Dabney, Austin

By: Alton Hornsby

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Dabney, Austin

1760?–1834
African American soldier who fought in the American Revolution.

Reported to be the son of a Virginia white woman and a black father, Austin Dabney was probably born in North Carolina. Shortly after the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, a man named Richard Aycock brought Austin from North Carolina to Wilkes County, Georgia. It was assumed that Austin was a slave. However, when Aycock was ushered into the Georgia militia, Aycock asked that the young mulatto (of African and European descent) be permitted to take his place. The law forbade slaves to bear arms for any reason, but Aycock swore that the boy was indeed a free person of color. Austin was placed under the command of Colonel Elijah Clarke in the Georgia militia. He was assigned to a company headed by a Captain Dabney, who soon gave his own surname to the young soldier.

As Dabney prepared to join American patriots who had vowed to sacrifice for colonial independence, other Georgians rallied to obey Lord Cornwallis's order to burn and destroy the property of “all who refuse to take the oath of allegiance to England.” At Kettle Creek, on a cold winter day in February 1779, the two sides fought a bloody battle that ended in a decisive patriot victory. All of the patriots except Dabney were free white men. Of all the heroism displayed that day in battle, perhaps none was greater than Dabney's. During the combat, a rifle ball passed through his thigh, crippling him for life and ending a brief but distinguished military adventure.

While convalescing from his combat wound, Dabney was the guest of the Giles Harris family of Wilkes County. Dabney had been taken immediately into the Harris home after being struck, and the Harrises' care probably saved his life. Dabney never forgot the kindness that the family had shown him. He attached himself to the family as a laborer, friend, and eventually, benefactor.

In 1786 the Georgia legislature emancipated Dabney by statute to prevent his former “master,” Aycock, from seizing him as a slave and reaping benefits from the young soldier's military fame. Then in 1821 the legislature passed a special act granting Dabney a farm of 45 hectares (112 acres) of choice land in Walton County. Dabney had been passed over in the Land Lottery of 1819 because blacks were not permitted to participate in this program designed to encourage settlers in Georgia. The special act of 1821, which rewarded Dabney for his heroism in the American Revolution, was bitterly opposed by many white Georgians. Others—such as Stephen Upson of Oglethorpe, who had introduced the measure in the legislature, and Governor George Gilmer—supported Dabney. The governor reminded the opposition of the soldier's “courageous service” to Georgia and chided them for acting in such an “unpatriotic” manner.

During the later years of his life, Dabney became increasingly prosperous, owning a number of fine horses and achieving a reputation as a professional sportsman. When the Harris family moved to Pike County about 1830, Dabney accompanied them. Despite his prosperity and fame, he continued to serve the Harrises and, upon the death of Giles, shared his resources with them. He financed the legal education of the eldest son and underwrote the boy's early practice.

Honored and respected by some of the most notable whites of the day in Georgia, including two governors, Dabney lived apart from the harsh life which most of his fellow blacks, slave and free, had to endure. After he died at Zebulon in 1834, his remains were laid beside those of a white man, Giles Harris. He was, in the words of historian Carter G. Woodson, “mourned by all.” He was Georgia's only genuine black hero of the American Revolutionary War.

W. B. Hartgrove called attention to Dabney in “The Negro Soldier in the American Revolution” (Journal of Negro History, April 1916, pp. 110–31). Benjamin Quarles referred to Dabney in The Negro in the American Revolution (1961). See also Mrs. Howard H. McCall's Roster of Revolutionary Soldiers in Georgia (vol. 3, 1969). For life in Georgia, see George W. Gilmer's Sketches of Early Settlers of Upper Georgia (1855) and Edward F. Sweat's “Social Status of the Free Negro in Antebellum Georgia” (Negro History Bulletin March 1958). The grant of land to Dabney is recorded in Acts of the General Assembly of Georgia (1821).

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