By Travis C. Perusich

On October 15, 1849, at the weary age of 107, Jim Capers stood before the Honorable Bird Fitzpatrick in hopes of claiming a pension for his seven and a half years of service in the American Revolution some seventy years prior—he could have applied much earlier, but until then did not realize he was eligible for a pension.[1] As was common among Black South Carolina Patriots, Capers was enlisted into a non-combatant role, serving as a drum major. Fear of slave rebellion and the challenge armed Black men represented to eighteenth-century racial hierarchy meant that for the vast majority of Americans—especially the southern planters that made up the leadership of South Carolina’s colonial government—Black arms-bearing was anathema. However, upon enlistment, Capers found himself in a unique situation. He originally enlisted in the South Carolina 4^th Artillery but was eventually transferred to the militia, under the command of Brigadier General and partisan practitioner of irregular guerilla warfare Francis Marion. Capers remembered Marion first and foremost among his leadership, suggesting Capers held Marion in the highest regard among his commanders.[2]

Despite being an enslaver, Marion, unlike many of his peers, was not opposed to mustering Black soldiers. As a result, Capers assumed arms-bearing soldiering duties within the militia in 1780.[3] He went on to fight in battles from Savannah to Camden, and, most notably, in the Battle of Eutaw Springs, in which he received several wounds.[4] Despite this lived combat experience (non-arms-bearers could be denied a pension), Capers was initially rejected in his claim for a pension. This was due to a combination of the fact that militia muster lists were rarely preserved and Capers, in his old age, was deaf and prone to getting confused in recounting his experiences.[5] Additionally, his role being officially listed as a drum major, with no muster list to support his arms-bearing, may have led the County Court to assume that he did not have the duties of a soldier.[6] Regardless of the justification, Capers was not alone in his post-war struggles and was not awarded his pension until two months before his death. He actually died before officially receiving it, though his widow, Milley, was able to claim a partial benefit after the fact.[7]

While he was of course only one man, Jim Capers’ experience in the American Revolution is still representative of those of a generation of arms-bearing Black Patriots who fought and bled to help achieve American independence but subsequently met hardship. Exploring his military experience, the conditions of his war-time environment cultivated by his leadership, and his post-war experience, can illuminate the arms-bearing Black Patriot experience.

The first aspect of Capers’ service that stands out is its length: he enlisted on June 15, 1775, and served until October 1, 1782. Black Patriots joined the cause for myriad reasons, but a shared commonality was their impoverished status. The Continental line was where the poorest soldiers were often resigned and after 1776 carried an enlistment requirement of three years or the duration of the war. By contrast, the militia often required a man to own his own musket and was predominated by land-owning whites on short tours, serving as a financial and cultural barrier of entry to would-be Black militiamen. Consequently, as was the initial case with Capers, Black Patriots tended to enlist for longer tours in the Continental Army.

In serving the Patriot cause, men of color like Capers, were able to use military service to gain socio-political advancement. For some, this included literal freedom. It is unclear if Capers was among those who received freedom for service; he consistently referred to himself as a “free man of color” and “volunteer” in his pension application.[8] However, when questioned about his place of birth and place of enlistment, Capers gave the same answer of Christ Church Parish, South Carolina and references his “old master.”[9] The Committee of Pensions even posited he might have been enslaved, though Judge Fitzpatrick concluded, “I cannot prove the precise time he was mustered in or out of service, but if you think from the testimony that he was a slave I can prove his freedom now, his freedom when he entered the service and when he left the very same conclusively.”[10] In all likelihood, Capers was one of the thousands of Black Patriots who received freedom in return for enlisting.

However, this was not the only form of social uplift he gained through his service. Both the Continental line and Marion’s militia units were integrated. By serving in these blended units, Black Patriots were able to practice cultural citizenship, a form of socio-political advancement in which Black Patriots used the irrefutable honor and respect of their soldier-status to endear themselves to their white comrades and whites within their communities. As a result, when Capers was initially rejected for his pension, he had white elderly comrades and local friends he could call upon to vouch for his service.[11]

Despite the ability to foster this modicum of liberty and socio-political advancement, military life for Black Patriots like Capers was notably harsh. Capers’ position of drum major is testament to this fact, as his role in conveying messages during battles necessarily drew attention. At Eutaw Springs, Capers was slashed three times on his face and head with a sword and shot in the side. He was not alone in receiving wounds. Across the entirety of the Revolution, perhaps the most consistent element of the Black Patriot experience was a greater exposure to danger, in part due to the apathy of their leadership in preventing it. For example, after the Battle of Rhode Island, Major Samuel Ward recalled: “I am so happy as to have only one captain slightly wounded in the hand. I believe that a couple of the blacks were killed and four or five wounded, but none badly.”[12] In truth, nearly three dozen men were killed and 137 wounded, most of whom were black Patriots from the Rhode Island 1st.[13] Indeed, Capers was fortunate, given that at the time of the Battle of Eutaw Springs, he was under the command of General Marion. 

