The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (118 page)

Surely almost no one lived really well, soldiers and civilians alike, until the navy carried the troops away in March 1776. Food became scarce almost immediately. Fruits, vegetables, and fresh meat disappeared as the besieging Americans cut off access to the farms and stores of the interior. Salted meat, dried beans and peas, and a few other items continued to come in from Britain. But supply from across the sea was irregular and could not provide much variety. For civilians, as John Andrews, a merchant who remained within the city to protect his property explained, it was "pork and beans one day, and beans and pork another, and fish when we can catch it." Andrews did not starve but he lived in dread that despite his austerity he could not protect what he had. The soldiers, he said, "think they have a license to plunder every one's house and store who leaves the town, of which they have given convincing proofs already."
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The British soldiers, for their own reasons, must have shared some of Andrews's gloom. They had fought in two bloody battles, to no good purpose as far as they could see. And here they were confined to a virtually deserted city by an army of rebels. The winter made things worse for these troops and for the civilians as well. As the river and the bay began to freeze over, the chance of an attack increased. By itself the cold would have been bad enough.

Not surprisingly in the winter of 1775-76 the British army did not show a nice regard for civilians' rights or for civilians' property. Officers took over a number of private houses for themselves -- General Henry Clinton lived in John Hancock's, and Burgoyne lived in James Bowdoin's. Other lower-ranking officers spread themselves out in lesser houses. Their soldiers also seem to have lived in houses.
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Public buildings were also put to the army's purposes. Dragoons used the Old South Meeting House as a riding school, tearing out the pews to make it serviceable. West Church and Hollis Street Church became barracks; the Federal Street Meeting House was made into a barn for

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the storage of hay, and the Old North was pulled down for firewood. At least one hundred privately owned houses went the way of Old North -- into the fires of shivering soldiers. Besides the damaged and demolished houses and churches, Bostonians found out-buildings missing, fences destroyed, trees cut down, gardens trampled, and a general filth when they reclaimed their city in March.

The year after the British evacuated Boston they captured Philadelphia, which they held for almost nine months. In several respects the occupation of Philadelphia resembled that of Boston. The civilians who remained after the city fell bad to contend with soldiers who sometimes plundered and abused and even killed them. They also had to house officers and men whether they wanted to or not.

On the whole, however, civilian life was much better than it had been in occupied Boston. No army surrounded Philadelphia, and travel to and from nearby farms and villages -- and to New York -- continued. To be sure, the Delaware River could not be used until late November 1777, when Howe finally succeeded in capturing the American forts which dominated its waters. But Washington's army, weak and miserable at Valley Forge, offered no threat at least until the spring of 1778. There were partisan bands, however, which attempted to stop farmers from carrying their produce into the city, and there were outlaws who robbed anyone on the road weaker than themselves.

Partisans, the occasional patrols sent from Valley Forge, even the outlaws were nothing more than a nuisance to the British army. It lived much better than it had in Boston under siege.

The civilians, however, were never completely free from harassment by soldiers. At its best a soldier's life was rarely comfortable, and soldiers in close quarters with civilians often took, or tried to take, goods civilians preferred not to give up. In the first few days of the occupation, before officers could dampen free spirits, soldiers stole from houses, tore down fences for their campfires, and took hay, vegetables, and other goods without giving receipts. Such actions never completely stopped in the next nine months, but unauthorized seizures may have fallen off. As winter came on the troops seemed to act on orders from their officers and protests from civilians.
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The poor suffered the most during the occupation. They may not have been robbed so frequently as those with more of the world's goods, but they felt the bite of inflated prices most keenly.
Food and fuel

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were almost always available in Philadelphia, but the prices one paid for them increased rapidly while the British were present.
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Inhabitants at every social level felt anxiety and fear during the occupation. Even those loyal to the king's cause had reason to fear, for soldiers looking for plunder did not care where they got it. Robert Morton, a young Tory, at first welcomed the arrival of the British and scoffed at the speed with which Congress fled the city in September. Within a day or two of the beginning of the occupation be began to record its "dreadful consequences" -- the looting of houses, the seizure of his mother's hay with no pretense of payment or even a receipt, and the "ravages and wanton destruction of the soldiery."
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Young Morton greeted the occupation well disposed toward the British. Elizabeth Drinker, the wife of a Quaker merchant, does not seem to have cared much for either side. And like almost all Quakers, she disapproved of the violence of the war.

