The Legislatures of each state took early steps to punish the adherents of Britain, to dispossess them of their property, and to banish them. Massachusetts took the lead in dealing severely against the loyalists. A rebel magistrates’ warrant was sufficient to banish one. Hundreds of Massachusetts Loyalists were prohibited from returning on penalty of imprisonment and even death. And the other States were active in “attainting” and confiscating, often without the form of trial. Each State carried on its function as a government, and trials ought to have been granted, in common justice to every one. But the Whigs were intolerant, hot-headed, malevolent, unforgiving. It has been said that “if it be conceded that rebellion against England was right, then every step necessary to success was justifiable.” If we grant all this there remains the fact that after success had crowned rebellion, persecution and confiscation continued. New York, on the 12th May, 1784, passed “An act for the speedy sale of the confiscated and forfeited estates within the States.” The powers consisted in the appointment of “commissioners of forfeitures.” Among those who lost their land was one Davoe. He had 300 acres near New York, twenty miles, which was confiscated and given to the notorious Tom Paine, the infidel, whose extreme liberal views expressed in his work, “Common Sense,” made him the friend of Washington, and revolutionists generally. Paine, after taking part in the French Revolutions, came, in 1802, to his place in New York, where he enjoyed the loyalists’ confiscated property until his death, 8th June, 1809.
In the terms of peace signed at Paris, there was no security effected for the losses sustained by the American Loyalists.
As Burgoyne at his inglorious surrender at Saratoga, thought not of the innocent inhabitants of the Mohawk and Hudson, who had identified themselves with the loyal cause, and supplied his troops with provisions, and left them to the merciless “Sons of Liberty,” to be despoiled of their all, and exposed to fearful cruelty, so at the last, when the British Government relinquished the attempt to subdue rebellion, the American Loyalists were of remote consideration. We can gather now but the outlines of this great wrong done unto noble men. The particulars are buried in the wreck of fortune, and of happiness, respecting all worldly matters. The after life of the loyalists was of too earnest a nature to allow time to place on record the sufferings, and the wanderings of the disinherited. The lost cause did not stimulate men to draw upon imagination, such as may be found in gaudy-hued descriptions of American revolutionary heroes, male and female. But there is sufficient of facts recorded, and engraven by the iron pen of extreme anguish upon hearts, that were of flesh, to stamp the persecutors with infamy, and mark the refugees, that clustered around the border forts, and found homes at Sorel, Lachine, and Montreal, with the highest attributes of patriotism and love of country.
The conduct of the ministry, and the commissioners at Paris is open to the severest censure. They left the claims of the loyalists to be decided by the American Congress. We may allow them the credit of having held the belief, that this body would be actuated by a feeling of justice and right, but the error was a grave one, the wrong grievous and hard to be endured. In pursuing this course, the British ministry did not escape condemnation by members of Parliament, and a feeling of sympathy was evoked that led to a tardy dispensing of justice. Lord North said “that never were the honor, the principles, the policy of a nation, so grossly abused as in the desertion of those men, who are now exposed to every punishment that desertion and poverty can inflict, because they were not rebels.” Mr. Sheridan “execrated the treatment of those unfortunate men, who, without the least notice taken of their civil and religious rights, were handed over as subjects to a power that would not fail to take vengeance on them for their zeal and attachment to the religion and government of the mother country,” “and he called it a crime to deliver them over to confiscation, tyranny, resentment and oppression.” Lord Loughborough said that “in ancient nor modern history had there been so shameful a desertion of men who had sacrificed all to their duty and to their reliance upon British faith.” Others, in terms of equal severity, denounced the ministry in Parliament for their neglect. The ministry admitted it all, but excused themselves by the plea that “a part must be wounded, that the whole of the empire may not perish”—that they “had but the alternative, either to accept the terms proposed, or continue the war.”
“A number of loyalists in England, came to the United States to claim restitution of their estates, but their applications were unheeded,” except to imprison, and banish them.
The treaty of peace signed, without any provision for the suffering loyalists, they at once took steps to petition the Imperial Parliament for justice. “They organized an agency, and appointed a Committee, composed of one delegate, or agent from each of the thirteen States, to enlighten the British public.” “At the opening of Parliament the King, in his speech from the throne, alluded to the ‘American sufferers’ and trusted generous attention would be shewn to them.” An act was consequently passed creating a “Board of Commissioners” to examine the claims preferred. The claimants were divided into six classes.
“First Class.—Those who had rendered service to Great Britain.”
“Second Class.—Those who had borne arms for Great Britain.”
“Third Class.—Uniform Loyalists.”
“Fourth Class.—Loyal British subjects residents in Great Britain.”