Considering the Revolution

“Considering the Revolution: The Identities Created by the American Revolutionary War” was the closing public plenary at the May 2022 virtual conference of the National Council on Public History (NCPH). The session, sponsored by the National Park Service (NPS) and NCPH, was the second in a series of five annual scholarly roundtables considering the origins and legacies of the American Revolution, dialogues which will contribute to larger discussions during NPS’s commemorations of the American Revolution’s 250th anniversary about its changing interpretation and its continuing relevance to the American people. These discussions will be used by NPS staff in their interpretive work with the public regardless of their geographic location or primary interpretive focus, by NCPH members as they prepare themselves and their students for the 250th commemorations, and by members of the public as they consider the relevance of the Revolution to their own lives.The American Revolutionary War was a seminal event that created new identities, new borders, and new realities for the British, French, African, and Indigenous inhabitants of North America. While the war was foundational in the formation of what became modern American identity, its repercussions go well beyond the citizens of the new republic. The events of 1776 to 1783 not only divided the continent between American and British interests, they also divided families and communities between “Patriots” who supported the Congressional Army and “Loyalists” who supported the British Crown. The establishment of the US–British (later Canadian) border not only defined the territories of the new United States—without any consideration of Indigenous rights or interests—it also divided the peoples of North America into American citizens or British subjects, while imposing a new settler-colonial construct upon Indigenous nations.Historic sites, such as the Minute Man National Historic Park, Independence Hall National Historic Park, and Valley Forge National Historic Park in the United States, or the Fortifications of Quebec National Historic Site in Canada, play a dual role in historical interpretation of the Revolutionary War. These sites not only commemorate and recount the historical events that occurred during the conflict, but also guide visitors towards a very specific idea of who the individuals participating in them were. Whether it be Valley Forge, which prompts visitors to remember the “sacrifices and perseverance of the Revolutionary War generation and [honor] the power of people to pull together and overcome adversity,” or Quebec City, where visitors learn that the fortifications allowed “the British and the French colonists who were still living there to resist American rebels,” historic sites, as sites of memory, help develop a sense of identity because they are places where the general public can interact with a “collective shared knowledge of the past, on which the group’s sense of unity and individuality is based.”1As Jan Assamann states in “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity,” cultural memory, such as the commemoration of the events between 1776 and 1783, is “defined through a kind of identificatory determination in a positive (‘we are this’) or in a negative (‘that’s our opposite’) sense.” In other words, the act of building collective memory through commemoration and memorialization helps shape group identities between those who “belong and those who do not” to those specific groups.2 Case in point: in 1784, a group of Loyalists from the Mohawk Valley, part of the 1st battalion of the King’s Royal Regiment of New York and refugees to Montreal, established a small settlement in one of the new “Royal Townships” on the St. Lawrence River. These townships were specifically set aside to the west of the old French colony along the northern shore of the river as replacement lands for those who had lost their properties by fleeing the new republic but who did not want to live under the seigneurial landholding system in Quebec. A 1784 painting by James Peachy immortalized the origins of this meager Loyalist settlement. Peachy, who travelled with the Loyalist refugees up the St. Lawrence River, painted the scene of the first encampment.Two centuries later, in 1984, the city of Cornwall in Ontario, Canada (my hometown), celebrated the bicentennial of its founding in 1784 by those Loyalist refugees. A bicentennial commission organized a year-long commemoration that squarely placed the origins of the community’s modern identity in the initial settlement of those two-hundred-odd soldiers and families. A commissioned academic history of Cornwall, children’s coloring books, a parade, and various promotional materials all reinforced the notion that the Loyalists were the cornerstone of the community and that their “frontier” spirit shaped the last two hundred years of Cornwall’s evolution. Peachy’s painting was used throughout promotional documents and was even included in a mural depicting different moments of the city’s history. As Elinor Kyte Senior states in her history of Cornwall, From Royal Township to Industrial City: Cornwall 1784–1984, the “descendants of the Loyalists” continued to celebrate the Britishness of the first settlers of Cornwall in countless ways—from the name of their hockey team (the “Royals”) to the name of the local military regiment (the Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry Highlanders).3Rarely mentioned in the celebration, although constantly inferred, this city and the identity of its citizens were directly created by the American War of Independence. The city was established as a direct result of the Revolution: from the arrival of Loyalists desiring lands, to the British policies to resettle them, to its description as a “Loyalist” stronghold to this day. As Jocelyn Létourneau of the Université de Laval has pointed out throughout his many works, understanding how history shapes and influences “who we think we are” but also “who will we become” is central tenant of public history; as he writes, “the study of history is decisive in the acquisition of civic consciousness and a conscious identity.”4 My identity (not to mention my career as a public historian) has been shaped by this event, as the telling about it was meant to ingrain in me the idea that I am from a community whose core identity is about being loyal to “King and Country” and definitely not “American.” I view myself as “Canadian” more because of the outcome of this eighteenth-century war than the actual creation of Canada in 1867.The role of “identity” in historical interpretation, as in public discourse, continues to be discussed and debated by historians, political scientists, and philosophers around the world. Building on this argument, the 2022 NCPH plenary session discussed how the Revolutionary War/War of Independence created new identities, reinforced settler-colonialism, and established not one, but two countries, the United States of America and Canada, and further examined how they have evolved and continue to influence current ideas of being “American” and “Canadian.” To flesh out this argument, five practitioners specializing in the lands and peoples at the center of these events were invited to share their perspectives: Rebecca Brannon, associate professor at James Madison University researching American Loyalists who stayed in the new United States after the war; Michael Hattem, associate director of Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute working on the history of the popular memory of the Revolution; Patrick O'Brien, lecturer of history at Kennesaw State University who focuses on loyalist families who fled the rebellious states during the Revolution; Taylor Stoermer, who teaches public history at Johns Hopkins University and is working on the Loyalist experience; and Seynabou Thiam-Pereira, PhD candidate in American Civilization at the Université de Paris 8 (Vincennes Saint-Denis) who focuses on the Black Americans, mostly fugitive enslaved peoples, who fought for the British army during the American War of Independence.The plenary session’s conversation was built around a series of six questions that delved into the intricacies and complexities of different identities that came out of the Revolutionary War—Patriot, Loyalist, Black Loyalist, neutral—and how these colonial-era concepts continue to have ongoing impact in the modern day. The first question addressed by the panelists, “What did it mean to be a ‘loyalist’ and a ‘patriot’ in the eighteenth century, and what are the similarities between these two identities?” sought to lay the foundation for the discussion by establishing broader definitions of the core terminology. The panel’s second question, “Who were the ‘Loyalists’ and how did exile impact their decisions and ‘final’ destination?” aimed to clarify who these Loyalists were and the motivations that drove them to remain in the British camp and ultimately leave the new republic. Building on the previous questions, the third, “What is there to say about those who are neither ‘Loyalists’ or ‘Patriots’—the others in the British colonies/new republic?” was intended to bring greater attention to those most often excluded by the typical Patriot/Loyalist dichotomy of public perception of the Revolution. With the fourth question, “What kind of conflicts did these ‘new’ identities cause, spur on, or perpetuate?” the panelists turned their attention to how these identities became the basis for long-standing conflicts. The two final questions of the plenary, “How did ‘Patriots’ become ‘Americans’ and did this grand political project succeed or fail?” and “How does the Revolution continue to shape identities in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere?” were designed to pull together the various threads of the discussion so as to bring into focus the process of identity-building and consider how the ongoing debates about these identities continue to influence American and Canadian societies.The conversation was wide-ranging and delved into the facts, perceptions, and myths that shape modern identities not only in North America but also the Caribbean and elsewhere. Although the ebb and flow of the conversation demonstrated the complexity of these questions, the panelists began to focus on three overarching themes: “Who did they think they were”; “Who do we think they were”; and “Who do we think we are.” The first theme centred on how those involved in the conflict saw themselves as well as how various groups related to one another. The second theme looked more deeply in how historiography has evolved and shaped our understanding of Patriots and Loyalists, while the third theme brought these threads together in discussing how these histories are directly connected to current perceptions and views of identity in North America.A fundamental aspect of this debate is what was meant by the terms “Patriot” and “Loyalist.” Although there are common definitions of “Patriots” (colonists favoring independence from the United Kingdom) and “Loyalists” (colonists wanting to remain tied to the King), these overarching descriptions create an impression of clearly defined groups while glossing over the complexity of the motivations and factors of the individuals in those groups and hide how the meaning and usage of the terms changed over the course of the war. As Patrick O’Brien noted, prior to 1774, these terms could be used to describe people with a range of beliefs, and he elaborated that part of the historical debate is also about when is it “fair to call someone a Loyalist [and] when is it fair to call them a Patriot.” The concerns and complaints in the American colonies were not unique to that location; they were present elsewhere in the British Empire. For example, protests against the Stamp Act also occurred in Halifax, Jamaica, and Scotland. Building on this point, Taylor Stoermer stressed that the use of “loyalty” could be applied to either “Patriot” and “Loyalist” as they both expressed loyalty—either to a representative democracy or to a king and parliament. In his study on the political positions of John Randolph and his cousin, Thomas Jefferson, in Virginia in the lead up to the war, Stoermer showed how these distinctions were often very thin, and that terms such as “Patriot,” “Loyalist,” “Whig,” and “Tory” were in flux and came to mean “different things to them and those around them.”5 As the conflict progressed, these terms took on increasingly divisive connotations.As Rebecca Brannon indicated, it was not always ideology that separated Loyalists and Patriots by 1776, “but a lot of it [was] circumstances of life. So you can find people like Samuel Seabury and other early loyalist writers who advocate for a vision of loyalism as a vision of constitutional order in an empire.” The motivation of these individuals to side with or against the Patriots was largely motivated by the fear of civil war breaking out across the colonies. In the case of others, the motivation for joining one side or the other was highly situational. Stoermer gave the example of Beverly Robinson in New York who simply “wanted to be left alone on his farm in the Hudson Valley, and he does not choose a side until the Oath Act is passed by the New York legislature [when] he is forced to make a choice as to whether or not he’s going to serve with the Patriots or whether he’s going to at least contribute” to their cause. For Robinson, this proved to be a tipping point as he saw this imposition as an “infringement of the exact kind of liberty and freedom that the Patriots say that they are there to protect,” and pushed him to become a Loyalist. His sons and grandchildren would become prominent Loyalist families in Upper Canada.6Whether someone did make the leap to the Revolutionary camp or remained “loyal” to the King often was due, as Michael Hattem described, to the strength of their individual “cultural sense of Britishness.” This linkage to “Britishness” becomes a fundamental part of the “calculus” that an individual had to consider when they chose to identify as “Patriots.” Those who could make that break would oppose British rule and be Patriots, while those who could not relinquish their “Britishness” become the Loyalists. This cultural sense of “Britishness” became a defining element of the later identity of the over 60,000 Loyalists who left the new United States of America for the Canadian colonies or traveled to Great Britain.To emphasize this point, O’Brien drew our attention to a specific painting of Sir John Eardley Wilmot, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, the second-highest common law court in the English legal system, by the American-born British painter, and Loyalist, Benjamin West. The painting has another “painting” within it showing the allegorical figure of Britannia receiving the Loyalists of the American Revolution—an image that includes African American Loyalists, First Nations Loyalists, and Loyalist women. The imagery evoked by West’s painting underlies one of the fundamental truths about those involved in the events of the American Revolution. It was more than just white Christian men who lived through the war, suffered its consequences and either chose to flee the new republic, or be forced to follow husbands and enslavers. As Brannon reminded us, “white women are presumed to follow their husband’s allegiance whether that’s true or not.”What is clear is that while there were some ideological differences between Patriots and Loyalists, many were white men who shared many common values and customs, especially with respect to their rights to human property. Seynabou Thiam-Pereira reminded us that Patriots and Loyalists alike “tended to be similar on the practice of slavery,” and as has been well documented, the Patriots’ republican “ideas of freedom and equality failed to universally reach the Black population despite the fact that free Black communities doubled in numbers especially in northern states” towards the end of the Revolution. The fact that several key founding fathers, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who called for freedom from British rule were also enslavers is, of course, widely known, and often discussed by historians and the media.7 Less well understood is that although the British were often perceived as abolitionists following the 1772 Somerset v. Stewart decision, which stated that it was unlawful for an enslaved African to be sold from and was as a towards in that in the American colonies many Loyalists were also these individuals became Loyalists, so to did their As Thiam-Pereira of the with the Loyalists were not some did not the British they had to serve in the war with their Loyalist In his study American of Loyalist how African enslaved by Loyalists the of with the of in while The to those “Loyalists” who chose to leave the new republic for the United or the Caribbean after American Revolution as by Brannon in the plenary, also the of enslaved people in North America prior to the American specifically because the British them the of them Thiam-Pereira that the and of as they have to be known, such as their motivations to the has that the British were freedom to enslaved in for their in from and those would remain and African to the British on the specific of freedom to or from was the only for the British as free were to side with the British as Thiam-Pereira their motivations are the plenary, Thiam-Pereira that the of Black Loyalists also the first and of free of the eighteenth To a their of the they in the American colonies were not Those who fled to the Caribbean often at the of Loyalists. In the case of the colonies of New and Black Loyalists only to that their legal was not the as white Loyalists and their political rights to the and despite their and for as other Loyalists, they were as and later Canadian of towards the free Black Thiam-Pereira reminded us that