The Voices of British Soldiers

Folks might recognize Don Hagist’s name from the British Soldiers, American Revolution blog. He digs out details about the enlisted men who were part of the British government’s effort to hold onto those thirteen rebellious North American colonies. His research can turn some faceless redcoats into individual people.

Often that task involves paging through muster rolls, pension grants, court-martial records, and other British military documents now stored at the National Archives at Kew. Unfortunately, there’s no British equivalent to the American pension application system, which (in lieu of systematic record-keeping during the war) required veterans to provide detailed narratives of their service. That means most British soldiers are preserved as names on a few documents without a line connecting those dots.

A few redcoats left detailed personal narratives. One of Don’s earlier books was an edition of Sgt. Roger Lamb’s postwar writing that collected all his first-hand military experiences in one volume. Don’s new book, British Soldiers, American War: Voices of the American Revolution, reprints nine shorter narratives of service in the king’s army (as well as the samples of the work of two military poets, including John Hawthorn). The narratives include the information taken down by the pension office, a letter written during the war to a potential patron, a convict’s dying words, and several published memoirs.

In each case, Don has checked and filled out the soldier’s own account with contemporaneous documentation, where available. Thus, the book includes the autobiographical “Dying Speech” of Pvt. Valentine Duckett, executed for desertion on Boston Common in 1774, and the record of his court-martial. Another court-martial fills out the story of Pvt. Thomas Watson, who survived to settle in Bolton, Massachusetts.

In some chapters Don describes other British soldiers whose careers parallel the main subject. For example, chapter 9, “The Aspiring Soldier,” is about William Burke of the 45th Regiment, who deserted to the Americans for more social and economic opportunity. That chapter also mentions Pvt. Thomas Machin of the 23rd, who did the same in July 1775 and eventually became Capt. Thomas Machin of the Continental Artillery. (I also discuss Machin in the big Washington study.)

You’ve probably spotted a significant pattern in these narratives: most of the memoirists ended up becoming American. Of the nine men profiled in the book, only two retired from the British army in good standing. Six deserted to the Americans or, in the case of Ebenezer Fox of Roxbury, deserted back to the Americans. Their recollections got published because in America those men became honored relics of our War for Independence.

British society simply wasn’t that eager to read the experiences of enlisted men. That may have been due to how societies don’t like to be reminded of wars they lose. But I think it reflects the aristocratic values of Georgian Britain. We see the pattern already right after the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The Massachusetts authorities published broadsides naming all the local men killed and wounded, regardless of rank. Gen. Thomas Gage sent home reports listing the officers killed but not the enlisted men. (Granted, that would have been a much longer list.) American culture valued ordinary individuals more.

Given the social stratification in Britain, it’s no surprise that several of these redcoats saw more opportunity on the other side of the conflict. One chapter of British Soldiers, American War documents how the army encouraged soldiers to learn to read and write, valuable skills in any large organization. But even an educated enlisted man was very unlikely to rise above sergeant.

As memoirists and as defectors, most of the men who left behind recollections for British Soldiers, American War were atypical. But of course all memoirists are atypical (at least until this era of self-publishing). And these men offer a rare peek into the daily lives of British recruits. Alongside Don’s research on recruitment patterns, demographic data, &c., the book is a top-notch source on the king’s soldiers during the Revolutionary War, “ordinary” men caught up in historical change.

British Soldiers, American War is handsomely designed (though, reflecting what Georgian artists were commissioned to paint, the cover art shows British officers instead of enlisted men). The profiles include images of some of their documentary sources. Eric H. Schnitzer’s drawings and detailed captions discuss the soldiers’ likely garments, which should increase the value of the book for reenactors. Thorough notes and index round out a fine volume.

“His verses are the fruits of simple nature.”

Yesterday I took note of John Hawthorn, poet and private in His Majesty’s 6th and then probably 20th Regiment of Dragoons in 1778-79. During his service Hawthorn actually published a slim book of poetry.

The July 1779 Critical Review, or Annals of Literature, took notice of Hawthorn’s work with a, well, critical review:

His verses are the fruits of simple nature. He appears to be a total stranger to all the rules of grammar; yet in some of his pieces there are strokes of imagination, which seldom appear in the productions of illiterate versifiers.

