Wallenfeldt J. The American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812: People, Politics, and Power

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Betsy Ross

(b. Jan. 1, 1752, Philadelphia, Pa.—

d. Jan. 30, 1836, Philadelphia)

According to legend, seamstress Betsy

Ross (née Elizabeth Griscom) fashioned

the ﬁ rst ﬂ ag of the United States.

Elizabeth Griscom was brought up a

Quaker and educated in Quaker schools.

On her marriage to John Ross, an Epis-

copalian, in 1773, she was disowned by

the Society of Friends. Her husband was

killed in 1776 while serving in the militia,

and Ross took over the upholstering

With the outbreak of hostilities, Revere

turned industrialist and constructed a

much-needed powder mill to supply colo-

nial arms. In 1776 he was put in command

of Boston Harbor’s principal defense at

Castle William, but his war record as a lieu-

tenant colonel was largely undistinguished.

He resumed his stride as a successful

industrialist after the war, however, and

set up a rolling mill for the manufacture

of sheet copper at Canton, Mass. From this

factory came sheathing for many U.S. ships,

including the Constitution , and for the

dome of the Massachusetts statehouse.

Members of Congress consult with Betsy Ross at 239 Arch Street in Philadelphia, where the

ﬁ rst American ﬂ ag was reputedly made. Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Nonmilitary Figures of the American Revolution | 155

156 | The American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812: People, Politics, and Power

Haym Salomon

(b. 1740, Lissa, Pol.—d. Jan. 6, 1785,

Philadelphia, Pa.)

Haym Salomon, a Polish Jewish émigré,

was one of the principal ﬁnanciers of the

ﬂedgling American republic.

In 1772, probably because of his rev-

olutionary activities for Polish liberty,

Salomon ﬂed to New York City, where

he established himself as a commission

merchant. He soon became a successful

ﬁnancier and supported the patriotic

cause on the outbreak of the American

Revolution. In 1776 the British, who con-

trolled New York City, arrested Salomon;

exposure suered in prison later contrib-

uted to his early death. He was paroled

but was arrested again in 1778 on more

serious charges; he escaped and went to

Philadelphia. There he established a bro-

kerage oce and acted without salary as

the ﬁnancial agent of the French, doing

all in his power to facilitate the Franco-

American Alliance.

Among his many other contributions

to the colonies, Salomon subscribed

heavily to government loans, endorsed

notes, gave generously to soldiers, and

equipped several military units with his

own money. Robert Morris, the super-

intendent of ﬁnance from 1781 to 1784,

appointed Salomon as broker to his oce.

Morris records in his diary that between

1781 and 1784 Salomon lent more than

$200,000. In addition, he made private

loans to prominent statesmen such as

James Madison, Thomas Jeerson, and

business he had founded. According to

her grandson, William Canby, in a paper

presented before the Historical Society

of Pennsylvania in 1870, Ross was visited

in June 1776 by George Washington,

Robert Morris, and George Ross, her late

husband’s uncle. The story is that they

asked her to make a ﬂag for the new

nation that would declare its indepen-

dence the following month. A rough

sketch presented to her was redrawn by

Washington incorporating her sugges-

tions. Betsy Ross then fashioned the ﬂag

in her back parlor—again, according to

the legend. She is supposed also to have

suggested the use of the ﬁve-pointed star

rather than the six-pointed one chosen

by Washington. On June 14, 1777, the

Continental Congress adopted the Stars

and Stripes as the national ﬂag of the

United States. It is known that Ross made

ﬂags for the navy of Pennsylvania, but

there is no ﬁrm evidence in support of

the popular story about the national ﬂag.

There is, however, no conﬂicting testi-

mony or evidence, either, and the story is

now indelibly a part of American legend.

Ross married Joseph Ashburn in 1777,

and, after his death in a British prison in

1782, she was married for a third time, in

1783, to John Claypoole. She continued

the upholstering business, which became

very proﬁtable, until 1827, when she

turned it over to her daughter. The

Philadelphia house in which Betsy Ross

lived and from which she ran her uphol-

stery business still stands; it has been

restored and is open to the public.

from 1770 to 1773, but imposition of the

Tea Act in 1773 gave new life to the Sons

of Liberty. In 1774 Sears led a New York

version of the Boston Tea Party, and he

signed the call for a meeting of represen-

tatives from the colonies.

