John Graves Simcoe was commissioned to command the Queen's Rangers in 1777. The regiment was composed almost entirely of American Loyalists who brought detailed knowledge of the terrain, roads, and political geography of their home colonies. Simcoe commanded them through operations in New Jersey, Virginia, and the Chesapeake. He wrote a journal of those operations published in 1787. It is at the Internet Archive from the John Carter Brown Library collection at Brown University.
Simcoe took command of the Queen's Rangers in October 1777 following the Battle of Brandywine. He reorganized it into a combined-arms unit with infantry, cavalry, and rifle companies, developing tactics around speed and local intelligence. His journal records the New Jersey and New York operations in detail: routes taken, intelligence received, actions fought, and results achieved. The journal's account provides a Loyalist unit commander's perspective on the war in the middle states that few other sources offer.
The object of the enterprise was as important as any that had occurred during the war, and the conduct of the Queen's Rangers, through the whole of it, would do honour to veteran troops of any nation.
In January 1781, Simcoe and his Queen's Rangers participated in the British raid on Richmond under the command of Benedict Arnold. Governor Thomas Jefferson fled the capital. Simcoe's Virginia operations continued through the spring of 1781, engaging with Lafayette's forces. He was captured in June 1781 during a cavalry engagement and held as a prisoner until after Yorktown. He was exchanged and returned to Britain before the formal end of the war.
Simcoe was appointed the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada in 1791, serving until 1796. He founded the town of York, present-day Toronto, as the provincial capital. He promoted Loyalist settlement, established the legal framework of the province, and passed the Act Against Slavery of 1793, one of the first anti-slavery legislative acts in the British Empire. The Queen's Rangers exist today as the Queen's York Rangers, a reserve regiment of the Canadian Forces.
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