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115
Conn. Col. Rec. (1665–78), pp. 260, 334, 335, 339–43, 578–
86. N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 254.
Governor Dongan’s jealousy of Andros makes his statement
of Andros’s intentions ten years before questionable authority,
especially when it is remembered that at the time he made the
statement he was busily engaged in trying to persuade the
people of Connecticut to ask to be annexed to New York,
rather than to Massachusetts under Andros. Under these
circumstances, one cannot help suspecting his testimony as to
memoranda left behind by Andros, who was one of the most
cautious and methodical of men. N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 415. If
Andros intended to surprise the post, he certainly was very ill-
judged to send notice of his claim beforehand. For the best
account of these proceedings, see Brodhead, Hist. of N. Y., ii.
284–286.
116
Brodhead, Hist. of New York, ii. 303–306. New Jersey
Archives, i. 156–347.
117
Conn. Col. Records (1678–89), 283–285.
118
Mass. Rec., iv. (2), 359–361. Brodhead, History of New York, ii.
127.
119
N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 257 ff.
120
N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 254, 258, 259, 266, 267. See also
Randolph’s report in the same vol. 242. Hutchinson, Coll., 476,
490. Brodhead, ii. 290. Mather’s Brief History of the War, 117,
129, 254.
121
N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 264, 265.
122
N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 235, 256.
123
N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 260–265.
124
N. Y. Col. Doc., 279–284, 302–308. For Andros’s answer, 308–
313.
125
N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 314–316.
126
Duncan, 589. N. Y. Col. Doc., ii. 741. Hutchinson, Coll., 542.
127
Whitmore, Andros Tracts, I. xlix., Note D. “In an old pedigree
written about A. D. 1687 by Charles Andros uncle of the
governor, and still preserved in the family, we find:
‘The 13th April 1683, the King, Charles II. gave the charge of
Gentleman in ordinary of his privy chamber’ to Sir Edmund,
and ‘the 6th day of the month of June 1685, the King, James II.
gave a Commission to the above Sir Edmund Andros to
command a troop of Cavalry to go against the rebels in
England.’ This refers of course to Monmouth’s Rebellion. ‘In
August, 1685, he was made Lieut.-Colonel of Lord Scarsdale’s
cavalry.’”
128
Palfrey, Hist. of New England, iii. 319, 334. In 1678, Andros
had written Blathwayt that there would be danger of Indian
difficulties, “so long as each petty colony hath or assumes
absolute power of peace and war, which cannot be managed
by such popular governments as was evident in the late Indian
wars in New England.” N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 271. Earlier still,
Gov. Winslow of Plymouth had told Randolph that New
England could never flourish until its several colonies were
placed under his Majesty’s immediate government
(Hutchinson, Coll., p. 509), and Randolph had urged the matter
upon the council in his celebrated report. Hutch., Coll., 477–
503.
129
Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 4th Series, vol. ii.
130
Rhode Island Col. Records, iii. 175–197. Chalmers, Political
Annals, 278.
131
Whitmore, I. xxvii. Cambridge Almanac, 1687.
132
Whitmore, I. xxvii. Goldwin Smith, in his recent work on The
United States, seems to suppose that this occurred in New
 Hampshire.
133
Conn. Col. Records (1678–89), 376–378.
134
Conn. Col. Records (1678–89), 389.
135
Chalmers, Political Annals, 297, 298. General History of
Connecticut, by a Gentleman of the Province (Rev. S. Peters,
D. D.), London, 1781.
Peters’s account is as follows: “They resigned it (the charter)
in propria forma, into the hands of Sir Edmund Andros at
Hertford, in October, 1687, and were annexed to the Mass.
Bay colony, in preference to New York, according to royal
promise and their own petition. But the very night of the
surrender of it, Samuel Wadsworth of Hertford, with the
assistance of a mob, violently broke into the apartments of Sir
Edmund, regained, carried off and hid the charter in the hollow
of an elm, and in 1689, news arriving of an insurrection and
overthrow of Andros at Boston, Robert Treat, who had been
elected in 1687, was declared by the mob still to be Governor
of Connecticut. He daringly summoned his old Assembly, who
being convened, voted the charter to be valid in law, and that it
could not be vacated by any power, without the consent of the
General Assembly. They then voted, that Samuel Wadsworth
should bring forth the charter; which he did in a solemn
procession, attended by the High Sheriff, and delivered it to the
Governor. The General Assembly voted their thanks to
Wadsworth, and twenty shillings as a reward for stealing and
hiding their charter in an elm.”
