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Through an Imperial Prism: Land, Liberty, and Highland Loyalism in the War of American Independence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Matthew P. Dziennik
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , April 2011 , pp. 332 - 358
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2011

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References

1 Johnson, Samuel, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (London, 1775), 305Google Scholar.

2 The Present Conduct of the Chieftains and Proprietors of Lands in the Highlands of Scotland … Considered impartially by a Highlander (Edinburgh, 1773), 7Google Scholar.

3 These figures detail the arrivals post-1763, though there may have been several thousand more that arrived earlier as traders, political exiles, and soldiers. Emigration figures are difficult to detail in any precise sense given the lack of empirical data and the hyperbole of eighteenth-century emigration literature, but for the most detailed estimate, see Bailyn, Bernard, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York, 1986), 89–113Google Scholar.

4 Estimates indicate that there were approximately 2.5 million British subjects in the colonies in 1776, of which around 2 million were white. Estimates of the loyalist population are 15–20 percent of the white population, making a white loyalist population of around 400,000. Paul H. Smith has estimated that 21,000 men served in the Provincial Corps, units raised from among the American population. The Royal Highland Emigrants enlisted over 1,700 men ca. 1776–83, although not all were ethnic Gaels. Significant numbers of Highlanders also served in Butler’s Rangers and the King’s Royal Regiment of New York. A unit of almost 100 North Carolinian Highlanders was also raised in 1780, and there was a similar unit of Highlanders in New York City in 1778. This indicates, in demographic and military terms, that Highlanders were massively disproportionately represented in the loyalist population. For the figures, see Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1975), 2:1168Google Scholar; Cogliano, Francis D., Revolutionary America, 1763–1815: A Political History, 2nd ed. (Abingdon, 2009), 32Google Scholar; Wells, Robert V., “Population and Family in Early America,” in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of the American Revolution, ed. Greene, Jack P. and Pole, J. R. (Oxford, 1991), 41Google Scholar; Robert M. Calhoon, “Loyalism and Neutrality,” in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of the American Revolution, 247; and Smith, Paul H., “The American Loyalists: Notes on Their Organisation and Numerical Strength,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 25, no. 2 (April 1968): 274CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith’s figures do not include those who were actively loyal in other ways, serving in loyalist militias or providing intelligence or supplies. According to the Loyalist Claims Commission, the number of those who were “uniformed and zealous” was twice the number of those who bore arms in formed regiments; see The National Archives (TNA), Kew, London, AO12/109, fol. 10.

5 Governor Josiah Martin estimated a potential fighting strength of 3,000 Highland Scots, which when combined with populations estimates and tax lists for North Carolina (unfortunately, unreliable) suggests an overall Highland population of 12,000. Allan MacDonald of Kingsburgh, husband of Flora MacDonald and a major in the loyalist force, gave the figures as 1,200 Highlanders and 300 Regulators present at Moore’s Creek, while Martin reported 600 Highlanders and 100 Regulators. For these population and fighting estimates, see Scots Magazine (1772), xxxiv, 395, 515; Loyalist Claims Commission Testimony of Allan MacDonald, TNA, AO13/87, fol. 59; and Governor Josiah Martin to George Germain, 21 March 1776, Wilmington, NC, in Documents of the American Revolution, ed. Davies, K. G., 21 vols. (Dublin, 1979), 12:85–90Google Scholar.

6 William Legge, second earl of Dartmouth, to General William Howe, 15 September 1775, London, TNA, CO5/92, fols. 491–94; Howe to Dartmouth, 15 January 1776, London, TNA, CO5/93, fol. 61.

7 Fingerhut, Eugene, “Assimilation of Immigrants on the Frontier of New York, 1764–1776” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1962), 232Google Scholar; Brown, Wallace, The King’s Friends: The Composition of the American Loyalist Claimants (Providence, RI, 1965), 206Google Scholar; Moore, Christopher, The Loyalists: Revolution, Exile, Settlement (Toronto, 1984), 21Google Scholar; Hunter, James, A Dance Called America (Edinburgh, 1994), 45Google Scholar; Dobson, David, Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1604–1785 (Athens, GA, 1994), 140Google Scholar; Calder, Jenni, Scots in the USA (Edinburgh, 2006), 77Google Scholar. The most recent scholarship has been more sophisticated but still assumes certain ethnic factors in Highland loyalism; see McLean, Marianne, The People of Glengarry: Highlanders in Transition (Montreal, 1991), 87–92Google Scholar; Fry, Michael, The Scottish Empire (Edinburgh, 2001), 57–70Google Scholar; and Devine, T. M., Scotland’s Empire, 1600–1815 (London, 2003), 186Google Scholar.

