Taking Sides in Revolutionary New Jersey: Caught in the Crossfire

By Maxine N. Lurie

The American Revolution in New Jersey lasted eight long years, during which many were caught in the middle of a vicious civil war. Residents living in an active war zone took stands that varied from “Loyalist” to “Patriot” to neutral and/or "trimmer" (those who changed sides for a variety of reasons). Men and women, Blacks and whites, Native Americans, and those from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, with different religious affiliations all found themselves in this difficult middle ground. When taking sides, sometimes family was important, sometimes religion, or political principles; the course of the war and location also mattered. Lurie analyzes the difficulties faced by prisoners of war, the refugees produced by the conflict, and those Loyalists who remained, left as exiles, or surprisingly later returned. Their stories are interesting, often dramatic, and include examples of those literally caught in the crossfire. They illustrate the ways in which this was an extremely difficult time and place to live. In the end more of the war was fought in New Jersey than elsewhere, resulting in the highest number of casualties, and a great deal of physical damage. The costs were high no matter what side individuals took. Taking Sides uses numerous brief biographies to illustrate the American Revolution’s complexity; it quotes from documents, pamphlets, diaries, letters, and poetry, a variety of sources to provide insight into the thoughts and reactions of those living through it all. It focuses on people rather than battles and provides perspective for the difficult choices we make in our own times.

Supplemental Instructor Resources for Taking Sides in Revolutionary New Jersey:
Questions (https://d3tto5i5w9ogdd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/19144155/Taking-Sides-Supplementary-Instructor-Resources-Questions.pdf)
Bibliography (https://d3tto5i5w9ogdd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/19144154/Taking-Sides-Supplementary-Instructor-Resources-Bibliography.pdf)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Release date: Aug 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781978800199

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Cover: Taking Sides in Revolutionary New Jersey, Caught in the Crossfire by Maxine N. Lurie

Taking Sides in Revolutionary New Jersey

Lucia McMahon and Christopher T. Fisher, Series Editors

New Jersey holds a unique place in the American story. One of the thirteen colonies in British North America and the original states of the United States, New Jersey plays a central, yet underappreciated, place in America’s economic, political, and social development. New Jersey’s axial position as the nation’s financial, intellectual, and political corridor has become something of a signature, evident in quips about the Turnpike and punchlines that end with its many exits. Yet, New Jersey is more than a crossroad or an interstitial elsewhere. Far from being ancillary to the nation, New Jersey is an axis around which America’s story has turned, and within its borders gathers a rich collection of ideas, innovations, people, and politics. The region’s historical development makes it a microcosm of the challenges and possibilities of the nation, and it also reflects the complexities of the modern, cosmopolitan world. Yet, far too little of the literature recognizes New Jersey’s significance to the national story, and despite promising scholarship done at the local level, New Jersey history often remains hidden in plain sight.

Ceres books represent new, rigorously peer reviewed scholarship on New Jersey and the surrounding region. Named for the Roman goddess of prosperity portrayed on the New Jersey State Seal, Ceres provides a platform for cultivating and disseminating the next generation of scholarship. It features the work of both established historians and a new generation of scholars across disciplines. Ceres aims to be field-shaping, providing a home for the newest and best empirical, archival, and theoretical work on the region’s past. We are also dedicated to fostering diverse and inclusive scholarship and hope to feature works addressing issues of social justice and activism.

Maxine N. Lurie, Taking Sides in Revolutionary New Jersey: Caught in the Crossfire

Jean R. Soderlund, Separate Paths: Lenapes and Colonists in West New Jersey

Taking Sides in Revolutionary New Jersey

Caught in the Crossfire

MAXINE N. LURIE

Rutgers University Press

New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lurie, Maxine N., 1940– author.

Title: Taking sides in revolutionary New Jersey: caught in the crossfire / Maxine N. Lurie.

Description: New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, [2022] | Series: Ceres: Rutgers studies in history | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021046761 | ISBN 9781978800175 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978800182 (hardback) | ISBN 9781978800199 (epub) | ISBN 9781978800205 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978800212 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: New Jersey—History—Revolution, 1775–1783. | United States—History—Revolution, 1775–1783. | American loyalists—New Jersey—Biography. | Quakers—New Jersey—Biography.

