he was sent to washington in 1872 and 1873 and got this law passed that became known as the comstock law even though it has a much longer and more complicated name. anthony comstock was essentially -- he was an iconic figure in the sense that he had kind of a classic civil war era biography which was young, religious, christian, fought in the war and then moved to a large city and became really overwhelmed by the amount of vice, noise, craziness manufacturing of new york, and it drove him to become what i call a [inaudible]. >> to watch the rest of this program, visit our website booktv.org, search for the title of the book "the man who hated women" using the search box at

the top of the page. good evening everyone. we're delighted to have you with us. welcome to book talk tuesday. i'm at the center for digital history at the washington library. we're glad to see you back in this new year and delighted you have joined and decided to spend your evening with us. tonight i'm very excited because we're going to have an opportunity to explore the challenges, the opportunities that early americans faced while living under british military rule in the american revolution. before we get to that and our guests, a programming note, i want to encourage you to join us on january 27th, next week, we will have a special symposium entitled leadership for a more perfect union. it is a one day symposium done in partnership with the brookings institute. we will talk about some of the serious issues that are facing this country at this time and some of the solutions for the way forward. we'll be joined by some esteemed

figures from government, from philanthropy and from business including former secretary of state colin powell, current governor of maryland larry hogan and current justice of supreme court sonya sotomayor. we encourage you to join us in these important discussions. we look forward to seeing you there. i also want to encourage you to help support mount vernon and other public history sites over this difficult time. we're delighted to bring programming like this to you free every so often, but that does come at a cost, so if you are able and you have some means to do so, we would appreciate you throwing a few clams our way right now. you can find a way to do that by going to mt. vernon.org and click the donate button. let's talk about tonight's main topic. in 1815, john adams wrote to thomas jefferson, and he argued that the revolution was in the

hearts and minds of the people in the 15 years before a drop of blood was spilled at lexington and concord and also argued the war for independence and the revolution were two different things. were they really? that's one of the things that we're going to explore tonight and many other questions as well. our guests this evening is dr. donald f. johnson, an assistant professor at north dakota state university. he's a former washington library research fellow, and he is the author of a brand-new book "occupied america, british military rule and the experience of revolution" published in 2020 by university of pennsylvania press. if you would like to purchase a copy of that, we will drop a link in the comments at this time. it is my distinct privilege to welcome dr. johnson to the screen. hello there, sir. >> hi. thank you for having me. >> it is a great honor. thank you very much for joining us. am i correct in assuming that you are coming to us from fargo this evening? >> i am, yes. >> i have to ask, what's the

temperature there right now? >> i haven't checked lately. this morning when i drove to work it was about 5 degrees above. >> you have a heated garage as i understand many do in that part of the world. >> yes. >> don, thank you very much, i'm excited to talk with you about this book. i was really fascinated your findings and your discussion of the experience that people face during the occupation, during the revolutionary war. i want to start with a big picture question, though. a lot of our colleagues in the historical profession have been writing a lot these days about american loyalists, been writing a lot about the ordinary americans during the revolution, looking at the flight of women, slaves who were escaping the british lines and pursuing freedom. what was missing? what did you think was missing from that conversation? >> i think specifically from the question of loyalists and patriots, what's missing is kind of the people who wouldn't have

identified as either or who could have identified as both at various points throughout the war. i mean, there's this whole category and people have called it different things like neutrals or like aaron sullivan's recent book called the disaffected. these people who at certain points side with the crown, at certain points side with the revolutionaries, at certain points side with neither. i felt like those types of people weren't well served in this kind of categorization that we have of patriots on one side and loyalists on the other. that was a much more kind of complicated story, that there was -- there has to be room for change over time for people's loyalties to be much more complicated, much more inflected by their day-to-day existence. in terms of the every day

experience, of women, of enslaved people, native americans, you know, there has been a ton of great history on that written in the last decade or so, but i felt it takes the exceptional; right? it takes these kind of disenfranchised kind of groups, but it doesn't integrate their stories into a more coherent narrative. you know, it doesn't integrate it with what kind of everyone else is doing. and so i was trying to get at kind of ordinary people of different races, genders, backgrounds, and get at kind of how the ordinary experience of revolution really shaped political allegiance. >> i'm curious in how our early ancestors, and ancestors being our predecessors in the historical profession shaped this narrative early on.

