“All grand tories:” Loyalism in the trans-Appalachian west during the revolutionary war

ABSTRACT

Loyalism was a potent force in the Trans-Appalachian West during the American Revolution. However, the experiences of western Loyalists differed from those elsewhere and provide a broader understanding of the forces affecting Loyalism in the British Empire. There were few reasons for western Loyalists to declare their sympathies and even fewer opportunities to seek assistance from the British. Geography meant that western Loyalists were isolated and could not cooperate effectively with the British government and army, while the threat of Indian attack also gave Loyalists and Whigs a common cause. Consequently, they lacked a clear identity, especially as most westerners were, to some degree, disaffected. Indeed, many frontier “patriots,” from George Rogers Clark to Daniel Boone, were associated with disaffection, if not outright Loyalism. Finally, the reintegration of Loyalists into western society after the Revolution meant that memories of Loyalism were written out of family and local histories.

KEYWORDS:

• American revolution
• backcountry
• loyalism
• trans-Appalachian West
• Kentucky
• frontier

In the decade before the American Revolution, and increasingly during the Revolutionary crisis itself, thousands of farmers and their families poured into the region lying immediately west of the Appalachian Mountains. Many of these migrants were Loyalists fleeing from persecution in the East or attempting to escape the political and social turmoil that was overtaking the colonies. Early Kentucky pioneer William Clinkenbeard described how, when travelling to Kentucky in 1776, he “could hardly get along the road for them; and all grand Tories, pretty nigh. All from Carolina Tories. Had been treated so bad there, they had to run off or do worse.”¹ However, the presence of a large number of Loyalists in the West has been largely overlooked in the historiography of both the Revolution as a whole and of the region itself. Writing over a century ago, Wilbur H. Siebert bemoaned the lack of attention given to Loyalism in the Trans-Appalachian West, pointing to the “large proportion of tories or loyalists in the revolutionary days, besides many who behaved like loyalists when the British forces were at hand.”² Views of the Trans-Appalachian West written during the nineteenth century almost ubiquitously portrayed the West as a hotbed of Revolutionary fervour. One of the most influential American historians of the nineteenth century, George Bancroft, assured his readers that “the affection of the West flowed in a full current towards the Union.” The men of the West “with fearless gallantry and a terrible loss of life, shed over Virginia a lustre that reached to Tennessee and Kentucky.”³

A century after Sibert was writing, western Loyalism still remains a largely invisible force. Brave “frontier patriots” like George Rogers Clark dominate much of the historiography of the West during the Revolutionary War. Some recent historians such as Malcolm Rohrbough, Stephen Aron, and Craig Thompson Friend have been more nuanced in their discussions of support for the Revolutionary movement. Aron, for instance, notes that many of Virginia’s land policies alienated westerners, converting migrants into Loyalists, yet has no detailed discussion of Loyalism beyond this.⁴ Friend has argued that many Kentuckians had no choice but to support the Revolution, quoting David Ramsey, who wrote that “several who called themselves Tories in 1775 became active Rebels in 1776.”⁵ However, Ramsay was writing about the Revolution in South Carolina, not in the Trans-Appalachian West, and the forces operating in the Carolinas were very different from those in the Trans-Appalachian West.

Understanding the nuances and extent of western Loyalism provides a useful yardstick for comparison with other regions of North America and the British Empire. An examination of Loyalism in its disparate contexts allows the identification of some factors that influenced individual choices in the eighteenth century. In particular, it allows a consideration of the forces that generated disaffection and then converted the disaffected into Loyalists and, in reverse, what forces prevented the emergence of active and open Loyalism. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the western regions of British North America. Studies of western Loyalism have tended to focus on Loyalism in the backcountry of North Carolina or western New York on the eastern slopes of the Appalachians.⁶ The Trans-Appalachian West, the region lying to the west of the colonies of Pennsylvania and Virginia, which would later be called the Old Northwest, has largely been ignored in such studies.

The nature of the region itself may be significant. The Trans-Appalachian West in the era of the American Revolution can be defined as the region lying to the west of the Eastern Watershed, whose creeks and rivers ultimately drained into the Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico. This encompassed western Virginia and western Pennsylvania and territory lying north of the Ohio River that would become the Northwest Territory. It also included some parts of western North Carolina in what would become Tennessee, but the settled areas of the North and South Carolina frontier and backcountry lay east of the watershed and thus outside the region.

Geography was highly significant because it isolated the region and may be considered the first key factor influencing the shape and nature of western Loyalism. The Trans-Appalachian West was remote and inaccessible compared to other areas of the British Empire. Isolated from the eastern coast of North America by the Appalachian Mountains, and with often-hostile native peoples blocking easy access westwards to the Great Lakes and Mississippi River, the region was more inaccessible than almost any other in the British Empire during the era of the American Revolution. Most travellers who traversed the Wilderness Road between Virginia and the Kentucky settlements travelled in groups for protection, and the trip took several weeks. The journey was so difficult that, in many ways, travelling across the Appalachians was not that dissimilar from an oceanic crossing in terms of the preparation, time, danger, and effort needed to make the journey, and it isolated westerners from their friends and kin in the east. Methodist bishop and evangelist Francis Asbury specifically described the Wilderness Trail, the crossing taken by most western migrants, as “like being at sea, in some respects, and in others worse.”⁷ William Clinkenbeard claimed that “I would never have stayed in the country then if I could have gotten out.” The Appalachian Mountains thus formed a psychological as well as a physical barrier that separated the West from the East.⁸

A principal impact of this isolation was to make it difficult for any westerner who wanted to demonstrate open and practical support for the Crown. Whereas in the Carolinas or around New York, it was relatively easy for Loyalists to flee to British lines, enlist in the British Army, or provide support of various sorts to the British war effort, in the Trans-Appalachian West, Loyalists had few options. They could choose to attempt to reach Detroit or Fort Niagara to join the British, but this was a long and arduous journey. Otherwise, they must remain and bide their time. A few men, such as Simon Girty and Alexander McKee, joined the British in Detroit. But these men typically took on roles as Indian agents and had specific expertise that was both in demand by the British and, most importantly, could ensure their safe passage across Indian lands. Most Loyalists lacked such expertise, and the dangers they might face in fleeing across Indian lands to the British at Detroit were far greater than any threat they may have faced by remaining in the West. Consequently, most westerners with Loyalist sympathies had few opportunities to declare their support for the British openly and participate in armed resistance.⁹

The exceptions to this were the Loyalists living in some of the settled valleys of southwestern Virginia, such as the Holston and New River valleys. Here, Loyalist sympathisers were close enough to possible British support, particularly during Cornwallis’s invasion of the Carolinas and Virginia, to consider active participation in the war. It was here that the most visible Loyalist presence in the Trans-Appalachian West emerged. In addition, small numbers of Loyalist Kentucky militiamen traversed the Appalachians in 1780 and 1781 to join the British in the Carolinas. There were many Kentuckians present at the Battle of Ramsour’s Mill, in the North Carolina backcountry, for instance, and there were some numbers of westerners present in British regiments in the southern campaigns. However, most Loyalists who remained in the West had little opportunity to participate actively in the war.¹⁰

