Damn’d Good Shots: A Matter of Honor on the Streets of New York, 1783

By Todd Braisted

It was a July morning in Manhattan like countless others before and since, typically hot and humid. The streets were crowded with people, many making travel arrangements, merchants looking to liquidate stocks, shoppers looking for corresponding bargains. Amidst the hustle and bustle so familiar to New York City, shots rang out. Gunfire in the city has hardly been unknown over the years. But the shots were fired by two army officers, at each other, to settle a matter of honor between them. The year was 1783, and New York was abuzz.

“A Plan of the city of New York,” 1776. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Digital Collections.

The Revolutionary War was in its final act that summer.  The preliminary articles of peace had arrived in New York City early that spring, triggering panic and despair among the Loyalist inhabitants and refugees living within the city.  New York had been the British headquarters in America ever since Sir William Howe and his army had wrested it from George Washington’s troops in 1776. Its peacetime population had swollen with thousands of displaced Loyalists from across the continent, many of whom were forced from home by the confiscation of their property by the new state governments due to their allegiance to the British. The articles of peace made scant mention of their rights and they foresaw little mercy or tenderness from their former neighbors, or support from the crown they defended for eight years. Sarah Winslow, a Massachusetts Loyalist in the city, probably spoke for many when she wrote: “What is to become of us, God only can tell, in all our former sufferings we had hope to support us, being deprived of that, is too much, my mind, and strength, are unequal to my present, unexpected trials—was their ever an instance my dear Cousin, can any history produce one where such a number of the best of human beings were deserted by the Government they have sacrificed there all for.  The open enemies of Great Britain have gained their point…This peace brings none to my heart.” [1]

Those wishing to remain under the British government were offered free land and supplies (for a time) in what remained of British North America, primarily in what is now Canada. Some 10,861 Loyalists, mostly civilians, would sail away on government-chartered shipping for Nova Scotia and Quebec between 18 April and 11 July 1783. [2] It was but the tip of the iceberg, as tens of thousands of troops and further civilians awaited transportation or simply weighed the options before them. Merchants seeking to leave sought to dispose of merchandise they could not otherwise bring away with them. Eddy, Sykes and Company at No. 184 Water Street was selling, “at very low terms for Cash,” everything from ale to cloth to sugar and hats. [3] Even the army got into the act, selling off 219 excess cavalry and wagon horses at a fraction of the price they originally cost. [4] Clearly, for those remaining behind, it was a buyer’s market.

One large group of people in a peculiar state of limbo were those serving at New York in the Loyalist regiments raised in America for service in the war. Known as Provincial regiments, by 1783, they were but a shadow of their former strength, with years of war reducing them annually by death, discharge and desertion. They still combined to a strength of over 3,000 officers and men, with their families, struggling to maintain discipline and keep good order while events they could not control unfolded around them. Among these corps was the King’s American Regiment.

Authorized in December 1776, the regiment was commanded by Colonel Edmund Fanning, a Suffolk County, Long Island native and private secretary to Royal Governor William Tryon of New York. This fledgling regiment was authorized by warrant to Fanning from Sir William Howe dated 11 December 1776. [5] The warrant was undoubtedly similar to those issued to others, specifying a regiment of about 600 officers, non–commissioned officers, drummers & private soldiers, divided into ten companies. To enlist these companies, additional warrants were issued to prospective captains and junior officers. Their rank would be contingent upon how many men they recruited. These warrant officers ranged far and wide in the attempt to collect recruits.

To defray the cost of clothing to the soldier, each was given a bounty of two guineas (forty-two shillings). In addition, extra clothing purchased in America (known as necessaries) was purchased for them by the captains commanding companies. The inhabitants of British-occupied New York, organized by wealthy New York City merchant Thomas White, took up a subscription to raise money to buy extra clothing quickly for those corps from the province. In 1777 Fanning’s regiment received as their part of this donation 350 shirts, 452 pair of shoes and 516 blankets or blanket coats. [6]

As an inducement to new recruits, enlistees were promised a future after the war— fifty acres of land to each soldier and two hundred acres to each non-commissioned officer. These grants were modeled after the King's Proclamation of 1763, which awarded land to veterans of the French and Indian War. [7] It was this promise of land that the British were fulfilling in 1783, not only for the soldiers, but for their families and all Loyalists who wished to start over in a new province.

