Tryon, William

TRYON, WILLIAM. (1729–1788). Royal governor of North Carolina and New York, British general. Well born, Tryon used his family connections to secure a lieutenancy in the prestigious First Regiment of Foot Guards in 1751. He was promoted to the rank of captain the same year. In 1757, he married Margaret Wake, heiress of a fortune and a relative of Lord Hillsborough (Wills Hill). Tryon saw military service during the Seven Years' War, during which he was in the Cherbourg-St. Malo operation (1758) and was almost killed. Also in 1758, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. Through the influence of Hillsborough, he was appointed lieutenant governor of North Carolina in 1764. A year later, when Governor Arthur Dobbs died, he was appointed governor.

Proving himself a successful administrator, Tryon reorganized the province's taxes; established the Anglican Church and a postal system; improved defenses; erected "Tryon Palace," a new governor's mansion at New Bern; drew a boundary between North and South Carolina; and attempted, unsuccessfully, to get London's approval for a provincial currency. He sympathized with the Carolinians in their opposition to the Stamp Act in 1765 and the Townshend Duties in 1769, but nevertheless attempted to enforce the measures. His final act as governor of North Carolina was to defeat the frontiersmen known as Regulators in the battle of the Alamance on 16 May 1771.

Replacing Lord Dunmore (John Murray) as governor of New York in late 1771, Tryon had difficulties with frontiersmen there as well. He became embroiled in a border controversy between New York and New Hampshire over the region that became Vermont. He got into difficulties with London when he granted enormous tracts of land to colonial aristocrats, and to himself. His avowed aim, as he explained to the British ministry, was to counteract "the general leveling spirit" that prevailed in many of England's American colonies, by imposing aristocratic landlords on tenants. In 1772 he also fostered hierarchy by establishing a militia system that granted all officers' commissions to "Gentlemen of first families" and created several independent companies for the provinces' richest citizens,

When Tryon was confronted in the mid-1770s with radical New Yorkers' resistance to the Tea Act, he attempted to isolate the protesters from the rest of the population. At the same time, he implored the ministry in London to end attempts to tax Americans. Failing in both these matters, he fled on 19 October 1775 to a British ship in New York harbor. Although he retained the governorship for the remainder of his tenure in the colonies, he concentrated on service in the British army. Having been promoted colonel in 1772, he used his military authority to organize Loyalist militias in New York. He welcomed General William Howe's army in July 1776, and acted as Howe's adviser during the fighting for the remainder of the year. On 1 January 1777 he was commissioned a major general in America and given command of Loyalist regiments in Howe's army. In April he led a successful raid against Danbury, Connecticut, and in October he joined Sir Henry Clinton in attacking the Highland Forts on the Hudson River. In 1778, he was appointed colonel of the Seventieth Regiment.

A year later, Tryon conducted savage attacks against Horseneck, New Haven, and Norwalk, all in Connecticut. Practicing what he called "desolation warfare," he unleashed merciless operations against both civilians and soldiers in an attempt to break their will to resist. In 1780, convinced that the war was unwinnable, he abandoned this policy. After serving in operations against Connecticut Farms and Springfield, New Jersey, in June 1780, he resigned his civil and military offices and returned to England. There he lived quietly and comfortably with his family until his death on 17 January 1788.

Before the War for America commenced in 1775, Tryon had sided with the colonists in opposing parliamentary taxes, even though he favored social hierarchy and believed the Americans were too democratic. Hence, he was generally popular. But his advocacy of sanguinary warfare after that time destroyed his popularity and convinced the rebels that he was a brutal despot. By his own lights a friend of America, he found himself in an impossible situation, for Britain refused to make timely and necessary concessions in the early 1770s. Through no fault of his own, he was a victim of forces over which he exerted no control.

SEE ALSO Dunmore's (or Cresap's) War; Regulators.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nelson, Paul David. William Tryon and the Course of Empire: A Life in British Imperial Service. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.

Powell, William S., ed. The Correspondence of William Tryon and Other Selected Papers, 2 vols. Raleigh, N.C.: Division of Archives and History, 1980–1981.

                             revised by Paul David Nelson