_THE LOYALISTS OF MASSACHUSETTS._
At the outbreak of the American rebellion the great majority of men in
the colonies could be regarded as indifferent, ready to stampede and
rush along with the successful party. Loyalty was their normal
condition; the state _had_ existed and _did_ exist, and it was the
disunionists who must do the converting, the changing of men's opinion
to suit a new order of things which the disunionists believed necessary
for their welfare. Opposed to the revolutionists were the crown
officials, dignified and worthy gentlemen, who held office by virtue of
a wise selection. Hardly to be distinguished from the official class
were the clergy of the Established Church, who were partially dependent
for their livings upon the British government. The officers and clergy
received the support of the landowners and the substantial business men,
the men who were satisfied with the existing order of things. The
aristocracy of culture, of dignified professions and callings, of
official rank and hereditary wealth, was, in a large measure, found in
the Loyalist party. Such worthy and talented men of high social
positions were the leaders of the opposition to the rebellion.
Supporting them was the natural conservatism of all prosperous men. The
men who had abilities which could not be recognized under the existing
regime, and those that form the lower strata of every society and are
every ready to overthrow the existing order of things, these were the
ones who were striving to bring about a change--a revolution.
The persecution of the Loyalists by the Sons of Despotism, or the "Sons
of Liberty," as they called themselves, was mercilessly carried out;
every outrage conceivable was practiced upon them. Freedom of speech was
suppressed; the liberty of the press destroyed; the voice of truth
silenced, and throughout the colonies was established a lawless power.
As early as 1772 "committees of correspondence" had been organized
throughout Massachusetts. Adams exclaimed in admiration: "What an
engine! France imitated it and produced a revolution."[40] Leonard, the
Loyalist, with "abhorrence pronounced it the foulest, subtlest and most
venomous serpent ever issued from the egg of sedition."[41] Insult and
threat met the Loyalist at every turn. One day he was, perhaps, set upon
a cake of ice to cool his loyalty,[42] and was then informed that a
certain famous liberty man had sworn to be his butcher. Next he was told
that he might expect a "sans benito" of tar and feathers, and even an
"auto da fe." The committee sent "Patriot" newspapers and other
propaganda to the wavering or obstinate, but seldom failed to follow
this system of conversion with a personal interview if the literature
failed. Such were the means that were used by the "Sons of Despotism" to
bring over the mass of the people to the disunion cause.
[40] John Adams' Letters. Vol. X, page 197.
[41] "Massachusettsensis."
[42] "Moor's Diary." Vol. I., page 359.
In the courts of law, not even the rights of a foreigner were left to
the Loyalist. If his neighbors owed him money he had no legal redress
until he took an oath that he favored American independence. All legal
action was denied him. He might be assaulted, insulted, blackmailed or
slandered, though the law did not state it so boldly, yet he had no
recourse in law. 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; he was
denied his vocation and his liberty to speak or write his opinions. All
these restrictions were not found in any one place, nor at any one time,
nor were they always rigorously enforced. Viewed from the distance of
one hundred years, the necessity of such barbarous severity is not now
apparent.
When this ostracism was approved by a large majority of the inhabitants
of a town the victim was practically expelled from the community. None
dared to give him food or comfort. He was a pariah, and to countenance
him was to incur public wrath.
On January 17, 1777, Massachusetts passed an Act punishing with death
the "Crime of adhering to Great Britain." The full extent of this law
was not carried into effect in Massachusetts, but it was in other
colonies. The "Black List" of Pennsylvania contained the names of 490
persons attainted of high treason. Only a few actually suffered the
extreme penalty. Among these were two citizens of Philadelphia--Mr.
Roberts and Mr. Carlisle. When the British army evacuated Philadelphia,
they remained, although warned of their danger. They were at once seized
by the returning disunionists and condemned to be hanged. Mr. Roberts's
wife and children went before congress and on their knees supplicated
for mercy, but in vain. In carrying out the sentence the two men, with
halters around their necks, were walked to the gallows behind a cart,
"attended with all the apparatus which makes such scenes truly
horrible." A guard of militia accompanied them; but few spectators.[43]
[43] "Penn Packet," Nov. 17, 1778. "Penn Archives," Vol. VIII, page 22.