we have been accustomed to thinking of two categories, patriots and loyalists, the mid people in the middle, the gray area get lost in between. very early on, people started writing histories of the war made those kind of determinations, helped shape the story we were telling even up until recently. >> absolutely. two of the earliest historians of the war were ones that were involved in military occupation themselves. and they knew well, you know -- ramsey writes the history of the revolution of south carolina in 1785. warren publishes her multivolume, the determination of the american revolution in the first decade of the 19th century. ramsey himself was a prisoner of war in occupied charleston. warren was witness to a lot of the trials and tribulations of

occupied boston and newport. they would have known well from their personal experience, kind of the ambiguities, the nuances of allegiance during this period, but it was in their interest as kind of the ruling elite of the new republic after the war not to cast the struggle itself like that. i mean, it is kind of like that adams quote that you opened with. adams writes that, you know, something like -- i'm going to butcher it here but that the revolution was complete, you know, before the first shot was fired, that everyone had turned against the british well before the war, and that the war was after effect of this kind of change in people's minds. people like ramsey and warren, it was in their interest to create this narrative of a patriotic kind of revolutionary -- to which people could cling, and to which people

whose own experiences didn't necessarily fit that could then claim after the war and say i was always a patriot or i was always kind of on this side. it's interesting that in reading their histories, one of the things that i found in kind of going back through, you know, with an eye towards how they're defining loyalty and political allegiance is actually how very few loyalists they actually name outright. many times the people that they name are either notorious loyalists, people like joseph galloway or the allen brothers of philadelphia, who have already fled the united states. or else they were this kind of group of kind of, you know, the loyalists, but never kind of with an actual definition. they kind of bend over backwards to kind of forgive people who

strayed of this kind of patriot path. >> are they doing that because after the war there is reconciliation in both places -- well, all across in the 13 colonies turned states? >> yeah, absolutely. it is one of the things that even some of the kind of the higher profile founding fathers are involved with. john jay, alexander hamilton, you know, a lot of these figures in new york are making the argument that you can't really alienate some of these people who sided with the crown early on in the war because they are contributing a good deal to society. they have money. they have expertise. they have the tools that people need to build a nation, and so if you're going to have kind of this strict, like if you did anything for the crown during the war you cannot be part of america, then you are going to have to exclude one historians estimated half a million people

either served in arms for the crown, you know, spoke in support of the crown, or took some action, you know, that could be considered as loyalists, if you are going to exclude that many people, you know, that's a quarter of, you know, the population at least. >> yeah, that could get awkward pretty fast. >> yeah. >> i want to take this opportunity to remind the audience that you will have a chance to ask questions of dr. johnson in the second half of the program, so please do post your questions in the comments on facebook, twitter, youtube, wherever you are watching us this evening. a second ago, you mentioned boston, newport, charleston, your book does look at port cities exclusively. why port cities? what do we get from these urban spaces that we're not going to get from the hinterlands or the back country? >> i looked at urban spaces for two reasons: first, records are more likely to survive in these places and in greater concentration than in kind of the hinterlands.

and so this was where kind of the sources that spoke to the experience of the occupation really existed and survived. and second, they are places where occupation was the most intense and had the highest stakes. in terms of intensity, the british occupied vast swaths elsewhere in america, in rural america, you know, pretty much the entire state of georgia, the entire state of south carolina, at various points, most of new jersey, large parts of new york, and pennsylvania. but in the countryside, in places that were, you know, ostensibly controlled or occupied by the british, ordinary people might go months or weeks without even seeing a single british soldier, whereas in cities where people were really kind of living [inaudible], you know, you're interacting with the occupying force every single day and the

things move much more quickly and with a greater intensity. and then in terms of the stakes, the cities were crucial to kind of the plan on both sides. for the british, the strategy was kind of to take the cities and use them as bases to conciliate loyalty from the surrounding countryside, and if there was anywhere that would be welcoming of the british army, it was likely to be these port cities which were much more cosmopolitan, much more kind of transient in the population, and who had largely depended on trade with the rest of the british empire for their livelihoods before the revolution, and in many places, for example, new port, rhode island, welcomes the british army with kind of a council of their higher citizens leading a proclamation of greeting to sir

