Skip to main content

New top story from Time: The Rise and Fall of a Dangerous Political Movement in Revolutionary America

https://ift.tt/3zNRUzA

The Brethren did not begin as a tory uprising. Ironically, its members—a group of eastern North Carolina yeomen—believed themselves to be responding to a tyrannical conspiracy against Protestant liberty, and in resistance against forced military service. The evils they had been taught to fear their entire lives—popish plots and tyrannical Frenchmen, heretics and an overbearing government tearing men from their harvest to serve in standing armies—had arrived amid revolutionary chaos. And the changes that came with independence seemed to undermine beliefs that had for generations shaped their self-understanding as a free people; beliefs the U.S. revolution of 1775 had developed in support of.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

But as American freedom took shape, elements within North Carolina’s revolutionary leadership redefined central tenets of Protestant British liberty as hostile to an independent republican state. (That enlightened political ideas had virtually no popular constituency in that early period of upheaval did nothing to temper this tendency.) Those leaders, and their supporters in the counties, would accept no criticism of the state’s actions or its members’ enlightened beliefs; the language of Protestant liberty that had been an ideological pillar of a free people had radically shifted its political position. It had become a weapon in a struggle over the course and nature of the Revolution, used as a discourse of criticism to assert a specific vision of liberty in a manner that some viewed as threatening.

Old map of Territory of United States at the close of the Revolution
Tomasz Skoczen—Getty Images

This is not to say that loyalism was created solely by committee persecution in revolutionary America. Loyalism was a complex, varied, and at times contradictory identity within the fractured Anglo-American political reality of the time. However, it is fair to say that some of those who created a republican state later also created a jarring ideological dislocation by disowning the predominant ideas of liberty in the English-speaking world. That dislocation helps explain a central, unrecognized ideological paradox that soon emerged: by 1778 the beliefs that drove the Revolution in 1775 were being identified as counterrevolutionary.

Late in 1776 or early in 1777, John Lewellen, who served the state as a militia officer as well as a justice of the peace, had begun to tell others that heretics in the North Carolina government intended to make the state “subject to popery.” He wanted to seek relief from their plotting “and hop’d for a Blessing on the Indeavour.” Lewellen did not advocate violence against the state or its leaders, but sought redress and to halt the drift toward popish government.

Read more: Faces of the American Revolution

It was a series of angry confrontations that altered the movement’s political character. In early or mid-May, Lewellen encountered Albemarle committeeman James Mayo on some unnamed rural path. Mayo was part of a locally prominent family that had migrated from Virginia to North Carolina in the 1740s. They owned considerable land in Martin County as well as in several other southern and western Albemarle counties. By 1776 Mayo and his brother Nathan had become active revolutionaries and were heavily involved in revolutionary militias and committees.

When Mayo encountered Lewellen, he accused him of being an enemy of the people. More clashes soon followed. What specifically sparked them remained unstated specifically. But Lewellen’s views about the state leaders’ embrace of popery and heresy played a central part in it.

Albemarle committeemen and militiamen saw the Protestant associators’ words as a challenge to the revolutionary state. And in 1777, criticizing members of the state governments or the Continental Congress or the American cause generally—even thinking bad thoughts—all of these could get a person in a lot of trouble. The list of political offenses had expanded relentlessly since 1775, and many points of view had become criminalized.

Lewellen had seen or heard about suspected tories being interrogated, tortured, and imprisoned, their property seized and their families expelled from the new states. He knew exactly what to expect if the label stuck to him. Lewellen began denouncing Mayo as being “very particular in atacting any that was thote to be enemies to the state.” (His phrasing again suggests he did not think of himself that way when he exchanged the angry words with Mayo.)

Within weeks Lewellen and a faction in the movement’s leadership began to consider violence against the revolutionary leaders in the Albemarle region. Lewellen argued that Mayo should be killed; his brother Nathan also became a target. Brethren leaders described him as a “very Busy Body,” a “son of a bitch” who would get himself killed for spying on Lewellen and their movement.

