And the colonial marines is a e unit that resembles on a much m smaller scale the union color regiments of the civil war in that the officers are white men, but the enlisted men and the ncos are africanamericans. And they are being attracted into the service because theyr not being compelled to it, and indeed, as far as we can tell, f most of the runaways, indeed, tl including most of the men, dont choose to be colonial marines. H some may end up as sailors or ms others work more informally as guides. Many women worked as laundresses and nurses. Hem some of them are serving as paid servants for british officers rh and others go to work for the ts dockyard in bermuda. So theres a whole range of roles, and it is a subset of the men who are serving in the colonial marines and theyre not compelled to do this, though aro there is a great deal of t persuasion applied to encourage them to serve. By the and they are attracted by the fact they will be paid, they re will receive decent clothing fon the first time in their lives. Re they will receive a daily meat r ration for the first time in lis their lives. They will receive a daily in alcohol ration for the first time in their lives. Have they will receive some respect h and they will have the opportunity to plunder and in some cases kill their former masters. Ei now, possessing racial prejudice, because these british and naval officers, again, s. Theyre growing into this role. Dont get the idea that these are William Lloyd garrison fromt the decks of these naval warships. You know, theyve got other g priorities. So theyre not naturalborn abolitionists but they are working up a real good hatred for the United States as this conflict goes along, and theyre trying to think, how can we really stick it to them . Ed for it occurs to them, by liberatind their slaves and using them hem against them. Thats whats going on here. And coburn thought, well, its useful because it draws these people away from their masters. It weakens the economy. Ws the hes not so sure that these young men are going to be effective fighters. Nomy. He said, quote, blackie ar hearabout, thats what he says in 1814 as the drilling has started. Quote, a month later, however, coburn changed his mind upon noticing how well the new recruits responded to their training. T he reported they were, quote, getting on astonishingly and ar. Really fine fellows. They induced me to alter the bad opinion i had of the whole of t their race and i now i believe w these who we are training will end quote. And with glee he noted that this is the news of the colonial marines was alarming the local masters. Quote, they expect blackie will have no mercy on them and they know that he understands bush rt fighting and the locality of thn woods as well as themselves anda can perhaps play hideandseek t in them even better, end quote. And during may and june, he y starts to employ the colonial y marines as part of the rating forces and they are ing systematically targeting militia batteries, particularly along the Eastern Shore and along the Northern Neck of virginia and ig the valley of Southern Maryland. And they perform very admirablye and win the universal praise of British Naval officers. Ill just quote one of them andn again, its coburn but you coulo multiply these quotes. Em quote, how uncommonly and unexpectedly well the blacks have behaved in the several engagements and though one of them was shot and died instantls in the front of the others, it e did not daunt or check the and others in the least but on the r contrary animated them to seek revenge. Now, on the one hand, by recruiting blacks in significan numbers, the british are able tt escalate their shore raids. Latee they are able to go deeper inland than they ever could in 1813. They also need to do so because the british cannot sustain their crews without food drawn from the shores of the chesapeake. And there are more and more people on these warships and on Tangier Island as they are welcoming more refugees. In the first year of this year operation when they were reluctant to take on the refugees, 600 had come to them. I believe that 2,800 went during 1814 which shows the payoff of s the british now welcoming them and aggressively going out and seeking them. T but now they have to feed them on top of their own crews. And so that means they have to accelerate and escalate their rating into the interior to get food, to get livestock, in , particular, but to get hams, to get chickens. Particul they are seeking out food. And they are going to the places where their colonial marines know best, their former neighborhoods. And thats an opportunity, thend for some revenge and its also, more importantly, an opportunitn to get out relatives who have been left behind. Atives w so everybodys purposes are being served by these raids, the purposes of these runaways who e have become colonial marines and the purposes of the british who want to punish the americans and need to get food for their own f crews and this expanding refugee population. Anding they benefit from the nocturnaly knowledge of enslaved peoples who have had to become intimate experts in the landscape. Because they have had to know sn how to navigate it at night ando dodge slave patrols in order for them to meet their friends, to s meet their wives, to meet their children because black families have been split up in this period of time and tend to live on different farms and plantations. Ity is so the black community is maintained by nocturnal travel. They are the experts in this landscape. They know it better than their masters who allegedly own ity. Ma ape and it is that knowledge that w passes to the british. And we can find both in british. Sources very eloquent statements about how better informed and h more secure they are now that id they have blacks as their guides and as their light infantry in e the form of these colonial bu marines, but we also find it from american officers. One of them, Brigadier General john p. Hungerford of virginia i said, quote, our