“Staunch to Government”: Mobilizing Scottish Loyalists in Revolutionary North Carolina

This paper analyzes the British colonial ministry’s policy of recruiting and inciting the ethnically Scottish population of North Carolina to suppress the American Revolution. Given that many of these Scots had themselves rebelled against the Crown in 1745, their role as counterrevolutionaries in 1775 is puzzling. Why would royal officials look to North Carolina’s Scots as ideal allies? By investigating the mobilization of Scottish loyalists in North Carolina, this paper argues for the contextual importance of Britain’s suppression of the Jacobite rebellions in early eighteenth-century Scotland for understanding Crown strategy and the politics of allegiance during the American Revolution.

In 1745-46, the British Army successfully suppressed Highland Scottish uprisings bent on restoring the deposed House of Stuart. They did so in no small part by recruiting indigenous Scottish loyalists who not only augmented their forces militarily but also symbolically undermined the rebels’ assertion of legitimacy. Throughout, British commanders adroitly exploited preexisting indigenous enmities to divide the population.

When confronted by rebellion in America in 1775, British officials drew on this counterrevolutionary experience. Notwithstanding Scotland’s recent history of insurrection, North Carolina’s Scots had little in common with their rebellious Anglo-American fellow colonists. Culturally, religiously, and linguistically isolated, as well as socially and economically marginalized, North Carolina’s Highland Scottish population had little to gain from a patriot victory. In the eyes of British officials, they appeared ripe for recruitment. The king’s officers proved prescient. Over a thousand Scots would take up arms against their patriot-leaning neighbors in February 1776. Their climactic defeat at the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge derailed British strategy in the south. In the aftermath of the battle, patriot authorities strove to rehabilitate and reconcile the Scots to their cause. These efforts proved effective. Never again would the Scots rise in opposition to the Revolution in such numbers.