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Identity and Identification in the American Revolution

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Identity and Identification in the American Revolution Americans on Paper: Identity and Identification in the American Revolution The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Huffman, John Michael. 2013. Americans on Paper: Identity and Identification in the American Revolution. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:11181108 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Americans on Paper: Identity and Identification in the American Revolution A dissertation presented by John Michael Huffman to The Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts August 2013 © 2013 John Michael Huffman All rights reserved. Advisor: Professor Joyce E. Chaplin John Michael Huffman Americans on Paper: Identity and Identification in the American Revolution Abstract The American Revolution brought with it a crisis of identification. The political divisions that fragmented American society did not distinguish adherents of the two sides in any outward way. Yet the new American governments had to identify their citizens; potential citizens themselves had to choose and prove their identities; and both sides of the war had to distinguish friend from foe. Subordinated groups who were notionally excluded from but deeply affected by the Revolutionary contest found in the same crisis new opportunity to seize control over their own identities. Those who claimed mastership over these groups struggled to maintain control amid civil war and revolution. To meet this crisis, American and British authorities and “Americans” of all sorts employed paper and parchment instruments of identification, including passes, passports, commissions, loyalty certificates, and letters of introduction. These were largely familiar instruments, many embodying the hierarchical and coercive social world from which the Revolution sprang. Access or subjection to certain classes of instruments depended on individuals’ social standing and reflected their unequal power over their own identities. But they were now deployed to meet new challenges. The increased demands for identification brought to Revolutionary Americans in general degrees of scrutiny and constraint traditional reserved for the unfree, while subordinated groups faced an intensification of the regimes designed to govern them. The struggles to define, enforce, and iii contest Revolutionary identities reveal the ways the notionally voluntarist, republican Revolution, undertaken in the name of consent and equality, was effected through regimes of identification both exclusive and coercive. While studies of early American identity are now common, there has been little study of the history of identification or identification papers in early America. Historians of this period have employed instruments of identification as sources, but they have rarely considered them as subjects of analysis in themselves. This study of the Revolutionary crisis of identification, from 1774 to 1783, examines the ways that these instruments of identification were used to identify “Americans” in the face of this crisis, at home and abroad, and therefore how the new United States were constituted through the identification of individuals. iv Table of Contents Abstract iii Acknowledgments vi Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1 An American on Paper 29 Chapter 2 Letters 62 Chapter 3 Commissions 106 Chapter 4 Certificates 147 Chapter 5 Passes 185 Chapter 6 Military 223 Chapter 7 Margins 260 Chapter 8 Abroad 294 Conclusion 338 Selected Bibliography 351 v Acknowledgments This dissertation is as much the product of the advice, assistance, and support of others as of my own efforts. Joyce Chaplin has been an outstanding guide, both intellectual and professional, through the thickets of graduate study and crafting a dissertation. Challenging, supportive, and generous with her time and insight, she both gave me direction and allowed me to find my own way. Without her persistent confidence in the project it might never have been completed. It certainly would have been much the worse (and much longer) without her tireless reading and innumerable incisive comments and suggestions. David Armitage and Walter Johnson—from the very beginning of my graduate work and on through the final reading of this dissertation—provided essential guidance, insight, and support. All three of these remarkable historians have been extraordinary teachers and inspiring models of scholarship and intellectual creativity. Other faculty as well gave generously of their time, advice, and support. I am especially grateful to Jill Lepore. I would also like to thank Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Kenneth Maxwell, Ann Blair, Emma Rothschild, Maya Jasanoff, Rachel St. John, and Bruce Mann. Members of the Early America, Nineteenth Century, and Book History workshops, both faculty and graduate students, provided valuable comments on many versions of several of the chapters. My fellow graduate students more generally made up a collegial, enlivening, and sustaining intellectual community. Emily Conroy-Krutz, especially, was a thoughtful reader and supportive friend throughout. She and her husband Jeff also provided much appreciated hospitality on one of my research trips to Michigan. The other fellows and fellow researchers at the American Antiquarian Society, the Huntington Library, and the David Library of the American Revolution shared their ideas and their passion and made for welcoming communities away from home. The audience and fellow vi presenters at the 2010 Policy History Conference and the 2012 Citizenship Studies Conference posed important questions and gave useful feedback regarding versions of portions of this project. This project received essential funding from the American Antiquarian Society, the Charles Warren Center for American History, the Center for American Political Studies, the Historic New Orleans Collection, the Huntington Library, and the David Library of the American Revolution. I received invaluable assistance and advice from numerous archivists, curators, and other archival staff. I would especially like to thank Elizabeth Pope of the American Antiquarian Society, Daniel Hammer of the Historic New Orleans Collection, and Barbara DeWolfe of the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. I would also like to express my gratitude more generally to the staff of the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Houghton Library of Harvard University, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the National Archives and Records Administration, the William L. Clements Library of the University of Michigan, the Indiana State Archives, the Indiana Historical Society, the Lilly Library of Indiana University, the Library of Virginia, the Historic New Orleans Collection, the New Orleans Public Library, the Tulane University Libraries, the Huntington Library, and the David Library of the American Revolution. My brother David, his wife Mimli, and their two daughters, Moushumi and Reshmi, provided much needed breaks, good company, fun, and hospitality over many weekends and holidays, as well as a wonderful place to stay during an extended research trip to Philadelphia. My brother Peter and his wife Fernanda put me up during a research trip to Washington, DC that took up much of a summer and frequently offered support, encouragement, and a welcome humorous perspective on the process. My brother Arthur’s calls and conversation were always refreshing. My four exceptional parents—Karen Cook and Rob Bremer, Carl Huffman and Martha Rainbolt—gave unstinting encouragement, essential guidance, intellectual insight, and necessary vii reminders to relax and enjoy myself. Just as importantly, they gave me the upbringing, the love of books and learning, the belief in the importance of education, and the conviction that it can and should be used to better the world that set me on this path and enabled me to follow it. My parents and my brother David commiserated, encouraged, and offered crucial veteran perspective, wisdom, and guidance regarding graduate school, the dissertation process, and the academic life. My family in general demonstrated an inquisitive enthusiasm for and interest in the project that repeatedly refreshed my own when it was flagging. They conveyed a firm confidence in me and my work that I often lacked. My wife’s family was supportive and understanding throughout this long process. I can think of no way adequate to express the gratitude I feel or the debt I owe to my wife Katie. Her patience, strength, love, and assistance have been vital at every step. Neither this project nor its author would be complete without her. viii Abbreviations AAO American Archives: Documents of the American Revolution, 1774-1776, Digitization Projects, Northern Illinois University Libraries AAS American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA AHN America’s Historical Newspapers, Readex, NewsBank AM American Memory, Digital Collections, Library of Congress AMDMR Archives of Maryland: Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, 1775-1783, (Baltimore,
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