At the time of the Revolution the intense hatred in New England of the mother country was due partly to a desire to confiscate the lands of the Loyalists and partly to that which they considered unfair restrictions on their overseas trade, as well as to an unwillingness to being taxed to pay a part of the great cost of conquering Canada.
The net result of these forces was a widespread anti-British and, later, anti-governmental complex, which has characterized our country ever since. In contrast to England and to Canada, we are an essentially lawless people.
Ireland.
In the North the Revolution was largely a movement of various Calvinist communities. The few Episcopalians in New England and the more numerous adherents of that church in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were almost all Loyalists. In Virginia, however, and further to the south the numerous Church of England planter class took the American side and as a result retained their leadership as an aristocracy down to the time of the Civil War. Even at the time of the Revolution this church contributed more than its quota of leaders. Of fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, thirty-four are classified as Episcopalians, twelve as Congregationalists, five as Presbyterians, two Quakers, one Baptist and one Roman Catholic. Of the Continental Congress which ratified this Declaration, nearly two-thirds are said to have been Episcopalians.
In the North following the expulsion of the Loyalists, the Church of England was left prostrate, and it was some time after the Revolution before it was successfully reorganized and was definitely designated as the Protestant Episcopal Church to become, after a century, the fashionable church of the Atlantic seaboard. The Protestant Episcopal Church has never had any substantial hold in the Middle or Far West and even today it is there largely a missionary church with a tendency towards ritualism, which has checked its normal development.
The Roman Catholic population of the colonies was negligible. In 1790 out of a white population of a little over 3,000,000, there were not more than 35,000 Catholics in the United States. This number included 5000 Negroes and some Germans. They were located for the most part in Maryland and Pennsylvania, showing that the South Irish Catholics had not come over in appreciable numbers during Colonial times. Many of the colonies legislated against Roman Catholics.
The Revolution itself was political and social, carrying to an extreme development the political theories of the English Whigs. The distrust of officialdom in power, engendered by the Revolution, led to all manner of constitutional and legal restrictions, in place of a reliance on the personal character of office holders as in England.