The Tea Act of 1773 reduced the tax on imported British tea, giving it an unfair advantage. The act allowed the almost-bankrupt British East India Company to sell its tea directly to colonial agents, bypassing American wholesalers. Now those powerful wholesalers had been handed a burning issue.
The American colonists condemned the Tea Act and planned to boycott tea. The end result was the infamous Boston Tea Party. When three British tea ships docked in Boston Harbor, men disguised as Indians boarded the vessels and threw all the tea overboard. Punishment was swift.
The Intolerable Acts of 1774 (so-named by the Americans) temporarily closed the port of Boston until compensation was paid, “royalized” the Massachusetts government, expanded the Quartering Act, and changed the Justice Act so that Americans charged with crimes had to be tried in England. These actions served to unite the colonies, and a call went out from the Virginia Burgesses to convene a continental congress in Philadelphia in 1774 to discuss their grievances.
Among the factions present at that First Continental Congress were those who believed that in the end force would be necessary; the moderates, who urged a peaceful solution; and those who felt Britain must soften its policies but who opposed the use of force and would never approve of independence.
In Congress, the colonists came close to declaring dominion status. They continued to recognize the Crown as necessary to hold them together, and they petitioned King George III for a remedy to their grievances. On the other hand, they asked the French Canadians to join them in their demands and again adopted an economic boycott of Britain.
The Suffolk Resolves of Massachusetts, declaring the Intolerable Acts void and advising the training of a militia force, received the backing of the colonists. When the British government refused to budge, the Americans knew they must come up with a more active resistance.
The local government in Massachusetts had been dissolved by the British, and yet it continued to operate. To remedy this, British general Thomas Gage set out to seize the colony’s government leaders, John Hancock and Samuel Adams, as well as the ammunition that was being stored in Concord, just outside Boston.
On April 18, 1775, British troops advanced on Concord. Before the British soldiers reached Lexington, Adams and Hancock managed to escape, having been alerted by Paul Revere. The British were met by the Massachusetts “minutemen,” and the American Revolution began.
In May, the Second Continental Congress adopted the poorly organized but growing New England Army outside Boston and chose as its commander General George Washington. Still uncertain about complete independence, Congress petitioned King George to restore peace.
The June 17, 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill, near Boston, was a British victory won at a terrible cost in lives. Nine months later, when General George Washington fortified the heights above Boston Harbor with cannons, British general William Howe, the successor to General Thomas Gage, feared a repeat of the carnage. He decided against attack and retreated, withdrawing his ships from Boston Harbor. When the British pulled out, 1,100 Loyalists left with them.
During the long siege of Boston the patriots had come to realize that the only means of safeguarding their liberty was going to be through complete independence from Britain.
Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Now the patriots had a firm commitment: they were fighting for the freedom of the country. It is estimated that about seventy thousand Loyalists fled to Canada, where the women and children found shelter and the men joined the Loyalist regiments.
The American patriots raised a small army of state regiments — the Continental Army — that could be counted on to provide most of the resistance, and it made use of state militia if and when it was available. In the later years of the war the patriots were joined by thousands of French troops, more than happy to help the Americans against their old enemy. For their part, unable to raise enough men at home, the British hired German troops and counted on additional support from the Indians and Loyalists.
After evacuating Boston, British general William Howe seized New York, most of New Jersey, and was not stopped until he reached Trenton at Christmas 1776. The following summer he retaliated by taking Philadelphia.
In the autumn of 1777, British general John Burgoyne led his army in an overland march from Canada toward New York, where he planned to join up with General Howe. They were cut off and captured at Saratoga, New York, in October 1777 by American general Horatio Gates. Burgoyne’s surrender of his army of over five thousand men was a huge victory for the Americans, and because it prevented the British from separating New England from the southern colonies, it was a turning point in the war.
Also surrendering with Burgoyne at Saratoga was Baron Friedrich Adolph Riedesel, commander of a regiment of soldiers from the Duchy of Brunswick, one of the German units hired by the British. Following the surrender, American general Horatio Gates treated Burgoyne as a gentleman, refusing to accept his sword and inviting him to his tent.
The allied army had left Canada feeling confident of an easy victory, and many of the officers’ wives had accompanied the men, promising themselves a pleasant trip to New York. Also in the party of wives was the Baroness Riedesel, along with the couple’s three children.
Although Burgoyne and Gates had agreed to a convention after the surrender of the British that would allow Burgoyne’s troops to return home, this was subsequently revoked and his men were taken prisoner.
The citizens of Great Barrington had only just heard of the British surrender to General Gates when Laura Ingersoll’s hometown found itself the scene of an encampment for the prisoners of war.
Elizabeth Ingersoll would have been accustomed to the sight and sound of the men of the militia tramping past her Main Street house, as they made their way to and from the various skirmishes. Perhaps she also witnessed, with two-year-old Laura clinging to her skirts, the spectacle of General Burgoyne and thousands of captured British and allied soldiers being led down the main thoroughfare of town.
The American officers and their long line of captives had followed an old trail from Saratoga, New York, through Kinderhook, and down into Great Barrington, where they would camp en route to Virginia and prison.
General Burgoyne would eventually return to England to defend his conduct. He never received the trial he had hoped for, and he was deprived of his regiment. Baron Riedesel, his wife, and their three daughters, along with the army of British and allied troops captured after the Battle of Saratoga, were imprisoned in Charlottesville, Virginia, where they engaged in subsistence farming. The Riedesels were later allowed to move to New York City, and finally, in 1781, they were permitted to journey to Canada and subsequently return home to Germany.
When Washington’s army besieged the British under the command of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, and the French fleet cut off his escape, Cornwallis surrendered in October 1781. He tried to get a promise of protection for those Loyalists who had been part of his army. When that failed, he secured an armed ship for their escape.
Negotiations for peace began. After an eight-year struggle, the Treaty of Paris in 1783 recognized the independence of the United States and set out its boundaries.
Fifteen months after the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1784 and the departure of baby Abigail, Thomas Ingersoll provided his young family with a new mother. On May 26, 1785, he married Mercy Smith, widow of Josiah Smith who had been killed in the American War of Independence.
It was said of Laura’s second mother that she taught Thomas’s daughters to read and introduced the fine art of needlework and drawing into a home that had been filled with
