Revolution Downeast: The War for American Independence in Maine

In the late 18th century, the area that would become the state of Maine was still part of Massachusetts - a colony of a colony within the sprawling British Empire. This account of the Revolution "downeast" is the story of a people initially too preoccupied with day-to-day survival to pay much attention to the rising temper of imperial controversy. When war did erupt, many Maine colonists hoped that their geographical isolation and the presence of native tribes - many of which were long-standing British foes - would protect them from royal forces in nearby Nova Scotia. But this was not to be. Soon enemy privateers plundered the region's coastal settlements and shipping, and in 1779 the British established a base at the mouth of the Penobscot River. Heartened by the British presence, local loyalists sprang into action and transformed a revolution into a bitter civil war. For Maine, as for many other areas of the rebelling colonies, the struggle with England proved to be a divisive ordeal that heightened pre-war social, economic, and political differences. James S. Leamon discusses Maine's revolutionary experience in the context of other regions of conflict - Georgia, Long Island, Maryland's Delmarva Peninsula, and the Carolina back country - where disrupted economies, British incursions, guerrilla warfare, and shifting loyalties defined the Revolution.

Revolution downeast: The war for American independence in Maine

History

Leamon, James S.

Americas

University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA

The history of the Revolution in Maine is the story of a people who did not really want a revolution―at least at first. Since the middle of the seventeenth century, the powerful Massachusetts Bay Colony had exercised an increasing hegemony over the settlements downeast―a hegemony legalized in the Massachusetts royal charter of 1691. From then until 1820, when it became a state, Maine remained an integral part of Massachusetts. Geographically isolated from the Bay Colony by the province of New Hampshire, and dependent on Massachusetts for its very existence, Maine was indeed a colony, in every sense of the word. The larger Massachusetts context has tended to obscure Maine as a legitimate object of study, nowhere more than in the period of the American Revolution. Even historians in Maine have slighted the period of the American Revolution. Where appropriate, town historians devote a chapter or so to the event, but only in the context of a particular community. In his book, Leamon aims to meet that deficiency by drawing together town and general histories, specialized studies, and primary sources, both published and unpublished. He examines why and how Maine fought the Revolution and the changes that occurred in Maine during and after the war.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

University of MA Press : Maine Historical Society

This book tells the story of the Reverend Jacob Bailey, a missionary preacher for the Church of England in the frontier town of Pownalborough (now Dresden), Maine, who refused to renounce allegiance to King George III during the American War of Independence. Relying largely on Bailey's unpublished journals and voluminous correspondence, James S. Leamon traces Bailey's evolution from his rustic background through his Harvard education and subsequent career as a teacher, Congregational minister, and missionary preacher for the Church of England. Along the way, Bailey absorbed many of the intellectual currents of the Enlightenment, but also the more traditional conviction that family, society, religion, and politics, like creation itself, should be orderly and hierarchal. Such beliefs led Bailey to oppose the Revolution as unnatural, immoral, and doomed to fail. Reverend Bailey's persistence in praying for the king and his refusal to publicize the Declaration of Independence from his Pownalborough pulpit aroused hostilities that drove him and his family to the safety of Nova Scotia. There, in exile, Bailey devoted himself to assisting fellow refugees while defending himself from others. During this time, he wrote almost obsessively: poems, dramas, novels, histories. Though few were ever completed, and even fewer published, in one way or another most of his writings depicted the trauma he underwent as a loyalist. Leamon's study of the Reverend Jacob Bailey depicts the complex nature and burdens of one person's loyalism while revealing much about eighteenth-century American life and culture.

The Reverend Jacob Bailey, Maine Loyalist: For God, King, Country, and for Self

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

University of Massachusetts Press

This book tells the story of the Reverend Jacob Bailey, a missionary preacher for the Church of England in the frontier town of Pownalborough (now Dresden), Maine, who refused to renounce allegiance to King George III during the American War of Independence. Relying largely on Bailey's unpublished journals and voluminous correspondence, James S. Leamon traces Bailey's evolution from his rustic background through his Harvard education and subsequent career as a teacher, Congregational minister, and missionary preacher for the Church of England. Along the way, Bailey absorbed many of the intellectual currents of the Enlightenment, but also the more traditional conviction that family, society, religion, and politics, like creation itself, should be orderly and hierarchal. Such beliefs led Bailey to oppose the Revolution as unnatural, immoral, and doomed to fail. Reverend Bailey's persistence in praying for the king and his refusal to publicize the Declaration of Independence from his Pownalborough pulpit aroused hostilities that drove him and his family to the safety of Nova Scotia. There, in exile, Bailey devoted himself to assisting fellow refugees while defending himself from others. During this time, he wrote almost obsessively: poems, dramas, novels, histories. Though few were ever completed, and even fewer published, in one way or another most of his writings depicted the trauma he underwent as a loyalist. Leamon's study of the Reverend Jacob Bailey depicts the complex nature and burdens of one person's loyalism while revealing much about eighteenth-century American life and culture.

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Books by Leamon, James S.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Leamon, James S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Revolution downeast: The war for American independence in Maine

Revolution Downeast: The War for American Independence in Maine

The Reverend Jacob Bailey, Maine Loyalist: For God, King, Country, and for Self

The Reverend Jacob Bailey, Maine Loyalist: For God, King, Country, and for Self