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NOTE 16. Suppressing Tories in the Middle Colonies

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Volume 4, Chapter 16 Suppressing Tories in the Middle Colonies

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New Jersey had nearly as great a proportion of loyalists as New York, and southern New

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Jersey was notoriously loyal to Great Britain. Its royal governor, William Franklin, illegitimate

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son of Benjamin, was particularly active in the British cause. In the spring of 1775,

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He tried to persuade the New Jersey Assembly to negotiate a separate peace with Britain.

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Failing this, he continued to organize Tory sentiment.

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Prodded by a series of petitions organized by him, the Assembly vehemently instructed

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its delegates to the Continental Congress against any attempt at independence.

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Indeed, Franklin was almost able to induce the Assembly to beg the King for peace, and

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Only lengthy harangues by moderate delegates from the Continental Congress were able to

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dissuade New Jersey from such separate action. It was only in June 1776 that Franklin was

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finally arrested by the New Jersey Assembly and sent to prison in the recesses of Connecticut.

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Apart from Franklin's political activity, by the spring of 1776 the province was plagued

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with imminent insurrections in Monmouth, Hunterdon and Bergen counties. Negroes were reported

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arming themselves to join the British cause and later to be intriguing with British prisoners

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of war. In conservative Pennsylvania, the Tory cause had been crippled by Joseph Galloway's

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decision not to run for the Second Continental Congress and his withdrawal from political

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The bulk of the Tories continued to be the Quakers in the Philadelphia area.

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The Philadelphia meeting sent dispatches to Quakers throughout the Middle Colonies,

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urging them to abstain from all forms of rebellion

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and to remember that it was their religious duty to honor the King.

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From their old anarchic individualism,

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The Taurism of the Quakers remained passive, however, and there was no worry about their

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taking up arms against the Revolution.

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In Maryland, a sharp geographical split prevailed, with the tobacco-growing regions on the western

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shore of Chesapeake Bay being staunchly revolutionary, while the maritime eastern shore was predominantly

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Tory. In heavily Tory Worcester County on the Atlantic coast, the loyalist led by Hugh

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Hugh Kelly obtained arms during the fall of 1775 from a vessel of Lord Dunmore, Royal

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Governor of Virginia. Meeting in secret and signing a joint oath, 1900 Tories formed

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an association, met for military drill, declared themselves for the king and against Boston,

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and pledged themselves to resist any conscription into the Continental Army. They also managed

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to seize some local wigs and hustle them aboard Dunmore's ship in a feudal quest for recruits.

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In adjoining Somerset County, one Isaac Atkinson led over half the local militia into a counter-revolutionary

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force for the king, and he threatened one day to fight it out. He also denounced the

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The Revolution is a Presbyterian plot. Several companies of militia in Caroline and Dorchester

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counties on the eastern shore laid down their arms in defiance of the Revolutionary cause.

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The colony of Delaware, almost wholly on the Chesapeake Peninsula, was riddled with Tories

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sentiment. By the spring of 1776, one thousand Tories were under arms in Sussex County in

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in the South, and in northern Newcastle County, British ships on the Delaware River were regularly

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furnished supplies by the inhabitants.