Chestnutt, South Carolina’s Expansion into Colonial Georgia, 1720-1765 (New York: Garland
Publishing, 1989). 54
Calhoon, e-mail message to the author, August 19, 2011. 55
Calhoon, The Loyalists of Revolutionary America, 4-5. 56
There are a number of incredibly useful introductions to Loyalists and Loyalism. Front and center are the works of Robert Calhoon, the doyen of Loyalist studies for more than four decades. His magnum opus, The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760-1781, placed the Loyalists within a broad interpretive framework of the Revolution – ideological, political, mili- tary, and social.57 His most recent work, Tory Insurgents, has carried his work into the twenty- first century with a focus on the relationship between ideas, actions, and patterns of practice.58 William Nelson’s groundbreaking study, The American Tory, examined the Loyalists’ political ideology as well as their many sufferings.59
These works, however, owe a tremendous debt to the pioneers of Loyalist scholarship. Most notable, perhaps, was Lorenzo Sabine’s 1864 Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution. Though not error-free, Sabine’s trailblazing study painted a stark and deeply humanizing portrait of the Loyalists. Moses Coit Tyler and Claude H. Van Tyne submit- ted turn-of-the-century works with an eye toward the intellectual foundations of Loyalism.60 Other notable surveys of Loyalism include two edited volumes by Esmond Wright: Red, White, and True Blue: The Loyalists in the Revolution and A Tug of Loyalties, Wallace Brown’s The Good Americans: The Loyalists in the American Revolution, Leslie F. S. Upton’s Revolutionary
57
Calhoon, The Loyalists in Revolutionary America. This work also provides numerous mini- biographies of Loyalists.
58
Calhoon, Timothy Barnes, and Robert Davis, eds., Tory Insurgents: the Loyalist Perception and Other Essays (Columbia: USC Press, 2010).
59
William Nelson, The American Tory (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1961). 60
Moses Coit Tyler, The Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763-1783 (New York: F. Ungar Publishing Company, 1957) and Claude H. Van Tyne, The Loyalists in the American Rev- olution (New York: P. Smith, 1929).
versus Loyalist; and the narrative works of North Callahan: Royal Raiders and Flight from the Republic.61
Four specific categories of Loyalist monographs or scholarly essays inform this disserta- tion: those which examine the characteristics which distinguished Loyalists from Rebels; those which scrutinize the Loyalists at war; those which examine Loyalists in exile, and those which seek to explain the Revolution through the eyes of its most powerful Loyalists. The majority of the works in the first category place Loyalism firmly in the eighteenth-century conservative movement. Likely the most impressive of these is Janice Potter’s, The Liberty We Seek.62
The second category of specific utility to this work is Loyalists at war. Historians inves- tigating this topic must consult Paul Smith’s Loyalists and Redcoats: A Study in British Revolu- tionary Policy. Smith convincingly argued that Britain’s failure to subdue the rebellion can largely be placed on its inability to determine exactly how to utilize the Loyalists.63 Additional- ly, there are a number of studies with particular relevance to Georgia. The best of these is Jim
61
Esmond Wright, ed., Red, White, and True Blue: The Loyalists in the Revolution (New York: AMS Press, 1976) and Wright, A Tug of Loyalties: Anglo-American Relations, 1765-85 (Lon- don: Athlone Press, 1975); Wallace Brown, The Good Americans: The Loyalists in the American Revolution (New York: Morris, 1969); Leslie F. S. Upton’s Revolutionary versus Loyalist (Wal- tham, MA, 1968); and North Callahan, Royal Raiders: the Tories of the American Revolution (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963) and Callahan, Flight from the Republic: the Tories of the American Revolution (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967).
62
Janice Potter-MacKinnon, The Liberty We Seek: Loyalist Ideology in Colonial New York and Massachusetts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). See also, William Pencak, Ameri- ca’s Burke: The Mind of Thomas Hutchinson (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982); Joseph Tiedeman, Eugene Fingerhut, and Robert Venables, eds., The Other Loyalists: Ordinary People, Royalism, and the Revolution in the Middle Colonies (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009) and John Ferling, “The American Revolution and American Security: Whig and Loyalist Views,” Historian 40, no. 3(May 1978): 492-507.
63
Paul Smith, Loyalists and Redcoats: A Study in British Revolutionary Policy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964).
