There were in the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Revolution in the neighbourhood of three million people. Of these it is probable that at least one million were Loyalists. This estimate is supported by the opinion of John Adams, who was well qualified to form a judgment, and whose Whig sympathies were not likely to incline him to exaggerate. He gave it as his opinion more than once that about one-third of the people of the Thirteen Colonies had been opposed to the measures of the Revolution in all its stages. This estimate he once mentioned in a letter to Thomas McKean, chief justice of Pennsylvania, who had signed the Declaration of Independence, and had been a member of every Continental Congress from that of 1765 to the close of the Revolution; and McKean replied, ‘You say that ... about a third of the people of the colonies were against the Revolution. It required much reflection before I could fix my opinion on this subject; but on mature deliberation I conclude you are right, and that more than a third of influential characters were against it.’
CHAPTER III
PERSECUTION OF THE LOYALISTS
In the autumn of the year 1779 an English poet, writing in the seclusion of his garden at Olney, paid his respects to the American revolutionists in the following lines:
Yon roaring boys, who rave and fight
On t’ other side the Atlantic,
I always held them in the right,
But most so when most frantic.
When lawless mobs insult the court,
That man shall be my toast,