And Lewellen soon realized he could not just murder the Mayo brothers, but that they needed to “kill all the heads of the County.” In late May, Lewellen began to contemplate a decapitating strike against the southern Albemarle’s revolutionary elite. The Brethren would eliminate with one thrust the state leaders who had embraced French-tainted popery and those who had threatened to arrest them. What had begun with an unhappy conversation soon cascaded into plans to decapitate the state government. Lewellen even began discussing killing Governor Richard Caswell, advocating for seizing the Halifax powder magazine and murdering the governor during a planned gubernatorial visit to the town sometime in June; King George III and his ministry now seemed less a threat than their own state leaders.

Read more: You Can’t Tell the Story of 1776 Without Talking About Race and Slavery

By mid-June the Brethren began talking like the king’s friends when they spoke to potential recruits. When James Rawlings brought David Taylor into the movement in late May, he indicated that the associators opposed the state government because “the Congress had given up the Country to the French to be governed by them, and then Popery would come into the Country.” He then went on to mention keeping their lands if royal authority was restored. Some recruiters told would-be recruits that the state leaders had to be confronted because the state’s loyalty oath contained heretical ideas. In their worldview, anti-Christian authority could be justly resisted.

Members, Lewellen insisted, had to be ready to join any royal forces that came to the Albemarle region and would receive munitions to do so. Lewellen and others who supported the loyalist turn actively began to consider inviting the king’s forces into the state; Lewellen went on to say “they would shoot any man who divulged the secret.”

The threats made against Lewellen, and later other Brethren leaders, had transformed the movement’s political orientation. Ideologically, Protestant political culture remained at its base, but by mid-June these leaders were no longer trying to save the commonwealth or support what they thought of as a Protestant revolution. They felt driven to a point where the empire and British army looked more attractive as rulers than their own countryman.

This change in political orientation explains the strange divergence in understanding within the depositions later taken when the movement came to be suppressed. Some portrayed the Brethren as a spiritual-political movement focused on stopping popery and heresy, and others suggest a loyalist conspiracy and do not mention popery or even forced drafts, or mention them only in passing. Across the six or seven months of its existence, the Brethren lived a profound shift in the nature of liberty.

The movement began to unravel with this turn toward a violent loyalist coup. An ideological gap opened among the associators as word of the movement’s new direction spread. When the leaders started to talk like tories—and after Lewellen shared plans to instigate a diversionary slave revolt to achieve his goal of murdering the state’s leadership—rank-and-file associators began to go to the state authorities to tell them what they knew and denounce the bloody-minded plans for a tory coup. These yeomen remained committed to Protestant liberty and the defense of community members. But they did not equate these goals with allegiance to a corrupted empire.

Can we really understand words uttered in anger on some forgotten rural trace as not only evidence of profound ideological change, but cause of change as well? We must if we wish to understand ideological change in revolutionary America at all. Archival sources reveal the role individual confrontations, pushing and shoving, rumors and threats, mobbings and assaults, battle and war played in transforming the revolutionary generation’s worldview. This is what happened in the Albemarle.

The Brethren
Harvard University PressHarvard University Press

 

Excerpted from The Brethren: A Story of Faith and Conspiracy in Revolutionary America by Brendan McConville. Copyright © 2021. Available from Harvard University Press.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

New top story from Time: House Passes President Biden’s $1.9 Trillion COVID-19 Relief Bill

https://ift.tt/2ZVMCSX WASHINGTON — The House approved a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill in a win for President Joe Biden, even as top Democrats tried assuring agitated progressives that they’d revive their derailed drive to boost the minimum wage. The new president’s vision for flushing cash to individuals, businesses, states and cities battered by COVID-19 passed on a near party-line 219-212 vote early Saturday. That ships the massive measure to the Senate, where Democrats seem bent on resuscitating their minimum wage push and fights could erupt over state aid and other issues. Democrats said the still-faltering economy and the half-million American lives lost demanded quick, decisive action. GOP lawmakers, they said, were out of step with a public that polling shows largely views the bill favorably. “I am a happy camper tonight,” Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said Friday. “This is what America needs. Republicans, you ought to be a part of this. But if you’re not,

