Freedom Under Another Flag

 Writing The South Spy was an engrossing experience. Sending my protagonist, Jeremiah Creed, into an entirely new theater of war, using more sophisticated intelligence and tradecraft, was a big part of it. In many ways, the American Revolution was won when the British strategy in the South failed. I also introduced some interesting fictional characters, although many represent real people or “types.” But of course, weaving in the historical figures is the most challenging and rewarding part, especially when you come across someone completely different.

Writing of the South also meant I had to deal with the experience of enslaved Africans, as they made up the larger part of that state’s population. One of those was John Kizell, whose life experience fascinated me to the point where I couldn’t resist inserting him into this tale of action and intrigue.

Son of Africa

 The young African we know as John Kizell was born around 1760 among the Sherbro people on Sherbro Island in what is now Sierra Leone. His early life was shaped by the rhythms of coastal West African communities. Around age 13, his father—a local chief—sent him to visit an uncle who was also a chief in a nearby village. That night, the village was attacked. A fight followed in which the uncle and most of his people were killed. Survivors who did not escape were taken prisoner. Kizell was among them. 

Village in Sierra Leone

His father offered slaves and land to ransom him. The captors refused and said they would rather kill the boy than release him. They marched him to the Gallinas River region (southeastern Sierra Leone, a major slaving area) and sold him to a European dealer. This pattern—African polities raiding rivals or using accusations (sometimes witchcraft) as a pretext, then selling captives at the coast—was the standard way people from the Sherbro/Gallinas hinterland entered the Atlantic trade. Europeans rarely captured people themselves that far inland; they bought from African intermediaries. 

Middle Passage to Market

 The British ship Blossom, Captain William Briggs left the Cape Mount/Gallinas area with 336 captives and arrived in Charleston on 24 May 1773 with 274 still alive—about one in five dead, worse than the typical rate for that route at the time. The survivors were quarantined on Sullivan’s Island, then consigned to the Charleston firm of Robert, John and James Smith. The firm advertised their sale the next day. Lowther presents this as the most likely vessel but notes it is not proven beyond doubt. 

The Middle Passage Proved Harsh and Deadly

Sold into Slavery

In Charleston, Kizell was sold to Esther Kysell (also spelled Kizell), a Swiss-German widow who operated a tavern. There, amid the bustling streets and waterfront, he performed domestic and labor tasks. Through observation, interaction with other enslaved Africans and free Blacks, and possibly informal instruction, he became literate in English—a rare and valuable skill that would serve him later. Charleston in the 1770s was tense, divided by growing colonial resistance to British rule. For the enslaved, the rhetoric of liberty from Patriot leaders rang hollow while they remained in bondage. 

Charleston Harbor and Slave Market

Revolutionary Change

As with many enslaved Africans, the American Revolution transformed Kizell’s life. In 1779, British General Henry Clinton issued the Philipsburg Proclamation, promising freedom to enslaved people owned by rebels who fled to British lines. During the 1780 Siege of Charleston, as British forces under Clinton surrounded and bombarded the city, Kizell seized the opportunity—escaping his owner and joining the British side. Assigned to support roles common for Black recruits—likely with pioneer or labor units—he contributed to the British effort that led to the city’s surrender on May 12, 1780, one of the worst American defeats of the war and a key event in The South Spy. 

British Siege of Charleston 1780

Chilling Great North Reception

His path to freedom was not straightforward. At one point, American forces captured him, but he escaped and made his way back to British-controlled areas. By the war’s end, he had adopted the surname Kizell. As the British evacuated, thousands of Black Loyalists—enslaved people who had sought liberty with the Crown—were recorded in the “Book of Negroes.” Kizell was among those who boarded ships from New York in 1783 bound for Nova Scotia, Canada, along with approximately 3,000 other Black Loyalists. There, he received a certificate of freedom. He married a woman named Phyllis and started a family, though life in the harsh northern climate proved difficult. Promised land grants were often delayed or denied, and white settlers commonly discriminated against them. 

