John Skey Eustace (10 August 1760 in Flushing, Province of New York, British America – 25 August 1805 in Newburgh, New York) was an officer and a veteran of both the American and French Revolutionary Wars.The Papers of the Revolutionary Era Pinckney Statesmen Digital Edition, ed. Constance B. Schulz. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2016. A mercurial figure, Eustace was a revolutionary soldier, colonel of the Continental Army (1781), and maréchal de camp in the French Revolutionary Army between 1792 and 1793. In 1794 he supported the Batavian revolution and was arrested for a short time. In February 1797 he was expelled from France, suspected of spying for the British. He was arrested in Dover for his advice to the Dutch revolutionaries and subsequently expelled from England, after which he traveled to America and retired in New York. Eustace regularly published his official and private correspondence. Eustace was close to and corresponded with several of the Founding Fathers, however he was also regarded as a political adventurer of doubtful purpose and character.WILLIAM S. DALLAM: AN AMERICAN TOURIST IN REVOLUTIONARY PARIS by Robert L, Dietle, page 155
Life
John Skey Eustace was the grandson of Colonel Lauchlin Campbell, a Scottish immigrant living at Campbell Hall, Orange County, New York. From 1738 to 1740 Campbell brought 83 families from Scotland to New York at his own expense on the false promise of land grants from the New York colonial governor William Cosby. His daughter Margaret (1733-1809) was born on Islay (Inner Hebrides) and married at a young age to Dr. John Eustace (1720-1769), a colonial physician and justice of the peace who corresponded with Laurence Sterne. Around 1764 his father left his family and moved to Wilmington, North Carolina. John's sister Kitty had become Lord Dunmore’s mistress when she was still a teenager and he was governor of New York. On gaining his post in Virginia in 1771, Dunmore arrived with Kitty’s mother and little brother in tow. Eustace grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, where his mother ran a boarding house. She was friendly with Thomas Burke. Dunmore arranged for young John’s education, first with a tutor and then at the College of William & Mary.
In late 1775, Dunmore sent Eustace to Boston with a letter to Gen. William Howe recommending him for a post in the British army. His travel companion, a British officer, was concealing Lord Dunmore's military plans. Somehow the fifteen-year-old ended up being marched to the headquarters of General George Washington, the opposing commander-in-chief. He joined the Continental Army during the Siege of Boston.MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF THE LATE CHARLES LEE After the Continental Army was reorganized Eustace served successively as an aide-de-camp to Charles Lee, Joseph Reed, John Sullivan (1777) and Nathanael Greene (1779).
Eustace participated in the repulse of the first British attack on Charleston, Battles of Trenton, Princeton, and Germantown. In 1778 he was at the siege of Newport, during the military campaign of 1779 against the Iroquois and loyalists on the New York border, known as the "Sullivan Expedition". General Lee regarded him as his adopted son and declared him as his heir,“To Alexander Hamilton from John Skey Eustace, [27 October 1798],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-22-02-0127. [Original source: The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 22, July 1798 – March 1799, ed. Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975, pages 213–216.] but Eustace decided to desert the unpredictable Lee after Lee's defeat at the Battle of Monmouth. Lee was subsequently court-martialed and his military service was brought to an end. Lee was succeeded by Von Steuben.Alexander Hamilton: An Important Family Archive of Letters and Manuscripts
Eustace was taught the essentials of military drills, tactics, and discipline based on Prussian techniques by Von Steuben who protected him.C. Tozzi (2016) Foreign, Black, and Jewish troops in the French military, 1715–1831, page 248 In 1779 Eustace proposed an interview with Colonel Archibald Campbell, a respected and perhaps related governor of Georgia.“From George Washington to Thomas Burke, 28 March 1779,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-19-02-0615. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, volume 19, 15 January–7 April 1779, ed. Philander D. Chase and William M. Ferraro. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009, pp. 631–632.] In January 1780 he resigned from the army but not from war. He was involved in the Battle of the Chesapeake and appointed colonel on 29 August 1781 of the militia in State of Georgia by Nathan Brownson. In the same year he became adjutant general and assisted governor Stephen Heard. Living in Augusta, Georgia he contacted Governor Morris. In 1782 he lived in Ebenezer, Georgia;CALENDAR OF THE SPARKS MANUSCRIPTS IN HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY, WITH AN APPENDIX SHOWING OTHER MANUSCRIPTS. BY JUSTIN WINSOR, page 37 now a ghost town then the capital.
During the American Revolution, many Georgians and Carolinians moved to Florida along with their slaves. In December he was sent on a mission to Saint-Augustine, East Florida to deal with the council (Gen. Tonyn) on captured slaves. In March he returned to Charlestown.
