Scottish-born Alexander McDougall served in the Sons of Liberty and then as a military leader in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. He also served for a short period in 1781 in the Continental Congress. It is for his military service during the American Revolution that he is most remembered for.

He was born in the Parish of Kildalton, on the island of Islay, Scotland, due west of Glasgow and directly north of northern Ireland, in either 1731 or 1732—the son and second of five children of Ranald (some sources list his name as “Ronald”) McDougall and Elizabeth (maiden name unknown) McDougall, both Scottish farmers. [1] In 1738, when Alexander McDougall was six or seven, his parents left Scotland. Historian David Dobson relates the cause of their migration: “Throughout the Middle Colonies, and particularly in the cities of New York and Philadelphia, there were Scottish merchants, lawyers, and civil servants who were interconnected through blood and business. These Scottish merchants were in turn linked with other Scottish merchants in Scotland, London, the West Indies, and elsewhere within the thirteen colonies . . . in 1734 the governor of New York invited Protestants from Europe to settle on the northern frontiers of the province, where they would be allocated land. Captain Lachlan Campbell subsequently brought several shiploads of Highlanders, 423 in all, from his native Islay you settle in New York in 1738, 1739, 1740, and 1742.” [2] However, the McDougalls settled not in these “northern frontiers” but in New York City, where the elder McDougall became a milkman.

McDougall became a seaman during the French and Indian War. He sailed on several privateers, the Tyger and the Barrington, ships not connected with any national naval body, and, in 1751, he returned, albeit for a short time, to his native Islay. There, he married a cousin, Nancy McDougall, and together the couple had three children before her death in 1763. McDougall then married Hannah Bostwick in 1767; she would survive him, remarrying the Reverend Azel Roe after McDougall’s death. There were no children from McDougall’s second marriage.

Following the end of the war, McDougall returned to New York, where he became a merchant. In a letter written by one William Smith, it was said of McDougall, “At the End of it [the war] he went into Trade & injoying [sic] a tolerable Fortune acquired by his own Bravery & Industry & having Youth of his side and very Strong Parts he gave himself to hard Study & made very singular Advancemts in the Cultivation of his Mind.” [3] He went to Albany and saw firsthand the politics of the New York colonial Assembly, although he did not get involved in the crisis over The Stamp Act in 1765 and 1766. He allied himself with the more moderate faction in New York politics led by the Livingston family, which counseled for reconciliation, rather than opposition, to English rule in the colonies.

In 1769, everything seems to have changed for McDougall. That year, a broadside appeared in New York, entitled “To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New-York. My Dear Fellow Citizens and Countrymen, in a Day When the Minions of Treachery and Despotism in the Mother Country, and the Colonies, are Indefatigable in Laying Ever Snare That Their Malvevolent [sic] and Corrupt Hearts Can Suggest, to Enslave a Free People. [Signed], A Son of Liberty. New-York, Dec. 16th, 1769.” Printed by James Packer of New York, the open letter denounced the New York colonial Assembly for granting money to support British troops in New York. The letter also claimed that a majority of the Assembly was forced to vote for the bill. The royal lieutenant governor of New York called the charge “a false, seditious and infamous libel,” and he offered a reward of £100 to uncover who had penned the broadside. In February 1770, two months after the broadside was published, James Parker, the publisher, was arrested, and his records showed that McDougall was the author of the diatribe. On 8 February 1770, McDougall was arrested, and put into prison. [4]

The case would become an early landmark in the area of seditious libel in America. Historian Harold L. Nelson added, “While out on bail, he was hailed before the assembly, which used an order charging libel to confront him, and there he protested that he was being placed in double jeopardy. His recalcitrance caused the assembly to jail him for breach of privilege (contempt). Repeated delays by the government in bringing him to trial on the libel charge, in spite of his attorney’s requests for trial, indicate that the government was not confident of its case and perhaps unwilling to face an aroused public opinion. The court discharged the defendant without trial.” [5] Historian Bernard Friedman wrote:

The young lawyer, Peter Van Schaack, conveniently sums up the aftermath to the Assembly’s action: “On Sunday, a good deal of noise was made on account of some anonymous papers filled with the most violent and indecent expressions charging a combination between the Governor, Council, and the ascendent party in the House of the Assembly, the DeLanceys, to trample upon the Liberties of the people in order, as they said, on the part of the Lieutenant Governor to keep his peace at home, and on the part of DeLanceys, to prevent a dissolution.” One of the papers referred to by Van Schaack was, of course, the famous “To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York,” from which was to follow the incarceration of Alexander McDougall and his celebration, with attendant rites, as the American Wilkes. [6]

For a time, McDougall refused bail. He issued a statement from prison, that “The Arm of Power could not perhaps, have fallen on a Subject more fearless of its Menaces.”

