CHAPTER VIII.
THE EXPULSION OF THE LOYALISTS AND THE SETTLEMENT OF CANADA.
The Huguenots and the proscribed of the French Revolution found sanctuary as welcome guests in England and the English colonies.
The Moors were well treated when banished from Spain; the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was civil death to all Huguenots; the Americans made the treaty of peace of 1783 worse than civil death to all Loyalists.
The Americans, at the inception and birth of their republic, violated every precept of Christianity and of a boasted civilization, even to confiscating the estates of helpless women. For all time it is to be a part of American history that the last decade of the eighteenth century saw the most cruel and vindictive acts of spoliation recorded in modern history.
At the treaty of peace, 1783, the banishment and extermination of the Loyalists was a foregone conclusion. The bitterest words ever uttered by Washington were in reference to them: "He could see nothing better for them than to recommend suicide." Neither Congress nor state governments made any recommendation that humane treatment should be meted out to these Loyalists. John Adams had written from Amsterdam that he would "have hanged his own brother had he taken part against him."[84]
At the close of the war the mob were allowed to commit any outrage or atrocity, while the authorities in each state remained apparently indifferent. An example of Loyalist ill-treatment is to be found in a letter written October 22, 1783, to a Boston friend, and preserved in New York City manual, 1870:—
"The British are leaving New York every day, and last week there came one of the d——d refugees from New York to a place called Wall Kill, in order to make a tarry with his parents, where he was taken into custody immediately. His head and eyebrows were shaved, tarred and feathered, a hog-yoke put on his neck, and a cowbell thereon; upon his head a very high hat and feathers were set, well plumed with tar, and a sheet of paper in front with a man drawn with two faces, representing the traitor Arnold and the devil."
Some American writers have been extremely severe upon Americans who served in the royal armies. Such condemnation is certainly illogical and unjust. They must have reasoned they were fighting to save their country from mob rule, from the domination of demagogues and traitors, and to preserve to it what, until then, all had agreed to be the greatest of blessings, the connection with Great Britain, the privilege of being Englishmen, heirs of all the free institutions which were embodied in a "great and glorious constitution." If the Loyalists reasoned in this manner, we cannot blame them, unless we are ready to maintain the proposition that the cause of every revolution is necessarily so sacred that those who do not sympathize with it should abstain from opposing it.
Very early in the Revolution the disunionists tried to drive the Loyalists into the rebel militia or into the Continental army by fines, and by obliging them to hire substitutes. The families of men who had fled from the country to escape implication in the impending war were obliged to hire substitutes, and they were fined for the misdeeds of the mercenary whom they had engaged. Fines were even imposed upon neutral and unoffending persons for not preventing their families from entering the British service. If the fines were refused, the property was recklessly sold to the amount of the fine and costs of action. Loyalists convicted of entering the enemy's lines could be fined as high as 2000 pounds, and even the unsuccessful attempt to enter might be punished by a fine of 1000 pounds.[85] If the property of the offender failed to answer for his offence, he became subject to corporal punishment, whipping, branding, cropping of ears, and exposure in the pillory being resorted to in some of the states.