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9 Richards, Eric, “Scotland and the Uses of the Atlantic World,” in Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire, ed. Bailyn, Bernard and Morgan, Philip D. (London, 1991), 67–114Google Scholar. For the best example of an accurate perception of change through emigration, see McLean, The People of Glengarry.

10 Fischer, David Hackett, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford, 1989), 602Google Scholar; Rawlyk, George, “Loyalist Military Settlement in Upper Canada,” in The Loyal Americans: The Military Role of the Loyalist Provincial Corps and their Settlement in British North America, 1775–1784, ed. Allen, Robert S. (Ottawa, 1983), 100Google Scholar.

11 T. M. Devine, “A Conservative People? Scottish Gaeldom in the Age of Improvement,” 225–36, esp. 233; MacKillop, Andrew, “Highland Estate Change and Tenant Emigration,” 237–58, esp. 253, both in Eighteenth Century Scotland: New Perspectives, ed. Devine, T. M and Young, J. R. (East Linton, Scotland, 1999)Google Scholar.

12 Jasanoff, Maya, “The Other Side of Revolution: Loyalists in the British Empire,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 65, no. 2 (April 2008): 205–32Google Scholar; Gould, Eliga H., “A Virtual Nation: Greater Britain and the Imperial Legacy of the American Revolution,” American Historical Review 104, no. 2 (April 1999): 476–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 For liberty and property, see Wood, Gordon S., The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1993), 11–95Google Scholar.

14 For the political complexities of allegiance across the Atlantic region in this period, see Norton, Mary Beth, The British Americans: Loyalist Exiles in England (Boston, 1972)Google Scholar; Berkin, Carol, Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist (London, 1974)Google Scholar; Ferling, John, The Loyalist Mind: Joseph Galloway and the American Revolution (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Potter, Janice, The Liberty We Seek: Loyalist Ideology in Colonial New York and Massachusetts (London, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Condon, Ann, “Marching to a Different Drummer: The Political Philosophy of the Loyalists,” in Red, White and True Blue: The Loyalists in the Revolution, ed. Wright, Esmond (New York, 1976), 1–18Google Scholar; Sainsbury, John, Disaffected Patriots: London Supporters of Revolutionary America, 1769–1782 (Kingston, ON, 1987)Google Scholar; Gould, Eliga H., Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000), 106–80Google Scholar; Armitage, David, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800, ed. Armitage, David and Braddick, Michael J. (Basingstoke, 2002), 11–30Google Scholar; Mason, Keith, “The American Loyalist Diaspora and the Reconfiguration of the British Atlantic World,” in Empire and Nation: The American Revolution in the Atlantic World, ed. Gould, Eliga H. and Onuf, Peter (London, 2005), 239–57Google Scholar; Jones, Bradley, “The American Revolution and Popular Loyalism in the British Atlantic World” (PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2006)Google Scholar; and Larkin, Edward, “What Is a Loyalist? The American Revolution as Civil War,” Common-Place 8, no. 1 (2007)Google Scholar, http://www.common-place.org/vol-08/no-01/larkin.

15 Meyer, Highland Scots, 4; Eric Richards, “Scotland and the Uses of the Atlantic World,” 106–8.

16 Commerce, the extension of empire, anti-French propaganda, and Protestantism have all been forwarded, though by no means uncritically received, as the key ingredients of an embryonic sense of Britishness; see Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation (London, 1992)Google Scholar. For a critique of Protestant identity in Britishness, see Claydon, Tony and McBride, Ian, introduction to Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c. 1650–1850, ed. Claydon, Tony and McBride, Ian (Cambridge, 1999), 3–52Google Scholar. The Highlands were partly rejected from this identity because much of what defined the French “other” in British identity was similarly applied to the Highlands; see Hawkins, Jonathan, “Imperial ’45: The Jacobite Rebellions in Transatlantic Context,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 24, no. 1 (January 1996): 31–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also The Chevaliers Market; or, Highland Fair (London, 1745)Google Scholar.

