Exclusive interview with author Thomas B. Allen and his new book about Tories fighting for the king in America’s first civil war, the American Revolutionary War
Rating: 4 Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I wrote a young adult book on Washington at Valley Forge,” says Tories author Thomas B. Allen. “I got interested in why the Continental soldiers were starving while Philadelphians were supplying food to the British occupiers and even dining and dancing with them.”
Tories is fast-paced. Allen’s writing style is smooth and clear. Tories reveals the personal lives of those living during the revolutionary war, a civil war that divided families. Allen uses letters, diaries, and other sources to show that a large number of Americans were loyal to Britain. Families were divided. This was a personal war that pitted father against son, brother against brother.
The Book also sheds new light on what happened to the Tories in America after the war, the exodus to Canada and families divided by loyalties. Not all went to Canada. In 1792, about 2,000 ex-slaves, given their freedom for joining the Loyalists, sailed to Africa. They founded what is now Sierra Leone.
“While doing research on the island of Grand Manan in Canada, my wife and I saw many Royal Canadian Mounted Police and were told they were attending a police convention,” says Allen. “Turned out that they were looking for vigilantes…many of them probably descendants of Tories…who had burned down a drug dealer’s house.”
“Researching and writing are not entirely separate tasks,” says Allen. “I find I begin writing before I have completed the research.”
Accompanied by his wife, Allen researched 18th Century newspaper files and archives in Northern Island, the British archives in Kew (London), the Library of Congress and papers in state archives from Massachusetts to South Carolina. “I also bought about four feet of books from a used bookstore,” says Allen. One interesting find was records of a copper mine used as a prison.
Allen copied documents on site and downloaded hundreds of pages of publications and archives online, enough to fill more than six filing cabinet drawers. “
I’m hearing from people who are looking for ancestors and are surprised to learn they are looking for Tories,” says Allen.
Allen first pitched Tories as a book about the role the Scots and Irish played in the American Revolution. “I tried a book proposal on that subject, and the editor who read it suggested that I write about Tories. I then remembered the contrast between Valley Forge and Philadelphia.”
Thomas B. Allen lives in Bethesda, Maryland and was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He’s currently working on ideas for other books and magazine articles.
Tories: Fighting for the King in America’s First Civil War by Thomas B. AllenHardcover, 496 pages, Publisher: Harper; 1St Edition edition (November 9, 2010), Language: English, ISBN: 9780061241802 $26.99.
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