among the blacks.”77 North Carolinian Thomas Burke wrote in a similar vein in 1777, claiming that the British had tried to entice the “savage Indians” to make war “on Western frontiers” and excite “insurrections . . . among the slaves.” Even after the Revolution, George Mason remembered that slaves had been a “dangerous instrument” in the hands of the enemy as the British had attempted to “arm the servants and slaves” of both Maryland and Virginia.78
Of course, rhetoric turned into reality when British forces in New York, inundated with runaway slaves, began to recruit them into the army. The rate of recruitment increased significantly after Henry Clinton’s 1779 guarantee of freedom to all slaves who deserted their masters, even though the practice had been ongoing since 1777 and even had been discussed by the colonial secretary, Lord Dartmouth, as early as May 1775. Indeed, in June 1775, General Thomas Gage believed that the “crisis” had become so dire that “we must avail ourselves of every resource even to raise the Negroes in our cause” as the American “rage and enthusiasm” for war had been shown by this point. By July 1776, patriot leaders received reports of large numbers of blacks mustering with British regiments.79
Black British troops plundering white-owned property first signaled the elevation of black power in New Jersey and assaulted the state’s racial hierarchy since, for the first time, blacks had been empowered to take white property and frequently did so in the king’s service. In two cases adjudicated in Mount Holly in June 1778, British officials investigated former slaves for plundering, even though foraging for supplies across the state had led to routine looting of private property. In one case, ex-slave Primus Cuffey captured and killed a pig, claiming in his defense that he did not know of the general order against plundering. The court still found him guilty and he received five hundred lashes. Unlike Cuffey, James Powers and Samuel Martin, accused of breaking into a civilian’s home and stealing meat, convinced the court martial of their innocence.80
Direct action against patriots did more than property crimes to instill trepidations among white New Jerseyans, as black British regiments targeted patriots along the ragged borderland between American and British territory. Newark minister Alexander MacWhorter described the dangers of arming black men when he detailed the aftermath of a British attack on his city in 1777. The enemy force, which included black British troops, made the town “look more like a scene of ruin than a pleasant well cultivated village.” Former slaves invaded and assaulted at least three men. One man was “cut and slashed” horribly while “three women were most horridly ravished by them, one of them an old woman near seventy years of age, whom they abused in a manner beyond description, another of them was a woman considerably advanced in her pregnancy, and the third was a young girl.”81
The Newark raid reflected whites’ most powerful fears, that ex-slaves would kill, rape, and pillage their former masters’ homes and families. Even some British officers believed that marauding black troops were particularly dangerous because they “distress and maltreat the inhabitants infinitely more than the whole army at the same time that they engross, waste, and destroy.”82 The danger these blacks represented came into clearer focus in 1782 when the British court-martialed nine former slaves for the murder of Cornelius Nissee of Bergen County. The nine defendants all served as members of British militia units based in Bergen Neck. Major Thomas Grant, who commanded the Refugee Corps at Bergen Neck, testified that these soldiers operated independently of whites in certain circumstances. William Grant, one of the men on trial, confessed that a former slave named Sisco, whom they called Colonel, advocated that the group should “go out . . . to take a rebel.” The nine left their camp, seized two Bergen residents and marched them a few miles before releasing one. Sisco ordered the group to shoot the other, Nissee, at which time Grant objected. Another prisoner, Caesar Totten, stepped in and shot him in the chest while a second shot came from Daniel Massis’s gun. The group then took Nissee’s money, clothing, and shoes, hid the body with branches and leaves, and traveled back to their camp.83
After further investigation, British officers discovered that one of the ex-slaves knew why the group selected Nissee to execute—he had been a fellow soldier’s former owner. Harry Scobey, also accused of capital murder, had been Nissee’s slave before he absconded to the British. According to the investigating officer, Scobey had been angry with Nissee because he had sold his wife out of New Jersey. For the British, the case hinged on if Scobey had been present at the killing or if he had motivated the men to search for his former master. In its decision, the court affirmed that Scobey and four other defendants either had not been at the scene of the crime or had not encouraged it. Four others, however, received death sentences for Nissee’s murder. On a practical level, even though Scobey did not actively attempt to seek out his former master, it is of particular interest because the act of ex-slaves murdering slaveholders increased concern among Jersey whites that violence from blacks in British employ would affect slavery’s operation.84
These vivid examples of former slaves conspiring to exert power over white New Jerseyans, especially their former masters, stoked white concerns across the state that the British were actively fomenting a race war. Colonel Tye, or Titus, a slave from Colts Neck in Monmouth County, became the prime example of these fears after he absconded from his master the day after Lord Dunmore promised freedom to Virginia slaves. Even though he did not yet know of Dunmore’s Proclamation, Titus believed that the British would free him from slavery. Once the British occupied New York, Titus joined the British army like so many others who had fled their patriot masters. He returned to New Jersey as Colonel Tye and fought with British forces at the Battle of Monmouth. In 1778 and 1779, Tye led a band of mostly black guerrilla fighters who operated out of a base called Refugeetown on British controlled Sandy Hook. Tye and his men attacked wealthy slaveholding patriots, burned houses, seized guns, and foraged for food and supplies in order to disrupt patriot activities and maintain the British war machine. In one 1780 engagement, Tye led a biracial group of thirty blacks, twenty white loyalists, and thirty-two Queen’s Rangers to capture leading Monmouth County patriot Barnes Smock. In addition to Smock, the party took twelve other Monmouth patriots prisoner, destroyed one cannon, captured two artillery horses, and burned several patriot homes. In his report of the raid to Governor Livingston, New Jersey militia officer David Forman pleaded with him to take into “account of our other numerous distresses” and send additional troops to protect the region.85
Monmouth County residents decried the attacks by their former slaves and requested emergency assistance from Governor Livingston. The county had already been devastated by the early years of the war and was even more battered after the Battle of Monmouth. John Fell, a delegate to the Continental Congress, wrote to Robert Morris that Monmouth County had been ravaged by the war “as bad as Bergen,” the county that bore much of the blunt of British raiding parties. Fell further relayed the story of a relative whose slave escaped from her Monmouth house. This slave, Fell claimed, “makes the fifth Negroe had gone to the enemy and has besides robbed the house.”86 After the attacks by Colonel Tye, the county residents claimed that “it is not possible . . . to prevent the frequent ravages of the enemy . . . they have been in Shrewsbury twice since” the last petition.87
In response to the distress caused by these former slaves, Livingston declared martial law and sent 210 men from Hunterdon and Burlington to Monmouth to defend against Tye.88 However, during the summer of 1780, Tye continued to engage Monmouth County patriots and in September 1780 made his most dramatic attack, attempting to capture Monmouth militia officer Joshua Huddy. After a fierce two-hour battle in Toms River, he ultimately failed. Huddy escaped (though loyalists, including elements of Tye’s unit, eventually captured and hanged him on a Monmouth County beach) and Tye and his soldiers returned to their base on Sandy Hook. Tye suffered a minor bullet wound to the wrist in the battle. Lacking appropriate medical treatment, the wound became infected and Tye died of lockjaw a few days after the failed raid.89
Tye, as leader of the Sandy Hook unit, had done much to bring fear and destruction to the county where he had toiled as a slave. His fellow ex-slaves continued to inspire fear after his death,