Classification: LCC E263.N5 L87 2022 | DDC 974.9/03—dc23/eng/20211012

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021046761

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright © 2022 by Maxine N. Lurie

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.

References to internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

www.rutgersuniversitypress.org

Manufactured in the United States of America

To Jon Lurie, who has shared my life for over 50 years,

and my sister, Carol Judith Neustadt (1944–2021), even longer.

—Maxine Neustadt Lurie

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword

Preface

Note on the Text

Chronology

1 Overview of the Revolution in New Jersey

2 Patriots Part I: The Adamant and Determined

3 Patriots Part II: In the Maelstrom

4 Straddlers, Trimmers, and Opportunists

5 The Society of Friends (Quakers): Pacifists and Participants

6 Loyalists Part I: The Irreconcilables

7 Loyalists Part II: Remained or Returned

8 Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Illustrations

1. County Boundaries in 1753 and at the time of the Revolution. Map by Michael Siegel.

2. Washington Crossing the Delaware, December 26, 1776, painting by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, 1851.

3. Rivington Hanged in Effigy, woodcut engraving from the New York Gazetteer, April 20, 1775.

4. First Presbyterian Church, Tennent, Monmouth County, NJ, HABS photograph, 1936.

5. Construction activities by the Continental army at Jockey Hollow, 1779–1780, painting by Donald Troiani, 1983.

6. Reverend John Witherspoon, painting after Charles Willson Peale.

7. Susan Livingston, Saving Governor William Livingston’s Papers, painting by Giselle Lindenfeld.

8. Reverend Dirck Romeyn, Bergen County, claims for damages done by the British, in November 1776.

9. Samuel Sutphen, former slave. Pension Claim for military service, 1833.

10. Benjamin Yard, Trenton, 1782 claims for damages done by the Patriots.

11. Richard Stockton, painting attributed to John Wollaston.

12. General William Howe and Admiral Richard Howe’s Required Oath of Allegiance to the King, July 14, 1776.

13. Interior of the old Jersey prison ship in the Revolutionary War, 1855 print.

14. New Jersey Oath of Abjuration and Allegiance, signed December 22, 1777, by Richard Stockton.

15. John Bray, painting, artist unknown.

16. Isaac Lowe, sketch.

17. John Wallace, painting, artist unknown.

18. Van Horne House, Bridgewater, NJ, 2021, photograph.

19. Margaret Hill Morris, drawing.

20. Whitall House in Red Bank Battlefield Park, National Park, NJ, photograph.

21. Statement of Free Quakers July 9, 1781. Broadside.

22. A view of the guard-house and Simsbury-mines, now called Newgate—a prison for the confinement of Loyalists in Connecticut, London, 1781.

23. Reception of the American Loyalists in Britain, 1783. Engraving based on a painting by Benjamin West.

24. Reverend Jonathan Odell, ca. 1770, artist unknown.

25. Bernardus LaGrange, Loyalist Application submitted to the Loyalist Claims Commission, 1783.

26. Reverend Abraham Beach, painting by Ralph Earle, 1794.

27. Mrs. Anne Van Wickle Beach, painting by Ralph Earle, 1794.

28. Reverend Thomas Bradbury Chandler, painting, artist unknown.

29. An Attempt to land a bishop in America (London, 1768), anti-bishop cartoon.

30. Vought House in Clinton, NJ, 2021, photograph.

31. Von Steuben House, River Edge, Bergen County, NJ, photograph of the exterior, 1965–1966.

32. William Peartree Smith, painting by John Wollaston.

33. Map of Newark, NJ, in the 1790s.

34. The Horse America, throwing his master, cartoon of August 1, 1779.

Foreword

On New Jersey’s state seal sits the Roman goddess, Ceres, a symbol of productivity and abundance. In commerce and politics, the image calls attention to the fecundity that makes New Jersey the Garden State, but as a metaphor, Ceres symbolizes so much more than the bounty of its land. Contained within this message of abundance is New Jersey’s role as an incubator for cultural and social bonds that helped transform the colonies into a nation; the richness of its people, whose diversity still serves as a national model; and its place as a conduit for the robust regional economy that scaled up America’s industrial growth.

