James Mitchell Varnum (17 December 1748 – 9 January 1789) was a Brigadier-General in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War with an active but brief life. He fought alongside Rhode Island units in the revolution and was a member of the Continental Congress from Rhode Island from 1780-1781 and 1787, dying at the age of 49 in 1789.
Biography[]
James Mitchell Varnum was born on 17 December 1748 in the town of Dracut, Massachusetts, and he graduated from Brown University with honors in 1769. Varnum stayed in Rhode Island after attending Brown, and he served in the Kentish Guards alongside Nathanael Greene; the two men would rise in the ranks of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Varnum saw action at the Siege of Boston at the start of war before fighting in New York and New Jersey, and he was loyal to Charles Lee during the war, criticizing Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben's appointment as Inspector-General. However, he was one of the founders of the all-black 1st Rhode Island Regiment, which had once been a line infantry regiment consisting only of whites. Varnum served as a member of the Continental Congress after the war, and from 1786 to 1789 Varnum also served as President of the Society of Cincinnati, a veterans' organization from the war. He died in 1789 in Marietta, Ohio of tuberculosis, having been one of the pioneers to the Northwest Territory.