Loyalists

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Loyalists

LOYALISTS. Histories of the Loyalists fall into two groups. The first and older tradition, flourishing from the Revolution itself until the World War II, considered them to have been a force unto themselves, a phalanx of conservative colonists committed to values of order, subordination, and imperial ambition who bravely stood athwart the libertarian, egalitarian, middle-class aspirations of their Patriot antagonists. Since 1945, historians of the Loyalists have situated them within, rather than athwart, the Revolution, recognizing that with a few notable exceptions, the so-called Tories were in fact Whiggish in their understanding of the British Constitution and reluctantly unwilling to embrace actual independence under republican government when those realities descended on them sometime between 1774 and 1777.

Generations of nineteenth-century American schoolchildren were taught that if anything during the American Revolution was lower than a British regular or a Hessian it was a Tory or Loyalist. What good could possibly be said about a native-born American who sided with the British? With the publication of Claude H. Van Tyne's Loyalists in the American Revolution in 1902, a revisionist trend got under way that tended to glorify Loyalists as honorable people victimized by diabolical mobs. This tendency was epitomized in the works of Kenneth Roberts, particularly in Oliver Wiswell (1940). The truth lies somewhere in between; this article will not presume to say just where but, rather, will attempt to outline the views of historical authorities.

CHARACTERIZING THE TORIES

Here, for a starter, is the statement of Canadian historian Henry Smith Williams:

It is but truth to say the loyalists … were the makers of Canada. They were an army of leaders. The most influential judges, the most distinguished lawyers, the most capable and prominent physicians, the most highly educated clergy, the members of the council of various colonies, the crown officials, the people of culture and social distinction—these … were the loyalists. Canada owes deep gratitude to her southern kinsmen, who thus, from Maine to Georgia, picked out their choicest spirits, and sent them forth to people our northern wilds. (Steele, American Campaigns, p. 12).

Van Tyne gives an interesting breakdown of the categories of Tories before the arrival of Gage in Boston: (1) officeholders, whose income was at stake; (2) "those gregarious persons whose friends were among the official class"; (3) Anglican clergymen, many of whom had motives similar to those of the crown officials; (4) "conservative people of all classes, who glided easily in the old channels"; (5) "dynastic" Tories who believed in kings; (6) "legality" Tories who thought Parliament had a right to tax; (7) religious Tories, whose dogma was "Fear God and honor the King"; and (8) "factional" Tories whose action was determined by family friends and old political animosities. The De Lanceys in New York became Loyalists because Livingstons were Whigs. Christopher Sower in Pennsylvania embraced the opposition primarily because the Patriot leadership of his region represented the critics of his family and religious sect. The antipathy of the Otises toward British authority stemmed from a personal animosity toward Governor Bernard.

Yet the Loyalists showed a peculiar inability to organize. "It is not far wrong to say that a genuine Loyalist party did not exist in the colonies until the commercial war failed and the real war began," Van Tyne has said. (War of Independence, p. 22n). "Instead," he has written, "of taking part in the colonial politics, they withdrew, in many cases, and looked frowningly on while rebellion advanced by leaps and bounds" (Loyalists, p. 87).

WHERE TORY STRENGTH LAY

Surprisingly, the greatest Loyalist strength appears to have been in the frontier regions. Colonel Rankin headed a movement in Pennsylvania and adjacent areas. The border warfare in New York and the civil war that raged in the southern theater are other examples. Organized Tory resistance was promptly squelched in Virginia when the fighting started; farther south the rebels also got the upper hand initially, but subsequent Tory uprisings were serious.

In the north, the Loyalists first acted as associated bands but then enlisted by the thousands in the British army. H. E. Egerton has written:

New York alone furnished about 15,000 to the British Army and over 8,000 Loyalist militia. All of the other colonies furnished about as many more, so that we may safely say that 50,000 soldiers, either regular or militia, were drawn into the service of Great Britain from her American sympathizers. Tories formed no inconsiderable part of Burgoyne's army. Even when they did not join, their known presence in large numbers among the inhabitants of the region prevented the Americans from leaving their homes to join the American army. The British forces were also greatly helped in the matter of supplies by the Tory inhabitants (Causes and Character, p. 178).

"New York supplied more recruits to George III than to George Washington," Crane Brinton has written. "It has been estimated that perhaps only one third of the colonists actively backed the Revolution" (p. 317). The Tories may be correct in claiming to have had more long-term troops in service than the rebels after 1778, Lynn Montross has written in Rag Tag, and Bobtail (1952). This was because the British could equip them. Although no fewer than sixty-nine Loyalist regiments were organized to the extent of seeking volunteers, at least twenty-one of these actually took the field with an average strength of several hundred men each.

LOYALIST IMPACT ON STRATEGY

The Loyalists had an interesting effect on British strategic planners, who tended to anticipate more support than existed in regions of America where they had not yet operated. When Tory support failed to materialize in New England, the British expected to find it in New York and shifted military operations there. Simultaneously, they got drawn into the Charleston expedition of Clinton in 1776. The hope of Loyalist assistance had a part in luring them into the unfortunate Bennington raid. Ferguson's defeat at Kings Mountain also stemmed from this fallacy. Another effect of the Loyalists was in restricting British strategic movement when they became burdened with Loyalists who had to be evacuated or protected. One reason why Sir William Howe went from Boston to Halifax rather than directly to New York was that he had to evacuate Tories from Boston. A reason that Howe permitted himself to get overextended in the winter of 1776 was because he had to outpost Trenton, Bordentown, Princeton, and Brunswick to protect the Tories of New Jersey. The isolated post of Ninety-Six, South Carolina, had to be garrisoned (by a northern Tory unit) for the protection of loyal inhabitants of the region. The two most brilliant American victories, Trenton and Cowpens, can be traced indirectly to the need for the British to overextend themselves to protect Loyalists.

REPRESSION OF TORIES

Persecution of the Loyalists started with mob action by the Sons of Liberty and continued throughout the Revolution. Matthew Steele has stated that "while liberty-loving pamphleteers were writing about the 'rights of man,' thousands of our patriotic ancestors were subjecting innocent, but loyal, persons to every sort of indignity and torture…. There was absolutely no freedom of the press or tongue, save for those that expressed opinions against the government" (p. 12). Test laws and statutes confiscating Tory property were passed. Perhaps forty thousand Loyalists were expelled from the states. New York made $3.6 million from the sale of confiscated property, and Maryland collected over $2 million. When the British evacuated New York City in 1783, they took out seven thousand Tories, and the estimated total of those who left America during the Revolution is almost one hundred thousand. In July 1783 the British government established a commission that examined 4,118 claims before it finished in 1790, having allotted almost £3.3 million to compensate loyal Americans for their losses.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brinton, Crane, John B. Christopher, and Robert Lee Wolff. Modern Civilization: A History of the Last Five Centuries. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1957.

Brown, Wallace. The Good Americans: The Loyalists in the American Revolution. New York: Morrow, 1969.

Calhoon, Robert M. The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760–1781. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.

Crary, Catherine S. The Price of Loyalty: Tory Writings from the Revolutionary Era. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973.

Egerton, H. E. The Causes and Character of the American Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon, 1923.

Norton, Mary Beth. The British-Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England, 1774–1789. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972.

Steele, Matthew Forney. American Campaigns. Washington: Combat Forces Press, 1951.

Van Tyne, Claude. The Loyalists in the American Revolution. New York, P. Smith: 1929.

???????. The War of Independence: American Phase, Being the Second Volume of a History of the Founding of the American Republic. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1929.

revised by Robert M. Calhoon

Encyclopedia of the American Revolution: Library of Military History