14. Corporal Washington
Harry Washington evaded the slave patrols and pursuit, and made it to British lines, where he enlisted in the Ethiopian Regiment. He survived the epidemic diseases that wracked the unit, as well as the fighting in Virginia. In 1776, the British position in Virginia became hopeless, prompting the evacuation of the state and the disbandment of the Ethiopian Regiment. Harry then sailed to New York, where he joined the Black Pioneers, serving in a company attached to a British artillery unit.
He was promoted to corporal, and accompanied Henry Clinton’s British army in its invasion of South Carolina. There, in 1781, Corporal Washington was placed in charge of a pioneer unit attached to the Royal Artillery Department in Charleston. After the war, he was evacuated to Nova Scotia. Later, he joined the first group of colonial black migrants who were returned to Africa, settling in Sierra Leone. In 1800, he joined a brief rebellion against British rule. The rebellion was swiftly crushed, and Harry Washington was arrested, convicted of sedition, and sentenced to internal banishment elsewhere in Sierra Leone. There, he died of illness soon thereafter.
