The Corps of Colonial Marines:
Black freedom fighters of the War of 1812

John McNish Weiss

Notes on sources

• BALL, Charles: Slavery in the United States: a narrative of the life and adventures of Charles Ball, a Black man, who lived forty years in Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia as a slave (Lewistownn, PA: J W Shugert, 1836; New York: Taylor, 1837); republished as: Life as a Negro Slave (New York: Muskett, 1846); and as: Fifty years in chains (New York: 1859); modern reprint: Fifty years in chains [1837 New York edition] with a new introduction by Philip S. Foner (New York, London: Dover: Constable, 1970)
• BERLIN, Ira: Many thousands gone: the first two centuries of American slavery (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1998)
• DUNN, Richard: ‘Black society in the Chesapeake 1776-1810’ (in Berlin & Hoffman, ed: Slavery and freedom in the age of the American Revolution, Symposium papers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986)
• MORGAN, Philip: Slave counterpoint: Black culture in eighteenth-century Chesapeake and Low Country (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998)
• SOBEL, Mechal: The world they made together: Black and white values in eighteenth-century Virginia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987)
• SMITH, Julia Floyd: Slavery and rice culture in low country Georgia, 1750-1860 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985);
and, because the War of 1812 was very much a naval war, and in the Chesapeake and Georgia mostly touched only those slaves within reach of the water:
• BOLSTER, W Jeffrey: Black Jacks, African American seamen in the age of sail (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1997).

As regards the war itself, an excellent review of the progression of sources and attitudes is to be found in:
• HICKEY, Donald R: ‘The War of 1812: Still a Forgotten Conflict?’ (Journal of Military History 65 (July 2001): 741-69).
In addition, I have found useful information in two bibliographies of the War of 1812 that were published over fifteen years ago and remain major guides to the literature:
• FREDRIKSEN, John C: Resource guide for the War of 1812 (Los Angeles: Subia, 1979)
• SMITH, Dwight L: The War of 1812. an annotated bibliography (New York, London: Garland, 1985).

Out of the many histories of the war published in the last half-century, I have used:
• HICKEY, Donald R: The War of 1812, a forgotten conflict (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990)
• HORSMAN, Reginald: The War of 1812 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1969)
• MAHON, John K: The War of 1812 (New York; Da Capo, 1991).

Two recent works set the story of the Colonial Marines in a general context of Black American armed service:
• HORNE, Gerald: Negro Comrades of the Crown: African-Americans & the British Empire fight the U.S. before emancipation (New York University Press, 2011)
• SMITH Gene Allen: The Slaves' Gamble: Choosing Sides in the War of 1812 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

The following works deal specifically with the flight of the refugees in the two main areas of British incursion on the Atlantic coast, CASSELL for Maryland and Virginia and BULLARD for Georgia:
• BULLARD, Mary: Black Liberation on Cumberland Island 1815 ([South Dartmouth, MA]: M R Bullard, 1983)
• CASSELL, Frank A: ‘Slaves of the Chesapeake Bay Area and the War of 1812’ (Journal of Negro History volume 67, 1972);
and informative references to the flight of slaves from one major slaveholder are included in:
• BELL, Malcolm: Major Butler's Legacy (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987).

An eye-witness account of the training and drilling of the new recruits in Georgia is to be found in:
• KINGSLEY, Zephaniah: A treatise on the patriarchal, or co-operative system of society as it exists in some governments, and colonies in America, and in the United States, under the name of slavery, with its necessity and advantages; by an inhabitant of Florida. ([n.p.]:1829 (2nd edn); reprint: Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1970).

The Colonial Marines and their service are mentioned in the semi-official NAVAL CHRONICLE and MILITARY REGISTER, in a few of the officers' memoirs of the War and in some histories of the Royal Marines:
• FIELD, Cyril: Britain’s Sea-Soldiers. A history of the Royal Marines and their predecessors and of their services in action .. (Liverpool: Lyceum Press, 1924)
• GLEIG, George R: The campaigns of the British army at Washington & New Orleans in the years 1814-1815 (London: J Murray, 1836)
• NICHOLAS, Lt Paul Harris: Historical record of the Royal Marine Forces (1845)

For the Naval Chronicle, a useful modern compilation is:
• TRACY, Nicholas, ed,: Naval Chronicle. the contemporary record of the Royal Navy at war, prepared for general use Vol. 5. 1811-1815 (London: 1999).