17 Macinnes, Allan I., Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603–1788 (East Linton, Scotland, 1996), 249Google Scholar; Harris, Bob, Politics and the Nation: Britain in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2002), 150CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It has also been shown that mismanagement of the Highlands, rather than any explicit hatred of the Hanoverian regime, was vital in creating the preconditions of rebellion; see Mitchison, Rosalind, “The Government and the Highlands, 1707–1745,” in Scotland in the Age of Improvement, ed. Phillipson, N. T. and Mitchison, Rosalind (Edinburgh, 1970), 39Google Scholar; and Kidd, Colin, British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800 (Cambridge, 1999), 135CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Alexander MacDonald to Jeffrey Amherst, August 1777, Halifax, NS, in The Letterbook of Captain Alexander MacDonald of the Royal Highland Emigrants, 1775–1779 (New York, 1883), 353–62Google Scholar. Allan MacDonald of Kingsburgh had commanded a detachment of government troops in the Inner and Outer Hebrides, in the very locality where his future wife would assist the prince in his famous escape; see memorandum of Flora MacDonald, National Library of Scotland (NLS), MS 2618 Misc., fols. 82–83.

19 For concepts of Britain in the poetry of Jacobite Gaels, see Morely, Vincent, “The Idea of Britain in Eighteenth Century Ireland and Scotland,” Studia Hibernica 33 (2004–5): 114–15Google Scholar.

20 Mac an t-Saoir, Donnchadh Bàn, “Oran do’n Righ,” in Orain Dhonnchaidh Bhàin [The songs of Duncan Ban Macintyre], ed. and trans. Macleoid, Aonghas (Edinburgh, 1978), 31Google Scholar; Macleoid’s work provides the best translation of Mac an t-Saoir’s poetry, and I have used it here. And see Macpherson, James, The rights of Great Britain asserted against the claims of America: being an answer to the declaration of the General Congress (London, 1776), 3–5Google Scholar; and “On Emigration from the Scottish Highlands and Isles,” Relig Papers, NLS, MS 9646, fol. 65.

21 Americanus, Scotus, Information Concerning the Province of North Carolina Addressed to Emigrants from the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland (Glasgow, 1773), 11Google Scholar, and see 7; Alexander Murdoch has highlighted that the views expressed in the tract closely resembled those of Alexander Campbell of Balole, a native of Islay who spent time in Jamaica, North Carolina, and the Highlands and maintained a reputation for possessing information regarding emigration on both sides of the Atlantic. It is possible that Balole and Scotus Americanus were one and the same; see Murdoch, Alexander, “A Scottish Document concerning Emigration to North Carolina in 1772,” North Carolina Historical Review 67, no. 3 (July 1990): 444–45Google Scholar. For another work by Scotus Americanus (or, at least, an individual utilizing the same pseudonym) advocating Highland support for the Revolution, see “To the emigrants lately arrived from the Highlands of Scotland,” Virginia Gazette, no. 498 (23 November 1775), 1.

22 Daniel Ross to Munro Ross, 28 September 1780, Antigua, West Indies, National Archives of Scotland (NAS), GD199/273; Devine, T. M., Clearance and Improvement: Land, Power and People in Scotland, 1700–1900 (Edinburgh, 2006), 168Google Scholar; Lenman, Bruce, “The Highland Aristocracy and North America, 1603–1784,” in The Seventeenth Century in the Highlands, ed. Maclean, Lachlan (Inverness, 1986), 172–85Google Scholar.

23 MacDonald, Allan M., “Captain John MacDonald ‘Glenalladale,’” Canadian Catholic Historical Association Report 31 (1964): 29Google Scholar; Jones, “The American Revolution and Popular Loyalism,” 114; Bowen, H. V., “British Conceptions of Global Empire, 1756–1783,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 26, no. 3 (July 1996): 1, 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 John Macdonald [of Glenalladale] to Lord Germain, 30 October 1776, Halifax, NS, TNA, CO217/53, fols. 67–112.

25 McLean, John P., An Historical Account of the Settlement of Scotch Highlanders in America prior to the Peace of 1783 (Glasgow, 1900), 126Google Scholar.

26 Burt, Edmund, Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland to his Friend in London, ed. Simmons, Andrew, 2 vols. (London, 1754; Edinburgh, 1998), 2:182Google Scholar; Macdonald, Alexander, Ais-Eiridh na Sean-Chanoin Albannaich; no, An nuadh oranaiche Gaidhealach (Edinburgh, 1751), 6–7Google Scholar.

