To academic historians and amateur (or avocational) historians: We explored the North Carolina Historical Review to find articles about the American Revolution. I hope these summaries (written by a person, not AI) will whet your appetite for the longer versions. (A link to each article on JSTOR is provided for each.)
Did North Carolina’s Revolution Start with the Burning of Fort Johnston?
Chris E. Fonvielle Jr., “’With Such Great Alacrity’: The Destruction of Fort Johnston and the Coming of the American Revolution in North Carolina,” North Carolina Historical Review 94, no. 2 (April 2017), 150–201.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/45184827
Chris E. Fonvielle Jr. details the story behind the Patriots’ burning of Fort Johnston in Southport, N.C. This attack on July 19, 1775, by hundreds of Patriot militiamen was one of North Carolina’s earliest forays into the American Revolution, even preceding the Battle of Moores Creek on February 27, 1776. It was also the culmination of a rebellion that had led British governor Josiah Martin to flee the capitol building in New Bern, to seek protection at Fort Johnston. Martin then escaped to the British ship Cruizer in the Cape Fear River a few days before the attack.
Entering the fort with little resistance, “[t]hey quickly discovered that the British had ‘carried off’ all the muskets, ammunition, gunpowder, and swivel guns—property that belonged to the people of North Carolina, in their view. . . . In retaliation, the Patriots turned their torches on all the structures inside the fort and the back portion of the timbered palisade surrounding it” (p. 188).
North Carolinians “were, in effect a very mutinous people, and had been since the 1660s,” writes Fonvielle. “Most historians argue that such challenges to the British Crown’s authority began in the more populated and developed urban centers of New England and the mid-Atlantic colonies, but recent research has revealed that, in North Carolina at least, it emerged when the colony was still largely rural and sparsely settled” (p. 151).
Who Were the Committees of Safety and How Did They Operate in North Carolina?
Alan D. Watson, “The Committees of Safety and the Coming of the American Revolution in North Carolina, 1774-1776,” North Carolina Historical Review 73, no. 2 (April 1996), 131–155.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23521536.
In 1774, as colonial opposition to the British coercive laws was building, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. The congress issued agreements called the Articles of Association (or the Continental Association), pledging resistance to punitive British laws through “nonimportation, nonexportation and nonconsumption.” It urged all colonies to adopt the resolutions.
This agreement led to the creation of Committees of Safety throughout the colonies, including North Carolina. Since 1773 there had been Committees of Correspondence among the colonies, but Watson says that the Committees of Safety sprang from grassroots efforts. And these committees “proved indispensable in effecting the Revolution.”
In North Carolina, they became quasi-governments after British governor Josiah Martin fled the capital.
The initial work of the North Carolina committees was to send aid to Boston, whose port the British had closed in response to the Boston Tea Party. But they quickly became enforcers of the Continental Association. In addition to watching the seaports for violations, they also set prices on some goods; they “guarded the morals of the community”; and they promoted local manufacturing.
Most important, “by use of intimidation and public ridicule, they silenced the loyalists and swelled the ranks of the revolutionaries”(p. 142). Many “exceeded congressional authority and direction,” says Watson, “and worked tirelessly to force the issue of independence and, in effect, to instigate revolution (p. 142).
What, Exactly, Did the “Committees of Safety” Do?
Richard Rayburn, “Infallible Power: The ‘Musquetoe,’ the Wilmington-New Hanover County Safety Committee, and the Coming of Revolution in the Lower Cape Fear, 1774-1776,” North Carolina Historical Review 92, no. 4 (October 2015), 387–42.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44113293
In this article, Richard Rayburn takes us deep into inside North Carolina’s Wilmington-New Hanover County Committee of Safety. He shows the conflicts and complications as the committee tried to stamp out Loyalist sentiment—taking steps probably well beyond their authority.
The Committees of Safety throughout the colonies were developed by the Continental Association, an agreement established by the First Continental Congress in 1774. Signed by all the colonies except Georgia, the agreement promised that the twelve colonies would not trade with Great Britain, Ireland, or the British West Indies “until Parliament repealed the Coercive Acts, particularly the Boston Port Act. . . .“ (p. 397).
“Their immediate charge,” Rayburn adds, was “simply to observe and report violations of the Association so that all ‘such foes to the rights of British America may be publically known, and universally contemned as enemies of American liberty’. . . .” (p. 397).
