Читать книгу As She Began - Bruce Wilson - Страница 9

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Who Were the Loyalists?

The popular American image of the Loyalists, portrayed in novels, television and films, is certainly not an heroic one. The Loyalist is seen as a stiff-necked Tory, rich, greedy and self-interested. Speaking with an affected English accent, he was probably a corrupt officeholder and owner of a great house, indolently whiling away his days driving about in a gilded carriage, a parasite who remained loyal only for personal gain. According to this American stereotype, the Loyalist was an isolated figure, a small sore upon the generally healthy body politic to be expunged by the hardy colonial freedom fighters.

Whatever else one says of the Loyalists, they were not few in number. It has been estimated that there were nearly 500,000 colonists who remained loyal to the British crown. That would be about 16 per cent of the total American population, or 20 per cent of white Americans. In 1780 some 8,000 Loyalists were actively serving their king in organized regiments at a time when Washington’s army numbered only about 9,000. Between 80,000 and 100,000 Loyalists eventually fled from the United States, about half of them to Canada, making it by far the most important centre of refuge. The Maritimes became home for about 45,000 while some 9,500 went to Quebec. Of these, approximately 7,500 settled in what was then western Quebec, later to become Upper Canada and finally Ontario.¹

A rough portrait of the white Ontario Loyalists can be sketched from the claims for war losses that 488 of them submitted to the British government shortly after the Revolution.² What is striking about this first-hand testimony is that it almost entirely contradicts the American stereotype. These people had enjoyed neither wealth nor privilege. Only five of them had held public office, three in relatively modest positions: that of magistrate, town clerk and employee of the Indian Department. Of the other two, one had been the postmaster of the City of Albany and Albany County, the other the sheriff of Tryon County. There was only one among the claimants who by modern standards would have been considered a professional – a physician. Two were surgeons (one a surgeon-apothecary) and one a school teacher. A small number had been shopowners, tavern-keepers or artisans, and two had been shipowners. But ninety per cent of the Loyalists listed themselves simply as farmers.³

Although the average land claim was deceptively large – 191 acres, leased or owned – a full 42 per cent indicated that they had had less than ten acres cleared. The great majority of Ontario Loyalists were pioneer farmers, most of whom had resided in New York State, 54 per cent of those coming from the sprawling county of Tryon, then the western frontier of New York settlement.⁴ Tryon County included the Mohawk Valley, the acknowledged hotbed of loyalism in western New York. Albany County accounted for 25 per cent, while Charlotte County, which then included what is now Vermont, had 14 per cent.

Large numbers of these Ontario Loyalists would have spoken with accents, but their accents would not have been either English or affected, as the popular American image would suggest. Fifty-four per cent of the Ontario claimants were foreign-born and many probably did not speak English at all. Over half of them were Scots, a large proportion of them Gaelic-speaking Highland Roman Catholics. There was also a good number of Germans and Irish (most of whom would have been Scots-Irish), while a meagre 8 per cent (some thirty-nine individuals) were English by birth. Most of the foreign-born were quite recent immigrants. Those Scots who indicated the length of their residence had only been in the country an average of four years before the beginning of the Revolution; the English had been there eight years, the Irish, eleven, and the Germans, eighteen.

Faces of Loyalism: “Robert Kerr” (1764-1824), artist unknown

During the Revolution, Kerr was a surgeon’s mate at Machiche, the main Loyalist refugee camp in Quebec and after 1780, surgeon to the second battalion of the King’s Royal Regiment of New York. After the war, he was appointed surgeon to the Indian Department and settled at Niagara in 1789. He was a judge of the Surrogate Court at Niagara and grand master of the Provincial Grand Lodge. He married Elizabeth, a daughter of Molly Brant and Sir William Johnson.

George III Indian Chief Medal, ca. 1775-1783

The custom of issuing medals to enlist and maintain the support of the Indian tribes had been a well-established practice in North America since the Spanish and French regimes. During the Revolution, British medals were struck in some profusion. They came in several different sizes, to correspond with the significance of the recipient and some, for the purpose of economy, were hollow. The obverse of the medal is a youthful bust of George III, the reverse the royal arms and supporters. Many similar medals have symbolic scenes or commemorations of victories on their reverse. The lack of any really major victories in the Revolution, despite the many successes of the Loyalist regiments in the Northern Department, probably precluded such depictions on British revolutionary medals.

