When British soldiers arrived in Boston in 1768 as part of the British government’s efforts to maintain peace in the colony of Massachusetts, local citizens resented the military presence for several reasons. First and foremost was the implication that the army, in spite of their mission to maintain order, were in fact oppressors sent by a government that was, while not foreign, wildly out of touch with the needs and interests of American colonists. Also, colonists paid taxes to their own colonial governments; most of those governments in turn maintained militia systems that provided defense when needed.
The two regiments posted in Boston, while generally unwelcome, did provide a measure of entertainment with their military rituals—posting guards, drilling, and marching about for various reasons. One facet of military discipline was particularly startling to onlookers: “In the Morning nine or ten Soldiers of Colonel Carr’s Regiment for sundry Misdemeanors, were severely whipt on the Common,” reported a local newspaper. In an era where corporal punishment itself was not unusual, there was something besides the severity of these lashings that brought journalistic commentary. The drummers in the Colonel Carr’s regiment, the 29th Regiment of Foot, were of African ancestry. The newspaper report continued, “To behold Britons scourged by Negro Drummers, was a new and very disagreeable Spectacle!”[1]
Most soldiers in most British regiments, as far as can be told from the scant records available, were from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and were ethnically white. The 29th Regiment differed from most in having a tradition of employing Black men as drummers.
Drummers, paid 50 percent more than private soldiers, were an important component of the military system, using their instruments to signal events throughout the day from reveille in the morning to “taptoo” in the evening. Drums provided cadence for marching in step and for teaching the precisely-timed movements with which soldiers handled their weapons. In battle, “the noise of the Artillery and Musketry generally renders it impossible to use any Signals by the Drum,” wrote Gen. William Howe in February 1776 when he ordered regiments “not to use the drum or fife for marching or signals when in the field.”[2] Drums nonetheless conveyed important signals such as “advance” and “cease fire.”[3]
Boys could begin drumming for the army in their early teens as long as they were physically able to manage the instrument and bear the fatigue of military life. Some later set the instrument aside in favor of a musket, but many men continued as drummers for their entire military careers which, for British soldiers, often spanned thirty years or more.[4] According to regimental histories, in 1759 eight or ten Black drummers were sent from the West Indies to the commanding officer of the 29th Regiment, starting a regimental tradition that continued well into the 1800s.[5]