But the Wilmington-New Hanover County committee went beyond observation. It wanted to punish, at least by ostracism, anyone who would not take an oath to support the Patriot cause.
This attitude was challenged not only by Loyalists but also by Patriots who resented the arbitrary use of power. One of those was John Fallon, who, writing as the “Musquetoe,” anonymously issued polemic attacks on the committee members, sometimes for good reason. Fallon’s story illustrates the divisions that remained throughout the American Revolution.
What Do We Know about Medical Conditions in Cornwallis’s Army?
Paul E. Kopperman, “The Medical Dimension in Cornwallis’s Army, 1780-1781,” North Carolina Historical Review 89, no. 4 (October 2012), 367–398.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23523993.
Paul Kopperman describes and analyzes health conditions of the British troops in General Charles, Lord Cornwallis’s Southern Campaign (1780 to 1781). This campaign began with the capture of Savannah and Charleston. The general’s next goal was to march through the Carolinas, destroying American forces and drawing in local Loyalists. But it soon became a race led by the Patriots’ Major General Nathanael Greene, who used guerilla attacks and his knowledge of the landscape to reduce Cornwallis’s army.
Even though the British army was reasonably staffed and equipped for medical care, Cornwallis’s sick soldiers were a liability that perhaps affected the outcome of the war in Yorktown, Virginia.
In the Carolinas and Virginia, the British army was undoubtedly more prone to illness than the Americans. They marched through unfamiliar, swampy places that bred typhus, dysentery, malaria, and smallpox. At times nearly 30 percent of the forces were unable to fight due to sickness. The 71st regiment camped near the Pee Dee River, and two-thirds of the men became sick.
In September 1780, “Cornwallis reported that 120 of his men were falling sick daily,” writes Kopperman, “and two days later he complained to [British general Sir Henry] Clinton that the 63rd, a regiment that had seen little action, was ‘so totally demolished by illness, that it [would] not be fit for actual service for some months’” (p. 372).
Cornwallis rarely had enough men to combat the Americans successfully, and the army’s poor physical health was one of the reasons.
Why Did the British Army Fail in the Lower South?
Charles Heaton, “The Failure of Enlightenment Military Doctrine in Revolutionary America: The Piedmont Campaign and the Fate of the British Army in the Lower South,” North Carolina Historical Review 87 no. 2 (April 2010), 127–157.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23523891
Charles Heaton argues that General Charles, Lord Cornwallis lost his Southern Campaign (1780–1781) because he followed a traditional “Enlightenment military doctrine,” not because of tactical errors.
In contrast, Major General Nathanael Greene had a more “adaptive approach to military theory,” which included guerilla attacks and strategic military feints.
What was this Enlightenment military doctrine? Its most important component was commitment to an offensive army and “decisive” battles. To Cornwallis that meant chasing Greene’s army to a place where a significant battle could take place. The second major strategy was the guerre des postes strategy that established a strong, fortified position and built out from there, subduing the countryside. Cornwallis had a guerre des postes strategy in South Carolina and Georgia, but once in North Carolina he abandoned it for a search for the decisive battle.
Heaton also notes that military doctrine minimized use of “unconventional forces” and petite guerre (guerilla warfare). Nor did Cornwallis understand the need for careful logistics or knowledge of the terrain. North Carolina was largely unsettled, unlike the traditional European landscape with its “stone fortifications, serviceable roads and bridges, and reliable topographic maps,” says Heaton (p. 134).
To reach his decisive battle, Cornwallis had to give up or destroy much of his what Heaton calls his “superfluous baggage” so that his army was light enough to move quickly. But that meant living off the land in a completely strange environment. When the decisive battle occurred at Guilford County Courthouse, Cornwallis had already lost many men.
What Continental Army Commanders Experienced in the South
Donald R. Lennon, “’The Graveyard of American Commanders’: The Continental Army’s Southern Department, 1776–1778,” North Carolina Historical Review 67, no. 2 (April 1990), 133–158.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23521245
Military study of the South during the American Revolution has emphasized Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis’s dramatic Southern Campaign, which began in 1780 with the capture of Savannah, Georgia, and ended with surrender at Yorktown, Virginia. But Donald Lennon looks at the southern command in earlier days, from 1776 to 1780, when most of the war’s military action was distant from the South.
Continental commanders in the South were forced to engage in politics—national and state—to get the men and matériel they needed. Often, they were unsuccessful. This wrangling led to failure to protect Savannah or Charleston when the British arrived in May 1780.
