"What if the American Revolution had started in Philadelphia?" Topic

What if the "Shot heard 'round the world…" had been fired at … Germantown, instead of Lexington?

There was a very good reason it started in the Boston area, notably the Boston Port Act which ed off quite a few of Whiggish sympathies.

I am reading Seymour's book on the Pennsylvania Associators. He mentions that the British Philadelphia garrison had been withdrawn and sent to Boston.
Also, at about that time, the Philadelphia Artillery severed all ties with the Royal Artillery.

Note that the Pennsylvania Associators were a volunteer association of martial minded fellows, in reaction to the Pennsylvania Quaker Assembly which was pacifist and unwilling to rock the boat with the Indians. There was no militia. The Associators were a kind of sort of militia, but were voluntary. They also drilled fairly regularly, probably as often as the British Regulars stationed there.
Interestingly, the Associators had not only standard line infantry, but also rangers, artillery and the famous Light Horse.
The Philadelphia Artillery were quite professional. The Light Horse drilled several times a week, which rich second sons of Whiggish sympathies could afford to do.

So, WHAT IF instead of transferring the Philadelphia garrison to Boston, the had stayed in Philadelphia. WHAT IF instead of the Lexington Concord expedition being the spark, the garrison commander had decided to seize the Philadelphia Artillery's fine brass guns? And, WHAT IF the Associators had sufficient warning to oppose them?
I can see a bigger bloodbath than LC had been.
This just occurred to me while getting dinner on the table and quaffing a few Yuenglings.
I have the Light Horse. I have the figures, not yet painted, for the Associators, and I have a ton of guns and gunners.
My questions are:

What regiments were the Philadelphia garrison in 1774?
Who was their commander, and was he any good?
Oh. sure I can always fake that, but it's nice to have the "Real Thing", even in a What If battle. It's just an excuse for a game, after all.

It will probably not be at Germantown, but at the fort the Associators built.

I will be running yet another Wyoming Massacre game in a week and half to celebrate our club's 10th Anniversary. Victory conditions for the Patriots will not only be survival, but to have enough of your retainers survive to vote for you in your post war political career. Somehow, I do not see Philadelphia politics being much different.

We'd have "Geno's London Steak Sandwiches", wit/Stilton.

Given the number of "shots fired" in Germantown on ANY given day, who would have noticed…?

Eric

They wouldn't be automatic weapons at that point in time, for one thing.

I would bet it was a small garrison if there were any troops left there at all. Perhaps a small element from the 10th, 16th, or 18th Foot. I think the 18th (Royal Irish) had a very small detachment there at some point. Boston is where all the real rowdy trouble centered so the troops kept being sent there from other places in America. You have to remember the Massachusetts powder raids were not a garrison commander level decision. Thomas Gage was the commander in chief of all British forces in the colonies as well as the Royal Governor essentially via martial law. In Virginia the British marine powder raid was ordered by Virginia's royal governor.

From what I understand the lower level British officers were under almost constant threats of lawsuits or worse in Boston and I don't think most of them wanted to risk doing anything too rash without legal authority. A naval officer was legally murdered due to a successful self defense claim because he had no authority to impress colonial Americans into the Royal navy and was trying to do so when he was shot. Consider the legal ordeal Captain Preston had to go through. Prior to the so called Coercive Acts trial meant trial by an American jury. The radical Whigs were pretty effective at intimidation. Even with troops in Boston it is my understanding that before the Coercive Acts they were often unable to interfere because they couldn't find a Colonial civilian officer brave enough to read the Riot Act for fear of retaliation.

After thinking about it a bit I think Thomas Gage had his HQ in Philadelphia before he went to Boston.

OFM,

I would suggest getting hold (if you don't already have it) of a copy of John Shy's "Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution". It has a lot of detail on pre-war relationships between civil and military society throughout the Colonies. Philadelphia appears possibly to have been the most placid assignment anywhere in N America (possibly because the troops – and later also the officers – were in barracks rather thanbeing quartered). So much so that radicals in NYC protesting the Quartering Acts believed Philadelphians had betrayed them.

The book also has an interesting series of maps throughout the text showing the size and location of garrisons. The troops in Philadelphia seem to have peaked at about 350 men – 7-8 coys of of the 18th and some RA (I'm not aware of any other units being present in any number worth noting) – in 1772 as the "retreat from the frontier" concentrated troops in the coastal cities. When the 18th left in 1774, the CO – Lt Col Wilkins – wrote a letter to the Assembly thanking the barrackmaster for his constant attention to the regiment's needs.

link

The Americans would have been defeated like every other Philadelphia team……..

I dunno. I've been to Philadelphia, and the people there are just so genteel and warm and refined and friendly and compassionate, it's hard to see them getting involved in something so brutish as an armed uprising.

Doug

If the state of Philadelphia sports teams for the past 100 years is an example, we are doomed.

For the record, I am a Philly sports fan. Born and raised in Philly subs.

There weren't Italian immigrants back in the AWI years. Speaking as an Italian American myself, I am free to be ethnically biased. This will probably be Stallone's next movie, Rocky starts the AWI!

No one would have thought anything amiss with hearing gunshots in Philly.

When I thought Gage's C & C HQ might have been in Philadelphia before being made military governor of Boston I though wrong. At least my memory about the 18th was correct.

Supercilius Maximus,

The Shy book looks interesting. Does it include by any chance a copy of the letter put in a New York Newspaper by the 16th Foot in defense of soldiers?

Wasn't Gage's HQ in NYC before he transferred it to Boston? I seem to recall that the previous CinC (Amherst) was operating out of NYC during the Pontiac's flap.

There is a great book on RN operations prior to the war (name escapes me at the moment) that talks about the consequences in England at the time of the all the Acts, which often applied to them as well. Many of the ship owners armed and opened fire on the RN in homewaters, so the tax problem was not just an American one.

If these Pennsylvania Associators were well drilled then what you may have seen is a European style stand up fight, rather than the running skirmish at Concord/Lexington. Who kn ows how that would have ended

@ Redcoat 55,

Not sure, but I can't recall seeing it quoted. There's only one mention of the 16th in NYC, and that's in relation to them being moved out of the city to remove provocation from the civil populace (much as the 29th were sent out of Boston).

@ OFM,

From a quick re-reading of the last chapters of Shy, NYC would have been the more likely alternative flash-point to Boston.

If it was the same place that the Continental Congress sat… Well then today's American capital would be in… London.

CC *TALKED* a tough fight but bugged out when the fighting came close to "Independence Hall" later in the war. No matter how well drilled the local militia were (and there would've been more then a few summer soldiers among the sunshine patriots – LOTTA loyalists in Philly), can it be BELIEVED that *they* would've done better than the "crowd" at Breed's Hill… OR Concord?

"What if's" can be fun!

For my two cents (er, pence), GW in the north (and his frontier southern commanders) in the south "pick away" at the Brits, needling here and there – ruining reputations and spoiling ill planned upstate/back country advances (as well as thwarting the more set and sedate European customs of war) until Franklin et. al. in Paris sets the spark that rekindles the last embers of the 7YW/F&IW and puts GB on the defensive.

Rather small stuff UNTIL the French get involved!

(Oh, and let's NOT forget the immeasurable thanks us Yanks owe to the Brit's opposition party and it's press at the time… "Freedom ISN'T free" indeed!)