Edward Floyd DeLancey, one of the anti-Livingston faction, wrote of McDougall’s broadside: “The method lately used in New York to post up inflammatory handbills, was the same as used in England at the time of the Pretender. It was done by a man who carried a little boy in a box like a magic lantern, and while he leaned against the wall, as if to rest himself, the boy drew back the slide, pasted on the paper, and shutting himself up again, the man took the proper occasion to walk off to another resting place.” [7]

Released from prison, McDougall now found himself among the radicals who desired full confrontation with England over a series of harsh economic measures enacted by the so-called “Mother Country” against the colonies. When the crisis between London and the colonies continued, McDougall became more and more radicalized. By 1774 he had joined the New York Committee of Correspondence, and served as a member of the Committee of Fifty-One, a group of New Yorkers opposed to protest the Coercive Acts. Historian Bernard Friedman stated, “The lack of class definition in the radical camp is further emphasized by the middle-class origins of the better-known radical leaders. Isaac Sears, John Lamb, Alexander McDougall almost perfectly fit Colden’s category of parvenue merchants. The Committee of Mechanics, which appeared in the final stage of the colonial crisis, may have represented a more highly differentiated state of radical opinion, but it seems to have been led by a petit bourgeois element among the artisan-tradesmen of New York City.” [8]

The crisis took a turn towards war when British and American troops fired on one another at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. The colonial response to the dual clashes was unique. Historian Roger Champagne explained, “The response of New York’s radical triumvirate of Isaac Sears, John Lamb, and Alexander McDougall was perhaps uniquely different from developments elsewhere. Identified since 1765 as leaders of New York’s Sons of Liberty, Sears, Lamb, and McDougall, merchants of modest fortune and middle age, had an off again-on again personal relationship that was largely determined by their involvement in the rivalry of the Livingston and DeLancey factions for political power in the colony.” [9]

To protest the “Tea Act,” punishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony for the Boston Tea Party, McDougall warned the first British ship carrying English tea that if it entered New York harbor it would be attacked. A second vessel, deciding to ignore the warning, did dock with tea, but a group of the Sons of Liberty went on board and threw the tea into the water. McDougall served in the First and Second Provincial Congresses in New York in 1774 and 1774. On 6 July 1774, he presided over the “Meeting in the Fields.” Historian Carl Becker wrote, “The meeting of the Fields, July 6, which had contributed more than anything to the fiasco at the city hall, had been presided over, and very likely instigated and called, by a member of the Fifty-One, without its sanction, in his mere private property.” [10]

In 1775, McDougall entered the military, when he was appointed as a colonel of the First New York Regiment. The following year he was named as a brigadier general in the Continental Army, and, in 1777, as a major general. In 1776, he was elected as a member of the New York provincial assembly, in its final election before independence, but, because of the movement towards the breaking away of the colonies from England, the royal governor, William Tryon, refused to call the Assembly to convene, and it was never held. McDougall saw action at the battles of White Plains (28 October 1776) and Germantown (4 October 1777). A document in the papers of General George Washington as well as those of McDougall show that a “Council of War” was held in New York on 12 September 1776, at McDougall’s headquarters, in which “[t]he General read a Letter signed by some general Officers proposing that there should be a Reconsideration of the Matter determined in Council last week with Respect to the State & farther Disposition of the Troops. The Question was put whether the Determination of last Week Should be reconsidered & the Opinions as follow.” The list shows that McDougall voted to reconsider the question. We find McDougall’s name across many of the documents and history of the period. Defending the Hudson River Valley, the Scottish-born officer saw the worst moments of the war for the American cause. Historian Paul David Nelson wrote, “As the dismal campaign of 1776 unfolded, many rebel officers joined Washington in criticizing the largely militia armies of America, generally for military reasons . . . Alexander McDougall reported to Washington in December that the militia were deserting him in such numbers that he could not patrol the country around Morristown.” [11]

