To “unhinge or dissolve … the whole system or machine of resistance, or in other terms, Congress Government,” Lee wrote, the British should look for aid from Loyalists. “If the Province of Maryland or the greater part of it is reduced or submits, and the People of Virginia are prevented or intimidated from marching aid to the Pensylvania Army, the whole machine is dissolved and a period put to the War.”12 Lee’s plan centered on Howe’s taking a major force into Maryland via Chesapeake Bay, where he would find pro-Loyalist residents. Howe’s subsequent maneuvers seem to have been at least partially based on Lee’s advice.
In New Jersey, Washington was racing time as well as Cornwallis, for the enlistments of many Continentals would soon expire. With the addition of Greene’s men, Washington had a force of about three thousand troops. But they were “much broken and dispirited men.”13 A Patriot saw the soldiers who had fled from Fort Lee entering Hackensack: “The night was dark, cold and rainy, but I had a fair view of Greene’s troops from the light of the windows as they passed on our side of the street. They marched two abreast, looked ragged, some without a shoe to their feet and most of them wrapped in their blankets.”14
Deciding to march without Lee’s men, Washington bade Zabriskie farewell. According to family tradition, Zabriskie asked the generalwhere he was heading. And, the story goes, Washington leaned down from his saddle and whispered, “Can you keep a secret?” Zabriskie assured him that he could, and Washington said, “I can, too.”15
The story underlined the Patriots’ distrust of New Jersey people. “A large part of the Jerseys,” Washington bitterly observed, “have given every proof of disaffection that a people can do.”16 As Washington led his troops out of Hackensack and headed toward Newark, the eyes of countless Tories watched. Some of them belonged to members of the big Zabriskie family.
As soon as Washington’s troops left Hackensack, young men from local homes and outlying areas began to appear around the village green. They were Loyalists who had secretly enlisted in the Fourth Battalion of New Jersey Volunteers, the state’s first Loyalist regiment, which had been raised soon after the British landed on Staten Island.17 The regiment was one of New Jersey’s three major Loyalist units.
Now the men of the Fourth Battalion emerged to receive their weapons and the green uniforms that would give them—and many armed Loyalists to come—the nickname Greencoats. Lt. Col. Abraham Van Buskirk, a former lukewarm Patriot who commanded the Fourth Battalion, appeared with his officers. The overwhelming majority of enlisted men were of Scotch-Irish stock; the officers were all scions of old Dutch families, known as the Tory Dutch.18
The members of the battalion could parade around in their new uniforms without fear because Hackensack had become, literally overnight, a Tory village. Worrisome Patriots, especially farmers, tried to earn a living while wondering where and when Tory raiders would strike. Sometimes men of the Fourth Battalion staged small-scale raids, picking up some cattle here, a few horses there. Or there might be a major foraging expedition, when several hundred British troops and members of the Fourth Battalion would put Patriots in jail and then plunder their homes and farms.
Reporting on one of those raids, a Patriot militia officer wrote, “I keep out large patrolling parties every night in that neighborhood for the protection of the inhabitants, but the enemy have so good intelligence of our thoughts and every motion that it is beyond my powerto give protection.”19 Patriots retaliated by ambushing small foraging parties. “Not a stick of wood, a spear of grass, or a kernel of corn, could the troops in New Jersey procure without fighting for it,” a Tory wrote. “… Every foraging party was attacked in some way or another.” Each side was losing men in sudden skimishes on this strange, unexpected battlefield called the Neutral Ground.20
As Washington retreated into New Jersey, taking the war westward, the allegiance of Loyalists also began to turn. In parts of New Jersey, as Washington would learn, Tories were in the majority and in control. Back in New York there were so many Loyalists in some areas that they pinned down Patriot militiamen who might otherwise be aiding Washington in New Jersey. One Westchester unit, the King’s American Regiment, expanded its horizon by going to sea and becoming privateers. They made Lloyd’s Neck, the Loyalist refugee community on Long Island, their home port.21
Washington assumed that all his movements were being reported to the British by Loyalist spies. He knew that Loyalists stole powder from magazines and drove horses and cattle through the American lines to be sold to the British. From presses operated by the British Army came counterfeit versions of “Continentals,” the paper money that helped to finance the Revolution. British operatives passed great wads of the bogus bills to Loyalists, who circulated them in a campaign that depreciated the value of the money.22 And the phrase “not worth a Continental” entered the American language.
