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

by James Henry Stark

The opinion of such an authority as Lecky on our revolutionary movements must be worthy of thoughtful attention; and his opinion is this: "Any nation might be proud of the shrewd, brave, prosperous and highly intelligent yeomen who flocked to the American camps; but they were very different from those who defended the walls of Leyden, or immortalized the field of Bannockburn. Few of the great pages of history are less marked by the stamp of heroism than the American Revolution and perhaps the most formidable of the difficulties which Washington had to encounter were in his own camp."[64] And he concludes his survey of the movement with these words: "In truth the American people, though in general unbounded believers in progress, are accustomed, through a kind of curious modesty, to do themselves a great injustice by the extravagant manner in which they idealize their past. It has almost become as commonplace that the great nation which in our own day has shown such an admirable combination of courage, devotion and humanity in its gigantic Civil War, and which since that time has so signally falsified the prediction of its enemies and put to shame all the nations of Europe by its unparalleled efforts in paying off its national debt, is of far lower moral type than its ancestors at the time of the War of Independence. This belief appears to me essentially false. The nobility and beauty of Washington can, indeed, hardly be paralleled. Several of the other leaders of the Revolution were men of ability and public spirit, and few armies have ever shown a nobler self-devotion than that which remained with Washington through the dreary winter at Valley Forge. But the army that bore those sufferings was a very small one, and the general aspect of the American people during the contest was far from heroic or sublime. The future destinies and greatness of the English race must necessarily rest mainly with the mighty nation which has arisen beyond the Atlantic, and that nation may well afford to admit that its attitude during the brief period of its enmity to England has been very unduly extolled. At the same time, the historian of that period would do the Americans a great injustice if he judged them only by the revolutionary party, and failed to recognize how large a proportion of their best men had no sympathy with the movement."[65]

Our native historians and the common run of Fourth of July orators have treated their countrymen badly for a hundred years. They have given the world to understand that we are the degenerate children of a race of giants, statesmen, and moralists, who flourished for a few years about a century ago and then passed away. An impartial examination of the records would show that we are wiser, better, more benevolent, quite as patriotic and brave as the standard heroes of 1776. We may give our ancestors credit for many admirable virtues without attempting to maintain that a multitude of unlettered colonists, scattered along the Atlantic coast, hunting, fishing, smuggling, and tilling the soil for a slender livelihood, and fighting Indians and wild beasts to save their own lives, possessed a vast fund of political virtue and political intelligence, and left but little of either to their descendants. The public is beginning to tire of this tirade of indiscriminate eulogy, and the public taste is beginning to reject it as a form of defamation. And so the ripening judgment of our people is beginning to demand portraits of our ancestors painted according to the command that Cromwell gave the artist; to paint his features, warts, blotches, and all, and to demand an account of our forefathers in which we shall learn to speak of them as they were.

