Liberty Is Sweet

The Hidden History of the American Revolution

Woody Holton

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781476750392
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

A "deeply researched and bracing retelling" (Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian) of the American Revolution, showing how the Founders were influenced by overlooked Americans—women, Native Americans, African Americans, and religious dissenters. Using more than a thousand eyewitness records, Liberty Is Sweet is a "spirited account" (Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution ) that explores countless connections between the Patriots of 1776 and other Americans whose passion for freedom often brought them into conflict with the Founding Fathers. "It is all one story, " prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes.Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America's unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics. Liberty Is Sweet is a "must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation" (Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin ), from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew.

PART ONE

THE KING’S GRIEVANCES

CHAPTER 1

Awing and Protecting the Indians 1763

UPPER OHIO VALLEY WARRIORS TOOK the Battle of the Monongahela as a signal to attack colonists everywhere west of the Appalachian Mountains, killing many, capturing still more, and chasing survivors back east into Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. The raids continued until October 1758, when British officials signed the Treaty of Easton, committing colonists to never again breaching the Appalachians.¹ The treaty not only stopped the Upper Ohioans’ attacks but persuaded them to back out of their alliance with France just as a second British army marched west toward Fort Duquesne. Unable to defend themselves without native help, the French evacuated, burning the fort to the ground on their way out. Redcoats occupied the smoking ruins on November 24 and immediately set to work on a new fort that they named for William Pitt, the cabinet secretary who had secured virtually unlimited parliamentary funding for the war.

British colonists immediately violated the Treaty of Easton. Some set up just outside Fort Pitt and christened their settlement Pittsburgh. In July 1760, members of the land-speculating Ohio Company, who now included George Washington, offered Henry Bouquet, the British commander at Fort Pitt, a share of its stock if he would allow them to sell land west of the Appalachians. Indignantly refusing (his own real estate ventures lay east of the mountains), Bouquet awarded only one “Lot of Ground on the Bank of the Monongahela” River. It went to Samuel Lightfoot of Chester County, Pennsylvania, “so as to take in his sons Grave who dyed there” with Gen. Braddock.²

Undaunted, the Ohio Company found other ways to advance its claim.

ESTIMATED POPULATION OF THE CARIBBEAN AND NORTH AMERICA EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI, C. 1776

	TOTAL	AFRICAN AMERICAN^1	NATIVE AMERICAN	WHITE	DATE	SOURCES CONSULTED
New England Colonies
Connecticut	199,200	6,400	1,400	191,400	1774	CT, CB, PH
Massachusetts^2	290,900	5,000	2,000	283,900	1776	HS, CJ, RW
New Hampshire	81,400	700^3		80,700	1775	HS
Rhode Island	59,700	3,700	1,500	54,500	1774	RI, CJ, RW
Middle Colonies
Delaware	35,500				1770	CJ
New Jersey	130,000		9,700	119,000	1775	HS, CJ, RW
New York	163,400	19,900		143,500	1771	HS, RW, CJ
Pennsylvania^4	302,000	7,200		294,800	1775	CB, Bo, GN
Southern Colonies
East Florida	5,500	2,500		3,000	1774	Sm, PW, CJ
West Florida	5,000	1,200		3,800	c. 1775	Sm, PW, CJ
Georgia^5	33,000	15,000		18,000	1775	PW, CB
Maryland	223,000	90,000		133,000	1775	CB, RW
New Orleans^6	3,500				1779	PL, KH
North Carolina	209,600	52,300	500	156,800	1775	PW
South Carolina	179,400	107,300	500	71,600	1775	PW, CB
Virginia	466,100	186,400	200	279,500	1775	PW
Canada
Newfoundland	12,400				1775	RW
Nova Scotia	11,000				1775	RW, WBK
Quebec	76,500		1,500	75,000	c. 1762	HT, RW
Caribbean and Bermuda
Antigua (Br.)	40,400	37,800		2,600	1774	Ba, Sh, CL
Bahamas (Br.)^7	4,300	2,300		2,000	1773	RW
Barbados (Br.)	87,600	69,100		18,500	1773	CG
Bermuda (Br.)^8	11,100	5,000		6,100	1774	RW
Cuba (Sp.)	171,600	75,200		96,400	1774	CG
Dominica (Br.)	22,600	18,800		3,800	1774	RW
Grenada (Br.)	36,400	35,100		1,300	1777	EW, TM
Guadeloupe (Fr.)	114,000				1767	CL
Jamaica (Br.)	216,000	197,300		18,700	1775	CG, RW
Martinique (Fr.)	85,800	74,200		11,600	1776	CG
Montserrat (Br.)^9	10,600	9,500		1,100	c. 1780	CL, RW
Nevis (Br.)	9,500	8,400		1,100	1756	RW
Puerto Rico (Sp.)	71,300	42,000		29,300	1775	CG, CB, RL
Saint-Domingue (Fr.)	330,500	310,300		20,200	1784	CG
St. Christopher (Br.)	25,400	23,500		1,900	1774	VH, RW
St. Eustatius (Du.)	3,200	1,600		1,600	1779	VE
St. Vincent (Br.)	9,200	7,300		1,900	1764	RW, JS
Tobago (Br.)	9,000	8,600		400	1775	RW
Virgin Islands (Br.)	7,300	6,100		1,200	1756	RW
First Nations (Native American)
Abenaki^10	3,000		3,000		1750	DG
Cherokee	10,700	200	8,500	2,000	1775	PW, JM
Chickasaw, Choctaw	16,400		16,300	100	1775	PW, JM
Delaware, Munsee	3,500		3,500		1768	HT, JM
Fox (Mesquakie)	1,500		1,500		1768	HT, JK
Illinois	2,200		2,200		1768	HT, JM
Iroquois (6 Nations)	6,000				1778	JM
Kickapoo, Mascouten	2,000		2,000		1768	HT, JM
Mi'kmaq	3,000		3,000		c. 1775	PB
Muskogee (Creek)	14,000		14,000		1775	PW, JM
Ojibwa (Ojibwe), Mississauga	15,000		10,200		1768	HT
Ottawa (Odawa)	5,000		5,000		1768	HT, JM
Piankeshaw, Miami, Wea	4,000		4,000		1768	HT, JM
Potawatomi	3,000		3,000		1768	HT, JM
Sauk	2,000		2,000		1769	HT, JK
Shawnee	1,800		1,800		1768	HT, JM
Wyandot (Huron)	1,000		1,000		1768	HT, JM