“Time and again the determination of South Carolina and Georgia governors to exert control over military matters created confusion and contradiction within the southern command,” writes Lennon (p. 148). For example, one general “was denied funds from the South Carolina treasury to support the state’s troops on the ground that the state auditor had not examined the Continental accounts for past expenditures” (p. 149).
Since most fighting took place in the New England and mid-Atlantic states, Congress paid little attention to the needs of the southern army.
North Carolina contributed soldiers, but Lennon’s story takes place mainly in Georgia and South Carolina. According to Lennon, the British defeat at the Battle of Moores Creek in North Carolina revealed that the British would receive little Loyalist support and thus the Americans did not fear their landing at Wilmington.
The Patriots’ Rebuke of Loyalists and Their Rights
John R. Maass, “’The Cure for All Our Political Calamities’: Archibald Maclaine and the Politics of Moderation in Revolutionary North Carolina,” North Carolina Historical Review 95, no. 3 (July 2008), 251–281.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23523343
John Maass tells the story of Archibald Maclaine, whom he calls a “conservative Patriot.” Throughout the war Maclaine attempted to keep the Patriots from forcing the exile of Tories and confiscating their property. However, between 1776 and 1782, the state legislature passed laws that did just that. If a person refused to swear allegiance to the state, he or she had to leave North Carolina, and the state could take the person’s property.
Maas begins his essay, “The struggle for American independence in North Carolina was primarily a civil war . . . . “[I]t was for the most part an internecine battle between Patriots (commonly called Whigs) who supported American independence and Loyalists (or Tories) who remained loyal to the British king” (p. 151).
Maass uses a collection of letters by Maclaine to his son-in-law George Hooper, a successful merchant in the Lower Cape Fear region. “Hooper did not support American independence but at no time during the war did he take up arms against the Patriots or act in any official capacity for the British,” says Maass (p. 266).
Yet he was in danger once the British withdrew from Wilmington in 1781, and he fled to Charleston. Maclaine’s letters show steadfast efforts to help Hooper return to North Carolina and obtain his property—unsuccessfully through 1785.
Times did change, at least for Hooper. By 1787 he had returned to North Carolina and had become a merchant again. But his story illustrates that even after the war, in the words of Maas, many victorious Patriots were “characterized by revenge, not forgiveness; by hostility, not reconciliation; and by extremism, not moderation” (p. 281).
Moravians Were Pacifists. How Did They Fare in the American Revolution?
Moravians Were Pacifists. How Did They Fare in the American Revolution?
Ruth Blackwelder, “The Attitude of the North Carolina Moravians Toward the American Revolution,” North Carolina Historical Review 9, no. 1 (January 1932), 1–21.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23514879
North Carolina’s Moravians were German-speaking members of the Unitas Fratrum (United Brethren Church) who settled in 1753 in an area that would become Winston-Salem. They traced their spiritual history to Jan Hus, a priest from Bohemia who was burned at the stake in 1415 for his efforts to reform the Catholic Church. Moravians initially came from Bohemia or Moravia, both part of today’s Czech Republic.
Ruth Blackwelder gives an outline of the Moravians’ history and then concentrates on their experiences in the American Revolution. They were largely pacifist, and in 1749, when they began settling in the colonies (Georgia and Pennsylvania before North Carolina), Parliament gave them an exemption from military service. They had to pay a fee, however, which at times became quite substantial.
Aiming to live in peace, the Moravians supported the government where they lived. Until the Declaration of Independence, that was the British king; after that, the Continental Congress. Some went into battle for the Patriots but for the most part Moravians declined to serve in a military capacity.
Moravians instead aided the Patriot cause with supplies such as meat and grain, and when the war came close to home they cared for the sick and wounded. While some Americans were suspicious that they were Tories or Loyalists, the Moravians’ peaceful conduct, prayerful dignity, and material support assuaged the state’s government. “They became known as faithful citizens whose money and provisions were just as necessary during the War of Independence as were soldiers for the battlefield” (p. 21).
Post-Yorktown Treatment for the Loyalists
Jeffrey J. Crow, “What Price Loyalism? The Case of John Cruden, Commissioner of Sequestered Estates,” North Carolina Historical Review 58, no. 3 (July 1981), 215–233
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23514879
After Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington on October 19, 1781, the British retained control of Savannah and Charleston. They did not fully exit the South until December 1782. John Cruden’s complicated experience in the Revolution “sheds new light on the frequently neglected post-Yorktown phase of the southern conflict,” writes Jeffrey J. Crow (p. 216).