Their isolation made it difficult to coordinate activities with British commanders and meant that British officers and officials remained woefully informed about the extent of potential support in the West. There was no conduit through which news and information could be transmitted between British officials and their potential supporters in the West. Following the defeat of Governor Henry Hamilton by George Rogers Clark at Vincennes in February 1779, there were almost no British officers in the region beyond a few Indian agents operating amongst the Ohio Indians. News and information came into and spread out of the region slowly. Just a few weeks before his defeat at Vincennes, Hamilton had written to the theatre commander General Frederick Haldimand begging him to send him information on the status of the French in the war and also inquiring whether the Spanish had yet entered the conflict as he had “as yet no account by which I may venture to act.”¹¹ Lacking the most basic intelligence on the development of the war, Hamilton was blundering in the dark, and this lack of intelligence would contribute to his calamitous decision to surrender his army to Clark’s smaller force. Over two months after his surrender to Clark, the British were still collecting and dispatching intelligence about Hamilton’s operations in the interior even though his army had ceased to exist. Indeed, news of his surrender did not reach British Headquarters in New York until late July, almost five months after the event. That British forces in the West could lack such basic information, while officers in the East could be so poorly informed about the West, exposes fundamental communication problems and may help explain the lack of detailed information about western Loyalism.¹²

If geography was one force that provided a distinctive environment that shaped western Loyalism, another was the presence of a powerful “other” in the form of the American Indian inhabitants of the Ohio Valley. The Indian peoples of the Ohio Valley, principally Shawnee, Delaware, and Miami, were often viewed by contemporaries as pawns of the British; they fought because the British ordered them to fight. However, the Indian peoples of the Ohio Valley participated in the Revolutionary War not at the behest of the British but for their own motives, principally to secure their homelands from white settlement and appropriation. While several studies have incorporated African American struggles for freedom within the fold of Loyalism, there has been no attempt to view the American Indian struggle for independence and liberty within the same context.¹³ This is, in many ways, a strange omission, for the Ohio Indians can, in some ways, be seen as the most powerful Loyalist force in the Trans-Appalachian West. Indian support for the Crown was central in determining the course of the war and shaping the Loyalist identity across the region. Although the British surrendered their claims to territory south of the Great Lakes at the Treaty of Paris in 1783, and effectively abandoned their Indian allies, British officials in Canada continued to press for the formation of an Indian territory and continued to occupy forts in the region until 1795 in order to offer support to their former allies.¹⁴

This shaped a different form of war in the West. All western inhabitants were involved in a separate war, which united Loyalists and Revolutionaries in a common cause that was more important to them than the Revolutionary War. Indeed, the concept of the Revolutionary War fits very awkwardly in the West where matters were very different. For the Ohio Indians, the struggle was part of a broader struggle to protect their homelands from the encroachment of white farmers that stretched from 1754 to 1794 or even 1814. Indeed, the most violent year of the conflict in the West was 1782, when Indian raiding parties devastated the exposed backcountry, Revolutionary militias massacred Indians, and the Kentucky militia suffered their most significant defeat of the war at the Battle of Blue Licks. Yet in the East, by 1782, the war was essentially over as a cease-fire was maintained following the surrender of Cornwallis’s army at Yorktown while British and American negotiators met in Paris. Many recent studies have suggested that the Revolutionary War in the Trans-Appalachian West should essentially be regarded as a separate struggle from the American Revolutionary War. Elizabeth Perkins has called for this war to be recognised as a continual forty years struggle between colonists and Indians for control of the Ohio Valley, from 1755 to 1795, while David Curtis Skaggs has even argued that it should be termed “The Sixty Years War for the Great Lakes.”¹⁵

The distinct nature of the war, and the participation of the Indian peoples of the Ohio Valley, influenced the war in the West, and the nature of western Loyalism, in profound ways. White settlements were only recently established and relatively isolated, allowing Indian raiding parties to penetrate with relative ease deep into the backcountry. Across Kentucky, western Virginia, and western Pennsylvania, most farms and settlements were repeatedly exposed to raids. In June 1780, raiding parties, equipped with light artillery, captured two fortified settlements in Kentucky, Ruddle’s and Martin’s Stations. These stations had previously been thought all but impregnable and provided a place of last retreat for frontier colonists. Their capture caused intense panic. Pioneer William Clinkenbeard recalled, “Our Station was very near breaking up at that time. Heap of people packed up their plunder to move off.” In July 1782, an even larger raiding party destroyed Hannastown, the county town of Westmoreland County, in western Pennsylvania. The threat of death or capture at the hands of a raiding party, and the destruction of farms and livestock, bound all westerners together in mutual defence. It provided a common cause for which everyone could fight.¹⁶

In the Carolinas and Georgia, Revolutionary forces launched a brutal and decisive strike against the the nearest American Indian threat, the Cherokee, at the start of the war. This attack essentially neutralised the Cherokee for the remainder of the war and caused other American Indian nations, such as the Creeks, to follow a much more restrained policy. The backcountry of the Carolinas was also much more densely populated by white farmers than the Trans-Appalachian West, making raids deep into the interior all but impossible. Consequently, in the Carolina backcountry, although perhaps not all of the Georgia backcountry, attacks from Indian raiding parties were little more than a distant threat for most inhabitants. They may have feared an Indian war, but they were not faced with the threat of imminent death or destruction.¹⁷

The nature of this war was, therefore, central to shaping the nature and experiences of Loyalism in the Trans-Appalachian West because both Loyalists and Whigs had a common enemy: the American Indian inhabitants of the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes region. The Ohio Indians could sometimes distinguish between those more prone to support the British and those who were more implacable enemies. Indians twice captured Daniel Boone and seized the skins and furs that he had spent a season hunting and took him captive to Detroit, where he remained for several months. However, otherwise, he was unscathed and remained in contact with his captors, and on friendly terms, until the end of his life. In contrast, when William Crawford, commander of the Washington County militia, who had recently massacred a hundred pacifist Indians at Gnadenhutten, was captured, he did not have such a fortunate fate. Crawford was agonisingly tortured for several hours. A witness of his torture reported that “he continued in all the extremities of pain for an hour and three quarters or two hours longer, as near as I can judge, when at last being almost spent, he lay down on his belly: they then scalped him.”¹⁸

