The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - A Different Take on the U.S. War of Independence

Episode Date: October 26, 2024

Author James Arnett joins us in studio to discuss his latest novel, "The Monmouth Manifesto." Heading back in time to the American Revolution, Arnett flips the script and paints a picture through the eyes of Loyalists.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For two and a half centuries, the American Revolutionary War has provided endless amounts of subject matter for authors and historians. And most of what we read casts the American rebels as the good guys and the subjects loyal to King George III as the bad guys. So it was with considerable interest that I read James Arnott's latest book, it's called The Monmouth Manifesto, which very much turns those tables and introduces us to characters in that war in a very different way. And James Arnett joins us here in studio. Great to have you here. Thank you.

We should just establish off the top a little bit about your background here, because you're a guy who was sort of a corporate lawyer, corporate CEO for how many years? 30, 40. Okay, and then sort of late in life you decided, I think I'm gonna try my hand at being an author. We had you here before for your previous book,

and now here you are again, you've come out with a second book. I have. What fascinated you about this story so much you wanted to spend your life writing about? Well, in a sense, the reason that you gave, I mean, it reverses the normal story about the American Revolution.

And of course, as Canadians, we always hear from the Americans all the time about their great revolution, which it was, and how the patriots were the good guys and everybody else were the bad guys. And this just flips the script. So that kind of interested me. And of course, the loyalists, a lot of them

became refugees to Canada, as you know. And it had an influence, at least in the 19th century, on Canada and the way it developed. I don't go into that aspect in the book. But if you follow these characters and you read this book, you get a sense of the kinds of people that were loyalists and why they were the way they were. Well it's interesting. You've written it as a novel, but the characters are real and the incidents are real, the events

are real. Absolutely. And how did you, I mean I guess you're stuck in a library somewhere for years and years trying to figure out all the notes? Steve, the incredible thing is I basically did this. I started this during the pandemic. I did this all, all my research online. It was unbelievable.

You can find everything there. You can find everything. And you come up with one fact, and then you see a footnote, and you follow that through to another one. It was extraordinary. And then, of course, that would lead me into books, or footnotes would lead me to books. And then I'd get in touch with Amazon and order the book.

I must have bought 50 or 60 books along the way. Just for researching this one? Yeah. Wow, OK. As you think about your own views and how they either did or didn't evolve as you were working on this, I'm guessing there must have been a point where you put yourself in the time and you thought to yourself, if I were living in America at the time, would I have been with King George III or would I have been part of the rebels trying to create this new country?

Where would you come down on that? I didn't, exactly. I mean, I sympathized with the characters, the loyalists, who were the protagonists in this book. But on the other hand, they were on the losing side of history. Generally speaking, not a good place to be. So a bit of this and a bit of that, to be honest. One of the protagonists is a guy from the so-called founding family of New Jersey.

His name is Richard Lippincott. And at some point, he is forced, I guess by the rebels, to swear an oath to his state of New Jersey rather than the king of the United Kingdom, which would be his, he's the guy he likes. What do you think of this requirement to swear oaths? Because we see this in your book. We see it through a lot of society today. Well, first of all, I mean, one of the reasons he didn't swear the oath was he was a Quaker.

And Quakers didn't swear oaths to anybody. In fact, it was almost like one of their key tenets. But on top of that, he wasn't about to swear an oath to the patriot cause, because he was a loyalist. I don't have a problem with swearing oaths if it's to the right person. I have a good friend, I won't name him. if he's watching this he'll know who it is, who says, you know, he's a lawyer, he said, you know, if he'd been asked to be a judge or something,

he would never have sworn an oath to King Charles because... Well, that's it. Because he is sort of Republican. And I said to him, well, you know, it's just an oath. So it depends. It depends whether you're really taking it seriously or not. OK. The War of Independence starts very badly for the United

States, as you tell in the book. George Washington, who was, of course, the general leading the rebel side, he's on the run. But suddenly, he wins a couple of battles, and the tide turns. How did that actually happen? Well, I think how that happened was that, you know. Because they were well on their way to losing. You know, and it's a fundamental aspect

of the American Revolution and of this story. The British, frankly, did a half-assed job, if I can put it that way. And at that time, at the start of it, the British general is a guy called General William Howe. And he was really of two minds, I think, about whether it was a wise thing to try and defeat this rebellion. So you know, inexplicably in a way, but unless you buy that line of thinking, he allowed Washington to get away a couple of times. And he didn't pursue him when Washington was at his weakest.

