(Photo courtesy of Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library)
Soldiers, including six African-American slaves who volunteered to fight in exchange for their freedom, lost toes due to frostbite during a failed expedition to destroy Fort Ontario in 1783. After the war, they obtained pensions for partial disability. This watercolor, painted at Yorktown by a French army officer, features a member of the "Black Regiment.'" “Soldiers in Uniform” by Jean Baptiste Antoine de Verger, 1781-1784.
