The British are coming, again: loyalists, property confiscation, and reintegration in the mid-Atlantic, 1777-1800
Date
2016
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This dissertation explores the complex nature of loyalty in the mid-
Atlantic region during the American Revolution, the confiscation of property,
and the question of loyalist reintegration in the years following the civil war
in North America. Historians have long explored the question of loyalist flight
and exile, and this dissertation explores an additional problem of loyalist
reintegration. In order to approach this complex topic, this dissertation
analyzes property confiscation legislation and the ways in which property
seizure and contests defined the experiences of those who left and returned or
attempted to return.
Property confiscation legislation, the practical process of confiscation,
and the sale of taken property became crucial to the ways that patriots in the
newly emerging states understood citizenship during a period of revolutionary
turmoil. Patriots effectively began to define who would share in the rights
and obligations of citizens in large part through the process of confiscating the
property of those whom they placed outside of the republic. In the chaos of
warfare at this local and personal level, the meanings of citizenship began to
emerge in pragmatic, ideological, and then legislated ways. Contests over property, too, were complex and drawn out. Wives,
children, and family all contested the seizure of loyalist property. These
contests extended well beyond the years of the American Revolution and, in
some extraordinary cases, became drawn out court battles that spanned
decades.
A handful of loyalists did return and reintegrate while others were
never permitted to return, and others never felt comfortable in the newly
established United States and left once more. Finally, the return of some
loyalists also permits an exploration of the ways in which citizenship and
loyalism coexisted uneasily in the early republic.