The American Revolution in New Jersey
Rivergate Regionals
Rivergate Regionals is a collection of books published by Rutgers University Press focusing on New Jersey and the surrounding area. Since its founding in 1936, Rutgers University Press has been devoted to serving the people of New Jersey and this collection solidifies that tradition. The books in the Rivergate Regionals Collection explore history, politics, nature and the environment, recreation, sports, health and medicine, and the arts. By incorporating the collection within the larger Rutgers University Press editorial program, the Rivergate Regionals Collection enhances our commitment to publishing the best books about our great state and the surrounding region.
The American Revolution in New Jersey
Where the Battlefront Meets the Home Front
EDITED BY
JAMES J. GIGANTINO II
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
The American Revolution in New Jersey : where the battlefront meets the home front / edited by James J. Gigantino II.
pages cm. (Rivergate regionals)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 9780813571928 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 9780813571911 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 9780813571935 (e-book (web pdf)) ISBN 9780813572734 (e-book (epub))
1. New JerseyHistoryRevolution, 17751783. 2. United StatesHistoryRevolution, 17751783. I. Gigantino, James J., II, 1983 editor, author.
E263.N5A45 2014
974.9'03dc23
2014027526
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
This collection copyright 2015 by Rutgers, The State University
Individual chapters copyright 2015 in the names of their authors
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.
Visit our website: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
For Diane
Contents
James J. Gigantino II
William L. Kidder
Gregory F. Walsh
Eleanor H. McConnell
Todd W. Braisted
Robert A. Selig
Michael S. Adelberg
Bruce A. Bendler
James J. Gigantino II
Donald Sherblom
Like many edited projects, this one grew over time into its present form with help from many people along the way. It was originally conceived by the staff at the Museum of Early Trades and Crafts in Madison, New Jersey, to complement their exhibit on the American Revolution in New Jersey. Former museum curator Siobhan Fitzpatrick deserves many thanks for her initial efforts to organize the authors. Marlie Wasserman showed an active interest in bringing the book to Rutgers and helped to shape these collected essays as well as assisted a first-time editor in navigating some difficult waters. However, without financial support from the University of Arkansas, this book would not be in readers hands today. Generous subventions from the Office of the Provost and the Department of History made publication possible. My special thanks to the provost, Sharon Gaber, and Kathryn Sloan, chair of the history department, for their support. Finally, as in all things in life, none of the authors in this collection would be where they are today without support from their families. From putting up with our fascination with what most would consider mundane materials to suffering our absences as we travel to archives around the world, their friendly smiles, kind words, and love on our return help make us better historians. For me, my sister has been with me every step of the way on my journey through life, providing advice, support, and love. I dedicate this volume to her.
The American Revolution in New Jersey
James J. Gigantino II
Generations of scholars have echoed historian Leonard Lundins 1940 argument that New Jersey was the cockpit of the American Revolution, a central site in the struggle over the fate of a continent. More recently, Mark Lender confirmed that assessment: New Jersey was a crossroads where opposing armies battled on an almost daily basis. However, to Lender, the cockpit description means more than just the most engagements recorded in any colony. To him, the military experience of New Jersey became a microcosm of the wider war, and to understand the military interactions in New Jersey would be to understand the military history of the revolution generally. The chapters in this volume continue to explore New Jerseys central role in the American Revolution by examining not just military affairs but also the intertwined relationship between the front lines of the Revolution and the home front. In the Garden State, those lines were frequently blurred: civilians lived with the war on a daily basis. The Revolution therefore had a dramatic effect on New Jerseyans economic well-being, the relationships they formed with their neighbors, as well as their very lives and freedom. Those who lived in New Jersey from 1775 to 1783 truly believed they were caught up in the cockpit of the Revolution.
In the past three decades, historians of the Revolutionary era have taken a more expansive view of the conflict, showing how the first half of the eighteenth century primed the colonies for the Revolution and how the Revolutionary experience affected succeeding generations of Americans. Like the prevailing historiography, this volume examines New Jerseys revolutionary experience in a wider context, paying close attention to how the war changed, or frequently did not change, the state after the guns fell silent.
New Jersey is perhaps one of the best places to measure the relationship between the colonial population and the Revolution because the colony and its people participated in almost every major eighteenth-century social and political movement. On the eve of the Revolution, New Jerseyans had been influenced by ideas, events, and issues from around the globe that would affect the progress of the Revolution. Most of these connections came about because of the states position between two major ports: Philadelphia and New York. Commerce flowed from New Jersey into these urban gateways and, as the historian Gary B. Nash has argued, helped enrich them and make them central players in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World.
New Jersey, as an agricultural powerhouse, had intense economic relationships with Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. From almost the very beginning, Jersey farmers had worked to develop an export-based economy. Wheat became the states cash crop, and its export to Philadelphia and New York brought expanding connections with merchants and traders who crisscrossed the British Atlantic World. Smaller agricultural operations near the Hudson River and along the southern Delaware became key exporters of milk, cheese, and vegetables to these urban centers as well. New Jerseys exports to the Caribbean were even more telling of the states Atlantic connection. Jersey foodstuffs, especially pork, regularly supplied the Caribbean sugar islands in exchange for sugar, coffee, slaves, and manufactured goods. In 1789, geographer Jedediah Morse even mentioned that New Jersey hams are celebrated as being the best in the world and a favorite in the West Indies.
