or disapproval, and the legislature moved.

Washington’s Reversal and the Dunmore Precedent

Washington had long opposed arming Black soldiers, fearing that armed Black men would incite rebellion among the enslaved and alienate southern slaveholders. What changed his calculation was a British move. In November 1775, Lord Dunmore, Britain’s colonial governor of Virginia, declared martial law and promised freedom to any enslaved person who abandoned their owner and joined British forces. An estimated 20,000 enslaved men fled and enlisted with the British over the course of the war. One of Washington’s own enslaved workers, Henry Washington, escaped Mount Vernon to join Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment — roughly 300 escaped Black men who were the first to answer the proclamation.

Washington wanted Dunmore’s effort crushed before it grew. ‘Otherwise, like a snow ball in rolling, [Dunmore’s] army will get size,’ he wrote to his aide-de-camp Joseph Reed. As historian Philip Morgan of Johns Hopkins University observed, this fear drove Washington’s reversal on Black troops: ‘Henceforth Washington commanded a racially integrated force.’

The Slave Enlistment Act of February 1778

The act’s language was unambiguous. Any enslaved person accepted into the 1st Rhode Island Regiment would be ‘immediately discharged from the service of his master or mistress, and be absolutely free, as though he had never been encumbered without any kind of servitude or slavery.’ The law also compensated owners who lost enslaved workers to the regiment — up to $400 each in colonial dollars, a substantial sum.

More than 130 enslaved men joined during the first several months. They enlisted despite counter-propaganda from disgruntled slaveholders, who spread word that Black soldiers would be placed in the most dangerous front-line positions and, if captured, sold into bondage in the West Indies. The recruitment of Indian men into the same ranks reflected the dense Indigenous geography of southern New England: the Narragansett, whose ancestral territory included Aquidneck Island and much of Narragansett Bay, had seen their population collapse catastrophically after King Philip’s War (1675–1676), and survivors lived under persistent colonial pressure to sell land and labor. The regiment offered wages, freedom, and in some cases the only available avenue to secure a livelihood amid that dispossession. Readers tracing how colonial land seizure reshaped Indigenous communities can examine the broader record of the historical impact of the Dawes Act on tribal lands, a later chapter in the same long process.

Timeline of the Regiment

• 1775 — Origins as part of the Rhode Island Army of Observation.
• 1777 — Reorganization as the 1st Rhode Island Regiment.
• February 1778 — Slave Enlistment Act passes; Black and Indian recruitment begins.
• August 29, 1778 — Battle of Rhode Island; the Black regiment holds the right wing.
• Later 1778 — Legislature repeals the Slave Enlistment Act within the year.
• 1781 — Present at the Siege of Yorktown; the British surrender two days after the fort is taken.

The Battle of Rhode Island: Aquidneck Island, August 1778

The Black regiment’s first combat came on land that had been Narragansett for centuries. On August 29, 1778, the regiment was assigned to Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay near Newport, guarding a defensive position anchoring the Continental Army’s right wing under Major General John Sullivan. Over the course of the battle they drove back three Hessian (German) regiments of the British army.

A regiment member later recalled: ‘It was in driving back these furious attacks that our Black regiment distinguished itself with deeds of great valor… Yes, this was a regiment of Negroes, fighting for our liberty and independence.’ Sullivan reported Washington’s satisfaction: ‘by the best information the commander-in-chief thinks that the regiment will be entitled to a proper share of the honors of the day.’

Repeal and the Limits of Revolutionary Idealism

The regiment’s performance won it honor but not institutional support. The Rhode Island legislature repealed the Slave Enlistment Act less than half a year after it passed. Most subsequent volunteers came from white or already-free Black ranks. As scholar Cameron Boutin has written, Congress and military leadership never fully embraced recruiting the enslaved: ‘Permitting enslaved African Americans to serve as soldiers in return for their freedom in units similar to the 1st Rhode Island would have alleviated the American forces’ manpower shortages… Despite the successful example set by the Rhode Island law of February 1778 and the combat performance of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, many civil leaders across the country maintained their opposition toward recruiting slaves.’

That pattern — courage on the battlefield, retreat in the legislature — recurs throughout the era. Indigenous nations who allied with or fought against the British faced the same calculus, and the aftermath often punished them regardless of which side they chose. For a comparative view of how such choices played out across tribal nations, see the account of Native American leaders in resistance movements.

