The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a three-year project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. You can sign up to receive a free monthly newsletter with updates. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal News 250 page.
In October 1778, a small flotilla set sail for the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Patriot, Dragon and Tartar, commanded by Captain Richard Taylor, were part of the tiny Virginia Navy, charged with protecting the state’s coastline from the British. Patriot was a schooner (sails parallel to the keel) carrying 10 swivel guns and 20 men.
The crews scanned the horizon for British warships and privateers, private vessels commissioned to attack and seize American shipping.
“When the British privateer Lord Howe entered the Chesapeake Bay, Dragon attempted to lure the enemy closer by masquerading as a merchantman,” in the account by Williamsburg historian Michael Romero. “Only Patriot was quick enough to pursue when Lord Howe saw through the ruse and attempted to flee. Despite facing a larger and more heavily armed vessel, Captain Taylor ordered Patriot to ram Lord Howe, hoping to board and capture her. The British vessel fired a broadside that raked Patriot fore and aft, killing two Virginians and seriously wounding several others. When Dragon was eventually able to get close enough to join the fight, Lord Howe’s crew threw their cannon overboard to hasten their escape.”
The repulse of the Lord Howe was due in no small part to the bravery and skill of the Patriot’s helmsman. Captain Taylor praised his performance, and years later the Patriot’s gunner, James Burk, testified that the helmsman had “steered the Patriot during the whole of the action, and behaved gallantly.”
Captain Taylor and gunner Burk fought, presumably, because they believed in the Patriot cause. As for the helmsman, perhaps he did too, but his motivations were likely more complex. For the hands that gripped the Patriot’s tiller that day were Black. Cesar Tarrant, pilot of the Patriot, was enslaved.
By the Revolutionary period, men and women of African descent had been toiling in Virginia for more than 150 years, since 20-some Black people stepped off the English privateer White Lion in 1619. They disembarked at Point Comfort (later Old Point Comfort) in Hampton. But in the strange new land there was little comfort to be found.
“Surviving records do not reveal the exact status of most African individuals brought to early colonial Virginia,” according to a study by Beth Austin, historian with the Hampton History Museum. “However, legal, cultural, and Atlantic evidence points to most Africans being treated as enslaved beginning in 1619. They were clearly not indentured servants. A small but significant number of early Africans were able to become free after a long term of service.”
Even that small crack in the door would eventually slam shut. The passage of Virginia’s Slave Codes in 1705 consolidated the legal status of slavery, shackling most African-Virginians for life.
On the eve of the Revolution, there were 2.5 million Americans in the 13 colonies, according to “The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution, 1770-1800,” by Sidney Kaplan. Of those, half a million were Black, a few free, the rest enslaved.
As tensions erupted into open warfare in 1775, Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia, made an incendiary offer — freedom for Black people who joined the British. Perhaps 15,000 African Americans fought with the British during the Revolutionary War. Around 5,000 sided with the Patriots.
Americans of all ethnicities were forced to make choices. In cabins on plantations and servant’s quarters in the “big house,” enslaved Virginians held hushed but urgent discussions.
“Complicated, complicated,” is how David Dangerfield, professor of history at University of South Carolina Salkehatchie, describes the choices facing enslaved people. “They were navigating the circumstances in which they lived.”
Consider an enslaved person who declines the opportunity to run away and join the British. “We might misread that as making a choice to remain loyal to an enslaver or to remain loyal to the colonies,” Dangerfield said. “But often it was a circumstance where they can’t run away, because they’d have to leave behind family. Very difficult, very complicated choices.”
For one thing, Dunmore’s offer only applied to slaves of “rebels.” Another factor, said Marvin Chiles, assistant professor of African American History at Old Dominion University, is that many Black people did not trust the British. It was the British who had organized the slave trade and sold them into slavery. “And so they dealt with the devil they knew” — their American enslavers.
Free Black people enlisted as well, Chiles said, “as a means of making money, as a means of securing some sort of military record to where they would actually have standing in their community, so they could buy land, they could be employed. Signing up for the colonial army had many benefits.”
A male child named Cesar — also spelled Caesar — was born around 1740, probably in Hampton, according to his entry in American National Biography. His parents’ names are unknown.
In 1765, Cesar was sold to Carter Tarrant, who owned 50 acres near the head of Hampton Creek, according to Hampton City Schools. Tarrant paid 97 pounds, 10 shillings, more than usual for a male slave, because of Cesar’s skill as a river pilot.