New Jersey holds a transformational place in regional and national history, and Ceres: Rutgers Studies in History seeks to capture the fullness of those stories. Ceres is a platform for cultivating and disseminating the next generation of scholarship that shapes the field. It provides a home for the newest and best work on the region’s past that is as diverse in its chronology as it is inclusive in the topics it covers.

Maxine Lurie, a distinguished scholar in New Jersey studies, takes a bold look at what it took to make a British colony a state, and how a state could reflect the challenges of a nation. Taking Sides in Revolutionary New Jersey reframes the American Revolution as a civil war, underscoring the violent, contested, and protracted nature of the nation’s struggle for independence. The constant presence and movement of troops across New Jersey left residents in a continual state of disruption. Through a series of compelling vignettes, Lurie illustrates how individuals made decisions about their loyalties and allegiances based on a number of factors, including familial, religious, economic, local, and political motivations. No matter what side individuals took during the Revolutionary War, the dangers and costs were high. Taking Sides reinforces New Jersey’s central place in Revolutionary America and the national story.

—Lucia McMahon and Christopher T. Fisher

Preface

The American Revolution in New Jersey lasted eight long years, during which many were caught in the middle of an at times vicious civil war. Residents living in this active war zone took stands that varied from loyalist to patriot to neutral and/or trimmer, straddler, opportunist (changing sides for a variety of reasons, including threats or experiences of violence). Whatever side they took they faced death, disease, losing all (family and property), and becoming refugees. Their stories are interesting, often dramatic, and help illustrate the ways in which this was an extremely difficult time and place to live. When taking sides, sometimes family was important, sometimes religion, or political principles, or economics (protecting property); the course of the war and location also mattered. The overall aim of the book is to illustrate the American Revolution’s messy complexity in New Jersey, to focus on people rather than battles, to indicate the great cost whatever side was taken, and to provide perspective for the difficult choices people make in our own times.

The story of the Reverend Abraham Beach (1740–1828), the Anglican minister of Christ Church, New Brunswick, illustrates how New Jersey residents were caught in the middle of a war zone: in his case literally.¹ Beach was born in Connecticut, attended Yale College, and then worked for several years before feeling called to the ministry. Rather than the Congregational Church of his college and colony, he chose Anglicanism, traveling to England for ordination. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts assigned him to New Brunswick. There he met and married Anne van Winkle, a local Dutch woman who had been orphaned as a child and had inherited a substantial farm three miles outside of town.²

July 7, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read aloud near his church. When Beach next went to conduct services (Anglicans started with prayers for the health of the king, his family, and Parliament), a congregant warned him to stop or he would be arrested. He suspended worship until after the British arrived December 1, 1776, and then held services until they withdrew at the end of June 1777. While British and Hessian forces were in New Brunswick and across the Raritan River in Piscataway, the Continental Army and local militia were in Somerset, Bound Brook, and up into the Watchung Mountains. To get from home to church and back he had to go between the two. At one point, Patriot soldiers surrounded the farm, took fifty head of cattle and other livestock, and traded shots with the Hessians—he was in the crossfire. He wrote a friend that his condition is truly distressing. When the British left Beach stayed, although he did not formally conduct services again until 1780, after he was assured from London that he could leave out prayers for the king and Parliament. In the interim he traveled within a forty-mile radius through what was still a war zone, ministering to other Anglican congregations by marrying couples, baptizing their children, and burying the dead (both Black and white).³ When the war was over, he moved into New York City, but he stayed in the new United States. We will come back to him later in the book because, while his story noted here is about being caught in the crossfire (again for him literally), his later decision provides insight into the options Loyalists had at the end of the Revolution. Beach is just one of the examples given in this book of the New Jersey residents caught in the middle of this civil war.