Sears was arrested in April 1775 for

his activities, but his admirers rescued

him at the jailhouse door. Later that

month—after the bloodshed at Lexington

and Concord—he and his followers drove

the loyalist ocials out of New York City

and seized control of the municipal gov-

ernment. His subsequent attacks on

loyalist businessmen elicited ocial dis-

approval from patriot committees, but

they earned Sears the backing of the New

York citizenry.

The capture of New York City by the

British compelled Sears to move to

Boston from 1777 to 1783, during which

time Sears spent time at sea as a priva-

teer. In 1784 and again in 1786 he was

elected to the New York state legislature.

He was in China on a trading venture

when he died there in 1786.

Robert Smith

(b. Nov. 3, 1757, Lancaster, Pa.—d. Nov. 26,

1842, Baltimore, Md.)

Robert Smith, who was secretary of state

under Pres. James Madison, ﬁrst served

the United States as a private in the

Continental Army during the Revolution.

Smith grew up in Baltimore. He

graduated in 1781 from the College of

New Jersey (now Princeton University),

James Monroe, from whom he would

not take interest. In all, the government

owed Salomon more than $600,000. Gen-

erations of his descendants tried in vain

to collect some portion of these loans,

which had helped to impoverish Salomon

in his last years.

A statue in Chicago of Washington,

Morris, and Salomon commemorates the

ﬁnancial contributions of the latter two

to the Revolution and acknowledges

Salomon’s Jewish heritage by quoting

Washington’s statement that the govern-

ment of the United States gives “to

bigotry no sanction” and “to persecution

no assistance.”

Isaac Sears

(b. July 1?, 1730, West Brewster,

Mass.—d. Oct. 28, 1786, Canton, China)

A patriot leader in New York City before

the American Revolution, Issac Sears

earned the nickname “King Sears” by vir-

tue of his prominent role in inciting and

commanding anti-British demonstrations.

A merchant whose shipping activi-

ties included privateering, Sears ﬁrst

exhibited his patriot leanings when the

Stamp Act crisis erupted in 1765. He

became a mob leader during the anti-

British riots in New York City, and he

belonged to the newly formed patriot

organization the Sons of Liberty.

Sears led the boycott of British goods

during colonial protests of the Townshend

Acts. Repeal of the Townshend Acts pro-

duced a period of calm in the colonies

Nonmilitary Figures of the American Revolution | 157

158 | The American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812: People, Politics, and Power

James Wilson

(b. Sept. 14, 1742, Fife, Scot.—d. Aug. 21,

1798, Edenton, N.C.)

Lawyer and political theorist James

Wilson was bot h a sig ner of the Decla ration

of Independence and member of the

Constitutional Convention of 1787.

Immigrating to North America from

Scotland in 1765, Wilson taught Greek

and rhetoric in the College of Philadelphia

and then studied law under John

Dickinson, statesman and delegate to the

First Continental Congress. Wilson’s

fame spread with publication in 1774 of

his treatise Considerations on the Nature

and Extent of the Legislative Authority of

the British Parliament. In this work he set

out a scheme of empire in which the British

colonies would have the equivalent of

dominion status. In 1774 he became a

member of the Committee of Corre-

spondence in Cumberland County, Pa.,

and he served as a delegate to the Second

Continental Congress. In 1779 he was

appointed advocate general for France

and represented that country in cases ris-

ing out of its alliance with the American

colonies. He became a champion of the

Bank of North America and an associate

of merchant-banker Robert Morris in his

struggle for currency reform after 1781.

As a member of the federal Congress

(1783; 1785–86), he pressed for an amend-

ment to the Articles of Con federation to

permit Congress to levy a general tax.

During the Constitutional Conven-

tion in 1787, Wilson helped to draft the

studied law, and became a prominent

and prosperous Baltimore attorney. From

1793 to 1801 Smith was active in Mary-

land politics, serving in both the state

senate and house of delegates and in

the Baltimore City Council. Following

Thomas Jeerson’s election to the presi-

dency, Smith was appointed secretary of

the navy, largely owing to the inﬂuence

of his brother.

During the Jeerson administra-

tions, Smith successfully prosecuted the

naval war against the Barbary States, and

he conscientiously enforced Jeerson’s

embargo despite his personal opposition

to the policy. It was during those years

(1801–09), however, that Smith and Albert

Gallatin, secretary of the Treasury,

became foes.

When James Madison became presi-

dent, he wanted Gallatin to be secretary

of state. But Samuel Smith and other

prominent senators opposed Gallatin,

and Robert Smith ultimately gained the

post. Smith and Madison frequently dis-

agreed—Smith objecting to the president’s

commercial restrictions, Madison unable

to tolerate Smith’s incoherent diplomatic

communications.

