these facts changes the way we think about these months. Even New England had nothing to match the exodus of the southern royal governors. History had already shown the effects of such action. Back in the early seventeenth century, the so-called Flight of the Earls—the exodus of key Irish Catholic nobles to Spain—was taken on the European continent as signaling the end of Gaelic Ireland. The flight of royal governors from New Hampshire to Georgia augured similarly for embattled British North America.
The breakdown in royal authority was a grievous political wound. It had been replaced by de facto American self-rule through local committees of correspondence and safety, trade-monitoring committees of inspection, oath-swearing associations, militia organizations, and provincial congresses. They began to exercise power twelve to eighteen months before the July 1776 arrival in New York of massive but belated British military might. This Patriot infrastructure, activity, and enforcement represented a governmental and political underpinning of American independence that was never effectively defeated or disassembled.
Despite lack of international legal recognition, the Continental Congress functioned as a de facto war government. By the end of 1775, the United Colonies had also created an army (June 15), a navy (October 13), and even a marine corps (November 10). American regiments were camped in Canada, wooing French
habitants,
occupying Montreal, and finally—too late—besieging the rocky citadel of Quebec. Below New England, from Philadelphia to Sunbury, Georgia, coastal defenses were springing up along key rivers and harbors. Pennsylvania, overcoming Quaker inhibitions, opted to protect Philadelphia with a small fleet of row galleys, river obstacles, and artillery batteries. 21
To facilitate defense and coordination, Congress separated the colonies into three separate military commands—the Northern Department (Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire), the Southern Department (Virginia, both Carolinas, and Georgia), and the Middle Department (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland). New England, with its four collaborative provinces, was a sector unto itself. The southern plantation elites were not far behind, but backcountry populations made those colonies less cohesive, and their Revolutionary future would be less secure in 1778–1781, when the British made a more serious southern invasion than the fumbled one of 1775–1776.
Map 1 shows the thirteen colonies and their major cities and rivers. Only half of the provinces conducted censuses in the decade before 1775, so there is no reliable way to include and detail the growth that was becoming such a topic of discussion in North America, Britain, and the European continent.
The Middle Colonies of 1775: The Politics of Ambiguity
The five “middle” provinces represented a third and more complex political geography too often skipped over or ignored in analyses of the early Revolution. Urban radicals in New York and Philadelphia favored independence, but partly as a vehicle for economic and social upheaval. The reverse side of the coin—this in addition to economic, cultural, and religious antagonisms that inhibited middle-colony consensus—was that many wealthy New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians, wary of the Sons of Liberty and organized mechanics, thought they would be safer remaining under British rule. Patriot congresses and committees of safety held a partial, extralegal sway in all five middle colonies, aided by
rage militaire.
The existing institutions of government, however, were divided. As of December 1775, royal governors retained at least toeholds—William Tryon in New York, William Franklin in New Jersey, and Robert Eden in Maryland—and the legislative assemblies in New York and Pennsylvania remained in conservative hands.
Luckily for the Patriots, the extent to which British authorities had focused on Boston
The breakdown in royal authority was a grievous political wound. It had been replaced by de facto American self-rule through local committees of correspondence and safety, trade-monitoring committees of inspection, oath-swearing associations, militia organizations, and provincial congresses. They began to exercise power twelve to eighteen months before the July 1776 arrival in New York of massive but belated British military might. This Patriot infrastructure, activity, and enforcement represented a governmental and political underpinning of American independence that was never effectively defeated or disassembled.
Despite lack of international legal recognition, the Continental Congress functioned as a de facto war government. By the end of 1775, the United Colonies had also created an army (June 15), a navy (October 13), and even a marine corps (November 10). American regiments were camped in Canada, wooing French
habitants,
occupying Montreal, and finally—too late—besieging the rocky citadel of Quebec. Below New England, from Philadelphia to Sunbury, Georgia, coastal defenses were springing up along key rivers and harbors. Pennsylvania, overcoming Quaker inhibitions, opted to protect Philadelphia with a small fleet of row galleys, river obstacles, and artillery batteries. 21
To facilitate defense and coordination, Congress separated the colonies into three separate military commands—the Northern Department (Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire), the Southern Department (Virginia, both Carolinas, and Georgia), and the Middle Department (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland). New England, with its four collaborative provinces, was a sector unto itself. The southern plantation elites were not far behind, but backcountry populations made those colonies less cohesive, and their Revolutionary future would be less secure in 1778–1781, when the British made a more serious southern invasion than the fumbled one of 1775–1776.
Map 1 shows the thirteen colonies and their major cities and rivers. Only half of the provinces conducted censuses in the decade before 1775, so there is no reliable way to include and detail the growth that was becoming such a topic of discussion in North America, Britain, and the European continent.
The Middle Colonies of 1775: The Politics of Ambiguity
The five “middle” provinces represented a third and more complex political geography too often skipped over or ignored in analyses of the early Revolution. Urban radicals in New York and Philadelphia favored independence, but partly as a vehicle for economic and social upheaval. The reverse side of the coin—this in addition to economic, cultural, and religious antagonisms that inhibited middle-colony consensus—was that many wealthy New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians, wary of the Sons of Liberty and organized mechanics, thought they would be safer remaining under British rule. Patriot congresses and committees of safety held a partial, extralegal sway in all five middle colonies, aided by
rage militaire.
The existing institutions of government, however, were divided. As of December 1775, royal governors retained at least toeholds—William Tryon in New York, William Franklin in New Jersey, and Robert Eden in Maryland—and the legislative assemblies in New York and Pennsylvania remained in conservative hands.
Luckily for the Patriots, the extent to which British authorities had focused on Boston
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