Loyalist

Background

The American War of Independence began as a revolt, became a revolution and civil war and eventually a wider global conflict when Patriots allied with former enemies, France, Spain and the Dutch Republic. Families were often divided during the conflict, most famously Founding Father Benjamin Franklin and his son William Franklin, the last royal governor of New Jersey. Many felt themselves to be both American and British, still owing loyalty to the mother country. Maryland lawyer Daniel Dulany the Younger opposed taxation without representation but would not break his oath to the king or take up arms against him. He wrote: "There may be a time when redress may not be obtained. Till then, I shall recommend a legal, orderly, and prudent resentment". Most Americans hoped for a peaceful reconciliation but were forced to choose sides by the Patriots who took control nearly everywhere in the Thirteen Colonies in 1775–76.

Motives for loyalism

In 1948, Yale historian Leonard Woods Larabee identified eight characteristics of the Loyalists that made them essentially conservative and loyal to the king and to Britain:

They were older, better established, and resisted radical change.

They felt that rebellion against the Crown—the legitimate government—was morally wrong. They saw themselves as "British born in the colonies" loyal to the British Empire and saw a rebellion against the metropole (Great Britain) as a betrayal of the empire. At the time, the national identity of the Americans was still in formation, and the very idea of two separate peoples (nationalities) with their own sovereign states (the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States of America) was itself revolutionary. Eventually and gradually, as the war progressed and it became clear that the United States and Great Britain would become two separate countries, the Loyalists who remained in the United States adopted the national identity of Americans.

They felt alienated when the Patriots (seen by them as separatists who rebelled against the Crown) resorted to violence, such as burning down houses and tarring and feathering.

They had a moderate position but were driven to support the Crown by Patriot violence.

They had business and family links with Britain, and being a part of the British Empire was crucial in terms of commerce and their business operations.

They felt that independence (or at least home rule) would come in due time, but wanted it to be by a consensual process.

They were wary that chaos, corruption, and mob rule would come about as a result of revolution.

Some were "pessimists" who did not display the same belief in the future that the Patriots did. Others, believing the Patriot cause doomed, recalled the experiences of the Jacobites after the failure of their 1715 and 1745 rebellions, who often had their lands confiscated by the Hanoverian government.

Demographics

Historian Robert Calhoon wrote in 2000, concerning the proportion of Loyalists to Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies:

Historians' best estimates put the proportion of adult white male loyalists somewhere between 15 and 20 percent. Approximately half the colonists of European ancestry tried to avoid involvement in the struggle—some of them deliberate pacifists, others recent immigrants, and many more simple apolitical folk. The patriots received active support from perhaps 40 to 45 percent of the white populace, and at most no more than a bare majority.

Before Calhoon's work, estimates of the Loyalist share of the population were somewhat higher, at about one-third, but these estimates are now rejected as too high by most scholars. In 1968, historian Paul H. Smith estimated there were about 400,000 Loyalists, or 16% of the white population of 2.25 million in 1780.

Historian Robert Middlekauff summarizes scholarly research on the nature of Loyalist support as follows:

The largest number of loyalists were found in the middle colonies: many tenant farmers of New York supported the king, for example, as did many of the Dutch in the colony and in New Jersey. The Germans in Pennsylvania tried to stay out of the Revolution, just as many Quakers did, and when that failed, clung to the familiar connection rather than embrace the new. Highland Scots in the Carolinas, a fair number of Anglican clergy and their parishioners in Connecticut and New York, a few Presbyterians in the southern colonies, and a large number of the Iroquois stayed loyal to the king.

After the British military capture of New York City and Long Island it became the British military and political base of operations in North America from 1776 to 1783, prompting revolutionaries to flee and resulting in a large concentration of Loyalists, many of whom were refugees from other states.

According to Calhoon, Loyalists tended to be older and wealthier, but there were also many Loyalists of humble means. Many active Church of England members became Loyalists. Some recent arrivals from Britain, especially those from Scotland, had a high Loyalist proportion. Loyalists in the southern colonies were suppressed by the local Patriots, who controlled local and state government. Many people—including former Regulators in North Carolina—refused to join the rebellion, as they had earlier protested against corruption by local authorities who later became Revolutionary leaders. The oppression by the local Whigs during the Regulation led to many of the residents of backcountry North Carolina sitting out the Revolution or siding with the Loyalists.

Black Loyalists

As a result of the looming crisis in 1775, Royal Governor of Virginia Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation that promised freedom to indentured servants and slaves who were able to bear arms and join his Loyalist Ethiopian Regiment. Many of the slaves in the South joined the Loyalists with the intention of gaining freedom and escaping the South. African-Americans were often the first to come forward to volunteer, and a total of 12,000 African Americans served with the British from 1775 to 1783. This forced the Patriots to also offer freedom to those who would serve in the Continental Army, with thousands of Black Patriots serving.

