Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World

by Maya Jasanoff

  8. For an excellent overview of the meanings of loyalism in this period, see Jerry Bannister and Liam Riordan, “Loyalism and the British Atlantic, 1660–1840,” in Jerry Bannister and Liam Riordan, eds., The Loyal Atlantic: Remaking the British Atlantic in the Revolutionary Era (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming 2011). I am grateful to Jerry Bannister for an advance copy of this essay. On loyalist ideology, see, among others, Robert M. Calhoon et al., The Loyalist Perception and Other Essays (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989), Part I; Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974); Carol Berkin, Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974); John E. Ferling, The Loyalist Mind: Joseph Galloway and the American Revolution (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977); Janice Potter-MacKinnon, The Liberty We Seek: Loyalist Ideology in Colonial New York and Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983).

  9. Bailyn, Voyagers, pp. 26, 552–53.

  10. Benjamin H. Irvin, “Tar, Feathers, and the Enemies of American Liberties, 1768–1776,” New England Quarterly 76, no. 2 (June 2003): 197–238. “Sons of Liberty” was first used in a speech by the Irish-born MP and “friend of America” Isaac Barré in a parliamentary speech opposing the Stamp Act. “Isaac Barré,” q.v., DNB.

  11. John Adams, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1865), II, pp. 363–64.

  12. The definitive treatment of Galloway is Ferling, The Loyalist Mind.

  13. Galloway’s speech is reproduced in Joseph Galloway, Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion (London, 1780), pp. 70–81. For the text of the plan, see Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–89, 4 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), pp. 49–51.

  14. Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Galloway, February 25, 1775, in Jared Sparks, ed., The Works of Benjamin Franklin (Chicago: Townsend McCoun, 1882), VIII, pp. 144–48.

  15. Franklin conveyed a similar sentiment still more vividly in a cartoon he circulated following the Stamp Act controversy, showing the British Empire as a dismembered female body, with its amputated limbs representing the colonies.

  16. Galloway, p. 81. For the debate, see John Adams’s notes: Adams, II, pp. 387–91.

  17. Adams, II, p. 390.

  18. Ferling, p. 26. Nothing appears to survive to indicate which colonies voted for and against. Galloway claimed that the debate over his plan had been intentionally “expunged” from the congressional record, consigning it to the ignorance of posterity. But the neglect may have been procedural: see Robert M. Calhoon, “ ‘I Have Deduced Your Rights’: Joseph Galloway’s Concept of His Role, 1774–1775,” in Calhoon et al., p. 89.

  19. “Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress,” The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/resolves.asp, accessed October 7, 2009.

  20. The phrase comes from Emerson’s 1837 “Concord Hymn,” though the first shots were exchanged in Lexington.

  21. On the ramifications of the war for British identities, see especially Dror Wahrman, “The English Problem of Identity in the American Revolution,” American Historical Review 106, no. 4 (October 2001): 1236–62; Stephen Conway, “From Fellow Nationals to Foreigners: British Perceptions of the Americans, circa 1739–1783,” William & Mary Quarterly 59, no. 1 (January 2002): 65–100; Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 137–45.

  22. Rick J. Ashton, “The Loyalist Congressmen of New York,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly 60, no. 1 (January–April 1976): 95–106. See also Joseph S. Tiedemann, Reluctant Revolutionaries: New York City and the Road to Independence, 1763–1776 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997).

  23. For a list of documented cases see Irvin, pp. 233–37.

  24. Catherine Skinner Robinson, Lady Robinson’s Recollections (London: Barrett, Sons and Co., Printers, 1842), pp. 19–20. (I accessed a copy of this privately printed book in LAC: Lady Catherine Robinson Fonds, Microfilm A-1985.) “Cortlandt Skinner,” q.v., DNB.

  25. For the evacuation of Boston, see David McCullough, 1776 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), pp. 97–105; Piers Mackesy, The War for America, 1775–83 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 80. A list of 926 Boston evacuees appears in Samuel Curwen, The Journal and Letters of Samuel Curwen, 1775–1783, ed. George Atkinson Ward (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1864), pp. 485–88.