"Dallis," Vol. I., pp 39, 42; "Galloway's Examinations," page 77.
At the gallows Mr. Roberts' behavior, wrote a loyal friend, "did honor
to human nature," and both showed fortitude and composure.
Roberts told his audience that his conscience acquitted him of guilt:
that he suffered for doing his duty to his sovereign; that his blood
would one day be required at their hands. Turning to his children he
charged and exhorted them to remember his principles for which he died,
and to adhere to them while they had breath. "He suffered with the
resolution of a Roman," wrote a witness.
After the execution, the bodies of the two men were carried away by
friends and their burial was attended by over 4000 in procession.[44]
Some of the more heartless leaders of the rebellion defended this
severity of treatment and thought "hanging the traitors" would have a
good effect and "give stability to the new government." "One suggested
that the Tories seemed designed for this purpose by Providence."[44] The
more thoughtful leaders, however, denounced the trial of Loyalists for
treason, and Washington feared that it might prove a dangerous
expedient. It was true, he granted, that they had joined the British
after such an offence had been declared to be treason; but as they had
not taken the oath, nor entered into the American service, it would be
said that they had a right to choose their side. "Again," he added, "by
the same rule that we try them may not the enemy try any natural-born
subject of Great Britain taken in arms in our service? We have a great
number of them and I, therefore, think we had better submit to the
necessity of treating a few individuals who may really deserve a severer
fate, as prisoners of war, than run the risk of giving an opening for
retaliation upon the Europeans in our service."[45]
[44] "Records of North Carolina," Vol. XI., page 561.
[45] "Washington's Writings," Vol. VI., page 241.
American writers never fail to tell of the "brutal and inhuman
treatment" of the American prisoners by the British in the prisons and
prison-ships at New York, where about five thousand prisoners were
confined. We are informed that their sufferings in the prison-ships were
greater than those in the prisons on land; that "every morning the
prisoners brought up their bedding to be aired, and after washing the
decks, they were allowed to remain above till sunset, when they were
ordered below with imprecations and the savage cry, "Down, rebels!
Down!" The hatches were then closed, and in serried ranks they lay down
to sleep," etc.[46] That many died from dysentery, smallpox and prison
fever, there is no doubt; but there is not any record that _they were
starved to death_. Compare the above treatment of prisoners by the
British with that of the Loyalists by the disunionists! In East Granby,
Connecticut, was situated an underground prison which surpassed the
horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta. These barbarities and
inhumanities were the portion of those who had been guilty of loyalty to
their country, a social class distinguished by both their public and
private virtues. It seemed almost incredible that their
fellow-countrymen should have confined them in a place unfit for human
beings.
[46] Lossing, "Field Book of the Revolution," Vol. II., page 661.
This den of horrors, known as "Newgate Prison," was an old worked-out
copper mine, sixty feet under ground, in the hills of East Granby. The
only entrance to it was by means of a ladder down a shaft which led to
the caverns under ground. The darkness was intense; the caves reeked
with filth; vermin abounded; water trickled from the roof and oozed from
the sides of the cavern; huge masses of earth were perpetually falling
off. In the dampness and the filth the clothing of the prisoners grew
mouldy and rotted away, and their limbs became stiff with rheumatism.
During the Revolutionary war Loyalists of importance were confined in
this place of horrors, then of national importance, although now but
seldom referred to by American writers. Loyalists were consigned to it
for safe keeping by Washington himself. In a letter dated December 11,
1775, addressed to the Committee of Safety, Simsbury, Conn., he informed
them that the "charges of their imprisonment will be at the Continental
expense," and "to confine them in such manner so that they cannot
possibly make their escape."[47]
[47] "History of Simsbury and Granby," page 125.
