434 Freeborn Black Soldiers in the American Revolution
Release Date: 02/24/2026
BFW Revisited: Running from Bondage in the American Revolution
Ben Franklin's World
She fled on horseback in the thick of war. Her six-year-old son rode with her. The white tailor at her side would pass, when anyone asked, as her husband. Her name was Sarah. She was one of tens of thousands of enslaved people who self-emancipated during the American Revolution, and one of the many women earlier histories barely noticed. In this Revisited episode, author of , recovers their stories. We learn how Lord Dunmore's 1775 proclamation reshaped the landscape of resistance, why motherhood drove women to flee rather than keeping them in place, and what creative, subversive...
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440 Jefferson's Cut Grievance and the British Monarchy's Role in Slavery
Ben Franklin's World
Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence contained 28 grievances against King George III — not 27. The final grievance, the one Congress cut before signing, accused the British king of waging cruel war against human nature by trafficking enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, forcing slavery onto unwilling American colonists, and then inciting those same enslaved people to rise up and kill their enslavers. Did King George III and the British monarchy actually bear responsibility for slavery in the 13 colonies? Or was Jefferson's grievance a strategic sleight of hand —...
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BFW Revisited: Whose Fourth of July?
Ben Franklin's World
On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass stood before the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society and asked one of the most searing questions in American history: "What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?" To answer Douglass's question, we have to go back to the Revolution itself; to the choices Black Americans made in wartime, to the ways they read, used, and interrogated the Declaration of Independence, and to the alternative celebrations they created when the Fourth of July felt like someone else's holiday. Historians and help us explore what the Fourth of July meant for African Americans in...
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439 When the Declaration of Independence Was News
Ben Franklin's World
The Second Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, but it had absolutely no plan for telling the world about it. Congress sent just one copy of the Declaration to France. It was lost at sea. Printers ran the text however they liked. And the first formal acknowledgment of American independence came not from a European court, but from a Native American chief responding to a verbal translation of the Declaration in the middle of a treaty negotiation. Historian and Declaration expert joins us to explore what the Declaration of Independence looked like when it was just news...
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BFW Revisited: The Age of Revolutions
Ben Franklin's World
Between 1763 and 1848, revolutions swept across four continents. We tend to remember three of them — the American, the French, and the Haitian Revolutions. But what about all the rest? And what connected them to each other? In this episode, we're bringing back our conversation with , Presidential Professor of History Emerita at the University of New Hampshire and author of , and , Associate Professor of History at William & Mary, who helps us understand why historians are increasingly looking at the American Revolution through an international lens. Together, they reveal why the Age of...
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438 The American Revolution & the Fate of the World
Ben Franklin's World
What if the American Revolution didn't just create the United States, but also created Australia? Most of us learned about the Revolution as a story of thirteen North American colonies pushing back against a distant king. But this episode reveals something far wilder: a genuinely global war whose consequences rippled across every inhabited continent — reshaping empires, forcing migrations, and planting the seeds of more than a hundred declarations of independence that would follow over the next two and a half centuries. Joseph Adelman joins historian to explore the American Revolution as a...
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BFW Revisited: British-Occupied Philadelphia, 1777–1778
Ben Franklin's World
In September 1777, just fourteen months after declaring independence, Philadelphia fell to the British Army. For nearly nine months, the new nation's capital was occupied territory. But what did that actually mean for the people who lived there? Not the generals, not the Congress: ordinary Philadelphians who had to decide whether to flee or stay, share their homes with British officers, watch their fences get chopped up for firewood, and figure out which neighbors to trust when it was all over. In this episode, , a professor of History at Rider University, , a public historian and...
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437 Civilian Life in America's Occupied Cities
Ben Franklin's World
The British Army is at your door. They need a room. What do you do? For thousands of civilians living in cities occupied during the American War for Independence — Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Newport, Charleston, Savannah — this wasn't a hypothetical. It was a reality that upended daily life and revealed a side of the revolution we rarely talk about. Lauren Duval, author of joins us to explore what the War for Independence actually looked like from inside the household. Women who negotiated quartering terms and held their ground. Men who came to blows over who controlled the parlor....
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BFW Revisited: Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site
Ben Franklin's World
250 years ago, the British evacuated Boston: driven out by cannon that had traveled 300 miles from Fort Ticonderoga. But where did the plan for those cannon take shape? In this Revisited episode, we return to our conversation with now Program Manager for Interpretation and Visitor Experience at Saratoga National Historical Park, to explore the in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This Georgian mansion served as George Washington's home and headquarters for nearly nine months during the Siege of Boston. In this house, Washington forged the Continental Army and plotted the moves that liberated the...
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Episode 436: Fort Ticonderoga & Henry Knox's Noble Train of Artillery
Ben Franklin's World
On March 17, 1776, the British evacuated Boston, driven out by cannon hauled 300 miles through winter wilderness from a crumbling fort in upstate New York. Join Curator at , as we trace the fort's dramatic history from its French origins in the Seven Years' War, its chaotic capture by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold in May 1775, and Henry Knox's legendary expedition to move nearly 60 tons of artillery to George Washington's army. Discover the logistics, rivalries, and resourcefulness behind one of the Revolution's most remarkable feats. Show Notes: EPISODE OUTLINE 00:00:00 ...
info_outlineWhat would you fight for if you were free but still not equal? In 1777, brothers William and Benjamin Frank answered that question by enlisting in the Second Rhode Island Regiment of the Continental Army. Freeborn men of color, they gambled that military service would earn them what freedom alone had not: equality, land, and a better future.
Historian Shirley Green, author of Revolutionary Blacks: Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence, joins us to tell their story. Drawing on genealogical research rooted in her own family history, Green reveals what daily life looked like for free Black families in Revolutionary Rhode Island, how the Frank Brothers fought at the Battles of Red Bank, Monmouth, and Rhode Island, and how the Revolution ultimately divided them—one brother serving through Yorktown, the other crossing to the British side and resettling in Nova Scotia as a Black Loyalist.
Their story is a window into the full range of Black experiences during the Revolution, and a reminder that for men like William and Benjamin Frank, choosing a side was never simple. It was a calculated gamble, shaped by promises made—and promises broken.
Shirley’s Website | Book |
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/434
EPISODE OUTLINE
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:19 The Frank Brothers' Revolutionary Choices
00:05:14 Discovering the Frank Brothers Through Family Oral History
00:09:01 Blending Genalogy and Microhistory
00:15:22 Life for Free Black Families in Early Rhode Island
00:20:50 Why Free Black Men Joined the Continental Army
00:24:00 Motivations: Land, Pay, and Equality
00:29:15 The Gamble of Military Service Amid Policy Shifts
00:41:13 Daily Life and Combat in the Integrated Regiments
00:44:46 Ben Frank's Desertion
00:52:51 The Book of Negroes
01:00:02 Postwar Outcomes: Did Promises of Land, Pay, and Equality Hold?
01:02:47 Lessons from Black Soldiers' Experiences
01:07:26 Conclusion
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 118: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island
🎧 Episode 157: African American Soldiers in the Continental Army
🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 1
🎧 Episode 333: Disruptions in Yorktown
🎧 Episode 348: Valley Forge
🎧 Episode 413: Dr. Joseph Warren & the Battle of Bunker Hill
🎧 Episode 424: Dunmore's Proclamation & the American Revolution in Virginia
🎧 Episode 427: How States Are Planning the 250th of the American Revolution
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