The Vigilante Acts of the Association for Retaliation

Prior articles discussed the establishment of the Association for Retaliation, the New Jersey Legislature’s investigation of them, and Retaliator inference in the October 1781 Monmouth County election. The violence and robbery against perceived enemies (often the kin of Loyalists still living in New Jersey) practiced by the Retaliators was scolded by New Jersey leaders. However, their tactic of eye-for-an-eye retaliation was supported, at times, by frustrated Continental leaders.

The Continental Congress Endorses Retaliation

In September 1781, Arthur Middleton, a South Carolina delegate to the Continental Congress, urged the body to support eye-for-an-eye retaliation. Americans were tired of “cruelties and devastations” from the enemy and they demanded “retaliation in kind.” The retaliation should be practiced upon “all British Officers and soldiers or others in their service now prisoners.” Unlike the extra-legal actions of the Retaliators, Middleton wanted retaliation to be supervised by Congress’s Board of War.

Congress issued a manifesto on retaliation on October 1. That day, Congress took into “consideration the various scenes of barbarity” committed by “British arms ...burning our towns and villages, desolating our Country, and sporting with the lives of our captive citizens.” Congress therefore resolved that:

The Commander in Chief, the commanding officers of separate Departments, cause exemplary retaliation to be executed on the enemy for all acts of cruelty committed by them against the citizens and inhabitants of these states.

It further resolved: “That British officers now prisoners... shall answer with their lives for every further destruction by fire of any town or village within any one of the United States... put to instant death." Congress then issued a manifesto that:

Resolved, and do hereby declare, that British officers now prisoners to American arms, or which hereafter may be made prisoner, shall answer with their lives for every further destruction by fire of any town or village within any one of the United States which shall be made by the enemy contrary to the laws of war observed among civilized nations; and the Department of War is hereby ordered to cause all the officers in the service of the King G. B. now in their custody to be duly secured, and on the first authentic notice of the burning of any town or village in any one of the U. States unauthorized by the laws of war, to cause such and so many of the said officers as they shall judge expedient to be put to instant death.

Buoyed by Congress, Thomas Henderson, a Monmouth County delegate to the New Jersey Assembly and a Retaliator, introduced an "An Act to Procure Reparations to the Loyal Citizens of this State for Damages they may Sustain from Nocturnal Plunderers." The bill would have put a tax on disaffected citizens to pay for the “damages done to the well-affected.” But the bill violated the legal principle of double jeopardy by re-punishing those already punished. The bill failed to pass by a 10-19 vote.

That December, Henderson wrote a report to the Continental Congress on the Associated Loyalists, calling them "a new fangled body of Executioners.” Henderson further wrote:

These men, who have assumed the title about two years ago with the declared intention of distressing the Country have commissioned a body of ruffians for the express purpose of plundering and destroying the well-affected inhabitants and kidnapping the most active defenders of the Country... and of carrying them into the loathsome dungeons of New York where, deprived of the necessities of life, they linger out a few days of painful existence till nature, overpowered by hardships, at least finds its relief to its sufferings in death.

Henderson noted that the Associated Loyalists were ungoverned by military convention, illegal, and motivated solely by revenge. The same accusations could be leveled at the Retaliators. Henderson instructed New Jersey’s delegates to "press Congress not to make any empty declarations of purposes never to be executed"—an apparent swipe at inaction following the October 1 manifesto. He called for eye-for-eye retaliation so that "the vengeance of an injured people may fall on British officers and others whose citizens whose credit and influence may induce the British Commander in Chief to the do justice." Henderson personally delivered the report to Philadelphia.

The Journals of the Continental Congress, note the Congress considered Henderson’s report. On December 20, the Congress: "Resolved, that the Commander in Chief be directed to obtain the fullest information he can, respecting the powers and conduct of a set of men who style themselves the board of directors to the Associated Loyalists in New York, and report thereon to Congress." It is unclear if Congress acted beyond this request for further information.

The Association for Retaliation as Active Vigilantes

The Association for Retaliation required its members to keep the actions of the association a secret. Initially, the Retaliators maintained a low profile, perhaps due to repeated setbacks in the New Jersey Legislature. That changed on October 10, 1781, when a gang of Retaliators bullied voters and beat an election official at Monmouth County’s annual election. According to 83 petitioners, the Retaliators engaged in scandalous and violent conduct:

At the late election, when a number of men (some in arms) appeared in a hostile manner, threatening all such persons at they called Tories and Traders, if they should vote; A writing was put up at the Court House to the same effect; several persons were inhumanly beaten, some of them after they had voted, and some of them drove away who were legally entitled to vote, and went away without voting, not thinking themselves safe, as they did not confine their abuse to people they judged disaffected, but beat and abused several… and at the close of the election, one of the inspectors was attacked going down the stairs, and most barbarously beaten.

