During the American Revolution, control of Newport was crucial because it was a deep-water port and center of trade, leading British forces to occupy Newport, Middletown, and Portsmouth in December 1776 with 6,100 British and German mercenary troops. By mid 1778, the Americans planned to retake Newport through a joint effort by Major General John Sullivan’s army and allied French forces under Admiral D’Estaing against the British command of Major General Robert Pigot. On August 8, 1778, the French fleet entered Narragansett Bay as an American army of 10,000 crossed from Tiverton, prompting the British to withdraw into forts and earthworks around Newport. When the British fleet appeared on August 10, the French re-embarked to pursue it, delaying the land campaign despite Sullivan’s pleas. The Americans moved south on August 15, laid siege to Newport, and opened fire on British positions on August 19, but on August 20 the French fleet returned only to announce that it would sail to Boston the next morning. Without French support and warned by George Washington that British reinforcements were coming, Sullivan withdrew northward while masking the movement with cannon fire. On the night of August 28, he pulled his troops back from outside Newport to fortified positions on the hills of Portsmouth to cover evacuation to the mainland. The next day, in the largest Revolutionary War battle fought in New England, British and Hessian forces advanced north along East Main Road and West Main Road, driving the Americans back from outlying positions at Quaker Hill and Turkey Hill to their main line. On the American left, troops under General John Glover repulsed an attack and forced the enemy back to Quaker Hill. On the right, the Americans had fortified Lehigh Hill and placed the First Rhode Island Regiment in a redoubt before it; this regiment included slaves, free blacks, and Native Americans fighting for independence. Hessian forces launched three attacks against the American right, and although the third nearly carried Lehigh Hill, the First Rhode Island held firm until reinforcements under Major-General Nathaniel Greene and other American troops drove the attackers into retreat. At the end of the battle both sides remained in fortified positions, but with General Clinton approaching Newport with 5,000 more British troops, Sullivan evacuated his army safely back to Tiverton. The American effort to dislodge the British failed, and the British held Newport and Aquidneck Island for another year until leaving in October 1779; French forces then entered Newport and remained there until the Yorktown campaign in 1781. The First Rhode Island Regiment, later known as the Rhode Island Black Regiment, had been rebuilt in spring 1778 after the Rhode Island General Assembly authorized black enlistment in February 1778, freeing enslaved recruits upon enlistment and placing free black men and Native Americans in segregated companies under white officers; it became the first predominantly black regiment to fight in the American army, and after five years of service its black veterans returned to continued struggles for jobs, equality, and pay.