Certificate of Recognition, 1778

During the 1770s, the practice was introduced of granting commissions to the Indian chiefs to whom medals had been granted, recognizing their authority and investing them with their title. The one reproduced above was granted in 1778 to a chief of the Menominees by Frederick Haldimand, the governor of Canada, for his “fidelity, zeal and attachment” to the crown.

Not included among the Ontario Loyalists who filed claims were considerable numbers of blacks and Indians. The white Loyalists brought a sizable contingent of slaves with them to Ontario, and free blacks and escaped slaves also fought directly in the Loyalist corps. Even more significant numerically were the Indians. The largest group of Ontario Loyalists after the native-born whites were the true natives of America. Over two thousand Indian allies of the crown – Six Nations Iroquois from New York, Delawares and Mingoes of the Ohio Country and a scattering of Creeks, Cherokees and other tribes from the southern colonies – had settled in Ontario by 1785.

Small though their initial numbers were, the Loyalist groups which came to Upper Canada were thus remarkably diverse in their origins. Major John Ross, the British commander at Cataraqui (Kingston) who was responsible for assisting the largest number of them to settle, regarded his charges with frank bewilderment. “Strange,” he wrote to his superiors, “is the collection of people here.”⁵

Why did such a range of people – Negro, Indian, German, Scots, Scots-Irish and English as well as native-born colonists – support the royal cause? There is no simple answer. The American Revolution was a complex conflict, a civil war fought within a war of colonial liberation by thirteen loosely knit colonies each with its own distinctive pattern of development. Within that tortuous configuration, there was plenty of room for a welter of often contradictory motives for supporting the king or his enemies. The conflict cut through class, occupational, religious and ethnic lines; at least some members of every conceivable grouping would be found on both sides in the war.

Ideology was perhaps the most widely shared motivation for loyalty. A personal attachment to the crown and the fear of the impact of the Revolution on American society were major factors in the decisions of many colonists. This is not to say that Loyalists were necessarily rigid reactionaries. Many, if not most, Loyalists agreed with the rebels (or Patriots or Whigs as they were often called) that America had suffered wrongs at the hands of the mother country. Unlike the rebels, they believed that the solution to those ills could be worked out inside the Empire. Many were staunch believers in the continuing value of the British connection. Most had never known any rule but that of the crown and not a few cherished a deep attachment to Great Britain and British culture as well as a sincere admiration for the British form of government. When new and untried leaders, radicals and demagogues as they appeared to the Loyalists, threatened the link to Great Britain by mob violence and extra-legal action, the Loyalists resisted. They sincerely believed that the Revolution would degenerate into anarchy or despotism. The final result, they affirmed, could be that the colonies would end up as a satellite of a foreign power or as mendicants begging for re-entry into the British Empire.

The Persecution of a Loyalist: a 1774 mezzotint, artist unknown

The victim is John Malcom or Malcomb, commissioner of customs in Boston. In January 1774 he was tarred and feathered, half-hanged and forced to drink enormous quantities of tea. Many other royalists would suffer similar fates in the course of the Revolution. The cockade in the hat of the assailant on the right marks him out as one of the Sons of Liberty. The “45” on the other hat refers to the “No. 45” issue of John Wilkes’ paper, the North Briton which stood at the centre of a British controversy over parliamentary privilege and the freedom of speech. Wilkes and the “No. 45” were embraced by the colonists as symbols of liberty. “Macarony” was the epithet applied to eighteenth-century English dandies.

A majority of the Ontario claimants were immigrants, and immigrants were likely candidates for loyalism. Some of those long resident in America had special reasons for loyalty. Of the fifty-eight Ontario claimants who had come to America before 1760, nineteen had come as soldiers with the British army to fight in the Seven Years’ War. Generally, however, the more recent an immigrant, the greater the chances of his loyalty; he had not usually done as well as those who had been longer established, lacked their confidence, had stronger ties with the homeland (especially if British) and felt more in need of a friend in the form of the British government.