136
Conn. Col. Rec. (1678–89), 248.
137
Bulkeley, Gershom, Will and Doom, in Conn. Col. Rec. (1678–
89), 390, 391.
138
Conn. Col. Rec. (1678–89), 393 note, 404 note.
139
Trumbull, History of Connecticut, i. 371–375.
140
For Andros’s own account of the transaction, see N. Y. Col.
Doc., iii. 722–726. Andros Tracts, iii. 20, 21. R. I. Col. Rec., iii.
281.
141
It is interesting to notice in this regard, that the chief complaint
Increase Mather made against Andros, in his interview with
James II., was that he did not sufficiently observe the king’s
Declaration of Indulgence. Mather, Cotton, D. D., Life of
Increase Mather, p. 41, London 1725. Parentator, pp. 109–116
(reprinted in part in Andros Tracts, iii. 121–187). Cf. Randolph’s
account in N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 578; also, Chalmers, Pol. Annals,
426.
142
Whitmore. Andros Tracts, i. 1–10. Hutchinson, i. 374–377.
N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 722, 726. Palfrey, History of New England,
iii. ch. xiv., xv. That the revolution was carefully prepared and
planned, see Mather, Samuel, Life of Cotton Mather, p. 42, and
N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 587, 588 (Deposition of Philip French), New
York, 1689.
“The above said Mr. Philip French further declared that being
on board the ‘Prudent Sarah,’ Benjamin Gillem Mastr coming
from England in company with Sir Willm Fips. heard him speak
severall times the words following to this effect, ‘that he did say
the first fishing boat he mett he would hire and goe privately
ashore and rise a company without beating of drum, and that
he would take the packets sent to Sr Edmund and not deliver
them to him, except he appeared in Councill, and there would
secure him.’
“That about the same time upon the said voyage he heard Sr
Willm Fips say that he appeared before the Lords, and one of
them starting up asked him whether they would stand by the
rights of their Charter, or for the abuses they had received from
Sir Edmund Andros; it was answered, by the right of their
charter.
“And about the same time this Deponant heard him say, that
they (which this Deponant supposes were the Lords or the
 Cômons assembled in Parliament) told him, that if they did
give them trouble to hang Sir Edmund, they deserved noe
funds.”
143
Conn. Col. Rec. (1678–89), 250, 455–460.
144
N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 723. Whitmore, Andros Tracts, iii. 22, 23,
41–43 (for his escape and capture, 95–102).
145
Hutchinson, i. 394.
146
Beverly, History of Virginia, i. 37. C. W. (Charles Wolley), A. M.,
A Two Years’ Journal in New York. For an unfavorable
account, Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., v. 124–166, “An Account of the
Present State and Government of Virginia.” The Sainsbury
Papers, in the State Library at Richmond, Va., are transcripts
and abstracts from the London originals, of all official papers of
this period, relating to Virginia, and an examination of them
made in 1892, through the kindness of the State Librarian,
gave strong corroboration of the view of Andros’s
administration presented by Wolley and Beverly, and
presented Blair and his friends in a less amiable light than they
have presented themselves. Cf. Meade, Old Churches and
Families of Virginia, i. 107, 108. Perry, History of the American
Episcopal Church, vol. i. chapter vii.
147
Perry, Historical Collections of the American Colonial Church:
Virginia.
148
Whitmore, I. xxxiv. Duncan, 130, 131, 589. “In 1704, under
Queen Anne, he was extraordinarily distinguished by having
the lieutenant-governorship of Guernsey bestowed on him,
whilst he also continued bailiff, his duties, as such, being
dispensed with for the time, he having power given to him to
appoint his lieutenant-bailiff, who was likewise authorized to
name a deputy.”