27 Soldiering in India, 1764–1787: Extracts from Journals and Letters Left by Lt. Col. Allan Macpherson and Lt. Colonel John Macpherson of the East India Company’s Service, ed. Macpherson, W. C. (Edinburgh, 1928), 195–201Google Scholar; Kirk, Robert, The Memoirs and Adventures of Robert Kirk, Late of the Royal Highland Regiment (Limerick, 1775), 68Google Scholar; “Report of John Macdonald on DeBarres Estate,” Joseph DeBarres Papers, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, MG23, F1(2), fols. 40–41; “Oran do na Gael a bah sa cuir do America, san bhliadna 1778,” in Cochruinneacha taoghta de shaothair nam bard Gaelach [A choice collection of the works of the Highland bards], ed. Stewart, Alexander and Stewart, Donald, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1804), 2:524–25Google Scholar. Much of the Gaelic poetry concerning North America upon which I draw is available in translation in Newton, Michael, We’re Indians Sure Enough: The Legacy of the Scottish Highlanders in the United States (Richmond, VA, 2001)Google Scholar.

28 Alexander Campbell to Alexander Campbell of Barcaldine, 20 February 1776, Hampton Roads, VA, NAS, GD170/1595/13; Patrick Campbell to Sandy Campbell, 8 July 1778, Staten Island, NY, NAS, GD170/1711/17; Loyalist Claims Commission Testimony of Alexander Macdonald, TNA, AO12/24, fol. 49; McAlpine, John, Genuine Narratives and Concise Memoirs of some of the most interesting exploits and singular adventures of J. M’Alpine, a native Highlander (Greenock, Scotland, 1780), 70–71Google Scholar; MacDonald to Lady MacDonald, 12 October 1777, Halifax, NS, and MacDonald to General Eyre Massey, 3 January 1777, both in Letterbook of Captain Alexander MacDonald, 372–73, 310.

29 James MacLagan to Lord John Murray, 12 July 1777, New York, John Rylands Library, Manchester, BAG5/1/140.

30 Mac an t-Saoir, “Oran Do’n Righ,” in Orain Dhonnchaidh Bhàin, 31, Macleoid’s translation.

31 Mackenzie, Kenneth, Orain Ghaidhealach agus Bearla air an eadar-theangacha (Edinburgh, 1792), 37–42Google Scholar; Newton, Michael, “Jacobite Past, Loyalist Present,” Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies 5 (2003): 58Google Scholar.

32 See McLeod, Wilson, “Gaelic Poetry as Historical Source: Some Problems and Possibilities,” in Ireland (Ulster) Scotland; Concepts, Contexts, Comparisons, ed. Longley, Edna, Hughes, Eamonn, and O’Rawe, Des (Belfast, 2003), 171–73Google Scholar.

33 “Oran do Choirneal Mac’Phearson,” in Mackenzie, Orain Ghaidhealach agus Bearla, 40, my translation; this song was for Duncan Macpherson, who commanded the 71st Foot at Yorktown in 1781 and who was known as Donnacha na h’Ath (Duncan of the Kiln), having been born in a kiln while his father, Ewan Macpherson of Cluny, was on the run from government forces after the 1745 Jacobite rebellion.

34 Quoted from Duncan Kennedy, “A Song after the Revolution,” a contemporary poem, in Newton, We’re Indians Sure Enough, 159, Newton’s translation.

35 James MacLagan, “Oran a rinneadh d’an chath bhuidhinn Rioghail Ghaoidheallach nuair bha iad dol d’American san bhliadhna 1756,” in Gillies, John, Sean Dain agus Orain Ghaidhealach, do Reir Ordu’ Dhoin Uaisle a Raid an Gaeltachd Alba (Perth, 1786), 115–16Google Scholar, my translation.

36 Nelson, William H., The American Tory (Oxford, 1961), 86–90Google Scholar; Brown, Wallace, The Good Americans: The Loyalists in the American Revolution (New York, 1969), 47Google Scholar; Potter, The Liberty We Seek, 12; Hunter, Dance Called America, 45; Devine, Scotland’s Empire, 183.

37 Ferguson, Adam, Essay on the History of Civil Society (Edinburgh, 1767), 23–24Google Scholar.

38 Arthur Lee to the Committee of Secret Correspondence, 3 June 1776, London, in The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, ed. Wharton, Francis, 6 vols. (Washington, DC, 1889), 2:95–96Google Scholar; Duffy, Michael, The Englishman and the Foreigner (Cambridge, 1986), esp. 19–20Google Scholar.

39 The Scotch Butchery (London, 1775); “About the use of Savages Against the Americans,” in State Records of North Carolina, ed. Clark, Walter, 16 vols. (Raleigh, NC, 1886–1914), 10:714Google Scholar; McAlpine, Genuine Narratives, 43.

40 Jeffrey Amherst to Henry Bouquet, 7 August 1763, New York, British Library, London, Add. MS 21634, fol. 347; Meyer, Highland Scots, 89.

