This past Sunday morning in downtown Portsmouth was loud. Church bells rang, birds chirped and convertible cars roared down the narrow streets, but a small crowd gathered in an empty parking lot is completely quiet. They were there to hear from reenactors like Sandi Clark Kaddy, who shared a rare historic interview with Ona Judge Staines, who escaped enslavement under George and Martha Washington.
“I left the fine house, the silk, the silver platters. The world where men in high places spoke of liberty. But not for the likes of me. I wanted to be free,” Clark Kaddy said, performing an interview Judge gave in her 80s.
“I have lived each day in knowing that I am mine. Not a Washington, not a Custis, not a piece of property, but a woman, a child of God. And when the hour comes that I draw my last breath, I shall not be bound by chains.”
As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence’s signing nears, Clark Kaddy is one of several reenactors of lesser-known Revolutionary War figures who are leading reflections on the meaning of ideas like liberty and freedom for the people enslaved by the Founding Fathers.
This is the case for Stanford Cross, who’s been portraying Prince Whipple for the past three years while leading walking tours through Portsmouth with the Black Heritage Trail. Prince Whipple was born in Ghana and was enslaved by Declaration of Independence signer William Whipple, a Brigadier General who took Whipple along to the Second Continental Congress and several campaigns during the Revolutionary War.
“I heard these stories about freedom and how freedom was something that everybody was fighting for,” Cross said as Whipple. “But I'm looking around me and my other enslaved people and wonder, where is our freedom? Why are we fighting?”
Cross says he’s scoured archives but it’s tough to find a historic record of Whipple – even to know what he looked like. There’s also no firsthand account of Whipple’s life like there is for Ona Judge.
“You get excerpts of different places. He was with William Whipple, but no real history from his perspective,” Cross said.
What does survive is the 1779 Petition to the New Hampshire Government for the Abolition of Slavery made by Whipple and 19 other enslaved men to the young New Hampshire Council and House of Representatives, arguing that they should be freed.
The Council and House of Representatives dismissed it. But more than two centuries later, in 2013, then Governor Maggie Hassan granted them their freedom.
“More than 230 years too late for their petition, we can say that freedom is truly an inherent right, not to be surrendered,” Hassan said.
Whipple was eventually freed when he married Dinah Whipple, who is best known for starting the first school for Black kids in New Hampshire. To Cross, speaking as Prince Whipple has taught him about the importance of freedom and teaching others about Black history.
“We uncover those truths to make sure that people know the story. And that's what I enjoy best about this,” he said.
The Black Heritage Trail is hosting another event to meet a Prince Whipple reenactor and a special exhibit about Black Revolutionary War soldiers at the American Independence Museum in Exeter on Sunday.
