Despite being cheated of years of freedom by the man who claimed to own him, Prince Whipple chose to live in his shadow, spending the rest of his life living in a small house in William Whipple’s backyard where he and his wife Dinah raised six children. His decision raises eyebrows today. Why would a man remain loyal to another who dehumanized and ultimately betrayed him? The answer lies not in Prince Whipple’s misplaced feelings of loyalty, but instead reveals the overwhelming danger and oppression that faced “free” black people in supposedly “free” northern states.
Prince Whipple would have heard of many African American veterans like himself who were taken back into the ownership of a white man after they took off their uniform. The full story of the numbers and experiences of black Revolutionary War veterans forced back into slavery has never been told—quite the opposite—as their experiences don’t fit comfortably within the heroic storyline of the plucky patriots fighting for liberty. Evidence for the ongoing suppression of the truth is that the writers closest to these events were more aware of them and knowledge of this tragedy seems to have faded as the centuries passed.
In 1842, an ancient white veteran of the Continental Army, identified only as Dr. Harris, spoke before the Congregational and Presbyterian Anti-Slavery Society, at Francestown, New Hampshire and wondered,
Now, the war is over, our freedom is gained—what is to be done with these colored soldiers, who have shed their best blood in its defence? Must they be sent off out of the country, because they are black? or must they be sent back into slavery, now they have risked their lives and shed their blood to secure the freedom of their masters? I ask, what became of these noble colored soldiers? Many of them, I fear, were taken back to the South, and doomed to the fetter and the chain.
While the proportion of African American Revolutionary War soldiers who were dragged back into bondage cannot be precisely determined, it is clear that this danger was one that lurked in the fears of many, even in the North. Legislative hearings held in Rhode Island after the war established that at least two of the black men promised their freedom had been re-enslaved and taken to the South. A substantial number of lawsuits were lodged in state courts around the nation on behalf of black war veterans who had been falsely promised their freedom. These suits pointed to the tragic fact that black veterans could not protect themselves from re-enslavement. Rather, they depended on community networks in black neighborhoods in larger cities and the help of powerful white patrons to defend their freedom.