We're Huntin' Tories Tonight, Boys!
This Week in 1776, Week 3
With Common Sense making the rounds and its rebuttals being soundly rejected, the Patriots start to tie up loose ends by arresting and removing Loyalists who go on the run. Elijah Isaacs was one such patriot out of the Carolinas, a Captain under Martin Armstrong of the Surry County Regiment, although he didn’t immediately set to work catching runaway troublemakers. His brother, Godfrey, [halfway down the page] would handle those duties later on in the war, starting around 1780 onward.
I mention it because Godfrey is my great-something-grandfather, though we don’t have any records of him participating in 1776. That record belongs to my great-something-uncle, Elijah. Yes, I’m flexing, no, I had nothing to do with it. It’s just cool.
Norfolk More Like No, Folks!
The Patriots successfully chased the British out of Norfolk, Virginia, due in no small part to a British naval battery that was supposed to sail in close and pound the Patriot fortifications, except they missed and hit a bunch of civilian structures, turning public support against them, because they suck, and also, lol. Further proof that the Brits couldn’t do anything right (God was on our side.) With the Patriots cutting off any land supply chains, the Brits accepted the impracticality of further occupation, and thus the Americans took full control of a significant port in the colonies.
Cock-a-doodle-do, American!
We may think of propaganda in terms of the stylized art of the 1940s, but it’s been a part of the American war effort since the beginning. Case in point, the Patriots did plenty of peacocking over the success at Norfolk, which helped to further rally public support to their cause. Since a key element of the colonial-Loyalist conflict centered on whether reconciliation was still possible, or even necessary, the tangible proof that the colonies could repel Britannia did wonders for dispelling the notion. As always, the American Revolution was both martial and philosophical: you had to physically beat your enemy, and you had to win the minds of the common man along the way.
Redcoats and Yellow Bellies
Now I’m just being mean, and I don’t care. With the Brits retreating from a major geographical asset, Loyalist support waned even further. There was nobody there to back them up for speaking their mind against the Patriot cause, and thus there was no point in doing so. It would just get you ostracized. As the British presence crumbled out of the south in early 1776, attention shifted farther up to the north, where cities like Boston and Philadelphia would play a significant role for a while. But the Brits wouldn’t entirely abandon a southern strategy. Not just yet.
Stay tuned for next week.