The main hope of success on the English side lay in the idea that the spirit and acts of resistance to the authority of the mother-country were in reality only on the part of a turbulent minority; that the bulk of the people desired to be loyal. It is certain indeed that the struggle was, in America itself, much more of a civil war than the Americans are now generally disposed to admit. In December, 1780, there were eight thousand nine hundred fifty-four provincials among the British forces in America, and on March 7, 1781, a letter from Lord George Germain to Sir H. Clinton, intercepted by the Americans, says, "The American levies in the King's service are more in number than the whole of the enlisted troops in the service of Congress."
As late as September 1, 1781, there were seven thousand two hundred forty-one. We hear of "loyal associates" in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, of "associated loyalists" in New York, of a fort built and maintained by "associated refugees," and everywhere of "Tories," whose arrest Washington is found suggesting to Governor Trumbull, of Connecticut, as early as November 12, 1775. New England may indeed be considered to have been cleared of active opposition to the American cause when more than one thousand refugees left Boston in March, 1776, with the British troops. But New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania remained long full of Tories. By June 28, 1776, the disaffected on Long Island had taken up arms, and after the evacuation of New York by Washington a brigade of loyalists was raised on the island, and companies were formed in two neighboring counties to join the King's troops.
During Washington's retreat through New Jersey "the inhabitants, either from fear or disaffection, almost to a man refused to turn out." In Pennsylvania the militia, instead of giving any assistance in repelling the British, exulted at their approach, and over the misfortunes of their countrymen. On the 20th of that month the British were "daily gathering strength from the disaffected." In 1777 the Tories who joined Burgoyne in his invasion from the north are said to have doubled his force. In 1778 Tories joined the Indians in the devastation of Wyoming and Cherry Valley; and although the indiscriminate ravages of the British, or of the Germans in their pay, seem to have roused the three States above mentioned to self-defence, yet, as late as May, 1780, Washington still speaks of sending a small party of cavalry to escort Lafayette "safely through the Tory settlements" of New York. Virginia, as late as the spring of 1776, was "alarmed at the idea of independence."
Washington admitted that his countrymen—of that State—"from their form of government, and steady attachment heretofore to royalty," would "come reluctantly" to that idea, but trusted to "time and persecution." In 1781 the ground for transferring the seat of war to the Chesapeake was the number of loyalists in that quarter. In the Southern States the division of feeling was still greater. In the Carolinas, a Loyalist regiment was raised in a few days in 1776, and again in 1779. In Georgia, in South Carolina, the bitterest partisan warfare was carried on between the Whig and Tory bands; and a body of New York Tories contributed powerfully to the fall of Savannah in 1778 by taking the American forces in the rear.
On the other hand it is unquestionable that in the extent and quality of the support which they met with, the British generals were cruelly disappointed. Up to May, 1778, General Howe had declared that in thirteen corps raised, with a nominal strength of six thousand five hundred men, the whole number amounted only to three thousand six hundred nine, of whom only a small proportion were Americans, and that "all the force that could be collected in Pennsylvania, after the most indefatigable exertions during eight months," was only nine hundred seventy-four men. Of the far more numerous loyalist levies in the South, Lord Cornwallis speaks in the most disparaging terms. A whole regiment in South Carolina marched off on one occasion in a body. Speaking of the friends to the British cause in North Carolina he wrote, "If they are as dastardly and pusillanimous as our friends to the southward, we must leave them to their fate." At the time of the battle of Guilford Court House (1781) the idea of such friends "rising in any number and to any purpose had totally failed." No "provincial" general ever rose to eminence on the British side, although more than one was appointed, and it is clear that if the struggle was so long protracted it was not through the valor or constancy of the loyalists.
The real causes of its protraction—though it may be hard to an American to admit the fact—lay in the incapacity of American politicians, and, it must be added, in the supineness and want of patriotism of the American people. If, indeed, importing into the struggle views of a later date, we look upon it as one between two nations, the mismanagement of the war by the Americans, on all points save one—the retention of Washington in the chief command—is seen to have been so pitiable from first to last as to be in fact almost unintelligible. We only understand the case when we see that there was no such thing as an American nation in existence, but only a number of revolted colonies, jealous of one another, and with no tie but that of a common danger.
Even in the army, divisions broke out. Washington, in a general order of August 1, 1776, says: "It is with great concern that the general understands that jealousies have arisen among the troops from the different provinces, and reflections are frequently thrown out which can only tend to irritate each other and injure the noble cause in which we are engaged." It was seldom that much help could be obtained in troops from any State, unless that State were immediately threatened by the enemy; and even then these troops would be raised by that State for its own defence, irrespectively of the general or "Continental Army."
"Those at a distance from the seat of War," wrote Washington in April, 1778, "live in such perfect tranquillity that they conceive the dispute to be in a manner at an end; and those near it are so disaffected that they serve only as embarrassments." In January, 1779, we find him remonstrating with the Governor of Rhode Island because that State had "ordered several battalions to be raised for the defence of the State only, and this before proper measures were taken to fill the Continental regiments." The different bounties and rates of pay allowed by the various States were a constant source of annoyance to him. After the first year, the best men were not returned to Congress, or did not return to it. Whole States remained frequently unrepresented. In the winter of 1777-1778 Congress was reduced to twenty-one members. But even with a full representation it could do little. "One State will comply with a requisition of Congress," writes Washington in 1780, "another neglects to do it, a third executes it by halves, and all differ either in the manner, the matter, or so much in point of time that we are always working up-hill." At first Congress was really nothing more than a voluntary committee. When the Confederation was completed—which was only, be it remembered, on March 1, 1781—it was still, as Washington wrote in 1785, "little more than a shadow without the substance, and the Congress a nugatory body"; or, as it was described by a later writer, "powerless for government, and a rope of sand for union."
Like politicians, like people. There was no doubt a brilliant display of patriotic ardor at the first flying to arms of the colonists. Lexington and Bunker Hill were actions decidedly creditable to their raw troops. The expedition to Canada, foolhardy though it proved, was pursued up to a certain point with real heroism. But with it the heroic period of the war—individual instances excepted—may be said to have closed. There seems little reason to doubt that the Revolution would never have been commenced if it had been expected to cost so tough a struggle. "A false estimate of the power and perseverance of our enemies," wrote James Duane to Washington, "was friendly to the present revolution, and inspired that confidence of success in all ranks of people which was necessary to unite them in so arduous a cause."
As early as November, 1775, Washington wrote, speaking of military arrangements, "Such a dearth of public spirit, and such want of virtue, such stock-jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantages of one kind or another, I never saw before, and pray God's mercy that I may never be witness to again." Such "a mercenary spirit" pervaded the whole of the troops, that he should not have been "at all surprised at any disaster."