"Driven to desperation the Loyalists rose against their guards. About 10
o'clock at night, on the 18th of May, 1781, when all the guards but two
had retired to rest, a wife of one of the prisoners appeared, to whom
permission was given to visit her husband in the cavern. Upon the
hatches being removed to admit her passing down, the prisoners who were
at the door, and prepared for the encounter, rushed up, seized the gun
of the sentry on duty, who made little or no resistance, and became
master of the guard-room before those who were asleep could be aroused
to make defence. The officer of the guard who resisted was killed, and
others wounded. The guard was easily overcome, a few sought safety in
flight, but the greater number were disarmed by the prisoners. The
prisoners, numbering twenty-eight persons, having equipped themselves
with the captured arms, escaped, and, with few exceptions avoided
recapture."[48]
[48] "History of Simsbury and Granby," pp. 123, 124.
The heart sickens at the recital of the sufferings of the Loyalists, and
we turn in disgust from the views which the pen of faithful history
records.
After the legislation of 1778 every grievance the colonists had put
forward as a reason for taking up arms had been redressed, every claim
they had presented had been abandoned, and from the time when the
English parliament surrendered all right of taxation and internal
legislation in the colonies, and when the English Commissioners laid
their propositions before the Americans, the character of the war had
wholly changed. It was no longer a war for self-taxation and
constitutional liberty. It was now an attempt, with the assistance of
France and Spain, to establish independence by shattering the British
empire.
There were brave and honest men in America who were proud of the great
and free empire to which they belonged, who had no desire to shirk the
burden of maintaining it, who remembered with gratitude that it was not
colonial, but all English blood that had been shed around Quebec and
Montreal in defence of the colonies. Men who with nothing to hope for
from the crown were prepared to face the most brutal mob violence and
the invectives of a scurrilous press; to risk their fortunes, their
reputation, and sometimes even their lives, in order to avert civil war
and ultimate separation. Most of them ended their days in poverty and
exile, and, as the supporters of a beaten cause, history has paid but a
scanty tribute to their memory. But they comprised some of the best and
ablest men America has ever produced, and they were contending for an
ideal which was at least as worthy as that for which Washington fought.
It was the maintenance of one great, free, industrial, and pacific
empire, comprising the whole British race, holding the richest plains of
Asia in possession, blending all that was most venerable in an ancient
civilization with the abundant energies of a youthful social combination
likely in a few generations to outstrip every commercial competitor, and
to acquire an indisputable ascendency among the nations. Such an ideal
was a noble one, and there were Americans who were prepared to make any
personal sacrifice to realize it. These men were the LOYALISTS of the
Revolution. Consider what the result would be today had not this
"Anglo-Saxon Schism," as Goldwin Smith calls it, taken place. There
would be a great English-speaking nation of 130,000,000 that could
dominate the world. They would in all substantial respects be one
people, in language, literature, institutions, and social usages,
whether settled in South Africa, in Australia, in the primitive home, or
in North America.
Because the Revolution had its origin in Massachusetts, and the old Bay
State furnished a large part of the men and the means to carry it to a
successful issue,[49] it seems to have been taken for granted that the
people embraced the popular side almost in a mass.
[49] The Southern States furnished 59,330 men; the Middle States 54,116,
and New England 118,355, of which number Massachusetts furnished 67,907.
("General Knox's Report.")
A more mistaken opinion than this has seldom prevailed. At the
evacuation of Boston, General Gage was accompanied by eleven hundred
Loyalists, which included the best people of the town. Boston at that
time had a population of 16,000. "Among these persons of distinguished
rank and consideration there were members of the council, commissioners,
officers of the customs, and other officials, amounting to one hundred
and two; of clergymen, eighteen; of inhabitants of country towns, one
hundred and five; of merchants and other persons who resided in Boston,
two hundred and thirteen; of farmers, mechanics and traders, three
hundred and eighty-two."[50]
[50] Sabine, "Loyalists of the Revolution," Vol. I., page 25.
Cambridge lost nearly all her men of mark and high standing; nearly all
the country towns were thus bereft of the very persons who had been the
most honored and revered. With the exiles were nearly one hundred
graduates of Harvard college.
Among the proscribed and banished were members of the old historic
families, Hutchinson, Winthrop, Saltonstall, Quincy, the Sewells, and
Winslows, families of which the exiled members were not one whit behind
those that remained, in intelligence, social standing and moral worth.
