Loyalists (American Revolutionary War)

“ In South Carolina, and possibly in Georgia also, the Loyalists seem at one time to have preponderated. When the British garrisons at Charleston and Savannah were finally withdrawn, 13,271 Loyalists were enumerated as intending to leave also, including 8,676 blacks. But any calculation is of little avail, for Loyalists were made and unmade by the vicissitudes of the war. In America, as in other countries in revolutionary times, it must be supposed that the stalwarts on either side were very far from including the whole population. ”

“ At Wyoming in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, in July, 1778, during a raid of Loyalists, aided by Indians, there was a brutal massacre, the horrors of which long served to inspire hate for the British. A little later in the same year similar events took place at Cherry Valley, in central New York. Burning houses, the dead bodies not only of men but of women and children scalped by the savage allies of the Loyalists, desolation and ruin in scenes once peaceful and happy—such horrors American patriotism learned to associate with the Loyalists. ”

“ Murder and blood is still their dear delight. So sang a ballad-monger of the Revolution; and the opinion which he voiced persisted after him. According to some American historians [2] of the first half of the nineteenth century, the Loyalists were a comparatively insignificant class of vicious criminals, and the people of the American colonies were all but unanimous in their armed opposition to the British government. ”

“ There were even members of the Church of England in the Boston Tea Party; and there were Presbyterians among the exiles who went to Canada and Nova Scotia. The Revolution was not in any sense a religious war; but religious differences contributed to embitter the conflict, and doubtless made Whigs or Tories of people who had no other interest at stake.
It is commonly supposed that the Loyalists drew their strength from the upper classes in the colonies, while the revolutionists drew theirs from the proletariat. There is just enough truth in this to make it misleading. ”

“ It was not, in fact, until 1776 that Loyalist regiments began to be formed on an extensive scale. There were several reasons why this was so. In the first place a great many of the Loyalists, as has been pointed out, were not at the outset in complete sympathy with the policy of the British government; and those who might have been willing to take up arms were very early disarmed and intimidated by the energy of the revolutionary authorities. ”

“ There were those who were Loyalists because they thought they had picked the winning side, such as the man who candidly wrote from New Brunswick in 1788, ‘I have made one great mistake in politics, for which reason I never intend to make so great a blunder again.’ Many espoused the cause because they were natives of the British Isles, and had not become thoroughly saturated with American ideas: of the claimants for compensation before the Royal Commissioners after the war almost two-thirds were persons who had been born in England, Scotland, or Ireland. ”

“ Those, however, who regard history, not as a means of enforcing certain opinions, but of reflecting the life of the time, are generally agreed that the Loyalists acted from sincere conviction, which led them deliberately to face cruel and prolonged persecution. At the outset of the war they numbered about one third of the population of the States; and, at least 20,000 of them joined the British forces.710 By the end of the war about 60,000 Loyalists were compelled to leave the States, of whom nearly one half settled in the future province of New Brunswick ”

“ Even some of the Loyalists had begun to realize that a revolution which had touched property was bound to be permanent, and that the American commissioners could no more give back to them their confiscated lands than Charles II was able to give back to his father’s cavaliers the estates they had lost in the Civil War. ”

“ Perhaps the most sorrowful phase of the Revolution was the internal conflict waged between its friends and its enemies in America, where neighbor fought against neighbor. During this pitiless struggle the strength of the Loyalists tended steadily to decline; and they came at last to be regarded everywhere by triumphant revolution as a vile people who should bear the penalties of outcasts. In this attitude towards them Boston had given a lead which the rest of the country eagerly followed. To coerce Loyalists local committees sprang up everywhere. ”

“ New men exercised the social influence of the old families, and they naturally dreaded the restoration of those whom they had dispossessed."
At the close of the war, the Revolutionists committed a great crime. Instead of repealing the proscription and banishment acts, as justice and good policy required, they manifested a spirit to place the humbled and unhappy Loyalists beyond the pale of human sympathy. ”

“ Many of the Loyalists had lost all, and depended for their new start in life entirely on the bounty of the government. Others had some means of subsistence left, not a few having served as officers during the Revolutionary War and drawing half-pay. ”

“ Thus they subjected to martial law and to death all who should furnish provisions and certain other articles to the King's troops in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware; and they resolved that all Loyalists taken in arms should be sent to the States to which they belonged, there to be dealt with as traitors" (not as prisoners of war, as were Americans taken in arms against the British) . ”

“ One thing that invests this work with special interest to all Canadians and Britons is that nearly all the histories of the United States, as well as the popular literature of that country, glorify the deeds and character of all who took a part in the Revolutionary war, on the Republican side; but the Loyalists who could not feel justified in fighting against their Sovereign and country, are uniformly painted in the blackest colours, as if they were cowardly and base wretches who had no redeeming qualities. ”

“ Very early in the Revolution the disunionists tried to drive the Loyalists into the rebel militia or into the Continental army by fines, and by obliging them to hire substitutes. The families of men who had fled from the country to escape implication in the impending war were obliged to hire substitutes, and they were fined for the misdeeds of the mercenary whom they had engaged. Fines were even imposed upon neutral and unoffending persons for not preventing their families from entering the British service. ”