Tidewater sailors, then as now, learned to read the skies, hoist sails, follow the channels and avoid the shoals. Just how or when Tarrant acquired the skill is unclear. The typical Tidewater river pilot was white and handed his profession down to his son.
Some time before the revolution, Cesar Tarrant married Lucy, who was enslaved by a neighbor, John Rogers.
When war came, Cesar Tarrant chose to support the Patriot cause. Whatever discussions there may have been between Cesar and Carter Tarrant are lost to history.
Slaveholders, especially in the South, had “a vested interest to ensure that enslaved people do not see this as a path to freedom,” said Michael Idriss, manager of the African American interpretive program at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. Colonial authorities had to balance the need for military manpower against slaveholders’ grip on their wealth-producing labor force.
“I can’t imagine there would have been many promises of freedom for that service,” said Romero, a world history teacher at Menchville High School in Newport News and former historic interpreter at Colonial Williamsburg. “But it’s possible Cesar may have volunteered. There are accounts of enslaved people asking if they can serve in some way.”
On 13 October 1775, the Continental Congress founded the Continental Navy, a grandiose name for the naval arm of a country that occupied merely the fringe of a continent. By 1776, the fledgling fleet consisted of 27 warships, compared to about 270 in the mighty Royal Navy.
Eleven of the 13 colonies also had state navies of at least a few vessels; “the chief need of each state for a navy was to defend its seaports, coasts, and trade,” according to “The Administration of the Massachusetts and Virginia Navies of the American Revolution” by Charles Paullin.
Between December 1775, and July 1776, Virginia’s Committee of Safety established a miniscule navy. Among the officers appointed were James Barron and Richard Taylor. Of seven pilots appointed, four were enslaved, including Cesar Tarrant, who entered the service in 1776 or 1777, according to Romero.
Luther P. Jackson of Virginia State College published a study of “Virginia Negro Soldiers and Seamen in the American Revolution” in the Journal of Negro History in 1942.
“In the Virginia navy there were approximately forty vessels — ships, brigs, brigantines, sloops, galleys, armed pilot boats, and barges — each of which was mounted with ten or more guns,” wrote Jackson (1892-1950), a historian and civil rights activist. “Negroes fought on many of these vessels, where they ranged in number from one to ten persons on each vessel.” Nearly all the sailors came from the low-lying counties along the sandy, tree-lined shores of the Chesapeake and its tributaries.
“Throughout the country slaves served the cause of American independence (1) as runaways, (2) as enrollees expecting liberation at the end of the war, (3) as substitutes for their masters, and (4) as persons owned or hired by the Government. Slaves in Virginia enrolled as soldiers and sailors in each of these positions. However, since this State passed no act during the Revolution permitting the arming of slaves, they either passed as freemen or they participated as slaves in plain violation of the law,” Jackson wrote.
At least 72 Virginians of African descent, enslaved and free, enrolled in the state navy. African-Virginians on the Patriot along with Tarrant were Pluto, Jack Knight, “Captain” Starlins, Cuffee, and David.
Many Black people served in skilled and responsible positions. James Thomas was a boatswain’s mate on the Northampton. James Sorrell was a gunner’s mate on the Hero. Cuffee and Starlins were pilots like Tarrant.
Speculating about shipboard life among the mixed crews, Jackson wrote: “Because of the hard life on the sea, especially in war time, it is likely that the Negro seamen in the Revolution under various commanders fared about like the Negro seamen in the War of 1812 under Commodore Perry. Under this officer white and colored men messed together and they fraternized in general. All enjoyed together the bounteous supply of rum given by the State — a half pint a day with an extra amount during periods of fighting.”
They also shared the risks of war. Cuffee, the enslaved pilot, died from wartime injuries; Aaron Weaver was wounded twice in a battle at the mouth of the York River; and Joseph Ranger was with the Jefferson when it was blown up on the James River.
Some seemed to have relished the smoke and fire of combat.
“‘Captain’ Starlins, a slave and a full blooded African, who was trained as a pilot from his youth, showed unusual bravery on the Patriot when he led the crew in an attack on a British sloop in the James River,” Jackson wrote. “In the midst of this fight Starlins ‘hollered for joy’ at the moment when he thought he had captured the British sloop. His vessel went down in defeat, however, because of the sudden appearance of fifty British sailors on the scene. This African was held in high esteem by all the Virginia naval officers, especially Commodore James Barron.”
The undersized Virginia Navy rarely ventured beyond the Chesapeake. Desperate for hands, officers resorted to impressment of seamen in 1780. The British destroyed almost the entire fleet in a battle on the James River in April 1781. The momentous naval victory of Sept. 5, 1781, known as the Battle of the Chesapeake or Battle of the Capes, which set the stage for Washington’s triumph at Yorktown, was won not by the Virginia or Continental Navy, but by French warships under Admiral de Grasse.