The Monthly Review, or Literary Journal in October 1779 had less praise but more pity:

Of honest John Hawthorn’s poetical attainments the Reader will form his own judgment from the following extract, which is given, not as the most favourable specimen of his abilities, but merely that, by pointing out the Writer’s situation and circumstances, the humane may be induced to become purchasers of his book.

It is not many months ago, since I
Enjoy’d my freedom and my liberty,
Before I e’er took up a haversack,
Or bullying serjeant to rattan my back,
When on my stockings there might be a spot;
No matter if my shoes were black or not:
Then, calmly I could lie, and take my rest,
No powder’d hair, or ruffles at my breast:
When at my ease I liv’d in a warm cot,
And had of land a fertile handsome spot:
What though my roof no tiles or slates sustain,
The well pack’d thatch kept out the driving rain;
A chearful fire glanced through my floor;
My wife could milk her own cow at my door;
Each day, a dinner dress’d by my good dame,
And chearing smells from boiling beef-pots came:
My horse was sure to know me at first sight;
Nay more, my dog would know my feet at night:
Oft’ I would walk in a fair evening tide.
And muse in quiet by a river’s side;
Where oziers green were nodding o’er the waves,
And water lilies spread their moisten’d leaves;
Then home return with calm and serene breast;
Return my thanks to God, and go to rest.
Thus did I live but in a low degree;
If some liv’d better, some liv’d worse than me:
Till trading bad, and loss of different kind,
Made me enlist, and leave them all behind.

It’s not certain that those lines from “The Drill” are strictly autobiographical; Hawthorn may have adopted the persona of a rustic yeoman. (He identified himself elsewhere as a trained linen weaver.) If so, Britain’s literati offered sympathy but not much respect.

Hawthorn’s poetry appears to have been rediscovered in the late 20th century as an unusual voice from Britain’s eighteenth-century laboring class. The poems he wrote about his army experience are also rare in providing a first-hand description of the everyday life of a British soldier during the period of the Revolutionary War.

Hawthorn’s “On His Writing Verses,” other lines from “The Drill,” and “Advice to a Recruit” appear in Don N. Hagist’s new book, British Soldiers, American Revolution. Tomorrow I’ll say more about that book, and for the rest of the week I plan to share news and opinions about some other recent books of Revolutionary history. I’ll try to be kinder than The Critical Review.

Pvt. John Hawthorn: “Yet I must be a bard”

John Hawthorn was a linen weaver from County Down, Ireland, who enlisted in the 6th (Inniskilling) Regiment of Dragoons in 1778. (Dragoons, we recall, were soldiers mounted on horseback.) That unit was stationed in Salisbury from May 1778 through the end of the following year.

According to an 1847 regimental history, Britain was then beefing up its army in response to France entering the American War. As a result:

one hundred men and horses were added to the Inniskilling dragoons; but the scene of conflict [i.e., North America] was so little adapted for cavalry, that the heavy dragoon regiments were not called upon to quit the United Kingdom.

Hawthorn was actually a light dragoon, and the same regimental history says that “In April, 1779, the men [of the 6th Dragoons] equipped as light cavalry were incorporated” into the new 20th Light Dragoons, along with some companies from other horse regiments. But that regiment didn’t go to America, either.

So what makes Pvt. John Hawthorn worthy of note here? Because at heart he was a poet! He was probably writing verses as an apprentice and continued that activity as a horse soldier.

It was all very well for a wealthy officer like Gen. John Burgoyne to indulge his literary habit, but an enlisted man like Hawthorn face harder challenges, as one of his compositions describes:

On His Writing Verses

Well may they write, that sit in parlours fine,
To raise their spirits can quaff luscious wine,
To keep out noise, the parlour door is shut,
The servants scarce dare speak, or budge a foot;
Under no fear, no terror, and no task,
But coolly can sit at a writing desk;
How different with me the time is spent,
Inclos’d with dragoons in a little tent;
Some darning stockings, others blacking shoes;
Some singing, others telling jests and news;
Their different sounds do ill confound my writing;
One should be solitary, when inditing,
Yet I must be a bard, nought less will do me,
And so write as nature dictates to me.

Despite those obstacles, Hawthorn completed enough work and saved enough money to have a small book of poetry printed in Salisbury in 1779: Poems, by John Hawthorn, Light Dragoon in the Inniskilling Regiment.

TOMORROW: The reviews come in.