149
Whitmore, I. xxxv.
150
Duncan, 589. “Sir Edmund was for many years at the head of
a mixed and adventurous population, in newly settled and
important colonies, distant from the mother country, a station at
all time arduous, but immeasurably so in the age of revolutions
in which he lived, when the institutions longest established
were not exempt from the common jeopardy, and unusual
energy was called for in all, wherever situated, by whom the
royal authority was to be asserted. He resolutely encountered
the duties and responsibilities of his high office throughout the
long course of his career, and was successful in resisting, in
his military as well as in his civil capacity, the intrigues and
hostilities of the neighboring French and Indians, to which he
was continually exposed. By some of the chroniclers of the
period, who wrote, doubtless, not uninfluenced by its
partisanship, he has been represented, in his earlier
government under James the Second, as an abettor of
tyranny; but by others of them, appearing to have possessed
the best means of judging of the circumstances under which
he acted, his conduct has been liberally estimated. His later
administration, under William the Third, is allowed to have
been irreproachable. All the colonies advanced greatly in
improvement whilst under his charge; and the fact that he was
distinguished by the marked approval and successive
appointments of his several sovereigns, after, no less than
before, the Revolution, cannot but be interpreted as the
strongest testimonial in his favor, and highly to the honor of his
reputation.”
Chalmers remarks (Political Annals, i. 422): “The charges of
greatest magnitude were not the faults of the governor, but of
the constitution; the smaller accusations arose from actions
directly contrary to his instructions. Did he act contrary to them
and to his commission, he had been the most faithless of
servants, and most criminal of men. But he did not. For, when
the agents of the province impeached him before William, they
accused him not of acting inconsistent with either, but of
having exercised an authority unconstitutional and tyrannous.
 His conduct was approved of by James; and he was again
appointed a colonial governor by William, because he equally
appeared to him worthy of trust. Unhappily oppressed by a real
tyranny, the colonists of those days beheld every action with
diseased eyes, and their distempers have descended in a
great measure to their historians, who have retailed political
fictions as indubitable truths.” And again: “What a spectacle
does the administration of Andros hold up to mankind for their
instruction; under a form of government, plainly arbitrary and
tyrannous, more real liberty was actually enjoyed than under
the boasted system, which appeared so fair.”
151
Doc. Hist. of N. Y., i. 179.
 IV.
THE LOYALISTS.

The opportunity of uniting together the colonies was lost when

the government of England, under William and Mary, condoned the
rebellion in Massachusetts, and allowed Connecticut and Rhode
Island to resume their charters. From that time onward, union under
the royal authority was impossible, even in the face of the pressing
dangers of the French and Indian wars, to which for over sixty years
the colonies were almost continuously exposed. Futile attempts were
made, but in face of such a triumph of individualism nothing could be
accomplished. When the conference at Albany, in 1754, put forth a
plan of federation, drawn up by Benjamin Franklin and studiously
moderate in its provisions, it was rejected with indignation by the
colonies, as tending to servitude, and by the authorities in England,
152
as incurably democratic. Yet the attempt that had been made
had, at least, one result: it had created what we may call an imperial
party, the members of which were devotedly attached to the
connection with Great Britain, and opposed to that narrow spirit so
prevalent in the colonies, which esteemed nothing as of value in
comparison with their local customs and local privileges. This party
grew strong in New York, where the extravagances of Leisler’s
insurrection had called for stern chastisement, and was also well
represented in New England. The new charter of Massachusetts,
which gave it a governor appointed by the crown, while preserving its
Assembly and its town organizations, had tended to encourage and
develop, even in that fierce democracy, those elements of a
conservative party which had been called into existence some years
before by the disloyalty and tyranny of the ecclesiastical oligarchy.
