Revolution Downeast: The War for American Independence in Maine

In the late eighteenth century, the area that would become the state of Maine was still part of Massachusetts - a colony of a colony within the sprawling British empire. This first comprehensive account of the Revolution "downeast" is the story of a people initially too preoccupied with day-to-day survival to pay much attention to the rising temper of imperial controversy. When war did erupt, many Maine colonists hoped that their geographical isolation and the presence of Native tribes - many of whom were longstanding British foes - would protect them from royal forces in nearby Nova Scotia. But this was not to be. Soon enemy privateers plundered the region's coastal settlements and shipping, and in 1779 the British established a base at the mouth of the Penobscot River. Heartened by the British presence, local loyalists sprang into action and transformed a revolution into a bitter civil war. For Maine, as for many other areas of the rebelling colonies, the struggle with England proved to be a divisive ordeal that heightened prewar social, economic, and political differences and created new ones. James S. Leamon notes that Maine's revolutionary experience can best be understood in the context of other conflicted regions - Georgia, Long Island, Maryland's Delmarva Peninsula, and the Carolina backcountry - where disrupted economies, British incursions, guerrilla warfare, and shifting loyalties defined the Revolution.