Piecuch’s, Three Peoples, One King: Loyalists, Indians, and Slaves in the Revolutionary South, 1775-1783. Piecuch’s work is especially valuable because of its inclusion of Native Americans and blacks. Patrick Furlong, Martha Searcy, and Gary Olson also address the unique situation in Georgia, especially along the frontier.64
The next category of especially useful Loyalist historiography for this project is Loyalists in exile. Mary Beth Norton’s The British-Americans employed the experiences of exiled Loyal- ists to reimagine their experiences during the revolutionary era.65 Much more recently, Maya Jasanoff has scrutinized the Loyalist diaspora and the communities they created.66
Biographical studies complete the Governor Wright-specific Loyalist categories. This category includes works that could also neatly fit into the categories above. The most valuable of these is Bernard Bailyn’s The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson. The Hutchinson revealed through Bailyn’s erudite and sensitive inquiry is a man very much like James Wright. “I am quite certain,” Bailyn wrote, that “the reasons for the ultimate failure of this otherwise successful and impressive politician … [was] his calculatingly pragmatic approach to politics, his insensi-
64
Patrick Furlong, “Civilian-Military Conflict and the Restoration of the Royal Province of Georgia, 1778-1782,” Journal of Southern History 38, no. 3 (August 1972): 415-442; Martha Searcy, The Georgia-Florida Contest in the American Revolution, 1776-1778 (; and Gary Olson, “Thomas Brown, Loyalist Partisan, and the Revolutionary War in Georgia, 1777-1782,” Georgia Historical Quarterly (1970). See also, Robert Allen, ed., The Loyal Americans: The Military Role of the Loyalist Provincial Corps and their Settlement in British North America, 1775- 1784(Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1983) and Thomas Allen, Tories: Fighting for the King in America’s First Civil War (New York: Harper Collins, 2010).
65
Mary Beth Norton, The British-Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England. 66
Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles. See also, Robert Calhoon, G.A. Rawlyk, and T. M. Barnes, eds., Loyalists and Communities in North America (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994); Phyllis Blakely and John Grant, eds., Eleven Exiles: Accounts of Loyalists in the American Revolution (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1982); Christopher Moore, The Loyalists: Revolution, Exile, and Set- tlement (Toronto: Macmillan, 1984).
tivity to the moral ingredients of public life and to the beliefs and passions that grip people’s minds, and his incapacity to respond to aspirations that transcend the ordinary boundaries of re- ceived knowledge, prudence, and common sense.”67
Though less specifically relevant to Governor Wright, Carol Berkin’s Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist has provided great insight into the transatlantic struggles en- dured by many Loyalists, as does John Ferling’s biography of Joseph Galloway.68 Although not a biography in the strictest sense, W. W. Abbot’s The Royal Governors of Georgia, 1754-1775 is indispensable as a source for illuminating Wright’s career.69 Edward Cashin’s penetrating anal- ysis of backcountry Loyalist Thomas Brown is quite useful as a guide to the complex drama which unfolded on the Georgia and South Carolina frontier.70
So what do we know of the American Loyalists? The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century produced grand narratives of the Revolution as an example of American exceptionalism, pitting the Loyalists as mere foils to the inexorable march of progress.71 Recent historiography, howev- er, clearly illustrates that Loyalists were virtually indistinguishable from their Rebel counter-
67
Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1974), vii.
68
Carol Berkin, Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist and John Ferling, The Loyal- ist Mind: Joseph Galloway and the American Revolution. See also, Lawrence H. Gipson, Ameri- can Loyalist: Jared Ingersoll; Sheila Skemp, William Franklin: Son of a Patriot, Servant of a King; and Geraldine Meroney, Inseparable Loyalty: A Biography of William Bill.
69
W. W. Abbot, The Royal Governors of Georgia, 1754-1775. 70
Ed Cashin, Thomas Brown and the American Revolution on the Southern Frontier. 71
parts. Demographically, they fit comfortably in virtually any and every economic, ethnic, and racial category we can devise to categorize humans.72
Both groups truly identified themselves as Americans, rather than Britons. Both groups admired and sought to emulate British culture. Both groups believed in the value of empire. Yet, in spite of these similarities, the Loyalists opposed independence. Personal issues – social, economic, and local – figured much more prominently in the decision-making process than did political ideology.73 For example, Rebel intimidation pushed many Americans from a neutral position into the waiting arms of the Crown and Parliament. Moreover, family ties often dictated a person’s loyalty. Others were motivated by personal economic interests. And still others simply feared change, felt more secure nestled in the British bosom, or could not comprehend that the rebellion could succeed. Of course, each of these motivations could be juxtaposed on their rebellious brethren.74
“WEBS OF MUTUAL DEPENDENCE”: HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE EIGHTEENTH-