My search for answers resulted in this study, which looks not only at the regiment’s formation and operations but also how it reflected and advanced the enterprise of the Continental Army and construction of the American union that became a nation. As I transcribed the journal, I compiled questions about the regiment. Bound long ago with sections out of order and gaps indicating where Hawkins or time lost his daybooks, the journal revealed an alert observer who wielded a pointed pen and an active regiment that bore arms and axes from Canada to Virginia and back again. The brown leather volume held some of the original small memorandum books in which Hawkins had recorded personal and regimental notes.
In search of soldiers’ stories that might reveal a developing consciousness of American identity, I had opened his journal at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Hawkins introduced me to Congress’s Own Regiment ages ago. 30 to kick off our 2021-22 Read the Revolution Speaker Series. With thanks to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Hawkins’s surviving journal will be on view for one night only during Mayer’s discussion on Congress's Own on Sept. Several years later, in 1782, Hawkins recognized the rising importance of names and numbers in settling the regiment’s accounts with Congress and wrote down a list of members that can be compared with later rolls. After the Battle of Brandywine, he itemized the personal things he lost while escaping the British Highlanders, a pack of lost items now recreated as a hands-on discovery cart at the Museum. Hawkins, who wrote meticulous accounts of his experience serving with Congress’s Own in his journal. One member of the regiment was Sergeant John H.
In Congress’s Own: A Canadian Regiment, the Continental Army, and American Union, Mayer interweaves insights from borderlands and community studies with military history to explore one of the first “national” regiments created by the Continental Congress in 1776, which drew members from Canada, 11 American states, and foreign forces. Mayer reveals what the personal passions, hardships, and accommodations of the 2nd Canadian Regiment, nicknamed “Congress’s Own,” can tell us about the greater military and civil dynamics of the American Revolution.