Boston King, profiled in the Yorktown Victory Center’s Witnesses to Revolution Gallery, was apprenticed to a carpenter in South Carolina and escaped enslavement in 1780, joining the British side, where he worked for a time as a boat pilot.
Welcome to All About the Revolution. Our topics range from historical insights to updates on plans for the next generation of the Yorktown Victory Center. We encourage your thoughts and reactions to each post.
What Kinds of Jobs Did Enslaved African Americans Do?
In the 18th century, most enslaved African Americans worked as agricultural laborers, but not all did. Below is a list of 78 different occupations mentioned in The Virginia Gazette, a late-colonial-era newspaper. How many of these jobs were sometimes performed by slaves in Virginia?
(Answer: All of them.)
Bakers; Barbers; Basket Makers; Blacksmiths; Brewers; Bricklayers; Brick Makers; Butchers; Cabinet Makers; Canoe Men; Carpenters; Carters; Cartwrights; Caulkers; Coachmen; Colliers; Cooks; Coopers; Curriers; Dairy Maids; Dancers; Ditchers; Drivers; Doctors; Dressmakers; Farmers; Ferrymen; Fiddle Makers; Fiddlers; Finers; Firemen; Fish Dealers; Fishermen; Foremen; Forge Men; Founders; Furnace Men; Furnace Keepers; Gardeners; Glaziers; Gunsmiths; Hairdressers; Hammermen; Harness Makers; Hostlers; House Joiners; Knitters; Millers; Mill Wrights; Miners; Musicians; Nurses; Overseers; Pilots; Plasterers; Preachers; Rope Makers; Saddlers; Sailmakers; Sailors; Sawyers; Seamstresses; Ship Carpenters; Ship Builders; Shoe Makers; Smiths; Skippers; Spinners; Stone Masons; Tailors; Tanners; Turners; Wagon Makers; Wagoners; Waiters; Watermen; Weavers; and Wheelwrights.
“That Strange Mixture of Blood”
A map printed in France in 1778 depicts the British American colonies of the Upper and Lower South. Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation collection.
These words by Jean de Crevecoeur described the peoples of the thirteen colonies at the time of the American Revolution. The population of more than two million represented several dozen regional and religious cultures derived from northwestern Europe and Africa. One quarter of these people were non-English Europeans, and another one quarter were Africans and African Americans.
While the New England Colonies were generally homogenous, mostly English Anglicans, Puritans, Baptists or Quakers, the Middle Colonies supported a wider variety of cultural groups because of a greater degree of religious and social tolerance. These colonies contributed one quarter of the total population and contained Philadelphia, America’s largest city.
America’s largest population lived in the Upper South – Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina. One-fifth of the population lived in Virginia alone, and almost half of all enslaved Africans and African-Americans lived on Virginia’s tobacco plantations. By contrast, the Lower South contained less than 10 percent of the total population.
Curiously, while New England played a major role in the revolutionary movement, it contained fewer people than in the mid-Atlantic. It was this mid-Atlantic region – the contiguous colonies of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina – that supported more than half of America’s total population and more than 70 percent of its Africans and African-Americans.
Welcome to All About the Revolution. Our topics range from historical insights to updates on plans for the next generation of the Yorktown Victory Center. We encourage your thoughts and reactions to each post.
Common Sense Knocked Them off the Fence
This British halfpenny token in the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation collection bears the image of a man on the gallows with the slogan “End of Pain,” a reference to the banished political theorist and British radical Thomas Paine.
The fire crackled in the tavern fireplace near where the tradesman sat drinking his mug of rum and reading aloud to others in his company from the little weathered pamphlet.
Volumes have been written on the subject of the struggle between England and America. Men of all ranks have embarked in the controversy, from different motives, and with various designs; but all have been ineffectual, and the period of debate is closed. Arms, as the last resource, decide the contest; the appeal was the choice of the king, and the continent hath accepted the challenge.
Such scenes were likely repeated across the colonies during the winter of 1776. The previous April, war between the American colonies and Great Britain had begun. The British were now under siege in Boston by George Washington’s army. But what did Americans hope to achieve by this war?
