Essays in American history

by Henry Ferguson

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. The same may be said of the generals themselves.”[168]

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, and pillaged the inhabitants of their cattle, hogs, sheep, poultry, and, in short, of anything they could lay their hands upon. It was no uncommon thing of an afternoon to see a farmer driving a flock of turkeys, geese, ducks, or dunghill fowls and locking them up in his cellar for security at night.... It was no uncommon thing for a farmer, his wife and children to sleep in one room, while his sheep were bleating in the room adjoining, his hogs grunting in the kitchen, and the cocks crowing, hens cackling, ducks quacking, and geese hissing in the cellar.... This robbing was done by people sent to America to protect loyalists against the persecutions and depredations of rebels. To complain was needless; the officers shared in the plunder.” In Newtown, a Hessian soldier opened a butcher’s shop, where he undersold all competitors, because while they had to pay for their meat he had no such outlay. In 1781, when the troops left Flushing, a resident of that place wrote, “There was not a four-footed animal (a few dogs excepted) left in Flushing, nor a wooden fence.”

We cannot wonder at the indignant words with which Mr. Jones closes his recital of this vandalism. “If Great Britain had, instead of governing by military law, by courts of police, and courts martial, revived the civil law, opened the courts of justice, invested the civil magistrates with their full power, and convened general assemblies in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and in South and North Carolina (as well as in Georgia, where it produced the most salutary effects), as the rebels abandoned these provinces and fled before the British arms; and prevented, by severely punishing, all kinds of plunder, rapine, and pillage committed by the army, the rebellion in all probability would have terminated in a different manner. The empire would not have been disgraced or dishonored, nor Great Britain reduced to the necessity of asking pardon of her ungrateful children, acknowledging herself in the wrong, and granting them absolute, unconditional independence. But, alas! the very reverse of this marked every step in the royal army in all its proceedings, and Great Britain, as well as the Independent States of America, feel to this day the dire effects of a conduct so very impolitic, so unmilitary, so unjustifiable, and so repugnant to the Constitution, the spirit, the honor, and the sentiments of Englishmen.[169]