Nova Scotia Period: An Interlude

Homeward Bound

In 1792, Kizell joined roughly 1,200 Black Loyalists on a voyage to Sierra Leone, sponsored by the Sierra Leone Company. They sought to establish a settlement for free Blacks in Freetown. Among the roughly 50 native-born Africans in the group, Kizell returned to his birthland after nearly two decades. The settlers faced immediate hardships. Broken promises from the company, poor soil, disease, and tensions with local populations. Kizell settled near his ancestral Sherbro territory and worked as a farmer, merchant, and community leader. 

Route from Halifax to Sierra Leone

Business, Political, and Spiritual Leader 

His literacy and firsthand knowledge of the slave trade made him a powerful voice. He documented the devastating effects of ongoing slave raiding on African societies and became a Baptist preacher and advocate for abolition. He served as a peacemaker between settler communities and indigenous groups. In 1794, unrest among the Nova Scotian settlers led to arrests. Kizell testified in the related trial in England, using the opportunity to advance his family’s prospects. Later, he joined discussions about resettling free Black Americans in Africa and contributed to early efforts connected to the founding of Liberia. 

Kizell served as a Black Volunteer with the British

Complex Choices

John Kizell’s life embodied the complex choices thousands of enslaved Africans faced during the American Revolution. While Patriot ideals promised liberty to some, many Black men and women calculated (correctly) that the British offered a more immediate path to freedom. An estimated 20,000 to 100,000 enslaved people sought refuge with British forces across the colonies. For Kizell, this decision led from the Carolina rice fields and tavern service to military service, hardship in Nova Scotia, and an eventual return to Sierra Leone as a respected leader fighting the very trade that had enslaved him. 

Legacy of Liberty

John Kizell’s story highlights the broader experiences of Black Loyalists—resilience amid broken promises, the pursuit of dignity despite all obstacles, and the creation of new communities in Africa. Kizell died in the 1830s, leaving a legacy as a survivor, veteran, missionary, and abolitionist whose journey circled the Atlantic. In the Lowcountry’s marshes and on Sierra Leone’s shores, his footsteps trace a remarkable arc of survival and agency during one of history’s great upheavals.

Patriot of Unambiguous Morality

When I was writing the latest Yankee Doodle Spies novel, The South Spy, I wondered how to handle this edition’s subject. To me, John Laurens is such a heroic figure that I was tempted to make him a major historical character. I decided against it because someone so substantive would require more than I could present in a work like this. Others, such as the legendary Francis Marion, also fell into this category. Face it, the South has plenty of colorful people in its history. So here is my humble attempt to give this impressive First Patriot his due.

John Laurens

A Charleston Heir Answers the Call  

Born October 28, 1754, into one of South Carolina’s wealthiest planter families, John Laurens grew up amid rice fields and the Atlantic slave trade that enriched his father, fellow patriot and future President of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens. His family traced its roots to French Protestant (Huguenot) refugees who fled religious persecution in France. 

His great-grandfather, André (or Andre) Laurens, left France in the late 17th century (around the time of, or just before, the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes), settled first in New York, and later moved to Charleston, South Carolina. The family intermarried with other Huguenot refugees (such as the Grassets), and by the time of John’s father, Henry Laurens, they were well established in South Carolina society. 

Educated in Geneva and London, the younger Laurens embraced Enlightenment ideals of liberty even as revolution erupted at home. In 1776, John married Martha Manning in London while she was pregnant with their daughter, Frances. He left England in December 1776 to return to America, never to see his wife again or to meet his daughter. 

Henry Laurens

In August 1777, Laurens joined George Washington’s staff as an unpaid volunteer aide-de-camp, where he became close friends with fellow- intellect, Alexander Hamilton. In the following year of campaigning, young Laurens earned a reputation for reckless courage at Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth.

A Radical Vision for Southern Arms  

When the British turned their full weight southward, Laurens returned to defend his native state. Before leaving Philadelphia, he proposed a bold solution to the Continental Army’s manpower crisis: raise battalions of enslaved men, promise them freedom for faithful service, and strike at both the enemy and slavery. 