However, although raiding parties could sometimes distinguish friend from foe, this did not necessarily mean that supporters of the Crown were safe from attack. Although widely known as a centre of Loyalist support, Bryan’s Station was attacked by raiding parties on several occasions. To the Ohio Indians, all incoming colonists were enemies; they sought to occupy their villages and drive them from their homelands. Indian attacks meant that all the white inhabitants of the Trans-Appalachian West had to look out for each other and overrode much of the hostility and enmity that might otherwise have existed between Loyalists and Whigs. Fear of attack and the terror it created amongst the white inhabitants of the West, overrode any internal political distinctions between different groups. When an Indian raiding party appeared, all cooperated in mutual defence. Acts of bravery secured a place in local folklore and a place of worth in the local community, regardless an individual’s political sympathies. Over forty years after their deaths, Josiah Collins remembered Isaac and Nathan Fearis as “brave men, [who] stood their ground till the Indians killed them.” Herman Bowman similarly described Joe Stucker as “the greatest illiterate man I ever saw, very silent man, distinct bravery and eternal vigilance.”¹⁹ Because militia service in the Trans-Appalachian West was also directed at operations against the Ohio Indians who were raiding deep into white settlements, many Loyalists found no pressing reason to seek to avoid such service, whereas in the East, militia service was one of the most obvious markers of Whigs and Loyalists. William Clinkenbeard later recollected how several militia officers under whom he served were Loyalists. In particular, he claimed that John Holder was “as grand a Tory as ever lived; was our Captain in the 1780 campaign.” Common service against a common enemy overrode such distinctions in the West.²⁰

British officials were only too aware of the ability of Indian raiding parties to drive frontier inhabitants to the Revolutionary cause. American newspapers in 1775 and 1776 had been full of stories of Indian atrocities, many of them manufactured by Revolutionary propagandists. Although by 1776, the British had made almost no use of their Indian allies in attacks on the frontier, The Declaration of Independence used such attacks as one of the justifications for independence. Such accounts of savagery transformed the British commanding officer at Detroit, Henry Hamilton, into the notorious “hair-buyer” and stoked widespread revulsion of the British and their Indian allies. The killing in July 1777 of Jane Macrae, a backcountry colonist, ironically engaged to a Loyalist officer, by Indian warriors supporting Burgoyne’s campaign, became grist for Revolutionary writers and served as a means to galvanise the militias opposing Burgoyne’s army. Some Revolutionary writers were even prepared to fabricate atrocities when needed. Many of the claims against Henry Hamilton were grossly exaggerated, while perhaps most infamously, Benjamin Franklin, in 1782, invented accounts of the capture of a British ship containing the scalps of women and children being sent as presents from Britain’s Indian allies to the Crown. All such accounts were designed to create maximum revulsion and to provide Americans with a defined cause for taking up arms against the mother country.²¹

As British officials in North America, particularly Sir Guy Carleton, Governor of Canada, attempted to formulate a strategy for conducting the war in the West, they were only too aware of the danger that encouraging Indian warriors to attack the backcountry would drive any potential Loyalist supporters into the Revolutionary camp. Carleton, in particular, was very reluctant to provide any encouragement or support to Indian raids and military activity outside the immediate environs of the St Lawrence Valley. The lack of British support caused some consternation among the Indian peoples of the Ohio Valley and also disturbed some British officers. When Carleton’s orders limiting the involvement of Indian warriors were received, one official quipped: “what were General Carleton’s Motives for restraining the Indians from acting against the Rebels beyond the Boundary of the Province of Quebec, is not explained in any of his dispatches.”²²

The actions of Revolutionary forces and the need to provide effective support for Burgoyne’s expedition from Canada down the Champlain Valley, finally forced the hand of Carleton and other British officials. In the summer of 1777, Hamilton received orders “to make a Diversion on the Frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia with the Indians of his District, led by proper Persons to direct their Operations, and to give pay to any of the frontier Settlers that should join him, and a promise of 200 Acres of Land if they served during the Rebellion.”²³ By the end of 1778, shortly before his surrender to Clark, Hamilton was able to report that he had “sent out parties in every direction … [who] have distressed a large tract of Country.”²⁴

As Carleton had feared, few Loyalists in the West were able or willing to take advantage of the offers of land. The offer of 200 acres of land to men who already possessed farms in Pennsylvania or Virginia was woefully insufficient to counter the dangers of the journey to Detroit. Even if they had had a compelling desire to join the British, few knew how or where they could do so, and there is little evidence that knowledge of the terms of service offered to Loyalist recruits was widely circulating in the West. At the same time, the threat of attack by Indian raiding parties created a sense of a common cause amongst all white inhabitants, whether their sympathies lay with King George or the Continental Congress. However, the British had few options available. The Ohio Indians were unlikely to remain neutral in the war even if the British encouraged this. American militias repeatedly attacked Indian villages and even murdered pro-American leaders such as White Eyes and Cornstalk. In the Southeast the British had encouraged the Cherokee to remain neutral at the start of the Revolutionary conflict, but Cherokee warriors still descended on the backcountry of Georgia and the Carolinas, provoking a swift counterattack by Revolutionary forces that devastated Cherokee Country before the British could send aid. The threat of such a powerful “other” that threatened both Loyalist and Whig alike was therefore one of the key forces that shaped the nature of western Loyalism.²⁵

However, while the threat of Indian attack may have encouraged Loyalist and Whig to participate in their own defence, another factor that shaped western Loyalism was the depth of internal divisions within the community. Indeed, these divisions severely hampered attempts to defend the West. Western Pennsylvania, in particular, was riven by deep social and political disputes. Virginia and Pennsylvania both claimed control of the region, both organised counties and set up rival court and militia systems, and rival groups of gentlemen from each state sought to direct affairs and refused to accept the authority of officials from the other state. Around Pittsburgh, farmers frustrated at the disputes between Virginia and Pennsylvania, sought to break free of both and “Determined to Declare them Selves a Separate State.”²⁶

When Virginian George Rogers Clark tried to recruit troops for a planned expedition in the Ohio Country in 1781, the Pennsylvanians all but rebelled. Pennsylvania militia officer James Marshal wrote that when he had tried to organise a detachment of Pennsylvania militia to counter the raids, “the Extraordinary Freedom which he [Clark] and his party of the old Virginia Officers used with the people of this Country, stood greatly in the way; they were Indefatigable … in pulling down my Advertisements – dissuading the people from attending the Elections – Crying out that I was every thing that was bad.” Pennsylvanians bluntly refused to enlist in Clark’s force, but their resistance went much further, and they assaulted Virginia militia officers, ransacked their homes, burned their crops and killed their livestock. The Virginians, in turn, responded by proclaiming a draft of all men and threatening to compel those who did not join Clark’s forces to enlist in the Continental Army. When Westmoreland County Pennsylvania justice, John Douglas, queried the legality of the Virginia draft, Clark ordered his arrest and execution. He sent out a party of Virginia state troops to apprehend Douglas, but not finding him, they looted his home and crops, threatened his wife and children, and arrested many of his neighbours, accusing them all of high treason. Mobs now rampaged through the neighbourhood preventing the collection of taxes and the imposition of the Pennsylvania Test Act.²⁷ Similar, though not so intense, divisions also divided Kentucky. Kentuckians, angered by the lack of protection from Indian raids, sought separation from Virginia. The inhabitants of Louisville on the Ohio River even sought separation from Kentucky angered at the lack of attention the regional government in the Blue Grass paid to them.²⁸

