Tag: Loyalists

Posted on

A Misguided Attempt to Populate Upper Canada with Loyalists after the Revolution

Following the American Revolution, and to achieve a more appropriate governing climate, the British Parliament issued the Constitutional Act of 1791 which created, out of a single province, “two separate Canadas, each having a representative government with an elected assembly of its own.” The French-speaking sector became known as Lower Canada while the English-speaking sector […]

by Marvin L. Simner
Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Sarah Swift on Searching for Samuel Babcock’s Military Service

On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews actor, research, and JAR contributor, Sarah Swift on her research on the service record of Loyalist Samuel Babcock and the surprising connections she uncovered. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and the JAR Dispatches web […]

by Editors
Posted on

Searching for Samuel’s Service: Stories of the Revolution Revealed Through One Man

The American Revolution was perhaps America’s first civil war—a dispute that forced neighbors to choose between country and King; to declare themselves Patriots or Loyalists. Modern Americans might be tempted to only focus on the Patriots’ side of events, but I have discovered that by investigating the Loyalists, an ensemble of characters with connections to […]

by Sarah Swift
Posted on

William “Bloody Bill” Cunningham and the Bloody Scout

On or about November 19, 1781, a Loyalist officer named William Cunningham and his regiment of approximately three hundred men rode toward Hayes Station, a fortified log home, or “blockhouse,” in the Little River District, surrounding western South Carolina’s Little River primarily in what is now Laurens County, South Carolina.[1] Now commanding the outpost was […]

by Andrew Waters
Posted on

Review: Resisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic

Resisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic by Brad A. Jones (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021) In Resisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic, Brad A. Jones reminds readers that “the American Revolution . . . was as much a story of loyalty as it was rebellion” (page 2). Jones’s book seeks […]

by George Kotlik
Posted on

Loyalist Slave-Owning Refugees in Postwar Jamaica

The two forces of paternalism and slavery shaped the lives of Loyalist slaveowners in the postwar British Empire. Historians rarely connect these forces in attempts to understand the relationship between refugees, colonial hosts, and British officials. In the postwar era, British officials treated Loyalists as an itinerant population to resettle to aid imperial expansion. In […]

by Patrick E. Brady
Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Todd Braisted on Benjamin Thompson’s Black Dragoons

On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews researcher, writer, and JAR contributor Todd Braisted on loyalist Benjamin Thompson—later Count Mumford—and the provincial mounted regiment that included free Blacks and men freed from slavery he organized. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and the JAR Dispatches web site. […]

by Editors
Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Kevin A. Conn on the Remarkable Career of Loyalist Soldier and Spy James Moody

On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews AP History teacher and JAR contributor Kevin A. Conn on the remarkable career of New Jersey Loyalist soldier and spy, James Moody, who carried out daring raids, was captured by Patriots and escaped, and ended up in England after the war. New episodes of Dispatches are available for […]

by Editors
Posted on

Biographical Sketches of Royal Militia Commanders in the South Carolina Mid- and Lowcountry, North Carolina, and Georgia, 1780–82

Introduction This article supplements one relating to royal militia commanders in the South Carolina Backcountry that appeared in the Journal of the American Revolution on November 30, 2020. SOUTH CAROLINA MID- AND LOWCOUNTRY Commanding Officers Elias Ball Sr. A brother-in-law of Thomas Gaillard (see below), Elias Ball Sr. was of a prominent local family owning […]

by Ian Saberton
Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Eric Wiser on the Outlaw Cornelius Hatfield

On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Eric Wiser tells the fascinating story of notorious Loyalist partisan and British spy, Cornelius Hatfield, who operated in northern New Jersey and New York, escaped from capture and eventually settled in London following the war. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening […]

by Editors
Posted on

The Battle of Shallow Ford, October 14, 1780

In September 1780, writing from Hillsborough, North Carolina, just one month after the disastrous defeat at Camden, Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates penned a disconcerted letter to Thomas Jefferson, the then governor of Virginia, broadly sketching the situation in the colonial South: “Should Wilmington in this State and Portsmo[uth] in Yours, be the posts they intend […]

by Travis Copeland
Posted on

The First Efforts to Limit the African Slave Trade Arise in the American Revolution: Part 2 of 3, The Middle and Southern Colonies