Remembering that this was a civil war is important. New Jersey historians have long emphasized this, but often scholars outside the state have either ignored New Jersey or simplified and misinterpreted its part of the story. Several years ago, while at a national conference, I listened to an international scholar explain that he was working on an unknown story about how the American Revolution in New Jersey was a civil war. That is not new to most state and local historians. In fact, in the middle of the war the Reverend Nickolas (Nils) Collin, a Swedish minister in South Jersey, used that term for what he saw going on around him. He wrote, Everywhere distrust, fear, hatred and abominable selfishness were met with. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, wife and husband, were enemies to one another. Noting, "From all this it is apparent how terrible this Civil war raged."⁴

This book teases out how those who lived during the war divided through short biographies, accounts of some of their experiences, and quotes from their writings. What they said in documents, letters, essays, and poetry has been used to gain insight to the choices they made. An attempt has been made to select a wide variety of individuals, limited of course by the fact that sometimes the surviving information is scant. It tries to avoid simple lists of those on one side or another. Some of the stories have been pieced together from numerous sources, found by accident, or suggested by friends. Individuals have been divided into various categories discussed in different chapters. Some fit clearly in one place (labeled adamant Patriots or irreconcilable Loyalists), but others have been put where it seemed most appropriate. The author confesses to having moved people around because their stories, like the war itself, are complicated, and classifying some individuals proved difficult. Women, Blacks, and, when possible, Native Americans, have been integrated into the general discussion. When found, birth and death dates for individuals are included to clarify the person discussed. Often more than one person with the same name appears in the records—family names are repeated through generations. For similar reasons, at times diverse spellings are also noted. This is not a military history, it is about people, but of course the war had an impact on almost everyone.

A chronology has been included at the end of the frontmatter to give context to the individual stories that follow. Readers are urged as they go through the book to flip back to the chronology as needed or desired. The book starts with an overview of colonial New Jersey and the pattern of the Revolutionary War, then includes two chapters on the Patriots, two on the Loyalists, one on the Quakers, another on those who tried to have it more than one way, and ends with a conclusion about patterns, damages, and consequences. The emphasis throughout the book is on how this was a civil war—particularly, but not only, in the Hackensack Valley (Bergen County, New Jersey, and extending into Westchester County, New York) and in Monmouth County.

A guest editorial in the Newark Star Ledger during the fall of 2019 suggested the need to look back to the revolutionary generation when everyone agreed, learn a lesson, and escape the contentions of present-day politics. Hopefully, the reader of this book will learn from a past that was more fractious than our present, and thereby gain perspective for our own troubling times.⁵

Note on the Text

The following list is provided as an effort to reduce repeating old versus new titles, and to clarify some cases where names have changed over time. The institutions include the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), Queens College (now Rutgers University), Kings College (now Columbia University), Philadelphia College (now the University of Pennsylvania), and the College of Rhode Island (now Brown University). Places include Brunswick (New Brunswick), Elizabethtown (Elizabeth), Maidenhead (Lawrenceville), Little Egg Harbor (Tuckerton), New Barbados (Hackensack), English Neighborhood (Ridgefield, Englewood), Bottle Hill (Madison), Cohansey (Greenwich), Cohansie Bridge (Bridgeton), Raccoon Creek (Swedesboro), Second River (Bellville), Connecticut Farms (Union), Coryell’s Ferry (Lambertville), Bulls Ferry (Hoboken), Somerset Court House (Millstone), Paulus Hook (Jersey City), Coopers Ferry (Camden), White Hill (Fieldsboro), Middlebrook (Bound Brook), New Germantown (Oldwick), Monmouth Court House (Freehold), Spanktown (Rahway). There are undoubtedly more. There is also a map showing the then existing counties, a time when there were thirteen rather than the current twenty-one. As regards spelling, note that the original has been retained when in a quote, and that there were no consistent rules in the eighteenth century. The terms Patriot and Loyalist are usually used because they were preferred at the time. Rebel and Tory were then perceived as derogatory. Exceptions are of course when they appear in quotations.

FIG. 1 County Boundaries in 1753 (and during the American Revolution). At the time of the Revolution there were thirteen counties in New Jersey, not the present twenty-one. A result was that the boundaries of those that then existed were not the same as they are today. That and the changes in town names, and boundaries, need to be remembered when studying the war. (Source: Michael Siegel, cartographer, Geography Department, Rutgers University-New Brunswick.)

Chronology

French and Indian War, 1755–1763. Built barracks in Trenton, Burlington, New Brunswick, Perth Amboy, and Elizabethtown.

