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Many historians of the American Revolution fail to accurately assess the impact British supporters in the Thirteen Colonies had on the military dimension of the war. The Crown's American allies, commonly referred to as Loyalists, were instrumental in British operations throughout the conflict, especially in the southern colonies. Reports from the royal governors of the southern colonies numbered the Loyalists in the thousands. British officials in London developed a plan to Americanize the war by utilizing Loyalists more comprehensively, lessening the burden for more British troops. The first steps toward Americanizing the war occurred when General Sir Henry Clinton and Lieutenant General Charles, Second Earl, Cornwallis incorporated southern Loyalists with their British troops to reconquer the southern colonies in 1780. After the British conquest of Charleston, South Carolina in June 1780, Lieutenant General Cornwallis was awarded the independent command of the British forces in the South and was additionally charged with rallying and protecting the Loyalists in North and South Carolina. Cornwallis consistently tried to organize the Loyalists into militia corps to combat Rebel partisans operating in the Carolina backcountry, The constant failure of the Loyalist militia persuaded Cornwallis of their inability to sustain themselves. As a result, Cornwallis abandoned the southern colonies, as well as the Crown's loyal subjects, in favor of offensive operations in Virginia. His aim was to prevent the Rebel southern army from receiving supplies and recruits. Many slaves joined Cornwallis' army in Virginia and persuaded him to utilize them to replace the services provided by southern white Loyalists. These failed decisions contributed to Cornwallis' humiliating defeat at Yorktown in October 1781, effectively ending the military dimension of the American Revolution. / History

This dissertations studies the problem of military shelter and its impact on the Continental Army’s conduct during the War of American Independence. It examines ideas and practices about military housing during the eighteenth century; how Continental officers sought and obtained lodging for themselves and their men, refinements in military camp administration; how military decisions regarding shelter affected strategy, logistics, and social relationships within the army; as well as how quartering practices structured relations between civilians and the military. This dissertation maintains a geographic focus on Northwestern New Jersey, a region it defines as the Highlands, because this area witnessed a Continental Army presence of greater size and duration than anywhere else in the rebelling Thirteen Colonies. Using official military correspondence, orderly books, diaries, memoirs, civilian damage claims, and archaeological studies, this dissertation reveals that developments in military shelter formed a crucial yet overlooked component of Continental strategy. Patriot soldiers began the war with inadequate housing for operations in the field as well as winter quarters, and their health and morale suffered accordingly. In the second half of the war, Continental officers devised a new method of accommodating their men, the log-hut city. This complex of hastily-built timber huts provided cover for Patriot troops from the winter of 1777-1778 through the end of the war. This method, unknown in Europe, represented an innovation in the art of war. By providing accommodations secure from enemy attack for thousands of soldiers at little cost to the government and little inconvenience to civilians, the log-hut city made a decisive contribution to the success of the Continental Army’s war effort. / History

Lord Mansfield is typically remembered for his influence in common law and commercial law, and his decision in Somerset v. Stewart , which granted a slave, brought to England, habeas corpus to refuse his forced transportation out of that nation by his master. Both conditions allowed observers to praise him for what they viewed as very modern notions about economy and society (capitalism and anti-slavery, respectively). Mansfield's primary position as Chief Justice of King's Bench in England, which contributed most of the only published material from him, shielded him from any scrutiny about his wider influence in general British governance in the period of his public career, roughly 1740-1790. Throughout his career, Mansfield played a large role in the general government of the British Empire. Beginning with his role as Solicitor General in 1742 and continuing after he became Chief Justice in 1756, Mansfield interacted and advised the highest members of the British ruling elite, including the monarch. Because the nature of British governance in the 18th Century was very porous, Mansfield partook in the exercise of legislative (through his seats in the House and Commons and Lords), executive (through a formal seat on the Privy Council and later in the King's Closet), and judicial (through his roles as Solicitor and Attorney General, Chief Justice of King's Bench, and temporary positions as Lord Chancellor) power practically simultaneously throughout his career. In these capacities, Mansfield contributed to imperial policy at a critical moment. He was a champion for the British Empire as the beacon of the most perfect society at that time - a perspective he developed through his education and experiences during the crucial formative years of the British nation. He channeled his support for Britain into a seemingly rigid dogma that saw any threat or challenge to British authority or culture as inherently illegitimate. In this regard, Mansfield favored British domination over the other imperial powers, and he immediately rejected the earliest complaints of the Americans over British rule. Because of the nature of his position within British governance, Mansfield's view remained constant in a government that witnessed continual turnover. The potential of Mansfield's influence was not lost upon the public. Many factions from "true Whigs" such as John Wilkes, and American patriots viewed him as the epitome of the problem with the British government-its seemingly arbitrary, unconstitutional, and tyrannical posture toward everything. Mansfield posed a particular challenge for these groups because he was a Chief Justice, and they believed he was supposed to adhere to a strong notion of justice. Instead, they saw him continually leading their repression, and so they questioned the basis of the whole British system. Through pamphlets, newspapers, and visual prints, these groups identified Mansfield as a key conspirator, which they attributed to an anti-British disposition. In these ways, Mansfield and his opponents squared off over the definition of true Britishness internally and imperially. When these opponents gathered enough strength (Londoners during the Gordon Riots, and Americans with their War of Independence), they aimed to pull down Mansfield and his comrades for their violations. The former failed to overthrow society, but they arguably hastened a change in government. The latter succeeded in their movement to exit the Empire. The Revolution was not a total transformation for the Americans, however. They struggled to define their new nation and America had similar imperial aspirations. In this environment, Mansfield was the quintessential symbol of early national "leaders" bipolar attitudes towards Britain. Some leaders such as John Adams embraced their British heritage, and used Mansfield as a model to develop a strong, centralized, commercial nation. Other leaders such as Thomas Jefferson saw Mansfield as the chief villain to the idea of America. Jefferson coined the phrase "Mansfieldism" which he identified as a caustic relationship between law and government that favored the development of political and legal elitism that challenged the interests and participation of common citizens. Jefferson viewed Mansfield as the essential symbol of the American anti-revolution. These first-generation independent Americans both remembered Mansfield for his direct participation in the imperial crisis, but for Adams and his fellow Federalists, they had to initiate redemption for Mansfield to justify their program to create America. The redemption was successful. American institutions used Mansfield to fine-tune the balance between their British heritage and uniquely American outlook. As successive generations of Americans emerged into the political sphere, they remembered his seemingly progressive positions on law and society as presented through his court decisions over his actual participation against their independence. Especially through a selective reading of his decision in Somerset, Mansfield became the legal prophet for abolitionist nationalism. His decision arguably provided a legal precedent against the institution of slavery, but it more importantly transformed into the moral imperative of the movement. In this manner, Mansfield became fully redeemed among Americans. / History

