Quest Biographies Bundle — Books 31–35. Rosemary Sadlier
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Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. In every colony the conflict divided families, some siding with the “colonial patriots” and others with the British Loyalists. It was impossible to remain neutral.
Thomas Ingersoll had no grudge against his Loyalist neighbours, but because he wanted to protect his property and his business from harsh British laws, he chose to fight on the side of the patriots. Before long his young wife would become used to having him march off to daily arms drills while the drums of war grew louder.
One of Thomas’s relatives, David Ingersoll, a magistrate and lawyer in Great Barrington, remained a Loyalist, and like many who sided with the British he was victimized by unruly mobs of patriots who took the law into their own hands. After being forcibly driven from his home, he was seized and taken to prison in Connecticut. His house was vandalized, attacked by both swords and hatchets, and all his property destroyed. Eventually, David Ingersoll fled to England.
Anyone caught helping a Loyalist to escape was himself fined or imprisoned, and citizens were paid to turn in their neighbours. Some Loyalists suffered the cruel humiliation of tarring and feathering or were forced to ride a rail through town, which meant sitting upright astride a narrow rail that was carried on the shoulders of two men.
The records of Great Barrington for the year 1776 list Thomas Ingersoll as the town constable and tax collector. When Great Barrington’s militia was consolidated into one company in October 1777, Thomas was commissioned second lieutenant under Captain Silas Goodrich. He became captain of the company in October 1781, after marching forty of his men out in response to an alarm raised at Stillwater, New York, the town where part of the Battle of Saratoga had taken place in June of that year.
During Laura’s earliest years, spent amidst the noise and confusion of war, her father was often away from home, and the little girl grew close to her gentle mother. A second child, Elizabeth Franks, was born October 17, 1779, and two years later a third daughter, Mira (also spelled Myra), was born. Daughter number four, Abigail, would arrive on the scene in September 1783.
Britain’s national debt had doubled after its victory over France and Spain in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). Now that those two countries no longer posed a threat to the Americans, Britain felt the grateful colonists should help pay more of the cost of colonial government.
The British parliament passed the Revenue Act of 1764 to raise customs revenues, and the same year the Currency Act prohibited the use of colonial paper money. Revenue collectors were appointed to enforce the tax laws, and trade with foreign countries was restricted.
The Stamp Act was passed by British parliament in 1765 to levy internal taxes, and the Quartering Act forced Americans to pay for housing British troops. It went on and on.
The colonies opposed these policies that were set by a government three thousand miles away, and the cry went out: “no taxation without representation.” American merchants joined forces to boycott British businessmen.
The Tea Act of 1773 reduced the tax on imported British tea, giving it an unfair advantage. The act allowed the almost-bankrupt British East India Company to sell its tea directly to colonial agents, bypassing American wholesalers. Now those powerful wholesalers had been handed a burning issue.
The American colonists condemned the Tea Act and planned to boycott tea. The end result was the infamous Boston Tea Party. When three British tea ships docked in Boston Harbor, men disguised as Indians boarded the vessels and threw all the tea overboard. Punishment was swift.
The Intolerable Acts of 1774 (so-named by the Americans) temporarily closed the port of Boston until compensation was paid, “royalized” the Massachusetts government, expanded the Quartering Act, and changed the Justice Act so that Americans charged with crimes had to be tried in England. These actions served to unite the colonies, and a call went out from the Virginia Burgesses to convene a continental congress in Philadelphia in 1774 to discuss their grievances.
Among the factions present at that First Continental Congress were those who believed that in the end force would be necessary; the moderates, who urged a peaceful solution; and those who felt Britain must soften its policies but who opposed the use of force and would never approve of independence.
In Congress, the colonists came close to declaring dominion status. They continued to recognize the Crown as necessary to hold them together, and they petitioned King George III for a remedy to their grievances. On the other hand, they asked the French Canadians to join them in their demands and again adopted an economic boycott of Britain.
The Suffolk Resolves of Massachusetts, declaring the Intolerable Acts void and advising the training of a militia force, received the backing of the colonists. When the British government refused to budge, the Americans knew they must come up with a more active resistance.
The local government in Massachusetts had been dissolved by the British, and yet it continued to operate. To remedy this, British general Thomas Gage set out to seize the colony’s government leaders, John Hancock and Samuel Adams, as well as the ammunition that was being stored in Concord, just outside Boston.
On April 18, 1775, British troops advanced on Concord. Before the British soldiers reached Lexington, Adams and Hancock managed to escape, having been alerted by Paul Revere. The British were met by the Massachusetts “minutemen,” and the American Revolution began.
In May, the Second Continental Congress adopted the poorly organized but growing New England Army outside Boston and chose as its commander General George Washington. Still uncertain about complete independence, Congress petitioned King George to restore peace.
The June 17, 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill, near Boston, was a British victory won at a terrible cost in lives. Nine months later, when General George Washington fortified the heights above Boston Harbor with cannons, British general William Howe, the successor to General Thomas Gage, feared a repeat of the carnage. He decided against attack and retreated, withdrawing his ships from Boston Harbor. When the British pulled out, 1,100 Loyalists left with them.
During the long siege of Boston the patriots had come to realize that the only means of safeguarding their liberty was going to be through complete independence from Britain.
Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Now the patriots had a firm commitment: they were fighting for the freedom of the country. It is estimated that about seventy thousand Loyalists fled to Canada, where the women and children found shelter and the men joined the Loyalist regiments.
The American patriots raised a small army of state regiments — the Continental Army — that could be counted on to provide most of the resistance, and it made use of state militia if and when it was available. In the later years of the war the patriots were joined by thousands of French troops, more than happy to help the Americans against their old enemy. For their part, unable to raise enough men at home, the British hired German troops and counted on additional support from the Indians and Loyalists.
After evacuating Boston, British general William Howe seized New York, most of New Jersey, and was not stopped until he reached Trenton at Christmas 1776. The following summer he retaliated by taking Philadelphia.
In the autumn of 1777, British general John Burgoyne led his army in an overland march from Canada toward New York, where he planned to join up with General Howe. They were cut off and captured at Saratoga, New York, in October 1777 by American general Horatio Gates. Burgoyne’s surrender of his army of over five thousand men was a huge victory for the Americans, and because it prevented the British from separating New England from the southern colonies, it was a turning point in the war.
Also surrendering with Burgoyne at Saratoga was Baron Friedrich Adolph Riedesel, commander of a regiment of soldiers from the Duchy of Brunswick, one of the German units hired by the British. Following the surrender, American general Horatio Gates treated Burgoyne as a gentleman, refusing to accept his sword and inviting him to his tent.
The allied army had left Canada feeling confident of an easy victory, and many of the officers’ wives had accompanied the men, promising themselves a pleasant trip