In 1811, in a face-to-face confrontation,

Madison accused Smith of ineciency

and of creating discord among members

of the administration. The president

oered Smith the position of minister to

Russia in exchange for resigning. Smith

hesitated, then refused, resigned, and

retired. He spent the ﬁnal 30 years of his

life in Baltimore.

college president, expanding the curric-

ulum, providing scientiﬁc equipment, and

working to increase the endowment

and enrollment.

From his arrival, Witherspoon was an

enthusiast about America, and in the dis-

pute with the mother country he ranged

himself uncompromisingly on the side of

the colonists. He presided over the

Somerset County Committee of

Correspondence (1775–76), was a member

of two provincial congresses, and was a

delegate to the Continental Congress

(1776–79, 1780–82), where in 1776 he was a

persuasive advocate of adopting a resolu-

tion of independence.

Witherspoon wrote extensively on

religious and political topics. His works

include Ecclesiastical Characteristics

(1753), Considerations on the Nature and

Extent of the Legislative Authority of

the British Parliament (1774), as well as

numerous essays, sermons, and

pamphlets.

Oliver Wolcott

(b. Nov. 20, 1726, Windsor, Conn.—

d. Dec. 1, 1797, Litchﬁeld, Conn.)

Oliver Wolcott was a signer of the

Declaration of Independence and a mili-

tary veteran of the Revolution, but

perhaps his greatest contribution to the

new republic was his negotiation of a

settlement with the Iroquois in 1784.

Descended from an old Connecticut

family long active in public aairs, he

was the son of Roger Wolcott, who was

U.S. Constitution; he then led the ﬁght

for ratiﬁcation in Pennsylvania. In 1790

he engineered the drafting of Penn-

sylvania’s new constitution and delivered

a series of lectures that are landmarks in

the evolution of American jurisprudence.

He was appointed an associate justice of

the U.S. Supreme Court (1789–98), where

his most notable decision was that on

Chisholm v. Georgia. In the winter of

1796–97 ﬁnancial ruin brought on by

unwise land speculation shattered his

health and ended his career.

John Witherspoon

(b. Feb. 15, 1723, Giord, East

Lothian, Scot.—d. Nov. 15, 1794,

Tusculum, N.J.)

A Scottish-American Presbyterian minis-

ter and the president of the College of New

Jersey (now Princeton University), John

Witherspoon was the only clergyman to

sign the Declaration of Independence.

After completing his theological

studies at the University of Edinburgh

(1743), he was called to the parish of Beith

in 1745 and in 1757 became pastor at

Paisley. A conservative churchman, he

frequently involved himself in ecclesias-

tical controversies, in which he proved

himself a keen dialectician and an eec-

tive speaker. In 1768 he left Paisley to

assume the presidency of the College of

New Jersey. He was warmly received by

the American Presbyterian Church and

contributed signiﬁcantly to its revitaliza-

tion and growth. He was a vigorous

Nonmilitary Figures of the American Revolution | 159

160 | The American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812: People, Politics, and Power

sovereignty in the New World, and for

creating policies and economic support

that aided in the British war eort.

Among them were important leaders,

both in North America and in Britain.

Jonathan Boucher

(b. March 12, 1738, Cumberland

[now Cumbria], Eng.—d. April 27,

1804, Epsom, Surrey)

English clergyman Jonathan Boucher

won fame as a loyalist in America.

In 1759 Boucher went to Virginia as

a private tutor. After a visit to London

in 1762 for his ordination, he became

rector of Annapolis, Md., and tutored

George Washington’s stepson, thus

becoming a family friend of the

Washingtons. His loyalist views cost

him his position: by 1775 he was keeping

pistols on his pulpit cushion while con-

ducting services, and he was forced to

return to England. He nevertheless

dedicated to Washington A View of the

Causes and Consequences of the Amer-

ican Revolution (1797), consisting of 13

of the eloquent sermons that he had

preached in America urging loyalty to

England, and he received a friendly

acknowledgment.

Having obtained a pension and the

living of Epsom, Surrey, Boucher devoted

his leisure to writing and to philology.

He contributed to William Hutchinson’s

The History of the County of Cumberland,

2 vol. (1794), and spent 14 years compil-

ing a “Glossary of Archaic and Provincial

Words,” intended to supplement Samuel

the colonial governor in 1750–54.

