Congress's Own: A Canadian Regiment, the Continental Army, and American Union by Holly A. Mayer

Abstract

Reviewed by: Congress's Own: A Canadian Regiment, the Continental Army, and American Union by Holly A. Mayer Friederike Baer (bio) Congress's Own, Canada, American Revolution, Continental Army Congress's Own: A Canadian Regiment, the Continental Army, and American Union. By Holly A. Mayer. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021. Pp. 408. Cloth, $45.00.) Holly Mayer describes Congress's Own as a "regimental history" that "is a social, institutional, and civil-military analysis of how members of Congress's Own realized the American Revolution in combat and community" (xi). The regiment, she argues in this insightful and original book, "exemplified the military borderland that was the Continental Army and the imagined community of the nation declared to be the United States of America" (3). Mayer employs innovative applications of community and [End Page 283] borderland studies methodologies to make a case for this Canadian regiment as a microcosm of the Continental Army and the new American nation. The book begins with a discussion of key events in Canada in the years 1774 and 1775, including Patriot efforts to bring the Canadians over to their side through political and ideological persuasion and, ultimately, military coercion. In the beginning of 1776, the American Patriots created two Canadian regiments. While the vast majority of Continental Army regiments were tied to a state or states for recruiting and support purposes, these Canadian military units were authorized by Congress to recruit throughout the states in addition to Canada. Soon, the 2nd Regiment, also known as the Canadian Old Regiment, became a kind of multicultural experiment that brought together men from eleven states in addition to Canada. In early 1777, it adapted the nickname Congress's Own, in part to spur recruitment but also to signify its civic allegiance to Congress and, with that, its uniqueness. It remained in service until its disbandment at West Point in November 1783. In her previous book, Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community During the American Revolution (Columbia, SC, 1996), Mayer studied the army primarily as a social organization that depended, to a significant extent, on the contributions of thousands of family members, servants, sutlers, and other associated individuals who did not actively and directly participate in combat. Although Congress's Own pays some attention to the wives and children of officers and privates that were attached to the regiment, it is primarily concerned with the experiences of the roughly 1,900 soldiers that belonged to this community at one time or another over the course of the war. Mayer conducted painstaking archival research to identify the members of the regiment, and she introduces readers to a number of them. Among them are Lieutenant Colonel Edward Antill, a native of New Jersey who had settled in Quebec, and Sergeant Major John H. Hawkins, who hailed from the Philadelphia area and was the author of a journal that first piqued Mayer's interest in the regiment's history. The book's main character is Moses Hazen, the regiment's leader for the duration of the war. Born in Massachusetts in 1733, he settled in Montreal in 1763 after serving in a colonial unit during the Seven Years' War. By the time of the American Revolution, Hazen had accumulated land holdings in Quebec and northern New England. He was initially conflicted about siding with the Americans, in part because of his ties to the British military but also because joining the American rebellion meant risk of losing property [End Page 284] in Canada. However, in early 1776, he seized the opportunity not only to join the Americans but also to assume command of the newly commissioned 2nd Canadian Regiment. Seigneur Hazen turned out to be a "dynamic combat commander but flawed manager" (211). Mayer details the regiment's movements and military operations throughout its history, including its participation in Sullivan's attack on British posts on Staten Island, as well as the battles of Trenton, Brandywine, Germantown, and Yorktown. She also examines operations that are less well known, such as the regiment's 1779 expedition into Coos Country, a region that included Vermont and New Hampshire. Over the course of several months, Hazen's regiment gathered intelligence, built...