scholarly journals The Headquarters Papers of the British Army in North America during the War of the American Revolution: A Brief Description of Sir Henry Clinton's Papers in the William L. Clements Library

1929 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 350
Author(s):  
Evarts B. Greene ◽  
Randolph G. Adams
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
British Army

‘To bring the American Army under strict Discipline’: British Army Foraging Policy in the South, 1780–81

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-26
Author(s):  
Gregory J.W. Urwin
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
American South ◽  
British Army ◽  
The South ◽  
The American South ◽  
Commander In Chief ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
American Army

Many British soldiers charged with suppressing the American Revolution embarked on their mission animated by anger. They expressed their fury most frequently through indiscriminate looting. Marauding undermined the discipline of the king’s troops and their commanders’ strategy by making enemies out of American moderates who had not yet rebelled, alienating Loyalists, and renewing Rebel resolve to continue fighting. In either 1778 or 1779, General Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander-in-chief in North America, commissioned two aides-de-camp, Major Patrick Ferguson and Captain John André, to formulate independent plans to enable British armies to operate in the interior without alienating hearts and minds. This article explores how Clinton, Lieutenant General Lord Charles Cornwallis, and other British commanders attempted to implement the André/Ferguson plan in the American South in 1780 and 1781.

Sophistry, Security, and Socio-Political Structures in the American Revolution; or, Why Jamaica did not Rebel

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. R. Clayton
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
British Empire ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
North American ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Constitutional Principle ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
Political Structures

Britain's most important American colonies did not rebel in 1776. Thirteen provinces did declare their independence; but no fewer than nineteen colonies in the western hemisphere remained loyal to the mother country. Massachusetts and Virginia may have led the American revolution, but they had never been the leading colonies of the British empire. From the imperial standpoint, the significance of any of the thirteen provinces which rebelled was pale in comparison with that of Jamaica or Barbados. In the century before 1763 the recalcitrance of these two colonies had been more notorious than that of any mainland province and had actually inspired many of the imperial policies cited as long-term grievances by North American patriots in 1774. Real Whig ideology, which some historians have seen as the key to understanding the American revolution, was equally understood by Caribbean elites who, like the continental, had often proved extremely sensitive on questions of constitutional principle. Attacks of ‘frenzied rhetoric’ broke out in Jamaica in 1766 and Barbados in 1776. But these had nothing whatsoever to do with the Stamp Act or events in North America.

Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution

1966 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 1058
Author(s):  
North Callahan ◽  
John Shy
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
British Army

Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution.

1966 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 240
Author(s):  
Willard M. Wallace ◽  
John Shy
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
British Army

Children and Slavery

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilma King
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
African Descent ◽  
Black Children ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Labor Costs ◽  
White Girls

Boys and girls of European and African descent in Colonial America shared commonalities initially as unfree laborers, with promises of emancipation for all. However, as labor costs and demands changed, white servitude disappeared and slavery in perpetuity prevailed for the majority of blacks in the South following the American Revolution. Children were aware of differences in their legal status, social positions, life changing opportunities, and vulnerabilities within an environment where blackness signaled slavery or the absence of liberty, and whiteness garnered license or freedom. Slavery and freedom existed concomitantly, and relationships among children, even black ones, in North America were affected by time and place. Slave societies and societies with slaves determined the nature of interactions among enslaved and emancipated children. To be sure, few, if any, freed or free-born blacks did not have a relative or friend who was not or had never been enslaved, especially in states when gradual emancipation laws liberated family members born after a specific date and left older relatives in thralldom. As a result, free blacks were never completely aloof from their enslaved contemporaries. And, freedom was more meaningful if and when enjoyed by all. Just as interactions among enslaved and free black children varied, slaveholding children were sometimes benevolent and at other times brutal toward those they claimed as property. And, enslaved children did not always assume subservient positions under masters and mistresses in the making. Ultimately, fields of play rather than fields of labor fostered the most fair and enjoyable moments among slaveholding and enslaved children. Play days for enslaved girls and boys ended when they were mature enough to work outside their own abodes. As enslaved children entered the workplace, white boys of means, often within slaveholding families, engaged in formal studies, while white girls across classes received less formal education but honed skills associated with domestic arts. The paths of white and black children diverged as they reached adolescence, but there were instances when they shared facets of literacy, sometimes surreptitiously, and developed genuine friendships that mitigated the harshness of slavery. Even so, the majority of unfree children survived the furies of bondage by inculcating behavior that was acceptable for both a slave and a child.

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