The Loyalists of Massachusetts and the Other Side of the American Revolution

by James Henry Stark

If the Loyalists were really a majority, as they claimed to be, the disunionists were determined to break them up. Loyalists were tarred and feathered and carried on rails, gagged and bound for days at a time; stoned, fastened in a room with a fire and the chimney stopped on top; advertised as public enemies, so that they would be cut off from all dealings with their neighbors; they had bullets shot into their bedrooms, their horses poisoned or mutilated; money or valuable plate extorted from them to save them from violence, and on pretence of taking security for their good behavior; their houses and ships burned; they were compelled to pay the guards who watched them in their houses, and when carted about for the mob to stare at and abuse, they were compelled to pay something at every town. For the three months of July, August and September of the year 1776, one can find in the American archives alone over thirty descriptions of outrages of this kind, and all this done by so-called "patriots" in the name of liberty! In short, lynch law prevailed for many years during the Revolution, and the habit became so fixed that it has never been given up. It was taken from the name of the brother of the man who founded Lynchburgh, Virginia.

Wherever the disunionists were most successful with this reign of terror, they drove all the judges from the bench, and abolished the courts, and for a long time there were no courts or public administration of the law, notably in New England.

To the mind of the Loyalists, all this lynching proceeding were an irrefragible proof not only that the disunionist party were wicked, but that their idea of independence of a country free from British control and British law were silly delusions, dangerous to all good order and civilization. That such a people could ever govern a country of their own and have in it that thing they were crying so much about, "liberty," was in their opinion beyond the bounds of intelligent belief. A recent American writer says: "The revolution was not by any means the pretty social event that the ladies of the so-called 'patriotic' societies suppose it to have been. It was, on the contrary, a rank and riotous rebellion against the long-established authority of a nation which had saved us from France, built us up into prosperity, and if she was ruling us today would, I am entirely willing to admit, abolish lynch-law, negro burning, municipal and legislative corruption, and all the other evils about which reformers fret." The same writer also says: "All that saved this country from complete annihilation was the assistance after 1778 of the French army, fleet, provisions, clothes, and loans of money, followed by assistance from Spain, and, at the last moment, by the alliance of Holland, and even with all this assistance the cause was, even as late as the year 1780, generally believed to be a hopeless one."[53] "In fact, Washington, at this time, was prepared to become a guerilla." In case of being further pressed, he said: "We must retire to Augusta County, in Virginia. Numbers will repair to us for safety, and we will then try a predatory war. If overpowered, we must cross the Allegheny Mountains."[54]

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 the fact that they could not take the initiative in action, the Loyalists were put at a disadvantage before the much better organization of the Revolutionary leaders. Though these were few in number in the South, they were of families of great social influence, and in the North 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," and other proceedings of the Continental Congress.[55] In regard to the 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 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."[56]

Judge Curwen, a Salem Loyalist, says: "So infamously knavish has been the conduct of the commissioners, that though frequent attempts have been made to bring them to justice and to 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 two pence on the pound have arrived to the public treasury of all the confiscation."[57]

"The Loyalists, to a great extent, sprung from and represented the old gentry of the country. The prospect of seizing their property had been one great motive which induced many to enter the war. The new owners of the confiscated property now grasped the helm. New men exercised the social influence of the old families, and they naturally dreaded the restoration of those whom they had dispossessed."

At the close of the war, the Revolutionists committed a great crime. Instead of repealing the proscription and banishment acts, as justice and good policy required, they manifested a spirit to place the humbled and unhappy Loyalists beyond the pale of human sympathy. Hostilities at an end, mere loyalty should have been forgiven. When, in the civil war between the Puritans and the Stuarts, the former gained the ascendancy, and when at a later period the Commonwealth was established, Cromwell and his party wisely determined not to banish nor inflict disabilities on their opponents, and so, too, at the restoration of the monarchy, so general was the amnesty act in its provisions that it was termed an act of oblivion to the friends of Charles, and of grateful remembrance to his foes. The happy consequences which resulted from the conduct of both parties, and in both cases, were before the men of their own political and religious sympathies, the Puritans of the North and the Cavaliers of the South in America, but neither of them profited by it, at that time; but since then the wisdom of it has been exemplified by the happy consequences which have resulted to both parties engaged in the war of secession, where the United States wisely determined not to banish, confiscate, or inflict any disabilities on their opponents in the late seceded states.

The crime having been committed, thousands ruined and banished, new British colonies founded, animosities to continue for generations made certain, the violent Revolutionists of Massachusetts, New York and Virginia, were satisfied: all this accomplished and the statute-book was divested of its most objectionable enactments, and a few of the Loyalists returned to their old homes, but by far the greater part died in banishment.

No one who studies the history of the American Revolution can fail to be convinced that the persecution of the Loyalists had for its final result the severance of the North American continent into two nations. The people who inhabited Nova Scotia prior to the Revolution were largely New England settlers, who dispossessed the Acadians, and who for the most part sympathized with the revolutionary movement. But for the banishment of the Loyalists, Nova Scotia would have long continued with but a very sparse population, and certainly could never have hoped to obtain so enterprising, active, and energetic a set of inhabitants as those who were supplied to it by the acts of the several states hostile to the Loyalists. The same can also be said of Upper Canada. The hold of the British government upon the British provinces of North America which remained to the crown, would have been slight indeed, but for the active hostility of the Loyalists to their former fellow-countrymen. They created the state of affairs which consolidated British power on this continent, and built it up into the Dominion of Canada, which in another century will probably contain one hundred million inhabitants.