Revolution downeast: the war for American independence in Maine

Abstract

In the late 18th century, the area that would become the state of Maine was still part of Massachusetts - a colony of a colony within the sprawling British Empire. This account of the Revolution downeast is the story of a people initially too preoccupied with day-to-day survival to pay much attention to the rising temper of imperial controversy. When war did erupt, many Maine colonists hoped that their geographical isolation and the presence of native tribes - many of which were long-standing British foes - would protect them from royal forces in nearby Nova Scotia. But this was not to be. Soon enemy privateers plundered the region's coastal settlements and shipping, and in 1779 the British established a base at the mouth of the Penobscot River. Heartened by the British presence, local loyalists sprang into action and transformed a revolution into a bitter civil war. For Maine, as for many other areas of the rebelling colonies, the struggle with England proved to be a divisive ordeal that heightened pre-war social, economic, and political differences. James S. Leamon discusses Maine's revolutionary experience in the context of other regions of conflict - Georgia, Long Island, Maryland's Delmarva Peninsula, and the Carolina back country - where disrupted economies, British incursions, guerrilla warfare, and shifting loyalties defined the Revolution.