And I think there was a certain British colonial arrogance there, too. Well, if I remember my reading of the book, General Howe, you write, was too busy screwing around having affairs to beat Washington at Valley Forge, otherwise the thing may have turned out differently. Now you say that in the book. Is that true? That is true. Okay, so that might have had something to do with it. That might have had something to do with it. Yeah, it's true. He spent a season, he spent a winter in Philadelphia. Washington was close by Valley Forge.

And the Americans always talk about this terrible winter when Washington was in Valley Forge and he didn't have enough troops and it was a terrible winter. And Howe was in Philadelphia, having conquered Philadelphia, which was then the main city, and he was luxuriating with his mistress and drinking too much, that kind of thing. Got it.

You certainly convey an impression in the book that the decision to create the United States of America, which, of course, all of us have been taught in elementary and high school was a virtually unanimous thing and everybody couldn't wait to get rid of the Brits. You really don't portray it that way. You really portray it as something that, you know, people were very mixed in their views about that.

Now, is that accurate? That's absolutely accurate. I mean, I think the general feeling is, if you read the history, you know, maybe one-third of the people were for it, maybe one-third were against it, and the one-third in the middle were just, you know, not thinking much about it. And what happened there, and it usually happens

with revolutions if you think about it, if you get a small core of People that really want to make it happen Most people are kind of apathetic If you get a small group of revolutionaries want to make it happen same thing happened in Russia It's amazing that they can make it happen. Yeah, and these guys did and these guys did yeah All right, you're going to forgive all these questions about did this really happen?

Did this really happen? Because you'd read something and you'd say, did that really happen? The loyalists are attempting to raise armies to fight Washington, but it's really not happening. They're having a hard time pulling people together. And there's a quote in the book which is, where are those effing regulars?

Except you don't say effing, you say the real F-bomb. And I want to know, did they really use the F-bomb back in the day? You know, I wondered about that before using it in the book. And I couldn't confirm it with my research online. But I came to the, I guess that they probably did. Because I just, you know, first time I heard the word was from George Carlin, but that's only 50 years ago.

This is 250 years ago. I think it goes back more than 50 years. OK, just checking. What were the loyalists, those loyal to King George III, what were they fighting for? You know, I think that they were fighting for no change. I think they thought, you know, we've got a pretty good way of life going. And, you know, sort of a romantic idea about the empire.

I mean, most of them, I mean, they identified themselves as British subjects still. They were almost not yet Americans. And so the authority figures in their lives were, you know, the Crown, the Anglican Church, and the colonial officials who ran things.

And another aspect of it would be that they didn't like the idea of these guys who were rebelling. A lot of them tended to be fiery people. They might have seen them to be fiery people. They might have seen them as lower class people. There'd be that fear too. Gotcha.

You are a lawyer, so I'd like your legal opinion of this. There are scenes in the book where there are courts, and I use that word in inverted commas, because they find Americans loyal to the king guilty of treason. Treason to a country that does not yet exist, so to speak. And they employ, I mean, as the cover of the book suggests, the noose. There's the death penalty if you're not loyal to their rebellious cause. I mean, technically speaking, how legal was all of that?

It was totally illegal. Think about it. So what happens? Basically, you've got a regular government, which has been established by the Crown, the British government. And you've got a governor. You've got judges and so on, and sheriffs that are appointed by that government.

You do have an elected assembly in most of these colonies, but they just deal with local matters. And then these rebels come along and they say, well, we're going to set up our own committees, and then these committees turn into sort of so-called legislatures. And they just take over. I mean, they just de facto take over. And so that is, by definition, illegal. Now, of course, the lawyer in me knows that at some point,

what's de facto becomes de jure. If you can establish control long enough, then even at law. It's a fact. But in this case, I would say that didn't happen until the British acknowledged independence for the Americans at the end of the war. I got the sense reading it that you were really quite offended by the fact that these folks thought that they were doing something legal in killing people and putting, you know, putting forward the death penalty for people who were loyal to the crown. Is that right? I wouldn't say I was offended.

