The Ragged Road to Abolition. James J. Gigantino II

Nelson described how British soldiers “play the very devil with girls and even old women to satisfy their libidinous appetites . . . there is scarcely a virgin to be found.”¹⁶ In the same vein, Samuel Adams wrote to James Warren about the “shocking inhumanities shown to our countrymen in the Jerseys” as the British engaged in “plundering houses, cruelly beating old men, ravishing maids, murdering captives in cold blood, and systematically starving multitudes of prisoners.”¹⁷ John Adams and Richard Henry Lee both reiterated the “ravages in the Jersies” including “rapes, murders, and devastation . . . [which] would have disgraced the savages of the wilderness.”¹⁸ Likewise, New Jersey native Thomas McCarty recalled the brutal nature of the New Jersey-New York borderland during an engagement with a British foraging party in February 1777. McCarty reported that his unit “attacked the body and bullets flew like hail” causing significant casualties. In speaking of the American wounded, McCarty wrote that the British soldiers had “dashed out their brains those men wounded in the thigh or leg . . . with their muskets and run them through with their bayonets, made them like sieves. This was barbarity to the utmost.”¹⁹ Delegate Whipple believed that this wanton inhumanity inflicted by the British reflected the true state of “British humanity” and that “all America would have experienced” the same if they “submitted to the yoke of the tyrant.”²⁰

      Reports of widespread destruction, rape, and murder from the initial 1776–1777 campaign fueled New Jerseyans’ fears of future attacks by the British. This consistent fear made Newark leaders, in the spring of 1777, warn Governor Livingston of “the unhappy situation of this town being so contiguous to the Enemy who threatens us daily with an invasion.”²¹ These fears were never realized as the main British army quickly withdrew from New Jersey, but the campaign of 1777 brought renewed reports of attacks against American civilians. For example, while based in Perth Amboy, Hessian cavalry officer Baron Friedrich Adam Julius von Wangenheim wrote to his brother that “we will soon bring war to an area where no one is suspecting it” and “attack the enemy as on a hunt.” He claimed that his men would “crawl on our bellies through the bushes and if one sees a rebel, one sneaks up to him and shoots him dead” and reiterated the orders of General Howe, who had decided that the army in this campaign needed “to be cruel, since he has seen that with kindness one does not accomplish anything with them—there will be burnings, hangings, and everything will be ruined.”²²

      After the Patriot victory at Monmouth, New Jersey settled into a prolonged period of guerrilla warfare between patriots, loyalists, and British military units that sought food and supplies from the countryside, which further damaged the state’s economy. A second cold winter at Morristown (1779–1780) made New Jersey no friend to Continental soldiers as harsh weather, lack of supplies, and poor living conditions affected both their health and discipline. Alexander Scammell, the army’s adjutant general during the second encampment at Morristown, described that the complete lack of discipline rampant among American soldiers, especially thefts from other soldiers and the plundering of local residents’ property, further exacerbated the already present civilian anxiety over their economic livelihood. In January 1780, for instance, Rubin Parker received one hundred lashes on the bare back for theft, while in February the Continental Army executed another soldier for the same crime. Similarly, Scammell recorded death sentences in May 1780 for four soldiers of the Pennsylvania line after they plundered the house of Cornelius Bogart near Paramus.²³ Plundering became so widespread that the General Orders issued on January 28, 1780, prohibited soldiers from leaving camp. Although some soldiers sought riches from plundering civilian homes, hunger motivated many more to search the countryside for food. Plundering continued after Morristown with Eliza Susan Quincy of Basking Ridge writing in her memoirs that in 1781 that a group of armed soldiers broke into her home searching for gold watches. The thieves stole thirty pounds worth of gold and silver before threatening to kill the home’s inhabitants unless they turned over more loot. The robbers proceeded to ransack the house and took twelve ruffled linen shirts, all the plates, the tea and coffee service, and every piece of silver, threatening to burn down the house if the family reported the theft.²⁴

      Just as American troops did, British forces also routinely foraged for supplies and angered already economically vulnerable residents. In December 1776, for instance, General Howe reported from New Brunswick that so many solidiers plundered civilian property, it would “be absolutely impossible to prevail upon the inhabitants to bring provisions to market” where the army could legally buy them. Similar reports came from Middlebush in June 1777 when Howe ordered that anyone found guilty of “marauding or pulling down houses, barns or any irregularity” would be punished severely. Punishments for plundering happened with regularity as Howe reported that John Gibson had been sentenced to 1,000 lashes for robbery and Jacob Van Tessel faced death for the same crime.²⁵ Likewise, physician Martin McEvoy stood trial for illegally plundering a horse and cow in 1778, a charge of which the court-martial found him guilty and discharged him from the service. Lt. Boswell of the Maryland loyalists similarly stood trial in September 1778 for taking two horses. Boswell claimed that he only took them because he was “so very lame that he could hardly walk” and, after his unit left New Jersey, he sent the horses back to their owner. Even though the court found him not guilty, the actions he and others took affected not only the economic lives of New Jerseyans but their willingness to support the Continental Army.²⁶

      British forces quickly realized that foraging in New Jersey had turned many residents against their cause. As Howe had feared in New Brunswick in 1776, New York’s British governor, James Robertson, wrote to Lord George Germain in 1780 after the Battle of Short Hills that the burning of several houses by area loyalists “deprived us of the reputation the general’s intentions merited and gave too good foundation to the rebels to represent us as inimical to the country.”²⁷ Benedict Arnold likewise argued in 1780 that “plundering the distressed inhabitants of New Jersey” would cause them to support the patriots.²⁸ British actions resulted in just that, as many New Jerseyans allied with Continental forces. By early 1777, Whipple reported that the “ravages committed by the enemy have had a most excellent effect on the people of Jersey” as “the militia now turn out with great spirit and harass the ravagers of their country in every quarter.”²⁹ At the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, Hunterdon County militia officer Joseph Clark reiterated his men’s support for the patriots when he wrote that the battle had “roused the militia . . . they turned out with such a spirit . . . never did the Jerseys appear more universally unanimous to oppose the enemy.”³⁰

      The economic devastation caused by the Revolution became further exacerbated by the work of the slaves themselves since they capitalized on the war’s destructive and disruptive power and struck out for freedom. For example, slaveholders in the most heavily slave populated county, Bergen, saw the loss of hundreds of slaves who joined British forces and no longer supported the county’s agricultural base. One such Bergen resident, Richard Varick, bemoaned in 1778 that “in the beginning of the war, my father had two middle-aged negroes and wenches—he has lost the wench . . . one negro died and the last wench and one negro left with the enemy.”³¹ Varick’s two escaped slaves joined hundreds more who heard the British promise of freedom. The fear that blacks could run away, disrupt New Jersey’s slave system, and potentially serve in the king’s army exacerbated the anxiety caused by the war and further damaged the economic viability of hundreds of slaveholders. The slaves themselves then, even as they sought freedom, inadvertently convinced many whites of the dangers of wartime abolition.³²

      British enthusiasm for offering slaves freedom and thereby economically hurting patriot masters began in 1775 when Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia, promised freedom to any slave who would fight against the Americans. News of Dunmore’s promise spread far from Virginia and soon slaves in New Jersey understood the British as a beacon of freedom. British commanders across the colonies announced similar declarations. On June 7, 1779, David Jones, the British general in charge of New York, declared that “all Negroes that fly from the Enemy’s Country are Free . . . no person whatever can claim a right to them.” Jones’s declaration exceeded the limited scope of Dunmore’s because he offered freedom to all slaves who escaped to Tory lines, not just males that fought.³³

      New Jersey slaves quickly