In his writings Washington once alluded to “half tories,” saying they might be useful as spies, for, in his low view of Tories, he believed that they were amoral and would just as well work for the Americans as for the British. That idea of half loyalty permeated the areas where the Continental Army had fought and retreated, fought and retreated, passing through defeats from New York into New Jersey.23 Each defeat produced more Loyalists not only in the area of the defeat but in the territory beyond. New Jersey’s government was under Patriot control, but the state’s population included thousands of Tories.
In Washington’s army fleeing across New Jersey was Tom Paine, whose Common Sense had stirred the Rebels and thrust them towardindependence. Now, in a dark December of defeats, in “times that try men’s souls,” when the “summer soldier and the sunshine patriot … shrink from the service of their country,” he looked around and began to envision what he soon would write in The Crisis. He saw an infestation of Tories, and he realized that the time had come when Rebels and Tories would repeatedly fight each other, no matter whether the British Army was present.
There were truly and clearly two Americas, one governed by the British military operating from New York and the other a group of colonies in rebellion but not quite governed. “The Declaration of Independence,” wrote Thomas Jones, the Loyalist historian, “… was the first act that put an end to the courts of law, to the laws of the land, and to the administration of justice under the British crown… . The revolt was now complete… . A usurped kind of Government took place; a medley of military law, convention ordinances, Congress recommendations and committee resolutions.”24 Every American now had a choice: to remain a subject of King George III and thus a traitor to a new regime called the United States of America or to support the rebellion and become a traitor to the Crown.
Loyalists by the thousands signed loyalty oaths administered by Tryon, who traveled to territory occupied by British troops. Few people refused to swear allegiance to the Crown.25 And those who chose the king had another way to show their choice; in taverns and meeting halls throughout New York City, Tryon’s recruiters signed up wealthy and well-connected young men for commissions in Loyalist regiments. For enlistments in the ranks there were many—among them farmhands, men without jobs, and ambitious sons turning away from their Rebel kin. The Loyalist recruits were issued weapons and uniforms, usually designed by their regimental commanders.
Eventually New York would send more men into Loyalist regiments than into the Continental Army.26 Tory Dutch farmers in New Jersey found a lucrative market in the British garrison in New York. The area closest to Manhattan, around Leonia and Englewood, contained Dutch farms whose farmers who could speak English, and this enclave became known as the English Neighborhood, a place where no Patriot could openly live. A New Jersey merchant fleet carried produce and goods to Tory New York. Vessels ranged from schooners to Dutch pettiaugers, small ships without keels; they could sail in shallows but had leeboards that could be lowered when a keel was needed.27
James Rivington, the Tory publisher driven out of America by Rebels who smashed his press, had returned from England to
a New York City much more to his liking. He began publishing Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, which produced such recruiting advertisements as this one:
ALL ASPIRING HEROES
have now an opportunity of distinguishing themselves by joining
THE QUEEN’S RANGERS HUZZARS,
Commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe*
Any spirited young man will receive every encouragement, be immediately mounted on an elegant horse, and furnished with clothing, and accoutrement, &c to the amount of forty guineas, by applying to Cornet Spencer, at his quarters No. 133 Water Street, or his rendezvous, Hewett’s Tavern, near the Coffee-house… .
Whoever brings a recruit shall instantly receive two guineas.