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.
Familiar New England names meet one at every turn in the maritime
provinces, especially Nova Scotia. Dr. Inglis, from Trinity church, New
York, was the first bishop, and Judge Sewell, of Massachusetts, the
first chief justice there. The harshness of the laws and the greed of
the new commonwealth had driven into exile men who could be ill spared,
and whose absence showed itself in the lack of balance and of political
steadiness which characterized the early history of the republic, while
the newly-founded colonies, composed almost exclusively of
conservatives, were naturally slow, but sure, in their development. The
men who were willing to give up home, friends and property, for an idea,
are not men to be despised; they are, rather, men for us to claim with
pride and honor as American--men of the same blood, and the same speech
as ourselves; Americans who were true to their convictions and who
suffered everything except the loss of liberty, for their political
faith. We look in vain among the lists of voluntary and banished
refugees from Massachusetts for a name on which rests any tradition of
disgrace or infamy, to which the finger of scorn can be pointed. Can
this be said of the Revolutionary leaders of Massachusetts, the
so-called patriots, to whom the Revolution owes its inception? If the
reader has any doubts on this subject, then let him compare the lives of
the Loyalists, as given in this work, with those of Samuel Adams, John
Hancock, and other Revolutionary leaders. The Loyalists were generally
people of substance; their stake in the country was greater, even, than
that of their opponents; their patriotism, no doubt, fully as fervent.
"There is much that is melancholy, of which the world knows but little,
connected with this expulsion from the land they sincerely loved. The
estates of the Loyalists were among the fairest, their stately mansions
stood on the sightliest hill-brows, the richest and best-tilled meadows
were their farms; the long avenue, the broad lawn, the trim hedge about
the garden, servants, plate, pictures, for the most part these things
were at the homes of the Loyalists. They loved beauty, dignity and
refinement." The rude contact of town meetings was offensive to their
tastes. The crown officials were courteous, well-born and congenial
gentlemen.
"The graceful, the chivalrous, the poetic, the spirits over whom these
feelings had power, were sure to be Loyalists. Democracy was something
rude and coarse, and independence to them meant a severance of those
connections of which a colonist ought to be proudest."
"Hence when the country rose, many a high-bred, honorable gentleman,
turned the key in his door, drove down his tree-lined avenue with his
refined dame and carefully-guarded children at his side, turned his back
on his handsome estate, and put himself under the shelter of the proud
banner of St. George. It was a mere temporary refuge, he thought, and he
promised himself a speedy return when discipline and loyalty should have
put down the rabble and the misled rustics."
"But the return was never to be. The day went against them; they crowded
into ships, with the gates of their country barred forever behind them.
They found themselves penniless upon shores sometimes bleak and barren,
always showing scant hospitality to outcasts who came empty-handed, and
there they were forced to begin life anew. Consider the condition of
Hutchinson, Apthorp, Gray, Clarke, Faneuil, Sewell, Royal, Vassall, and
Leonard, families of honorable note bound in with all that was best in
the life of the Province." "Who can think of their destiny
unpityingly."[51]
[51] Hosmer's "Life of Hutchinson." pages 321, 322.
A man suspected of loyalty to the crown was not left at peace, but was
liable to peremptory banishment unless he would swear allegiance to the
"Sons of Liberty," and if he returned he was subject to forcible
deportation, and to death on the gallows if he returned a second time.
One of the first acts of the revolutionary party when they returned to
Boston after the British evacuation, was to confiscate and sell all
property belonging to Loyalists and apply the receipts to supply the
public needs. The names and fate of a considerable proportion of these
Loyalists and those that preceded and succeeded the Boston emigration,
will be found in succeeding pages. Most of them went to Halifax, Nova
Scotia, and St. John, New Brunswick, where they endured great privation.
Many, however, subsequently went to England and there passed the
remainder of their lives. We find seventy or more of the Massachusetts
Loyalists holding offices of greater or less importance in the
provinces, and many of them were employed in places of high trust and
large influence in various parts of the Empire. They and their sons
filled for more than half a century the chief offices in the Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick judiciary, and they and their descendants must have
contributed in a degree not easily estimated to the elevation and
progress of those provinces.
