Review: Kacy Tillman, Stripped and Script

March 5, 2020 By Emily Yankowitz in Book Review Tags: American Revolution, Loyalists, women's history 3 Comments

Kacy Tillman, Stripped and Script: Loyalist Women Writers of the American Revolution (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2019).

Studies of loyalist women were at the forefront of studies of women in early America and the American Revolution. Scholars including Mary Beth Norton, Janice Potter-MacKinnon, Linda Kerber have examined how women, supporters, neutrals, and opponents alike, experienced and participated in the American Revolution. Contributing to this vibrant area of scholarship, Kacy Tillman’s Stripped and Script: Loyalist Women Writers of the American Revolution focuses on loyalist women as writers. While much scholarship on the American Revolution and loyalism examines the rhetoric and war writing in essays, broadsides, and pamphlets typically published by men, Stripped and Script focuses on how women writers used “public, if not published” letters and journals to engage in politics and to craft their own senses of loyalties.^[1] Continue reading →

Q&A with Rebecca Brannon and Joseph S. Moore, editors of The Consequences of Loyalism

April 23, 2019 By Christopher F. Minty in Academia, Book Review, From the Archives, Historiography, Methodology, Publishing, Recent Scholarship, Research, Review / Q&A Tags: Atlantic History, Christopher F. Minty, Diaspora, Editing, Joseph S. Moore, Loyalism, Loyalists, Publishing, Rebecca Brannon, South Carolina Leave a comment

Following on from Emily Yankowitz’s review of The Consequences of Loyalism: Essays in Honor of Robert M. Calhoon (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2019), we continue our Review/Q&A format with an interview with the editors, Rebecca Brannon and Joseph S. Moore. Brannon is associate professor of history at James Madison University and the author of From Revolution to Reunion: The Reintegration of the South Carolina Loyalists (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2016), which was reviewed on The Junto in 2017. Moore is associate professor of history and department chair at Gardner-Webb University. He is the author of Founding Sins: How a Group of Antislavery Radicals Fought to Put Christ into the Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Continue reading →

Review, Rebecca Brannon and Joseph Moore, eds. The Consequences of Loyalism

April 22, 2019 By Emily Yankowitz in Review / Q&A Tags: American Revolution, book review, Edited collections, Eighteenth Century, historiography, Interdisciplinarity, Loyalists, Recent scholarship, University of South Carolina Press 1 Comment

Brannon, Rebecca, and Joseph S. Moore, eds. The Consequences of Loyalism: Essays in Honor of Robert M. Calhoon. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2019).

If you are studying or researching Loyalists in some way, Robert M. Calhoon’s name is bound to come up. The “dean of American Loyalist studies,” as Joseph Moore terms him, is a well-esteemed scholar, writer, and mentor who has been the leading voice in American Loyalists historiography for decades.”[1] By engaging Loyalists in a multi-dimensional fashion, Calhoon’s work elucidated the now-incontrovertible inference: that Loyalists were multi-dimensional figures who were not too different from their revolutionary counterparts. In fact, the irrefutability of this idea is no doubt due in part to his work. In honor of him, Rebecca Brannon and Joseph Moore edited a Festschrift titled The Consequences of Loyalism. Continue reading →

Non-Americans Researching Early America in North America

May 19, 2016 By Christopher F. Minty in Academia, Archives around the Atlantic, Roundtables, Special Features Tags: academia, Ann Arbor, Archival work, Archives, History, How to research, Loyalists, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, museums, New England, New York City, research, Researching in America, Researching in Canada, Scholarly community, University of New Brunswick, Where to stay in America when researching 12 Comments

This week, several Juntoists have offered useful guides for archival work in Spain, France, and England. Today, we are offering something slightly different—a guide to researching in North America! After all, not all early Americanists are American, and planning transatlantic trips can be daunting. Continue reading →

Evolution of an Article

March 16, 2016 By Rachel Herrmann in Publishing, Research Tags: academic publishing, Black Loyalists, food, Food laws, Hunger prevention, Journal Articles, Loyalists, peer review, Publishing, Sierra Leone 6 Comments

In summer 2010 I sat in the house furnished by Rhys Isaac in Colonial Williamsburg, and attempted to write my first dissertation chapter. I’d just finished my first research trip, to Library and Archives Canada, in Ottawa, and was in the middle of my second, at the John D. Rockefeller Library. I was trying to follow advice I’d read to write as I researched. There was no Wi-Fi in the house, which was a curse and a blessing. I couldn’t get distracted, but I also did not have instantaneous access to articles and books, which meant I couldn’t check basic facts and chronologies, which, turns out, tend to be missing from your research! Continue reading →

“UNITE OR DIE”: John Holt’s New-York Journal; or, the General Advertiser and the Imagery of Allegiance

January 21, 2016 By Christopher F. Minty in From the Archives, Methodology, Research Tags: Ben Franklin, historiography, james rivington, John Holt, Join or Die, Loyalists, mastheads, New York history, newspapers, patriots, Print Culture 9 Comments

Colonial Williamsburg—reconstruction of Holt’s storehouse, sometimes referred to as John Holt’s “new store.”