The regiment spent the next year and a half in the environs of New York City, serving under Sir Henry Clinton in a foraging expedition in northern New Jersey in September 1777 and the following month in his Hudson Valley campaign up the Hudson to aid the expedition under General John Burgoyne.  The following summer the corps was sent as a reinforcement to the garrison of Newport, Rhode Island where they arrived just in time to help defend that city against the combined efforts of a French-American expedition.  The siege was eventually lifted, culminating in a severe action on 29 August 1778. The battle was extremely hot, as the regiment fought against a numerically greater force, sustaining the loss of four of its men killed and twenty others wounded. One sergeant was thought killed but was actually wounded and captured. [8]

The siege and the Battle of Quaker Hill (as the action of 29 August would be known) had been the regiment’s first real taste of battle. They performed well, but several tense situations arose before, during and after the action. When the siege first began, the officers were ordered to attend the working parties of the soldiers to encourage them and assist in a sharing of labor. Captain Abraham DePeyster, a New York City native, had been extremely ill for days but was ordered out of bed by Lt. Col. George Campbell. When he took more time in attending than Campbell thought allowable, he placed DePeyster under arrest. The captain was cleared by a court martial after the siege was over. [9]

When the French fleet was passing the batteries of the town, the different Crown regiments were ordered under arms and the officers were posted to the different companies. Captain Isaac Atwood asked permission for leave to view the French, which he could do at a small distance from his company. Lt. Col. Campell, already unpopular with almost every officer, infuriated them further by ordering Atwood to physically stand in front of his company and then ordered him under arrest when he didn't attend as quickly as Campbell thought proper. He, too, was court martialed and found guilty of only a part of the charges, being sentenced to a mild reprimand. [10]

George Campbell considered himself a professional soldier, superior in experience and training to his fellow officers in the regiment, having served in both the British Regular and East India armies. Happily for those officers, they did not see much of their superior officer for the next few years, Campbell being twice captured at sea and once more in his quarters at Georgetown, South Carolina, where the regiment was then serving in January 1781. [11] Edmund Fanning was not present with the regiment at this point, nor for much of the remainder of the war, leaving it to Lt. Col. Campbell’s administration.  For the officers under his command, it was a less than pleasant situation.  The state of affairs overall for the British in South Carolina was perilous, staving off the Continental Army under Nathanael Greene, as well as partisans and militia under Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter. After fighting in the British victory at Hobkirk’s Hill on 25 April 1781, the regiment was ordered to proceed to Charleston where it would embark to reinforce the garrison of Savannah, Georgia, which had even more troubles than its neighbor to the north.

While in garrison at Savannah, Campbell exerted full authority.  In the words of Captain Robert Gray of the regiment, he conceived “Lt. Colo. Campbells conduct to have been highly tyrannical and oppressive in many instances, and calculated to render their situation truly miserable and wretched; such as putting Officers in Arrest, taking away their Servants, sending their Baggage to distant Places, without a Guard or their Servants to take care of it, shifting Officers in their Quarters refusing them those Indulgencies which Officers of other Regts. serving with them enjoyed and making use of disrespectful and illiberal language to Officers before the Soldiers…” [12] These were but some of the complaints lodged against Campbell by the officers.  Shortly after the evacuation of Savannah in July 1782, a new advocate appeared on the scene for the officers, one who had earned respect in combat in three grueling years of fighting in the south: John Coffin. 