Men whose fathers, mocked and broken
For the honor of a name.
Would not wear the conqueror's token,
Could not salt their bread with shame.
Plunged them in the virgin forest
With their axes in their hands,
Built a Province as a bulwark
For the loyal of the lands.
Won it by the axe and harrow,
Held it by the axe and sword,
Bred a race with brawn and marrow,
From no alien over-lord.
Gained the right to guide and govern;
Then with labor strong and free
Forged the land a shield of Empire,
Silver sea to silver sea.
--Duncan C. Scott.
In this way the United States, out of their own children, built upon
their borders a colony of rivals in navigation and the fisheries, whose
loyalty to the British crown was sanctified by misfortune. It is
impossible to say how many of these Loyalists would have been on the
Revolutionists' side had the party opposed to the crown been kept under
the control of its leaders. But they were, most of them, of the class of
men that would have the least amount of tolerance for outrage and
rapine, and when we consider how closely they were identified with the
institutions of their native province, and how little remains on record
of anything like rancor or malignity on their part, there can be little
doubt that a considerable proportion of them would have been saved for
the republic but for the very acts which posterity has been foolish
enough to applaud, and for their loss Massachusetts was appreciably the
poorer for more than one or two generations.
It is also admitted by those who are authorities on the subject, that if
it had not been for the brutal and intolerant persecution of the
Loyalists, the ruthless driving of these unfortunate people from their
homes, with the subsequent confiscation of property, the attempt to
throw off the authority of Great Britain at the time of the
Revolutionary War would not have succeeded; that is, people entirely or
at least reasonably content with the previous political condition were
terrorized into becoming patriots by the fear of the consequences that
would follow if they remained Loyalists.
The fact is, that, as far as the Americans were in it, the war of the
Revolution was a civil war in which the two sides were not far from
equality in numbers, in social conditions, and in their manners and
customs. The Loyalists contended all through the war that they were in a
numerical majority, and if they could have been properly supported by
British forces, the war might have ended in 1777, before the French
alliance had given hope and strength to the separatist party. Sabine
computes that there were at least 25,000 Americans in the military
service of the King, at one time or another, during the wars. 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. An irresponsible tyranny was
established, of town and country committees, at whose beck and call were
the so-called "Sons of Liberty." To these committees was entrusted
absolute power over the lives and fortunes of their fellow citizens, and
they proceeded on principles of evidence that would have shocked and
scandalized a grand inquisitor.[52]
[52] "Essays in American History," 180-181.
The rigorous measures adopted by the new governments in New England
States, and the activity of their town committees, succeeded in either
driving out these Loyalist citizens, or reducing them to harmless
inactivity. In New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the Carolinas and
Georgia, they remained strong and active throughout the war, and loyalty
was in those states in the ascendancy.
If the Loyalists were really a majority, as they claimed to be, the
disunionists were determined to break them up. Loyalists were tarred and
feathered and carried on rails, gagged and bound for days at a time;
stoned, fastened in a room with a fire and the chimney stopped on top;
advertised as public enemies, so that they would be cut off from all
dealings with their neighbors; they had bullets shot into their
bedrooms, their horses poisoned or mutilated; money or valuable plate
extorted from them to save them from violence, and on pretence of taking
security for their good behavior; their houses and ships burned; they
were compelled to pay the guards who watched them in their houses, and
when carted about for the mob to stare at and abuse, they were compelled
to pay something at every town. For the three months of July, August and
September of the year 1776, one can find in the American archives alone
over thirty descriptions of outrages of this kind, and all this done by
so-called "patriots" in the name of liberty! In short, lynch law
prevailed for many years during the Revolution, and the habit became so
fixed that it has never been given up. It was taken from the name of the
brother of the man who founded Lynchburgh, Virginia.
Wherever the disunionists were most successful with this reign of
terror, they drove all the judges from the bench, and abolished the
courts, and for a long time there were no courts or public
administration of the law, notably in New England.