John Cruden was a merchant in Wilmington, North Carolina, when the war began. He was also an “embittered and strident” Loyalist who was forced to sign an oath defending the Patriot cause (p. 218). He soon fled to Jamaica and then to British-controlled New York. At the behest of North Carolina royal governor Josiah Martin, Cornwallis appointed Cruden as the army’s commissioner of sequestered estates in the Carolinas. His job was to produce value from the plantations that the British confiscated as they marched through the area. “Eventually, Cruden had in his charge over 100 whig plantations and over 5,000 slaves” (p. 219).
Cruden faced severe difficulties, beginning with the fact that the plantations under his control mostly failed, and in many cases the whigs (i.e., Patriots) attacked and even burned down property the British had taken over.
An unceasing activist for the Crown, Cruden rounded up enough men and ships to attack the coastal town of Beaufort in April 1782 in order to obtain much-needed provisions. The sailors and dragoons pretended to be Patriots and persuaded local “whalemen” to guide them through the shallow waters of the Beaufort Inlet. The result was a vicious attack by the British. For a week, “the British occupied Beaufort and plundered its inhabitants nearly at will,” writes Crow (p. 227). When the war ended, Cruden sought compensation for his efforts from the British, but he died shortly before it was awarded to him.
The Outer Banks Played an Important Role in the Revolution. What Was It?
Norman C. Delaney, “Outer Banks of North Carolina during the Revolutionary War,” North Carolina Historical Review 36, no. 1 (January 1959), 1–16.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23516876
Norman C. Delaney’s essay confirms and clarifies that “The dangerous North Carolina coast, considered a handicap to trade in peace-time, became a valuable asset during the Revolution” (p. 3).
Ocracoke Island (at the time often called Ocracock) was a valuable station for supplies being sent to North Carolina and Virginia during the Revolution. Because it was treacherous for British ships, the Ocracoke Inlet was one means by which supplies could “escape the dangers of the British blockade of Delaware and Chesapeake Bays” (p. 3). Once goods passed through the inlet they could go through Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds to reach Virginia by the Chowan River.
That trade was invaluable. British colonial governor Josiah Martin wrote in a letter that the “contemptible Port of Ocracock” provided a “great Channel of supply to the Rebels while the more considerable Ports of the Continent have been watched by the King’s Ships” (quoted by Delaney from a Martin letter of 1778, p. 10).
And yet the Patriots’ protection of the inlet and the nearby barrier islands was beset with difficulties stemming from disagreements among the Patriot governors of Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, plus anxiety by the Outer Banks farmers (called Bankers), and the continuing presence of British ships. Those conflicts culminated in the Beaufort attack, led by John Cruden. Nevertheless, for the most part the Outer Banks protected North Carolina during the war.
Echoes of the American Revolution
David Smiley, “Revolutionary Origins of the South’s Constitutional Defenses,” North Carolina Historical Review 44, no. 3 (July 1967), 256-269.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23517889
David L. Smiley delves into the similarities found between the Americans’ eighteenth-century argument for a revolution against Great Britain and the South’s nineteenth-century argument that the national government should stay out of the southern states’ politics. The colonists argued that the British constitution (a collection of papers, not a single document) prevented Parliament from interfering in local matters by imposing taxes. Years later, Southerners argued that the U.S. Constitution prohibited the national government from interfering in states’ local affairs.
“The leaders of the Revolution evolved a set of constitutional principles which patriots in all parts of the country could accept as a means of preserving human liberty,” Smiley writes, “and these same principles were adapted by a sectional minority in defense of states’ rights and southern institutions, including slavery” (p. 267).
The struggles preceding the American Revolution started with the Stamp Act of 1765; war started ten years later. The South’s resistance to the Union took seven decades before it ended in the Civil War.
In 1790, Congress debated whether the national government should take over the states’ revolutionary debts. Southerners opposed it then because they had almost paid off their debt, whereas Northerners had not ,and thus would benefit. In 1832, South Carolina attempted to nullify tariffs because tariffs benefited the manufacturing North but hurt the rural South. Ultimately, there were the debates over the spread of slavery; war followed. “Memories of the methods of one revolutionary era served as guideposts of another,” writes Delaney (p. 268).