Women

While men were out fighting for the Crown, women served at home protecting their land and property. At the end of the war, many Loyalist men left America for the shelter of England, leaving their wives and daughters to protect their land. The main punishment for Loyalist families was the expropriation of property, but married women were protected under "feme covert", which meant that they had no political identity and their legal rights were absorbed by their husbands. This created an awkward dilemma for the confiscation committees: confiscating the land of such a woman would punish her for her husband's actions. In many cases, the women did not get a choice on if they were labeled a Loyalist or a Patriot; the label was dependent on their husband's political association. However, some women showed their loyalty to the Crown by continually purchasing British goods, writing it down, and showing resistance to the Patriots. Grace Growden Galloway recorded the experience in her diary. Her writings show the difficulties that her family faced during the revolution. Galloway's property was seized by the Patriots, and she spent the rest of her life fighting to regain it. It was returned to her heirs in 1783, after she and her husband had died.

The Patriots allowed women to become involved in politics on a larger scale than the Loyalists. Some women involved in political activity include Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren, who were both writers. Both women maintained a 20-year friendship, although they wrote about different sides of the war; Macaulay wrote from a Loyalist British perspective, whereas Warren wrote about her support for the American Revolution. Macaulay's work include History of England and Warren wrote History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution. Although both women's works were unpopular during this time, they pushed them to learn from social critique.

Canada and Nova Scotia

Patriot agents were active in Quebec (which was then frequently called "Canada", the name of the earlier French province) in the months leading to the outbreak of active hostilities. John Brown, an agent of the Boston Committee of Correspondence, worked with Canadian merchant Thomas Walker and other Patriot sympathisers during the winter of 1774–75 to convince inhabitants to support the actions of the First Continental Congress. However, many of Quebec's inhabitants remained neutral, resisting service to either the British or the Americans.

Although some Canadians took up arms in support of the revolution, the majority remained loyal to the king. French Canadians had been satisfied by the British government's Quebec Act of 1774, which offered religious and linguistic toleration; in general, they did not sympathize with a revolution that they saw as being led by Protestants from New England, who were their commercial rivals and hereditary enemies. Most of the English-speaking settlers had arrived following the British conquest of Canada in 1759–60 and were unlikely to support separation from Britain. The older British colonies, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (including what is now New Brunswick), also remained loyal and contributed military forces in support of the Crown.

In late 1775, the Continental Army sent a force into Quebec, led by General Richard Montgomery and Colonel Benedict Arnold, to convince the residents of Quebec to join the revolution. Although only a minority of Canadians openly expressed loyalty to King George, about 1,500 militia fought for the king in the siege of Fort St. Jean. In the region south of Montreal, which was occupied by the Continentals, some inhabitants supported the revolution and raised two regiments to join the Patriot forces.

In Nova Scotia, there were many Yankee settlers originally from New England, and they generally supported the principles of the revolution. The allegiance toward the revolution waned as American privateers raided Nova Scotia communities throughout the war. The Nova Scotia government used the law to convict people for sedition and treason for supporting the Patriot cause. There was also the influence of an influx of recent immigration from the British Isles, and they remained neutral during the war; the influx was greatest in Halifax. Britain, in any case, built up powerful forces at the naval base of Halifax after the failure of Jonathan Eddy to capture Fort Cumberland in 1776.

Military operations

The Loyalists rarely attempted any political organization. They were often passive unless regular British army units were in the area. The British, however, assumed a highly activist Loyalist community was ready to mobilize and planned much of their strategy around raising Loyalist regiments. The British provincial line, consisting of Americans enlisted on a regular army status, enrolled 19,000 Loyalists (50 units and 312 companies). The maximum strength of the Loyalist provincial line was 9,700 in December 1780. In all, about 19,000 at one time or another were soldiers or militia in British forces.

In the opening months of the Revolutionary War, the Patriots laid siege to Boston, where most of the British forces were stationed. Elsewhere, there were few British troops, and the Patriots seized control of all levels of government, as well as supplies of arms and gunpowder. Vocal Loyalists recruited people to their side, often with the encouragement and assistance of royal governors. In the South Carolina backcountry, Loyalist recruitment outstripped that of Patriots. A brief siege at Ninety Six, South Carolina in the fall of 1775 was followed by a rapid rise in Patriot recruiting. In what became known as the Snow Campaign, partisan militia arrested or drove out most of the backcountry Loyalist leadership. North Carolina backcountry Scots and former Regulators joined forces in early 1776, but they were broken as a force at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge. Loyalists from South Carolina fought for the British in the Battle of Camden. The British forces at the Battle of Monck's Corner and the Battle of Lenud's Ferry consisted entirely of Loyalists except their commanding officer Banastre Tarleton. Both white and black Loyalists fought for the British at the Battle of Kemp's Landing in Virginia.

