Page 224 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

224 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

occupying force without risking a wood cutting party being attacked by American militia
outside the lines. It was estimated that during the winter months, the occupying forces used
upwards of 300 cords of wood a week. Later rail fences were burned, orchards were cut down
and even stone from the famous New England stone wall enclosures were knocked down to
provide ballast for British ships. Soldiers even pulled up Newport’s now vastly under used
wharves to get the firewood that they needed. Wood cutting parties were sent via ship as
far away as Block and Fisher’s Island in the Long Island Sound – some even went as far as
Staten Island, New York. Hessian Captain Friedrich von der Malsburg of the von Ditfurth
Regiment noted that “the people feel the military presence is disrupting their normal lives”
and it was not only over a lack of fuel for the harsh New England winters. It seemed the
citizens of Newport were especially afraid of the Hessians. One citizen appealed to Frederick
Mackenzie that now that the island had been seized by British forces “he hoped the General
would send all the Hessians on board ships again.” 9
It was not long before conditions inside Newport began to substantially deteriorate. One
Newport merchant, Aaron Lopez, belonged to the town’s vibrant Jewish community. Lopez
had the foresight to remove himself and much of his business first to Portsmouth, eight miles
to the north and then eventually to Boston to, in his words, “escape the cruel ravages of an en-
raged enemy.” During his forced absence from his Newport home, Lopez wrote to his friend
and former neighbor Joseph Anthony that “the poor inhabitants of the town have been very
much distress’d this winter for the want of fewell [fuel] and provisions.” He was especially
concerned that his Jewish friends who had remained behind were suffering even more due to
the lack of available kosher food and wrote that they “had not tasted any meat, but once in
two months” and were largely subsisting on coffee and chocolate. Lopez informed his for-
mer neighbor of what had happened to their neighborhood since the invasion and wrote that
Anthony’s house had been much damaged. Another neighbor, Augustus Johnson, was found
dead in his home and a woman who lived nearby, Mrs. Sisson, had gone insane. But what he
said he “lamented most” was that he had heard a number of “our respectable ladys” had been
molested by British soldiers in town. 10
Since January 1776, Provincial officials had been urging Newporters to flee the inevitable
British storm that was to come 11 months later. Two hundred pounds “were voted by the gen-
eral treasury to assist poor people to leave.” In fact, “only 35 percent of Newport’s residents
in 1774 were found there in 1782” (two years after the British had permanently departed the
town). While this outflow is indeed significant, it must be noted that a substantial portion
of Newport’s population was dedicated to the maritime industry and could easily find work
elsewhere in non-occupied ports and locales. Further, many transient sailors may have very
likely been missed by census takers at any given time. But there can be no doubt that the
occupation of Newport wreaked major demographic and economic damage on the town for
years to come. 11

9 Citizen of Newport quoted in Frederick Mackenzie, Vol. 1, 126.
10 Stanley F. Chyet, Lopez of Newport: Colonial American Merchant Prince, (Detroit, MI: Wayne State Uni-
versity Press, 1970), 160-161.
11 Lynne Elizabeth Withey, Ph.D. Dissertation, “Population Change, Economic Development and the Revolu-
tion,” (University of California – Berkeley, 1976), 9.