Bryan on Tilghman

32 Maryland Historical Magazine “And can you think my faith will alter, By tarring, whipping, or the halter?” From Canto III, John Trumbull, M’Fingal, or, A Tory’s Day of Judgement: A Modern Epic Poem in Four Cantos. (Baltimore: J. Peters, 1816.) 33 “The Horrors of Civil War”: The Tilghman Family in the American Revolution Jennifer A. Bryan n April 28, 1775, James Tilghman wrote to a correspondent in England about the current state of American affairs. A little more than a week Oearlier, colonial militia and British regulars had clashed at Lexington and Concord. James mentioned the upcoming meeting of the Second Continental Congress, expressing his hope that “the horrors of civil War now more clearly seen” would induce the delegates to pursue conciliatory measures. In another letter, he lamented the unwillingness of either Britain or America to make conces- sions, exclaiming, “Strange Perverseness! That a Point of honour should stand in competition with the horrible Effects of Civil War!”1 Like many families caught up in that turbulent era, the Tilghmans of Mary- land found themselves divided over what course to take in the struggle with Brit- ain. Historian Paul Smith has posited that approximately 500,000 Americans, almost twenty per cent of the white population, remained loyal to George III. Of those 500,000, an estimated 80,000 persons emigrated during the course of the war to other parts of the British empire, a figure greater than the number of French emigrés during the French Revolution. About 19,000 colonists took up arms against their countrymen, serving in such units as the Pennsylvania Loyalists, the Queen’s Rangers, and the Loyal American Regiment.2 Whatever the exact number of “To- ries,” there were enough loyal colonists to turn the rebellion into a civil war. In her history of the American Revolution, published in 1805, Mercy Otis Warren wrote, “so intermixed and blended were persons, families, and parties of different political opinions, that it was not easy to distinguish . the royalists from the whigs.”3 James Tilghman would neither actively support the revolution- aries nor oppose them. His brother Matthew served as a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses and chaired seven of Maryland’s nine Provincial Conventions. Edward Tilghman, another brother, embraced independence. His son Edward Tilghman Jr. fought against the British at the Battle of Long Island in 1776, but attempted to avoid swearing allegiance to the Patriot cause. His cousin and James’s eldest son Tench was one of George Washington’s aides-de-camp. Washington chose Tench to deliver the news of the victory at Yorktown to Con- The author is Head of Special Collections & Archives at the Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis. 34 Maryland Historical Magazine James Tilghman (1716–1793), John Hesselius painted this por- trait in the 1760s, at the pinnacle of James’s career. (Maryland His- torical Society.) gress. Philemon, Tench’s brother, joined the British navy in 1777. Other Tilghmans actively worked in Patriot politics.4 James Tilghman’s correspondence with his sons, relatives, friends, acquaintan- ces, and other connections provides a rare opportunity to study the range of alle- giances within one family during the Revolutionary War. James never disowned his sons Tench or Philemon for taking active roles in the conflict, telling them that he would support them as long as they behaved honorably. As he wrote to Philemon, “I hope and believe you acted upon Principle and therefore I cannot abandon you or withdraw my affection unless I should have the misfortune to hear that you have departed from the principles of virtue and honor.”5 Like their father, James’s other sons chose to remain neutral. Richard left America for good in 1776 and found employment with the East India Company, James Jr. gave up his mercantile career to manage his father’s farms, and William quietly pursued his legal studies. James’s youngest son Thomas Ringgold was just eleven years old in 1776, too young to be actively involved in the war. James’s daughters—Anna Maria, Elizabeth, Mary, and Henrietta Maria—worried about their brothers and father, but refrained from expressing any political opinions. “I shall ever regret his [Tench] differing in senti- ment from you on such an important occasion as the present dispute but as I do not understand the subject I shal[l] conclude,” wrote Anna Maria to her father.6 The Tilghmans provide a contemporary perspective, from several vantage points, on the imperial crisis. Historians have long debated the causes of the American Revolution. In the early twentieth century, Carl Becker put forth the supposition that the colonists were fighting for who should rule at home as well as The Tilghman Family in the American Revolution 35 “home rule.” Numerous scholars have followed Becker’s line of reasoning with notable permutations and variations, searching for the kinds of internal conflicts