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History Battle of Black Race for Liberty and Justice

Khalid Elhassan May 12, 2020 34 min

Deacons for Defense - Deacons for Defense and Justice — Black demonstrators arriving in Franklinton, Louisiana, after a two day march from Bogalusa. Face 2 Face Africa

18. Colonel Tye’s Homecoming

A Black Loyalist in the American Revolution. Canadian Encyclopedia

In his first combat experience, the Battle of Monmouth, on June 28^th, 1778, Tye captured a Patriot captain of the Monmouth militia, and returned with his captive to British-held New York City. Having grown up in Monmouth County, Tye had intimate knowledge of the local geography, which made him well suited to the guerrilla warfare that wracked the region. While the Redcoats and the Continental Army fought each other in pitched battles, a nasty civil was simultaneously being fought between Loyalist and Patriot militias and armed bands throughout much of the colonies.

Guerrilla warfare was intense in New Jersey, a border region sandwiched between the British stronghold in New York, and the Patriot capital in Philadelphia. In Monmouth County, things got particularly vicious, as Patriot vigilantes took to hanging Loyalists and confiscating their property. That prompted William Franklin, New Jersey’s Loyalist governor despite being Benjamin Franklin’s son, to sponsor Loyalists in fighting fire with fire. In Tye, he found a great firebrand.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.