A bronze-and-granite monument honoring roughly 150 Black Marylanders who fought against the British during the Revolutionary War was unveiled Sunday on the grounds of the Maryland State House in Annapolis, standing on the very spot where a statue of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger Brooke Taney once stood. The new memorial, titled “Black Patriots, The Pursuit of Transcendent Liberty,” commemorates both free and enslaved Black soldiers who served in the fight for American independence, including one man, Cpl. Thomas Carney, whose story anchors the piece.
According to Maryland Matters, the unveiling ceremony fell on the 162nd anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Maryland. The monument sits on the southeast lawn of the State House, overlooking the historic city of Annapolis, in the exact location where the Taney statue stood from 1872 until it was removed in 2017. Taney, a Maryland-born justice, wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which declared that Black people enslaved in the country were property rather than human beings, as Maryland Matters reported — a detail that threads together the symbolism of what now occupies that ground.
Who Was Cpl. Thomas Carney
Carney, a free Black Marylander born on the Eastern Shore in either 1752 or 1754, enlisted in 1777, per the same account from Maryland Matters. The American Battlefield Trust reports that in May 1778 he joined Maryland's 5th Regiment before transferring to the 7th Maryland Regiment, fighting at the Battle of Germantown and the Siege of Ninety Six in South Carolina. He was later promoted to corporal, making him one of the few known African American soldiers to hold that rank during the Revolutionary War, according to the Trust.
Battlefields.org also notes that, according to legend, Carney carried wounded Maj. Gen. Perry Benson off the battlefield and helped save his life. Carney was discharged from military service on November 15, 1783, later received a pension in 1818, and died in 1828, the Trust reports. The monument also honors Black women who served during the war, many as cooks, nurses, seamstresses and washerwomen, per Maryland Matters.
A Governor's Own Family Tie
The ceremony carried a personal thread for Gov. Wes Moore, the first Black governor in Maryland history. His fifth-great-grandfather, Prince Ames, served in the Massachusetts militia during the war. Moore said Ames “fought for nearly six years for a country and cause that did not include him, hoping it might one day include his descendants,” according to Maryland Matters.
Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller said sculptor Branly Cadet's work would make Cpl. Thomas Carney and more than 150 “nearly erased” Black patriots impossible to forget, and that it ensures a more complete story of the nation's founding, Maryland Matters reported. Cadet himself said he owed his presence to “the brave individuals whose actions and sacrifices stood for something greater,” adding that the patriots represented greater freedom, justice, harmony and the possibility of a greater nation, per the same report.
Funding, Selection and the Sculptor's Résumé
The monument was commissioned by the State House Trust in 2023 to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, according to ReportAnnapolis, which noted a nationwide call for artists drew more than 50 proposals before Cadet was selected in 2024. The project was initially proposed by Steven X. Lee, an adjunct history professor at Stevenson University who wrote about Thomas Carney and founded the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum in Baltimore County, according to a project overview from the Maryland State Arts Council. That document also notes that Cadet's contract required approval from the Maryland Board of Public Works before work could begin.
The Board of Public Works approved $402,462 for the project in 2025, including $311,500 for Cadet and $90,962 for Campion Hruby Landscape Architects, according to the Baltimore Sun. The Sun's report at the time said officials hoped the monument would be completed in time for the nationwide July 4, 2026 celebration of the Declaration's 250th anniversary, though the unveiling ultimately took place in November. Cadet, a 60-year-old California-based artist trained in figurative and portrait sculpture, has also created a statue of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. — the first African American elected to Congress from the Northeast — in Harlem, sculpted civil rights activist and teacher Octavius V. Catto in Philadelphia, worked on a memorial to lynching victims in Montgomery, Alabama, and created statues honoring Sandy Koufax and Jackie Robinson for the Los Angeles and Brooklyn Dodgers, respectively.
A Contested First, and a Century-Long Gap
Maryland House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk said the monument is the first and only monument to Black Revolutionary War soldiers at any state house in the nation, according to Maryland Matters. Senate President Bill Ferguson, meanwhile, said it is the first large-scale memorial added to the State House grounds in a century, per the same report. The Statehouse grounds already include a reconstructed memorial to Justice Thurgood Marshall in Lawyers Mall, bronze statues of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass in the Old House Chamber, and a portrait of Marshall outside the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee room and offices.
Maryland's own history with slavery looms over the new monument's placement. The state's constitution was amended in 1851 to prohibit passage of laws ending enslavement, and the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to Maryland because the state had not joined the Southern states in rebellion, according to Maryland Matters. More broadly, more than 5,000 Black soldiers served across the 13 colonies during the Revolutionary War, per the same report — a figure echoed by the American Battlefield Trust, which puts the number of African American soldiers and sailors, both free and enslaved, who served the Revolutionary cause at roughly 5,000. The Museum of the American Revolution has estimated between 5,000 and 8,000 people of African descent served with the Continental Army, while roughly 15,000 to 20,000 supported the British, Hessians and Loyalists.