  26. Quoted in Lorenzo Sabine, The American Loyalists: Or, Biographical Sketches of Adherents to the British Crown in the War of the Revolution (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1847), p. 14.

  27. [Charles Inglis], The True Interest of America, Impartially Stated, in Certain Strictures on a Pamphlet Called Common Sense (Philadelphia: James Humphreys, 1776), pp. vi, 34, 51.

  28. [Inglis], p. vi.

  29. Isaac Kramnick, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Thomas Paine, Common Sense, ed. Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin, 1986), pp. 8–9. But for more conservative publication estimates see Trish Loughran, The Republic in Print: Print Culture in the Age of U.S. Nation-Building (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 33–58.

  30. Charles Inglis, “Breif [sic] Notes or Memoirs of Public & various Other Transactions: Taken to assist my Memory, & begun Jan. 1775,” February 20, April 4, May 8, June 14, June 22, 1776, LAC: Charles Inglis and Family Fonds, Microfilm A-710. The Inglis pamphlet burned in New York was an earlier version of The True Interest called The Deceiver Unmasked; or, Loyalty and Interest United: in Answer to a Pamphlet called Common Sense (New York: Samuel Loudon, 1776).

  31. Brendan McConville, The King’s Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688–1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), pp. 306–11. On Bowling Green, see Inglis, “Breif Notes,” July 9, 1776, LAC: Charles Inglis and Family Fonds, Microfilm A-710; and Holger Hoock, Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750–1850 (London: Profile Books, 2010), pp. 49–54.

  32. Quoted in Judith L. Van Buskirk, Generous Enemies: Patriots and Loyalists in Revolutionary New York (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), p. 18.

  33. Even before the battle they had been rowing out to the fleet to seek protection: Thomas Moffat Diary, July 3, July 8, August 6, November 23–24, December 1, 1776, LOC.

  34. Mary Beth Norton, The British-Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England, 1774–1789 (London: Constable, 1974), p. 32. For the larger context of loyalism in New York, with assessments of the strength of loyalism in the colony, see Philip Ranlet, The New York Loyalists (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986).

  35. Benjamin L. Carp, “The Night the Yankees Burned Broadway: The New York City Fire of 1776,” Early American Studies 4, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 471–511.

  36. On loyalist-British relations see Van Buskirk, esp. chapter 1, and Ruma Chopra, “New Yorkers’ Vision of Reunion with the British Empire: ‘Quicken Others by our Example,’ ” Working Paper 08–02, International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, Harvard University, 2008.

  37. “Loyalist Declaration of Dependence,” November 25, 1776, NYHS.

  38. R. W. G. Vail, “The Loyalist Declaration of Dependence of November 28, 1776,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly 31, no. 2 (April 1947): 68–71. I have also relied on the annotated “Transcription and Partial List of the Signatories of the New York Loyalist Declaration of Dependence of November 28, 1776,” prepared by the staff of the New-York Historical Society.

  39. Diary of Sir Frederick Philipse Robinson, RMC, p. 5.

  40. “Minutes of the Committee for Detecting Conspiracies,” February 22, 1777, Richard B. Morris, ed., John Jay: The Making of a Revolutionary; Unpublished Papers, 1745–1780 (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 348.

  41. Bever
ley Robinson to John Jay, March 4, 1777, in Morris, ed., pp. 349–50.

  42. Aaron Nathan Coleman, “Loyalists in War, Americans in Peace: The Reintegration of the Loyalists, 1775–1800” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kentucky, 2008), pp. 41–52, 246–48.

  43. Jay to Susanna Philipse Robinson, March 21, 1777, in Morris, ed., pp. 352–54.

  44. Diary of Sir Frederick Philipse Robinson, RMC, p. 6.

  45. Charles A. Campbell, “Robinson’s House in the Hudson Highlands: The Headquarters of Washington,” Magazine of American History 4 (February 1880): 109–17.

  46. Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1995). For the longer context of Indian participation in the revolution, see Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

  47. For a treatment of the American Revolution as frontier war, see Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007).

