Liberty and Property: Seeking the truth about Prince Whipple
Its hard to know the full or exact truth about Prince Whipple. He was born in Africa, enslaved at age ten, and free before he died. The most heart-warming version is that early in the American Revolution, William Whipple, a delegate to the Continental Congress from New Hampshire and captain, then general, of a New Hampshire brigade in the revolutionary army, had a fit of conscience. General Whipple realized he couldn't fight for his own freedom while holding another in slavery. Then, a free man, Prince enlisted in the Continental Army alongside his former master. That makes the rounds of social media during Black History Month. This is almost certainly not true.
Benjamin Quarles, a prominent historian, wrote in 1975 in Ebony magazine that Prince seemed depressed shortly before a battle, and when asked why, replied "You are going to fight for your liberty, but I have none to fight for," and Whipple free him. But an article in Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, points out that Prince Whipple was one of twenty signatories on a petition to the New Hampshire legislature in 1779 to free them from bondage. The first document actually dissolving his status as property was signed by William Whipple, 22 February 1781, allowing him the rights of a freeman. That was the eve of his marriage to Dinah Chase, who was manumitted by her owner-of-record at age 21, just before the wedding. He was formally manumitted 24 February 1784, a year after the final treaty with Great Britain recognized American independence. General Whipple died a year later.
This is William Whipples’s home.
I’d like to show an image of Prince and Cuffee Whipple’s home when married and free, or of their own faces. But there are none. Well, as the WW II saying goes, “Prince was here.”
A story published in The Granite Monthly:A New Hampshire Magazine: Devoted to History, Biography, Literature and State Progress Volume XL, New Series Volume III, 1908), offers a plausible account that "Prince attended General Whipple on the expedition to Saratoga in 1777, but one morning, on the way to the army, Prince was dilatory when ordered to get the horses ready for the march." In this version, when Prince said he had no liberty to fight for, the general responded, "Prince, behave like a man and do your duty and from this hour you shall be free."
General Whipple may have said that, and meant it, but it was a few more years before he made good on it. The fact is, there was little controversy about slavery before the Revolution -- choosing to fight for independence on a grandiose platform proclaiming that "all men" are created equal, endowed by their Creator with "certain inalienable rights" challenged many habits, common assumptions, and modes of business. It even made holding men and women as property questionable in law and ethics in a way few had imagined before. But it required a whole new way of thinking, and many resisted it.
The Granite Monthly cites statements from the files of the New Hampshire Adjutant General's office that "Prince Whipple appears on 'Pay roll for Brigadier General William Whipple, his brigade major and servant,' during the Saratoga campaign, and that Prince served in the Rhode Island campaign in 1778. The 1908 article was published to highlight that Prince Whipple's grave had been identified in the North Burial Ground not far from William Whipple's. The local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic, a union civil war veterans' organization, had placed a new memorial stone to commemorate his service.
A few days before July 4, 1908, the United States, through Storer Post, Grand Army of the Republic, Portsmouth NH, placed a memorial stone in the North cemetery.
Storer Post -- to whose members for four long years a black face was always the face of a friend -- gladly pays this tribute to a comrade of the Revolution!
Prince Whipple, his brother Cuffe Whipple (owned for a time by William Whipple's brother Joseph), and their wives lived in a home provided by General Whipple's widow "during their lives and the lives of their wives." Prince died in 1796, Cuffee in 1816, Dinah in 1846. Her obituary described her husband's earlier death as "much regretted both by the white and colored inhabitants of the town."
By all accounts, the African Whipples were highly respected by all people in Portsmouth. Dinah Whipple opened a school in her home (for children of African descent — they were not routinely admitted to the public school with “white” children) which remained open 1806-1832. The school operated under the auspices of the Ladies Charitable African Society. She was also a patron of the Congregational church lending library.
The beginning of the story has an interest of its own: the young man purchased by William Whipple around 1766 may well have been a prince in his homeland, probably the area that is now Ghana. There are accounts dating to the time that family obituaries were published, that the two had been sent by their parents to American for an education, but the captain of the ship had instead sold them into slavery. In the 20th or 21st century, most of us would doubt that any African parents would entrust their children on such a voyage.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Africans were respected and self-assured business partners, necessary to any foreigner, European or otherwise, who wanted to do business. The commercial networks, legal permissions, connections, trading partners, necessary to trade in any commodity were in the hands of wealthy Africans, embedded in powerful kingdoms with capable mass armies and coastal navies. Earlier, a small number of Africans had made the same voyage and returned with an enlarged knowledge of the world. What the families of these young men could not know was that, across the ocean, anyone of a dark complexion was presumed a slave until proven otherwise, and the betrayal of their trust would be easy to get away with.