Sabine, in his valuable work, "Loyalists of the American Revolution," says: "I presume that I am of Whig descent. My father's father received his death-wound under Washington, at Trenton; my mother's father fought under Stark at Bennington. I do not care, of all things, to be thought to want appreciation of those of my countrymen who broke the yoke of colonial vassalage, nor on the other hand, do I care to imitate the writers of a later school, and treat the great and the successful actors in the world's affairs as little short of divinities, and as exempt from criticism. Nay, this general statement will not serve my purpose. Justice demands as severe a judgment of the Whigs as of their opponents, and I shall here record the result of long and patient study. At the Revolutionary period the principles of unbelief were diffused to a considerable extent throughout the colonies. It is certain that several of the most conspicuous personages of those days were either avowed disbelievers in Christianity, or cared so little about it that they were commonly regarded as disciples of the English or French school of sceptical philosophy. Again, the Whigs were by no means exempt from the lust of land hunger. Several of them were among the most noted land speculators of their time, during the progress of the war, and, in a manner hardly to be defended, we find them sequestering and appropriating to themselves the vast estates of those who opposed them. Avarice and rapacity were seemingly as common then as now. Indeed, the stock-jobbing, the extortion, the fore-stalling of the law, the arts and devices to amass wealth which were practised during the struggle, are almost incredible. Washington mourned the want of virtue as early as 1775, and averred that he 'trembled at the prospect'—soldiers were stripped of their miserable pittance that contractors for the army might become rich in a single campaign. Many of the sellers of merchandise monopolized (or 'cornered') articles of the first necessity, and would not part with them to their suffering countrymen, and to the wives and children of those who were absent in the field, unless at enormous profit. The traffic carried on with the army of the king was immense. Men of all descriptions finally engaged in it, and those who at the beginning of the war would have shuddered at the idea of any connection with the enemy, pursued it with increasing avidity. The public securities were often counterfeited, official signatures forged, and plunder and jobbery openly indulged in. Appeals to the guilty from the pulpit, the press, and the halls of legislature were alike unheeded. The decline of public spirit, the love of gain of those in office, the plotting of disaffected persons, and the malevolence of factions, became widely spread, and in parts of the country were uncontrollable. The useful occupations of life and the legitimate pursuits of commerce were abandoned by thousands. The basest of men enriched themselves, and many of the most estimable sank into obscurity and indigence. There were those who would neither pay their debts nor their taxes. The indignation of Washington was freely expressed. 'It gives me sincere pleasure,' he said, in a letter to Joseph Reed, 'to find the Assembly is so well disposed to second your endeavor in bringing those murderers of our cause to condign punishment. It is much to be lamented that each state, long ere this, has not hunted them down as pests of society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America. No punishment, in my opinion, is too great for the man who can build his greatness upon his country's ruin.'"

In a letter to another, he drew this picture, which he solemnly declared to be a true one: "From what I have seen, heard, and in part known," said he, "I should in one word say, that idleness, dissipation, and extravagance seem to have laid fast hold on most; that speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches, seem to have got the better of every other consideration, and almost every order of men, and that party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the day."

In other letters he laments the laxity of public morals, the "distressed rumors, and deplorable condition of affairs," the "many melancholy proofs of the decay of private virtue." "I am amazed," said Washington to Colonel Stewart, "at the report you make of the quantity of provision that goes daily into Philadelphia from the County of Bucks." Philadelphia was occupied at that time by the British army, who paid in hard money and not in "continental stuff." and mark you! this was written in January of that memorable winter which the American army passed in nakedness and starvation at Valley Forge. There was always an army—on paper. At the close of one campaign there were not enough troops in camp to man the lines. At the opening of another "scarce any state in the Union," as Washington said, had an "eighth part of its quota" in service. The bounty finally paid to soldiers was enormous. The price for a single recruit was as high sometimes as seven hundred and fifty, and one thousand dollars, on enlistment for the war, besides the bounty and emoluments given by Congress. One hundred and fifty dollars "in specie" was exacted and paid for a term of duty of only five months. Such were the extraordinary inducements necessary to tempt some men to serve their country when its vital interests were at issue. Making every allowance for the effects of hunger and want, for the claims of families at home, and for other circumstances equally imperative, desertion, mutiny, robbery, and murder are still high crimes. There were soldiers of the Revolution who deserted in parties of twenty and thirty at a time, and several hundred of those who then abandoned the cause fled to Vermont and were among the early settlers of that state. A thousand men, the date of whose enlistment had been misplaced, perjured themselves in a body, as fast as they could be sworn, in order to quit the ranks which they had voluntarily entered. In smaller parties, hundreds of others demanded dismissals from camp under false pretexts, and with lies upon their lips. Some also added treason to desertion, and joined the various corps of Loyalists in the capacity of spies upon their former friends, or as guides and pioneers. Many more enlisted, deserted, and re-enlisted under new recruiting officers for the purpose of receiving double bounty, while others who placed their names upon the rolls were paid the money to which they were entitled, but refused to join the army; and others still who were sent to the hospitals returned home without leave after their recovery, and were sheltered and secreted by friends and neighbors, whose sense of right was as weak as their own. Another class sold their clothing, provisions, and arms to obtain means of indulgence in revelry and drunkenness; while some prowled about the country to rob and kill the unoffending and defenceless. A guard was placed over the grave of a foreigner of rank, who died in Washington's own quarters, and who was buried in full dress, with diamond rings and buckles, "lest the soldiers should be tempted to dig for hidden treasure." Whippings, drummings out of the service, and even military executions were more frequent in the Revolution than at any subsequent period of our history.