henry clanton when he lands. you know, so -- and a lot of these places there were kind of people who welcomed the chance to get back to business, when the british arrived, but over the course of the war, they kind of realized that the cost of having soldiers cornered there and the experience of occupation made them realize that the empire wasn't kind of a place to go back to. >> well, i want to come back to the british occupation in a second, but one of the things that really struck me about your book and made me think about things in different ways is the extent to which the revolutionary regimes that rise and come into being in the immediate months or the early months of the war, were themselves a kind of occupying force. what do these governments look like? how did the people respond to them when this dramatic change occurred in 75, 76? >> yeah, a lot of people really

didn't know what to make of them. you know, they were these groups of citizens that formed themselves into committees, counsels, militias, kind of resistance organizations, and starting around april of 1775, after the battles of lexington and concord, they started kind of seizing the apparatus of the power. and the six cities that i'm looking at here in the book were each capitals of their respective colonies, and in order to obtain kind of legitimacy and the sanction of a proper government, revolutionaries made moves almost immediately to kind of secure those places, secure the records, secure the apparatus of civil government. >> uh-huh. >> this took place, you know, almost kind of in somewhat of a comical way. you know, one of my favorite

examples happened in savannah, georgia, where the clerk of the kings council in savannah, basically the person in charge of recordkeeping at the colony house in savannah gets woken up at 6:00 a.m. by one of his neighbors saying hey, the provincial congress, this revolution organization, we broke into the courthouse, we want the keys to your office so we can get the colonial records. he basically says no i'm not going to give you the keys. they come back a couple hours later and they threaten his wife and they say basically we are going to rough you up if you don't let us in and give us the colonial records. then he still says no i'm not going to give you the keys to my office. they come back a couple hours later and say we broke into your office. we can't make heads or tails of the records. will you at least come and show us what's what? he said all right if you have already broken in, i will go and at least you're not going to make a mess of it. they let him kind of organize the records for them and take

anything that is private for him and go, you know, go about his way. but it's this kind of, you know, soft occupation almost, this seizing of public buildings and records and the auspices of power at the beginning of the revolution. >> we didn't have a hard occupation then when the british take new york or new port, savannah, charleston, these other cities, boston, philadelphia, what does that look like? you had mentioned a moment ago that one of their goals was to conciliate the american colonists back to the crown and to the king's government. what does that process look like? what's the role of collaborators, i guess, would be the word, in this process? >> i mean collaborator is a great word. i use it in the book in the sense that the historians of

german occupation of france use it in that almost everyone living under occupation collaborates to some degree or another. but what the british do is pretty much immediately when they land, and they retake these cities starting with new york and then new port, philadelphia, savannah, and charleston, they start distributing loyalty oaths, and they go around, and they first do this in new york in the fall of 1776. and they get people to sign these loyalty oaths. there it is. you guys are ahead of me. but they give out these things that basically these little slips of paper that are held in duplicate. one of them is, you know, in a book that is held at military headquarters, and one of them is given to the person who signs them. that has them kind of renounce any loyalties to the

revolutionary, sign over the loyalties to the crown, in some case promise to defend the crown's interest, though they are not usually interested in making people that they have suspect loyalties of fight for them. but they get people to sign these loyalty oaths that is kind of an affirmation of their acceptance of loyal rule. as kind of a carrot, they hold out the prospect of returning to what they call the king's piece, which is reconnecting to the old british empire, getting back kind of that access to trade routes, getting back access to loyal courts, the ability to sue and reclaim property and debts, kind of getting back all of these old connections to the british empire, for a lot of people, especially living in urban centers, these were attractive. a lot of people made their

living based on transatlantic trade and depending upon the nodes of british empire kind of for that livelihood, and so for a lot of people kind of signed on thinking they would kind of get their lives back essentially, though it turned out to be very different. >> how successful were the british in the -- i guess in the best sense in their life in achieving a king's peace or restoring civil government and maybe we can look at, for example, new york city and savannah which i think are two of the critical places where these experiments are taking place? >> yeah, and i mean, new york and savannah are great kind of american [inaudible] because they are really different in the ways they succeed. in new york, the british invade in the late summer, fall of 1776. they seize long island, manhattan island, staten island, kind of what we now think of as the boroughs of new york city as