The first article of this series discussed the increasing chorus of American Patriots in New England raising their voices against the African slave trade. This article focuses on the Middle and Southern Colonies, as well as a few select thinkers from Philadelphia. Those who opposed the African slave trade in colonies ruled by royal governors […]

by Christian McBurney
Posted on

A Painter Abroad: John Singleton Copley Writes to His Wife

It may have been Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s patriotic paean that belatedly canonized a heroic horseman as a key figure of the American Revolution, but it was John Singleton Copley who provided posterity with the definitive visual representation of the famous midnight rider. Seven years before Paul Revere spread the alarm through every Middlesex village and farm—and […]

by Justin Ross Muchnick
Posted on

1774: The Long Year of Revolution

1774: The Long Year of Revolution by Mary Beth Norton (Knopf, 2020) Although previous works have tried to draw attention to “The Missing 16 Months” between the Boston Tea Party in December of 1773 and the Battle of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775, Cornell history professor Mary Beth Norton argues in her latest […]

by Alec D. Rogers
Posted on

The East Florida Gazette, 1783–1784

East Florida only had one newspaper in the colony’s entire history. The newspaper went live during the final year of the American War for Independence. The East Florida Gazette, sometimes referred to as the East Florida Gazette Extraordinary, was founded in 1783 by Dr. William Charles Wells. Dr. Wells migrated to St. Augustine, the capital […]

by George Kotlik
Posted on

Maj. Gen. John Sullivan and the Occupation of Easton, Pennsylvania, May 7–June 18, 1779

For a brief seven weeks, the Pennsylvania frontier village of Easton became the second largest community within the state. With an estimated 25,000 inhabitants, Philadelphia was the largest city in Pennsylvania (and North America); under normal circumstances, Lancaster was second with between 3,000-3,500 inhabitants followed by York with under 2,000.[1] In 1752 it was estimated that […]

by Andrew A. Zellers-Frederick
Posted on

Tapping America’s Wealth to Fund the Revolution: Two Good Ideas that Went Awry

“Unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place,” Gen. George Washington wrote from Valley Forge on December 23, 1777,[1] to Henry Laurens, the recently-appointed president of the Continental Congress, “the Army must inevitably be reduced to one or the other of these three things. Starve—dissolve—or disperse, in order to obtain subsistence.” A week later, […]

by Tom Shachtman
Posted on

Milton’s Odyssey: The Revolutionary and Post-Revolutionary Service of Georgia’s John Milton

Georgia’s fragile independence within the new American republic was shattered on December 29, 1778, when British troops attacked Savannah. Despite clear signs that the British were coming, the capital of the state on that December morning was caught by surprise. Panic set in as the redcoats approached the city. State officials and soldiers fled for […]

by R. Boyd Murphree
Posted on

Worthy of Commemmoration

We recently ran an article about monuments commemorating the American Revolution. We asked our contributors: If you could commission a monument, what would you commemorate and where would it be located? They provided a wide range of worthy candidates. Nancy K. Loane On December 19, 1777, over 400 women—and an unknown number of children—struggled into […]

by Editors
Posted on

Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763–1789

Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789  by Joseph M. Adelman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019) An explosion of new media! News editors and writers under attack for their views! Increasing media polarization along partisan lines. Readers expecting the news to be free. Newspapers teetering on the edge of profitability. A […]

by Gene Procknow
Posted on

This Week on Dispatches: Joseph Wroblewski on the Queen’s Rangers during the British Occupation of Philadelphia

On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews educator and JAR contributor Joseph Wroblewski on the operations of the Queen’s Rangers during the British occupation of Philadelphia in 1777–1778. Thousands of readers like you enjoy the articles published by the Journal of the American Revolution. Dispatches is a free podcast that puts a voice to the writing […]

by Editors