I mean, I might have been, but in writing the book, I'm trying to put myself in the position of the way the loyalists would have looked at it. They were certainly offended. There's a quote in the book which says, the reason this rebellion started is that the British government wanted to reserve all that land over the mountains for the Indians, but the land speculators, and they say George Washington is one of them, didn't want that. You got evidence of that? That's a well-known fact.

I mean, the Quebec Act of what was 1774, I think it was, the British wanted to reserve, they've thrown the French out of North America. And they were worried about what was then called the Indians. And I use that word in the book because that's the way they were described at the time. For sure. And they wanted to reserve all that area

west of the Appalachian Mountains for the Indians because they were worried about this situation. And you had all these American settlers that were kind of moving west. And the American settlers didn't like that. That was one of the causes of the rebellion, in fact. And George Washington, he was one of those guys that was going west and trying to make big land claims and make money as a land developer.

I mean, and a lot of the senior Americans were in that boat. Another very famous American, obviously, is Benjamin Franklin, who was a guy who was one of the leaders of the revolution. His son, William, had a bit of a different view. What was his view? Well, he was a committed loyalist. That's quite an incredible story.

And it's not a main part of the book, but it's certainly part of the book. William Franklin, when the rebellion started, he was the crown appointed governor of the province of New Jersey. Loyal to the king. Loyal to the king. And his dad was a revolutionary. Well, his father, yeah, his father by then was.

But his father had only recently turned. His father had been a loyal Brit until he ran into some trouble in London with the crown. And then he switched. And he became a revolutionary. And he assumed that his son would follow his lead. And he didn't. And he didn't. What happened to their relationship?

It was absolutely fractured. And basically, Benjamin Franklin was quite a wealthy guy. He disinherited William Franklin. Here's a quote from the book. Benjamin Franklin was quite a wealthy guy. He disinherited William Franklin. Here's a quote from the book. A loyalist to the king was convicted by a jury of treason against the state of Delaware for providing intelligence and stolen arms to other loyalists.

And the punishment was reported as this. You must be hanged by the neck, but not till you are dead, for you must be cut down alive, then your bowels must be taken out and burnt before your face, then your head must be severed from your body, and your body divided into four quarters, and these must be at the disposal of the supreme authority of the state." Now that's pretty barbaric stuff. Did this really happen? Well, it didn't really happen then. It was still the legal punishment for treason. If you go back 100 years earlier to what happened in the civil wars in England,

that's the way the rebels were treated. But by the time of the American Revolution, it was still the legal punishment. But generally speaking, they were much more genteel, and they just hanged them. We should explain the title of the book. The Monmouth Manifesto is actually what? The Monmouth Manifesto was a statement, a message, a manifesto that a bunch of

patriots in the county of Monmouth in New Jersey sent to General Washington. Because what had happened was that a patriot had been hanged by the loyalists. And not only had he been hanged, but his body had been left hanging on a tree for all good patriots to see what happened to people who messed around with the loyalists. So the loyalists were not very happy, and they were demanding that retribution. And so they sent a manifesto to George Washington, who was the general, the head of the army, demanding that he arrange one way or another

for there to be retribution. There is evidence in our province today to remember some of the loyalists in this war. And I note that there are three streets in the Toronto area named Lippincott, after Richard Lippincott, who's the protagonist of the book. There's another street named Borden, after Esther. It's kind of amazing that all that evidence is still here. What did you think of that? Well it is kind of amazing that all that evidence is still here. What did you think of that?

Well, it is kind of amazing. The reason it happened, Steve, is that Richard Lippincott and his wife Esther Borden, they had several children, but only one of them survived to maturity. And it was a woman. And she married, when Richard Lippincott, he ended up in what's now called Toronto, in York. And his only daughter married a guy in Toronto named George

Taylor Dennison. And the Dennison family in the the early 19th century anyway, were quite prominent in Toronto. And so they were big landowners in Toronto. And so they developed various areas of downtown Toronto. And they ensured that the name of Lippincott and the name of Borden was affixed to some of those streets as it was developed. Are there any of their ancestors left?