well as some of the surrounding area, but they are never able to kind of penetrate deeper into the country. and so there exists this kind of no-man's land, this kind of hard border in between revolutionary new york and the british occupied new york. >> uh-huh. >> and because of this, the british are unwilling to kind of restore full civil government to the areas they occupy. instead there's this kind of mix of military government led by the commanding general of the army, william howe and then sir henry clanton and then sir guy carleton and the commandants of the city of new york itself were responsible for kind of keeping order on the streets. they work with kind of a series of a group of civilian former officials, led by sir -- sorry excuse me, andrew elliot, former customs collector. >> uh-huh. >> who is given the title of

chief of police -- or chief magistrate of police or superintendent of police depending on which source you read. and he's kind of responsible for this civilian apparatus that then keeps order in the streets and reports back to the military with kind of offenders. this gives civilians kind of a stake in the administration and actually provide, for example, kind of lodging for the poor and people who couldn't afford it, you know, based on loyalty and adherence to the crown. they confiscate the estates and houses of known -- what they would call traitors or revolutionaries and rent those out to loyalists or people who adhere to them coming into the city. and they employ a lot of people

as street cleaners, as clerks, as rent collectors and so forth. there's this kind of weird civilian administration, but it never really has the full force of law. >> yeah. >> as long as it's only backed by the military, there's this idea that it could end at any time when the military comes out and especially kind of poignant are the examples of boston, new port, and philadelphia, which the british army does leave kind of before the war ends and which loyalists who collaborate with the british or helped the british and end up kind of faring really poorly. in savannah the british do bring back the royal governor sir james wright, they are able to conquer the entire province of

georgia, by the end of 1779, 1780, they are able to call the colonial assembly back into session in 1780. and this is, you know, savannah and later charleston, where they attempt to do the same thing, but charleston doesn't succeed as well. it is their best hope to kind of restore and show that they are going to restore king's peace, and it does work for about a year, but again, when the british army marches north out of the low country into north carolina towards yorktown, it kind of goes away. you get revolutionary guerrilla forces fighting in the back country through the swamps and kind of these feuds between people of different allegiances break out, and wright is, you know, even though he tries his best as governor to kind of

conciliate the situation, he's never able to kind of retain pow their he had -- retain the power that he had previously. even where civil government is kind of technically put in power, while the war is still raging, the military really is the ultimate kind of be all and end all. >> as the british army is trying to take these various cities, and in some sense successfully holding at least some of them, at least while they're sitting in there and not heading towards yorktown, which didn't end well for them, how are people -- the people you spoke of earlier, sort of in this middle ground, hedging their bets, trying to figure out, you know, how to survive, how are they as you say in the book reinventing and also [inaudible] themselves in the process? >> a lot of them are doing really ingenious things. there's an inn keeper in new york city who does this -- runs this kind of arbitrage scam with continental currency where she,

you know, she keeps -- opens her house to prisoners of war from the continental army, houses them, takes their rent in continental dollars which not a lot of landlords would do in occupied new york, and then she asks the military authorities for a pass to go outside of the lines, crosses the river to new jersey, uses that continental currency to buy a bunch of food, comes back to new york and sells it at three to four times the price she paid for it in new york -- in british currency and pockets the difference. there's a lot of people who are kind of working these kind of angles, these kind of schemes to enrich themselves. in her case she actually breaks her way free of an abusive husband, who she's able to throw out of the house and break free from because of this kind of new source of power, this new source

of income. for other people, they are more fundamentally reinventing themselves. one of the people i follow in the book is an enslaved carpenter and later sailor named boston king. he's born on a plantation outside of charleston, south carolina. he's again trade to the carpenter, skilled trade, flees to the british lines. the british were offering freedom to the enslaved people of the revolutionaries who fled behind the lines, who were willing to serve in the army, serves in a british regiment as kind of an auxiliary or grunt kind of a worker, then ends up escaping to new york, where he marries another freed slave, works as a carpenter, a hairdresser, a man servant, eventually sails in a whale boat and ends up kind of reinventing himself as a free person, ends