Vivant Rex et Regina28
As soon as the British Army took root on Long Island, scores of young Connecticut men sailed across the Sound to enlist. Many described themselves as “Churchmen,” Anglicans who equated service for the king with their religious beliefs. The names of men from Fair-field, Stratford, Stamford, Norwalk, New Haven, Newtown, Waterbury, Middletown, and Redding appeared on the musters of the Queen’s Rangers, the King’s American Regiment, and the Prince of Wales’s American Volunteers.29 By July 1777 the King’s American Regiment alone had enlisted twenty-six sergeants, nine drummers and fifers, and 415 rank and file, the military label for noncommissioned troops.30
The Prince of Wales’ American Volunteers brigade was the creation of Montfort Browne, a prisoner of war. Governor General of His Majesty’s Bahamas, Browne had been captured in March 1776 on the island of New Province when Cmdr. Esek Hopkins, commander in chief of the fledgling Continental Navy, in its first amphibious operation, landed 280 marines from whaleboats.
Among the island residents were several Loyalists, described by Browne as “licentious, poor, haughty and insolent.”31 No one offered resistance when the Continental sailors cleared the island’s fort of military stores—including eighty-eighty cannons and a ton of gun-powder—and took Browne prisoner.
Browne was placed under house arrest in Middletown, Connecticut, which was considered far enough inland to keep the governor from mischief. But Browne managed to raise a Tory regiment by smuggling out invitations to friends and friends of friends, much as he might have arranged a dinner party on New Province. He dispatched two young Connecticut Loyalists, who easily passed through the porous Continental lines, to New York City, where they conferred with General Howe. He arranged the exchange of Browne for Continental Army general William Alexander (who claimed the disputed title of Lord Stirling despite his Patriot fervor). He had been captured during the Battle of Brooklyn.32
Browne set up his headquarters in Flushing, Long Island, and began issuing warrants to recruiters, claiming that he had been commissioned by “His Majesty’s Commissioners for Restoring Peace and Tranquility to the Deluded Subjects in America.”33 In a letter to Muster Master General Winslow, Browne said that he had “about eighty or ninety men” who had agreed to serve without pay. Soon, he said, he would get many more, thanks to a nautical recruiter who was sailing along the Connecticut coast in an armed sloop and picking up Browne’s enlistees.34
In New Jersey, Cortlandt Skinner, a member of one of the state’s oldest and wealthiest families, raised six battalions of New Jersey Volunteers. Patriots, unaware that Skimmer had long spied for the British,35 had offered him command of Rebel forces in New Jersey. He chose instead to accept a brigadier general commission from General Howe.36 Skinner originally envisioned a force of three thousand men. But four battalions of four hundred men each were raised, and they fought in battles from New Jersey to Virginia.37 A merchant and shipowner who had been a member of New Jersey’s Provincial Congress was commissioned a major and recruited two hundred men for one of the battalions.38
Officers and men were outfitted in green uniforms—a frequent color selection for Loyalist units—and became known as Skinner’s Greens.39 Skinner, besides commanding the Volunteers, would continue to spy as British troops marched across New Jersey in pursuit of Washington. He once wrote as his own testimonial that “there was scarcely any Material Information of the Encampment of the Rebel Army which I did not obtain the first Intelligence of.”40
Loyalists in Bergen County, adjacent to Staten Island, provided the British in New York City not only with food but also with spies and recruits, many of whom Tryon secretly signed up while he was aboard the Duchess of Gordon. Those shipboard enlistees were told to return home and tell no one about their enlistments until British troops arrived in New Jersey. This was an unprecedented move, going beyond usual British military doctrine by setting up advance Loyalist units in places that the British Army had yet to invade.41