If we turn our attention to the officers we shall find that many had but doubtful claims to respect for purity of private character, and that some were addicted to grave vices. There were officers who were destitute alike of honor and patriotism, who unjustly clamored for their pay, while they drew large sums of public money under pretext of paying their men, but applied them to the support of their own extravagance; who went home on furlough and never returned to the army; and who, regardless of their word as gentlemen, violated their paroles, and were threatened by Washington with exposure in every newspaper in the land as men who had disgraced themselves and were heedless of their associates in captivity, whose restraints were increased by their misconduct. At times, courts-martial were continually sitting, and so numerous were the convictions that the names of those who were cashiered were sent to Congress in long lists. "Many of the surgeons"—are the words of Washington —"are very great rascals, countenancing the men to sham complaints to exempt them from duty, and often receiving bribes to certify indisposition with a view to procure discharge or furlough"; and still further, they drew as for the public "medicines and stores in the most profuse and extravagant manner for private purposes." In a letter to the governor of a state, he affirmed that the officers who had been sent him therefrom were "generally of the lowest class of the people," that they "led their soldiers to plunder the inhabitants and into every kind of mischief." To his brother, John Augustine Washington, he declared that the different states were nominating such officers as were "not fit to be shoe-blacks." Resignations occurred upon discreditable pretexts, and became alarmingly prevalent. Some resigned at critical moments, and others combined together in considerable number for purposes of intimidation, and threatened to retire from the service at a specified time unless certain terms were complied with. Many of those who abandoned Washington were guilty of a crime which, when committed by private soldiers, is called "desertion," and punished with death. Eighteen of the generals retired during the struggle, one for drunkenness, one to avoid disgrace for receiving double pay, some from declining health, others from weight of advancing years; but several from private resentments and real or imagined wrongs inflicted by Congress or associates in the service.

John Adams wrote in 1777: "I am worried to death with the wrangles between military officers, high and low. They quarrel like cats and dogs. They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts."[66]

"The abandoned and profligate part of our army," wrote Washington, "lost to every sense of honor or virtue as well as their country's good, are by rapine and plunder spreading ruin and terror wherever they go, thereby making themselves infinitely more to be dreaded than the common enemy they are come to oppose. Under the idea of Tory property, or property that may fall into the hands of the enemy, no man is secure in his effects, and scarcely in his person."[67] American soldiers were constantly driving innocent persons out of their homes by an alarm of fire, or by actual incendiarism, in order more easily to plunder the contents, and all attempts to check this atrocious practice had proved abortive. The burning of New York was generally attributed to New England soldiers. The efforts of the British soldiers to save the city were remembered with gratitude, and there is little doubt that in the city, and in the country around it, the British were looked upon not as invaders, but as deliverers.

"Wherever the men of war have approached, our militia have most manfully turned their backs and run away, officers and men, like sturdy fellows, and these panics have sometimes seized the regular regiments.

"....You are told that a regiment of Yorkers behaved ill, and it may be true; but I can tell you that several regiments of Massachusetts men behaved ill, too. The spirit of venality you mention is the most dreadful and alarming enemy America has to oppose. It is as rapacious and insatiable as the grave. This predominant avarice will ruin America. If God Almighty does not interfere by His grace to control this universal idolatry to the mammon of unrighteousness, we shall be given up to the chastisement of His judgments. I am ashamed of the age I live in."[68]