up leaving with the british and living out the rest of his life in nova scotia in a free black community. then there's tons of people like this, kind of that are, you know, totally kind of changing their circumstance through the occupation. >> that raises the question in my mind about source material. you know, in some ways it is easier to write about the guys like sir henry clanton or folks like that because they kept voluminous papers, george washington, of course, but these folks that we don't often see or write about or people you're tracking across large spaces through time, where did you find some of these individuals? >> through a lot of digging. a lot of it was kind of going to historical societies and just kind of digging through people's papers for these years and seeing what they had. and part of the reason for that is again kind of going back to the beginning of our conversation, some of these

people kind of went efforts to hide the extent of their activities during the occupation. one of the stories i found most fascinating was that of an owner of a boarding house in newport, rhode island. she was kind of a die-hard loyalist even though her husband served in the continental artillery. she wrote a series of letters to him during the battle of rhode island, where he was actually commanding a unit that was attacking newport, and she writes these kind of furious letters saying like, you know, i hope the continental army burns in hell and its commander, you know, dies a horrible death, and that when i see you again, you're being marched through the streets as a prisoner of war, but then, you know, she hides that. she kind of -- once newport reverts to revolutionary rule, once the british evacuates in october of 1779, she takes this

kind of bundle of unsent letters, hands them to a good friend of hers and says, you know, hide these until long after i'm dead. she continues to operate this boarding house with her husband well into the 1790s and even as kind of maybe legendary washington connection where george washington apparently stays at this house when he comes through newport in the 1790s, and the historical society has a blanket that they say washington slept on there. but they don't find these papers of hers until 1845, 1850, when her grandchildren are going through the attic and they find oh my gosh grandma was, you know, a loyalist. a lot of people went to great lengths to hide their activities during the period which made kind of hunting for their stories that much more challenging and rewarding when

we could find them. >> that's amazing and a good reason to always look in grandma's basement. [laughter] >> the occupation of the war put stress on individuals and families. we may joke about it being cool earlier because it is winter and i was outside the other day chopping down some trees and splitting logs with my mighty acts so i was thinking about that when i was reading your book. you have a really wonderful discussion about the stress that the occupation puts on a natural landscape and the environment and the ways in which people even at their homes built shelters, fed themselves. can you tell us more about those stresses? >> yeah. i mean, the army was an extraordinary drain on resources. in these cities especially when you consider that these places

were not set up for large influxes of population. largest city in colonial america, philadelphia, had about [inaudible] people living there during peacetime and that was with trade routes open during the countryside and took an incredible amount of wood, food, fuel to actually heat and keep these people alive, and the british army, you know, for example, comes to new york, comes in with about 35,000 troops. you know, in newport, rhode island, they come in with 8,000 that almost doubles the pre-war population of about 10,000 living on the island. by the end of the first year of the occupation of rhode island, they've cut down every single tree on the island. they are beginning to tear down fences and outbuildings and barns and actually even send

armed ships to go and raid the connecticut coast for lumber, and even as far away as long island. you see this also with prices for food and shelter. there's tons of complaints from even well off people in new york city that prices for rent are sky high. a lot of it has to do with there was a fire at the beginning of the occupation that burned about a third of the homes of the city. this happens pretty much everywhere the british go because there's so many soldiers that need to be housed and fed and sheltered that get priority over the local population in a lot of places. then there's accounts of people going hungry and even kind of freezing to death on the

streets. in new port, the winter of 1777, 78, we know by kind of climate science, one of the coldest of the second half of 18th century, and we have accounts of people freezing to death and actually even burning animal fat, and other things in order to try to survive. in new york city, the price of regular brown bread, you know, ordinary stuff goes up by about five times its prewar high. this is despite the british efforts to kind of protect these populations. there's really kind of dire straits for a lot of people living in these towns. >> to what extent were able to restart commerce, especially when, you know, the british take places like new york, savannah, where they have a little more stable control, charleston, are they able to resupply themselves and put back into place some