41 Meyer, Highland Scots, 108–11, 133–34.

42 “The Journal of the Proceedings of the Provincial Congress of North Carolina, held at Hillsborough 20th August A.D. 1775,” in Clark, State Records of North Carolina, 10:173–74; Martin to the earl of Dartmouth, 16 October 1775, on board a sloop of war in the Cape Fear River, ibid., 10:266. For evidence of good relations between Highland settlers and revolutionary governments, see “Proceedings of Virginia Convention at Williamsburg in the matter of certain Scotch immigrants en route to North Carolina,” ibid., 10:346; Thomas Burke to the General Assembly of North Carolina,” 16 April 1782, Halifax, NS, ibid., 16:13; and MacDonald to Mr Walter, 4 November 1775, Halifax, NS, in Letterbook of Captain Alexander MacDonald.

43 McGeachy, Robert, “Captain Lauchlin Campbell and Early Argyllshire Emigration to New York,” Northern Scotland 19 (1999): 21–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Governor Tyron to the second earl of Dartmouth, 2 November 1773, New York, TNA, CO5/1078, fols. 15–16.

44 Sullivan, James, ed., The Papers of Sir William Johnson, 14 vols. (Albany, NY, 1921–30), 8:915–17, 12:1111–12Google Scholar.

45 Marshall, P. J., “Empire and Opportunity in Britain, 1763–75,” 1995 Prothero Lecture, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 5 (1995): 128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mackillop, Andrew, “The Highlands and the Returning Nabob: Sir Hector Munro of Novar, 1760–1807,” in Emigrant Homecomings: The Return Movement of Emigrants, 1600–2000, ed. Harper, Marjory (Manchester, 2005), 233–61Google Scholar. For opportunity through empire, see Bob Harris, “‘American Idols’: Empire, War and the Middling Ranks in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Past and Present, no. 150 (February 1996), 115–18; Bayly, C. A., “The First Age of Global Imperialism, 1760–1830,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 26, no. 2 (April 1996): 43Google Scholar; Marshall, P. J., The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and America, c. 1750–1783 (Oxford, 2005), 158–206Google Scholar.

46 Cashin, Edward J., Lachlan McGillivray, Indian Trader: The Shaping of the Southern Colonial Frontier (Athens, GA, 1992)Google Scholar; Snapp, J. Russell, John Stuart and the Struggle for Empire on the Southern Frontier (Baton Rouge, LA, 1996)Google Scholar; James Noel MacKenzie MacLean of Glensanda, “The Early Political Careers of James ‘Fingal’ Macpherson and Sir John Macpherson, Bart.” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1967)Google Scholar; Macpherson, James, The Rights of Great Britain asserted Against the Claims of America (London, 1776)Google Scholar; Macpherson, James, The History and Management of the East-India Company from its origin in 1600 to the Present Times (London, 1779)Google Scholar; McGilvary, George K., East India Patronage and the British State: The Scottish Elite and Politics in the Eighteenth Century (London, 2008)Google Scholar; Donald McNicol to James McLagan, 3 March 1779, Limoges, Dundee City Archives, GD/We/5/13; SirSinclair, John, An Account of the Highland Society of London, from its establishment in May 1778, to the commencement of the year 1813 (London, 1813), 1–12Google Scholar.

47 Journal of An Expedition against the Rebels of Georgia in North America Under the Orders of Archibald Campbell Esquire Lieut. Colol. Of His Majesty’s 71st Regimt., 1778, ed. Campbell, Colin (Darien, GA., 1981), i–vGoogle Scholar.

48 These figures are based on a Highland population of 275,000, of which one-quarter were eligible males, increasing by three percent per annum as males came of military age. This would have yielded an eligible male population of 148,000, of which a conservative 16,000 would have been required to raise nineteen battalions, allowing for understrength battalions and transfers between battalions, as occurred at the end of the Seven Years’ War. The true number of Highlanders in regular battalions, additional companies, reinforcements, and non-Scottish units might have been as many as 25,000, rather than 16,000, but I have chosen a conservative approach until more quantitative research is completed. The higher estimate would yield one in six Highland males serving in the regular army during the period. The figures for the British Isles as a whole are 136,000 regular soldiers, from an eligible male population of 3.8 million, and are based on figures from Conway, Stephen, “British Mobilization in the War of American Independence,” Historical Research 72 (February 1999): 65–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In summer 1757, of the non-Highland battalions deployed to America, Scots amounted to between 4 percent and 56 percent of those battalions; see Brumwell, Stephen, Redcoats: The British Soldier and War in the Americas, 1755–1763 (Cambridge, 2002), 318Google Scholar.