On 6 May 1783, Carleton and George Washington met face to face for the first time after years of long-distance communication; Carleton made it clear to Washington that the ex-slaves would not be returned to their former masters.Lacey Hunter (2018) An Expansive Subjecthood in Eighteenth-Century British North America: The Life and Perspectives of Sir Guy Carleton, pages 68-70
In September 1783, Britain accepted American independence, and the war officially ended. Eustace became a member of the Society of the Cincinnati and practiced briefly as a lawyer. He was invited to a general meeting of the Society in Philadelphia, in May 1784, but did not attend.“II. Winthrop Sargent’s Journal, 4–18 May,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-01-02-0236-0003. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, volume 1, 1 January 1784 – 17 July 1784, ed. W. W. Abbot. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992, pages 332–354.] Several times he had met with the well-informed lawyer Francisco de Miranda travelling from North-Carolina to Massachusetts.Miranda, Diary, page 14. Cf. Eustace, Le citoyen des États-Unis d'Amérique, pages 6‑7.William Spence Robertson (1929) The Life of Miranda Eustace to Miranda, October 3, 1783, Mir. MSS., volume 5.William Spence Robertson (1929) The Life of Miranda At the end of 1783, Eustace sailed to Cuba, Trinidad and Venezuela to learn Spanish. He may have been influenced by the dynamic Miranda who had a secret project to emancipate the Kingdom of Venezuela from Spanish rule. He then lived in Madrid, where he opened a snuff, cigar and tobacco shop. In 1787, he visited Havanna and London. With the encouragement of Miranda, he complained to the Spanish court about abuses he had suffered at the hands of colonial officials.“To George Washington from Saint-Jean, 24 June 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-03-02-0020. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, vol. 3, 15 June 1789–5 September 1789, ed. Dorothy Twohig. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989, pages 66–68.] They unsuccessfully tried to interest a friend of Miranda, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, in a project for the liberation of Venezuela.Official and private correspondence of Major-General J.S. Eustace, citizen of the state of New York. (1796)
France Between 1789 and 1791, John S. Eustace lived in Bordeaux, and kept George Washington and Thomas Jefferson informed of the events of the French Revolution.George Washington Papers, Series 2, Letterbooks 1754 to 1799: Letterbook 22,- Aug. 24, 1790. - August 24, 1790, 1788. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw2.022/. With the support of the American consulate, he applied to the Minister of War (Marquis de Grave) with a request for naturalization and admission as a volunteer to the French army.C. Tozzi (2016) Foreign, Black, and Jewish troops in the French military, 1715–1831, page 135, 260 Therefore, he met mayor Pétion de Villeneuve, minister of war Servan, his successor Bouchotte and minister of finance Clavière.
On 20 April 1792, Eustace was accepted into the French service with the rank of colonel and sent to Orchies, Valenciennes and Menen at the border.Le citoyen des États-Unis d'Amérique, Jean-Skey Eustace. A ses frères d’armes, Paris 1793 On 5 June, he was appointed in the staff of the Northern Army (Armée de Belgique) under Nicolas Luckner. He refused to join Marquis de LaFayette, his successor. The goal was to liberate Austrian Netherlands. Eustace was introduced to Louis-Alexandre Berthier. On 9 July he was promoted to field marshal and on 7 September brigadier general under Charles-Francois Dumouriez. He participated in the battles of Valmy and the Jemappes, commanding an infantry brigade. On 20 November Eustace occupied the city of Lier where he planted a Tree of Liberty and ordered local authorities to rename the city square in honor of General Washington. He also issued instructions to rename various boulevards in the town in honor of himself, general Dumouriez and several French deputies.
On 29 November, Eustace sent a letter to the commander of Maastricht demanding the surrender of French emigrants who had taken refuge in this Dutch city. He then personally visited Maastricht, where he dined with Major General Prince von Hesse-Darmstadt, the German commander in Austrian service. As a result, he was removed from command, according to himself no longer part of the army. On 13 December, Miranda the only general from Latin America in French service took over. Dumouriez planned to arrest and sent Eustace to Paris to explain his behavior before the Convention Nationale. However, Eustace ignored the order and, claiming to be dangerously ill, retired to the Carmelite nuns at Tongerlo Abbey, where he successfully resisted an attempt to question and arrest him.
On 1 February 1793 the French First Republic declared war on the monarch of Great Britain and William V of Orange, stadtholder of the Dutch Republic.Rosendaal, J. (2003), Bataven! Nederlandse vluchtelingen in Frankrijk 1787-1795, p. 382 By mid-February Lazare Carnot proposed that annexation be undertaken on behalf of French interests whether or not the people to be annexed so wished.P. Howe (2018) Foreign Policy and the French Revolution, pages 154-155 It seems both Eustace and Miranda disagreed; on 14 March Eustace wrote a letter to Dumouriez.
After the disaster at the Battle of Neerwinden (1793) Eustace returned to Antwerp. On 20 March Danton and Delacroix were sent to his headquarters at Saint-Amand-les-Eaux to interrogate Dumouriez and sent Miranda, Valence, Luckner, etc. back to Paris. Aware that if he returned to Paris he would probably be executed, Dumouriez turned to the Austrians. Dumouriez's defection on 5 April changed the course of the events.