To the mind of the Loyalists, all this lynching proceeding were an
irrefragible proof not only that the disunionist party were wicked, but
that their idea of independence of a country free from British control
and British law were silly delusions, dangerous to all good order and
civilization. That such a people could ever govern a country of their
own and have in it that thing they were crying so much about,
"liberty," was in their opinion beyond the bounds of intelligent belief.
A recent American writer says: "The revolution was not by any means the
pretty social event that the ladies of the so-called 'patriotic'
societies suppose it to have been. It was, on the contrary, a rank and
riotous rebellion against the long-established authority of a nation
which had saved us from France, built us up into prosperity, and if she
was ruling us today would, I am entirely willing to admit, abolish
lynch-law, negro burning, municipal and legislative corruption, and all
the other evils about which reformers fret." The same writer also says:
"All that saved this country from complete annihilation was the
assistance after 1778 of the French army, fleet, provisions, clothes,
and loans of money, followed by assistance from Spain, and, at the last
moment, by the alliance of Holland, and even with all this assistance
the cause was, even as late as the year 1780, generally believed to be a
hopeless one."[53] "In fact, Washington, at this time, was prepared to
become a guerilla." In case of being further pressed, he said: "We must
retire to Augusta County, in Virginia. Numbers will repair to us for
safety, and we will then try a predatory war. If overpowered, we must
cross the Allegheny Mountains."[54]
[53] "The American Revolution and Boer War," By Sidney Fisher, 1902.
[54] Irving's "Life of Washington," Vol. II., chap. xli.
The question will naturally be asked why, if they were so numerous, were
they not more successful, why did they yield to popular violence in New
England, and desert the country while the contest was going on, Why did
they not hold the Southern States, and keep them from joining the others
in the Continental Congresses, and in the war?
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. Though these
were few in number in the South, they were of families of great social
influence, and in the North were popular agitators of long experience.
They manipulated the committee system so carefully that the colonies
found themselves, before they were aware of the tendency of the actions
of their deputies, involved in proceedings of very questionable
legality, such as the boycotting agreement known as the "American
Association," and other proceedings of the Continental Congress.[55] In
regard to the subject of legal attainder and exile, Mr. Sabine remarks,
very moderately and sensibly: "Nor is it believed that either the
banishment or the confiscation laws, as they stood, were more expedient
than just. The latter did little towards relieving the public
necessities, and served only to create a disposition for rapacity, and
to increase the wealth of favored individuals. Had the estates which
were seized and sold been judiciously or honestly managed, a
considerable sum would have found its way to the treasury; but, as it
was, the amount was inconsiderable. Some of the wisest and purest Whigs
of the time hung their heads in shame because of the passage of measures
so unjustifiable, and never ceased to speak of them in terms of
reprobation. Mr. Jay's disgust was unconquerable, and he never would
purchase any property that had been forfeited under the Confiscation Act
of New York."[56]
[55] "Essays in American History," 179. See also "Royalists' Archives,"
Mass. State House.
[56] "North American Review," LIX., page 280.
Judge Curwen, a Salem Loyalist, says: "So infamously knavish has been
the conduct of the commissioners, that though frequent attempts have
been made to bring them to justice and to respond for the produce of the
funds resting in their hands, so numerous are the defaulters in that
august body, the _General Court_, that all efforts have hitherto proved
in vain. Not two pence on the pound have arrived to the public treasury
of all the confiscation."[57]
[57] The "Journal and Letters of Samuel Curwin," 147.
"The Loyalists, to a great extent, sprung from and represented the old
gentry of the country. The prospect of seizing their property had been
one great motive which induced many to enter the war. The new owners of
the confiscated property now grasped the helm. 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. Hostilities at
an end, mere loyalty should have been forgiven. When, in the civil war
between the Puritans and the Stuarts, the former gained the ascendancy,
and when at a later period the Commonwealth was established, Cromwell
and his party wisely determined not to banish nor inflict disabilities
on their opponents, and so, too, at the restoration of the monarchy, so
general was the amnesty act in its provisions that it was termed an act
of oblivion to the _friends_ of Charles, and of grateful remembrance to
his _foes_. The happy consequences which resulted from the conduct of
_both_ parties, and in both cases, were before the men of their own
political and religious sympathies, the Puritans of the North and the
Cavaliers of the South in America, but neither of them profited by it,
at that time; but since then the wisdom of it has been exemplified by
the happy consequences which have resulted to both parties engaged in
the war of secession, where the United States wisely determined not to
banish, confiscate, or inflict any disabilities on their opponents in
the late seceded states.