Sugar Act, 1764

Stamp Act, 1765

Townsend Acts, 1767

Tea Act, May 1773

Tea Parties: Boston, December 16, 1773; Greenwich, December 22, 1774

Coercive/Intolerable Acts, 1774

Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, January 1776

Arrest of Governor William Franklin, June 1776

British arrive in New York Harbor, June 29, 1776

New Jersey Constitution, July 2, 1776

Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Battle of Long Island (Brooklyn Heights), August 27, 1776

New Jersey invaded, Battle of Fort Lee, November 20, 1776

Battle of Trenton 1, December 26, 1776

Battle of Trenton 2, January 2, 1777

Battle of Princeton, January 3, 1777

Continental Army in Morristown, January 1777

Battle of Bound Brook, April 13, 1777

Battle of Brandywine, September 11, 1777

Philadelphia captured, September 26, 1777

Battle of Germantown, October 4, 1777

Battles of Saratoga (2), surrender October 17, 1777

Battles over the river approach to Philadelphia: Battle of Red Bank (Fort Mercer), October 22, 1777; Fort Mifflin abandoned November 15, 1777; Fort Mercer abandoned November 20, 1777

Valley Forge, winter 1777–1778

Hancock’s Bridge, March 31, 1778

Battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778

Continental Army in Middlebrook, winter 1778–1779; Pluckemin Artillery Cantonment, training facility

Continental Army in Morristown, winter 1779–1780

Battle of Connecticut Farms, June 7, 1780

Battle of Springfield, June 23, 1780

Continental Army in northern New Jersey and parts of New York, 1781

Mutiny of Pennsylvania Line and then New Jersey Line, January 1781

March through New Jersey to Virginia—Rochambeau and Washington, August 19, 1781–September 17, 1781

Surrender at Yorktown, October 19, 1781

Joshua Huddy hanged April 12, 1782

Proclamation of Peace, April 19, 1783 (Congress meeting in Princeton)

Taking Sides in Revolutionary New Jersey

1

Overview of the Revolution in New Jersey

In 1761 the news that George III was now king was celebrated with parades, speeches, fireworks, and Demonstrations of Joy in Perth Amboy and Elizabethtown.¹ Soon after residents of New Jersey welcomed William Franklin as the new governor of the colony. In 1763 New Jerseyans were proud to be part of an empire that had defeated France in the French and Indian War/Seven Years War. This auspicious beginning of the 1760s began to change with the Stamp Act of 1765. Eleven years later, 112 years after its founding as a British colony, representatives at a meeting of the Third Provincial Congress at Burlington wrote a constitution creating a new government because the king had violated his Compact. He had refused to protect them, assented to acts of Parliament that attempted to subject them to the Absolute Dominion of that Body, and made war on them in the most cruel and unnatural Manner, all for no other cause than asserting their just Rights. The Declaration of Independence called him a tyrant. During the Battle of Princeton on January 3, 1777, Patriot forces fired a cannon at British soldiers in Nassau Hall, hitting a portrait of George II. Even if accidental, this was surely symbolic of changed perspectives (only heightened when after the war the College of New Jersey inserted a painting of George Washington into the same frame). Before the war was over Governor William Livingston wrote a former friend that he could only be loyal to one country and needed to oppose tyranny in whatever form or time it appeared.² When the peace treaty arrived in 1783 residents celebrated even as they worried about what the future would bring.³ Although this short description begins and ends with celebrations, the period between was fraught with danger and disagreements. Danger from the armies that marched back and forth through the state, disagreements between citizens who were Patriots, Loyalists, or tried to be neutral or to straddle the differences.

Historiography

This book makes use of what was written by the Reverend Nickolas Collin and others during the Revolution and scholars since. This includes the products of a recent explosion of new books on the American Revolution, from specific works on individuals or events (such as the Boston Massacre and the Tea Party), to several on Loyalists in New York City and elsewhere, to oversized efforts to summarize the whole story.⁴ The last group includes Thomas Slaughter, Independence: The Tangled Roots of the American Revolution (2014) on the long-term origins; Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804 (2016) providing a global perspective; Robert G. Parkinson, The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution (2016) on the importance of racism; and Holger Hoock, Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth (2017) on propaganda and violence. Local scholars are filling in details about people (Revolutionary Neighbors, multiple books on General Charles Lee), places (Bergen, Monmouth, and Hunterdon counties), and battles (Trenton, Monmouth, Connecticut Farms, and Springfield).⁵ Recent scholarship informs the discussion of the difficult choices individuals made while living in a war zone, noting that there was no one reason why they ended up supporting (as Patriots) or opposing (as Loyalists) the Revolution, or tried to remain neutral.

