3 -
The Redcoats Are Coming!
When
open warfare finally erupted in April, 1775 between the nascent United States
and the still-waxing British Empire, Hillfield came to a standstill as it
debated whether to declare themselves Loyalists or take up the Patriot cause.
The town's population was still predominantly Quaker and generally considered
the violent revolution advocated by the Patriots anathema. On the other hand,
the town's citizens found the British to be insufferably snotty and
exceptionally annoying. Perhaps predictably the town fathers ultimately settled
on a policy of unofficial neutrality. Hillfield would not openly declare for
either their fellow Americans nor for their English overlords. It was also
decided that in the event a contingent from either army was to enter the town
or otherwise make demands of the citizenry, each situation would be dealt with
on an individual basis.
Isolated
deep in the wooded tangle of the Pine Barrens, Hillfield remained untouched by
the fires of the Revolution for the first four years of the war's hostilities.
During that time life in the small town continued uninterrupted, the town's
residents only peripherally aware of the conflict over their future. But on
August 4, 1779, Colonel Tye brought the war to Hillfield's doorstep.
The
escaped slave had been born (or branded, rather) Titus Cornelius by his former
owner, a Quaker from Monmouth County, northwest of Hillfield. Prone to drink
and eschewing the Quaker practice of educating their slaves and freeing them
upon their twenty-first birthdays, Tye's owner had been known as an especially
unforgiving slaveholder. Shortly after Lexington and Concord Virginia's last
royal governor offered freedom to all slaves who escaped and took up arms under
the Loyalist banner. Tye wasted no time. He quickly escaped to Virginia and was
soon back in New Jersey, armed and uniformed with the intent of crushing the
colonists' rebellion. While Tye's exact date of birth is unknown, it is
believed that he was still in his mid-twenties by 1778. By that point he been
granted the honorific of "Colonel" for his tactical ingenuity and
charismatic leadership, despite the prohibition of blacks as commissioned
officers in the British Army, and been given the command of one of the most
dreaded Loyalist units in the country. The Black Brigade was an elite guerilla
unit of two dozen former slaves committed to supply seizures, hit-and-run
attacks on Patriot outposts and detachments, and assassinations of important
American leaders.
However,
when his British commanders had not given him specific missions, Tye regarded
the Black Brigade's standing orders to be the liberation of slaves,
particularly if those slaves belonged to Quakers, and to do so with extreme
prejudice.
On
August 6, 1779, two days after Tye arrived at the secluded hamlet of Hillfield,
Filman Hazelworth, a tanner, recorded the eventy of the 4th in his diary:
The Black Brigade -
twenty-three ink-black negroes on twenty-three ink-black horses - rode slowly,
almost sleepily, down the thoroughfare. At the head of this obsidiun (sic) mass
rode a single bright eye. It was he - the Colonel Tye - astride a steed white
as milk. Of a paler complection (sic) than his fellows, the Colonel was the
embodiment of patrician class and command. His carriage was that of Cornwallis
himself. His likeness would not be misplaced were it displayed in Charring
Cross, such was his austere comportment and stentorian resolve. His
compatriots, meanwhile, seemed freshly plucked from the deepest jungles of the
Dark Continent, for if they be any indication, Africa is as dark of soul as it
is of skin.
The Colonel, the
picture of gentlemanly eloquence informed us, the townsfolk, of his identity
and that of his brigands. He requested, with utmost politeness and as a
fully-authorized representative of the English Crown, a litany of provisions
that, were we to acquiese (sic) to their requisition, would leave our
settlement on a rather frightening brink. We relented, of course, with little
argument for fear of raising the ire of the Colonel's savages.
Once the provisions
were delivered in full, the Colonel demanded the town's entirety of slaves and
indentured servants be brought forthwith. This we did with far greater
consternation. The Colonel addressed our negroes sweetly as a governess,
inviting them to cast off their shackles - they were not shackled at all - and
join his Brigade. Our blacks, having grown accustomed to our munificence and
having been well trained, did not move or make an utterance. It was then the
Colonel, betraying the primitivity of his race, ordered his men to go forth and
assault our women, which they proceeded to do with ferine abandon. With the
rapine concluded, the Slave Colonel demanded we free our slaves before his
return in September. If we had not done so upon his arrival, he swore to raze
Hillfield to the ground.
Tye
and the Black Brigade wheeled around and rode out of town, carrying their
requisitions back to the Loyalist keep in Monmouth County.
The
people of Hillfield trembled at Colonel Tye's promised wrath. But they were a
proud and stubborn and not altogether intelligent people and were loath to bend
to a man they considered to be little more than a dark-skinned terrorist. Their
deeply-prized neutrality had been violated alongside their women. They
determined to violate with equal violence the vengeance of Tye and his savages.
It
was then that Hillfield turned to the only man they believed could exact that
violation.
Next:
Let
the Red Flow Freely
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