“ In New York, New Jersey, the Carolinas, and Georgia, the Loyalists outnumbered the Revolutionists. Even in New England, the nursery of the Revolution, the number was so large and so formidable, in the opinion of the Revolutionary leaders, that in order to suppress them there was established a reign of terror, anticipating the famous "Law of the Suspected" of the French Revolution. ”

“ New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia contained large and influential Loyalist minorities; North Carolina was about equally divided; South Carolina probably, and Georgia certainly, had Loyalist majorities. Some of the Loyalists joined the regular British army, others organized guerilla bands and with their Indian allies inaugurated a reign of terror on the frontier from New York to Georgia. New York alone furnished about 15,000 Loyalists to the British army and navy, and about 8500 militia, making in all 23,500 Loyalist troops. ”

“ Finally, and in general, it may be said that a majority of those who, of whatever occupation, of whatever grade of culture or of wealth, would now be described as conservative people, were Loyalists during the American Revolution. ”

“ The ligaments that connect nations are never less powerful, though less tender, than those which unite individuals, families, and clans. Consanguinity, affinity, alliance, operate alike on each." (Allen's History of the American War.)
"The disaffected, or rather the Loyalists, were a formidable party in the Middle States. They might be forgiven—many of them acted from principle, from a conscientious regard to their duty, from affection to their 'Sovereign,' and however mistaken they may have been, they deserve no censure. ”

“ At the evacuation of New York and Savannah no fewer than 30,000 persons left the United States for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. From northern New York and Vermont the Loyalists crossed over into Upper Canada, and laid the foundations of that prosperous province under the vigorous leadership of Governor Simcoe, who, during the war, commanded a regiment of Loyalist rangers which had done efficient service. Many of the Southern Loyalists settled in Florida, the Bahamas and the West India Islands. ”

“ In the second place that very conservatism which made the Loyalists draw back from revolution hindered them from taking arms until the king gave them commissions and provided facilities for military organization. And there is no fact better attested in the history of the Revolution than the failure of the British authorities to understand until it was too late the great advantages to be derived from the employment of Loyalist levies. The truth is that the British officers did not think much more highly of the Loyalists than they did of the rebels. ”

“ On the other hand, we are now able to do justice to those American Loyalists who honestly believed that the attempt at independence was a mad one, and who sacrificed all they had rather than rebel against their King. ”

“ There were a number of Loyalists in each of the Colonies; many, though not unfriendly to the American cause, had never entered cordially into the quarrel, and the heavy pressure of the war had begun to cool the zeal and exhaust the patience of some who had once been forward in their opposition to Britain. Congress became apprehensive lest a disposition should prevail to accept of the terms proposed by the British government, and the great body of the people be willing to resign the advantages of independence, in order to escape from present calamity. ”

“ If the Loyalists reasoned in this manner, we cannot blame them, unless we are ready to maintain the proposition that the cause of every revolution is necessarily so sacred that those who do not sympathize with it should abstain from opposing it. ”

“ At the close of the war, therefore, instead of witnessing, as in the case of all other civilized nations at the termination of a civil war, however rancorous and cruel, a general amnesty and the restoration of all parties to the rights and property which they enjoyed at the commencement of the strife, the Loyalists found themselves exiled and impoverished, and their enemies in possession of their homes and domains. It is true about 3,000 of the Loyalists were able to employ agents, or appear personally, to apply to the English Government and Parliament for compensation for their losses ”

“ They passed edicts of banishment against the persons, and acts of confiscation against the estates of the Loyalists. They drove them out, poor in purse indeed, but rich in experience, determination, energy, education, intellect and the other qualities which build up states, and with their hearts fired and their energies stimulated with hatred of republicanism. They drove them out 70,000 strong to build up a rival nation at their very doors which perhaps would never have had an existence but for the rash folly of those who persecuted the Loyalists. ”

“ They found it hard to believe that the British government would abandon them to the mercy of their enemies; and yet the temper of the revolutionists toward them continued such that there seemed little hope of concession or conciliation. Success had not taught the rebels the grace of forgiveness. At the capitulation of Yorktown, Washington had refused to treat with the Loyalists in Cornwallis’s army on the same terms as with the British regulars; and Cornwallis had been compelled to smuggle his Loyalist levies out of Yorktown on the ship that carried the news of his surrender to New York. ”

“ But there was a far greater burden assumed by the British government in granting the compensation asked for by those who had sacrificed everything to their loyalty. Those who had lost offices or professional practice were, in many cases, cared for by the gift of lucrative offices under the government, and Loyalist military officers were put on half pay. It is said with truth that the defeated government dealt with the exiled and fugitive Loyalists with a far greater liberality than the United States bestowed upon their victorious army. ”

“ In the first place, a negative attitude is necessarily an inactive one, and in consequence of this, and the fact that they could not take the initiative in action, the Loyalists were put at a disadvantage before the much better organization of the Revolutionary leaders. ”

“ William Wragg in South Carolina and the De Lanceys, De Peysters and Van Cortlandts in New York; (4) the wealthy commercial classes in New York, Albany, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Charleston, whose business interests would be affected by war; (5) natural conservatives of the type of Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania, and numerous political trimmers and opportunists. Before 1776 the Loyalists may be divided into two groups. There was a minority of extremists led by the Anglican ministers and teachers, who favoured an unquestioning obedience to all British legislation. ”