Austin Dabney
The Substitute
Never abandon a friend—either yours or your father’s. When disaster strikes, you won’t have to ask your brother for assistance. It’s better to go to a neighbor than to a brother who lives far away.
PROVERBS 27:10, NLT
The great blemish on our country in the Revolutionary War era was that so many Americans, primarily in the South, continued to embrace the institution of slavery, which denied blacks the right to govern their own lives. Though the Declaration of Independence declared that all men were created equal and had equal claim to their inherent rights, our country denied a large portion of the population the free exercise of those rights.
But even in the most ardent of slave states, there were signs of hope during the period of the Revolution. One such sign can be found today in a cemetery in Pike County, Georgia. A tombstone there reads:
Austin Dabney
Georgia Militia
Freed Slave
Devoted Friend to Harris Family
The marker is a summary of the remarkable story of the Georgian slave Austin Dabney and his personal journey from slavery to freedom.
Austin Dabney was born a slave, raised a slave, and even fought for the Patriots as a slave. His master, Richard Aycock, a resident of Wilkes County, Georgia, had no interest in fighting for the Patriots himself, so he sent a willing Dabney to the Georgia militia as his substitute.
Dabney saw action in one of Georgia’s bloodiest Revolutionary War engagements, the Battle of Kettle Creek, and may have been the only black man who served among the Patriots in that battle. During the battle, he suffered a severe injury to his thigh—an injury that could have been life threatening but turned out to be a life-changing opportunity. One of his fellow soldiers, Giles Harris, took him to a nearby home to treat his wound. Harris regarded this injured man not as a slave, not as an inferior being, but as a brother in arms. Over time, Harris and Dabney formed a friendship that defied racial prejudices and transcended the racial boundaries of colonial Georgia.
Not much is known about Dabney’s life over the next seven years. He remained a slave but had clearly earned the respect and admiration of Harris and his fellow soldiers. On August 14, 1786, the Georgia legislature saw fit not only to authorize the payment of up to seventy pounds for Dabney’s emancipation but also to grant him fifty acres of land. This made Dabney the only black man in the state of Georgia to receive a land grant for his military service. Of Dabney, the legislature wrote,
During the revolution, instead of advantaging himself of the times to withdraw himself from the American lines and enter with the majority of his color and fellow slaves in the service of his Britannic majesty and his officers and vassals, [Dabney] did voluntarily enroll himself in some one of the Corps under the command of Colonel Elijah Clarke, and in several actions and engagements behaved against the common enemy with a bravery and fortitude which would have honored a freeman, and in one of which engagements he was severely wounded, and rendered incapable of hard servitude; and policy as well as gratitude demand a return for such services and behavior from the Commonwealth.
George Gilmer, an early Georgia governor and historian, said of Dabney, “No soldier under [Clarke] was braver, or did better service during the revolutionary struggle.”
The legislature authorized Colonel Clarke, along with two others, to negotiate the emancipation price with Aycock. Clarke was eager to vouch for Dabney’s service to the cause, and Dabney’s freedom was secured. Starting in 1789, the federal government also awarded Dabney a military pension of sixty dollars a year, which rose to ninety-six dollars a year in 1816.
With his land secured and a strong work ethic, Dabney made a decent living for himself. He never forgot the kindness Giles Harris had showed him, and he treated Harris and his family as if they were his own. The feeling was clearly mutual, as Giles named his son William Dabney Harris.
As William Harris reached maturity, he dreamed of going to college, but the Harris family, for reasons unknown, did not provide the funds for him to continue his schooling. Dabney stepped in and paid for William’s tuition at Franklin College, which later became the University of Georgia. Dabney’s support did not end there. He assisted William financially throughout his time in college and then while William was studying to become a lawyer under attorney Stephen Upson in Lexington, Georgia.
The love and care bestowed on a white family from a former slave made a lasting impression on Upson—one that compelled him to take an unpopular position on behalf of Dabney in later years, when Upson served as a state legislator in Georgia. In the early 1800s, Georgia conducted a series of land lotteries that gave residents the opportunity to buy large parcels of land in the state’s interior at dirt-cheap prices. The chances for getting this opportunity rose significantly for those who had served in the military. As a black man, Dabney was not permitted to participate in any of the lotteries, despite the fact that he was a Patriot veteran. Upson thought the state’s position was unjust, and he sponsored a resolution that, rather than offering Dabney an opportunity to purchase land, actually granted him an additional 112 acres of land for his service to the state.
Dabney would stay close to the Harris family, literally, for the rest of his life. He followed them to three different counties before finally settling in Pike County, where he passed away in 1830. Dabney left all his material goods to the Harris family, who buried him in their family plot in Pike County.
Perhaps the clearest indication that the Harris family’s regard for Dabney was as strong as Dabney’s for them came five years later, when William Harris named his newborn son Austin Dabney Harris. And just before William passed away, as the story goes, his last request was that his body be laid in death next to the man he regarded as his best friend in life: Austin Dabney.