Francis Marion was far from a Black rights champion; he was an enslaver, particularly aggressive against Black Loyalists, and frequently sought to capture enslaved men from the enemy to perform labor throughout the war.[14] However, as a military commander, Marion oversaw a mixed-race brigade and, as best as can be discerned, led his Black Patriots fairly and with respect—at least more so than his peers. Marion showed himself to be far from apathetic towards his own men. For example, in 1781 when Colonel Peter Horry requested Black laborers out of military necessity, Marion refused to allow his own Black troops to be forced into teamster duties, leaving Horry to begrudgingly recall that Marion would “not suffer Negroes to be seized on or taken out of his Brigade.”[15] This was almost certainly due to the manning issues that affected the Patriots throughout the war. For example, the previous summer when Marion was moving north to join with General Gates for the Battle of Camden, a member of Gates’ command staff, Colonel Otho Williams, noted how Marion’s troops “did not exceed twenty men and boys, some white, some black, and all mounted, but most of them miserably equipped.”[16] This quote reveals more than Marion’s dwindling numbers; the fact that all of Marion’s partisan soldiers, including African Americans, were mounted speaks volumes in this situation. Francis Marion is famous for his deft use of horses to conduct raids—specifically South Carolina’s adaptable Marsh Tacky breed whose demeanor was so ideally suited to Marion’s guerilla warfare that the horse’s gait was dubbed “the Swamp Fox Trot.”[17] By providing horses to all of his men, including African Americans, Marion implicitly held his Black soldiers in equal regard to white soldiers. He did not force Black Patriots into an overtly reduced social hierarchy within the unit; his men were seemingly treated equally. With Capers likely being among these twenty and given a horse to ride, he would have more fully experienced the respect of a soldier under Marion’s command.

Marion’s sense of fairness regarding non-enemy Black people did not stop with his own troops either. In 1781, Patriot General Thomas Sumter devised a recruitment strategy to encourage white enlistment by offering enslaved people as an incentive to whites for serving for at least ten months. “Sumter’s Law,” as it came to be known, was adopted by others among Patriot leadership, and even endorsed by General Nathaniel Greene. But Marion refused to implement it, decrying the recruitment method as “inhuman, immoral, and violative of due process.”[18] To be sure, Marion showed no signs of changing his pro-slavery views during his lifetime. This can best be seen in the case of his enslaved valet, Oscar Marion, who, despite accompanying General Marion throughout the entirety of the war, never received his freedom.[19]  Marion also spent his post-war years trying to accumulate more enslaved men and women to restore his pre-war wealth. Yet, Marion exhibited a discerning sense of fairness in his military life. In this light, it makes sense that Marion would be the foremost leader Capers recalled over half a century later. In all likelihood, Marion was one of the only Patriot leaders to treat Capers with any degree of equality to white soldiers.

Following the war, little is known about Capers’s life. In 1785, he moved to Alabama and in 1826, he married his wife Milley, and the two had six children.[20] The wealth of Capers and his family is unknown. However, if Capers was like the majority of Black Patriot veterans, he was likely impoverished and resigned to the role of a laborer.[21] What is known is that Milley Capers was enslaved, and Jim and Milley lived on the plantation of her enslaver, Norman McLeod.[22] By all accounts, McLeod acted in the interests of the Capers family—he attested to Jim’s good character in his pension application and even offered to manumit Milley, though he was legally prohibited from doing so under Alabama law.[23] Whatever benevolence McLeod may have had, however, does not change the fact that even being free, Jim Capers was still bound by slavery.

Taken together, Capers’s experience represents the same struggle as that endured by innumerable Black Patriots during and after the American Revolution. The war was challenging for all soldiers, but more so for Black Patriots who had to navigate the lowest position in the social order and were often subjected to the most dangerous jobs. Some, like Capers, were fortunate to be able to find a measure of respect from leaders like Marion, but that did not change the fact that the years following the war were filled with hardship and the continued challenges of racism and slavery that defined the early nineteenth century. Often, the best men like Capers could do was leverage their veteran status in strategic ways and foster relationships within their communities—as he did with Milley’s master and others who endorsed his pension application. Despite this, the environment in Antebellum America—North and South—was a continual struggle for Black veterans. But in resisting these pressures, men like Capers served as an ever-present reminder that Black Patriots fought and bled for American independence and were deserving of the same benefits of the country as white Americans—even if it would not be realized within their lifetimes.

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Travis C. Perusich is a historian of the American Revolution, concentrating on the wartime and post-war experience of African American Patriot soldiers. Perusich is a proud Air Force veteran and former high school social studies teacher. He received his M.A.T. in 2018 from the University of Central Arkansas, and his PhD in 2025 from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He currently serves as an instructor at University of Arkansas, and is working towards publishing his dissertation, Rise Up: How Black Soldiers and Veterans Defined the Revolutionary Era, in the near future. His LinkedIn Profile is https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-perusich-645076113/.

Title Image: “In the Glorious Cause of Liberty” Battle of Beaufort South Carolina, February 3, 1779, 2020, by Jeff Trexler. Digital graphic courtesy of the South Carolina American Revolution Sestercentennial Commission (SC 250). Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=518074703941423&set=a.115761304172767.