Thus, side by side with a group of men who were constantly
regretting their lost autonomy, and looking with suspicion and
prejudice at every action of the royal authorities, there arose this
other group of those who constantly dwelt upon, and frequently
exaggerated, the advantages they derived from their connection with
the mother country. In Connecticut there was a strong minority that
had opposed the re-assumption of the charter after the overthrow of
Andros; and in all the royal provinces an official class was gradually
growing up, that was naturally imperial rather than local in its
sympathies. The Church of England, also, had at last waked up to a
sense of the spiritual needs of its children beyond the seas, and by
means of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was sending
devoted and self-sacrificing missionaries to labor among the people
153
of the colonies. The influence of this tended inevitably to maintain
and strengthen the feeling of national unity in those of the colonists
who came under the ministrations of the missionaries. In the colony
of Connecticut, especial strength was given to this movement by an
unexpected religious revolution, in which several of the prominent
ministers of the ruling congregational body, and many of the best of
the laity, forsook their separatist principles and returned to the
154
historic church of the old home. The wars with the French, in
which colonists fought side by side with regulars, in a contest of
national significance, tended upon the whole to intensify the sense of
imperial unity; although there can be no doubt that the British officers
generally, by their contemptuous speeches and by their insolent
manner towards the colonials whom they affected to despise,
prepared the way for the eventual rupture of sentiment between the
155
colonies and England.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that neither navigation laws
nor the Stamp Act nor parliamentary interference had as much to do
in alienating the affections of Americans from the mother country, as
had the ill-mannered impertinence of the British officers and the royal
officials. This insolence, when joined to Grenville’s bungling and
exasperating attempt to extend imperial taxation to the colonies, had
the result of uniting for a time nearly all Americans in opposition to
the measures proposed by the advisers of the king, and enabled
them to win a great constitutional victory over the attempt to impose
stamp duties upon them. The division into two distinct parties,
though as has been pointed out the groups had been gradually
forming and drawing apart from one another, did not really come into
definite existence until the further impolitic measures of successive
ministries had strengthened the hands of those who were
traditionally disposed to resist the authority of England.
It is very hard for us to put ourselves in the place of men of a
century ago, and to think their thoughts and surround ourselves in
imagination with their environment; we naturally carry back much of
the nineteenth century into the eighteenth. We know the America of
to-day, a vigorous, healthy, prosperous, mighty nation, reaching from
sea to sea, filled with a busy people, adorned with the achievements
of a hundred years, hallowed by many sacred memories. The
American flag has floated proudly through the smoke of battle in
every quarter of the world, and for a hundred years men have seen
in it the symbol of a country and a fatherland. It is difficult for us to
realize that, before 1776, these influences had no power; there was
then no nation, no country, no fatherland, no flag, nothing but a
number of not over-prosperous colonies, with but little love or liking
for one another. Even the strongest Americans did not venture to use
the word nation or its derivatives, but called their congress, even
after the formal separation from England, simply the Continental
Congress. The very considerations which show us how wonderful
and even sublime were the faith and the devotion of the leaders of
the American revolution, will also show us how natural it was, how
almost inevitable it was, that other men, whose connection with
England was closer and more intimate, whose habits of mind were
conservative rather than progressive, who had been brought up to
fear God and honor the king and to think more about their duties
than about their rights, should cling with devotion to the cause of the
mother-country and condemn the revolution as a “parricidal
rebellion.”
Besides this highest motive, which influenced the best and the
purest-minded among the opponents of colonial separation, there
were undoubtedly other motives of lower character, which affected
some men in their decision, and disposed them to loyalty. The
political power of all the colonies had been largely in the hands of
those who were known as the “better sort,” usually gentlemen of
good family, rich and well educated; in some of the colonies official
position had been treated as the special prerogative of a few
distinguished families who contended with one another for its
possession: none of the colonies, not even Connecticut, was
democratic as we understand the term to-day. In some cases the
revolutionary movements and impulses came from a class which
wished to occupy public positions from which they had been
excluded, and in others from dissatisfied and discontented men of
birth and family, who were tired of being out in the cold, while their
156
rivals were enjoying the pleasures and emoluments of office.
Thus in New York, the history of the revolution is closely bound up
with the family feuds of the De Lanceys on the one side with the
Livingstons on the other. In Massachusetts, the quarrel between
Governor Bernard and the Otises did much to increase the patriotism
of the latter family; and until the very breaking out of hostilities, the
contest within the colony was between a majority of the well-to-do
merchants and lawyers of Boston on the one side, and the least
stable elements of the populace, under the leadership of one of the
most skilful of political agitators, Samuel Adams, upon the other.
