George: Jury and Executioner

The conflict that rent the United States 1861-65 was not America’s first civil war—the American Revolution was. The fight for independence pitted neighbor against neighbor and family member against family member, exemplified by the split between Founding Father Benjamin Franklin and Tory son William, the final royal governor of New Jersey. Violence arising from these and countless other personal breaks rendered expanses of the former colonies “danger land,” as one historian has called the impact of the internecine warfare that raged between loyalists and patriots.

In one instance, Continental Army commander George Washington, seeking to control a fractious military and political situation in the aftermath of the surrender at Yorktown, attempted to answer an act of loyalist outlawry. Washington undertook a tenuously logical reprisal that in satisfying rebel militia anger stood to besmirch his own reputation and vastly complicate reunification of former colonists at odds over the rebellion. That neither eventuality occurred testifies to the practicality of which Washington was capable, even in very personal circumstances.

The phrase “danger land” certainly defined northern New Jersey in 1782. Following patriot victories at Trenton and at Princeton in 1776-77, militia in New Jersey had driven hundreds of loyalists, including the younger Franklin, to flee into British-held New York. Once Refugees—as loyalists called themselves—had Crown protection, some returned to avenge themselves on those who had dispossessed them. In 1780, upon forming a Board of Associated Loyalists headed by William Franklin, King George III created a Refugee army under the Board’s control.

LOYALISTS LYNCHED JOHN HUDDY, LEAVING HIS CORPSE TO DANGLE AND DECORATING IT WITH PLACARDS; ONE READ, “UP WENT HUDDY FOR PHILIP WHITE.”

Refugee militia attacks on New Jersey patriot towns intensified, at times degenerating into vendetta. Both camps repeated stories of rape, mutilation, and murder that, accurate or not, inflamed deeply embittered animosities. These emotions and the violence they engendered persisted long after October 1781, when British forces surrendered at Yorktown. The terms