kind of market economy? >> in a sense yes and no. they are able to bring in a lot of what we might today think of as luxuries; right? for example, there's a merchant in new port island, a day after the british land, starts writing to his suppliers in birmingham and sheffield saying, you know, send me hardware. send me silverware. send me, you know, ceramics, send me all of this stuff because there's this desire for british manufactured goods that people haven't been able to get since the outbreak of the imperial crisis. and there's a great deal of, you know -- a lot of these goods that are selling very cheaply in a lot of these cities, just because there's been a supply built up in england during the kind of intervening period, and there's a lot of demand from american merchants to kind of sell it, so, you know, if you're in the market for a set of

really nice [inaudible], occupied new york might be your place. at the same time, they are not really able to connect to the economy -- to the local economies. they are not really able to reconnect these food supplies. these kind of fuel supplies that kept the cities going on a day-to-day basis. the british army goes so far to try to ship in food from ireland which spoils on the way and never really works, but they ship in -- they try to ship, you know, dried grain. they tried to ship coals to heat fires and it never really works. >> that's fascinating. audience, we will be coming to your questions in a minute so please get them in if you haven't already. feel free over the rest of the evening to continue to post questions if they come to mind.

you mentioned the fact that the experience of occupation essentially eroded whatever loyalty many colonists felt for george iii and his government just by virtue of the hardships. can you tell us more about that process? was it sort of all at once that some people decided enough was enough or it was kind of a slow burn, that when peace comes, they decided they were not going to go into exile but stay in the united states? >> it's much more of a slow burn, and i kind of compare it to muscle memory, almost? so what a lot of these people even if they were, you know, they had this utmost loyalty to the crown, at the beginning of the occupation, because of the hardships, because of the strain that the british army puts on these communities, they're forced to kind of break the law to turn to illicit means in order to survive.

so, for example, a family of rhode island which has branches in boston and new york is constantly kind of smuggling food and resources to one another across enemy lines. you know, one brother in revolutionary newport, one brother in occupied new york, one brother in boston, you know, they are constantly writing each other and sending each other food and other money and other things kind of illicitly, you know, under the nose of the british. the same thing is happening in the south. you see people kind of keeping ties to revolutionary friends, neighbors, relatives, not necessarily out of ideological reasons, but practical reasons. that's how they can survive and also kind of vice versa. you know, people in revolutionary-held areas kind of keeping ties to british occupied

areas in order to [inaudible]. i think by having to constantly undermine these governments, these occupation regimes, it erodes their authority, it erodes the idea that the king can actually -- the king's forces i should say, not the king personally, the king's forces can actually meet the needs of the population. so while it doesn't necessarily turn people into, you know, stalwart revolutionaries, it at least gives them kind of this alienation from royal government that didn't necessarily exist before the war. >> that makes a lot of sense. just before we turn to audience questions, i do want to note that you did teach two classes today so thank you very much for being here with us. i want to close my portion of the conversation by asking you what do you often tell your students is the most important thing they ought to know about the occupation or actually maybe

even better, what surprised you most about this project when you were researching it? >> i think what surprised me most about the project and the occupations was really kind of the amount of good faith people put into, you know, actually making society work under british occupation and the -- you know, we often kind of think, you know, yeah, like when the military comes, it's this kind of, you know, catch-all or, you know, this dire situation where people are kind of closeted. you know, a lot of people like, you know, i feel like this category of in between patriots and loyalists, this category of disaffected, this category of people that kind of fence it or go either ways, they get a bad wrap in, you know, early histories and in modern histories, and i think it is undeserved. i think a lot of these people,

you know, held strong political opinions, but they didn't necessarily have the luxury of acting on them. they didn't necessarily, you know, i mean, one of the -- one of the, you know, the best source i found was this book of poems from a woman in new york, who was hannah lawrence who was a quaker, daughter of a quaker merchant, who in her poetry was vehemently pro revolutionary. she wrote these romantic couplets about revolutionary heroes and virtue and marries a british soldier and ends up moving to british canada. ::

a lot of what happens during these revolutionary upheavals. >> inc. you very much for talking with me and now let's talk to the audience. a question about the transition of capital city from places like philly to harrisburg and charleston and to what extent did the occupation of these cities allude to the removal of these capitals and other places in the states? >> i've never really thought of it that way. the traditional narrative is kind of an east versus west and that leads to the movement of capital like the harrelson -- harrisburg columbus to atlanta in places like that but it may something to do with it as well. again i'm not sure the timing of that so i will have to pass on

that question. that's really interesting. >> it's a research topic so it's good. we have a question coming in about williamsburg and yorktown and jamestown and she's curious about the struggles that these cities faced in the british occupation. >> e i mean you could argue that yorktown was -- at the end of the war and norfolk virginian ends up occupied at the beginning of the war and basically burned by patriot leaders in order to prevent its use by governor dunmore. the town tend to be too small for the british to worry much about.

