I joined Rob Orrison from Emerging Revolutionary War.org to discuss Nicholas Cresswell’s take on the American Revolution and specifically his reaction to the Declaration of Independence. YouTube link: https://youtu.be/fyONRWmy6_I?si=kmKUR5QORPJvWKdg
“The people here are Liberty mad…” Nicholas Cresswell and the American Independence
Leesburg, Virginia. Tuesday, July 9, 1776. “…News that the Sanhedrim[1] had declared the thirteen united Colonies Free and Independent States. That this was intended by the Northern Colonies from the first, I am well convinced…”[2] These are not the words one expects when talking about the Declaration of Independence, but to a 26-year-old entrepreneurial Englishman caught in a revolution that he neither wanted nor supported, this was the worst news ever.[3] The Journals of Nicholas Cresswell is an informative source on the Revolutionary War from what could be considered a ‘Tory’ point of view. It is a personal account that shows that the struggle for freedom was not just on the battlefield but also in the streets and homes at the end of the colonial era.
Nicholas Cresswell was an outsider from the moment he stepped on American soil in 1774 and heard news of the siege of Boston, noting that the colonists “talk as if they were determined to dispute the matter with the Sword.”[4] For two years, Cresswell observed the American colonies descend into rebellion, “The people here are Liberty mad, nothing but war is thought of.”[5]
When the colonies officially separated, Cresswell felt despair and anger instead of hope. Cresswell’s intention was to set up life as a farmer, but misfortune and bad timing foiled his plans. He blamed the “cursed Rebellion” for turning this “earthly paradise to a Hell upon terra firma.” [6]
Constantly under the suspicion of the local committees tasked with enforcing the Continental Association as a suspected ‘Tory’ spy, he grew to despise the Continental Congress as vile and hypocritical. “The Congress under the fallacious pretense of nursing the tender plant, liberty, which was said to thrive so well in American soil, have actually torn it up by the very root.”[7]
Cresswell could not help himself and always got into political discussions in the bars and houses of Virginia. “At Dinner had a long dispute with Doctor Jacson about the origin of the present proceedings…Most of the company agrees that I had the better of the argument. But never so much embarrassed in my whole life.”[8]
He even chided General Washington as a yeoman farmer “Negro-driver”[9] and a and was befuddled that he kept evading General Howe. Ultimately, he did decide that he was a decent General.
In the end, Cresswell decided that Virginia, for all of its bounty, was lost and returning to England was his only option. After three years of surviving the storm of a revolution, he made his slip to British lines. While technically not a Loyalist,[10] Cresswell provides critical details on the otherwise missing narrative of Loyalism in the colonies, especially Virginia. His last act dramatically involved him in a plot to free English sailors and soldiers from a jail in Alexandria Virginia. Some of the conspirators were well known merchants in Alexandria.[11] Thankfully Cresswell’s account exists to inform how a revolution hits the home front and the profundity of independence at that time.
[1] Cresswell’s derisive term for the Continental Congress. It refers to the Sandedrim, or Jewish Supreme Council. “Sanhedrim,” McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia, accessed June 2, 2026 https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/S/sanhedrim.html.
[2] Nicholas Cresswell, The Journals of Nicholas Cresswell, 1774-1777, (North Charleston, South Carolina: reprinted 2024, 117. Free online version at the Library of Congress https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/gdc/lhbtn/30436/30436.pdf.
[3] See: “An Englishman’s Journal of the Revolutionary War: The Journals of Nicholas Cresswell 1774-1777,” Emerging Revolutionary War, October 20, 2025, https://emergingrevolutionarywar.org/2025/10/20/an-englishmans-journal-of-the-revolutionary-war-the-journals-of-nicholas-cresswell-1774-1777/.
[4] Cresswell, 16.
[5] Ibid, 77.
[6] Ibid, 197.
[7] Ibid, 198.
[8] Ibid, 99.
[9] Ibid, 193. It is interesting that that turn of phrase is famously used by Samuel Johnson, an avowed Tory who despised what the American colonies were doing. See: Interview, “Gordon S. Wood: How the American Revolution “infused into our culture our noblest ideals and highest aspirations,” Library of America, accessed June 7, 2026 https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/639-gordon-s-wood-how-the-american-revolution-infused-into-our-culture-our-noblest-ideals-and-highest-aspirations/.
[10] McGill … Cresswell was more of an immigrant who still had cultural ties to his homeland.
[11] William Buckner McGroarty, “Loyalism in Alexandria, Virginia, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biuography, 52, no. 1 (January 1944), 42-43, accessed March 11, 2026 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4245269.
Ken Bancroft Public History 
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