Loyalists

“ 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. ”

“ The United Empire Loyalists came to this country not as those who desired to better their condition in life, nor were they possessed by land hunger, nor by ideas of political and social aggrandisement. They came solely because of their devotion to the British Crown and Constitution, and because they preferred to live in peace and poverty under a monarchical Government rather than in wealth and discord under republican institutions. ”

“ The fate of the Loyalists claimed the compassion of every human breast. These helpless, forlorn men, abandoned by the Ministers of a people on whose justice, gratitude, and humanity they had the best-founded claims, were left at the mercy of a Congress highly irritated against them. He spoke not from party zeal, but as an independent country gentleman, who, unconnected with party, expressed the emotions of his heart and gave vent to his honest indignation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In regions more remote the scattered Loyalists lacked the consolation arising from numbers and propinquity to England, and accordingly their tremors continued, and, in a smaller degree, continue still. To them the Bill is a matter of life and death; and while their industry is crippled, their mental peace is destroyed by the ever-present torture of suspense. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Today their descendants are organized as the United Empire Loyalists, and count it an honor that their ancestors suffered persecution and exile rather than yield the principle and idea of union with Great Britain.
The cause of the Loyalists failed, but their stand was a natural one and was just and noble. They were the prosperous and contended men—the men without a grievance. Conservatism was the only policy that one could expect of them. Men do not rebel to rid themselves of prosperity. Prosperous men seek to conceive prosperity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With this the Loyalists were satisfied, and they went back to their houses to make preparations for their march against the rebels.
Davidson and his men slept upon the ground that night, wrapped in their blankets. This had been their life for years, so they thought nothing of it. These rangers who knew every trail and stream in the country, were at home wherever night overtook them. Possessions they had none. A life of indolence and ease they despised. The spirit of adventure animated their souls, and their only creed was loyalty to King George. ”

“ In the camp, on the march, and in the field of battle, the Loyalists were always on the alert, and performed the severest and most perilous services. No class of men had stronger claims on the nation, upon the principles of right and strict justice, than the Loyalist claimants before Parliament. This was acknowledged by all the speakers on both sides, and in both Houses of Parliament, and even by Mr. Pitt himself, and the objectionable and offensive principle which he laid down at the outset was contravened by the whole tenor and spirit of his speech. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of the reasons which influenced, of the hopes and fears which agitated, and of the miseries and rewards which awaited the Loyalists—or, as they were called in the politics of the time, the Tories—of the American Revolution, but little is known. The most intelligent, the best informed among us, confess the deficiency of their knowledge. ”

“ Brief Sketches of some Individual Loyalists—First Settlers in Canada and other British Provinces.
It is not possible to [Pg 191] give biographical sketches of all the old Loyalists, officers and soldiers. To do justice to their character and merits would require a massive volume. Besides, the data for such a volume are for the most part wanting. It is not the object of this history to give a biography of the Loyalists; that must be done by others, if attempted at all. The Loyalists were not writers, but workers. ”

“ But as the fight went on, and Loyalists and revolutionists grew more and more bitter towards one another, the revolutionary followers found the same cause for hating the Loyalists as their leaders had found for hating the government. Many of the Loyalists belonged to the well-educated and well-to-do classes. So the envy and greed of the revolutionary followers were added to the personal and political rage of their leaders.
The British government had done its best for the Loyalists in the treaty of peace and had urged Carleton, who needed no urging in such a cause, to do his best as well. ”

“ They saw the power on which they had leaned as almost invincible growing weak, and quailing before those whom it had affected to despise. They well knew that severe retribution for miseries which they had been instrumental in inflicting, surely awaited them, when British bayonets should leave the peninsula and the excited patriots should return to their desolated homes. The dangers of a perilous voyage to a strange land seemed far less fearful than the indignation of the oppressed Americans, and the Loyalists resolved to brave the former rather than the latter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They were Americans in all respects, as much as those who took sides with the rebels, yet to-day the descendants of the U. E. Loyalists are as unlike the descendants of the rebels, as each is unlike a full blooded Englishman. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would be a mistake, however, to identify too closely the parties in England with the parties in America. The old Tory party in England was very different from the so-called Tory party in America. The term Tory in America was, as a matter of fact, an epithet of derision applied by the revolutionists to all who opposed them. The opponents of the revolutionists called themselves not Tories, but Loyalists or ‘friends of government.’
There were, it is true, among the Loyalists not a few who held language that smacked of Toryism. ”

“ 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 ”

“ No Loyalist might hold office, or practice law or medicine, or keep a school.
Some Loyalists were deported to the wilderness in the back country. Many took refuge within the British lines, especially at New York. Many Loyalists created homes elsewhere. Some went to England only to find melancholy disillusion of hope that a grateful motherland would understand and reward their sacrifices. ”

“ I've heard my mother say that one of them was a cousin of her grandmother's, and they all came here together at the close of the war."
Priscilla was delighted. Here, perhaps, was a person who would tell her something about the Loyalists of the Revolution.
"Were your people Loyalists?" she asked.
"Why, of course," was the reply, as if anything else were unsupposable.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" responded Priscilla. "I've been waiting to hear more about the Loyalists."
"You are an American?" questioned the girl. "Americans are not apt to care about Loyalists; they seem to think only about the Acadians ”

“ Passing then from the Loyalists, he commended the French for their refusal to assist the rebels; thanked the Indians for the fulfilment of all their treaty obligations; and declared forgiveness to all who, on the river, had been misguided into rebellion. Then, in a few words, he closed.
'And now, my friends and fellow-citizens, as I look abroad upon this magnificent river before me; as I behold these fields and flocks; as I look into your faces and read there your past, I read a future also. You are happy now; it is the King's good pleasure that you shall be happier still. ”

“ Much labour has been spent on the problem of the numbers of the Loyalists. No means of numbering political opinions was resorted to at the time of the Revolution, so that satisfactory statistics are not available. There was, moreover, throughout the contest a good deal of going and coming between the Whig and Tory camps, which makes an estimate still more difficult. ”

“ Professions of the unalterable attachment of the Loyalists to your Majesty's person and government we conceive to be [Pg 182] unnecessary; they have preserved it under persecution, and gratitude cannot render it less permanent. They do not presume to arrogate to themselves a more fervent loyalty than their fellow-subjects possess; but distinguished as they have been by their sufferings, they deem themselves entitled to the foremost rank among the most zealous supporters of the British Constitution. ”

“ Concerning the Loyalists, he says: "A notion prevails among all parties that it is politest and genteelest to be on the side of the administration, that the better sort, the wiser few, are on one side, and that the multitude, the vulgar, the herd, the rabble, the mob, only are on the other." ”

“ 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. ”

“ All classes were Loyalists, and all had fought as one man in defence of their country during the recent war, although all had not fought for the life of the nation and the unity of the empire from 1776 to 1783, or been driven from their homes to Canada, to become the fathers of the inhabitants and founders of the institutions of our country. ”