The crime having been committed, thousands ruined and banished, new
British colonies founded, animosities to continue for generations made
certain, the violent Revolutionists of Massachusetts, New York and
Virginia, were satisfied: all this accomplished and the statute-book was
divested of its most objectionable enactments, and a few of the
Loyalists returned to their old homes, but by far the greater part died
in banishment.
No one who studies the history of the American Revolution can fail to be
convinced that the persecution of the Loyalists had for its final result
the severance of the North American continent into two nations. The
people who inhabited Nova Scotia prior to the Revolution were largely
New England settlers, who dispossessed the Acadians, and who for the
most part sympathized with the revolutionary movement. But for the
banishment of the Loyalists, Nova Scotia would have long continued with
but a very sparse population, and certainly could never have hoped to
obtain so enterprising, active, and energetic a set of inhabitants as
those who were supplied to it by the acts of the several states hostile
to the Loyalists. The same can also be said of Upper Canada. The hold of
the British government upon the British provinces of North America which
remained to the crown, would have been slight indeed, but for the active
hostility of the Loyalists to their former fellow-countrymen. They
created the state of affairs which consolidated British power on this
continent, and built it up into the Dominion of Canada, which in another
century will probably contain one hundred million inhabitants.
The treaty of peace with Great Britain, like other documents of its
kind, contained provisions of give and take. After signature by the
commissioners in Paris it was ratified with due consideration by the
Continental Congress. The advantages which it secured were not merely of
a sentimental nature, but material. It was justly regarded by
enlightened citizens of the states as a triumph of diplomacy. The credit
of Britain in the bargain was more of the heart than of the head. She
was willing to concede substantial and important benefits in order to
secure the lives and property of the Loyalists who had clung to her and
had sustained her arms. Looking at the matter now, in a cool light, she
blundered into sacrifices that were altogether needless, even with this
aim in view, and knowledge of the knavery that was to follow.
The game was played, and she had lost. North America, in the eyes of her
statesmen, was a strip of eastern seaboard; the great lakes were but
dimly understood; the continent beyond the Mississippi was ignored. She
gave much more than she needed to have given both in east and west, to
attain her honorable end, and what was more immediately distressing, she
received little or no value in return for her liberal concession.
"That each party should hold what it possesses, is the first point from
which nations set out in framing a treaty of peace. If one side gives up
a part of its acquisitions, the other side renders an equivalent in some
other way. What is the equivalent given to Great Britain for all the
important concessions she has made? She has surrendered the capital of
this state (New York) and its large dependencies. She is to surrender
our immensely valuable posts on the frontier, and to yield to us a vast
tract of western territory, with one-half of the lakes, by which we
shall command almost the whole fur trade. She renounces to us her claim
to the navigation of the Mississippi and admits us to share in the
fisheries even on better terms than we formerly enjoyed. As she was in
possession, by right of war, of all these objects, whatever may have
been our original pretensions to them, they are, by the laws of nations,
to be considered as so much given up on her part. And what do we give in
return? We stipulate that there shall be no future injury to her
adherents among us. How insignificant the equivalent in comparison with
the acquisition! A man of sense would be ashamed to compare them, a man
of honesty, not intoxicated with passion, would blush to lisp a question
of the obligation to observe the stipulation on our part."[58] In return
for these advantages which Hamilton informs us Great Britain gave to the
States, Congress had most solemnly undertaken three things, and people,
wearied by the sufferings of our eight years' war, would have gladly
purchased the blessings of peace at a much higher price. The first of
these conditions was that no obstacle or impediment should be put in the
way of the recovery of debts due to British subjects from the citizens
of the Republic; the second that no fresh prosecution or confiscation
should be directed against Loyalists; the third, that Congress should
sincerely recommend to the legislatures of the various states a repeal
of the existing acts of confiscation, which affected the property of
these unfortunate persons. On the last no stress could be laid, but the
first and second were understood by every man, honest or dishonest, in
the same sense as when peace was joyfully accepted. The American states
took the benefits of peace which the efforts of Congress had secured to
them, they accepted the advantages of the treaty which their
representative had signed, they watched and waited until the troops of
King George were embarked in transports at New York for England, and
then proceeded to deny, in a variety of tones, all powers in the central
government to bind them in the matter of the _quid pro quo_. It was not
a great thing which Congress had undertaken to do, or one which could be
of any material advantage to their late enemy. All their promises
amounted to was that they would abstain from the degradation of a petty
and personal revenge, and this promise they proceeded to break in every
particular.