negroes are flocking to the enemy from all quarters which they convert into troops, vindictive. With the most minute knowledge of every bypass. Ost they leave us as spies upon our post and return upon us as guides and soldiers in incendiaries. Rn it was by the aid of these guides that ambushes were formed everywhere in the woods. From this cause alone, the enem have a great advantage over us in a country where the passes h and biways, through our innumerable necks and swamps arr so little known to but very fewa of our officers and men in through which the enemy can penetrate and be conducted withf so much ease by these refugee blacks, end quote. And this is the same modern artist imagination of the colonial marines engaged in onei of these raids at benedict maryland, and it shows them nedt destroying some kegs of alcoholh in the foreground. In the middle ground, you see a British Naval officer directingd a black family to safety and freedom in british boats that are just out of the scene here t and in the distant background you see an american sailing shit being burned. Ckgrou so the whole range of activitieg that colonial marines would havo been involved with, several of o their activities are combined il this one imagined reconstruction of their activities. Now, the point i want to make is that this raiding would not havk been as effective without the colonial marines that transformed british operations. Here is a map done and i am grateful to ralph for sharing this with me. This shows the variety of targets the british had in 1813, the first year. Year. And youll see that its fairly randomly scattered along the bay, east and west, north and south, by the maritime targets are the prince targets and thats indicated by these west, symbols for sailing ships. If we go to 1814, well see a very different nature of british attacks. Many more shore raids and they are concentrated particularly along the Northern Neck of nt nr virginia and in Southern Maryland, either along the r shores of potomac on the rticulr maryland side but especially along the patuxent river. Eck o the british are targeting them for a reason. P one, there are a lot of black people there eager to get out and help the british. These are also the pathways or should say the waterways that lead to washington, d. C. , and coburn has been looking for the opportunity to get to washington. He did not have that opportunity in 1813. Now he has it in 1814. What he must first do is soften up and eliminate militia resistance along one of these two corridors. The virginians are much more republican than the marylanders of Southern Maryland and they fight a lot harder, so coburn decides that the resistance is eliminated much more quickly and earlier because most of the People Living in Southern Maryland dont really want to be part of this war at all. O be and they certainly dont want to deal with superior british ant forces that are now wellguided by the local experts in the landscape. And it is because of this that the british are able to land t without any opposition at benedict in midaugust of 1814 a and they are able to advance to the upper reaches of the river and to approach the very mida outskirts of washington, d. C. , t again, without any opposition te because that opposition has already been eliminated by the raids of the summer. And they were able to brush aside militia resistance which e it belatedly appears at bladensburg and push into washington, d. C. , where they le famously burn the public edly buildings. Here is a very famous image of that. And you will notice, theres not a single black face represented in this, which is all too common among representations of battles of the war of 1812. They are presented as lily White Affairs in almost all cases. The colonial marines were very much present in the occupation of washington, d. C. , and in the burning of the white house and h the capitol. Now, so my argument today has been that the colonial marines and black refugees in general transform the british operationc in the chesapeake and make it far more effective and nes destructive to the americans it than had been their operation in 1813 when they did not have the same level of support and erican assistance from black americans. Now, this is an image that is produced. Im going to get this magic l arrow out of the way, which is. Not part of the original image. You may recognize this structure. Its the u. S. Capitol building. This was produced in 1817 by a critic of american slavery, an american critic of american slavery named jesse torrey and jesse torrey wants you to thinks about the destruction of the Capitol Building and wants you to draw certain conclusions from it and those conclusions that he wants you to reach are indicated by the other figures hes put in this particular engraving. You can see down here in this ia right foreground, a group of enslaved africanamericans, a slave coffle. In washington, d. C. , was a major center for the interstate slave trade of the United States which is accelerating in this very period of time. And, indeed, although i certainly find it impressive that 3,400 africanamericans cel will escape to freedom during the war of 1812 from the icana chesapeake, it is probably that something on the order of 60,000 enslaved chesapeake slaves weree moved deeper south into the slad harsher slavery of the deep south during the same period of time. And jesse torrey is commenting on that. Ave we have a slave trader who is there with a group of enslaved n people, men, women and childreno and then just so you will willer get the message, we have a couple of other figures floating in the sky. Two lady liberties who are s when you put together the threea components of this, the message is that the u. S. Capitol burnedt for the sins of the United States in sustaining slavery ino the land devoted to freedom. Now, the last thing i want to show you is the only photographu that we know of of one of the runaways from the war of 1812. This is gabriel hall. He came from calvert county, maryland. He