There is no doubt that, in Massachusetts at least, most well-to-
do persons considered the agitation at first to be merely political, the
usual device of the “outs” against the “ins”; they laughed at the loud
talk of some of the orators, and considered that it was put on for
157
effect. When, in addition to this, the cause of American rights was
disgraced, year after year, by riots, murder, arson, and sedition,
those who were entrusted with the responsibilities of office, however
much they sympathized with the abstract principles that were upheld
by the popular leaders, were prejudiced against the concrete
158
application of them. We should also remember that, down to the
time of the battle of Bunker Hill, if not later, all parties united in the
most loyal and devoted language. The rights that were claimed were
not the rights of Man, but of “natural-born subjects of the king of
Great Britain”; the king was always described as “the best and most
generous of monarchs,” and separation was never mentioned as a
possibility in any public utterance. War was looked forward to by
some of the most eager as a means of bringing the ministry to terms,
or as an unavoidable necessity if the unconstitutional taxation was
persisted in; but, up to the very last, most men agreed with Richard
Henry Lee, who said to Adams, as they parted after the first
Continental Congress in 1774: “All offensive acts will be repealed—
159
Britain will give up her foolish project.”
When the most ardent American patriots used this language,
and used it sincerely, it is not remarkable that those who formed the
opposing political party, who were conservative when these were the
radicals, should have felt that they were bound by their duty to their
king and country, or that they should also have felt that the disorderly
actions and the factious attitude of some of the extreme patriots in
Massachusetts and elsewhere were simply seditious. These
convictions were undoubtedly strengthened by the abominable
treatment which many of them personally received. They were not
apt to look with greater favor upon a cause whose votaries had tried
to recommend it to their liking by breaking their windows, plundering
their houses, constantly insulting them, their wives and their
daughters, to say nothing of tarring and feathering them, or of
burning them in effigy. The penal measures imposed by the
Parliament upon the town of Boston and the colony of
Massachusetts had been brought upon themselves by the so-called
patriots. One rather wonders at the slowness and mildness of the
British government, and at their miserable inefficiency, than at any
repressive measures that they undertook. They deserved to lose the
colonies for their invincible stupidity, which led them from one
blunder into another; they irritated when they ought either to have
crushed or conciliated; they tried half-measures when vigorous
action was necessary; they persisted in affronting all the other
colonies while they failed in chastising sedition in Massachusetts.
The result was that they drove many men, who were loyal subjects
of Great Britain in 1774, into revolution in 1776, while they allowed
the rebels of Massachusetts to wreak vengeance at their will upon
160
those who had been faithful in their allegiance to their king.
Besides those who were loyalists from conviction and
temperament and those who were almost unavoidably so from the
political position they occupied, there were also men who were
loyalists from the profit it gave them. Such were the holders of the
minor offices in the gift of the royal governors, the rich merchants
who represented English trading-houses, and dreaded war and
disturbance. There were others whose chief desire was to be upon
the winning side, who were unable to conceive the possibility of the
defeat of the English government by a handful of insurgent colonists,
and some also who, from local or personal dislikes or prejudices, or
from love of opposition, took a different side from that which was
taken by their neighbors. It is probable, however, that there were
hardly any whose motives were not to some extent mixed; few on
the one hand so disinterested or so devoted as not to be moved in
some degree by self-interest or prejudice, few on the other hand
whose nature was so biassed by prejudice or so sordid with love of
place or pension as not also to be moved by the higher impulse of
fidelity.
Loyalty is hard to define; it is one of those virtues which appeals
not so much to the head as to the heart. Its critics accuse it of being
irrational and illogical, as being based upon sentiment rather than
upon conviction. Yet, in spite of logic and reason, or rather, on
account of its profounder logic and higher reason, loyalty will hold its
own, and strike an answering chord of admiration in the human heart
as long as men appreciate disinterested virtue. It may be classed
with the other unreasoned qualities that men yet esteem, with faith
and truth, honor and courage, decency and chastity. It may be a
man’s intellectual duty to follow the dictates of his understanding and
to act upon his temporary convictions, whatever pain the action cost;
nevertheless, the man whom we respect and follow is not the man
who is always changing, who is easily influenced by argument, but
the man who abides by certain fixed principles, and refuses to desert
them, unless it can be shown him that beyond all chance of mistake
they are wrong and misleading.
