Phillip Papas

That Ever Loyal Island

Phillip Papas

Of crucial strategic importance to both the British and the Continental Army, Staten Island was, for a good part of the American Revolution, a bastion of Loyalist support. With its military and political significance, Staten Island provides rich terrain for Phillip Papas's illuminating case study of the local dimensions of the Revolutionary War.Papas traces Staten Island's political sympathies not to strong ties with Britain, but instead to local conditions that favored the status quo instead of revolutionary change. With a thriving agricultural economy, stable political structure, and strong allegiance to the Anglican Church, on the eve of war it was in Staten Island's self-interest to throw its support behind the British, in order to maintain its favorable economic, social, and political climate. Over the course of the conflict, continual occupation and attack by invading armies deeply eroded Staten Island's natural and other resources, and these pressures, combined with general war weariness, created fissures among the residents of “that ever loyal island,” with Loyalist neighbors fighting against Patriot neighbors in a civil war. Papas’s thoughtful study reminds us that the Revolution was both a civil war and a war for independence—a duality that is best viewed from a local perspective.

Renegade Revolutionary

Phillip Papas

Honorable Mention for the 2015 Book Award from the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond Honorable Mention for the 2015 Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award InNovember 1774, a pamphlet to the “People of America” was published inPhiladelphia and London. It forcefully articulated American rights andliberties and argued that the Americans needed to declare their independencefrom Britain. The author of this pamphlet was Charles Lee, a former Britisharmy officer turned revolutionary, who was one of the earliest advocates forAmerican independence. Lee fought on and off the battlefield for expandeddemocracy, freedom of conscience, individual liberties, human rights, and forthe formal education of women. Renegade Revolutionary: The Life ofGeneral Charles Lee is a vivid new portrait of one of the most complex and controversial of theAmerican revolutionaries. Lee’s erratic behavior and comportment, his captureand more than one year imprisonment by the British, and his court martial afterthe battle of Monmouth in 1778 have dominated his place in the historiographyof the American Revolution. This book retells the story of a man who had beendismissed by contemporaries and by history. Few American revolutionaries sharedhis radical political outlook, his cross-cultural experiences, hiscosmopolitanism, and his confidence that the American Revolution could be wonprimarily by the militia (or irregulars) rather than a centralized regulararmy. By studying Lee’s life, his political and military ideas, and his styleof leadership, we gain new insights into the way the American revolutionariesfought and won their independence from Britain.