While divisions within society were hardly unique to the West, the extent to which most inhabitants were alienated from the policies and aims of state governments and the Continental Congress was distinctive. Disaffection from the government, however, was not the same as Loyalism, even though many on both sides often conflated the two. These disputes were almost always tied to local, rather than imperial, issues, as in western Pennsylvania. Such internal disputes cannot be taken as evidence that one group was more or less loyal to the Crown, or Continental Congress, than the other. Emory Evans has noted that terms such as tory, nonjuror and recusant were often used all but interchangeably to discuss Loyalists and appear scattered throughout court proceedings, yet these were not identical statements of belief. Non-jurors and recusants were simply those who refused to accept the authority of the state government and swear loyalty oaths or serve in the militia. They were not necessarily ardent supporters of the Crown.²⁹

On the eastern seaboard, particularly in the Carolinas, the intervention of the British Army often resulted in one group of the disaffected, or one side of an internal community conflict, seeking the support of the Crown and transforming the conflict into a dispute between Loyalists and Revolutionaries. The approach of a British army into a region frequently inflamed local conflicts and largely accounted for the acrimony of the war in the backcountry of the Carolinas, east of the Appalachians. In North Carolina, the demands of the Revolutionary government for militia service, taxes and supplies, when threatened with a British invasion, led to widespread disaffection and even insurrection. However, when British commanders interpreted such disaffection as widespread support for the Crown and devised a southern military strategy based upon exploiting this support, they not only greatly exacerbated the existing disputes but found that the supposed supporters of the Crown were few and far between. Disaffection may have been widespread, but open support for the Crown was much less widespread. The arrival of British forces forced individuals to make a stand. Both sides attempted to enforce loyalty oaths, demanded militia service and taxes.³⁰

If this was the case in the Carolinas, where there was the possibility of British intervention, in the West, an appeal to the Crown could not provide any meaningful aid. Unlike in other regions, western Loyalists rarely cooperated en masse and failed to cooperate with British forces. There was no British “western strategy” in the manner in which the administration developed a “southern strategy.” No British army invaded the Trans-Appalachian West and forced individuals to make a declaration of their loyalty or to cooperate with one another. Following Hamilton’s surrender to George Rogers Clark in 1779, British forces in the Illinois Country remained on the defensive, and it was left to the Ohio Indians to launch offensive operations, supplied and equipped by the British in Canada, into the settlements in the Trans-Appalachian West. While American commanders may have fretted about rumours of British and Loyalist invasions of the Trans-Appalachian West, none materialised.³¹

If these local disputes in the West are viewed in a broader chronological context, the problems of associating disaffection directly with Loyalism become even more apparent. In a manner similar to the American Indian struggle for control of the region, western disaffection was not simply associated with the era of the American Revolution but had a much broader context, spreading from the 1750s to the 1790s: “disaffection” from the government was almost the default state of western society. During the 1760s, for instance, the frontier of Pennsylvania witnessed intense unrest. In December 1763, frontiersmen calling themselves the Paxton Boys, angered at Pennsylvania’s offer of protection to the colony’s Indian allies while they suffered the devastation of ongoing enemy Indian raids, descended upon the peaceful community of Conestoga Indians living in their midst, returning several days later to attack the jail in which the survivors had taken shelter. From there, they marched on Philadelphia, briefly threatening the provincial government. The Paxton Boys marked the start of almost continual activities in opposition to the colonial authorities. In March of 1765, residents of the Conococheague Valley in Cumberland County attacked a British convoy transporting goods to Pittsburgh and threatened to storm Fort Loudon. One British officer claimed that the “Country People is Raising in Arms.” Over the following decade, popular and widespread discontent continued, with violence directed against Indians and colonial officials across the backcountry.³²

In the years after the Revolution, disaffection from the new governments led to the numerous secessionist impulses that swept through the West. In 1784 a group of backcountry farmers in the Tennessee Valley, declared their region independent and attempted to form their own state of Franklin. Just three years later, Kentuckian James Wilkinson led a group of Kentucky politicians and merchants who offered to pledge their loyalty to Spain and join Kentucky to the Spanish Empire. During the early 1790s, farmers in western Pennsylvania and Virginia joined together in the “Whiskey Rebellion” and sought to break free of the United States and establish their own government freed from the interference of the eastern states.³³ No other region of the United States witnessed such extensive discontent with the early republic. Western disaffection was uniquely deep and widespread. However, such disaffection did not necessarily equate with Loyalist support. Opponents of the state governments and the Continental Congress did not turn to the British, as they did in Vermont, for instance, as well as in parts of the Carolinas. In different circumstances, had the West not been so isolated and the British been able to offer support to one faction or another, had there not been a powerful Indian threat, one faction may have sought support from the Crown, but this did not happen in the West during the Revolutionary War.³⁴

The coalescence of disaffection into Loyalism was also hampered by the comparative lack of social ties. Colonists were moving into the Trans-Appalachian West as the Revolutionary War was raging in the East. Their migration destroyed many traditional social bonds; in many ways, western society was a society of strangers. In the East, such social ties helped to define the nature of the war. Around New York, family ties often even overrode political sympathies. Communication between family members across community lines was commonplace, often blurring pollical sympathies and creating permeable boundaries between Whig and Tory.³⁵

Another consequence of the lack of community ties may be that the social groups who supported the Crown in the West appear to have been slightly different to Loyalists elsewhere. Emory Evans’s study of Loyalists in the Upper Valley of Virginia has suggested that those who declared themselves to be Loyalists tended to be poorer than the region’s leaders, and many may have been recent immigrants who “felt little loyalty to established leaders.”³⁶ While specific proof of poverty can be hard to find – few Loyalists appear in the sparse surviving tax lists for these regions – there certainly is much evidence suggesting poverty. In Montgomery and Botetourt counties, which included the New River Valley, in western Virginia, when suspected Loyalists were brought before the county court, only a few were able to post bond for their good behaviour. Many escaped punishment by enlisting in the Continental Army, or by persuading their sons to enlist, behaviour that would be more typical of a poor tenant than a wealthy farmer. Others were punished by flogging, which was typically reserved for those with so little capital that they could not pay a fine. Indeed, some Loyalists, such as George Walker, were specifically identified by the court as “poor and ignorant.”³⁷ Similarly, those Loyalists who petitioned for aid at Detroit, particularly those from western Pennsylvania, seem to have been principally poor families.³⁸ That poorer westerners may have comprised more than their share of Loyalists also provides some evidence for the tight links between Loyalism and disaffection. For it was poorer men, unable to gain land, who were most disaffected from the government and would later participate in the Whiskey Rebellion.³⁹

It was even more significant that no members of the Western elite openly backed the Crown, which is in marked contrast to other regions of North America. Once more, the deciding factor seems to have been access to property and land. In the West, Loyalists fretted about the security of their land, and sought to secure their rights and titles. While security of property rights may have been an issue elsewhere, and was one of Loyalists’ concerns in most parts of the empire, nowhere else did it possess such influence. In New York, for instance, Loyalists were concerned about their constitutional and legal rights, and fumed when British officials restricted these and implement martial law. To westerners such abstract issues about liberty and government seemed unimportant when struggling for day-to-day survival. Western elites desired land, and particularly they sought land in which they could make speculative investments. For all colonists, rich and poor, the legal security of their land title and physical security on the land were paramount concerns. The Crown’s attempts to restrict western expansion in the wake of the Proclamation of 1763 ushered in a policy that sought to restrict, rather than encourage, western speculation and expansion, while Britain’s support of their Indian allies threatened physical security. For most men, rich and poor, the struggle in the West was more about an assessment of who could offer the best security for their property rights than it was about disputes over parliamentary sovereignty. Indeed, one group of colonists who communicated with British agents brazenly declared that they would “defend the Country that affords them protection.”⁴⁰