A little pamphlet, unassumingly entitled Common Sense would answer that question. Written by Thomas Paine, Common Sense outlined the case for independence. The most radical and important pamphlet written in the American Revolution, Paine spoke directly to the common man. At a time when many revolutionary leaders wrote for their small circle of enlightened colleagues using obscure classical and historical references, Thomas Paine reached out to ordinary working folk with plain language and an unprecedented common style. This brought all ranks of society into the political debate for the first time. Even those who were illiterate could hear Common Sense read aloud in public gathering places. Published anonymously in Philadelphia in January 1776, it was soon available in all 13 colonies and sold over 150,000 copies. Its impact was electrifying, jolting reluctant colonists off the fence to fight for independence.
Which of these arguments might have persuaded YOU to choose independence and why?
Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.
We have boasted the protection of Great Britain, without considering, that her motive was interest not attachment; that she did not protect us from our enemies on our account, but from her enemies on her own account…
And a government which cannot preserve the peace, is no government at all, and in that case we pay our money for nothing…
The debt we may contract doth not deserve our regard if the work be but accomplished. No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond …
The present time, likewise, is that peculiar time, which never happens to a nation but once, viz., the time of forming itself into a government. Most nations have let slip the opportunity, and by that means have been compelled to receive laws from their conquerors, instead of making laws for themselves.
Jacob Ellegood, a Virginia planter who remained loyal to Britain, is depicted in the Yorktown Victory Center’s Witnesses to Revolution Gallery.
American Loyalists Get No Respect
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Lots of people on both sides of the American Revolution didn’t think much of Loyalists. Patriots persecuted them, driving them from their homes and confiscating their property. Even though thousands of Loyalists fought for the King in America, the British government never thought the Loyalist contribution to war effort was large enough. The British army in North America resented the fact that it had to allocate scarce manpower for the purpose of protecting Loyalist civilians.
Here are some contemporary perspectives on Loyalists:
“filthy grovelling vermin, formed only to be trampled upon by tyrants” – The Virginia Gazette, January 15, 1774
“Damnation to Tories and Success to American Liberty” – Patriot toast, 1775
“How can you be called friends of the King if you won’t venture anything for the right cause? Look at your Opposition Party: they abandon wife, child, house, and home, and let us lay waste to everything. They fight without shoes and clothing with all passion, suffer hunger, and gladly endure all the hardships of war. But you loyalists won’t do anything! You only want to be protected, to live in peace in your houses. We are supposed to break our bones for you, in place of yours, to accomplish your purpose. We attempt everything, and sacrifice our own blood for your assumed cause.” – Captain Johann Ewald, German officer serving with the British Army in America, 1781
A late-18th-century portrait of Cornwallis by Daniel Gardner, in the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation collection, is exhibited at the Yorktown Victory Center.
Battle of Generals
What would it feel like to be the one responsible for losing the American colonies? Would you fight tooth and nail to prove that it wasn’t you to blame; that it was someone else instead? That’s exactly what happened between Generals Henry Clinton and Charles Cornwallis of the British Army after the Siege of Yorktown, the last major battle of the American Revolution.
In 1780, General Clinton began to execute his strategy against the southern colonies with a siege against Charleston, South Carolina. With the expedition under his personal command, Clinton defeated the Patriots and took the city. With victory at Charleston, however, Clinton also suffered a deteriorating relationship with General Cornwallis, his second in command. The two men were at odds with one another when Clinton returned to New York, leaving Cornwallis to command in the South. From his position in the North, Clinton directed actions in the South, actively at first and less so as time went on.
Meanwhile, Cornwallis was left with a limited number of troops and direction from his superior to find recruits among the Loyalist citizens living in the South. When garnering the support of southern Loyalists failed to supply adequate troops, Cornwallis encouraged enslaved African-Americans to leave their masters and help the British cause. Cornwallis’ troops went on to several victories, such as Camden and Guilford Courthouse, but lost many men and resources in the process – while American troops remained substantially intact. Cornwallis soon made his way to Virginia to regroup and await reinforcements promised by Clinton.
While Lafayette, a commander of American troops, shadowed Cornwallis’ troops and gathered reinforcements in early spring 1781, Clinton sent orders to Cornwallis to secure an ice-free position along the coast of Virginia where the British fleet would have access. Cornwallis, unhappy with the width of the waterways in Portsmouth, decided to fortify in Yorktown and thus placed his troops in a position of entrapment. He was soon cut off by American and French armies and forced to surrender.
