PERSECUTION OF THE LOYALISTS
In the autumn of the year 1779 an English poet, writing
in the seclusion of his garden at Olney, paid his respects
to the American revolutionists in the following lines:
Yon roaring boys, who rave and fight
On t'other side the Atlantic,
I always held them in the right,
But most so when most frantic.
When lawless mobs insult the court,
That man shall be my toast,
If breaking windows be the sport,
Who bravely breaks the most.
But oh! for him my fancy culls
The choicest flowers she bears,
Who constitutionally pulls
Your house about your ears.
When William Cowper wrote these lines, his sources of
information with regard to affairs in America were probably
slight; but had he been writing at the seat of war he
could not have touched off the treatment of the Loyalists
by the revolutionists with more effective irony.
There were two kinds of persecution to which the Loyalists
were subjected--that which was perpetrated by 'lawless
mobs,' and that which was carried out 'constitutionally.'
It was at the hands of the mob that the Loyalists first
suffered persecution. Probably the worst of the
revolutionary mobs was that which paraded the streets of
Boston. In 1765, at the time of the Stamp Act agitation,
large crowds in Boston attacked and destroyed the
magnificent houses of Andrew Oliver and Thomas Hutchinson.
They broke down the doors with broadaxes, destroyed the
furniture, stole the money and jewels, scattered the
books and papers, and, having drunk the wines in the
cellar, proceeded to the dismantling of the roof and
walls. The owners of the houses barely escaped with their
lives. In 1768 the same mob wantonly attacked the British
troops in Boston, and so precipitated what American
historians used to term 'the Boston Massacre'; and in
1773 the famous band of 'Boston Indians' threw the tea
into Boston harbour.
In other places the excesses of the mob were nearly as
great. In New York they were active in destroying
printing-presses from which had issued Tory pamphlets,
in breaking windows of private houses, in stealing live
stock and personal effects, and in destroying property.
A favourite pastime was tarring and feathering 'obnoxious
Tories.' This consisted in stripping the victim naked,
smearing him with a coat of tar and feathers, and parading
him about the streets in a cart for the contemplation of
his neighbours. Another amusement was making Tories ride
the rail. This consisted in putting the 'unhappy victims
upon sharp rails with one leg on each side; each rail
was carried upon the shoulders of two tall men, with a
man on each side to keep the poor wretch straight and
fixed in his seat.'
Even clergymen were not free from the attentions of the
mob. The Rev. Jonathan Boucher tells us that he was
compelled to preach with loaded pistols placed on the
pulpit cushions beside him. On one occasion he was
prevented from entering the pulpit by two hundred armed
men, whose leader warned him not to attempt to preach.
'I returned for answer,' says Boucher, 'that there was
but one way by which they could keep me out of it, and
that was by taking away my life. At the proper time, with
my sermon in one hand and a loaded pistol in the other,
like Nehemiah I prepared to ascend my pulpit, when one
of my friends, Mr David Crauford, having got behind me,
threw his arms round me and held me fast. He assured me
that he had heard the most positive orders given to twenty
men picked out for the purpose, to fire on me the moment
I got into the pulpit.'
That the practices of the mob were not frowned upon by
the revolutionary leaders, there is good reason for
believing. The provincial Congress of New York, in December
1776, went so far as to order the committee of public
safety to secure all the pitch and tar 'necessary for
the public use and public safety.' Even Washington seems
to have approved of persecution of the Tories by the mob.
In 1776 General Putnam, meeting a procession of the Sons
of Liberty who were parading a number of Tories on rails
up and down the street's of New York, attempted to put
a stop to the barbarous proceeding. Washington, on hearing
of this, administered a reprimand to Putnam, declaring
'that to discourage such proceedings was to injure the
cause of liberty in which they were engaged, and that
nobody would attempt it but an enemy to his country.'
Very early in the Revolution the Whigs began to organize.
They first formed themselves into local associations,
similar to the Puritan associations in the Great Rebellion
in England, and announced that they would 'hold all those
persons inimical to the liberties of the colonies who
shall refuse to subscribe this association.' In connection
with these associations there sprang up local committees.
From garrets, cellars, rushing through the street,
The new-born statesmen in committee meet,
sang a Loyalist verse-writer. Very soon there was completed
an organization, stretching from the Continental Congress
and the provincial congresses at one end down to the
pettiest parish committees on the other, which was destined
to prove a most effective engine for stamping out loyalism,
and which was to contribute in no small degree to the
success of the Revolution.
Though the action of the mob never entirely disappeared,
the persecution of the Tories was taken over, as soon as
the Revolution got under way, by this semi-official
organization. What usually happened was that the Continental
or provincial Congress laid down the general policy to
be followed, and the local committees carried it out in
detail. Thus, when early in 1776 the Continental Congress
recommended the disarming of the Tories, it was the local
committees which carried the recommendation into effect.
During this early period the conduct of the revolutionary
authorities was remarkably moderate. They arrested the
Tories, tried them, held them at bail for their good
behaviour, quarantined them in their houses, exiled them
to other districts, but only in extreme cases did they
imprison them. There was, of course, a good deal of
hardship entailed on the Tories; and occasionally the
agents of the revolutionary committees acted without
authority, as when Colonel Dayton, who was sent to arrest
Sir John Johnson at his home in the Mohawk valley, sacked
Johnson Hall and carried off Lady Johnson a prisoner, on
finding that Sir John Johnson had escaped to Canada with
many of his Highland retainers. But, as a rule, in this
early period, the measures taken both by the revolutionary
committees and by the army officers were easily defensible
on the ground of military necessity.