49 Nenadic, Stana, Lairds and Luxury: The Highland Gentry in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 2007), 90–106Google Scholar.

50 Conway, Stephen, “Scots, Britons and Europeans: Scottish Military Service, c. 1739–1783,” Historical Research 82 (February 2009): 114–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marsden, John, Galloglas: Hebridean and West Highland Mercenary Warrior Kindreds in Medieval Ireland (East Linton, Scotland, 2003)Google Scholar.

51 For bounty money offered, see Sir James Grant to George Mackenzie, 28 September 1778, Edinburgh, NAS, GD248/277/37; Lawrence Leith to James Ross, 3 January 1776, Northern Argyll, Scotland, NAS, GD170/415; and Recruiting Accounts, 1776, Maxwell and Francis Skelly’s companies, 71st Foot, Fochabers, Scotland, NAS, GD44/47/1/49.

52 Mackillop, Andrew, More Fruitful than the Soil: Army, Empire, and the Scottish Highlands, 1715–1815 (East Linton, Scotland, 2000), 139–67Google Scholar.

53 McCulloch, Ian Macpherson, Sons of the Mountains: The Highland Regiments in the French and Indian War, 1756–1767, 2 vols. (New York, 2006), 2:173–78Google Scholar.

54 Recruitment poster, 8 January 1776, National Museum of Scotland (NMS), National War Museum, Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, M.1982.97; italics in original.

55 Scotus Americanus, Information Concerning the Province of North Carolina, 10.

56 Gray, Malcolm, The Highland Economy, 1750–1850 (Edinburgh, 1957), 23Google Scholar; Devine, T. M., Clanship to Crofters’ War (Manchester, 1994), 32–52Google Scholar; Hunter, James, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh, 2000), 37–48Google Scholar; Devine, Clearance and Improvement, 126–56; Mackillop, “Highland Estate Change and Tenant Emigration,” 237–58.

57 Mackillop, “The Highlands and the Returning Nabob,” 250; Angus McCuiag to Alexander McAllister, August 1770; Alexander McAllister to John Boyd, November 1770; James McAllister to Alexander McAllister, October 1771; Alexander McAllister to Mary McAllister (undated [1772?]), all written between Cross Creek and Argyllshire, Scotland—no specific locations given, all in McAllister Papers, North Carolina State Archives (NCSA), Raleigh, NC; Commissioners of Customs, Fort William, to the Treasury in London, 18 July 1785, Treasury Papers, TNA, T1/624, fols. 107–9; Duncan Lothian, “Oran America” [A song for America], in A Collection of Gaelic and English Songs (Aberdeen, 1780), 22, my translation; and see “Observes or Remarks upon the lands and islands which compose the barony called Harris,” Lee Papers, NLS, MS 3431, fol. 80.

58 For definitions of positive and negative liberty, see Berlin, Isaiah, Two Concepts of Liberty: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered before the University of Oxford on 31 October 1958 (Oxford, 1958)Google Scholar; see also Clark, J. C. D., “Liberty and Religion: The End of U.S. Exceptionalism?” Orbis 49, no. 1 (2005): 21–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Loyalist Claims Commission Testimony of Donald Morrison, TNA, AO12/34, fol. 357; McLean, An Historical Account, 211.

60 General Donald Macdonald to James Moore, 20 February 1776, Camp at Rockfish, NC, in Clark, State Records of North Carolina, 11:278–79; 8 January 1776, NMS, M.1982.97; MacDonald to J. Ogilvie, 24 April 1775, Halifax, NS, and MacDonald to [addressee unknown], 21 August 1777, Halifax, NS, both in Letterbook of Captain Alexander MacDonald, 159, 321; John Grant to Sir James Grant of Grant, 26 June 1777, New York, NAS, GD248/54/4/60.

61 Mac an t-Saoir, “Oran Do Thailbeart,” in Orain Dhonnchaidh Bhàin, 23, Macleoid’s translation.

62 Wickremesekera, Channa, “Best Black Troops in the World”: British Perceptions and the Making of the Sepoy, 1745–1805 (New Delhi, 2002), 129Google Scholar; Marshall, “Empire and Opportunity in Britain, 1763–75,” 13, 20.