Cornwallis and Clinton returned to England in 1782 where they entered a battlefield of a different kind. Eager to re-establish his reputation, Clinton published his Narrative of the Campaign of 1781 in North America, essentially blaming the failed Yorktown campaign on Cornwallis. Not to be outdone, Cornwallis shot out a public response that criticized Clinton. The two were soon engaged in an all-out battle of the blame.
Who won this final war of the generals? Was it Clinton, who resumed his seat in Parliament until 1784, was re-elected in 1790, promoted to full general in 1793 and appointed governor of Gibraltar in 1794 (though he died before taking the post)? Or was it Cornwallis, who, following his role during the American Revolution, maintained King George III’s support and admiration, found favor in the new prime minister, William Pitt, was elected a Knight of the Garter, got appointed Governor-General and Commander in Chief in India, was granted the title “Marquis,” and was entrusted with the post of Governor-General of Ireland?
Remembering the Women of the Revolution
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Sarah Benjamin, who accompanied her soldier husband to Yorktown in 1781, is profiled in the Yorktown Victory Center’s “Witnesses to War” exhibit.
The 1840s saw a renewed interest in stories about people who had actually participated in the American Revolution. Only a few of these individuals still lived (one of them, Sarah Osborn Benjamin, is profiled in the Yorktown Victory Center galleries), and there was a widespread realization that soon the opportunity to record firsthand accounts of the war would be gone. The availability of a new technology, photography, supported this trend. The possibility of preserving a visual record of these last survivors of the revolutionary generation helped promote a widespread interest in recording the personal experiences of those who had lived through the war.
New York-born writer Elizabeth Ellet was concerned, in particular, that the stories of women who took an active part in the Revolution would never be recorded. Therefore she began an ambitious project to document the lives of the individuals she called “Revolutionary Women.” The result of her research was a multivolume work entitled “Revolutionary Women in the War for American Independence.”
One of the most charming of the stories Ellet records is that of Isabella Barber Ferguson of South Carolina. During the Revolution, when Loyalists tried to persuade Isabella’s husband to support the King’s cause, she reacted with anger, proclaiming, “I am a rebel, glorying in the name. My brothers are rebels, and the dog Trip is a rebel too… Rebel and be free that is my creed.” – Isabella Barber Ferguson, 1780.
Welcome to All About the Revolution. Our topics range from historical insights to updates on plans for the next generation of the Yorktown Victory Center.
In Massachusetts in December 1773, a group of men boarded three vessels in the Boston Harbor and, over the course of three hours, dumped 342 chests of tea into the water to protest the tax on imported tea. The perpetrators later argued that it was not the act of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option the people had to defend their constitutional rights.
Not only did this action capture the attention of King George III and Parliament, but it was noticed by citizens in the other colonies and sparked the beginning of their unification in the struggle against British rule.
According The Virginia Gazette, on November 7, 1774, the inhabitants of York went on board the ship Virginia and waited for a letter from the House of Burgesses, who had taken the tea matter under consideration. No letter came, so two half-chests were dumped into the York River. There was no damage done to the ship or the other cargo. The County Committee met days later and resolved that they highly approved of the conduct of the inhabitants of York.
Welcome to All About the Revolution. Our topics will range from historical insights to updates on plans for the next generation of the Yorktown Victory Center. Our first post derives from an exercise among Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation staff to comment on these questions: “What is the legacy of the American Revolution? What did it ultimately achieve? Why is it relevant today?” We encourage your thoughts and reactions to each post.
What is the meaning of the Revolution?
Above all, the American Revolution created new possibilities. Millions of people got to rethink who they were and what they could achieve in a world where the old boundaries limiting thought and behavior could be challenged. Just as the English settlers who came to Jamestown chose to confront a physical world whose boundaries they could not know, the people who made the American Revolution chose to create a future for themselves that was full of opportunities and perils, a future whose boundaries they could not predict.
The American Revolution was not an event, it was a process, and the process continues to change people’s lives today. The wave of possibilities created by the Revolution is self-sustaining, and every generation must confront it. The ideas that fueled the Revolution can be accepted or rejected, but they cannot be ignored.