A full discussion of the tainted election of 1781 is in the prior article. As a secretive vigilante society, the full actions of the Retaliators are not recorded in any surviving document. We have only an incomplete picture of the group’s activity. Examples are below:

Joseph Allen was a wealthy landholder from Dover Township who supported the Loyalist insurrection of 1776. He “was plundered by a scout of about 30 men commanded by Capt. [Reuben] Randolph, and [they] carried away clothing" in 1780. Then, he "was taken by a scout of about 20 men commanded by Capt. [Samuel] Bigelow and confined, from which he run away, soon after his house was plundered by said scout of a considerable amount of corn, cheese, butter & grain, and sundry household furniture, and oxen & cows." Allen was forced to flee; retaliation pushed him to become an active Associated Loyalist in 1781.

On December 29, 1780, the New Jersey Legislative Council, read a petition from Daniel Van Mater of Monmouth County "setting forth that he has been cruelly and unjustly treated, by having his property clandestinely taken from him by a certain Captain [James] Green and others belonging to a celebrated number called and known by the name of Retaliators." The petition was referred to the Assembly without action.

Other Retaliator actions include the murder of the Loyalist, Philip White; the plundering of Joseph Salter and Richard Hartshorne; the jailing and extortion of Peter Stout, and the beating of British sailors from the HMS Vixen. All are discussed in other articles. These and other incidents led the Loyalist New York Gazette to report on the "many daring acts…which have been perpetrated with impunity by a sett of vindictive rebels well known by the designation of Monmouth Retaliators."

In September 1782, 24 Retaliator victims petitioned the New Jersey Legislature. The petitioners claimed they “have always contributed their proportion to the support of government, and are, at all times amenable to the law.” Despite this:

Your petitioners have been in a wanton & cruel manner, spoiled of their property by order of a body of men, who title themselves ‘the Association for Retaliation’ - our doors have been forced open, our houses rifled of our beds & other furniture - our stock drove away, and our teams totally broke up. - we have been deprived of the means of tilling our land - and many of us, who lived in a degree of affluence, now find it difficult to procure sustenance for our families.

The petitioners claimed the Retaliators were acting “in defiance of the law and good government.” The petitioners then discussed the imprisonment of John Taylor (a leader in the 1776 Middletown Loyalist insurrection). Taylor was “confined in the common gaol, in the course of which time a court of Oyer & Terminer was sitting over his head” but he remained in jail without trial.

The petitioners complained of inadequate legal protections and corrupt courts led by David Forman:

Writs of habeus corpus have been disregarded by the Sheriff - in short, every attempt for relief by course of law has been of no effect, owing, as we firmly believe, to the prevailing influence of sd association; that the first judge of the court of common pleas, David Forman, esq., has been at the head of the sd association - a chairman of their committee and has signed divers orders whereby we have been plundered aforesaid.

They concluded that “we have no form of tryal - if any crimes are laid to our charge, we have no chance of defending ourselves, nor any account of how our property, thus torn away, is disposed of.”

The petitioners noted that prior petitions did not produce any check against the Retaliators, so they requested to be “heard in support of the facts alleged in their petition - that the protection of the laws may extend to them.” Petition signers included a number of pre-war gentry who were disaffected at one point or another during the war including: James Grover, Esek Hartshorne, John Hartshorne, Robert Hartshorne, Daniel Hendrickson (not the militia colonel), Joseph Salter, John Taylor, Edward Taylor, John Van Mater, and John Wardell.

As noted by the petitioners, the Retaliators mixed vigilantism with lawful government activity. In February 1782, a public advertisement went up by “order” of the Retaliators. The advertisement called for a posse to form under the direction of Sheriff John Burrowes, Jr., to march after John Bacon, the infamous Pine Robber. Cornelius Suydam recalled a tour of duty for his militia company “in pursuit of the Tories to punish their villainies.” These are two examples of the intermingling of Retaliator activity with lawful government activity.