Prepared by Riley K. Sutherland, University of South Carolina

Key to Sources (see bibliography for detailed source citations)

• Ba - Ballester
• Bo - Bouton
• CB - US Census Bureau
• CG - Cohen and Greene
• CJ - Coulson and Joyce
• CL - Carey and Lea
• CT - Connecticut Census
• DG - Ghere
• EW - Williams
• GN - Nash
• HS - Historical Statistics
• HT - Tanner
• JK - Kay
• JM - Muller
• JS - Spinelli
• PB - Block
• PL -Lachane
• PH - Hinks
• PW - Wood
• RI - Rhode Island Census
• RL - Logan
• RW - Wells
• Sh - Sheridan
• Sm - Smith
• TM - Murphy
• VE - Enthoven
• VH - Hubbard
• WBK - Kerr
• WC - Calderhead

Notes

Blank cells indicate that no data is available. All estimates are rounded to the nearest hundred.

• 1. Numerous mixed-race individuals lived in both native and colonial societies, but sources rarely estimate their numbers.
• 2. African American, Native American, and white populations of Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Nevis, and the Virgin Islands were estimated by applying Robert Wells’s proportions to estimates of the colonies’ total populations.
• 3. For New Hampshire, Maryland, the Bahamas, and St. Eustatius, the sources estimate the number of enslaved people, not the slightly larger number of African Americans.
• 4. Estimates of Pennsylvania’s African American and white populations in 1775 were derived using Bouton’s figures for their proportions of the 1780 population.
• 5. Wood combines his headcounts for the Creeks/Muskogees (14,000) and Georgia. Here these figures have been disaggregated.
• 6. The sole portion of the Spanish North American empire that lay east of the Mississippi River was New Orleans. The headcount given here is an average of New Orleans’s 1769 and 1788 populations.
• 7. This Bahamas estimate includes 150 inhabitants of Turks Island. Since the source provides a racial breakdown for the Bahamas but not Turks, it is assumed to be the same for both.
• 8. The sources for Bermuda, Dominica, and Tobago do not supply headcounts for African Americans and whites but do estimate each group’s proportion of the population. In each case, these proportions have been applied to the total populations.
• 9. Estimates of white and African American populations in Nevis and the Virgin Islands were reached by applying the proportion of each race in all of the Leeward Islands. Although sources do not provide individual racial proportions for either location, Wells estimates that their racial proportions varied from that of all Leeward Islands by less than two percent. Additionally, population statistics for the Virgin Islands were estimated by averaging Wells’s estimate of the islands’ 1756 population and Carey and Lea’s estimate from 1805.
• 10. The number of Abenaki warriors (640) in 1750 was multiplied by five, as suggested by David Ghere, to estimate the total Abenaki population.

The scramble for Ohio Valley land was fueled by a combination of greed and mass depopulation. For 250 years, European disease and violence had ravaged native communities, leaving the so-called New World much less populous than the Old. Just as nature abhors even a relative vacuum, America’s lower population density made land there comparatively cheap, drawing a continuous stream of immigrants from Europe. As soon as they could, many of the new arrivals bought slaves, seeing no other way to wealth in this land where free workers were scarce enough to demand a decent wage. By the eighteenth century, forced immigrants from Africa outnumbered voluntary arrivals from Europe.³

But the movement of peoples across the Atlantic, forced and free, was only the second largest contributor to the demographic boom that saw the Black and white populations of the future United States double every generation, from about 300,000 in 1706, the year of Benjamin Franklin’s birth, to four million at his death in 1790.⁴ Even more significant was natural increase: excess of births over deaths. In North America, cheap land enabled young couples to marry and start having children—not always in that order—sooner than in Europe. And a more dispersed population inhibited the spread of disease, allowing mothers to live longer and deliver more children than their cousins in densely populated Europe.

The same diffusionary process that drew immigrants across the Atlantic propelled thousands of settlers westward, always preceded, at least on paper, by real estate speculators, who counted on the surge of new arrivals to push the price of Native American land ever higher.

On September 8, 1760, Britain captured Montréal, prompting the French to surrender all of New France (Canada) and setting off a land rush. At the beginning of the Seven Years’ War, Virginia had recruited soldiers for its provincial regiment by promising each a share of 200,000 acres of Ohio Valley land. The bounty was for enlisted men, but in 1762, George Washington led their officers in appealing to the provincial council for the lion’s share of the plunder. Land fever struck Connecticut, too. That colony’s 1663 charter claimed every acre all the way out to the Pacific Ocean, encroaching not only on numerous native nations but on the northern third of Pennsylvania. Before the war, Connecticut residents had formed the Susquehannah Company to exploit the disputed territory, and in 1762, they dispatched settlers to the Susquehanna Valley (home of today’s Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, Pennsylvania).⁵

Native Americans learned that the removal of the French had fundamentally transformed their relationship to the British government as well. After Braddock’s defeat, London had tried to strip away France’s native allies by redressing their grievances. But many officers serving in America viewed every victory over the French as reducing the need to placate Native Americans. For example, in July 1759, less than t...