John Coffin — like the majority of officers in the regiment (and unlike Campbell) — hailed from a prestigious family. The New Englander started his military career somewhat oddly in a regiment raised in the Hudson Valley, Lt. Col. John Bayard’s King’s Orange Rangers. [13] After a series of run-ins with a fellow officer, Lt. John Cummings, Coffin found he could no longer stay, at least comfortably, in the Rangers. [14] In July 1778 he exchanged units with Captain John Howard, an officer in similar circumstances in his own corps, thereafter serving in the New York Volunteers. [15] The New York Volunteers, one of the first Provincial units raised in the war, would serve with distinction for the following four years in the south. Coffin, at the head of the regiment’s light infantry company, fought at the taking and defense of Savannah, Brier Creek, Purysburg, Siege of Charleston, Rocky Mount, Hobkirk’s Hill, Eutaw Springs and numerous other skirmishes. Serving with aplomb for a lengthy period as a brevet major, he soon found a new home where the rank would be permanent. “Having distinguished himself very particularly” as a brevet major, Coffin was commissioned major of the King’s American Regiment on 28 August 1782, the predecessor James Grant having passed away earlier that year on a voyage to New York City. [16]

While with his new corps in Charleston and later back in New York after the British evacuated the south, Coffin had many conversations and observations concerning Lt. Col. Campbell’s conduct as a commanding officer. He bonded with the captains and subalterns, which no doubt drew the unfavorable notice of Lt. Col. Campbell.

In recognition of their spirited service, the King’s American Regiment was elevated to the British Establishment on 25 December 1782, in effect making them a regular British regiment. The ranks of the officers would now be permanent anywhere in the British Empire. [17]

An Officer in the King’s American Regiment, 1780-1782. Courtesy of Don Troiani.

Despite this good news, the end of hostilities allowed old grudges that had been brewing to surface within the regiment. Captain DePeyster was once again put under arrest by Lt. Col. Campbell, charged with inciting mutiny within the regiment, disobedience of orders, neglect of duty and a host of other charges. He was acquitted of all of them by general court martial. [18]

It was now Campbell’s turn to be accused and tried. Virtually every one of the officers under his command stepped forward and detailed the tension in the regiment and the terrible fatigues it had undergone, and how Lt. Col. Campbell had contributed negatively to everything. The court agreed. They found him guilty of falsely accusing Captain DePeyster, not accounting for large sums of the regiment’s money and acting in a tyrannical and oppressive manner. For all of these, he was sentenced to be suspended without pay for six months. [19]

But the tension was not over. Major Coffin had not served long in the regiment, but what he had seen and experienced led him to an instant dislike of Campbell. After the sentence of the court a “fracas” occurred in the street between the two officers, which led to a serious verbal exchange. Coffin then took to “posting” Campbell in public places; that is to say, he wrote extremely inflammatory pieces about him and put them up in public places to draw Campbell into a duel, or send him away in disgrace.

What had caused such hot-headed emotions between the two senior officers present with the regiment? Delicacy, in the 18th Century manner. This life-and-death struggle centered around the regimental clerk, Sergeant James Perkins, being illegally detained by Lt. Col. Campbell to transcribe all his legal proceedings after his being suspended from duty. Upon being ordered to join the corps, after Campbell’s suspension, the disgraced lieutenant colonel made us of “the most rude & violent Expressions, in which Colo. Campbell thought proper pointedly to make use of” against Major Coffin. [20]

The indelicate words would not pass unnoticed, leading to verbal, public exchanges of no doubt further indelicate expressions against each other. The next time they met, the morning of Saturday, 19 July 1783, matters would finally be settled as honor dictated in that age. An event of this sort today would make the back pages of all the tabloid newspapers in the city as well as a lead story on the 11:00 news. Yet in the turmoil of 1783, it went completely unmentioned in all three newspapers in the city. It certainly wasn’t for a want of witnesses.  We are fortunate in having no less than four accounts of the encounter, at least three of whom by Loyalist officers, writing to a brother officer then serving on the island of Jamaica.