Settling in Litchﬁeld County, where he

practiced law and was made sheri

(1751), he became a member of the

Connecticut council (1771–86) and a del-

egate to the Continental Congress in

Philadelphia. At the beginning of the

Revolution, Wolcott signed the Dec-

laration of Independence, then returned

home to raise a state militia, which he

commanded in defense of New York

City (August 1776). The following year

he organized more Connecticut volun-

teers and took part in the successful

campaign against Gen. John Burgoyne.

In 1779 he commanded Continental

troops during the British invasion of his

home state.

Wolcott had been appointed a com-

missioner for northern Indian aairs in

1775. After the war he helped negotiate

the Second Treaty of Fort Stanwix, which

redrew the western boundaries of the Six

(Iroquois) Nations. He went on to serve

as Connecticut’s lieutenant governor

(1787–96) and governor (1796–97), as well

as a member of the Connecticut conven-

tion that ratiﬁed the new federal

Constitution.

His son, Oliver Wolcott (1760–1833),

continued the family tradition of public

service as U.S. secretary of the treasury

(1795–1800) and governor of Connect-

icut (1817–27).

ThE BRITISh SIDE

Many civilians played a strong role in

making the case for maintaining British

from attempts at repeal. He rejected fur-

ther proposals for conciliation with the

colonies and in 1776 called for the use of

overwhelming force to suppress the

growing rebellion. Unwilling, however,

to direct a war against the colonists, he

resigned his oces in November 1775

but remained in the cabinet as Lord

Privy Seal until 1782 in order to support

Lord North.

Dartmouth, a devout evangelical

Anglican, befriended the Methodist John

Wesley and the Quaker John Fothergill.

He supported the work of Eleazar

Wheelock, a Congregationalist minister,

in establishing a school for the educa-

tion of Native Americans. This school

developed into Dartmouth College of

Hanover, N.H., which was named in

Dartmouth’s honour.

Daniel Dulany

(b. June 28, 1722, Annapolis, Md.—

d. March 17, 1797, Baltimore, Md.)

Maryland lawyer Daniel Dulany, an

inﬂuential political ﬁgure in the period

just before the Revolution, opposed the

Stamp Act but remained a loyalist.

The son of the Maryland ocial of

the same name, Daniel Dulany was edu-

cated in England and became a lawyer

after returning to Maryland. He was a

member of the Maryland legislative

assembly from 1751 to 1754, and he was

appointed to the Governor’s Council in

1757 in recognition of his support for the

colony’s proprietary government. In

the following years he held other high

Johnson’s Dictionary of the English

Language. It was published only in part

but was later used for Noah Webster’s

American Dictionary of the English

Language.

William Legge,

2nd earl of Dartmouth

(b. June 20, 1731—d. July 15, 1801,

Blackheath, Kent, Eng.)

British statesman Lord Dartmouth played

a signiﬁcant role in the events leading to

the American Revolution.

Legge was educated at Westminster

School and Trinity College, Oxford. In

1750 he succeeded his grandfather as earl

of Dartmouth and later entered on a polit-

ical career, taking his seat in the House

of Lords in May 1754. In the marquess of

Rockingham’s ﬁrst administration, Dart-

mouth was appointed president of the

Board of Trade and a member of the Privy

Council (July 1765). During his tenure

(1765–66) he opposed the Stamp Act and

worked for the act’s repeal.

In 1772 Dartmouth became secre-

tary of state for the colonies in the

ministry of his stepbrother, Lord North.

Faced with mounting hostility in the

British North American colonies, he

adopted a policy of conciliation to allow

tensions to abate. When this policy was

rendered ineective by the Boston Tea

Party, Dartmouth sought to reimpose

strict British control over the colonies.

The Intolerable Acts, which he sup-

ported, only exacerbated tensions, as did

the Quebec Act (1774), which he defended

Nonmilitary Figures of the American Revolution | 161

162 | The American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812: People, Politics, and Power

As the revolution approached,

Dunmore’s power declined rapidly, espe-

cially through his own rashness. He

dissolved the Virginia Assembly in 1772,

1773, and 1774 on account of its Revo-

lutionary sentiments. In April 1775 he

seized the colony’s store of powder,

thereby bringing about an armed upris-

ing. Taking refuge aboard an English

warship, he shortly declared martial law,

proclaimed freedom to slaves who would

join the British, and proposed to Lord

Dartmouth the use of Indians against the

rebels. Defeated at Great Bridge near

Norfolk on Jan. 1, 1776, he ordered his

ships to bombard Norfolk, thereby set-

ting it aﬁre. He returned to England in

July 1776. After serving again in the

House of Lords, he was royal governor of

the Bahamas from 1787 to 1796.

