My work as an anthropologist began in 2015 with the publishing of my first ethnographic book about the lives of athletes competing in the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup in Canada, but my anthropological interests were wide ranging. My Bachelor's degrees after all were in both anthropology and history with a minor in Native American Studies. So during Covid lockdowns, I started working on hobbies to satisfy my diverse range of interests- including sewing historical clothing.
During that time, I worked on creating a series of reproductions of uniforms worn throughout the American Revolutionary War and would watch videos about the lives of the men who served in those specific units during the war like the British Marines or the 1st Rhode Island Regiment. While sewing that uniform coat of the 1st Rhode Island, I was mesmerized by every account I heard about the unit. Not only had they served in almost every major battle of the war from Bunker Hill to Yorktown and beyond, but they had also played vital roles in those battles.
At Bunker Hill- when British grenadiers and light infantry attempted to flank the Americans on Breed's Hill to cut off their escape route and force a surrender of the position, the 1st Rhode Island not only held their ground along the fence line protecting that flank, they actually routed the grenadiers assaulting their position while under intense artillery bombardment. During the British assault on New York which forced Washington to surrender the city and retreat into New Jersey, the 1st Rhode Island engaged the British advance units led by the feared Black Watch through a series of skirmishes that bought Washington enough time to evacuate almost his entire army.
In almost every battle the regiment fought in, they were almost entirely responsible for salvaging a lost battle that allowed most of the remaining Continental Army to retreat safely or were able to use their skill and discipline to win major battles in the conflict. They were also almost entirely made up of Black soldiers. Most Rhode Islanders at the outbreak of the war were mariners- people who had careers on ships- so most of the men of Rhode Island who answered the call to fight in the war formed privateer crews to serve on sea rather than on land, which meant the colony had trouble finding enough men to fill their quota for infantry regiments.
From the start, Rhode Island allowed free Black men, Native Americans, and anyone else in the colony to enlist in their militias including that of Varnum's Regiment- made up of some of the most well-trained and well-disciplined minutemen in Rhode Island at the time. While only about one in ten recruits at the outset were Black, casualties from a failed campaign to Canada forced the Rhode Island Congress to allow slaves from any colony to enlist in exchange for gaining freedom from slavery at the end of their service. When word spread about the offer, slaves from colonies as far away as Georgia flocked to Rhode Island to enlist, and- by the end of the war- only one in ten members of the regiment were white. Also due to casualties, the regiment could not facilitate the Continental Congress' demands to segregate the regiment, so Black, Native American, white, and even Jewish soldiers fought side by side in this desegregated regiment.
The more I learned about the exploits of this unit, the more I realized somebody needed to create a show about them. The US military would not allow Black men to serve in the army again until the 1860's during the American Civil War and would not allow them to serve in a desegregated army unit again until the 1950's during the Korean War. Yet I had never heard of the 1st Rhode Island before. Roughly a year later, I started forming the script for the series and casting voice actors to portray the characters- almost all of which are pulled directly from the roster lists of the real regiment.
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