Four Viceroys

General John Burgoyne.

The era of the Four Viceroys was a period of North American history between the end of the North American Rebellion in June 1778 and the initiation of the Britannic Design in July 1782. The era was named for the four British generals who ruled British North America between the fall of the Second Continental Congress and the investiture of General John Burgoyne as first Viceroy of the Confederation of North America.

The era of the Four Viceroys can be held to have begun on 12 June 1778, when Joseph Galloway, the President of the Continental Congress, agreed to an armistice that had been negotiated with a commission headed by the Earl of Carlisle. During the two weeks that followed, the remaining leaders of the Continental Army were informed of the armistice, and most surrendered to their British counterparts. By the end of June 1778, the Rebellion had ended except for continued resistance in New Hampshire and western Virginia.

In an effort to maintain order while a new settlement was negotiated between the colonists and the government in London, British North America was divided into four districts, each under the command of a British general. Each general was given viceregal authority in his area, and the right to supercede civil authority when and if necessary. Sir Guy Carleton continued to serve as Governor of Quebec, a post he had held since 1768. Sir William Howe was assigned to command of the district that included the New England colonies of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Burgoyne was assigned to command of the district that included the middle colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Finally, Sir Henry Clinton was assigned to command of the district that included the southern colonies of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

Howe and Clinton had the most difficult assignments, since Massachusetts and Virginia had been the centers of the rebellion. Both were also unsuited by temperament for the role of pacifying the still-rebellious areas of their districts. Resistance to British rule in both districts continued past the era of the Four Viceroys and into the establishment of the Britannic Design. Carlton had an easier time ruling Quebec, an area he was familiar with, and which had been much more Loyalist than the thirteen southern colonies. Burgoyne, for his part, was able to gain considerable public support in his district, even going so far as to marry Mrs. Abigail Conrad, a young widow of rebel sympathies.

Despite the efforts of the "four viceroys", many former rebels were victims of mob violence, with over a thousand being lynched in the year after the armistice. In response to the violence, thousands of former rebels left the North American colonies. A few went to France and Scandinavia, but most took part in the Wilderness Walk, leaving the colonies to found new settlements beyond the control of the British government.

Early in 1780 a group of about 1,000 former rebels from the New England and middle colonies traveled down the Ohio River to the Mississippi, then crossed over to enter Spanish Louisiana, after which they disappeared. A larger group, led by former General Nathanael Greene, travelled overland from Virginia to the province of Tejas in New Spain between June 1780 and September 1782. There, they established the settlement of Jefferson.

The Four Viceroys remained in power until the Britannic Design went into effect on 2 July 1782, when the thirteen colonies were reorganized into the Northern and Southern Confederations.

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Sobel's sources for the era of the Four Viceroys are Harry Content's Never Give Up: Rebels after the Rebellion (New York, 1950); Ralph Ocon's The People We Left Behind: The Remnant in the C.N.A. (Mexico City, 1959); Daniel Pitchon's Vermont and Western Virginia in the Decades Following the Britannic Design (Mexico City, 1965); Sir Douglas Carlisle's The Four Viceroys: Burgoyne, Carleton, Howe, and Clinton (New York, 1967); and Harvey Ritter's Allen's Irregulars: The History of a Brave People (London, 1967).