Ultimately, there could be little doubt that elites and speculators stood more chance of acquiring land and secure title from the new United States and the state governments than they did from the British government. For poorer men, however, this was less apparent, but their protests did not necessarily make them Loyalists. When poor men objected to the land policies of wealthy elites, or squatters protested and tenants refused to pay their rents, elite men were wont to define them as Loyalists or tories, even if they had little support for the Crown. Indeed, land disputes in numerous guises lay at the root of most western discontent from the 1750s to the 1790s.⁴¹

Another reason for the failure of western elites to support the Crown may simply be that western elites only arrived in the region during the war itself. In his classic 1965 study of Loyalist claims, Wallace Brown argued that how long someone had lived in North America was more influential in determining whether an individual became a Loyalist than their ethnicity: the more recently an individual had migrated, the more likely they were to be a Loyalist.⁴² However, very few colonists in the Trans-Appalachian West were immigrants from Great Britain, the overwhelming majority were migrants from the eastern colonies. Most were second or third-generation immigrants whose families had migrated west in search of increased opportunities, particularly more land. By contrast, many of the white inhabitants of the backcountry of the Carolinas were first-generation immigrants, and there were large communities of Highland Scots, many of whom strongly supported the Loyalist cause and gave it a recognisable identity. Migration across the Appalachians, shattered community ties and may also have served to break down some ethnic ties. If migration did undermine such ties, it may help to explain why, unlike almost every other region in North America, western Loyalism was not associated with the Scots and lacked a clearly defined social cohesion. Indeed, while in Virginia as a whole, Loyalism was closely associated with the Scots, in western Virginia it was the isolated communities of Welsh and Germans, and not the Scots, who were viewed as Loyalist sympathisers. One westerner, for instance, specifically blamed Loyalist disaffection on “a missunderstanding between Col Lynch and the Welsh in General.”⁴³

Contemporaries were very aware of ethnic divisions in the West, and social conflicts do seem to have partly revolved around such ethnic splits. However, these divisions were more complex than simply echoing traditional ethnic loyalties. One westerner wrote to Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, that “we have two sorts of people in this country, one called tuckahoes, being Generall. of the Lowland old Virginians. The other Class is Called cohees, Generally made up of Backwoods Virginians and Northward men, Scotch, Irish, &c, which seems, In some measure, to make Distinctions and Particions amongst us.”⁴⁴ Tuckahoes and Cohees were not simply amalgams of Scots and English but were much more complex rearrangements of ethnic and, more importantly, social and class identities. It was not a lack of ethnic identity that hindered the development of a clearly defined Loyalism in the West, but the lack of clearly defined social ties as a consequence of the recent and ongoing migration to the region.⁴⁵

A final significant force that defined Loyalist support was the relative lack of compulsion to make a public declaration of loyalty. Unlike in the East, few events in the Trans-Appalachian West compelled Loyalists to declare themselves openly. There were several key moments when authorities would compel individuals to declare their loyalties as the conflict waged. The first of these was generally with the enforcement of the Continental Association. Consumers were expected to participate fully in the boycott, initially of British tea, but then of all British imported items. But in the West, there were no seaports, and imported goods were almost non-existent, so consequently, there was no reason to impose a boycott. Debates over import duties and stamp taxes meant nothing in a region where there were no ports for items to arrive directly from Britain. No Committees of Safety were established west of the Appalachians to administer the Association and ensure civilians’ loyalty. Tarring and feathering were regularly used in the East to force recalcitrant men, most frequently government officials, to support the Continental Association. Such punishments were also used widely in the West in the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s to intimidate tax collectors. However, there is no evidence of tarring and feathering in the region during the 1770s. Local justices and officials did try to force suspected Loyalists to swear oaths of loyalty to the state, and identifiable Loyalism in the Appalachians first emerged in 1777 when Virginia attempted to enforce an oath of allegiance on all adult males. While some Loyalists did swear these oaths, those who could not bend their conscience to make such a pledge were generally able to take advantage of the dispersed nature of western settlement and the ineffective functioning of local courts to avoid making such a declaration. It was only in areas where the court was more entrenched, such as Augusta County in Southwestern Virginia, where there was any notable resistance to the oath. Elsewhere, attempts to enforce loyalty oaths were ineffective and sporadic, making it easy for western Loyalists to avoid declaring their position.⁴⁶

In the Carolinas, any Loyalist who came out in open support of the Crown was quickly persecuted. Colonel Robert Gray maintained that “when ever a Militia Man of ours was made a prisoner he was delivered … to the Rebel Militia, who looked upon him as a State prisoner, as a man who deserved a halter, & therefore treated him with the greatest cruelty.”⁴⁷ The Loyalists responded in kind, carrying on “a continual predatory war against the rebels & sometimes surprised them at musters. In short, they carried on the war against the rebels precisely as they had set the example.”⁴⁸ In the Trans-Appalachian West, however, matters were very different. Here there was no direct clash or battle between Loyalist and Revolutionary forces. The fighting west of the Appalachians was almost exclusively between the Indian allies of the British and western militias. The bitter civil war in the Carolina backcountry was avoided, and Loyalists were generally able to avoid making open declarations.

Many of these issues are revealed most clearly in southwestern Virginia, where the most extensive open resistance to Revolutionary authority in the West occurred in the New River Valley. In January 1778, William Preston reported the presence of one hundred suspected Loyalists in the region and feared that an uprising was looming.⁴⁹ By the spring of 1779, such fears seemed justified as Loyalist bands began to assemble in the region, and a report circulated that a group was planning to join with “the Indians and with them proceed to kill & Destroy all before them.” According to some reports, “Thousands … had joined their party, upon the Western Waters.”⁵⁰ By the early summer, the bands had become large enough that they threatened the strategically important lead mines in Washington County, upon which the Virginia and Continental forces depended for much of their supply of shot, and Whig militia units were rapidly dispatched to defend them.⁵¹

The following year, the arrival of a British army in South Carolina brought such alarms to a crescendo. As British forces advanced from the coast into the eastern slopes of the Appalachians, a bitter partisan war broke out in the Carolina backcountry, and British authorities hoped that Loyalists further west would rise in support of their brethren east of the mountains. Patrick Ferguson, the commander of Loyalist militia regiments in the Carolina backcountry, informed General Cornwallis that westerners were “very well disposed to take an active part” and that he had “much confidence that great benefit will be rendered.”⁵² As Ferguson had predicted, many western Loyalists now took the opportunity to muster and form militia units to oppose the actions of the Revolutionaries. William Preston reported that around 75 men in his county had now taken an oath to the Crown and were forming militia companies and corresponding with men in the neighbouring counties. Soon, Loyalist bands were mustering across southwestern Virginia.⁵³