Further Readings:

Buskirk, Judith Van. Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution. University of Oklahoma Press, 2017.

Green, Shirley L. Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence. Westholme, 2023.

Morgan, Philip D., and O’Shaughnessy, Andre Jackson. “Arming Slaves in the American Revolution.” in Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern Age, edited by Christopher Leslie Brown and Philip D. Morgan. Yale University Press, 2006.

Nash, Gary B. The Forgotten Fifth: African-Americans and the Age of Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2006.

Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the American Revolution. University of North Carolina Press, 1961.

Rees, John U. ‘They Were Good Soldiers’: African-Americans Serving in the Continental Army, 1775-1783. Helion and Company, 2019.

Endnotes:

[1] Pension Application of Jim Capers, R. 1669, transcribed by C. Leon Harris, Southern Campaign American Revolution Pension Statements & Rosters, revised July 17, 2014, https://revwarapps.org/r1669.pdf.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Jim Capers,” SC 250 Anniversary: American Revolution, South Carolina American Sestercentennial Commission, https://southcarolina250.com/story/jim-capers/. It is unclear what Capers’ exact role was while serving under Marion, however it is likely when practicing irregular warfare outside of major battles, he was armed similarly to his fellow militiamen—drumming would have undermined Marion’s guerilla tactics. However, when the militia took the field with Continental regulars, he likely would have assumed his drum major duties. 

[4] Ibid.

[5] Jim Capers, Pension File R. 1669 (South Carolina. Service, Revolutionary War), page 88, in Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service, Microfilm Publication M804, roll 0465, Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Record Group 15, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); image accessed through Fold3, https://www.fold3.com/image/12833556/capers-jim-page-88-us-revolutionary-war-pensions-1800-1900.

[6] Judith Van Buskirk, Standing in their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), 208.

[7] Jim Capers, Fold3 Pension File, 69.

[8] Jim Capers, Fold3 Pension File, 37.

[9] Jim Capers, Fold3 Pension File, 6.

[10] Pension Application of Jim Capers, https://revwarapps.org/r1669.pdf.

[11] Jim Capers, Fold3 Pension File, 42.

[12] Samuel Ward, quoted in Shirley L. Green, Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence (Westholme, 2023), 100.

[13] Ibid., 95.

[14] “Francis Marion to John Postell, Jr., January 19, 1781,” in The Francis Marion Papers. Vol. 2. Columbia, SC: South Carolina American Revolution Sestercentennial Commission, 2025.

[15] Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (University of North Carolina Press, 1961), 103.

[16] Stephen D. Smith, “African Americans in the Revolutionary War,” South Carolina Encyclopedia, University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies, last modified July 14, 2022, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/african-americans-in-the-revolutionary-war/.

[17] Virginia Ellison, “June, 2010: Marsh Tacky Becomes the Official State Heritage Horse,” South Carolina Historical Society, May 31, 2022, https://schistory.org/june-2010-marsh-tacky-becomes-the-official-state-heritage-horse/.

[18] Philip Foner, Blacks in the American Revolution (Greenwood Press, 1976), 65; It is worth noting, Marion was more than willing to seize enslaved people from Loyalist plantations in order to fill required labor needs for military operations. It is likely his opposition lay in the fact that the program was tantamount to promoting the slave trade, and institution even many of the most prominent enslavers saw as inhumane.  

[19] “Oscar Marion,” The Soul of Pee Dee, Pee Dee Tourism, https://soulofthepeedee.com/oscar-marion/.

[20] Pension Application of Jim Capers, https://revwarapps.org/r1669.pdf. The record here is contradictory. Capers himself claimed he moved to Alabama three years after the war concluded, yet Milley claims in an 1853 pension request that he did not move to Alabama until thirteen years prior to his death, which would put the move from South Carolina around 1840. Milley was 46 at the time, and likely represents a more accurate account due to Jim’s cognitive decline, yet Capers himself attested to the year 1785.

[21] Van Buskirk, Standing in Their Own Light, 196.

[22] Jim Capers, Southern Campaign.  

[23] Jim Capers, Fold3 Pension File, 64; The record does not give the enslavement status of the Capers’ children, though it suggests they were free as all of their adult children save for one lived outside of Pike County and Milley knew their exact locations. If they had been enslaved and sold off, it is unlikely she would have had their locations, or at the very least would have listed the names of their enslavers. Pension Application of Jim Capers, https://revwarapps.org/r1669.pdf. This brings into question the very nature of Milley’s enslavement. She was undeniably “technically” enslaved—her enslaver, Norman McLeod, offered to manumit her. However, her actions and mobility are not in keeping with an enslaved person’s actions. If McLeod had, for instance, wanted Milley to claim Jim’s pension so he could have it, he would not have needed her to do it. There was precedence where he could have simply filed the pension request himself, laying claim to Milley’s entitlement as his own. Combined with the fact that McLeod also vouched for Jim’s initial pension, and the two lived with McLeod, it seems plausible McLeod operated as Milley’s master in name only, potentially supplying a degree of legal protection for the two to live their lives freely.