The Retaliators and the Court Martial of Richard Lippincott

In April 1782, a party of Associated Loyalists took Captain Joshua Huddy of Colts Neck to the Navesink Highlands and hanged him. Huddy’s corpse was left swinging with a note stating his murder was retaliation for the murder the Associated Loyalist, Philip White. George Washington threatened to hang a British officer in retaliation for Huddy’s hanging. Seeking to defuse the situation, the British Commander in Chief, Henry Clinton, charged Lippincott with murder and convened a court martial.

Loyalists produced evidence to exonerate Lippincott, some of which discussed the murder of Loyalists in Monmouth County and abuses by the Retaliators. On April 27, the Board of Directors of the Associated Loyalists wrote Clinton complaining of: “A sett of vindictive rebels well known by the designation Monmouth Retaliators, who fired our party with an indignation only to be felt by men who have beheld many of their friends and neighbors butchered in cold blood.” The Loyslists concluded, “We thought it high time to convince the rebels we would no longer tamely submit to such glaring acts of barbarity.” On May 1, 1782, British Governor General James Robertson compiled accounts "detailing the murder of fifteen Loyalists from Monmouth County" by the "Retaliators of Monmouth" which he forwarded to General Washington.

In May, Clinton was replaced by Guy Carleton as the British Commander in Chief. He drydocked the vigilante Associated Loyalists and wrote Washington that "the same spirit of revenge has mutually animated the people of New Jersey and the Refugees under our command, [both] are equally criminal and deserving of punishment." Governor William Livingston of New Jersey thanked Carleton for his "benevolent sentiments" but claimed there was not “a single instance in which the militia or any other citizens of this State have treated a prisoner with inhumanity, or contrary to the law of arms." Livingston did, however, pledge to suppress "all such acts of private passion and resentment." This may have been a tacit acknowledgement of Retaliator misdeeds.

But Livingston did not move against the Retaliators. Loyalist attorney William Smith wrote in August that Carleton would be writing Livingston:

It was a very good opportunity to complain of committees, and particularly of General Forman and the Sheriff of Monmouth County, and it would be a good service to get these promoters of Committees disgraced by the loss of their offices. Forman is an inferior court judge.

Perspective

Historian David Fowler wrote of the Retaliators, “there was nothing quite like it elsewhere in New Jersey.” Indeed, outside of the Carolinas there likely was not a vigilante group as prolific as Monmouth County’s Retaliators. But for all of their excesses, the Retaliators were tolerated by the New Jersey and Continental governments because the Retaliators supported the Revolution. The combat death of Nathaniel Scudder shows that Retaliator leaders fought and died fighting the enemy. Pragmatically speaking, the Continental and New Jersey governments did not want to lose the support of the Retaliators. War materials and troops were in short supply—to divert these scarce resources for a campaign against rogue allies was politically unwise and militarily risky.

Related Historic Site: Independence Hall (Philadelphia)

Appendix: Continental Congress Manifesto on Retaliation, October 1, 1781

“The United States in Congress assembled, taking into serious consideration the various scenes of barbarity by which the present war has from its beginning been characterized on the part of the British arms, in burning our towns and villages, desolating our Country, and sporting with the lives of our captive citizens... Resolved and hereby order that the Commander in Chief, the commanding officers of separate Departments, cause exemplary retaliation to be executed on the enemy for all acts of cruelty committed by them against the citizens and inhabitants of these states, And whereas it is essentially and particularly necessary that the barbarous and savage practice of destroying by fire the towns and villages of these United States... further Resolved, and do hereby declare, that British officers now prisoners to American arms shall answer with their lives for every further destruction by fire of any town or village within any one of the United States, to cause such and so many of the said officers as they shall judge expedient to be put to instant death.

The Committee to whom were referred the several papers concerning retaliation delivered in their several reports.  The Committee to whom was referred the several papers concerning retaliation recommend the following, Manifesto:

The United States in Congress assembled, taking into serious consideration the various scenes of barbarity by which the present war has from its beginning been characterized on the part of the British arms, and the perseverance of British commanders in carrying into execution the sanguinary and vindictive denunciations of the Commissioners of their King by a redoubled licentiousness in burning our towns and villages, desolating our Country, and sporting with the lives of our captive citizens, notwithstanding the multiplied warnings and the humane example which have been placed before them, and judging it inconsistent with the dignity of the United States with the just expectations of the people thereof, and with the respect due to the benevolent rules by which civilized nations have tempered the severities and evils of war, any longer to suffer these rules to be outrageously violated with impunity, have: Resolved and hereby order that the Commander in Chief, the commanding officers of separate Departments, cause exemplary retaliation to be executed on the enemy for all acts of cruelty committed by them against the citizens and inhabitants of these states, And whereas it is essentially and particularly necessary that the barbarous and savage practice of destroying by fire the towns and villages of these United States, should be restrained fetal by means more immediately within our power than a specific retaliation on the towns and villages belonging to the enemy, and it is even more consonant to the spirit of justice and humanity that such as have made themselves instruments of these incendiary purposes should be objects of vengeance than the remote and unoffending inhabitants of all such towns and villages. The United States in Congress have further Resolved, and do hereby declare, that British officers now prisoners to American arms, or which hereafter may be made prisoner, shall answer with their lives for every further destruction by fire of any town or village within any one of the United States which shall be made by the enemy contrary to the laws of war observed among civilized nations; and the Department of War is hereby ordered to cause all the officers in the service of the King G. B. now in their custody to be duly secured, and on the first authentic notice of the burning of any town or village in any one of the U. States unauthorized by the laws of war, to cause such and so many of the said officers as they shall judge expedient to be put to instant death.”

Sources: Journals of the Legislative Council of New Jersey (Isaac Collins: State of New Jersey, 1780) p49; Letters of Delegates to Congress: Volume 18 March 1, 1781 - August 31, 1781, p90, Arthur Middleton's Draft Resolves; Journals of the Continental Congress, p1029-30 (www.ammem/amlaw/lwdg.html); The Library Company, New Jersey Votes of the Assembly, October 3, 1781, p 22; Larry Gerlach, New Jersey in the American Revolution 1763-1783 A Documentary History (Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1975) pp. 397-9. New Jersey State Archives, Dept. of Defense, Revolutionary War, Numbered Manuscripts, #10948 and 11036, and Collective Series, Revolutionary War, document #114; The Library Company, New Jersey Votes of the Assembly, December 15, 1781, p 58; Journals of the Continental Congress, p1181-2 (www.ammem/amlaw/lwdg.html); The Royal Gazette is quoted in David Fowler, egregious Villains, Wood Rangers, and London Traders (Ph.D. Dissertation: Rutgers University, 1987) p 199; National Archives, Revolutionary War Veterans' Pension Application, Cornelius Suydam of NJ, www.fold3.com/image/# 18861757; Library of Congress, Early American Newspaper, New Jersey Gazette, reel 1930; The advertisement is in Dennis Ryan, New Jersey in the American Revolution, 1763-1783: A Chronology (Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1974) p 74; William Gordon, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of Amerca, (New York, 1801) vol 3, p316-7; Petition, New Jersey State Archives, Collective Series, Revolutionary War documents, September 1782, #32; The statement from the Board of Associated Loyalists is printed in Howard Peckham, Sources of American Independence: Selected Manuscripts from the Collections of the William L. Clements Library  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978) pp. 610-2; Guy Carleton to George Washington, Great Britain, Public Record Office, Colonial Office, CO 5, v105, reel 8, #209; James Robertson, The Twilight of British Rule in Revolutionary America: The New York Letter Book of General James Robertson, 1780-1783 (New York: New York State Historical Association, 1983) pp. 243-4; George Washington to William Livingston, Library of Congress, George Washington Papers, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mgw:@field(DOCID+@lit(gw240240)); Guy Carleton to William Livingston in Richard J. Koke, "War, Profits, and Privateers Along the Jersey Coast," New York Historical Society Quarterly, vol. 41, 1957, p 324-5; The Library Company, New Jersey Votes of the Assembly, May 25 and 31, 1782, p 13-20; William Smith, Historical Memoirs of William Smith: From 26 August 1778 to 12 November 1783 (New York: Arno, 1971)  p 598; Information on Joseph Allen is in Peter W. Coldham, comp., American Loyalist Claims (Washington, D.C.: National Genealogical Society, 1980), p 9. Jones, E. Alfred. The Loyalists of New Jersey, (Newark, N. J. Historical Society, 1927) p 11.  Gregory Palmer, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (Westport, Conn. and London, 1984) p 13.  Rutgers University Library Special Collections, Great Britain Public Record Office, Loyalist Application Claims, D96, AO 13/17, reel 5; Peter Stout, Affidavit, David Library of the American Revolution, Great Britain Public Records Office, British Headquarters Papers, #9154, 9177.