Over the following months, western Loyalist bands continued to gather while other Loyalist militiamen journeyed to North Carolina to support the British advance into the backcountry. On 20 June 1780, Loyalist militias commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel John Moore clashed with a smaller force of Revolutionary militias, commanded by Colonel Francis Locke, near Ramsour’s Mill on the Little Catawba River, in North Carolina. The Loyalist force comprised around 1,300 militiamen, many of whom had come from the Trans-Appalachian West. After a fierce fight, with much brutality shown on both sides, the Revolutionary militias, although outnumbered, were able to disperse the Loyalist force. The battle was one of the largest engagements of the Revolutionary War involving Kentucky militiamen, with almost as many militiamen committed as the famous Battle of Blue Licks.⁵⁴

Despite the defeat and dispersal of the Loyalist force at Ramsour’s Mill, fears of Loyalist activity remained high in the West, and bands of Revolutionary militias rounded up suspected Loyalists in the Appalachian valleys. Indeed, rather than being dispirited, news of the surrender of Charleston to the British in May 1780 served to increase Loyalist morale and reinvigorate Loyalist activity.⁵⁵ In the summer of 1780, two Loyalist agents, John Griffith and John Heavin, were active in the region. According to William Preston, they planned “to Embody to a very great Number near the Lead Mines … and after securing that Place to over run the Country with the Assistance of the british Troops, who they were made to believe would meet them.” They would then free the British prisoners captured at Saratoga, who were held in confinement in western Virginia, and march east. Over a hundred armed Loyalists, and almost as many unarmed men, assembled near the Chiswell lead mines. However, they were surprised by a larger Whig militia force and dispersed.⁵⁶

It is significant that the most active and persistent Loyalist activity in the West took place in the New River Valley. This was one of the most accessible parts of the West. The New River was the first river that colonists discovered that did not flow into the Atlantic. it is to the west of the Eastern Watershed, flowing into the Kanawha River and then the Ohio River, it cuts through the Appalachian Mountains, and the upper valley, where much of the Loyalist activity occurred, was relatively well-connected with the East. Thus some of the most extensive Loyalist activity took place in the region with the best connectivity to the East. The valley was also one of the longest-settled regions in the West, having seen colonists arrive in the 1750s. There had therefore been an opportunity for community ties to develop by the time of the Revolution, unlike settlements further west. It was also more secure from the threat of Indian attack than almost any other part of the West. While farmers on the New River certainly fretted about Indian attacks, from the Ohio Indians to the north or the Cherokee to the south, compared to those further west, they were relatively secure. Finally, the timing of Loyalist activity was also highly significant. Activity in the region only became prominent when the British Army was campaigning in the South, particularly in North Carolina. Only when there was a realistic prospect that Loyalists might receive support from the British did they openly declare themselves and begin to take action.⁵⁷

That Loyalists only openly declared themselves under particular circumstances creates a fundamental problem in identifying the extent of Loyalist support in the Trans-Appalachian West. John Adams famously estimated that the American population was “about one third Tories, one third timid, and one third true Blue.”⁵⁸ Modern assessments have not necessarily been so positive about Loyalism’s strength. Alan Taylor has estimated that the Loyalist population was never more than twenty per cent of the population, while the Whigs consisted of around forty per cent, and the remaining forty per cent were neutral.⁵⁹ In most parts of North America, Loyalists were easy to identify because rebel authorities compelled individuals to pay taxes and swear loyalty oaths. Those suspected of Loyalist tendencies were quickly identified and closely monitored. In the West, this did not happen and many were able to retain dual loyalties throughout the war.

No one better exemplifies this than one of the best-known figures of the early American frontier, Daniel Boone. Many of his neighbours suspected that Boone was a secret Loyalist. His wife’s family, the Bryans, were nearly all Loyalists, and Boone had frequent contact and correspondence with them. He was said to have carried the militia commission that he had received from the British governor of Virginia, Governor Dunmore, with him throughout the Revolutionary War and to have displayed it to Governor Hamilton following his capture by Indians in 1776 as evidence of his loyalty.⁶⁰ Two of the most important early pioneers of Kentucky, Richard Callaway and Benjamin Logan, both intensely distrusted Boone. When Boone escaped from his captivity and returned to Boonesborough, he was welcomed not as a hero but as a possible traitor and was immediately court-martialled. Callaway maintained that Boone had agreed “with the British Commander that he would give up all the people at Boonsbourough, and that they should be protected at Detroyt and live under British Jurisdiction.” He concluded that “Boon was in favour of the britesh goverment, that all his conduct proved it.” The correspondence of Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, seems to offer some evidence to support these suspicions. Hamilton was evidently impressed with Boone, and Boone had convinced him that Kentucky was in dire straits and that the people were ready to join the British.⁶¹ However, Boone was able to return to Kentucky and was eventually exonerated by a court-martial, but suspicions of his loyalty remained throughout the rest of his life. Indeed, he fled from Kentucky in 1799, settling in Spanish Missouri and spent the last twenty years of his life in far closer contact with his former Indian captors than his former neighbours in Kentucky.⁶²

Even one of the best-known military commanders of the war, George Rogers Clark, was not steadfast in his loyalty to the United States. Although there is no suggestion that Clark ever thought of supporting the British, in 1793 he came close to renouncing his loyalty and becoming a French citizen. He argued bitterly that the United States seemed “in my very prime of life, to have neglected me.”⁶³ That men like Boone and Clark, portrayed as the epitome of the western patriot frontiersman, could have such ambiguous loyalties reveals the difficulties of identifying and assigning labels to western colonists.

Despite the difficulties in identifying Loyalist support, there are good reasons to suspect that broadly defined Loyalist support may have been extensive in the West. When reminiscing about their experiences in the early Trans-Appalachian West, many early pioneers had little hesitation in identifying their neighbours as Loyalists. The inhabitants of Bryant’s Station, Strode’s Station and Boone’s Station, in particular, were routinely identified as being “a heap of Tories.”⁶⁴ Officers in the Continental Army also noted the substantial presence of Loyalists in the region. In 1778 General Edward Hand, who commanded the Continental forces at Fort Pitt, fretted that if more men were not sent to the West immediately to “overawe the Tory faction, this whole country will be abandoned or over-run by the enemy in a short time.”⁶⁵ Other American officials also noted that during 1778 and 1779, many Loyalists left the Carolina backcountry and moved across the Appalachians to the relative security of Kentucky. Daniel Brodhead reported that the region around Pittsburgh was “infested with such a set of disaffected inhabitants” that he worried he could defend it. There were also reports of farmers and their families leaving parts of Pennsylvania and heading west in hopes of joining with the British.⁶⁶

British reports support such depictions of widespread Loyalism. John Stuart, the British Superintendent for Indian Affairs, wrote to Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for North America, in August 1776, informing him that “a great number of families wishing to avoid the calamities of a rancorous civil war have migrated from the different provinces to seek bread and peace in those remote deserts, and a very extensive and populous settlement is made upon lands … situated between Holsten’s River and the Ohio.”⁶⁷ Similarly, writing in 1780, the British commander at Detroit, Major Arent de Peyster, reported that there were a “Thousand Families who are flying from the oppression of Congress, in order to add to the number already settled at Kentuck.” While such accounts are undoubtedly hopeful exaggerations, they do suggest that the British had contacts with substantial numbers of Loyalists. Indeed, British agents in Detroit maintained lists of western farmers with Loyalist sympathies.⁶⁸