Indigenous Presence in the Revolutionary Ranks

Native men served on both sides of the Revolution. The Oneida and Tuscarora of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy sided with the Americans; the Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga largely sided with the British. In New England, Indian soldiers served in integrated units throughout the war, and Rhode Island’s recruitment of ‘Indian men’ under Varnum’s proposal was not an abstraction — it drew on communities already decimated by war and disease but not erased. The regiment itself served all seven years of the conflict, from the Siege of Boston to Yorktown.

Historical Context & Key Cultural Takeaways

What the 1st Rhode Island Regiment Actually Represents

• Military first, contested from the start. The 1st Rhode Island Regiment is widely recognized as the first Black regiment in U.S. military history — but it was born of manpower shortage, not abolitionist conviction.
• Legal freedom as enlistment currency. The Slave Enlistment Act of February 1778 is one of the earliest American laws explicitly trading military service for manumission, complete with owner compensation.
• Indigenous participation embedded in the record. Varnum’s proposal named ‘Indian men’ alongside free and enslaved Black men, reflecting southern New England’s surviving Native communities, including the Narragansett of Aquidneck Island and Narragansett Bay.
• Valor acknowledged, policy reversed. The regiment’s stand at the Battle of Rhode Island on August 29, 1778 earned official praise from Washington’s headquarters; the enabling law was repealed within the year.
• The British counter-offer mattered. Lord Dunmore’s 1775 proclamation drew an estimated 20,000 enslaved people to British lines, directly forcing Washington’s change of position.
• The land itself is layered history. The regiment fought on Narragansett homeland — ground already transformed by King Philip’s War a century earlier.

For deeper context on the Narragansett specifically, the tribal history record is instructive: Narragansett history and heritage documents a nation that hosted Roger Williams, fought and lost King Philip’s War, and persisted through centuries of colonial pressure.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was the 1st Rhode Island Regiment really the first Black regiment in American history?

It is widely regarded as the first Black battalion in U.S. military history — the first time an American state legislature formally authorized and organized a regiment whose ranks were substantially filled by Black soldiers recruited under a promise of emancipation. Black men had served in integrated colonial and Continental units earlier, but the 1st Rhode Island was the first to be raised as a Black regiment by law.

What exactly did the Slave Enlistment Act of 1778 say?

Passed by the Rhode Island General Assembly in February 1778, it stipulated that any enslaved person accepted into the regiment be ‘immediately discharged from the service of his master or mistress, and be absolutely free, as though he had never been encumbered without any kind of servitude or slavery.’ It also provided compensation to owners of up to $400 each in colonial dollars. More than 130 enslaved men enlisted in the months following.

Did Native American men serve in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment?

Yes — the recruiting proposal advanced by General James Mitchell Varnum to Washington explicitly called for filling the shortfall with ‘enslaved men, along with free Black and Indian men.’ This drew on the surviving Native communities of southern New England, including the Narragansett, whose homeland encompassed Aquidneck Island and Narragansett Bay where the regiment fought in August 1778.

Why did Rhode Island repeal the Slave Enlistment Act so quickly?

The legislature repealed it in late 1778, less than a year after passage. Contemporary and scholarly accounts point to sustained opposition from slaveholding interests who feared the precedent of emancipation-by-service, combined with the state’s changing manpower situation. After repeal, most new recruits to the regiment were white or already-free Black men.

What was the regiment’s most significant battle?

The Battle of Rhode Island on August 29, 1778, near Newport. Assigned to hold the Continental Army’s right wing on Aquidneck Island, the regiment drove back three Hessian regiments. A regiment member recalled the unit ‘distinguished itself with deeds of great valor.’ The regiment also served from the Siege of Boston through to Yorktown in 1781.

Legacy and the Long Fight for Recognition

The 1st Rhode Island Regiment’s story resists easy celebration. It was a unit created by a state that needed bodies, staffed partly by men who won their freedom by risking their lives, led by all-white officers, praised in dispatches, and then abandoned by the legislature that had authorized it. Its Indigenous soldiers served within a military structure that had no intention of restoring the lands their nations had lost. And yet the regiment’s stand at Aquidneck Island in 1778 remains a documented, verifiable moment when Black and Native men held a line together in a war fought on land that had been Narragansett for generations.

Preserving that record matters. It is a corrective to narratives that erase either Black or Indigenous participation from the founding era, and it grounds the Revolution in the specific places — Narragansett Bay, Newport, Valley Forge, Yorktown — where its contradictions were lived out. The men of the 1st Rhode Island did not fight for an abstraction. They fought for freedom defined in plain language by an act of the Rhode Island General Assembly, and then they fought on after that act was repealed.

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