A Certain Spindle-Shanked Miscreant
And other members of the New York Resistance, 1776-1783.
In Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, a 15-story-high pillar sits on a plateau at the top of a long flight of stairs, in the middle of a large square with eagle statues at each corner. Of the approximately 15,000 people it commemorates, a tiny fraction are interred in a crypt below.
When I lived in the neighborhood, people were mainly using that spot as a free outdoor gym. They’d run up and down the stairs, or, this being Brooklyn, do whatever the latest fitness fad was—tai chi, medicine ball carries, or some strange activity with unfamiliar equipment that I had to assume was a workout.
My dog Louie, more of a traditionalist in his workout routine, mainly chased squirrels. I always had him on a leash, which meant that chasing squirrels was also my own workout. We’d follow one to one of the large trees nearby, it would clamber up, and Louie would then try to climb the tree after it, without success. I indulged this because he always needed to burn off some energy after being cooped up in our little apartment, and because I wasn’t too worried about him ever catching one. Until one day, at the base of the tree, the squirrel didn’t climb up. Instead, it ducked into a little hollow right at ground level. The hole that allowed it access was also just big enough that Louie could stuck his head in, which he immediately did.
But the squirrel was on its own turf, and cared more about the outcome than Louie did, so it won the fight. Louie pulled his head out a second later and started rubbing his eyes. I assume the squirrel had kicked dirt in his face. His eyes were irritated for the next couple of days, and his Fort Greene squirrel-chasing privileges were permanently revoked.
Of all of us at the memorial that day, that squirrel paid the most fitting tribute to the martyrs of the New York resistance, 1776-1783.
1. This is Fine
You may have heard a song about the loss of New York in September of 1776. Alexander Hamilton and the militia he’d put together, the Hearts of Oak, helped steal some British cannons…or liberate some New York ones, depending on your point of view. Aaron Burr, more consequentially, organized a timely retreat.
The British and Hessian soldiers were overjoyed. They’d been forced to headquarter in Boston, which hated them with a fiery passion and, also, was Boston. New York was much more divided. Several counties had more loyalists (“tories”) than rebels (“whigs”). Washington had asked whether he should torch the city on the way out, to deny it to the enemy, but the Continental Congress had voted emphatically no. So New York promised to be a comfortable and friendly haven for those loyal to the Crown.
Five days later, the city was in flames.
The British thought the whigs had started the fire. Some New Yorkers thought that British soldiers had, to give them an excuse to loot. We may never know for sure, but the bulk of the evidence points at whig civilians acting on their own initiative. Both sides spread lurid, all-too-plausible stories—the redcoats were summarily executing anyone they caught with matches, by tossing them into the flames. People trying to put out the fire were attacked by sword-wielding rebels.
The Great Fire of 1776 destroyed about a fifth of the city. It was stopped to the west by the Hudson River, and to the north by Columbia University (then King’s College). Columbia had bought up a bunch of land in Morningside Heights, but not gotten around to building anything on it yet, following a tradition they’ve upheld to this day. This empty space prevented the fire from spreading.
If it hadn’t been for the fire, it’s almost possible that the occupiers could have…maybe not won the hearts and minds of the city, but at least kept the supporters they already had. But in the ensuing martial law, breakdown of military discipline, and seizure of property, most loyalists began to realize they had backed the wrong horse.
Most.
2. Three Factions
Not every rebel soldier fled New York. Burr was posted to nearby Westchester, a contested no-man’s-land, and began setting up a spy network. Some members of the Hearts of Oak, such as Hercules Mulligan, disappeared into the civilian population. They quietly recruited civilian allies, such as Anna Strong, who sent messages by drying petticoats and handkerchiefs on her clothesline in prearranged patterns. The resistance began to take shape.
As did the British effort to pacify the city via propaganda. A much-loved and much-loathed loyalist publisher, James Rivington, had fled the city when the whigs took over. Now, he returned to help the occupiers. He restarted his little media empire: a bookstore, a print shop, and his weekly newspaper, which had been one of the most popular in America, now styled the Royal Gazette. Also, to make ends meet after royal funding dried up, an upscale coffeehouse beloved by British officers. He published real news with a pro-government slant, as well as lies about things like the French switching sides and General Washington deserting.
And then there was New York’s substantial enslaved population, who sought freedom by playing the other factions against each other. This had included a revolutionary conspiracy (allegedly) with poor White laborers in 1741. Now, quite a few took advantage of the chaos and escaped to the north. Rivington’s newspaper had pages of fugitive slave notices. Tens of thousands joined forces with the British, who promised to free them in return. And a handful joined the resistance, who promised the same.
There’s a glimpse of all three factions in this item from Rivington’s Gazette, reprinted in historian Henry Onderdonk’s 1846 collection of primary sources on the resistance.
Dec 19, 1781. The Loyalists in the village of Flatbush are pleased in expectation that a certain long, tall, spindle-shanked miscreant who resides here will be brought to condign punishment for holding private correspondence with the rebels. Though he took the oath of allegiance when the royal army found him in Jersey, his heart is as black as his skin and his skin as blue as when he assisted Isaac Sears and others in stealing the King’s cannon from the Battery in New York.
I don’t believe said miscreant was ever successfully prosecuted. Warning him and his associates publicly, in a widely-circulated newspaper, probably didn’t help. I’m not sure who it was1, but one candidate is Cato, then the slave of Hercules Mulligan.