63 Martin to Dartmouth, 10 March 1775, Wilmington, NC, in Davies, Documents of the American Revolution, 10:56.

64 Martin to Dartmouth, 12 November 1776, on board a sloop of war in the Cape Fear River, in Clark, State Records of North Carolina, 10:324, and see 10:324–28.

65 Martin to Dartmouth, 16 October 1775, on board a sloop of war in the Cape Fear River, ibid., 10:267–68, and see 264–79.

66 Patterson, George, “The 84th Foot or Royal Highland Emigrants,” in More Studies in Nova Scotian History (Halifax, NS, 1941), 12Google Scholar; MacDonald to William Howe, 30 November 1775, Halifax, NS, in Letterbook of Captain Alexander MacDonald, 224; “Brid. Gen. Allan Maclean,” app. 21, in Hadden’s Journal and Orderly Books: A Journal Kept in Canada and upon Burgoyne’s Campaign in 1776 and 1777, by Lieut. James M. Hadden, Royal Artillery, ed. Rogers, Horatio (Boston, 1972), 549–50Google Scholar. The corresponding figure for other loyalists was 100 acres per private, with the difference between Emigrant officers’ and other loyalist officers’ land grants diverging at increased rates the higher the rank of the officer. The vast majority of loyalists would not receive this amount of land until 1788. The corresponding figure for the King’s Proclamation was 50 acres per private rising to 4,000 acres per field officer. It is probable that these numbers were inflated for the purposes of recruitment, for it was not until April 1777 that the king officially authorized Torloisk to grant lands but to do so on the basis of the 1763 Proclamation; see Smith, Paul H., Loyalists and Redcoats: A Study in British Revolutionary Policy (Chapel Hill, NC, 1964), 67Google Scholar.

67 McAlpine, Genuine Narratives, 15, 45; Nile Mclean to his father, 2 September 1782, Halifax, NS, NAS, GD174/1348; William Mackenzie to Peter [surname unknown], 7 February 1778, New York, NAS, GD170/3158.

68 Charles, Lord Cornwallis, to Francis Edward, Lord Rawdon, April 1781, Cross Creek, NC, TNA, PRO30/11/79, fol. 2; see also Rawdon to Cornwallis, April 1781, Camden, SC, TNA, PRO30/11/101, fol. 8, in which Cornwallis allows the recruitment of a Highland Company in North Carolina on the basis of “grants of lands according to his majesty’s Proclamation.”

69 William MacDonald Land Grant Papers, Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, Halifax, NS, RG20, Series A, vol. 1; Smith, Donald B., “From Swords to Ploughshares: The Context for Highland Soldier Settlement in Nova Scotia, 1710–1775” (MA thesis, St. Mary’s University, 2003), 107–42Google Scholar; Patrick Campbell to Duncan Campbell of Glenure, 1 March 1777, NAS, GD170/1065/3/1.

70 Loyalist Claims Commission Testimony of Donald Morrison, TNA, AO12/34, fol. 357; “Observes or Remarks upon the lands and islands which compose the barony called Harris,” Lee Papers, NLS, MS 3431, fol. 80.

71 John Small to Charles Morris, 5 September 1785, Windsor, NS, NAS, GD174/2177/10; Regimental returns of 2/71st Foot, April 1783, TNA, WO12/7847.

72 Loyalist Claims Commission Testimony of John Cameron, TNA, AO12/27, fol. 209; Loyalist Claims Commission Testimony of John Macdonnell, TNA, AO12/29, fol. 245; Loyalist Claims Commission Testimony of Donald Ross, TNA, AO12/29, fol. 54; Loyalist Claims Commission Testimony of Ranald MacDonald, TNA, AO12/27, fol. 157; Petition of Alexander Macdonnell, June 1776, TNA, WO28/9, fol. 159.

73 Loyalist Claims Commission Testimony of Donald Cameron, TNA, AO12/29, fol. 210; Loyalist Claims Commission Testimony of Angus Cameron, TNA, AO12/29, fol. 250; it is not known if there was any familial relationship between the two men.

74 Loyalist Claims Commission Testimony of Alexander Cameron, TNA, AO12/26, fol. 411; Loyalist Claims Commission Testimony of Alexander Cameron, TNA, AO12/29, fol. 203.

75 Philip Schuyler to John Hancock, 19 January 1776, in American Archives, ed. Force, Peter, 9 vols. (Washington, DC, 1837–53), 4:828Google Scholar; McLean, The People of Glengarry, 84–86.

