First City. Gary B. Nash
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troop of Philadelphia Light Dragoons recruited in November and December 1777. Many wavering Philadelphians, presumably knowing that the promise of land in this broadside presupposed American defeat, saw the signing bonus as an empty promise.
The appeal of loyalism operated among ordinary as well as wealthy Pennsylvanians. Some poor German immigrants, with particular grievances against Pennsylvania’s government, were drawn to the Loyalist side. And many Americans were simply “sunshine patriots,” as Paine called them. Looking to see where the wind blew, they changed sides when the revolutionary cause faltered. When the British captured Philadelphia in September 1777, they plastered the town with broadsides recruiting Philadelphians to the Queen’s Rangers and First Battalion of Pennsylvania Loyalists (Figure 37).16
For hundreds of enslaved Philadelphians, the prospect of gaining freedom by fighting with the British was irresistible. Wherever the British army went, they fled their masters and joined up, inspired by Lord Dunmore’s promise in 1775 of freedom to slaves and indentured servants. Many masters advertised for their runaway slaves in Philadelphia’s newspapers, especially when the British were occupying Philadelphia between September 1777 and June 1778. Hundreds of former slaves from the southern colonies had their first look at the City of Brotherly Love when they arrived as part of the Black Guides and Pioneers, a regiment wholly composed of escaped slaves who fought throughout the war under Scottish officers.17
The British recruited not only African Americans but also thousands of Hessians, transported across the Atlantic as mercenaries to fight against the rebellious colonists. Thirty German regiments—with an estimated 35,000 soldiers—fought against the Americans. They sustained 12,000 casualties; another 5,000 were lost through desertion, most of whom took up life in the United States; and 18,000 returned home. On several occasions the Hessians fought against other Pennsylvanians who were natives of Germany or the sons of German immigrants, and what has been collected about this fratricidal story and how the Hessian deserters disappeared into New York and Pennsylvania German communities is remarkable for its thinness. One rare and intriguing artifact that has survived is a Hessian regimental flag captured by the Americans at the Battle of Trenton on December 26, 1776. The Historical Society received the flag, seized from 900 Hessian prisoners who were paraded through Philadelphia before being marched off to prison in Lancaster, as a gift in 1882.
Besides Hessians, the Americans had to face most of the eastern Indian tribes, who chose to join the redcoats; these tribes regarded the British as their protectors, whereas the Americans threatened their land and political sovereignty. Lieutenant Colonel Adam Hubley commanded the Eleventh Pennsylvania Regiment, composed of Pennsylvanian Germans, against the Mohawks in the Wyoming Valley of western Pennsylvania during General John Sullivan’s grim campaign against the Iroquois tribes. In his journal, which the Historical Society acquired early in the twentieth century, Hubley sketched the plan of his encampment at Wyoming and copied the symbols the Indians painted on the forest trees. One of the Mohawk leaders that Hubley must have encountered was Thayendanegea, known to the Americans as Joseph Brant (Figure 38). Educated at what became Dartmouth College and a devoted Anglican, Thayendanegea had fought with the Americans during the Seven Years’ War as a young man. But by 1776, after a trip to England to parley with George III and his ministers, he was convinced that the Iroquois could maintain their independence only if the Americans did not gain theirs. Commissioned a captain in the British army, he led his people against the Americans in southern New York and northern Pennsylvania in some of the bloodiest fighting of the revolution. After the war, Thayendanegea pursued the Iroquois’ interest in negotiations with Great Britain and the United States. Peale painted Joseph Brant, probably in 1797 when Brant made his last visit to Philadelphia, adding the painting to his public portrait gallery. By then, the bitterness about the Iroquois alliance with the British had dissipated, and the public’s attention was focused on the diplomatic crisis with revolutionary France.18
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