But with the Declaration of Independence a new order of
things was inaugurated. That measure revolutionized the
political situation. With the severance of the Imperial
tie, loyalism became tantamount to treason to the state;
and Loyalists laid themselves open to all the penalties
of treason. The Declaration of Independence was followed
by the test laws. These laws compelled every one to abjure
allegiance to the British crown, and swear allegiance to
the state in which he resided. A record was kept of those
who took the oath, and to them were given certificates
without which no traveller was safe from arrest. Those
who failed to take the oath became liable to imprisonment,
confiscation of property, banishment, and even death.
Even among the Whigs there was a good deal of opposition
to the test laws. Peter Van Schaak, a moderate Whig of
New York state, so strongly disapproved of the test laws
that he seceded from the revolutionary party. 'Had you,'
he wrote, 'at the beginning of the war, permitted every
one differing in sentiment from you, to take the other
side, or at least to have removed out of the State, with
their property ... it would have been a conduct magnanimous
and just. But, now, after restraining those persons from
removing; punishing them, if, in the attempt, they were
apprehended; selling their estates if they escaped;
compelling them to the duties of subjects under heavy
penalties; deriving aid from them in the prosecution of
the war ... now to compel them to take an oath is an act
of severity.'
Of course, the test laws were not rigidly or universally
enforced. In Pennsylvania only a small proportion of the
population took the oath. In New York, out of one thousand
Tories arrested for failure to take the oath, six hundred
were allowed to go on bail, and the rest were merely
acquitted or imprisoned. On the whole the American
revolutionists were not bloody-minded men; they inaugurated
no September Massacres, no Reign of Terror, no
_dragonnades_. There was a distinct aversion among them
to applying the death penalty. 'We shall have many unhappy
persons to take their trials for their life next Oyer
court,' wrote a North Carolina patriot. 'Law should be
strictly adhered to, severity exercised, but the doors
of mercy should never be shut.'
The test laws, nevertheless, and the other discriminating
laws passed against the Loyalists provided the excuse
for a great deal of barbarism and ruthlessness. In
Pennsylvania bills of attainder were passed against no
fewer than four hundred and ninety persons. The property
of nearly all these persons was confiscated, and several
of them were put to death. A detailed account has come
down to us of the hanging of two Loyalists of Philadelphia
named Roberts and Carlisle. These two men had shown great
zeal for the king's cause when the British Army was in
Philadelphia. After Philadelphia was evacuated, they were
seized by the Whigs, tried, and condemned to be hanged.
Roberts's wife and children went before Congress and on
their knees begged for mercy; but in vain. One November
morning of 1778 the two men were marched to the gallows,
with halters round their necks. At the gallows, wrote a
spectator, Roberts's behaviour 'did honour to human
nature.'
He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene
Addressing the spectators, he told them that his conscience
acquitted him of guilt; that he suffered for doing his
duty to his sovereign; and that his blood would one day
be required at their hands. Then he turned to his children
and charged them to remember the principles for which he
died, and to adhere to them while they had breath.
But if these judicial murders were few and far between,
in other respects the revolutionists showed the Tories
little mercy. Both those who remained in the country and
those who fled from it were subjected to an attack on
their personal fortunes which gradually impoverished
them. This was carried on at first by a nibbling system
of fines and special taxation. Loyalists were fined for
evading military service, for the hire of substitutes,
for any manifestation of loyalty. They were subjected to
double and treble taxes; and in New York and South Carolina
they had to make good all robberies committed in their
counties. Then the revolutionary leaders turned to the
expedient of confiscation. From the very first some of
the patriots, without doubt, had an eye on Loyalist
property; and when the coffers of the Continental Congress
had been emptied, the idea gained ground that the Revolution
might be financed by the confiscation of Loyalist estates.
Late in 1777 the plan was embodied in a resolution of
the Continental Congress, and the states were recommended
to invest the proceeds in continental loan certificates.
The idea proved very popular; and in spite of a great
deal of corruption in connection with the sale and transfer
of the land, large sums found their way as a result into
the state exchequers. In New York alone over 3,600,000
pounds worth of property was acquired by the state.
The Tory who refused to take the oath of allegiance became
in fact an outlaw. He did not have in the courts of law
even the rights of a foreigner. If his neighbours owed
him money, he had no legal redress. He might be assaulted,
insulted, blackmailed, or slandered, yet the law granted
him no remedy. No relative or friend could leave an orphan
child to his guardianship. He could be the executor or
administrator of no man's estate. He could neither buy
land nor transfer it to another. If he was a lawyer, he
was denied the right to practise his profession.
This strict legal view of the status of the Loyalist may
not have been always and everywhere enforced. There were
Loyalists, such as the Rev. Mather Byles of Boston, who
refused to be molested, and who survived the Revolution
unharmed. But when all allowance is made for these
exceptions, it is not difficult to understand how the
great majority of avowed Tories came to take refuge within
the British lines, to enlist under the British flag, and,
when the Revolution had proved successful, to leave their
homes for ever and begin life anew amid other surroundings.
The persecution to which they were subjected left them
no alternative.