it's one of the reasons that i mentioned this in the book as well that the big cities like austin new york philadelphia and charleston were the biggest cities in colonial north america economically and the most important strategically. williamsburg and yorktown jamestown just weren't on that map from an imperial standpoint. they did face waves at various points in the war and yorktown was occupied part by cornwallis as troops but only circumstantially when cornwallis used it as an escape back to new york and again it's not as important economically to trade spare that make make sense.

thank you cynthia very much. the next question looks at whether or not any state occupied by the british was considered a failure and the other common themes we seem at these various places? >> i think they all failed in the end because they all returned to the united states. the british when they negotiate for peace there's a movement even after the battle of yorktown new york savannah and charleston and there is a direct if by the ministry to save new york and to keep it as a trading outpost to which the british can keep some of their economic clout in north america and station their navy and kind of have this strategic hold down

but really the populations of all of these didn't turn against the british by the end of the war. they don't, by the end of the war even the people who had been the most excited about british rule and the occupation of new york you know they are exhausted. they are tired and they are at ease with the revolutionary government. even -- was a cantankerous loyalist and said enough is enough in the population will follow if you try to hold new york as an american gibraltar in north america and population turned against him. i think the common theme is they

just kind of collapsed after defeat. >> the question does make me wonder about what lessons the british learned in various cities and the extent to which for example what lessons did they learn in boston new york or charleston or places like that? >> it evolves over the course of the war in new york and replicated in philadelphia and savannah and charleston and i'd believe in new york although the records of the newport occupation when the british evacuated broke the town records but the police system involved in and charleston the former attorney general creates this really elaborate plan for police

hand even an ideological indoctrination of the population. but again it's not necessarily the bulk of these officials. it's mostly military officers who are unwilling to put conciliation in front of military victory. >> revolutionary regimes and british authorities use this tool. in what ways are they using conversations to entice people to one side or the other? >> one in the things especially in the occupied south in south carolina and georgia the british seized a large numbers of people

when they invade georgia and south carolina and they were alternately kind of rewards to their loyalty and they were able to reclaim their property or the people who people and even some people who stuck with the ground even before the occupation were given the land of former revolutionaries and letting people do what they will during this period and also the courts in new york and charleston have the power to take away to educate to seize land and to seize material and goods.

so there's a lot of using a people's property as a way to entice or punish them alternatively. >> speaking of taking toward tori we have a question about how far inland the british occupied the country during the war. >> in most of the places that i'm looking that they didn't go in that much further than the actual city and boston never really controlled beyond the offices of the city itself and philadelphia as well. they controlled the city and it was like the inner suburbs. but the lines were narrow. in the south is more like

all-encompassing. they occupy georgia up to augusta which is pretty far to western georgia and south carolina as far back as 96 which was a frontier settlement. and they were able to exert control over those entire states. they buried from place to place. both sides claimed a lot of the regions around new york city for about 100 miles in either direction as no-man's land places where malicious were loyal to the revolutionary and for control and neither side really had a clear advantage.

>> i want to talk about what you just said because i'm wondering if the british armies were contesting these no-man's land and does this mean disaffection or did this lead people decide with one government or the other? >> i think both. there were certain amount people who were willing to side with jefferson for ways to win the war. and i found correspondence between family members say maybe next month is the time to jump ship and jump to the revolutionary side or maybe in a couple of months they should switch to the crown. so there's a lot of side

swapping in these areas. in terms of disaffection a lot of people are militantly anti-both sides and i draw the comparison to the english civil war with these men called clubman who would protect their town from the royal is the need see that a lot in the back countries of carolina and georgia in the mountains. you'd see tennessee and kentucky. they just wanted to defend their settlement and will attack pretty much anyone who comes through their region. there is definitely disaffection they are in terms of the question and occupied cities yes

and no. what would i try to do with the book is draw common threads as much as i can. in each city there is a hopeful beginning when the british arrived among a lot of the populations of the british empire that things will get more peaceful and they will get to the end of their travails and then there's this period of deprivation and hardship of military rule and the other thing that occurs is a lot of militaries and the british army in particular was a very violent society and there's assault in the air's rape and there are murders and there's all kinds of violence in the cities. that is common to all six.