Estimating the strength of western Loyalism is also problematic because later writers consciously ignored it. Local folklore and collective memory minimised opposition to the Revolutionary cause. Unlike those Loyalists who fled as refugees to Nova Scotia, Upper Canada or the West Indies, most western Loyalists did not flee the region after the American Revolution but were able to remain a part of backcountry society. This meant that unlike those Loyalists who relocated to other parts of the British Empire, such as Upper Canada or Nova Scotia, who then sought to craft an identity based on their Loyalist heritage, the descendants of Loyalists who remained in the Trans-Appalachian West were much more reluctant to commemorate or even discuss their Loyalist roots. Accusations of Loyalist sympathies could elicit bitter conflict and be bandied about as part of local disputes. In the 1790s, a bitter dispute between two leading Kentucky families, the Smith and Preston families, led to accusations of Loyalism being made against Francis Preston even though his family had been one of the backcountry’s principal supporters of the Revolution. A simple association with Loyalism could ruin a man’s reputation, and while backcountry families commemorated the activities of the American Revolution, any Loyalist activities or sympathies were conveniently forgotten or rewritten.⁶⁹

Western Loyalism in the Trans-Appalachian West was a significant force, but it was an amorphous and ill-defined force that can be understood in many ways. Understanding the nature of western Loyalism reveals some of the forces that affected the ability of Loyalism generally to coalesce. All western Loyalists were disaffected from the government, but then so was most of western society. Many Loyalist had migrated to the West either as a refuge from Whig persecution in the East or simply in the quest of land and improvement. Unlike their brethren in the East, they had few social ties to each other or to Britain, and they seem to have been often composed of the poorer rather than the wealthier members of society. The region was relatively isolated from outside interference and contact, and most importantly, it contained fertile lands which attracted immigrants from the East. To these immigrants, rich and poor, what mattered most was security, both of land title and person. Disputes, over land in particular, may have led to widespread disaffection, but the region’s isolation prevented disaffection from coalescing into Loyalism, while the quest for land and secure property rights also encouraged westerners to support the Continental Congress rather than the Crown.

There were other specific reasons why Loyalism did not become an articulate and coherent force in the West. There were few particular triggers, such as the Continental Association and the enforcement of loyalty oaths, that forced people to take sides early in the war. Without these triggers, Loyalist support was never forced into the open. Moreover, the presence of a powerful “other” in the shape of Indian warriors compelled both Loyalists and Revolutionaries to make a common cause and, in the years after the Revolution, to create a common story which largely wrote Loyalism out of the region’s history. Loyalism was, therefore, difficult to observe during the Revolution and is even more difficult to examine today. However, the specific forces shaping western Loyalism, and the experiences of western Loyalists themselves, can shed much light on the broader processes shaping Loyalism across the British Empire.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew C. Ward

Matthew C. Ward is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Dundee. He is the author of several books and articles on the early Trans-Appalachian West including Breaking The Backcountry: The Seven Years War In Virginia And Pennsylvania 1754–1765 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004) and Making the Frontier Man: Violence, White Manhood, and Authority in the Early Western Backcountry (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023).

Notes

1 John Dabney Shane Interview with William Clinkenbeard, Kentucky Papers, 11CC55.

2 Siebert, “Kentucky’s Struggle,” 113.

3 Bancroft, History of the United States, 8:109, 318.

4 Aron, How the West was Lost, 73.

5 Friend, Kentucke’s Frontiers, 72.

6 See for example Hoffman, Tate, and Albert, eds., An Uncivil War; Humphrey, Land and Liberty; Barnes and Calhoun, “Loyalist Discourse,” 218–228.

7 Asbury, Journal of Francis Asbury, 2:82; Rev. David Barrow’s Journal, Kentucky Papers, 12CC169; Rohrbough, Trans-Appalachian Frontier, 36–37.

8 John Dabney Shane interview with William Clinkenbeard, Kentucky Papers, 11CC65; Asbury, Journal of Francis Asbury, 2:82.

9 Hoffman, Simon Girty Turncoat Hero; Nelson, Man of Distinction Among Them; Calloway, “‘We Have Always Been the Frontier’,” 39–52; Van Buskirk, Generous Enemies.

10 Col. Arthur Campbell to Col. William Preston, 3 July 1780, “Preston Papers” 316–317. Cornwallis to Clinton, 30 June 1780, Records of the Colonial Office CO5/100 107–108; Tillson, “Localist Roots of Backcountry Loyalism” 285–307; Russell, American Revolution, 153–154.

11 Hamilton to Haldimand, 24 January 1779 CO42/39 109, The National Archives, UK.

12 Deposition of Michael Jackson, 27 April 1779, Sir Henry Clinton to Lord George Germain, 26 July 261779, Records of the Colonial Office CO5/237 124, CO5/80 220; Sheehan, ‘“The Famous Hair Buyer General’,” 1–28.

13 Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom; Walker, Black Loyalists; Curry, Freedom and Resistance.

14 Allen, His Majesty’s Indian Allies.

15 Skaggs, “The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes,” 1–20; Perkins, Border Life, 14.

16 John Dabney Shane interview with Isaac Clinkenbeard, John Dabney Shane interview with William Clinkenbeard, John Dabney Shane interview with John Craig, John Dabney Shane interview with Miss Campbell, Kentucky Papers, 11CC1, 11CC58, 12CC145, 13CC82–87; Michael Huffnagle to William Moore, 30 July 1782, Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives 1st Ser., 9: 596.

17 John Stuart to Lord George Germain, 10 March 1777, Records of the Colonial Office CO5/229 117–120; Piecuch, Three Peoples, 72–73.

18 Slover et al., Narratives of a Late Expedition, 10–12; Faragher, Daniel Boone.

19 John Dabney Shane interview with Josiah Collins, John Dabney Shane interview with Herman Bowman, Kentucky Papers, 12CC102 13CC173. Alexander, Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity.

20 John Dabney Shane Interview with William Clinkenbeard, Kentucky Papers, 11CC63.

21 Parkinson, Common Cause, 539–542; Fisher, “Fit Instruments in a Howling Wilderness,” 647–680.

22 Precis of Operations on the Canadian Frontier, CO 5/253 9–11; Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, 92–93.

23 Board of Trade to Sir Guy Carleton, 26 March 1777, CO 5/223 170–171.

24 Henry Hamilton to John Stuart, 25 December 1778, Records of the Colonial Office CO5/80 163.

25 Harper, Unsettling the West, 103–104, 12; Calloway, American Revolution in Indian Country, 158–181; Piecuch, Three Peoples, One King, 63–72.

26 Gabriel Madison to William Madison, 10 April 1780, Virginia Papers, 5ZZ73.

27 James Marshall to Joseph Reed, 8 August 1781, Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives, 1st Series, 9:344–345; Barr, A Colony Sprung from Hell, 235–238.