Oh yeah. There are, still in the city. Well my wife is one. No kidding. Okay. Well, okay, well that's all right. There we go. Did you know that before starting all this?

I wish I hadn't said that, Steve. OK. I did not know that. There are lots of descendants of the denizens in this city and around the country. That's what happens. As it happens, my wife, who's from Winnipeg, as am I, was a descendant.

And what had happened was I had actually heard from her family the barest outline about the story about Lippincott. That's how I got onto it in the first place. I hasten to add it's not why I wrote the book, but it's how I knew the story. And if I can add one thing there, so I'd heard a little bit about this thing about Lippincott. When I read up about him, I found out, oh boy, there's a real story here because it's mentioned in biographies of George Washington and in stories about the histories of the American Revolution,

some of this stuff. But what happened was I stumbled on the fact that there was another New Jersey farmer, as was Lippincott, who became a loyalist, who ended up in Canada, whose name was James Moody. James Moody, actually, his biography is written up in the Dictionary of Canadian Popery. Yeah, he's better known. But what happened was, so I was trying to decide, was there enough to make a novel out of this?

Then I thought, well, I've got these two guys, but how do I do that? It's amazing. I stumbled, absolutely stumbled on the fact that Lippincott and Moody overlapped in the New Jersey Volunteers, which was a loyalist unit, a loyalist regiment, actually, in the British Army. And then I thought, oh, boy, I've got these two guys.

I've got their two lines of story I'll put them together and pretend that they're buddies. Very good that's very cool. Well since you mentioned the family connection I guess it's a bit of a tradition on this program since we had you here last time when we did this to just sort of find out what's going on in your family because your daughter Tanis used to work here. Yeah. She's okay these days? She's okay. All right good to know. There's OK these days? She's OK. All right, good to know. There's a funny little story there

that I probably shouldn't tell you on TV either. But in any event. Well, if you've set it up like that, you have to tell. I have to. Yeah. As it happens, and we don't need to go into how it happened, but as it happens, a few years ago, I think just before the pandemic, my daughter, Tanis, found herself at dinner with the George H.W. Bushes in Kennebunkport.

When I heard about this, I said, Tanis, why didn't you tell President Bush that you're related? Because the Bush family are also Lippincott descendants. Come on. No kidding. Boy, everything connects. It's amazing. Yeah.

Now, I'm trying to remember his name now. You got another kid, Will or something like that. Did he ever amount to anything? He's doing all right. Just all right. He's doing all right, Steve. Yeah, I mean, you may or may not have seen in his podcast, Smartless.

Smartless. Yeah, Smartless. I heard of it. I got a couple other guys on that too. Well, yeah, but they had the four presidents on. Yeah, that's right, I heard that. And there's a picture of them together with Will and the four presidents and the other

guys on the smart list. And the way the picture is set up is that Will's in the middle of the picture. And as it happens, he's the biggest guy in the picture. And he's got his arm around Joe Biden. So it's a little bit like a picture of Will Arnett and his buddies. Now, do you and Will yet agree on how to pronounce your family name? Because he doesn't say Arnett. He says Arnett.

There's an historical reason for that. Yeah. We've always pronounced the name Arnett. And when Will grew up, of course, his name was pronounced Arnett. But when he went to the States, it morphed into Arnett. And that doesn't bother me because I found, for three years, we lived in Washington, DC. And I found myself increasingly referring to myself

as James Arnett. because for some reason, and I couldn't tell you why, Americans sort of like to hear it pronounced that way. And if you say Arnett, they say, what is that? Is it Arnold? They don't know. So he says Will Arnett. The kid wins this one. And that's, he's won a lot.

He's done okay, that's for sure. Give Tannis our love. Thank you. Yes. I used to call her MNBF, my new best friend. That was our nickname for each other. And for those of you who love American history, this is a really different take and you will enjoy James Arnett's latest, The Monmouth Manifesto, and we're glad it's brought you

back here to TVO for this chat. Thank you so much, Steve.