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قراءة كتاب The United Empire Loyalists : A Chronicle of the Great Migration

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The United Empire Loyalists : A Chronicle of the Great Migration

The United Empire Loyalists : A Chronicle of the Great Migration

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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Jonathan Boucher says that Washington told him in the summer of 1775 'that if ever I heard of his joining in any such measures, I had his leave to set him down for everything wicked.' As late as Christmas Day 1775 the revolutionary congress of New Hampshire officially proclaimed their disavowal of any purpose 'aiming at independence.' Instances such as these could be reproduced indefinitely. When, therefore, the Whig leaders in the summer of 1776 made their right-about-face with regard to independence, it is not surprising that some of their followers fell away from them. Among these were many who were heartily opposed to the measures of the British government, and who had even approved of the policy of armed rebellion. but who could not forget that they were born British subjects. They drank to the toast, 'My country, may she always be right; but right or wrong, my country.'

Other motives influenced the growth of the Loyalist party. There were those who opposed the Revolution because they were dependent on government for their livelihood, royal office-holders and Anglican clergymen for instance. There were those who were Loyalists because they thought they had picked the winning side, such as the man who candidly wrote from New Brunswick in 1788, 'I have made one great mistake in politics, for which reason I never intend to make so great a blunder again.' Many espoused the cause because they were natives of the British Isles, and had not become thoroughly saturated with American ideas: of the claimants for compensation before the Royal Commissioners after the war almost two-thirds were persons who had been born in England, Scotland, or Ireland. In some of the colonies the struggle between Whig and Tory followed older party lines: this was especially true in New York, where the Livingston or Presbyterian party became Whig and the De Lancey or Episcopalian party Tory. Curiously enough the cleavage in many places followed religious lines. The members of the Church of England were in the main Loyalists; the Presbyterians were in the main revolutionists. The revolutionist cause was often strongest in those colonies, such as Connecticut, where the Church of England was weakest. But the division was far from being a strict one. There were even members of the Church of England in the Boston Tea Party; and there were Presbyterians among the exiles who went to Canada and Nova Scotia. The Revolution was not in any sense a religious war; but religious differences contributed to embitter the conflict, and doubtless made Whigs or Tories of people who had no other interest at stake.

It is commonly supposed that the Loyalists drew their strength from the upper classes in the colonies, while the revolutionists drew theirs from the proletariat. There is just enough truth in this to make it misleading. It is true that among the official classes and the large landowners, among the clergymen, lawyers, and physicians, the majority were Loyalists; and it is true that the mob was everywhere revolutionist. But it cannot be said that the Revolution was in any sense a war of social classes. In it father was arrayed against son and brother against brother. Benjamin Franklin was a Whig; his son, Sir William Franklin, was a Tory. In the valley of the Susquehanna the Tory Colonel John Butler, of Butler's Rangers, found himself confronted by his Whig cousins, Colonel William Butler and Colonel Zeb Butler. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, were not inferior in social status to Sir William Johnson, Thomas Hutchinson, and Joseph Galloway. And, on the other hand, there were no humbler peasants in the revolutionary ranks than some of the Loyalist farmers who migrated to Upper Canada in 1783. All that can be said is that the Loyalists were most numerous among those classes which had most to lose by the change, and least numerous among those classes which had least to lose.

Much labour has been spent on the problem of the numbers of the Loyalists. No means of numbering political opinions was resorted to at the time of the Revolution, so that satisfactory statistics are not available. There was, moreover, throughout the contest a good deal of going and coming between the Whig and Tory camps, which makes an estimate still more difficult. 'I have been struck,' wrote Lorenzo Sabine, 'in the course of my investigations, with the absence of fixed principles, not only among people in the common walks of life, but in many of the prominent personages of the day.' Alexander Hamilton, for instance, deserted from the Tories to the Whigs; Benedict Arnold deserted from the Whigs to the Tories.

The Loyalists themselves always maintained that they constituted an actual majority in the Thirteen Colonies. In 1779 they professed to have more troops in the field than the Continental Congress. These statements were no doubt exaggerations. The fact is that the strength of the Loyalists was very unevenly distributed. In the colony of New York they may well have been in the majority. They were strong also in Pennsylvania, so strong that an officer of the revolutionary army described that colony as 'the enemies' country.' 'New York and Pennsylvania,' wrote John Adams years afterwards, 'were so nearly divided—if their propensity was not against us—that if New England on one side and Virginia on the other had not kept them in awe, they would have joined the British.' In Georgia the Loyalists were in so large a majority that in 1781 that colony would probably have detached itself from the revolutionary movement had it not been for the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. On the other hand, in the New England colonies the Loyalists were a small minority, strongest perhaps in Connecticut, and yet even there predominant only in one or two towns.

There were in the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Revolution in the neighbourhood of three million people. Of these it is probable that at least one million were Loyalists. This estimate is supported by the opinion of John Adams, who was well qualified to form a judgment, and whose Whig sympathies were not likely to incline him to exaggerate. He gave it as his opinion more than once that about one-third of the people of the Thirteen Colonies had been opposed to the measures of the Revolution in all its stages. This estimate he once mentioned in a letter to Thomas McKean, chief justice of Pennsylvania, who had signed the Declaration of Independence, and had been a member of every Continental Congress from that of 1765 to the close of the Revolution; and McKean replied, 'You say that … about a third of the people of the colonies were against the Revolution. It required much reflection before I could fix my opinion on this subject; but on mature deliberation I conclude you are right, and that more than a third of influential characters were against it.'

CHAPTER III

PERSECUTION OF THE LOYALISTS

In the autumn of the year 1779 an English poet, writing in the seclusion of his garden at Olney, paid his respects to the American revolutionists in the following lines:

   Yon roaring boys, who rave and fight
    On t'other side the Atlantic,
   I always held them in the right,
    But most so when most frantic.

   When lawless mobs insult the court,
    That man shall be my toast,
   If breaking windows be the sport,
    Who bravely breaks the most.

   But oh! for him my fancy culls
    The choicest flowers she bears,
   Who constitutionally pulls
    Your house about your ears.

When William Cowper wrote these lines, his sources of information with regard to affairs in America were probably slight; but had he been writing at the seat of war he could not have touched off the treatment of the Loyalists by the revolutionists with more effective irony.

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