And now let us inquire how the loyalists were treated by the new governments of the various states. Besides the irregular violence to which the unfortunate loyalists were exposed at the hands of Sons of Liberty and town committeemen, they were marked out for punishment and plunder by the new state governments as they came into existence. The State of Massachusetts proscribed three hundred and eight persons by name, whom it condemned, if ever found within its borders, to imprisonment and eventual banishment; and if they ventured to return, it denounced the death penalty upon them. Not all of these were the wealthy merchants and lawyers who had offended the populace by their addresses to Hutchinson and Gage; at least a fifth of the number were from the middle classes of society, and some of them were of still humbler position. The State of New Hampshire, small as its population was at that time, banished seventy-six by name and confiscated twenty-eight estates. New York attainted and confiscated the property of fifty-nine persons by name, three of whom were women whose chief offence lay in the attractiveness of their estates. Pennsylvania summoned sixty-two persons to surrender themselves for trial for treason, and on their failing to appear they were pronounced attainted, and thirty-six estates were confiscated. In Delaware the property of forty-six refugees was confiscated. In North Carolina, sixty-five estates were confiscated. In South Carolina, for the offence of attachment to the royal cause in different degrees of offensiveness, two hundred and fifteen persons were either fined twelve per cent. of their entire property, or deprived of it wholly, or banished from the country.[170] In Rhode Island, death and confiscation of estate were the punishments provided by law for any person who communicated with the ministry or their agents, afforded supplies to their forces, or piloted the armed ships of the king; and certain persons were pronounced by name enemies to liberty, and their property forfeited in consequence. In Connecticut, where the loyalists were very numerous but inclined to be quiet if they were let alone, these offences only involved loss of estate and of liberty for a term not exceeding three years; but to speak, write, or act against the doings of Congress or the Assembly of Connecticut was punishable by disqualification from office, imprisonment, and the disarming the offender. The estates of those who sought the royal fleets or land forces for shelter might, by law, be seized and confiscated. In her treatment of loyalists Connecticut showed the same shrewd sense that had characterized the proceedings of that republic from its earliest days; and the result was seen in the fact that the loyalists, instead of being alienated, became after the war was over some of her best and most patriotic citizens. William Samuel Johnson, who during part of the war, at least, was under surveillance as a suspected Tory, but who when the war was over was one of Connecticut’s delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and Seabury, the author of the clever and exasperating “A. W. Farmer” letters, who had been pulled through the mud by Sons of Liberty at New Haven, were none the less loyal citizens of the commonwealth and of the nation, and none the less respected by men who had differed from them, because they had been loyal to their convictions of duty. In Massachusetts, the feeling was much more bitter, and, in addition to the special act already mentioned, any person suspected of enmity to the Whig cause might be arrested under a magistrate’s warrant and banished, unless he would swear fealty to the friends of liberty; and the selectmen of towns could prefer in town meeting charges of political treachery and the individual thus accused, if convicted by a jury, could be sent into the enemy’s jurisdiction. By a second special act the property of twenty-nine persons, “notorious conspirators,” was confiscated; of these, fifteen had been “mandamus” councillors; two, governors of the province; one, lieutenant-governor; one, treasurer; one, secretary; one, attorney-general; one, chief-justice; and four, commissioners of customs. The State of Virginia, though passing no special acts, passed a resolution that persons of a given description should be deemed and treated as aliens, and that their property should be sold and the proceeds go into the public treasury for future disposal. In New York, the county commissioners were authorized to apprehend and decide upon the guilt of such inhabitants as were supposed to hold correspondence with the enemy or who had committed some other specified acts, and might punish those whom they adjudged to be guilty with imprisonment for three months or banishment for seven years. Persons opposed to liberty and independence were prohibited from the practice of law in the courts; and any parent whose sons went off and adhered to the enemy was subject to a tax of ninepence in the pound value of such parent’s estate for each and every such son.

The Congress naturally left such matters largely to the individual states, but nevertheless passed a resolution subjecting to martial law and death all who should furnish provisions, etc., to the British army in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and resolved that all loyalists taken in arms should be sent to the states to which they belonged, there to be dealt with as traitors.[171]

In regard to this 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 severe 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.”[172]

Curwen, a Salem loyalist who was allowed to return after the war, writes in terms that, though exaggerated, yet describe the result upon public morals of the confiscations:

“So infamously knavish has been the conduct of the commissioners, that though frequent attempts have been made to bring them to justice, and 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 twopence in the pound have arrived to the public treasury of all the confiscations.”[173]

It only now remains to notice the treatment the unfortunate loyalists received from their friends in England and the manner in which the British government—for which they had sacrificed home, friends, and property, and had embraced exile, contempt, and penury—threw them upon the tender mercies of their opponents in the treaty of peace. This surrender of their interests by Lord Shelburne called out, in both Houses of the Parliament, expressions of sympathetic indignation; but the sympathy never took any material shape. Sheridan, in the House of Commons, execrated the treatment of these unfortunate men, “who, without the least notice taken of their civil and religious rights, were handed over as subjects to a power that would not fail to take vengeance on them for their zeal and attachment to the religion and government of the ‘mother country.’” In the House of Lords, Lord Loughborough said, “that neither in ancient nor modern history had there been so shameful a desertion of men who had sacrificed all to their duty and to their reliance upon British faith.”

To such charges Lord Shelburne could only reply by a feeble appeal to the mercy of his condemners: “I have but one answer to give the House; it is the answer I give my own bleeding heart. A part must be wounded that the whole of the empire may not perish. If better terms could be had, think you, my lords, that I would not have embraced them? I had but the alternative either to accept the terms proposed or continue the war.”[174]