Rhode Island Black Continental Infantry

In response to this “Black Battalion Proposal,” Congress passed a resolution in March 1779 that encouraged South Carolina and Georgia to raise 3,000 enslaved men, promising freedom in exchange for service. Congress appointed Laurens lieutenant colonel to lead the effort, but the South Carolina legislature rejected the proposal in 1779 and again at Jacksonborough in early 1782. 

Undeterred, Laurens took to the battlefield—suffering a wound at Coosawhatchie and leading infantry in the bloodbath at Savannah—while continuing to demand freedom for Black soldiers.

Charleston Falls, a Patriot Captured  

By spring 1780, the conflict in the South had reached a crisis. British troops under Sir Henry Clinton trapped the American garrison during the Siege of Charleston. Laurens fought stubbornly alongside the defenders until the city surrendered on May 12, 1780. The British Southern Strategy was at its apogee. Captured in the war's largest American defeat, he was paroled to Pennsylvania. Rather than breaking his spirit, the fall of his hometown hardened his resolve. Upon his official exchange as a prisoner in November 1780, he immediately sought new ways to strike back. He soon found one.

Charleston Under Siege

Diplomat Across the Atlantic  

Recognizing his intellect and fiery passion, Congress appointed the 26-year-old officer as special minister to France in December 1780. Arriving in Paris in March 1781, Laurens bypassed tedious court etiquette to appeal directly to King Louis XVI and French ministers such as Comte de Vergennes. His relentless diplomacy secured vital loans, military hardware, and a critical French naval commitment. These resources made possible the strategic trap at Yorktown later that year. Mission accomplished, Laurens immediately set sail back across the Atlantic, determined not to miss the coming showdown.

French Minister Comte de Vergennes

Glory at Yorktown, Then South Again  

At the Siege of Yorktown in October 1781, Laurens charged alongside Hamilton in the dramatic nighttime bayonet assault on Redoubt Number 10. After the victory, Washington appointed Laurens to negotiate the British surrender terms—a poetic moment of justice for an officer who had endured the indignity of capture at Charleston. Yet even as the northern theater was secured, Laurens refused to rest. He raced back to South Carolina to join General Nathanael Greene, taking command of light infantry units and directing crucial intelligence operations.

Storming Redoubt Number 10

Eyes and Ears in the Lowcountry  

Throughout late 1781 and early 1782, Laurens ran a clandestine spy network in British-occupied Charleston, funneling reports on enemy troop movements, supply raids, and evacuation preparations to Greene’s headquarters. He balanced these dangerous covert duties with a final, desperate attempt to persuade the South Carolina legislature at Jacksonborough to approve his Black regiments—only to be rejected again. Though thwarted in this attempt to secure justice, Laurens remained a formidable field commander in the Lowcountry’s grinding guerrilla war.

Laurens's Scouts in South Carolina

Final Charge on the Combahee  

On August 27, 1782, while bedridden with a severe fever, Laurens learned that a British foraging force had landed along the Combahee River. Rising from his sickbed, he rode hard to join Brigadier General Mordecai Gist and volunteered to lead a small detachment to block the enemy's retreat at Tar Bluff. Marching into a British ambush, Laurens refused to retreat or wait for support. He ordered a charge and was mortally wounded, making him one of the last high-ranking casualties of the Revolutionary War. 

Mordecai Gist

Legacy of Unambiguous Morality

Though cut down before he could see the nation he fought to build reach full dawn, John Laurens left an enduring legacy as one of the American Revolution’s most fearless and uncompromising visionaries. His relentless pursuit of liberty—not just from British rule but from the bonds of human slavery—marked him as a patriot whose moral conviction matched his legendary courage. General George Washington said it best when he later lamented that Laurens’s only fault was "an intrepidity bordering on rashness," driven by the purest motives of duty and freedom.

Hero's Grave Site