3. Yoink
A popular tactic, on both sides, was to capture high-value officers on the other side, to ransom or to sweeten the pot in a prisoner exchange. For British officers, a typical case was that of Major James Moncrief in 1778. He went to sleep in his comfortable home, seized from Brooklyn rebels, and woke up at gunpoint. His captors, abused in Rivington’s newspaper as “savage,” “shabby cordwainers,” and “from Jersey,” took him, and all the valuables from his house they could carry, to the beach, a waiting boat, and back to their base, which was indeed in New Jersey. He was quickly ransomed, and went on to command the Black Company of Pioneers, an otherwise all-African-American military force fighting for themselves as much as the British cause, with the words “Liberty to Slaves” sewn on their uniforms.
These brazen kidnappings required rebel military and paramilitary support in nearby areas—primarily New Jersey and Westchester. They also needed the support of the locals. Even back then, you couldn’t just take a walk through Brooklyn without being seen. Moncrief’s abductors, in fact, had tapped on a window of the Van Pelt manor house, home of a wealthy New York family whom the British incorrectly trusted. The Van Pelts hadn’t known in advance, but gave what help they could and wished them luck.
Afterwards, the British retraced the route the kidnappers had taken (they’d also tried to grab the mayor, but were foiled by his slaves) and decided there was basically no way the Van Pelts hadn’t seen them, so at minimum they were traitors for not having sounded the alarm. They arrested the entire family…but they were rich, and easily bribed their way out.
On the other side, the British were of course particularly interested in capturing George Washington. But Washington was never quite where he was supposed to be. Every time the British made an attempt, it turned out Washington had made a last-minute change of plans. It was inexplicable. The officers involved hadn’t told anyone what they were planning. Okay, one of them had mentioned it to someone while getting fitted for a watch coat. But Hercules Mulligan was definitely not a spy. He was just a simple tailor.
Benedict Arnold2 did rat Mulligan out when he defected, but the word of a traitor wasn’t good enough evidence, so Mulligan got a do-over. The next time he got word of an attempt on Washington, he stayed in his shop and had Cato risk his neck to warn the general instead.
4. The Prison-Ship Martyrs
Most whigs weren’t as rich as the Van Pelts or as lucky as Hercules Mulligan. The British imprisoned about 30,000 people over the course of the occupation. They’d refused to take an oath of loyalty to the Crown, or were turned in by their tory neighbors, or were captured in battles, raids, or privateer adventures gone wrong.
British treatment of prisoners deteriorated as the war got uglier. Their prison camps became, increasingly, concentration camps. Deadly disease became so common that most of them were isolated on prison ships off the coast. More prisoners died than survived. It was one of the worst of their atrocities, and a disaster for their image among the colonists.
That’s why we have a monument in Fort Greene park. We don’t talk about the meaning of it much anymore. Britain’s a staunch ally—why bring up the old bad blood? But it stands, anyway, as a quiet reminder of just how bad it can get when your own ruler turns against you.
5. Liberation
All told, as many as 100,000 people escaped slavery during the seven-year occupation. An unknown number (pretty large, judging from the fugitive slave notices in royalist newspapers) escaped Loyalist masters and vanished into Canada. But most escaped from Patriot masters and fought in the British army. By and large, the British kept their word. James Moncrief, among other officers who had served with the “Black Loyalists,” helped advocate for them. Many resettled in Nova Scotia, the only colony of the original 14 to be denied independence.
On the other side, Black veterans of the war and the resistance had to apply for their freedom, supplying proof of their service. Some had to fight in court, but in the end, they were generally successful too. White heroes of the revolution and resistance, like Hercules Mulligan and Aaron Burr, used their celebrity to start their own New York emancipation movements. Together, they eventually won, making New York a free state.
The other residents of New York mostly welcomed the liberation of the city in 1783. Under civilian government, life was suddenly much better. Unless, of course, you had been a high-profile collaborator. Some were beaten or killed in revenge. Most escaped first—to Canada, England, or just somewhere else in America where nobody knew who they were.
But to the surprise of all, the most high-profile collaborator of them all, James Rivington, didn’t flee this time. As Washington’s troops moved in, he kept his bookshop open, kept printing his Royal Gazette. After a few days, General Washington said, to two of his officers, “Suppose, gentlemen, we walk down to Rivington’s bookstore; he is said to be a very pleasant kind of fellow.”
Rivington greeted all three officers, but Washington asked to go into a private room in the back, just him and Rivington. There, he gave Rivington two heavy purses of gold and his heartfelt thanks. Rivington had been his spy for years, possibly from the start. British military plans, overheard in his coffeehouse or passed to him by other spies, were written up on thin paper and bound into the covers of the books he printed.
King George thought he had conquered New York. He was wrong. No tyrant has ever truly conquered us, and no tyrant ever will.
I reached out to Lamb’s Artillery Company, a group of Revolutionary War re-enactors who specialize in the very artillery company in charge of the Battery cannon. Frank Cecala, their unofficial historian, has tentatively deemed it possible but unlikely that any members of the company that day were Black. (Thank you!) This means the Flatbush spy was more likely part of the militia, either free or as the slave of a militia member.
Benedict Arnold’s plan was to sabotage the defenses of the rebel fortress at West Point. West Point was only a little bit down the Hudson from New York City, but the British could never get past its innovative defenses, which had been designed and built by Tadeusz Kościuszko, an idealistic Polish military engineer who’d traveled to America to help with the Revolution. Arnold’s plan was foiled when his British contact, traveling through Westchester, mistook a rebel militia for a loyalist one.