76 “St. Andrew’s District Committee Resolves,” December 1774, in Lachlan MacIntosh Papers in the University of Georgia Libraries, ed. Hawes, Lilla Miles (Athens, GA, 1968), 8–12Google Scholar; Alexander McAllister to Hector McAllister, January 1774, and Alexander McAllister to John Boyd, January 1775, McAllister Papers, NCSA; Treasury Papers, TNA, T1/624, fols. 107–9; General James Moore to General Donald MacDonald, 20 February 1776, Camp at Rockfish, NC, in Clark, State Records of North Carolina, 11:277–78, and see 278–79.

77 Bailyn, Voyagers to the West, 112; Fingerhut, “The Assimilation of Immigrants on the Frontier,” 202; Brown, The King’s Friends, 105; Meyer, Highland Scots, 91.

78 Meyer, Highland Scots, 93.

79 Paul Smith has claimed that most early loyalists were veterans of the Seven Years’ War; see Smith, Loyalists and Redcoats, 67. This is not borne out by Wallace Brown’s comprehensive study, in which he highlights that only sixty of the one thousand New York claims came from veterans; see Brown, The King’s Friends, 90.

80 Jackson, Harvey, Lachlan McIntosh and the Politics of Revolutionary Georgia (Athens, GA., 1979), 12–14Google Scholar; “St. Andrew’s District Committee Resolves,” in Hawes, Lachlan MacIntosh Papers, 12; Alexander McAllister to Hector McAllister, 29 November 1770; Alexander McAllister to Hector McAllister, 6 December 1770; Alexander McAllister to John Boyd, January 1775, all in McAllister Papers, NCSA.

81 “The Petition [to Josiah Martin] of the Freeholders and Inhabitants of and near Campbelton in Cumberland County,” 13 March 1772, in Clark, State Records of North Carolina, 9:79; “Journal of the Proceedings of the First Provincial Convention or Congress of North Carolina, held at New Bern on the 25 August, A.D. 1774,” ibid., 9:1049; “St. Andrew’s District Committee Resolves,” December 1774, in Hawes, Lachlan MacIntosh Papers, 12, and see 3; Alexander McAllister to John Boyd, January 1775, McAllister Papers, NCSA.

82 Memorandum of Flora MacDonald, NLS, MS 2618 Misc., fol. 82–3; McLean, An Historical Account, 206; McAlpine, Genuine Narratives, 15, 18, 48; John Ancrum, William Wilkinson, and Jona Dunbibin to Governor Richard Caswell, 24 February 1778, Wilmington, NC, in Clark, State Records of North Carolina, 13:57; Martin to Germain, 23 January 1778, New York, ibid., 13:368; Hardy Sanders to Governor Thomas Burke, 16 August 1781, Wake Court House, NC, ibid., 15:610.

83 For the militia forays, see “Report of Committee appointed to enquire into the conduct of insurgents and suspected persons,” 20 April 1776, Halifax, NC, in Clark, State Records of North Carolina, 10:594–603; Governor Richard Caswell to C. Harnett, 2 September 1777, New Bern, NC, ibid., 11:603; introductory note, ibid., 14:iii; “House Journal of the State of North Carolina,” 22 January 1779, New Bern, NC, ibid., 13:633; and Cornwallis to Rawdon, April 1781, Cross Creek, NC, TNA, PRO30/11/79, fol. 2; Stevens, Benjamin Franklin, ed., The campaign in Virginia 1781: An Exact Reprint of Six Rare Pamphlets on the Clinton-Cornwallis (London, 1888), 10Google Scholar; and Brown, The King’s Friends, 197. For Highlanders who received mistreatment, see Loyalist Claims Commission Testimony of Donald MacDonald, TNA, AO12/34, fol. 409; see also Daniel Klaus to William Knox, 16 October 1777, Montreal, in Davies, Documents of the American Revolution, 14:219–24; and “Account of William Gipson,” in The Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts of the War for Independence, ed. Dann, John C. (Chicago, 1983), 188–89Google Scholar, and see 186–89.

84 For these antagonisms, see McLean, The People of Glengarry, 96; for hopes of peace among Highland loyalists, see MacDonald to Mr Walter, 4 November 1775, Halifax, NS, in Letterbook of Captain Alexander MacDonald, 217; and Colin Shaw to Sally Shaw, 14 October 1778, Shaw Papers, NCSA.

85 Mackillop, Andrew, “For King, Country and Regiment? Motive and Identity in Highland Soldiery, 1746–1815,” in Fighting for Identity: Scottish Military Experience, c. 1500–1900, ed. Murdoch, Steve and Mackillop, Andrew (Leiden, 2002), 191Google Scholar.