Many who saw themselves as weak or threatened felt the need of an outside arbiter, Great Britain, to protect them from the most powerful elements in colonial society. As one Loyalist succinctly put it, he would rather be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away than by three thousand tyrants not a mile away. Those who agreed with him would include a number of the Palantine Germans who had come in the early eighteenth century to escape religious persecution, and had established group settlements along the Pennsylvania frontier or in the Schoharie tract of Tryon County. They wished to retain their distinctive ways and saw the Revolution as a potential threat. The Gaelic-speaking Roman Catholic Scots likewise wished to remain distinct from the Protestant English-speaking majority in America. Certainly the Indians had no enthusiasm for the aggressive expansionism of the colonists which pushed them from their lands and destroyed their way of life. The native peoples believed the British were more likely to restrain this movement. Blacks too had more to hope for from the wholesale British offer of freedom to slaves deserting the Patriots than they had from their rebel masters. Loyalism then could be the refuge of the helpless against American oppression.

Local politics had much to do with the side that a group or an individual might choose in the Revolution. Many who came from New York, and especially those from Tryon County, had a strong personal loyalty to the Johnson family. Sir William Johnson had come to western New York from Ireland in 1738 to manage his uncle’s lands. A dynamic leader with magnetic appeal for whites and Indians alike, Johnson quickly rose to become superintendent of the Northern Indian Department and a great landowner. He exercised an impressive influence in his own area; he had been responsible for the creation of Tryon County and its officers were personally loyal to him. Through the large sum expended by the Indian Department and the British army, Johnson also controlled a munificent amount of patronage along the western frontier, and many were beholden to him. Although Sir William died on the eve of the Revolution, his son Sir John and his nephew Guy ably managed the family’s interests and took many of their tenants and dependants with them to the British side. A substantial segment of these tenants were Scottish Highland Catholics who had arrived in 1773 and were dependent upon, and owed gratitude to, their landlord.

But if some tenants followed their landlords, others were fighting against them. New York had been the scene of bitter struggles over land which erupted into major tenant riots in 1766. Many of the rich landowners sided with the Patriots. Numbers of their tenants, not surprisingly, favoured the Loyalists; they hoped for land reform if the king defeated their landlords. Loyal farmers from Albany County, for example, were often in revolt against the leading landlords, the rebel Livingstons. In other areas of New York, where the landlords were Tory, the tenants tended to be Whig. Land was also an issue in Pennsylvania, especially in the border area with New York where a decade before the Revolution the Susquehanna Company, run by Yankees from Connecticut, had claimed ownership of the land. They had been unsuccessfully opposed by Pennsylvanians in what amounted to a small land war. When the Revolution came, many of the Pennsylvanians joined the Loyalist regiments.

Human nature being what it is, not all Americans were avid Tories or Whigs. Many of those favourable to the royal cause preferred to remain passive during the Revolution, living out their daily lives quietly and ignoring the conflagration. In such cases, circumstances – rebel persecution, the success of British arms or pressure from their own side – could be a major factor in forcing them to openly choose sides. To strengthen the wavering and ferret out secret Loyalists, all the revolting American colonies passed at least one law requiring inhabitants to take oaths, which usually involved foreswearing their old loyalties and pledging allegiance to the new regime and faith in the Revolution. Those who hesitated or refused could find themselves facing penalties ranging from disfranchisement and exclusion from political office through extra taxation and confiscation of property to imprisonment, banishment, and execution for exiles who returned. In November 1777 the Continental Congress recommended the confiscation of Loyalist estates, a suggestion which in some places had already been acted upon. All the states finally taxed or confiscated Loyalist property. The harshness of the penalties imposed on Tories and the thoroughness of their application varied from state to state and were usually severest where Loyalists were most numerous and therefore most dangerous. The areas from which Ontario Loyalists came were not noted for their leniency. New York was considered one of the most punitive of the states, but Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Rhode Island were all harsh. Those who tended towards the royal cause and therefore faced extreme penalties often found themselves with little alternative other than to join openly the Loyalists.

Sympathy for the crown could be a dangerous sentiment in the brave new republic. Those who defied the Revolution could find themselves non-persons without civil rights, turned out of their homes with no more than the clothes on their backs or flung into a prison. The most famous of the Loyalist prisons was Simsbury Mines in Connecticut. The cells there were forty yards below the surface into which “the prisoners are let down by windlass into the dismal cavern, through a hole, which answers the purpose of conveying their food and air, as to light, it scarcely reaches them.” Many Loyalists were murdered, lynched or executed for such acts as spying, recruiting, counterfeiting or guiding troops to the attack.