  48. On the formative impact of Indian war in forging early American identity, see Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: Norton, 2008); Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Knopf, 1998).

  49. Brown to Cornwallis, July 16, 1780, NA: PRO 30/11/2, f. 308.

  50. Karim M. Tiro, “The Dilemmas of Alliance: The Oneida Indian Nation in the American Revolution,” in John Resch and Walter Sargent, eds., War and Society in the American Revolution: Mobilization and Home Fronts (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007), pp. 215–34.

  51. Daniel Claus to Frederick Haldimand, August 30, 1779, BL: Add. Mss. 21774, f. 58.

  52. “The first letter written by Hannah Lawrence Schieffelin to her parents after her marriage. Written from Navy Hall opposite Fort Niagara to her father John Lawrence, New York, December 4, 1780,” NYPL: Schieffelin Family Papers, Box 1.

  53. “List of Loyalists Against Whom Judgments Were Made Under the Confiscation Act,” NYPL.

  54. “Sir William Johnson,” q.v., DNB; Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground, pp. 3–45. I owe much of my understanding of the Johnsons and Brants to Kirk Davis Swinehart: see “This Wild Place: Sir William Johnson Among the Mohawks, 1715–1783” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2002) and Kirk Davis Swinehart, “Object Lessons: Indians, Objects, and Revolution,” Common-Place 2, no. 3 (April 2002), http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/cp/vol-02/no-03/lessons/, accessed December 30, 2009.

  55. William Leete Stone, Life of Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), 2 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: J. Munsell, 1865), II, p. 247.

  56. Taylor, p. 75; Charles Inglis, “Journal of Occurrences, beginning, Wednesday, October 13, 1785,” October 13, 1785, LAC: Charles Inglis and Family Fonds, Microfilm A-709.

  57. The London Magazine 46 (July 1776).

  58. Barbara Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1972), pp. 146–49.

  59. Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850 (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002), pp. 228–31.

  60. Mackesy, pp. 130–41.

  61. These measures are summarized in Claude Halstead Van Tyne, The Loyalists in the American Revolution (New York: Macmillan, 1902), appendices B and C, pp. 318–41.

  62. Claus to Haldimand, August 30, 1779, BL: Add. Mss. 21774, ff. 57–58.

  63. Charles H. Lesser, ed., The Sinews of Independence: Monthly Strength Reports of the Continental Army (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).

  64. Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of the Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).

  65. Elizabeth Lichtenstein Johnston, Recollections of a Georgia Loyalist (New York: M. F. Mansfield and Company, 1901), pp. 41, 45–46. Memorial of John Lightenstone, NA: AO 13/36B, Georgia H-M, f. 441.

  66. Johnston, pp. 48–49, 52.

  67. John Graham to William Knox, March 8, 1779, NA: AO 13/36A, Georgia H-M, ff. 69–70.

  68. Johnston, pp. 52–57. William’s student antics earned him numerous chastising letters from his father: see Lewis Johnston to William Martin Johnston, July 17, 1773, September 6, 1773, November 17, 1773, February 5, 1774, July 15, 1774, PANS: Almon Family Papers, reel 10362.

  69. Johnston gave a somewhat disorganized account of the siege: Johnston, pp. 57–63. See also Mackesy, pp. 277–78.

  70. Alexander Chesney, The Journal of Alexander Chesney, a South Carolina Loyalist in the Revolution and After, ed. E. Alfred Jones (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1921), p. 10; Mackesy, pp. 340–43.

  71. “A Memoir of the Life of William Charles Wells, M.D., Written by Himself,” in William Charles Wells, Two Essays: One upon Single Vision with Two Eyes; the Other on Dew (London: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co., 1818), p. xviii. One John Wells signed a loyalty certificate on June 24, 1780, and a John Wells Jr. on June 23, 1780. NA: CO 5/527.

  72. NA: CO 5/527. This is one of several volumes of loyalty oaths from Charleston.

  73. See for instance Cruden’s announcement of the seizure of patriot estates in the Pennsylvania Packet, January 20, 1781, p. 3.

