difficult for them to not show a bias towards one side. Flemming even admits that, “depending on who is quoted, a writer can make New Jersey sound like a volcano of revolutionary ardor-or a swamp of unenthusiasm for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”4 By comparing Flemming's account of the Revolutionary War to The Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley, by Adrian C. Leiby, this statement becomes even more evident. Leiby, though he provides a description of the role of the Jersey Dutch and the Neutral Ground which Flemming ignores, reveals his prejudices against the loyalists instead of allowing the reader to realize that both sides had their positive and negative characteristics. At points, he describes the rebels as the “good men,” and openly agrees with their decision to live “impoverished and die in British prisons rather than submit to British oppression…to whom generations unborn owe eternal gratitude.5 Though sometimes incomplete, Flemming provides a picture of this war without this tendency to exhibit favoritism. He avoids glorifying New Jersey, showing its tendencies to both support independence as well as withdraw to the comfort of the imperialistic system. There was obvious tension between New Jersey and the Parliament. Like other colonies, they resisted the taxation attempts of the Stamp and Townsend Act, but their protests were always mild compared to the violence that exploded in the surrounding states. New Jersey tended to shift its attention to itself when its many colonial conflicts arose.6Another factor that reduced New Jersey’s level of enthusiasm was the colony’s rustic lifestyle. Its largest populated city, Elizabethtown, only had 1,200 inhabitants. This was far less than its neighbors, New York and Philadelphia. New Jersey also lacked a newspaper, “the other indispensable engine of eighteenth-century agitation.” Their imperial con...