[58] The Works of Alexander Hamilton, by H. C. Lodge, 2d edition, Vol.
IV., page 239.
As Hamilton wisely and nobly urged, the breach was not only a despicable
perfidy, but an impolitic act, since Loyalists might become good
citizens and the state needed nothing more urgently than population. But
no sooner was danger at a distance, embarked on transports, than the
states assumed an attitude of defiance. The thirteen legislatures vied
with one another in the ingenuity of measures for defeating the recovery
of debts due to British creditors. They derided the recommendation to
repeal oppressive acts, and to restore confiscated property, and
proceeded, without regard either for honor or consequences, to pass new
acts of wider oppression and to order confiscation on a grander scale.
There was a practical unanimity in engaging in fresh persecutions of
Loyalists, not merely by the enactment of oppressive civil laws, but by
even denying them the protection afforded by a just enforcement of the
criminal laws. In many districts these unfortunate persons were robbed,
tortured, and even put to death with impunity, and over a hundred
thousand driven into exile in Canada, Florida and the Bahamas.
Measures were passed amid popular rejoicing to obstruct the recovery of
debts due to British merchants and to enable the fortunate Americans to
revel unmolested in the pleasure of stolen fruits. It is remarkable how
at this period public opinion was at once so childish and rotten, and
one is at a loss whether to marvel most at its recklessness of credit or
its unvarnished dishonesty; it was entirely favorable to the idea of
private theft, and the interest of rogues was considered with compassion
by the grave and respectable citizens who composed the legislatures of
the various states. It was the same spirit which had violated the
Burgoyne convention at Saratoga, the same which in later days preached
the gospel of repudiation, greenbackism, silver currency, violated
treaties with the Indians, that produced a "Century of Dishonor."
Meanwhile the policy of breach of faith was producing its natural crop
of inconvenience. Dishonest methods were not the unmixed advantages
which these adherents had supposed, when they engaged upon them in a
spirit of light-hearted cunning. For in spite of all the ill-feeling, a
large demand arose for British goods. For these, specie had to be paid
down on the nail in all cases where wares or material were not taken in
exchange, since no British merchant would now give one pennyworth of
credit, out of respect to the measures of the various states for the
obstruction of the payment of British debts. It was true that Britain
was in no mood to embark upon a fresh war for the punishment of broken
promises. She had surrendered the chief hostage when she evacuated her
strategical position at New York, but she declined to hand over the
eight important frontier posts which she held upon the American side of
the line between Lake Michigan and Lake Champlain. These posts were much
in themselves, and as a symbol of dominion to the Indian tribes. They
were much also as a matter of pride, while their retention carried with
it the whole of the valuable fur trade, which consequently, until 1795,
when they were at last surrendered, brought considerable profits to
British merchants.
To the short-sighted policy which banished the Loyalists may be traced
nearly all the political troubles of this continent, in which Britain
and the United States have been involved. "Dearly enough have the people
of the United States paid for the crime of the violent Whigs of the
Revolution, for to the Loyalists who were driven away, and to their
descendants, we owe almost entirely the long and bitter controversy
relative to our northeastern boundaries, and the dispute about our right
to the fisheries in the colonial seas."