#loyalism

[illogarithmil]

This'd be a good sequel to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, I think?

[bantarleton]

Loyalism on the Southern Frontier

Courtesy of Will C. and the Boston Garrison Facebook page. 

Frontier and Backcountry Loyalism is fascinating because it rarely followed any clear divides. Some whole settlements would band together; but you also had settlements torn apart. Sometimes factionalism would span various cultures and ethnicities for both sides, though religion tended to be more likely to presume someone’s loyalty. Reading through Whig pension applications you’ll see many men who state they became directly involved in the fighting due to first being attacked or harassed, and you have to believe that the same was true for Tories even though we don’t have the same volume of personal accounts. Those personal reasons ignited deep hatred that would last, in some cases, even after the war ended. You have some accounts that talk about changing sides over the course of the war; this was driven by wanting to join whoever the “big dog” was at the time for personal protection, but also there were some who split with their political party due to personal attacks.

One factor that encouraged frontier Loyalism was the backcountry distrust of lowcountry elites, who were usually the loudest voices calling for the rebellion in the south. While the wealthy in Charlestown and Savannah railed against Parliament for “taxation without representation” and the laws keeping them from buying millions of acres of Indian land west of the mountains, you meanwhile had frontier Tories who weren’t represented in their own Colonial Assemblies, and were mostly undefended and cheated by those same coastal power-players. You had many backcountry settlers who saw the British empire as the protector of a safe and prosperous future, not their lowcountry neighbors. This loyal group also included recent immigrants from across the Atlantic and those who viewed the British as the main reason there was peace (usually) with the local Cherokee and Creek Nations. While the coastal elite felt they were getting Parliament’s boots to their face, they were the ones stepping all over the backcountry folks. When it came time to side with Britain or the wealthy “Rice Kings” and merchants of the lowcountry, many frontier and backcountry Tories felt safer with their king.

The ranks of such Loyalists included men like Thomas Brown, a 24 year old northern Brit whose wealthy father helped him start his own town along the Georgia/South Carolina border with indentured servants from Scotland. Thomas was confronted and assaulted on his front porch by an armed mob of Sons of Liberty when he refused to join their movement. He was brutally beaten and tortured before a friend helped get him to safety in South Carolina: his skull fractured with a blow from a rifle barrel (which gave him migraines for the rest of his life), he was partially scalped, and his legs covered in melted pine tar and burned by torches until he lost two toes and was incapable of walking for 6 months. Hence the Whigs nicknaming him “Burnfoot Brown.” He ended up losing all of his land and property in Georgia, and became one of the most aggressive Loyalist leaders in the southern colonies.

He helped rally Loyalist supporters in 1775 South Carolina, was forced to flee to Florida, and began raising a regiment of refugees in 1776. His “East Florida Rangers” were the boogeymen to the Whigs on the Florida/Georgia border, from their formation in 1776 until the large British push back into South Carolina in 1780. Brown and his men then made his headquarters in forts in and around Augusta, Georgia until being forced to surrender the post and retreat to the British army along the coast in the summer of 1781.

Brown was also one of the most aggressive Superintendents of Indian Affairs seen in the Southern Department. He was a major advocate for involvement of the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Nations against the Whigs, and was one of the architects of the “three-pronged Southern Strategy” that utilized the Indian Nations as one of the main ways to attack the frontier. Once he was appointed to the position in 1779, he and his deputies traveled from the Florida coast to the Mississippi River trying to convince the Indian Nations to take up arms with the British. Even in 1783, as the British had lost the war and Brown was preparing to evacuate Florida for the Bahamas, he urged the Creek/Mvskoge Nation to continue opposing the Whigs anyway they could.

The War of Independence in the southern colonies was also particularly brutal because it was the newest issue draped over decades of conflicts and rivalries. There had been the Regulator War in North Carolina, and the entirely different Regulator War in South Carolina, between groups of settlers and their governors. You had competition between immigrants from Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ireland, Scotland, etc trying to claim the best frontier land for themselves and their families. This created a very distrusting environment where different communities viewed themselves as competitors with the community or church congregation on the next river over. These were rough, distrustful, violent people who were willing to fight for what they had built and knew they had to solve their own problems one way or another.

On top of this framework of divides and old wounds you now have the Revolution. When one leading person or community joined the Whigs, their old enemies may join the Tories just because they hate their old enemy. We see evidence of this from the Snow Campaign of 1775 when lists of “potential enemies” are arrested and described using terms from the SC Regulator War of the 1760s. Whig use of violent terror-tactics against Tories early in the war created resentment and anger that built and stewed until the British invaded the south and presented the opportunity for the Tories to take revenge. Retaliatory attacks in turn spawned reasons for more retaliation, which caused more retaliation, and on and on. Generals who arrived from other regions of the colonies were horrified at the amount of bloodshed and violence so calmly exercised; the violence simply snowballed. Add into this some enterprising individuals who took advantage of the chaos to loot and plunder the “enemy” simply to gain wealth. I’ve seen one petition from a Whig community in South Carolina that was being so regularly raided and plundered by Whigs from the frontier that they wrote to the Continental generals asking for relief.

The mounted militias of the backcountry were toughened fighters that filled a crucial role in both armies, such as foragers, light cavalry, and a much-needed temporary boost in numbers, but they were partisans with personal feuds and violent agendas seeking to avenge a long history of abuses.

[citizen69]

One of Ulster’s oldest flute bands in 1879, Whiteabbey Johnston Star.

[spvcecrvcker]

‘In a relationship, there’s gonna be girls badder than your girl and guys doing better than your man.

That’s where the loyal comes in.’

[leadkmn]

Egal was ihr mir wünscht, ich wünsch euch das doppelte zurück.

Samra

[pk-795]

There's something wrong with your character if opportunity controls your loyalty.

[thespiralingqueens]

Well everyone the final hours is upon us! Come let us enjoy these final moments of freedom together and enjoy the company of our favored friends. I have enjoyed sharing my content with you and while this may be the end of a NSFW picture chapter perhaps it is just the doom of our existences. I shall continue on as the Mistress if the lost and the Madame of the spiral you all know and love, and while my posted pictures will be more tame my writing will only flourish as I corrupt the minds of the weak and entice the thoughts of those intrigued by my words. This is not the End for us my dear friends. It’s quiet the contrary, this is the dawning of a new chapter in our lives. Now I ask who of you will brave this new frontier and follow my lead as I hold the leash of the most loyal?