 It has been sometimes asserted that loyalty can only be felt
towards a personal ruler or a dynasty; such a restriction of the term
is entirely unfounded. It is, by its very derivation, devotion to that
which is legal and established. Legality and Loyalty are
etymologically the same. No one can doubt that there is a high and
noble devotion to right and justice which is as admirable and as
strong as a devotion to any person. It is a more refined sentiment
and appeals to a higher moral sense than does the simple fidelity to
a person, beautiful and touching though such devotion be. The
loyalty of men who, like the younger Verneys, espoused the side of
the Parliament in its struggle with Charles the First, was as true and
real a sentiment, though its character was impersonal, as was that of
the stout Sir Edmund, who, though “he liked not the quarrel,”
followed the king, because “he had eaten his bread too long to turn
against him in his necessity.” There could hardly be a finer example
of this loyalty to an idea than was shown by those Americans who
condemned the stupid errors of the king and his advisers, and
realized fully the danger to liberty in the system of government that
George the Third was attempting to carry out in England and in
America, and yet, in spite of all, remained patriotic subjects, not from
affection but from principle, trusting to constitutional methods to
overcome the evils which they felt as strongly as any of those who
made them a justification for revolution.
As has been shown, among those who adhered to the side of
the mother country in the revolution there were men of all kinds and
convictions. There were those who were loyal because they believed
in the legal right of the Parliament to tax the colonies, short-sighted
as the policy might be, and considered their duty and their allegiance
to be due to the united empire. There were those who adhered to the
king’s cause from personal devotion to him and to his dynasty, an
unreasonable devotion in the eyes of some, but certainly not as
contemptible as American satirists have loved to describe it. There
were those who were by nature conservatives, willing to do anything
sooner than change, governed completely by a prejudice which
hardly deserves the noble name of loyalty, but still had in it an
element of steadiness and sturdiness that redeems it from contempt.
There were also, undoubtedly, men who calculated the chances of
victory in the struggle and espoused the side that they thought was
likely to win; there were those who were for the king from pure
gregariousness, because some of their friends and neighbors were
on that side; and, finally, some who, from a mere love of opposition,
set themselves against the cause of America because their
neighbors and townsmen favored it.
And, as the motives which impelled men were different, so also
their actions differed when the rupture came between the king and
the colonies. Some were active favorers of the cause of the king,
doing whatever they could to assist it and to injure the cause of their
rebellious neighbors. Others sadly left their homes at the outbreak of
the war and took refuge in England or in some of the English
provinces, suffering want, anxiety, and despair, snubbed and
despised by the insular English, compelled to hear America and
Americans insulted, dragging along a miserable existence, like that
of the shades whom Virgil found upon the bank of the infernal river,
not allowed to return to earth or to enter either Elysium or Tartarus.
Others attempted to live in peaceful neutrality in America,
experiencing the usual fate of neutrals, animals like the bat neither
beast nor bird but plundered and persecuted by both. Such betook
themselves usually to the protection of the British arms, and were to
be found in the greatest numbers at or near the headquarters of the
British generals in Savannah or Charlestown, Newport or New York.
Some American writers have been extremely severe upon the
Americans who served in the royal armies; such condemnation is
certainly illogical and unjust. They were fighting, they might have
reasoned, to save their country from mob rule, from the dominion of
demagogues and traitors, and to preserve to it what, until then, all
had agreed to be the greatest of blessings—the connection with
Great Britain, the privilege and honor of being Englishmen, heirs of
all the free institutions which were embodied in the “great and
glorious constitution.”