Several weeks before Philadelphia's capture, the Pennsylvania council seized Henry Drinker, husband of Elizabeth, on suspicion of disloyalty to the American cause. Henry Drinker and other Quakers under suspicion were sent to outlying towns and confined. Elizabeth naturally worried about her husband. The occupation added to the strain she felt.

The Drinkers had money and did not go hungry or cold. Nor did they have to give up their house, although after prolonged negotiations they had to take in a British officer, a Major Crammond, who came with three servants (one boarded at the Drinkers'), three horses, three cows, two sheep, plus assorted turkeys and chickens. All this baggage may have surprised Elizabeth Drinker, who never quite adjusted to having the major in the house. His presence, however, may have brought a benefit she did not fully recognize. Before Major Crammond took up residence the family feared that soldiers might break into the house. One did in late November, an intoxicated trooper who had taken up with their young servant Ann. Elizabeth Drinker was badly frightened by this occurrence and was made even more fearful by stories of troops who plundered Philadelphia houses. In December, after seeing men loitering in the neighborhood after dark, she confided to her journal that "I often feel afraid to go to Bed." Major Crammond may have been something of a bother -- he kept late hours and entertained his friends in

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the Drinkers' parlor -- but his presence must have discouraged soldiers who might otherwise have entered the bouse.
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Elizabeth Drinker occasionally appealed to Joseph Galloway for assistance. Galloway was a loyalist, once a powerful Pennsylvania politician, and a man of ability. From December 4, 1777, until the army pulled out of the city, he served as "Superintendent General of the Police in the City and its Environs and Superintendent of Imports and Exports to and from Philadelphia." The grand title simply meant that he was responsible for the regulation of trade in and out of Philadelphia. The only coercive power he had was whatever the army chose to lend him.
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The regulation of trade during the occupation was no light matter. Business flourished during these nine months. The army ordered that regular entry of ships and cargoes should be made, and goods which were likely to be smuggled to rebels outside the city -- rum, spirits, molasses, and salt -- were carefully stored and sold only by permit.

Loyalist merchants made money during this period and so apparently did the British officials and naval officers who engaged in smuggling. Galloway did his best to see that the law was observed, once going so far as to break into a warehouse owned by Tench Coxe, another Tory merchant, in search of contraband arms.

Coxe had returned to Philadelphia with the army in September 1777. He found it half deserted, but exiles like himself who had fled the year before soon made their way back. Trade revived with New York and the West Indies once the American forts on the Delaware were cleared in late November. Even before the opening of the river, Coxe advertised in a local paper that he had cotton goods, satins, silk knee garters, pearl necklaces, and Keyser's pills for sale. Keyser's pills must have been highly valued, for they supposedly cured venereal disease, rheumatism, asthma, dropsy, and apoplexy.
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For those with money, merchants like Coxe, royal officials, and some army officers, there was a social season with balls held weekly, and occasional plays, concerts, and parties. The high point of these celebrations occurred on May 18, 1778, when General Howe's officers, directed by Captain John André, gave their commander, who was soon to give way to Henry Clinton, the Mischianza, a grand party with a mock tournament

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featuring knights of the Blended Roses and the Burning Mountain, a ball, a banquet, and decorated barges on the river which hailed their commander with gun salutes. André enlisted the local gentry, and beautiful Tory girls were much in evidence. Altogether it was a memorable occasion for the general, though not everyone approved. Elizabeth Drinker sniffed that the day was to be remembered for its "scenes of Folly and Vanity."
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There were similar scenes in occupied New York City throughout the war, though none so lavish or extravagant as the Mischianza. New York fell to the British in September 1776 and remained in their hands until late November 1783, almost three months after the signing of the definitive treaties of peace on September 3, 1783. The city provided the headquarters for successive British army commanders in America -William Howe, Henry Clinton, and Sir Guy Carleton, who took over from Clinton in May 1783 when the war was all but over.

As the army's headquarters and as a great port, New York City naturally received a good deal of attention from the ministry at home and the military forces in America. Troops and supplies moved into it, and sometimes out of it, throughout the war. Operations were planned there, warships were refitted and in some cases repaired at its docks, and loyalists in the northern states gradually filtered into its protection. Until near the end of the war the army entertained no idea of giving it up.