their choice to go into exile in Canada had a direct impact on the and of the colonies they Although they were largely from these new Loyalist they were community that was part of the British her work has the of Black Loyalists was not to their actual it to their in history. who were part of the of Loyalists of the and did not consider them “Loyalists” and often were about their very as a group within the Loyalist It would only be in the during the bicentennial commemoration of the arrival of the Loyalists to Canada that the first of Black Loyalists was that has continued to O’Brien indicated, there was of allegiance and eighteenth-century As he described, people who defined themselves by a had identities with they had identities, they had to and they to one another and shaped their that changed over With identity not being a clearly defined it became the of the Patriots to others to their and ultimately on their As Brannon noted, the Patriots were the to their identity, their to the their political and what they had always are the on people to up against what was and to for an new republic that or not their lot in a to Benjamin in John a view of the involved in the Revolution, that in the years up to the of the colonies about one third one third and one third true on his understanding of the within American his in several other to his Revolutionary such as in a to Thomas in discussing the of the First third and the As Stoermer during the plenary can all John is he that a third were Patriots, the third were Loyalists, and that there in is to that this has historians and others from constantly This has been and for over a century, such as by George in his The for American The of this has created a perception that the between the the and in were clearly As was discussed throughout the plenary, who the “Patriots” and the “Loyalists” were has been discussed and debated for while at the attention has been to those of those debate about what drove Patriots or Loyalists to their has become a core element of of both American and Canadian As Hattem pointed out during the plenary, this has been going on the end of the conflict with the that of an identity throughout the and that its was part of the of the although historians have that this identity after the His work on the memory of the American Revolution has demonstrated that it was part of the of a history for a that was only a The generation themselves sought to the meaning and of the Revolution for through the of histories between 1783 and that aimed to shape a understanding of the A key in understanding this process was the replacement of an with “Britishness” with one of because although the Patriots as Hattem stated in the plenary, political independence after the war, cultural independence was another study of who the “Loyalists” were is not a and about Loyalists in Canada has been a of Canadian at least as as with the of A of the of Upper Canada by Loyalists and in In the United States, the of The King’s in the in those who chose to for “King and as well as that of that out of the of a new of at Loyalists beyond the of a O’Brien reminded us that the of the Loyalists as of a small and largely with and political throughout the British is a of who they were. As pointed out in the Loyalists, both those who into exile and those who remained in the new republic, were mostly and men of as well as free and enslaved peoples, First and women and O’Brien brought this point into focus what the Loyalists who left after the war shared they did not share an ideological share a share a geographic did they share was that all were refugees in the new colonies of New and in as well as refugees in Great as Hattem many Loyalists a very and that they did not in the that they they these and the work of O’Brien on the women who left after the conflicts has “Loyalist” be they the or of Loyalist have often been as part of the “Loyalist” with for their motivations or in building new Loyalist As O’Brien in his work on and her two Loyalist women who fled for Halifax, these women central in these places of In this case the of exile and the as a while to a sense of community the The can be of those “Loyalist” women who remained in the new republic to live their As Brannon in her study From Revolution to The of Loyalists, many women suffered the as their and their cause, but to their of the on the Revolution has on the Loyalist attention has been to those who chose not to become involved in the conflict because they did not share the views of either such as many First did not to become or who were to their beliefs, such as As O’Brien this did not mean that they were of the conflict as both the Patriots and the Loyalists these to their cause. whose meant that they could not allegiance to either were by and some communities were even up and from to In her in the examined this of and showed that women tied their to their identity within their A of First Nations with the British, that long-standing with the British were the most to them, a reinforced by against A of communities with the often against their own to such as the within the chose to remain of the conflict between the as that was for First Nations in this and the of on the of the of the American Revolution, three discussing the of the commemorations and for a interpretation of the The first American Revolution and the in the the often John discussed about third one third Loyalist, one third that this was one of the myths of the Revolution and that historians of his continued to that the conflict was a against the with the of an In his second and the from the American that the to the events of the War had to a of the Revolution that increasingly that the American in 1783 was to the of the Patriots and their A third on American Revolution as a what is it we are with the With a of the and of the American Revolution to have the American people and a of the historical from what has been during the his

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