  74. Johnston, pp. 64–66.

  75. Cashin, pp. 114–19; Jones, II, pp. 455–59; McCall, pp. 483–87. Andrew Johnston’s obituary is available online: http://www.royalprovincial.com/military/rhist/kcarrng/kcrngobit.htm, accessed October 7, 2009.

  76. Cashin observes that King’s Mountain, recognized as a turning point in the southern war, grew out of the siege of Augusta. Cashin, pp. 120–21.

  77. For a landmark interpretation of the American Revolution as a war over slavery and black liberation, see Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991).

  78. “An Account of the Life of Mr. David George.…,” reprinted in Vincent Carretta, ed., Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996), pp. 333–34.

  79. The municipal officials of Williamsburg immediately presented Dunmore with a written protest, reprinted in various colonial newspapers, e.g., Newport Mercury, May 15, 1775, p. 2.

  80. James Corbett David, “A Refugee’s Revolution: Lord Dunmore and the Floating Town, 1775–1776,” Working Paper 08–04, International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, Harvard University, 2008.

  81. Pennsylvania Evening Post, November 4, 1775, Supplement, p. 507. The same paper had earlier ridiculed Dunmore for his maritime exploits: “Lord Dunmore, we hear, keeps cruising about (wandering like Cain) and at the time of the late storm was up in James river.” (Pennsylvania Evening Post, September 19, 1775, p. 426.)

  82. Philip Morgan and Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, “Arming Slaves in the American Revolution,” in Christopher Leslie Brown and Philip Morgan, eds., Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern Age (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 188–89; Frey, pp. 49–80. Slaves themselves had on several occasions justified rebellion by citing the rumor that the king intended to free them: McConville, pp. 175–82.

  83. Proclamation, November 7, 1775, Early American Imprints, Series 1, no. 14592.

  84. Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), pp. 13–20; Cassandra Pybus, “Jefferson’s Faulty Math: The Question of Slave Defections in the American Revolution,” William & Mary Quarterly 62, no. 2 (April 2005): paras. 11–15.

  85. Archibald Campbell, Journal of an Expedition against the Rebels of Georgia, ed. and intr. C
olin Campbell (Darien, Ga.: Ashantilly Press, 1981), pp. 52–53. On receiving favorable overtures from Galphin, Campbell sent the slaves to Savannah “to be preserved for Mr. Golphin, in Case he continued to act the same friendly part toward us” (Campbell, p. 56). Galphin died the following year.

  86. “Account of the Life of David George,” in Carretta, ed., pp. 334–36; Pybus, Epic Journeys, pp. 38–40; Walter H. Brooks, The Silver Bluff Church: A History of Negro Baptist Churches in America (Washington, D.C.: R. L. Pendleton, 1910).

  87. Morgan and O’Shaughnessy, p. 191. Stiele’s deposition is reproduced online: http://www.royalprovincial.com/Military/rhist/blkpion/blklet4.htm, accessed September 11, 2010.

  88. Mackesy, pp. 409–12.

  89. Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), pp. 126–33; Pybus, Epic Journeys, pp. 49–51.

  90. Cornwallis to Sir Henry Clinton, September 16, 1781, NA: PRO 30/11/74, f. 91.

  91. Patriots interpreted Cornwallis’s expulsion of the sick as an act of biological warfare: Fenn, pp. 131–32.

  92. Cornwallis to Clinton, October 20, 1781, NA: PRO 30/11/74, ff. 106–10; Henry Dearborn Diary, October 16 and 17, 1781, NYPL; Pybus, Epic Journeys, pp. 51–53; Johann Ewald, Diary of the American War: A Hessian Journal, trans. and ed. Joseph P. Tustin (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979), pp. 334–37.

  93. Articles of surrender published in Pennsylvania Packet, October 25, 1781, p. 3.

  94. On the ballad and its afterlives, see Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (London: Penguin, 1991), pp. 379–81.

  95. Articles of Capitulation “Done in the Trenches before York,” October 19, 1781, NA: PRO 30/11/74, ff. 128–32.