Stephen Millidge, a surgeon’s mate in the 1st Battalion, New Jersey Volunteers wrote on the gloomy prospects of evacuating New York, but added the following note: “as we have no public enemies to fight, hostilities are commencing with each other. To give you a specimen, know that Lt. Col. Campbell, the person whose name our friend Hatton [21] has so often wrote is possessed of personal bravery, that since you left us Major Coffin after a long quarrel and a number of reciprocal threats called him to the field of action and was, after exchanging two shots each, wounded in the Groin. The Friends of C----n are much afraid it may prove mortal. [22]

Garret Clopper, an officer in the New York Volunteers, wrote of the action the day it occurred: “This Morning Lt. Col. Campbell & Major Coffin Exchanged two shots each at 5 Yards Distance. Poor Coffin receiv’d a Ball in the Groin & pronounced Dangerous. Campbell just scratched on the Right Thigh by one shot, & the other a Button knock’d of[f] his Coat. Damn’d good shots. The Occasion of this Business was a Dispute between Campbell & Coffin – the Latter Posted the former – they met in the street…” [23]

The duel took place near the Merchant’s Coffee House, pictured on the right as it appeared from 1772 to 1804.“Coffee-House Slip (foot of Wall Street),” 1832. Courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collections, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs.

One witness who was more optimistic for Major Coffin’s future health was Lt. William Chew of the Royal Garrison Battalion who closed a letter of his own saying “One Thing I had almost forgot We have had the devil to pay between Col. Campbell and Major Coffin of the KAR Who from the gritty Language of Scoundrel & Rascal posting at the Coffee house Street fireing &c the Grand dispute was finally Settled on Saturday Morning the 19th In a duel When poor Coffin was very badly Wounded in the Groin but from the opinion of the Surgeons he likely to do very well…” [24] An unidentified correspondent wrote matter-of-factly “…the Parties this Morning met, when Coffin received a Ball in his right Groin, which is not extractable, and ‘tis thought will prove Mortal – so has the matter ended.” [25]

Even though dueling was prohibited by the articles of war, once it was established Major Coffin did not send a challenge to Campbell (also against regulations) the board of enquiry let the matter drop. The last thing the British needed in the middle of evacuating thousands of troops and Loyalists was another lengthy, high-profile trial. Both officers would soon be leaving New York behind them. Campbell would go to England and remain under suspension until December 1783, at which point he was reduced to half-pay as a seconded officer, although retaining his rank for life. This was significant, as within a few years he would depart for India, where he would eventually rise in rank to major general. As for “poor Coffin” he would indeed recover from his wounds, leading the embarkation of the King’s American Regiment for Nova Scotia in September 1783, arriving at what is now Saint John, New Brunswick on the 26th of that month. Coffin would go on to own some 6,000 acres of land in his new home, holding many civil positions and likewise becoming a general in the army. Despite a musket ball to the groin, Coffin would live until 1838, about 87 years old. [26]

It is not known if this was the final duel in New York City during the British occupation, but it was certainly the most public. Of course, dueling would continue in the metropolitan area well after the British departed (see: Hamilton/Burr).

Todd Braisted is an author and researcher of Loyalist military studies. His primary focus is on Loyalist military personnel, infrastructure and campaigns throughout North America. Since 1979, Braisted has amassed and transcribed over 40,000 pages of Loyalist and related material from archives and private collections around the world. He has authored numerous journal articles and books, as well as appearing as a guest historian on episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? (CBC) and History Detectives (PBS). He is the creator of royalprovincial.com, the largest website dedicated to Loyalist military studies. Braisted is a Fellow in the Company of Military Historians and a past-president of the Bergen County Historical Society.

[1] Sarah Winslow to Benjamin Marston, New York, April 10, 1783.  W.O. Raymond (ed).  Winslow Papers, A.D. 1776–1826 (Saint John, New Brunswick: Sun Printing Company Ltd, 1901), 78-79.