New top story from Time: Latest Tests Bring Israel a Step Closer to Commercial Drones

https://ift.tt/3lyZxGe TEL AVIV, Israel — Dozens of drones floated through the skies of Tel Aviv on Monday, ferrying cartons of ice cream and sushi across the city in an experiment that officials hope provided a glimpse of the not-too-distant future. Israel’s National Drone Initiative, a government program, carried out the drill to prepare for a world in which large quantities of commercial deliveries will be made by drones to take pressure off highly congested urban roads. The two-year program aims to apply the capabilities of Israeli drone companies to establish a nationwide network where customers can order goods and have them delivered to pick up spots. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The project, now in the third of eight stages, is still in its infancy and faces many questions about security and logistics. “We had 700 test flights at the start of this year and now we are close to 9,000 flights,” said Daniella Partem, from Israel Innovation Authority, a partner in th

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J सिद्धार्थ रॉय कपूर फिल्म्स कि अगली सीरीज़ विलियम डेलरिम्पल कि बेस्टसेलर, 'द एनार्की: पर आधारित होगी

सिद्धार्थ रॉय कपूर के प्रोडक्शन 'रॉय कपूर फिल्म्स' ने हालही में अवार्ड विनिंग इतिहासकार और लेखक विलियम डेलरिम्पल की बेस्ट सेलिंग हिस्टोरिकल बुक ‘द अनार्की: द रिलेंटलेस राइज़ ऑफ़ द ईस्ट इंडिया कंपनी' के आधिकारिक राइट्स हासिल कर इसे सीरीज़ के from टेलीविजन की खबरें | Television News in Hindi | TV Serials Update in Hindi – FilmiBeat Hindi http:/hindi.filmibeat.com/television/siddharth-roy-kapoor-next-web-series-will-be-based-on-anarchy-090499.html?utm_source=/rss/filmibeat-hindi-television-fb.xml&utm_medium=23.11.231.156&utm_campaign=client-rss

New top story from Time: Japan’s Prime Minister Abe Reportedly Stepping Down Over Health Concerns

https://ift.tt/32yNoGh (TOKYO) — Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expressed his intention to step down due to his declining health, according to reports Friday by NHK and other Japanese media. The Prime Minister’s Office said the report could not be immediately confirmed, but that Abe was believed to be meeting top ruling officials at the party headquarters. The Liberal Democratic Party spokesman did not answer the phone. Concerns about Abe’s chronic health issues, simmering since earlier this summer, intensified this month when he visited a Tokyo hospital two weeks in a row for unspecified health checkups. Abe, whose term ends in September 2021, is expected to stay on until a new party leader is elected and formally approved by the parliament. He had abruptly resigned from his first stint in office in 2007 due to his health, which was fueling concerns about his recent condition. Abe on Monday became Japan’s longest serving prime minister by consecutive days in of

New top story from Time: Justice Department Charges 8 in Chinese Harassment Plot in U.S.

https://ift.tt/37P9856 (WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department has charged eight people with working on behalf of the Chinese government in a pressure campaign aimed at coercing a New Jersey man who was wanted by Beijing into returning to China to face charges, officials said Wednesday. The prosecution, which Justice Department officials said was the first of its kind, accuses the defendants of participating in a Chinese government operation known as “Fox Hunt” that was ostensibly created to help Beijing locate fugitives abroad but that U.S. officials say in practice relied on intimidation and bullying to go after dissidents and political opponents. Five of the eight, including an American private investigator who was hired as part of the effort, were arrested Wednesday. The other three are believed to be in China. All eight were charged with conspiring to act as illegal agents for China in a case filed in federal court in Brooklyn. “Without coordination with our governmen

