LOYALISM IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES
It was a remark of John Fiske that the American Revolution was merely a
phase of English party politics in the eighteenth century. In this view
there is undoubtedly an element of truth. The Revolution was a struggle
within the British Empire, in which were aligned on one side the American
Whigs supported by the English Whigs, and on the other side the English
Tories supported by the American Tories. The leaders of the Whig party
in England, Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, Colonel Barré, the great
Chatham himself, all championed the cause of the American revolutionists
in the English parliament. There were many cases of Whig officers in the
English army who refused to serve against the rebels in America. General
Richard Montgomery, who led the revolutionists in their attack on Quebec
in 1775-76, furnishes the case of an English officer who, having resigned
his commission, came to America and, on the outbreak of the rebellion,
took service in the rebel forces. On the other hand there were thousands
of American Tories who took service under the king’s banner; and some of
the severest defeats which the rebel forces suffered were encountered at
their hands.
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. Among the Loyalist pamphleteers there were those
who preached the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance. Thus
the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, a clergyman of Virginia, wrote:
Having then, my brethren, thus long been tossed to and fro in
a wearisome circle of uncertain traditions, or in speculations
and projects still more uncertain, concerning government, what
better can you do than, following the apostle’s advice, ‘to
submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, for the Lord’s
sake; whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors,
as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of
evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well? For, so is
the will of God, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the
ignorance of foolish men; as free, and not using your liberty
for a cloak of maliciousness, but as servants of God. Honour
all men: love the brotherhood: fear God: honour the king.’
Jonathan Boucher subscribed to the doctrine of the divine right of kings:
Copying after the fair model of heaven itself, wherein there
was government even among the angels, the families of the earth
were subjected to rulers, at first set over them by God. ‘For
there is no power, but of God: the powers that be are ordained
of God.’ The first father was the first king.... Hence it is,
that our church, in perfect conformity with the doctrine here
inculcated, in her explication of the fifth commandment, from
the obedience due to parents, wisely derives the congenial duty
of ‘honouring the king, and all that are put in authority under
him.’
Dr Myles Cooper, the president of King’s College, took up similar ground.
God, he said, established the laws of government, ordained the British
power, and commanded all to obey authority. ‘The laws of heaven and
earth’ forbade rebellion. To threaten open disrespect of government was
‘an unpardonable crime.’ ‘The principles of submission and obedience to
lawful authority’ were religious duties.
But even Jonathan Boucher and Myles Cooper did not apply these doctrines
without reserve. They both upheld the sacred right of petition and
remonstrance. ‘It is your duty,’ wrote Boucher, ‘to instruct your members
to take all the constitutional means in their power to obtain redress.’
Both he and Cooper deplored the policy of the British ministry. Cooper
declared the Stamp Act to be contrary to American rights; he approved
of the opposition to the duties on the enumerated articles; and he was
inclined to think the duty on tea ‘dangerous to constitutional liberty.’
It may be confidently asserted that the great majority of the American
Loyalists, in fact, did not approve of the course pursued by the British
government between 1765 and 1774. They did not deny its legality;
but they doubted as a rule either its wisdom or its justice. Thomas
Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, one of the most famous and
most hated of the Loyalists, went to England, if we are to believe his
private letters, with the secret ambition of obtaining the repeal of the
act which closed Boston harbour. Joseph Galloway, another of the Loyalist
leaders, and the author of the last serious attempt at conciliation,
actually sat in the first Continental Congress, which was called with
the object of obtaining the redress of what Galloway himself described
as ‘the grievances justly complained of.’ Still more instructive is the
case of Daniel Dulany of Maryland. Dulany, one of the most distinguished
lawyers of his time, was after the Declaration of Independence denounced
as a Tory; his property was confiscated, and the safety of his person
imperilled. Yet at the beginning of the Revolution he had been found in
the ranks of the Whig pamphleteers; and no more damaging attack was
ever made on the policy of the British government than that contained in
his _Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British
Colonies_. When the elder Pitt attacked the Stamp Act in the House of
Commons in January 1766, he borrowed most of his argument from this
pamphlet, which had appeared three months before.
This difficulty which many of the Loyalists felt with regard to the
justice of the position taken up by the British government greatly
weakened the hands of the Loyalist party in the early stages of the
Revolution. It was only as the Revolution gained momentum that the party
grew in vigour and numbers. A variety of factors contributed to this
result. In the first place there were the excesses of the revolutionary
mob. When the mob took to sacking private houses, driving clergymen
out of their pulpits, and tarring and feathering respectable citizens,
there were doubtless many law-abiding people who became Tories in spite
of themselves. Later on, the methods of the inquisitorial communities
possibly made Tories out of some who were the victims of their
attentions. The outbreak of armed rebellion must have shocked many into
a reactionary attitude. It was of these that a Whig satirist wrote,
quoting:
This word, Rebellion, hath frozen them up,
Like fish in a pond.