one of the things bostonians are complaining about is the british soldiers cursing and not respecting the sabbath on sundays and not letting them go to their churches. one of the things carolinians were complaining about is how the british are allowing people to have more liberties than they are used to so there are regional and cultural differences like that but there are a lot of common experiences. >> we go one final question and i want to build on this question a little bit. he's asking about benjamin franklin and son. i want to build on that by

asking about the long-lasting occupation of post-war period and what does it mean for people who have been occupied and divided and exiled? what kind of lasting effects to the occupation have on their lives? >> it's a good question and i can't think of anybody more notable than the franklins but there were a lot of families that were divided this way. the family that i mentioned earlier half of them end up in nova scotia and england and the other half remaining in rhode island. they continued to correspond is just the one side can come back under the penalty of execution. so there are a lot of these splits and benjamin franklin son

going into exile whereas franklin himself is -- the occupation does hang over a lot of people but they were able to sweep it under the rug and kind of forget it and going back to the beginning of the conversation there is kind of the permissiveness or willingness to forget the complexities and the nuances of the wartime experience and someone that a lot of historians think of a loyalist was -- who was a political economist at the department of treasury in the jefferson administration and he was a die-hard loyalist.

he married the daughter of a prominent loyalist family and basically made his money profiteering off of the occupation obtaining licenses to sell goods to the west indies and import stuff from new york to the caribbean in philadelphia but he was one of these people that switches sides at the right time and he gets word that the british are getting ready to evacuate. he speaks out of philadelphia a week before in science and open royalty. he comes back to new york and he writes he is one of the most purposed americans with no exception and they wanted to make a career in politics. he's elected to the congress of the confederation and serves in

the treasury department and the 1800's and this comes up every now and then in public view but it's treated as a useful -- like they say you can't blame him for that. he was only 20 and you can't blame them for that. it was war. so let's let bygones be bygones and everyone had something like that they did during the war. so critics are naval -- never able to get any traction because there is this forgive and forget mentality. >> i saw the hitchcock contact -- and i hadn't read much before the 1790s and i picked up your book and eyes like what the heck is he doing there? it was a good example of the

ways in which he talked in the book about people reinventing themselves during the war and even after. >> if you look at his record you can see in his books they are ripped out from during the occupation. on the one hand it's really frustrating but on the other hand it's really interesting the way people reshape their lives. >> this was fantastic and thank you so much. the next time you travel this way let's occupy a table at a pub. i've really enjoyed our time together and i want to thank you and that want to thank our audience for the great questions and thanks for tuning in to all of you out there and thanks to sam snyder and jeanette patrick who are behind the scenes working their magic as usual.

i hope to see you soon and have a good evening, good night and good night in good luck. >> thank you very much. it's been a pleasure.

>> i was on the panel wants and what the people on the panel said there are people miss world who get to go to that as many times as they want and there are those of us who we don't just strike out but we get ejected from the game and that's so often the groups of people end up working with and i try to serve in my other life as an avid get her politician those who the notion of a second chance is very remote. it's entirely possible that avery could have another shot but there are no guarantees in the desperation of follow that urgency is something i felt. my family we were economically insecure. i was the first one with real money and i couldn't make mistakes.

i couldn't stumble and lose this one opportunity. my siblings all did well eventually eventually but we did know of for sure in this sense of responsibility i think is one part of what i wanted to interview in her character and i wanted to create a place for anyone else who's thinking about taking a risk and what is at stake and what am i willing to jeopardize her what i think is right? >> thank you for joining us. my name is andrew jackson o'shaughnessy that i'm the director of the robert h. smith international -- in monticello. my pleasure to introduce kevin weddle who will be discussing his new book "the compleat