Volunteers signing up for Loyalist regiments were given their equipment and were paid in gold-backed British money, not in theever-declining currency printed by the Continental Congress. Some Loyalist recruiters promised a prospective soldier a five-guinea signing bonus, rather than the advertised forty guineas, but added the lure of two hundred acres of land, with an extra one hundred acres for his wife and fifty acres for each child. A Patriot enlisting in a Rebel militia typically had to provide his own musket and bayonet, a sword or tomahawk, cartridge box and belt, twenty-three rounds of cartridges, twelve flints, a knapsack, a pound of gunpowder, and three pounds of bullets in reserve. All this was an expensive outlay for a poor farmer.42 Stephen De Lancey, of the powerful Tory clan, was commissioned a lieutenant colonel of the Volunteers’ 1st Battalion. His commissioning had been delayed by a brief encounter with Patriots. On the evening of June 4, 1776, he and several others had been celebrating King George’s birthday at a Tory tavern in Albany, New York. The Committee of Correspondence denounced the birthday party as an “indecent meeting” and ordered De Lancey and five others deported to Connecticut, a frequent venue for the safekeeping of Tories, whose crimes ranged from not accepting Continental currency to taking up arms against the Revolution. Patriots usually charged them for their rooms and meals.43 When De Lancey was released in December, he went to New York and received his commission.44
Each battalion had, in addition to its complement of commissioned officers, a surgeon and a chaplain, all drawn from New York and New Jersey. The most distinguished of the chaplains was the Reverend Charles Inglis, assistant minister at Trinity Church, New York City’s most esteemed Anglican congregation. Inglis was a passionate Loyalist who, after the occupation of the city, became an eloquent propagandist.45 Responding to Tom Paine’s Common Sense, for example, Inglis wrote, “The Americans are properly Britons. They have the manners, habits, and ideas of Britons… . Limited monarchy is the form of government … which is best adapted to the genius and temper of Britons; although here and there among us a crack-brained zealot for democracy or absolute monarchy, may be sometimes found.”46
• • •
Loyalists who enlisted or were commissioned in areas under Patriot control had to make their way to safe grounds in New York City or Long Island. These traveling new soldiers of the “Provincial Corps,” as the British Army collectively called the Loyalist units, were treated by Patriots sometimes as spies and sometimes as armed foes. One of the largest packs of recruited Loyalists, numbering about fifty, was assembled in northern New York’s Ulster County. At Wallkill, about eighty-five miles north of New York City, militiamen spotted them, and in a brief firefight three Patriots were wounded and the Loyalists got away.
An alarm spread through the countryside. The recruits, supported by local Loyalists, hid out in the woods or in the cellars or barns of sympathizers by day and slogged through creeks and along old trails by night. They had not gone far before a militia patrol found them and captured about thirty. Eleven were accused of “levying war against the United States of America” and five of “aiding and assisting [and] giving Comfort” to the enemy. They were brought before a court-martial ordered by Gen. George Clinton, a former member of the Continental Congress and soon to become governor of New York.
The court
-martial, after listening to Patriots who told of encounters with the armed Tories, resolved that “an immediate Example was necessary and requisite to deter intestine Enemys from continuing Treasonable Practices against the State.” Fourteen men “were adjudged to suffer the Pains and Penalties of Death by being hanged by the neck until they are dead.” But after hearing petitions and statements the provisional state government (the Convention of the Representatives of the State of New York) ruled that only the leader and his assistant were to be executed. The others received various sentences, ranging from immediate parole to confinement until the end of the war.47
One of the black veterans brought to New York by Dunmore was a former slave known as Titus. He had run away from his Quaker master in Colt’s Neck, New Jersey, and managed to reach Virginia, where he enlisted in Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment. Under the nomde guerre “Colonel Tye,” Titus became a leader of guerrilla warriors who fought on the Neutral Ground.48
When the New York Provincial Congress in October 1775 described widespread Tory recruiting as a “conspiracy from Haverstraw [New York] to Hackensack [New Jersey],” the phrase roughly encompassed the Neutral Ground. It stretched along both banks of the Hudson River from above the New York—New Jersey border south to Sandy Hook. In Westchester County, the term referred to the land between the British-held Bronx and American-held Peekskill. The label was ironic, for on this so-called Neutral Ground both sides would fight, not to gain territory but to forage for food and firewood, to demand loyalty oaths, to kill each other in skirmishes—and to spy.49
Tories Page 22