Loyalists also suffered in ways that were not the direct result of legislation or government action. Many social pressures were brought to bear on them. The lucky ones might experience nothing more than social ostracism; others suffered under mob attacks, and many had their homes looted or burned. A favourite punishment for loyalism, which at times threatened to reach the proportions of a national sport, consisted of stripping the victim to the “buff and breaches” and coating him with hot tar and feathers. The damage to the skin could be extensive and the awful goo was virtually irremovable. The tarring ceremony was often followed by a cruel round of “riding the rail,” which consisted of jogging the victim along with a sharp-edged rail between his legs. In the face of such vengeance, many who remained loyal sought refuge within the British lines.

The Most Notorious Loyalist Prison: a line engraving, “A Prospective View of Old Newgate Connecticut’s State Prison,” by Richard Brunton

Simsbury, or Granby, copper mines ceased production by 1773 and were converted into Connecticut’s gaol. Renamed after the London prison, Newgate, the mines soon gained a fitting reputation. Loyalists and prisoners of war suffered ghastly privations in its subterranean cells.

Certainly the existence of a strong military presence in an area encouraged many Loyalists to declare themselves, just as major British military campaigns prompted many to come forward and actively join the cause. Thus the fact that the British held New York City throughout the war and the fact that a number of major campaigns were fought in New York State encouraged Loyalism there and in adjoining parts of Connecticut and New Jersey. The capture of Philadelphia clearly had a bearing on loyalism in Pennsylvania, in nearby Delaware and in southern New Jersey. Reluctant loyalists who were neither compelled by the vengeance of the Patriots nor encouraged by the successes of the British might still have to face compulsion from the recruiting parties of their own side, whose methods were sometimes far from gentle. Barnabas Kelly, a settler in the Mohawk Valley, reported that he had “heard John Young of Butternut read a proclamation from Butler [John Butler, leader of the Loyalist Butler’s Rangers] desiring all the friends of government to join him, and bring their cattle together with their wives and families and they would be kindly received by the said Butler.” For those for whom the carrot was not sufficient, there was a stick. Shortly after the reading of the proclamation, the loyal Indian leader Joseph Brant appeared on the scene with a party of warriors. He ordered a number of the settlers to go with him, or if they did not, “to take their own risks.” His meaning could not be mistaken and the settlers went.⁶ Episodes such as this make it clear that desperate conditions in the war led to drastic measures and some consequent blurring of the lines between Tory and Whig. Indeed, especially in the frontier regions, the issues which initially divided Patriot and Loyalist were often lost in the confusion of raids, massacres and lawlessness, blood spilt and vengeance extracted, as the revolutionary conflict became increasingly savage.

Given the swirl of disparate motives that could decide loyalty or rebellion, it is not surprising that for many colonists the final decision was a highly individual one. If many small farmers in New York and Pennsylvania fought for the crown, the vast majority of farmers across the colonies did not. If many German-Americans remained loyal, German-Americans were also at the core of the successionist movement in New York. Large numbers of North American Indians actively supported the British but many more remained apathetic. The Revolution split families and divided business partnerships. Old friends became bitter enemies.

A contemporary account of the War of 1812 contains this revealing account of an incident in that war involving the Glengarry Fencibles:

In this regiment there were a father and three sons, American U.E. Loyalists, all of them crack shots. In a covering party one day the farmer and one of the sons were sentries on the same point. An American rifleman dropped a man to his left, but in so doing exposed himself, and almost as a matter of course, was instantly dropped in his turn by the unerring aim of the father. The enemy were at that moment being driven in, so the old man of course (for it was a ceremony seldom neglected) went up to rifle his victim. On examining his features he discovered that it was his own brother. Under any circumstances this would have horrified most men, but a Yankee has much of the stoic in him, and is seldom deprived of his equanimity. He took possession of his valuables, consisting of an old silver watch and a clasp knife, his rifle and appointments, coolly remarking, that it “served him right for fighting for the rebels, when all the rest of his family fought for King George.” It appeared that during the Revolutionary War his father and all his sons had taken arms in the King’s cause, save this one, who had joined the Americans. They had never met him from that period till the present moment; but such is the virulence of political rancour, that it can overcome all the ties of nature.⁷

The American Revolution was truly the first American civil war.