and social upheaval that gave rise to the French Revolution. A contrary view- point holds that the Revolution was primarily a constitutional and political struggle, with very little, if any, social impact—a fight to preserve rather than alter the existing social structure. Historians in this camp tend to emphasize the conservative nature of the rebellion, and see it as a struggle over concepts of lib- erty and power, virtue and corruption. Alternatively, there are scholars who view economics as the determining factor, the colonies having reached a point in their development where the British imperial system no longer benefited them. Many recent studies of the period have focused on manners, polite discourse, gentility, sociability, political ritual, and the public sphere, to the point that the war itself often fades into the background. Historian Gordon Wood has argued that the American Revolution “was as radical and social as any revolution in history, but it was radical and social in a very special eighteenth-century sense.” For Wood, the Revolution’s radical nature was not located in class conflict, in poor versus rich, in city versus country, in radicals versus conservatives, but in the transformation of a monarchical society into a democratic one. What the Tilghmans reveal through their correspondence bolsters Wood’s thesis. To them, the principal cause of the rebellion was a political and constitutional crisis, and their writings show how that crisis unleashed forces that transformed a hierar- chical world into a democratic one. 7 The British empire in which James Tilghman, his grandparents, parents, sib- lings, and children had been born was one in which men were either gentlemen or commoners. Gentlemen possessed land, wealth, learning, and leisure; everyone else had to work for their livings. Within this grand division were numerous gra- dations of rank: yeomen, merchants, tradesmen, and artisans as well as peers, bishops, baronets, and “mere” gentlemen all had their appropriate places in the “great chain of being.” In eighteenth-century America, where there was no titled aristocracy, gentle status rested on reputation. All the components of gentility— land, affluence, education, religion, and breeding—had to be present, but a family was only of the first rank if society accorded it that standing. The Tilghmans belonged to that select group of American clans that included the Washingtons, Lees, Livingstons, and Shippens. They were major landholders in Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot counties, held local and provincial offices, sat on parish ves- tries, and engaged in trade—all hallmarks of the Chesapeake gentry. By the fourth generation in Maryland, they had established blood or marriage ties to most of the landed families on the Eastern Shore, including the Lloyds, Goldsboroughs, Earles, Chamberlaines, and Hollydays. Their kinship network extended to Phila- delphia, including the Chews, Francises, Willings, and Mifflins.8 Lineage was an important component of gentility and family identity. The Tilghmans were de- 36 Maryland Historical Magazine scended from a minor gentry family who had lived in Kent in the southeast of England for more than 500 years. Their coat of arms dated to at least 1468, per- haps earlier. James’s grandparents Richard and Mary Foxley Tilghman arrived in Maryland in 1662 with their two children and sixteen indentured servants during the boom period in the tobacco trade. Lord Baltimore had granted Richard a patent to a thousand-acre tract, Canterbury Manor, near present-day Easton, but he settled at “Tilghman’s Hermitage” on the Chester River. Governor Charles Calvert appointed him sheriff of Talbot County in 1669. By his death in 1676, Richard had accumulated 3,350 acres and an estate worth more than £800 ster- ling, placing him in the top rank of Chesapeake society. His son and namesake Richard married Anna Maria Lloyd in 1700, thus allying the Tilghmans to one of Maryland’s wealthiest families. Richard held numerous offices, among them justice of the peace for Talbot and Queen Anne’s counties, vestryman of St. Paul’s parish, sheriff of Queen Anne’s County, member of the Lower House of Assembly for Talbot County, member of the Upper House, Councillor, justice of the Pro- vincial Court, and Chancellor of Maryland. He “dyed in what we call in this Country good circumstances.”9 James Tilghman, born on December 6, 1716, was the eighth of Richard and Anna Maria’s nine children. Twenty-two at the time of his father’s death in 1739, he inherited about 2,500 acres. He studied law with Tench Francis and married Francis’s daughter Anne on September 30, 1743. The couple resided at “Fausley,” Francis’s former plantation in Talbot County. James sat in the Lower House of Assembly for Talbot County in 1762, where he led the anti-proprietary party against the Supply Bill, legisation to raise revenue for the colony’s defense.

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