When the smoke cleared and the survivors went home, Black veterans faced mixed prospects. Some free veterans received payments and land grants from the state. Enslaved men who had served as substitutes for their enslavers were freed in 1783. Cesar Tarrant, who apparently wasn’t substituting for Carter Tarrant, remained in bondage.
Carter Tarrant died in 1784 and Cesar Tarrant was willed to Carter’s wife, Mary Tarrant, according to American National Biography. Finally, in 1789, the General Assembly purchased the freedom of Cesar Tarrant, Revolutionary hero.
What prompted the action isn’t clear. Other pilots, friends of Tarrant, may have petitioned on his behalf; the state navy board may have acted; or Tarrant himself may have petitioned. In any case, “in consideration of which meritorious services it is judged expedient to purchase the freedom” of Tarrant, a government representative negotiated a purchase price with Mary Tarrant and issued a certificate freeing Cesar Tarrant.
While Cesar Tarrant’s motives in fighting for Virginia aren’t known — perhaps he had several — one thing is clear: he never stopped working for the freedom of his family.
His wife, Lucy, and children were still enslaved by John Rogers. In 1793, Rogers freed Lucy and their 15-month-old daughter, Nancy. Cesar Tarrant may have worked for Rogers, Tarrant may have raised the purchase price somehow, or perhaps Rogers felt some need to free the mother and child. The other children, Sampson and Lydia, remained enslaved, according to American National Biography.
Tarrant purchased a lot in Hampton in a section where white river pilots lived, suggesting that Tarrant was liked and respected among the maritime brotherhood. The pilots petitioned the legislature in 1791 to include skilled Black pilots among those granted licenses, probably with Tarrant in mind.
Tarrant died in Hampton, Virginia, in 1797, a free man, property owner, and respected professional. Still, on his deathbed, he was probably thinking of his two children still in slavery. His will specified that all his property be given to his wife Lucy, and upon her death, the property be sold to buy his daughter Lydia’s freedom. Whatever remained was to be given to Sampson. Finally, Tarrant asked the court to “see Justice done my children.”
Justice was a long time coming.
Daughter Lydia was later sold to a Norfolk resident for $250. Her mother was finally able to buy her freedom in 1822, but Lydia herself left a child in bondage. Sampson disappears from the records. He may have died enslaved.
More than a half century after the Lord Howe raked the Patriot with gunfire, the shots were still echoing.
The Virginia legislature continued to reward Revolutionary veterans and their heirs with land grants well into the 19th century. In 1831, with supporting testimony from the now-elderly Patriot gunner James Burk, Nancy Tarrant successfully petitioned the legislature for a grant of 2,666 2/3 acres in Ohio.
Testimonials like that of Burk paint “a very interesting picture of the complicated relationships … during the Revolutionary War, and the aftermath, where certain people of African descent served along or [in] close relations with white soldiers,” Idriss said. “And there were very strong bonds that were made.”
Nancy Tarrant sold her land and used the proceeds to buy the freedom of her husband and two other relatives. “While the wheels of emancipation turned slowly, once hopes that Cesar would be comforted by the fact that his own wartime service led directly to at least six members of his family becoming free,” Romero wrote.
“Over 100,000 Black people gained their freedom at the behest of the American Revolution,” Chiles said, “because of what happened as a result of Black people making strategic choices, to say, hey, this war is going to open up the doors of freedom for us. It was the first wave of real Black freedom in America.”
Cesar Tarrant is not forgotten in Hampton. Cesar Tarrant Elementary School opened in 1970. “Tarrant is a great role model for students as being one of the generations of African Americans who remained loyal to American forces, willing to defend their country, even when it did not offer them the equal rights of citizenship,” according to a statement from Hampton City Schools. The elementary school closed in 2015, but in 2018, the former Jefferson Davis Middle School was renamed Cesar Tarrant Middle School.
Two hundred and fifty years later, we have an inkling of the complex political, emotional and economic choices faced by Virginians of African descent, as the upheaval of revolution loomed like a storm cloud on the Chesapeake horizon.
But the short description of Cesar Tarrant in American National Biography doesn’t capture any of that. It doesn’t say “Cesar Tarrant, enslaved man in the Virginia navy” or “African American who took service with…” or “Black seaman who was sent to fight for….”
Next to Cesar Tarrant’s name, it simply says “patriot.”