If the loyalists of New York, Georgia, and the Carolinas 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 at least abstain from forcibly opposing it. The further charge
is made that the worst outrages of the war were committed by Tories,
and the ill-doings of Brant and Butler at Wyoming and Cherry Valley,
together with the raids of Tryon and Arnold, are held up to the
execration of posterity as being something exceptionally brutal and
cruel, unparalleled by any similar actions on the part of the Whig
militia or the regular forces of either army, Sullivan’s campaign
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through the Indian country being conveniently forgotten. Impartial
history will not palliate the barbarities that were committed by either
party; but there can be no doubt that the Tory wrong-doings have
been grossly exaggerated, or at least have been dwelt upon as
dreadful scenes of depravity to form a background for the heroism
and fortitude of the patriotic party whose misdeeds are passed over
very lightly. The methods of the growth of popular mythology have
been the same in America as elsewhere; the gods of one party have
become the devils of the other. The haze of distance has thrown a
halo around the American leaders, softening their outlines, obscuring
their faults, while the misdeeds of Tories and Hessians have grown
with the growth of years. But it is an undoubted fact that there were
outrages upon both sides, brutal officers on both sides, bad
treatment of prisoners on both sides, guerilla warfare with all its evil
concomitants on both sides, and in these respects the Tories were
no worse than the Whigs. There was not much to choose between a
Cowboy and a Skinner, very little difference between Major
Ferguson’s command and that of Marion and Sumter. There was no
more orderly or better-behaved troop in either army than Simcoe’s
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Queen’s Rangers; possibly there was none on either side as bad
as the mixture of Iroquois Indians and Tory half-breeds who were
concerned in the massacres at Wyoming and Cherry Valley.
The Americans, however, do not deserve any credit for
abstaining from the use of Indian allies. They tried very hard to make
use of them, but without success. A few Englishmen in the Mohawk
Valley, faithful to the traditions of just and honest treatment of the
Indians, which had been inherited from the Dutch, had succeeded in
making the Iroquois regard them as friends, but everywhere else the
Indian and the colonist were bitter and irreconcilable foes. The
savage had long scores of hatred to pay, not upon the English nation
or English army, but upon the American settlers who had stolen his
lands, shot his sons, and debauched his daughters. The employment
of the Mohawks by the English was an outrage and a crying shame
upon civilization; but the responsibility of it lies directly upon the
government which allowed it, and the commanding generals who
sanctioned the expeditions, and only indirectly upon the men who
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carried out the directions of their superiors. It is interesting to
remember in this connection that the courteous and chivalrous
Lafayette raised a troop of Indians to fight the British and the Tories,
though his reputation has been saved by the utter and almost
ludicrous failure of his attempt. The fact is that, as far as the
Americans were engaged in it, the war of the Revolution was a civil
war, in which the two sides were not far different in numbers or in
social condition, and very much the same in their manners and
customs. The loyalists contended all through the war that they were
in a numerical majority, and that if they had been properly supported
by the British forces and properly treated by the British generals, the
war could have been ended in 1777, before the French alliance had
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given new hopes and new strength to the separatist party.
Sabine, in his well-known work on the loyalists of the Revolution,
computes that there were at least twenty thousand Americans in the
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military service of the king at one time or another during the war.
Other authorities think this estimate too high, but the number was
extremely large. In New York and New Jersey it is probable that the
opponents of separation outnumbered the patriot party, and the
same is probably true of the Carolinas and Georgia. Even in New
England, the nursery of the Revolution, the number was large and so
formidable, in the opinion of the revolutionary leaders, that in order to
suppress them they established a reign of terror and anticipated 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 an 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.
Virginia and Maryland seem to have been the only provinces in
which the body of the people sympathized with the projects of the
revolutionary leaders. The few loyalists there were in Virginia retired
to England with the last royal governor, and in Maryland a strong
sense of local independence and local pride led the colony to act
with unanimity and moderation.
The rigorous measures adopted by the new governments in the
Eastern States, and the activity of their town committees, succeeded
in either driving out their loyalist citizens or reducing them to
harmless inefficiency. In New York and New Jersey, however, they
remained strong and active throughout the war; and as long as the
British forces held Georgia and the Carolinas, loyalty was in the
ascendant in those states.