28 Petition of Trustees at Fort Jefferson, 13 June 131780, Virginia Papers, 5ZZ73; Watlington, Partisan Spirit.

29 Proceedings of Montgomery and Botetourt County Courts, William Preston Papers, 5QQ73-79; Evans, “Trouble in the Backcountry,” 190.

30 Crow, “Liberty Men and Loyalists,” 126–178; Moore, “The Local Origins of Allegiance in Revolutionary South Carolina” 26–41.

31 James Campbell to Anthony Forster, 9 September 1779, Records of the Colonial Office CO5/157 33–34.

32 Charles Grant to Bouquet, 9 March 1765, Callender to Bouquet, 11 March 1765, Waddell et al., eds., Papers of Henry Bouquet, 6:763, 64–65; Kenny, Peaceable Kingdom Lost; Hinderaker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 135–137; Tiedemann, “A Tumultuous People,” 387–431; Tillson, “Militia and Popular Political Culture,” 285–307.

33 Barksdale, “Introduction: Kentucky and the Struggle for the Early American West,” 298; Barksdale, “Our Rebellious Neighbours,” 5–32; Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion; Barksdale, Lost State of Franklin: America’s First Secession; Brannon, From Revolution to Reunion.

34 Bennett, A Few Lawless Vagabonds; Calhoon, Tory Insurgents.

35 Van Buskirk, Generous Enemies.

36 Evans, “Trouble in the Backcountry,” 179–212.

37 Proceedings of Montgomery and Botetourt County Courts, William Preston Papers, 5QQ73-79.

38 Hay to Haldimand, 2 September1784, Loyalists Names, Detroit, 2 September 1784, List of Persons and Families who wish to settle under the British Government at Detroit from near Fort Pitt, 2 September1784, Haldimand Papers, 21783: 412, 414, 415.

39 Aron, How the West was Lost, 58–81; Bouton, Taming Democracy; Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion.

40 Extract of a Letter from Capt Bird to Major De Peyster, 24 July 1780, Haldimand Papers, 21760: 331; Chopra, Unnatural Rebellion; Egnal, A Mighty Empire.

41 Harper, Unsettling the West, 67–76; Weaver, The Great Land Rush, 68–75; Holton, Forced Founders, 175–188; Aron, How the West was Lost, 58–81.

42 Brown, King’s Friends.

43 Charles Lynch to William Preston, 17 August 1780, Nancy Deveraux to William Preston, 1780, William Preston Papers, 5QQ57–58, 58.

44 Robert Johnson to Patrick Henry, 5 December 1786 Palmer, Calendar of Virginia State Papers, 4:191.

45 Drake, A History of Appalachia, 68.

46 Virginia Gazette, 27 August 1777; Warrant for the Arrest of John McDonald, 24 July 1782, James Duggless Confession, 17 August 1780, William Preston Papers, 5QQ43, 59; William Preston to William Fleming, 2 December 1777, Virginia Papers 2ZZ43; Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large, 9:281–283.

47 Gray, “Colonel Robert Gray’s Observations,” 145.

48 Ibid., 149.

49 William Preston to Patrick Henry, 16 January 1779, “Preston Papers,” 292.

50 Walter Crockett to William Preston, 7 April 1779, Deposition of Captain John Cox, “The Preston Papers Relating to Western Virginia” 371–372, 73. Walter Crocket to William Preston, 7 April 1779, “Preston Papers,” 302.

51 Col. William Christian to Col. William Fleming, 23 July 1779, Virginia Papers, 2ZZ81.

52 Patrick Ferguson to Cornwallis, 30 May 1780, Charles Cornwallis Papers, 30/11/2 58.

53 Col. William Preston’s Account of the Loyalist Plot, March 1780, Col. William Preston to Gov. Thomas Jefferson, March 1780, William Preston Papers, 5QQ27, 28.

54 Col. Arthur Campbell to Col. William Preston, 3 July 1780, “Preston Papers,” 316–317. Cornwallis to Clinton, 30 June 1780, Records of the Colonial Office CO5/100 107–108; Russell, American Revolution, 153–154.

55 Col. Arthur Campbell to Maj. William Edmiston, 24 June 1780, Col. Arthur Campbell to Maj. William Edmiston, 25 June 1780, Kings Mountain Papers, 9DD21, 22.

56 William Preston to Thomas Jefferson, 8 August 1780, Boyd et al., eds., Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 3:533–534; James McGavock to William Preston, 30 June 1780, “Preston Papers,” 315. John Heavin to William Preston, 22 July 1780, William Preston to Thomas Heavin, 14 August 1780, James Duggless Confession, William Preston Papers, 5QQ42, 55, 59; Col. William Campbell to Col. Arthur Campbell, 25 July 1780, Kings Mountain Papers, 8DD4-5.

57 Arthur Campbell to William Preston, 13 August 1780, Kings Mountain Papers, 8DD5. Anderson-Green, “The New River Frontier Settlement on the Virginia-North Carolina Border 1760–1820,” 413–431.

58 John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 19 March 1812, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5768.

59 Taylor, American Revolutions, 212.

60 Lofaro, Daniel Boone; Faragher, Daniel Boone, 105, 143.

61 Young, ed., Westward into Kentucky, 63–64; Gov. Henry Hamilton to Sir Guy Carleton, 25 April 1778, Thwaites and Kellogg, eds., Frontier Defense, 283–284.

62 Brown, Frontiersman.

63 George Rogers Clark to Provisionary Executive Council, 5 February 1793, George Rogers Clark Papers, 55J1; Nester, George Rogers Clark, 299–300.

64 John Dabney Shane Interview with William Clinkenbeard, John Dabney Shane Interview with Josiah Collins, John Dabney Shane interview with William Moseby, John Dabney Shane interview with Samuel Gibson, Kentucky Papers, 11CC55-56, 11CC105, 11CC270-74, 12CC122.

65 Gen. Edward Hand to Maj. Horatio Gates, 14 May 1778, Pittsburgh and Northwest Virginia Papers, 3NN 16-18.

66 Daniel Broadhead to George Washington, 27 March 1781, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-05218. George Washington to Daniel Broadhead, 25 April 1781, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-05520. Frontier Retreat, 352–353. Watlington, “Discontent in Frontier Kentucky,” 81–82; Gen. Edward Hand to Maj. Horatio Gates, 14 May 1778, Pittsburgh and Northwest Virginia Papers, 3NN 16-18;

67 John Stuart to Lord George Germain, 23 August 1776, Records of the Colonial Office CO5/77 126.

68 De Peyster to Lt Col Mason Bolton, 16 May 1780, Michigan Historical Collections, 19:519; Hay to Haldimand, Detroit, 2 September 1784, Loyalists Names, Detroit, 2 September 1784 List of Persons and Families who wish to settle under the British Government at Detroit from near Fort Pitt, 2 September1784, Haldimand Papers, 21783: 412, 414, 415.

69 Alexander Smith to William Preston, [February 1799], Preston Family Papers, Joyes Collection, Box 1, Folder 10.