By July 4, 1776, the Patriots had gained control of virtually all territory in the Thirteen Colonies and had expelled all royal officials. No one who openly proclaimed their loyalty to the Crown was allowed to remain, so Loyalists fled or kept quiet. Some of those who remained later gave aid to invading British armies or joined uniformed Loyalist regiments. The British were forced out of Boston by March 17, 1776. They regrouped at Halifax and attacked New York in August, defeating George Washington's army at Long Island and capturing New York City and its vicinity, and they occupied the mouth of the Hudson River until 1783. British forces seized control of other cities, including Philadelphia (1777), Savannah, Georgia (1778–83), and Charleston, South Carolina (1780–82). But 90% of the colonial population lived outside the cities, with the effective result that Congress represented 80 to 90 percent of the population. The British removed their governors from colonies where the Patriots were in control, but Loyalist civilian government was re-established in coastal Georgia from 1779 to 1782, despite the presence of Patriot forces in the northern part of Georgia. Essentially, the British were only able to maintain power in areas where they had a strong military presence.

Aftermath of the American Revolution

Emigration

Estimates for how many Loyalists emigrated after the war differ. Historian Maya Jasanoff calculates that 60,000 in total went to British North America, including about 50,000 whites. Philip Ranlet estimates 20,000 adult white Loyalists went to Canada, while Wallace Brown cites about 80,000 Loyalists in total permanently left the United States.

According to Jasanoff, about 36,000 Loyalists went to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, while about 6,600 went to Quebec and 2,000 to Prince Edward Island. About 5,090 white Loyalists went to Florida, bringing along their slaves who numbered about 8,285 (421 whites and 2,561 blacks returned to the US from Florida). When Florida was returned to Spain, however, very few Loyalists remained there. Approximately 6,000 whites went to Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, notably the Bahamas Islands, and about 13,000 went to Britain (including 5,000 free blacks).

A precise figure cannot be known because the records were incomplete and inaccurate, and small numbers continued to leave after 1783. The 50,000 or so white departures represented about 10% of the Loyalists (at 20–25% of the white population). Loyalists (especially soldiers and former officials) could choose evacuation. Loyalists whose roots were not yet deeply embedded in the United States were more likely to leave; older people who had familial bonds and had acquired friends, property, and a degree of social respectability were more likely to remain in the US. The vast majority of the half-million white Loyalists, about 20–25% of the total number of whites, remained in the US. Starting in the mid-1780s, a small percentage of those who had left returned to the United States. The exiles amounted to about 2% of the total US population of 3 million at the end of the war in 1783.

After 1783, some former Loyalists, especially Germans from Pennsylvania, immigrated to Canada to take advantage of the British government's offer of free land. Many departed the fledgling United States because they faced continuing hostility. In another migration—motivated mainly by economic rather than political reasons—more than 20,000 and perhaps as many as 30,000 "Late Loyalists" arrived in Ontario in the 1790s, attracted by Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe's policy of land and low taxes, one-fifth those in the US.

The 36,000 or so who went to Nova Scotia were not well received by the 17,000 Nova Scotians, who were mostly descendants of New Englanders settled there before the Revolution. "They [the Loyalists]", Colonel Thomas Dundas wrote in 1786, "have experienced every possible injury from the old inhabitants of Nova Scotia, who are even more disaffected towards the British Government than any of the new States ever were. This makes me doubt their remaining long dependent." In response, the colony of New Brunswick, until 1784 part of Nova Scotia, was created for the 14,000 who had settled in those parts. Of the 46,000 who went to Canada, 10,000 went to Quebec, especially what is now modern-day Ontario, the rest to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

United States citizens

The great majority of Loyalists never left the United States; they stayed on and were allowed to be citizens of the new country, retaining for a time the earlier designation of "Tories". Some became nationally prominent leaders, including Samuel Seabury, who was the first Bishop of the Episcopal Church, and Tench Coxe. There was a small but significant trickle of returnees who found life in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick too difficult. Perhaps 10% of the refugees to New Brunswick returned to the States as did an unknown number from Nova Scotia. Some Massachusetts Tories settled in the Maine District. Nevertheless, the vast majority never returned. Captain Benjamin Hallowell, who, as Mandamus Councilor in Massachusetts, served as the direct representative of the Crown, was considered by the insurgents as one of the most hated men in the Colony, but as a token of compensation, when he returned from England in 1796, his son was allowed to regain the family house.