But the event which brought the greatest reinforcement to the Loyalist
ranks was the Declaration of Independence. Six months before the
Declaration of Independence was passed by the Continental Congress, the
Whig leaders had been almost unanimous in repudiating any intention of
severing the connection between the mother country and the colonies.
Benjamin Franklin told Lord Chatham that he had never heard in America
one word in favour of independence ‘from any person, drunk or sober.’
Jonathan Boucher says that Washington told him in the summer of 1775
‘that if ever I heard of his joining in any such measures, I had his
leave to set him down for everything wicked.’ As late as Christmas Day
1775 the revolutionary congress of New Hampshire officially proclaimed
their disavowal of any purpose ‘aiming at independence.’ Instances such
as these could be reproduced indefinitely. When, therefore, the Whig
leaders in the summer of 1776 made their right-about-face with regard
to independence, it is not surprising that some of their followers fell
away from them. Among these were many who were heartily opposed to the
measures of the British government, and who had even approved of the
policy of armed rebellion, but who could not forget that they were born
British subjects. They drank to the toast, ‘My country, may she always be
right; but right or wrong, my country.’
Other motives influenced the growth of the Loyalist party. There
were those who opposed the Revolution because they were dependent on
government for their livelihood, royal office-holders and Anglican
clergymen for instance. 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. In some of the colonies the struggle between Whig
and Tory followed older party lines: this was especially true in New
York, where the Livingston or Presbyterian party became Whig and the
De Lancey or Episcopalian party Tory. Curiously enough the cleavage
in many places followed religious lines. The members of the Church
of England were in the main Loyalists; the Presbyterians were in the
main revolutionists. The revolutionist cause was often strongest in
those colonies, such as Connecticut, where the Church of England was
weakest. But the division was far from being a strict one. 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 is true that among the official classes and the large
landowners, among the clergymen, lawyers, and physicians, the majority
were Loyalists; and it is true that the mob was everywhere revolutionist.
But it cannot be said that the Revolution was in any sense a war of
social classes. In it father was arrayed against son and brother against
brother. Benjamin Franklin was a Whig; his son, Sir William Franklin, was
a Tory. In the valley of the Susquehanna the Tory Colonel John Butler,
of Butler’s Rangers, found himself confronted by his Whig cousins,
Colonel William Butler and Colonel Zeb Butler. George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, John Adams, were not inferior in social status to Sir William
Johnson, Thomas Hutchinson, and Joseph Galloway. And, on the other hand,
there were no humbler peasants in the revolutionary ranks than some of
the Loyalist farmers who migrated to Upper Canada in 1783. All that can
be said is that the Loyalists were most numerous among those classes
which had most to lose by the change, and least numerous among those
classes which had least to lose.
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. ‘I have been struck,’ wrote Lorenzo Sabine, ‘in
the course of my investigations, with the absence of fixed principles,
not only among people in the common walks of life, but in many of the
prominent personages of the day.’ Alexander Hamilton, for instance,
deserted from the Tories to the Whigs; Benedict Arnold deserted from the
Whigs to the Tories.
The Loyalists themselves always maintained that they constituted an
actual majority in the Thirteen Colonies. In 1779 they professed to
have more troops in the field than the Continental Congress. These
statements were no doubt exaggerations. The fact is that the strength
of the Loyalists was very unevenly distributed. In the colony of
New York they may well have been in the majority. They were strong
also in Pennsylvania, so strong that an officer of the revolutionary
army described that colony as ‘the enemies’ country.’ ‘New York and
Pennsylvania,’ wrote John Adams years afterwards, ‘were so nearly
divided—if their propensity was not against us—that if New England on one
side and Virginia on the other had not kept them in awe, they would have
joined the British.’ In Georgia the Loyalists were in so large a majority
that in 1781 that colony would probably have detached itself from the
revolutionary movement had it not been for the surrender of Cornwallis at
Yorktown. On the other hand, in the New England colonies the Loyalists
were a small minority, strongest perhaps in Connecticut, and yet even
there predominant only in one or two towns.
There were in the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Revolution in
the neighbourhood of three million people. Of these it is probable that
at least one million were Loyalists. This estimate is supported by the
opinion of John Adams, who was well qualified to form a judgment, and
whose Whig sympathies were not likely to incline him to exaggerate.
He gave it as his opinion more than once that about one-third of the
people of the Thirteen Colonies had been opposed to the measures of the
Revolution in all its stages. This estimate he once mentioned in a letter
to Thomas McKean, chief justice of Pennsylvania, who had signed the
Declaration of Independence, and had been a member of every Continental
Congress from that of 1765 to the close of the Revolution; and McKean
replied, ‘You say that ... about a third of the people of the colonies
were against the Revolution. It required much reflection before I could
fix my opinion on this subject; but on mature deliberation I conclude
you are right, and that more than a third of influential characters were
against it.’