McDougall also was considered one of the better officers in the Continental Army. Samuel Adams wrote to James Warren on 17 September 1777, “We are told that the Enemy have landed in the Jerseys, 4000 strong. You can tell whether they have left Rhode Island. I have Reason to hope that an equal Number of spirited Jersey Militia are mustered under the Command of General [John] Dickinson, Brother of the late Patriot. These were designed for a Reinforcement to the Army here. If the Report be true, these Militia joynd [sic] with 1500 Troops from Peeks Kill (undoubtedly now in Jersey) under the Command of Brigr. General McDougal [sic], will be sufficient to give a good Account of them.” [12] According to historian Simon Gratz, McDougall served as a major general from 20 October 1777 to 3 November 1783. [13]

Placed by Washington in command of the Hudson River Valley, McDougall was given only 300 troops to ward off a British attack. On 27 March 1777, the British moved 20 ships and 600 troops to fight McDougall and his forces. Although the British had the numerical advantage, nevertheless the Americans held and the British were driven back. Two months later, however, McDougall asked Washington to be relieved of duty, although he was left in command of the area until mid-1778. In September 1777, Washington ordered McDougall to move south, to Pennsylvania, to reinforce the American forces there. It was in this capacity that McDougall saw action at Germantown, supplementing the armies of Washington and General Nathanael Greene, and giving both armies cover during the retreat that followed. In 1778, after Major General Israel Putnam was defeated in the Hudson area, McDougall was dispatched to look into the causes of the defeat, and he recommended Putnam’s removal; McDougall was then given the command of Putnam’s troops. Washington wrote to him, “The vast importance of it [control of the Hudson] has determined me to confide it in you.” After General Benedict Arnold was implicated in treason and forced to flee to the British lines, McDougall was named as his successor as the commander of West Point.

On 12 September 1780, the New York State Assembly elected McDougall to a seat in the Continental Congress, despite his having very little political experience. Nevertheless, he served from 17 January to 28 February 1781. According to historian Edmund Cody Burnett, on 27 February 1781 “McDougall was chosen [as the] Secretary of Marine, but he stipulated certain conditions respecting the retention of his rank in the army, and, when Congress refused to accede, he declined the office.” He then resigned his seat in Congress, having made little to no impact on the body. No published letters to or from him during the period seem to exist. [14]

Returned to military duty, in 1782 McDougall became involved in a dispute with fellow General William Heath, which led to McDougall’s arrest and court-martial for seven charges of insubordination. He was acquitted of all but one, and given a verbal reprimand for the conviction on the single count. With the end of the war, McDougall was elected to the New York State Senate, where he served from 1783 to 1786. Some sources report that McDougall served a second tenure in the Continental Congress, from 1784 to 1785, but his official congressional biography does not list this, and official sources report that he only served the single time in office. [15] In 1784, he helped to found the Bank of New York, and served as the bank’s president from 9 June 1784 to 9 May 1785. [16] He also served as the president of the New York Society of the Cincinnati, a patriotic veterans’ group formed by those who fought in the American Revolution. [17]

A year after leaving his post as the president of the Bank of New York, McDougall died in New York City on 9 June 1786, in his mid-fifties. He was buried in the First Presbyterian Churchyard in Manhattan, located at 5th Avenue and West 12th Street.

Following his arrest in 1770, McDougall wrote on 9 February of that year, “Amidst all the Engines, there employed to render public Villany [sic] triumphant over Virtue and Law, no Minister has been so presumptuous, no State Artificer so audacious, as to violate this Palladium of British Freedom . . . What in Britain no Man dare to attempt, let none expect to see accomplished in America; for tho’ there be among us of Sycophants many, and of Miscreants actuated by slavish Principles, and destitute of any Principles at all, not a few; still of Men of Spirit also, of avowed, determined, inflexible Friends of Liberty, there is a numerous Multitude. I therefore rejoice, that on me the Trial is to be made. That I rejoice that I am the first Sufferer for Liberty since the Commencement of our glorious Struggles, and if my Sufferings shall in the least conduce to promote the Cause, I shall esteem my Confinement a singular Felicity, and my very Bonds (however I abhor even the momentary Loss of personal Liberty) Glory and Triumph.” And these sentiments, of liberty, of freedom, came from a man born not in America but in the United Kingdom.