In many states, moderate Whigs, who had not been in favor of separation from Britain but preferred a negotiated settlement that would have maintained ties to the Mother Country, aligned with Tories to block radicals. Among these was Alexander Hamilton in 1782–85, to wrest control of New York State from the faction of the George Clinton. Most states had rescinded anti-Tory laws by 1787, although the accusation of being a Tory was heard for another generation. Several hundred who had left for Florida returned to Georgia in 1783–84.

South Carolina, which had seen a bitter, bloody internal civil war in 1780–82, adopted a policy of reconciliation that proved more moderate than any other state. About 4,500 white Loyalists left when the war ended, but the majority remained. The state government successfully and quickly reincorporated the vast majority. During the war, pardons were offered to Loyalists who switched sides and joined the Patriot forces. Others were required to pay a 10% fine of the value of the property. The legislature named 232 Loyalists liable for the confiscation of their property, but most appealed and were forgiven.

In Connecticut, much to the disgust of the radical Whigs, the moderate Whigs were advertising in New York newspapers in 1782–83 that Tories who would make no trouble would be welcome because their skills and money would help the state's economy. The moderates prevailed; all anti-Tory laws were repealed in early 1783 except for the law relating to confiscated Tory estates: "... the problem of the loyalists after 1783 was resolved in their favor after the War of Independence ended." In 1787, the last of any discriminatory laws was rescinded.

Effect of the departure of Loyalist leaders

The departure of so many royal officials, rich merchants, and landed gentry destroyed the hierarchical networks that had dominated most of the colonies. A major result was that a Patriot/Whig elite supplanted royal officials and affluent Tories. In New York, the departure of key members of the De Lancey, De Peyster, Walton, and Cruger families undercut the interlocking families that largely owned and controlled the Hudson Valley. Likewise, in Pennsylvania, the departure of powerful families—Penn, Allen, Chew, Shippen—destroyed the cohesion of the old upper class there. Massachusetts passed an act banishing 46 Boston merchants in 1778, including members of some of Boston's wealthiest families. The departure of families such as the Ervings, Winslows, Clarks, and Lloyds, hitherto leaders of networks of family and clients, opened opportunities for other leadership to emerge. The bases of the men who replaced them were much different. One rich Patriot in Boston noted in 1779 that "fellows who would have cleaned my shoes five years ago, have amassed fortunes and are riding in chariots." New men became rich merchants, but they shared a spirit of republican equality that replaced the former elitism.

The Patriots' reliance on Catholic France for military, financial, and diplomatic aid led to a sharp drop in anti-Catholic rhetoric. For the Patriots, the king replaced the pope as the demon they fought. Anti-Catholicism remained strong among Loyalists; support for the monarch, head of the Church of England, meant hostility to Catholicism. By the 1780s, Catholics were extended legal toleration in all of the New England states that previously had been so hostile. "In the midst of war and crisis, New Englanders gave up not only their allegiance to Britain but one of their most dearly held prejudices."

Media

John Singleton Copley painted many prominent Loyalists and produced an oil-on-canvas depiction of a soldier wearing the uniform of the Royal Ethiopian Regiment in The Death of Major Pierson (1784).

Benjamin West characterized the ethnic and economic diversity of the Loyalists in his Reception of the American Loyalists by Great Britain in the Year 1783. The original painting was lost, but a smaller version of it can be seen in the background of West's portrait of John Eardley Wilmot.

Gilbert Stuart painted a portrait of James DeLancey around 1785. It stays in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a bequest of his descendant George DeLancey Harris Jr. of New York City and Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.

The Adventures of Jonathan Corncob, Loyal American Refugee (1787) by Jonathan Corncob. According to Maya Jasanoff, "traveling to London to file a claim served as the opening gambit" for this "picaresque novel about the American Revolution".

"Rip Van Winkle" (1819), short story by Washington Irving

The Spy: a Tale of the Neutral Ground (1821), novel by James Fenimore Cooper

Oliver Wiswell (1940), a novel by Kenneth Roberts

Downie, Mary Alice; Downie, John (1971). Honor Bound. illus. Joan Huffman. Toronto: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-540192-1.

The Book of Negroes (2007) by Lawrence Hill

The Fort (2010), novel by Bernard Cornwell

Long Stanley, Wendy (2019). The Power to Deny: A Woman of the Revolution Novel. Carmenta Publishing. ISBN 978-1-951747-00-8. Well received historical fiction account of the life of Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson

Notable people

Benedict Arnold, Patriot turned British general

Jonathan Boucher, Anglican priest in Maryland

Thomas Brown, Georgia planter, officer in the King's Carolina Rangers

William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin

Joseph Galloway, speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly; author of the Galloway Plan of Union 1774

Charles Inglis, Anglican priest, published a response to Common Sense

Thomas Hutcinson, royal governor of Massachusetts

Boston King, former slave, Black Loyalist

Peter Oliver, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court