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 of the fact that they
could not take the initiative in any action, the loyalists were put at a
disadvantage before the much better organization of the patriotic
leaders. Though these were few in number, in the South they were of
the best families and of great social influence, and in the North they
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,
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and the other proceedings of the Continental Congress. When the
war began, the population of the three southernmost states had very
little care, except for their own lives and pockets. They were, with the
exception of a few distinguished families, descendants of a very low
grade of settlers. Oglethorpe’s philanthropy had left the legacy of
disorder and inefficiency to the colony of Georgia, a legacy which the
Empire State of the South has now nobly and grandly outlived. North
Carolina had a most heterogeneous population, and was, perhaps,
the most barbarous of all the colonies; while in South Carolina the
extremes in the social scale were most strongly marked, from the
high-spirited Huguenot gentlemen to the poor whites who formed the
bulk of the population, worse taught, worse fed, and worse clad than
the negro slaves. Such a population as this, living also in constant
fear of negro insurrection, was not likely to count for much on the
one side or the other; and we shall find, if we read Gates’s and
Greene’s dispatches on the one side, and Rawdon’s and
Cornwallis’s on the other, that the rival commanders agree in one
thing at least—in condemning and despising the worthlessness of
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the militia recruited in the southern country. It was the utter
cowardice of this militia that lost the battle of Camden and caused
the needless sacrifice of the lives of the braver Continentals; and the
correspondence of the English general is full of instances that prove
that, except for plundering and bushwhacking, there was little use to
be made of the loyalists in the South.
As to the other questions, why, when the loyalists were so
numerous, were they not more successful, and why did the eastern
loyalists yield to the violence that was offered them, one question
nearly answers the other. They were not successful, because they
had no leaders of their own stock and country, and because the
British commanders blundered throughout the war with as unerring
certainty and unfailing regularity as the various British ministries had
done from 1764 to 1776. The game was in the hands of the English,
if they had known how to play it, for the first three years of the war.
Then English inefficiency, rather than any belief in the ability of the
colonists to make good their own independence, brought about the
French alliance; and the war assumed from thenceforward a very
different aspect. The desertion of their cause and their country by the
many Tories who left New England for Great Britain or the loyal
provinces, and the supineness of the men of place and position who
attempted to preserve an attitude of neutrality instead of siding
openly either for or against the king, weakened the king’s cause in
America and prevented the numbers of the loyalist population from
counting for as much as they were really worth.
The clever French diplomatist who collected and translated the
correspondence of Lord George Germaine with the British generals
and admirals, a remarkably well-informed critic of the military
operations in America, states in his Preface his opinion as follows:
“Another thing which clearly proves that the affairs of the English
have been badly conducted in America, is that the American loyalists
alone were superior in number to the rebels. How, then, has it come
to pass that troops double in numbers, well paid and wanting
nothing, aided besides by a German army, have failed in opposing
the partisans of liberty, who, badly paid and badly equipped, often
lacked everything? Manifestly it is in the different capacity of the
commanders that we must seek for the counterweight which has
turned the scale in favor of the latter. If the English had had a
Washington at the head of their army there would long since have
been no more question of war on the American Continent.... M.
Linguet has said somewhere in his annals that the secretaries of the
Congress were better than the secretaries of the English generals.
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The same may be said of the generals themselves.”
Besides being inefficient in the field, the British commanders
alienated their friends and weakened the attachment of the loyalists
to the cause of the king by their extremely impolitic treatment of the
American provinces within their occupation. The regular officers
made no secret of their contempt for the colonists, and plundered
them without mercy, making little, if any, distinction between loyalist
or rebel, Tory or Whig. Judge Thomas Jones, a New Yorker of
prominence and position, who was a devoted loyalist and one of the
number especially singled out by name in the Act of Confiscation
and Attainder passed by his native state, has left us his record of the
way in which the British officers and officials exasperated rather than
conciliated the Americans, and punished rather than rewarded the
loyal for their attachment to the king and the integrity of the empire.
He writes: “In 1780, part of the army went into winter quarters upon
the westernmost end of the island, where they robbed, plundered,