Joseph Galloway

(b. c. 1731, West River, Md. [U.S.]—

d. Aug. 29, 1803, Watford,

Hertfordshire, Eng.)

Distinguished American colonial attor-

ney and legislator Joseph Galloway

remained loyal to Great Britain at the

time of the American Revolution. His

eort in 1774 to settle dierences peace-

fully narrowly missed adoption by the

Continental Congress. He was, perhaps,

the greatest of the colonial loyalists.

Entering law practice in Philadelphia

in 1747, Galloway won a reputation by

pleading cases before the Supreme Court

of Pennsylvania before he was 20. Elected

oces and also became known as one of

the best lawyers in the American colo-

nies. Though his sympathies were those

of a loyal British subject, Dulany was

critical of some policies of the British

government, and, during the crisis over

the Stamp Act of 1765, he wrote

Considerations on the Propriety of Impos-

ing Taxes in the British Colonies (1765),

which was the most inﬂuential pamphlet

that appeared in opposition to the Stamp

Act. He opposed Revolutionary action

against British rule, however, and, during

the American Revolution, he remained a

loyalist, being deprived of his property

in 1781 on account of this.

John Murray,

4th earl of Dunmore

(b. 1730?—d. Feb. 25 or March 5, 1809,

Ramsgate, Kent, Eng.)

Lord Dunmore served as the British royal

governor of Virginia on the eve of the

American Revolution.

A descendant of the Scottish house

of Stuart, he was the eldest son of William

Murray, the 3rd earl, whom he succeeded

in 1756. He sat in the House of Lords from

1761 to 1770 and then was appointed gov-

ernor ﬁrst of New York in 1770 and then

of Virginia in 1771. Personally interested

in western lands as well as ocially con-

cerned with protection of the Virginia

frontier to the west, he raised 3,000 mili-

tiamen to subdue the Shawnee Indians

in the upper Ohio River valley in 1774, an

action known as Lord Dunmore’s War.

His chief minister, Lord Bute, forced

William Pitt’s resignation and caused

intrigue rather than stability within the

government. Bute resigned in 1763, but

George’s political overtures to others

were snubbed, until Lord North became

prime minister in 1770. England was in

ﬁnancial distress caused by the war, and

George supported attempts to raise funds

through taxation of the American colo-

nies, which led to the American

Revolution. With North, he was blamed

for prolonging the war and losing the

colonies. He reasserted his power when

North and Charles James Fox planned to

take control of the East India Company;

he forced them to resign and rearmed

his control through a new “patriotic”

prime minister, William Pitt, the Younger.

George supported him until the war with

revolutionary France (1793) and fears of

related uprisings in Ireland caused Pitt

to propose political emancipation of the

Roman Catholics. George’s vehement

opposition led to Pitt’s resignation in

1801. In 1811 George’s ill health and a

return of the madness that had aicted

him for short periods earlier in his life

caused Parliament to enact the regency

of his son, the future George IV.

Politically, Bute encouraged the most

disastrous of George’s delusions. The

government of England at the time

lacked eective executive machinery,

and members of Parliament were always

more ready to criticize than to cooperate

with it. Moreover, the ministers were, for

the most part, quarrelsome and dicult

to the provincial assembly in 1756, he occu-

pied the powerful post of speaker from 1766

to 1775. His “A plan of a proposed Union

between Great Britain and the Colonies”

in 1774 provided for a president general

to be appointed by the king and a colonial

legislature to have rights and duties simi-

lar to the House of Commons. After a

day’s debate his plan was rejected by the

Continental Congress by only one vote

and was later expunged from the record.

In the belief that the Revolution was

unreasonable and unjust, Galloway left

Philadelphia and joined Gen. Sir William

Howe’s British army. He returned to the city

as a civil administrator during the British

occupation and drew up several plans of

union after the Declaration of Independ-

ence with the hope that they might be

used when the rebels had been defeated.

With the reentry of the Continentals into

Philadelphia in 1778 he ﬂed to England,

where he remained until his death.

George III

(b. June 4, 1738, London, Eng.—d. Jan. 29,

1820, Windsor Castle, near London)

The king of Great Britain and Ireland

from 1760 to 1820, George III was the

ruler of Britain during the American

Revolution.

Early Rule and Political

Instability, 1760–70

The grandson of George II, he ascended

the throne during the Seven Years’ War.

Nonmilitary Figures of the American Revolution | 163

164 | The American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812: People, Politics, and Power

Serving as king between 1760 and 1820, George III ruled England during the American

Revolution. Kean Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images