[2] “Return of Loyalists and Troops sailed for the undermentioned Places, N. York 10th October 1783.” War Office, Class 60, Volume 27, Bundle 22, Great Britain, The National Archives. Hereafter cited as TNA.

[3] The Royal Gazette, July 30, 1783.

[4] “Return of Dragoon Horses sold by Auction on the 14th 15th and 16th April 1783.” Headquarters Papers of the British Army in America, PRO 30/55/7491, TNA.

[5] Regimental Orders of 18 December 1776. Orderly Book of the King's American Regiment, University of Michigan, William L. Clements Library. Hereafter cited as CL.

[6] "Distribution of Monies and Necessaries, from the Voluntary Contributions, Collected for the Encouragement and Support of the Provincial Forces raised in the Province of New York." Sackville–Germain Papers, Volume 16, CL.

[7] Proclamation of Sir William Howe, 21 April 1777. The New York Gazette and the Weekly Mercury, April 21, 1777.

[8] "A Return of Killed & Wounded of the King's American Regt. Commanded by Colonel Edmund Fanning 29th Augt. [written] September 26th 1778." Frederick Mackenzie Papers, CL.

[9] Court Martial Proceedings for Captain Abraham DePeyster, 8 – 9 September 1778. War Office, Class 71, Volume 87, pages 219–225, TNA.

[10] Court Martial Proceedings for Captain Isaac Atwood, 10 – 11 September 1778. War Office 71/87/225–231, TNA.

[11] Campbell had been taken at sea first en route to Nova Scotia to temporarily take command of another New York regiment, the King’s Orange Rangers, whose commander was then under arrest for murder; after being exchanged he was then taken again in April 1779 heading to Savannah, Georgia to attempt to raise a cavalry unit. His capture at Georgetown was by the famous Continental Army partisan “Light Horse” Henry Lee, who left Campbell behind on parole. Nisbet Balfour to Sir Henry Clinton, Charleston, 31 January 1781. Cornwallis Papers, PRO 30/11/109, folio 10, TNA.

[12] Testimony of Robert Gray. Proceedings of the Court Martial of Lt. Col. George Campbell, 3 April 1783.  War Office 71/97/88-265, TNA.

[13] Coffin’s commission as captain was dated 19 January 1777. Muster Roll of Coffin’s Company, King’s Orange Rangers, Fort Knyphausen, April 1778. RG 8, “C” Series, Volume 1908, Library and Archives Canada.

[14] Court Martial Proceedings for Lt. John Cummings, 3-4 December 1777.  War Office 71/85/25-31, TNA.

[15] The exchange was effective 29 July 1778. The New-York Gazette and the Weekly Mercury, August 17, 1778.

[16] The Royal Gazette (New York), August 31, 1782.

[17] T. Townshend to the Secretary at War, 21 January 1783. Headquarters Papers, PRO 30/55/6793, TNA.

[18] General Orders of 9 February 1783. Sir Guy Carleton Orderly Book, pages 103–104, CL.

[19] General Orders of 26 May 1783. War Office 28/9/413–414, TNA.

[20] Draft of defense of Major Coffin in Court of Enquiry, June 1783. AHMC–Coffin, John, New-York Historical Society.

[21] Lieutenant John Hatton, 3rd Battalion, New Jersey Volunteers.

[22]  Millidge to Captain Gideon White, New York, July 1783. White Collection, MG 1, Volume 948, folio 219, Nova Scotia Archives. Hereafter cited as NSA.

[23] Clopper to White, New York, 19 July 1783. White Collection, folio 215, NSA.

[24] Chew to White, New York, July 1783. White Collection, folio 220, NSA.

[25] Unsigned letter to White, New York, 19 July 1783. White Collection, folio 216, NSA.

[26] Robert S. Elliot, “COFFIN, JOHN (d. 1838),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 7, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed February 18, 2024, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/coffin_john_1838_7E.html.