Black Soldiers of Liberty - Journal of the American Revolution

Estimates have appeared in print for generations that 3,000 to 5,000 Black soldiers served in the American military in the Revolution. These claims seldom offer documentation, being instead what historian Michael Lanning defined as only a “general consensus” of the number of African American patriots. Lack of records, reliance on anecdotal evidence, and other factors make any estimate of the number of these soldiers only an educated guess, but modern scholars make arguments for 10,000 or more Black Patriots.[1]