Revolutionary HERO
Enslaved Hampton man Cesar Tarrant, a ship’s pilot, was one of many
The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This story is part of a project by Cardinal News to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. The three-year project is supported in part by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission.
In October 1778, a small flotilla set sail for the Chesapeake Bay. The Patriot, Dragon and Tartar, commanded by Capt. Richard Taylor, were part of the tiny Virginia navy, charged with protecting the coastline from the British. The Patriot carried 10 swivel guns and 20 men.
The British privateer Lord Howe entered the Chesapeake and the Dragon attempted to lure it closer by “masquerading as a merchantman,” writes historian Michael Romero of Williamsburg. The Patriot was the quicker and attacked, but the Lord Howe narrowly escaped.
The repulse of the larger vessel was due in no small part to the skill of the Patriot’s helmsman. Capt. Taylor praised the helmsman, and the Patriot’s gunner, James Burk,
testified years later that the helmsman had “steered the Patriot during the whole of the action, and behaved gallantly.”
Taylor and Burk fought, presumably, for the Patriot cause. Perhaps the helmsman did too, but his motivations were likely more complex: Cesar Tarrant, pilot of the Patriot, was enslaved.
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 open warfare erupted 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; around 5,000 sided with the
Patriots.
“Complicated, complicated,” is how David Dangerfield, professor of history at the 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 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 applied only 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. The British had organized the slave trade. “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.”
Around 1740, a male child named Cesar —
also spelled Caesar — was born, probably in Hampton, according to his entry in American National Biography.
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.
Sailors, then as now, learned to read the skies, hoist sails, follow the channels and avoid the shoals. How or when Cesar Tarrant acquired the skill is unclear; the typical Tidewater river pilot was white and handed his profession down to his son.
At some point before the Revolution, Cesar Tarrant married a woman named Lucy, who was enslaved by a neighbor, John Rogers.
When war came, Cesar Tarrant chose to support the Patriots. Whatever discussions there may have been between him and Carter Tarrant are unknown.
But slaveholders had an interest in making sure that supporting the Revolution didn’t mean freedom for the enslaved. 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, the author, who teaches world history at Menchville High School in Newport News and was a 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 Oct.13,1775, the Continental Congress founded the Continental Navy. By 1776, the fleet consisted of 27 warships, compared to about 270 in the Royal Navy.
Eleven of the 13 colonies also had navies of at least a few vessels to defend their coasts, 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 minuscule navy. Among the officers 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.
“Negroes fought on many of these vessels, where they ranged in number from one to ten persons on each vessel,” wrote Luther P. Jackson, a Virginia State College historian and a civil rights activist, in a 1942 article, “Virginia Negro Soldiers and Seamen in the American Revolution,” in the Journal of Negro History.
Enslaved people served for several reasons: They expected to be freed after the war; they were substituting for their owners; or they were owned or hired by the government, he wrote. “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.”
At least 72 Virginians of African descent, enslaved and free, enrolled in the state navy. James
Thomas was a boatswain’s mate on the Northampton. James Sorrell was a gunner’s mate on the Hero. On the Patriot along with Cesar Tarrant were two other pilots, Cuffee and “Captain” Starlins, as well as Pluto, Jack Knight and David.
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 the 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 Adm. de Grasse.
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.
What prompted the action isn’t clear. Other pilots, friends of Cesar 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, 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
When the smoke cleared
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 he 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 in 1797,
a free man, property owner and respected professional. His will specified that all his property be given to his wife and upon her death, the property be sold to buy the freedom of their daughter, Lydia. 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. 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.
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, Cesar and Lucy’s daughter Nancy successfully petitioned the legislature for a grant of just over 2,666 acres in Ohio.
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, (one) 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.
ODU’s Chiles said: “Over 100,000 Black people gained their freedom at the behest of the American Revolution, 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.”
In Hampton, Cesar Tarrant is not forgotten. Cesar Tarrant Elementary School opened in 1970. The school closed in 2015, but in 2018, Jefferson Davis Middle School was renamed Cesar Tarrant Middle School.
In American National Biography, the short description of Cesar Tarrant 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.”