The long-standing division between scholars studying the American Revolution has been either an emphasis on imperial issues, ideological reasons (no taxation without representation meaning the right to self-government), or economic ones (the cost of those taxes and of imperial mercantile policies, plus class differences). Originally called imperial, whig, and progressive views, more recently they have been labeled neo-imperial, neo-whig, and neo-progressive. These have long been the standard divisions. New Jersey historians have usually followed the general patterns. Leonard Lundin’s Cockpit of the American Revolution (1940) is described by the series editor as a Beardian interpretation. He points to economic causes of the Revolution, begins by contrasting the wealthy clique in Perth Amboy with their opponents, and ends noting the persistence of pre-war class antagonisms. Neo-whig history is exemplified by Adrian Leiby, who, while he criticizes the Patriots at times, sees them as in the right and the Loyalists as awful/evil; Larry R. Gerlach, who, in Prologue to Independence (1976), emphasizes the ideological positions of the Patriots; and David Hackett Fischer, whose Washington’s Crossing (2004) is a story of heroism. Gerlach pictures New Jersey as a reluctant rebel that supported its sister colonies to secure the rights as Englishmen. James Gigantino II, ed., Where the Battlefield Meets the Home Front, is part of newer social and cultural history.⁶

More recent literature presents a dark view of the Revolution, a tragedy with more a reason to weep than celebrate, seeing support for the war coming from racial fears of Black slaves and red Indians, and the desire for western lands and keeping slave property.⁷ Holgar Hoock sees the development of the press during the Revolution as producing the equivalent of fake news; for him promotion of the common cause was done for economic and racial protection not because of a belief in liberal ideology. Colin G. Calloway in The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (1995) sees the war as a disaster for indigenous populations, no matter which side they took (and this included the Lenape/Delaware Indians in and from New Jersey).⁸ Andrew Jackson Shaughnessy, in The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of Empire (2013), argues that the British had lost the war four months before the Declaration of Independence. The best of its politicians, generals, and admirals underestimated Patriot support as well as the resources needed to defeat it, while they overestimated Loyalist numbers. He presents a devastating picture of Britain’s many difficulties. Matthew Lockwood, To Begin the World Over Again: How the American Revolution Devastated the Globe (2019), as the title indicates, goes even further in blaming the Revolution for multiple subsequent problems. In the texts of these authors the war was violent and extremely bloody, with few if any heroes. There is also a new emphasis on the complexity of the Revolution, as in the essays in Patrick Spero and Michael Zuckerman, eds., The American Revolution Reborn (2016), and the various stands that people at the time took, something that this book stresses. Robert G. Parkinson, in a 2019 review of five new books, compared their combined interpretations to a Jackson Pollock painting, messy splatters all over, an appropriate view.⁹ Surely the dark, complicated view reflects the period in which we live.¹⁰

This interpretation of the Revolution criticizes Patriots, who were, it is argued, at most 40 percent of the population and therefore a minority, for producing a nation for white men, while mistreating the Loyalists and all others who opposed them or even tried to sit on the sidelines. For example, Gregg L. Frazer, in God against the Revolution: The Loyalist Clergy’s Case against the American Revolution (2018), pictures the Patriots as tyrants who created illegal governments, violated the religious and political freedom of their opponents, confiscated property, spreading false (fake) news. The cost of the war includes deceit, violence, perjury, blood, distress, misery, and ruin.¹¹ It is easy in New Jersey to find Patriots who said exactly the same about the Loyalists, British, and Hessian forces who paraded through their state during the war. For some recent authors, the war was indeed dark because violence led to retaliation, and disorder opened opportunities for those who were banditti and preyed on everyone else.¹² In truth this was not a good time to be living in New Jersey, even after 1780 when the war moved south to North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and other places, being nasty there as well, although for a shorter time.