A significant number of Pennsylvanians were not, in any meaningful sense, either revolutionaries or loyalists during the American War for Independence. Rather, they were disaffected from both sides in the imperial dispute, preferring, when possible, to avoid engagement with the Revolution altogether. The British Occupation of Philadelphia in 1777 and 1778 laid bare the extent of this popular disengagement and disinterest, as well as the dire lengths to which the Patriots would go to maintain the appearance of popular unity. Driven by a republican ideology that relied on popular consent in order to legitimate their new governments, American Patriots grew increasingly hostile, intolerant, and coercive toward those who refused to express their support for independence. By eliminating the revolutionaries' monopoly on military force in the region, the occupation triggered a crisis for the Patriots as they saw popular support evaporate. The result was a vicious cycle of increasing alienation as the revolutionaries embraced ever more brutal measures in attempts to secure the political acquiescence and material assistance of an increasingly disaffected population. The British withdrawal in 1778, by abandoning the region's few true loyalists and leaving many convinced that American Independence was now inevitable, shattered what little loyalism remained in the region and left the revolutionaries secure in their control of the state. In time, this allowed them to take a more lenient view of disaffection and move toward modern interpretations of silence as acquiescence and consent for the established government. / History

Americans view neutrality in the 1790s as the far-seeing wisdom of the Founders and a weak power's common-sense approach to a transatlantic war in which it could not afford to get involved. Far from this benign image of prudence, however, neutrality in the Early Republic was controversial: it was a style and paradigm of foreign policy that grappled with the consequences of a democratic politics exacerbated by diplomatic crises. Far from promoting tranquility, neutrality provoked uproar from the very beginning. Intense print battles erupted over sensational exposés of foreign influence and conspiracy, reverberating through the international, national, and local levels simultaneously. Print exposés of foreign intrigue provoked partisan warfare that raised the larger, unsettled (and unsettling) issues of the national interest, the exercise of federal power, and the relationship between the people and their government. This dynamic reflected and exacerbated preexisting sectional fissures in the union, triggering recourse to the politics of slavery. As a result, the politics of slavery calibrated the competing national visions of the emerging Federalists and Republicans, defining the limits of American independence while challenging the ability of the United States to remain neutral. Drawing on the efforts of diplomatic historians, political historians and literary scholars, this work illustrates the mutually constitutive relationship between print politics, foreign relations, and the politics of slavery in the Early Republic. It argues that neutrality was a style of foreign policy that both political parties used to contain sectionalism and faction, and that print politics and the politics of slavery combined to create a dynamic that made that style malleable. / History

Master of Arts / Department of History / Louise A. Breen / The land west of the Alleghany Mountains and along the Ohio River and Great Lakes was an area of hotly contested land and sovereignty claims during the colonial period, complete with shifting loyalties and highly factionalized alliances. Warfare and diplomacy in the western territories often hinged on the actions of just one man or a small group of people, with consequences that could cause the collapse of entire empires. The long-standing battle for land and power throughout the Ohio Valley has been called the Long War because once conflict began between the French, British, and Indians in 1754, no one power was truly able to claim the land and its people until the British were forced out of their Great Lakes forts in 1815. George Rogers Clark uniquely united these groups for a short moment in history. A feat made all the more impressive when we consider how long the region remained contested ground between empires. These factions united only once prior the era of American control. During the expedition of George Rogers Clark in 1778, backcountry settlers, French habitants, Indian chiefs, and Spanish officials all united during a small window of time to overthrow British control of the Illinois Country. He moved freely from the top political circles of Virginia to the remote frontier outposts of the Illinois Country. This thesis argues that George Rogers Clark was especially successful at gaining the cooperation of diverse groups of populations and coordinating those groups to work together towards his own goals. Clark certainly owes part of his success to being the right man in the right place at the right time, but it must be remembered that he was the only man to ever bring all of these factionalized groups together.