was born probably in 1801. Gl he was 13 years old when he escaped, so about the same age n that willis had been. 13 and this is a photograph taken much later in life, in 1891, wi when he was 90 years old. Llis and he was a prospering farmer in nova scotia, which is where approximately 2,800 of the refugees from the war of 1812 end up after the war as free people. Ng that had survived and maybe those additional images will po8 up by right now this is our onlo chance to look at the face of someone who from the Africanamerican Community experienced the events that iv discussed today. T ive thank you very much. [ applause ] so im happy to take any questions you may have. Yes, please . [ inaudible question ] yes. Okay. So ill repeat the question. Where do the british take the refugees at the end of the war . During the war, they are being i taken to Tangier Island, to bermuda, a major British Naval base and is the central headquarters for the operation , on the chesapeake. O other main British Naval base ip north america is at halifax, nova scotia. So probably about 1,200 during the war years are moved on to nova scotia and then another 1,600 are moved on to nova scotia from bermuda or from the sea islands of georgia where the british also operated at the very end of the war. So were getting about 2,800 who go to nova scotia. We weve got another approximatelyt 360 who go to new brunswick, another of the maritime provinces. And probably about 1,000, including most of the colonial marines who go to the west Indian Island of trinidad. Professor allgor talked about and in trinidad they have their most successful experience a. Distinct identity. Professor and in trinidad they have their most successful experience. And they manage to maintain distinct communities in a distinct identity. Professor allgor talked about identity formation in her presentation. This particular community in trinidad has maintained its cohesion, and they call themselves to this day the merikans to distinguish themselves from the many other peoples of color in trinidad. So they dropped the a. They turned the c into a k. And theyre merikins and a fair number of them have subsequently become immigrants in england or in the United States. But they are still very proud about being merikins. Yes . [ inaudible ] the british was integrated. So why didnt the royal navy apply the lessons in louisiana that it arguably should have learned from the chesapeake . Well, the british do. So the British Forces in the chesapeake include two regiments of from the west indies. The black west indian regiments. So the british are really in the forefront of deploying people of color in their military. They do so in india and they also do so in the west indies. So 2 3 were actually black people when the war of 1812 begins. The United States is extremely reluctant to employ even free blacks in its military. It does so in the navy and the privateers, so free black americans make a major contribution to the u. S. War effort in the navy and the privateers but are not allowed in the u. S. Army until the very end of the war when policy suddenly changes because the United States is basically on the ropes militarily and is desperate for men. The only place where a significant number of black men are employed in the United States army is at new orleans by Andrew Jackson. There are two battalions of free blacks were employed and probably another battalion of enslaved people promised their freedom but Andrew Jackson. This employment outraged the local whites of louisiana. So Andrew Jackson is going out on a limb and hes a slaveholder himself in tennessee but this shows you how desperate he was for men to fend off this british attack which included back soldiers. Unfortunate, or fortunate, whatever side you want to put, unfortunate or fortunate on in this war, jackson wins bigtime and then he reneges on his promise to the black soldiers. He promised them freedom and then said, sorry, youre not going to be freed because i really dont have that power. Yes . Thank you for a superb presentation. Thank you. Clifford from warrenton, virginia. I question the effectiveness of a 1,000 broadside circulation to a population that cannot read by reality, the effectiveness of their inability to read. And i also question the notion that white virginians, marylanders, would discuss the circulation of this broadside to their enslaved people. Can you address that . Yes, i can. Two very good questions. One is, there is much greater literacy among the slaves in this period of time than i think weve recognized. This is probably the peak period for literacy among enslaved people. A couple of reasons. One is, its not illegal yet to teach slaves to read and write in virginia. That will become illegal in 1832. In the wake of nat turners revolt. Until then, theres an actual fair amount of teaching slaves to read and write, particularly artisans and house slaves. The other thing is, this is also a period in which the vast majority of enslaved people in chesapeake have become christians and theyre usually methodist or baptist and their class leaders or teachers would like many of them to be able to read the bible. So theres much more literacy than we have bargained on and you dont need everybody to be able to read it. He can read it to everybody else. The other thing is that people in america are lousy at keeping secrets. They are the worlds worst people at keeping secrets and this comes back to bite them all time in the war of 1812. You get officers in the front line writing letters about how terrible their troops are and theyre not prepared and theyre sick and they get published in the newspapers of that time. People talk about stuff. They cant stop themselves from talking. So we live in a society now where weve been conditioned for the last three generations to try to keep secrets militarily and our government has become better and better at trying to keep these secrets. So it can be hard for us to understand this time where people were just blabbing away about everyth