A short while ago, I wrote on the importance of political caricatures within eighteenth-century British America. I called for an increased focus on how caricatures affected, and in some cases represented, politics during the American Revolution. In today’s post, I’d like to do something similar—I’d like to call for an increased focus on newspaper mastheads. An increased exploration on what they meant, and how they were used for political mobilization. Continue reading →

The Importance of Partisanship in New York City, ca. 1769–1775

June 5, 2015 By Christopher F. Minty in From the Archives, Research Tags: Alexander McDougall, American Revolution, historiography, John Wilkes, Liberty Boys, Loyalists, Middle Colonies, New York City, New York history, Partisanship, patriots, Politics, Print Culture, Republicanism, Sons of Liberty, voluntary associations 7 Comments

On April 25, 1775, hundreds of New Yorkers acknowledged receiving “a Good firelock, Bayonet, Cartouch Box, and Belt.” Six days after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and three days after Israel (Isaac) Bissell told New Yorkers the news, Alexander McDougall mobilized support against the British. The War of American Independence had reached New York and, with hundreds of supporters, McDougall was ready to fight.[1] By April 1775, McDougall was a revered figure across colonial America, widely known as “the Wilkes of New York.” He was an individual who, like John Wilkes, was perceived as willing to fight for the liberties of the press, the people’s welfare, and against arbitrary rule.[2] McDougall’s popularity, by 1775, had been five years in the making. But, in 2015, historians are yet to fully appreciate the role he played in the coming of the Revolution. In this post, I want to reemphasize his influence in affecting New Yorkers’ allegiances. Continue reading →

Guest Post: [Enter Catchy Title Here]: Working towards a Book Title

February 5, 2015 By Christopher F. Minty in Commentary Tags: Alexander Hamilton, American Revolution, book titles, books, colonial New York, correspondence, friendship, King's College, Loyalists 1 Comment

Today’s guest poster, Christopher Minty, is a Bernard and Irene Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow at the New-York Historical Society and Eugene Lang College at The New School for Liberal Arts. He received his PhD from the University of Stirling. His current book project examines the role of popular partisanship and its effects on New Yorkers’ allegiances on the eve of the American Revolution. He is also the author of two previous guest posts at The Junto, “The Problem of Loyalism before the American Revolution” and “Working on the Papers of Francis Bernard.”

Untitled I like eye-catching book titles. Who doesn’t, right? A good title should run of the tongue without too much fuss, while also championing the main argument(s) of the book. Recent books with titles that caught my eye include Benjamin Irvin’s Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty, Jessica Roney’s Governed by a Spirit of Opposition, and Albrecht Koschnik’s “Let a Common Interest Bind Us Together.” To be sure, there are others, and they are held together by a common thread: Despite looking at different periods with different objectives, each title offers a snapshot of what the reader can expect to find. Continue reading →

Guest Post: The Revolutions in the Margins of AMC’s “Turn”

July 15, 2014 By Michael Blaakman in Film, Guest Posts Tags: AMC, Culper, Loyalists, patriots, Revolutionary War, spies, TURИ, Turn 3 Comments

Don Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Northwestern University. His work explores how ordinary Americans experienced the major political and military events of the Revolutionary era in the course of their everyday lives, and how those experiences shaped actions and changed world-views going forward. Don’s dissertation, now nearing completion, examines the social dynamics of six port cities occupied by the British army during the Revolutionary War.

Turn The AMC series Turn ended its first season last month with mixed reviews. The consensus seems to be that the series, which tells the story of the Culper spy ring during the American Revolution, has a strong cast, good production values, and promising subject matter but ultimately fails both as a drama and as an accurate representation of history. Popular reviews have mostly found the narrative arc slow and frustrating, while the show’s numerous departures from the historical record have inspired an entire blog devoted to separating fact from fiction. As The Junto’s Roy Rogers put it in his review of the first three episodes back in April, these narrative and historical failings made the series in large part “just another morality play—The Patriot in the guise of Mad Men.”

While Turn‘s main storyline falls far short of doing justice to the fascinating story of the Culper spies, in its background characters and neglected subplots lie many of the complex and diverse experiences of ordinary Americans. Continue reading →

Guest Post: The Problem of Loyalism before the American Revolution

September 11, 2013 By Christopher F. Minty in Guest Posts, Historiography, Recent Scholarship Tags: American Revolution, colonial New York, Loyalism, Loyalists, New York City 13 Comments

Today’s guest poster is Christopher Minty, a PhD candidate at the University of Stirling. His dissertation focuses on Loyalists in New York.

Patriots and Loyalists

Over the past four years, I’ve been fortunate enough to work on a group of colonists who would go on to become Loyalists in the American Revolution. My dissertation examines 9,341 future Loyalists during the imperial crisis, 1763–1775, in New York and, essentially, tries to follow their collective paths to either voluntarily signing their name to a declaration, petition and/or subscription list affirming their continued allegiance to the prevailing political order or taking the oath of allegiance. Continue reading →