New top story from Time: The Reopening of Springsteen on Broadway Brought Broadway Out of Hibernation—and One Packed Theater Into a Brighter Future

https://ift.tt/3A6wS0a The city that never sleeps is still a little sleepy, unsure of how to move its joints and muscles as it awakens from its forced hibernation . Although Times Square is now almost as brightly lit as ever, it’s remarkably hard to find a bar that will serve a drink after 11 p.m. On a late-June Saturday night, Eighth Ave. around 42nd Street was vibrating with young people: guys imported from the outer boroughs and beyond in their baggy, rumpled shorts, young women in elastic spangled mini-dresses making their first outing after a year lying in a drawer, men in mardi gras beads and the tiniest of tank tops ready to make the most of the final days of Pride month . Yet it was hard to know exactly what all these people were doing there, other than taking their place in a kind of Brownian-movement minuet under the cheerfully garish lights. Because Times Square cannot be itself while Broadway—meaning not the actual street but the constellation of live shows around

More 20 MPH Streets Coming Soon Near You

More 20 MPH Streets Coming Soon Near You By Christine Osorio Last October when California Assembly Bill 43 (Friedman) was signed into law, we posted a blog about which gave cities new flexibility in setting speed limits—specifically reducing them. “Speed Management,” a reference that is still in development, focused on reducing speed limits in key business activity districts where at least 50% are dining or retail. Since the bill went into effect last month, we’ve already started lowering speed limits by 5 MPH (from 25 MPH to 20 MPH) in the first phase of approved corridors, four of which have been implemented:  San Bruno Avenue, from Silver to Paul avenues (Completed January 2022)  Polk Street, from Filbert to Sutter streets (Completed January 2022)  Haight Street, from Stanyan Street to Central Avenue and from Webster to Steiner streets (Completed February 2022)  24th Street, from Diamond to Chattanooga streets and from Valencia Street to San Bruno Avenue (Completed

New top story from Time: Department of Homeland Security Warns of Politically Motivated Violence

https://ift.tt/2NINiIA WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security issued a national terrorism bulletin Wednesday warning of the lingering potential for violence from people motivated by antigovernment sentiment after President Joe Biden’s election, suggesting the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol may embolden extremists and set the stage for additional attacks. The department did not cite any specific plots, but pointed to “a heightened threat environment across the United States” that it believes “will persist” for weeks after Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration. It is not uncommon for the federal government to warn local law enforcement through bulletins about the prospect for violence tied to a particular event or date, such as July 4. But this particular bulletin, issued through the department’s National Terrorism Advisory System, is notable because it effectively places the Biden administration into the politically charged debate over how to describe or characterize acts

In-Person Pride Parade & Celebrations Return This Month!

In-Person Pride Parade & Celebrations Return This Month! By Pamela Johnson The SFMTA is happy to join San Francisco Pride celebrations when they return to in-person events this month as the city continues its recovery from the pandemic. This year’s theme is “Love will Keep Us Together.” The Trans March is happening on Friday, June 24 and the Pride Parade is on Sunday, June 26. SFMTA staff are, of course, an important part of the LGBTQIA+ community that keeps SF moving with Pride. Pride is an opportunity for us to demonstrate our continued support of the LGBTQIA+ community, promoting our core values of respect, inclusivity and integrity.  History/Background of SF Pride   San Francisco had its first Pride celebration in 1970. For more than three decades the LGBTQIA+ community and their allies have been moving San Francisco forward to become a better, safer, and more equitable world for the LGBTQIA+ community and the city a better place for people to live, work and enjoy.    His

New top story from Time: ‘Do Not Hold Grudges.’ Joe Biden’s Notes Reveal Talking Points About Kamala Harris

https://ift.tt/2X4natB (WILMINGTON, Del.) — Joe Biden was uncharacteristically tight-lipped on Tuesday about the final stretch of his search for a vice president. But the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee seemed prepared to talk about at least one leading contender: California Sen. Kamala Harris. As he took questions from reporters on Tuesday, Biden held notes that were captured by an Associated Press photographer. Harris’ name was scrawled across the top, followed by five talking points. “Do not hold grudges.” “Campaigned with me & Jill.” “Talented.” “Great help to campaign.” “Great respect for her.” Those are all observations Biden has made about Harris before. But they take on new significance following a recent Politico report that one of Biden’s closest friends and a co-chair of his vice presidential vetting committee, former Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, still harbors concerns about Harris’ tough debate stage performance and that she hasn’t expressed reg