The Neighbor Who Chose the King

They call me a traitor. The patriots of Elizabethtown, who were my neighbors and in some cases my kin, use that word as if loyalty to the Crown were a crime rather than the position of every subject of the British Empire until a handful of lawyers and ministers decided otherwise. I was born in this town. My family has been here since before most of theirs. I did not rebel against the government I was born under, and I do not accept that refusing to rebel makes me a criminal.

The trouble in Elizabethtown did not begin with taxes or stamps or tea. It began generations ago, with the land. The Elizabethtown Associates — the original settlers who purchased the land from the Indians — held grants that conflicted with the claims of the East Jersey Proprietors. For decades, families argued over who owned what, and the courts were clogged with suits and countersuits. Some families aligned with the Proprietors, others with the Associates, and the bitterness ran deep. When the Revolution came, many of those old fault lines determined which side a man chose. The patriots wrapped their cause in the language of liberty, but underneath it, the war in Elizabethtown was about who would control the land and the government and the courts.

I chose the King because I believed the King's government was the legitimate authority and because I did not trust the men who claimed to speak for liberty while seizing the property of anyone who disagreed with them. The Committees of Safety, which the patriots established in every town, were instruments of terror. They interrogated suspected Loyalists, confiscated their property, imprisoned them without trial, and in some cases drove them from their homes. These were the men who spoke of liberty — liberty for themselves, and coercion for everyone else.

When the British occupied parts of New Jersey in 1776, I crossed to Staten Island and joined the Loyalist forces. From there, I participated in operations on the New Jersey shore. I will not pretend these were genteel affairs. War is not genteel, and a civil war least of all. We raided patriot farms and homes because those farms and homes supplied the rebel army. We took what we could use and destroyed what we could not. The patriots did the same to Loyalist property. Both sides burned, both sides stole, both sides settled old grudges under the cover of military necessity.

I knew the men I raided. I knew their fathers and their wives and the names of their children. They knew me. That is what made the war in Elizabethtown different from a war between strangers. Every raid was personal. Every house I entered had been a house where I had once been welcome. The Arthur Kill, that thin strip of water between New Jersey and Staten Island, separated two communities that had once been one, and crossing it in a boat with a musket in my hands was the loneliest thing I have ever done.

Do I regret my choice? I regret the necessity of making it. I do not regret standing by what I believed was right. The patriots won, and history is written by the victors, and so I am remembered as a villain and they are remembered as heroes. But I would ask this: if loyalty to one's lawful government is treason, then what is the word for those who overthrew that government by force? The answer depends on which side of the Arthur Kill you stand on, and that is as true today as it was when the boats crossed in the dark and the muskets fired and the neighbors of Elizabethtown made war upon each other.