It is possible to look at the American Revolution in New Jersey and see all these divergent interpretations work. Some individuals took a firm stand (adamant Patriots as well as irreconcilable Loyalists) for ideological reasons, whereas others primarily had self-interest in mind. Quakers freed their slaves (although some slowly), while other owners were determined to hold on to what they saw as their property, even as they feared what escaped slaves would and did do when they joined the British. When in control, Patriots confiscated Loyalists’ estates using funds obtained from them to help finance their Revolution, and where the British held sway they occupied and condemned Patriot property. Homes and farms were burned, crops appropriated, churches desecrated and destroyed. Inflation was rampant, and to obtain money or scarce goods, some engaged in the illegal London trade with the enemy. While acknowledging the messy complexity of it all, one main conclusion is that in the end the war in New Jersey was dangerous and enormously costly in terms of property and lives, no matter what side individuals and families took.¹³

Neither in New Jersey, nor elsewhere, did this war end as a glorious victory won by a united people. In fact, some of the last, most bitter actions involved New Jersey figures (seen in the so-called Huddy Affair that will be noted in several contexts). It should also be remembered that the draft Peace Treaty that ended the fighting arrived while Congress met in Princeton (there to escape the unpaid soldiers converging on Philadelphia). And General George Washington wrote his Farewell Orders to the Armies of the United States while nearby at Rockingham. Residents of the state muddled through difficult times and then got to pick up the pieces and go on. With the war over they turned to arguing about other things, while living together as members of a new nation.

Why New Jersey Was Important

Mark E. Lender has written that when it comes to real estate what is most important is location, and New Jersey’s experience in the Revolution was a consequence of location.¹⁴ It was caught in middle of the Revolutionary War because for most of the conflict British headquarters was in New York City, and the Patriot headquarters was in Philadelphia. The state was also between the northern and southern states (with the valley between the ranges of the Watchung Mountains providing a route between the two). Capture and keep it, and the Revolution would be cut in half. It contained areas with rich farmlands that produced food for people and animals desperately needed by both sides. The northern mountains and southern bogs contained iron ore, and the ocean to the east was a source of salt. The result was that the Continental army spent more time there than anywhere else, including three winters. The second winter at Morristown was the coldest, with the most storms, of any in the eighteenth century. In addition, throughout the war, local militia forces faced repeated calls to turn out, leaving farms and families to fight.¹⁵ American privateers used small harbors along the Atlantic coast to prey on British shipping, making these places vulnerable to attack. In the Northeast, New Jersey was bounded by the Hudson River, and the west by the Delaware Bay and River; both also provided access for British naval vessels that were usually more effective than the new Continental or Pennsylvania navies. As a result of geography, and location, the war was fought longer in New Jersey than anywhere else, with more battles (including Trenton, Princeton, and Monmouth) and skirmishes (together estimated at over six hundred), resulting in greater loss of life and property than elsewhere.¹⁶ It is for good reason that New Jersey has been called the cockpit of the revolution. Lord Cornwallis acknowledged the significance of what happened in New Jersey when speaking after the surrender at Yorktown. He congratulated George Washington and stated that the general would gather his brightest laurels rather from the banks of the Delaware than from those of the Chesapeake.¹⁷

FIG. 2 Washington Crossing the Delaware (December 26, 1776), 1851 oil on canvas painting by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (1816–1868). This interpretation of the river crossing by General George Washington with soldiers and horses in the middle of a winter storm dramatizes the risky efforts that led to the Battle of Trenton, an important turning point early in the war. (Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, ac.97.34. Gift of John Stewart Kennedy, 1897. Open Access for Scholarly Content.)

How New Jersey Was Different

European settlement of the region that became New Jersey began in the seventeenth century when it was first part of New Sweden, then New Netherlands, and finally the lands granted to the Duke of York by his brother Charles II, King of England. The duke granted a portion of his lands to John Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, two English noblemen. By 1674 they had divided it into West Jersey and East Jersey, and then title passed on to other proprietors. Even though reunited into the single royal colony of New Jersey in 1702, differences between the two sections persisted through the American Revolution and contributed to the complex ways residents divided. More Quakers settled in the west, more Dutch in the east; there was one legislature but two treasurers and two capitols (Burlington and Perth Amboy) with meetings alternating between them. In some ways the war exacerbated the differences—although almost all sections were affected at some point, more of it was fought in the east, which as a result suffered more destruction and indebtedness.

Limited in terms of territory,