This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan.
CHRONICLES OF CANADA
Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
In thirty-two volumes
Volume 13
THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS
A Chronicle of the Great Migration
By W. STEWART WALLACE
TORONTO, 1914
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTORY
II. LOYALISM IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES
III. PERSECUTION OF THE LOYALISTS
IV. THE LOYALISTS UNDER ARMS
V. PEACE WITHOUT HONOUR
VI. THE EXODUS TO NOVA SCOTIA
VII. THE BIRTH OF NEW BRUNSWICK
VIII. IN PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
IX. THE LOYALISTS IN QUEBEC
X. THE WESTERN SETTLEMENTS
XI. COMPENSATION AND HONOUR
XII. THE AMERICAN MIGRATION
XIII. THE LOYALIST IN HIS NEW HOME
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The United Empire Loyalists have suffered a strange fate
at the hands of historians. It is not too much to say
that for nearly a century their history was written by
their enemies. English writers, for obvious reasons, took
little pleasure in dwelling on the American Revolution,
and most of the early accounts were therefore American
in their origin. Any one who takes the trouble to read
these early accounts will be struck by the amazing manner
in which the Loyalists are treated. They are either
ignored entirely or else they are painted in the blackest
colours.
So vile a crew the world ne'er saw before,
And grant, ye pitying heavens, it may no more!
If ghosts from hell infest our poisoned air,
Those ghosts have entered these base bodies here.
So sang a ballad-monger of the Revolution; and the opinion
which he voiced persisted after him. According to some
American historians of the first half of the nineteenth
century, the Loyalists were a comparatively insignificant
class of vicious criminals, and the people of the American
colonies were all but unanimous in their armed opposition
to the British government.
Within recent years, however, there has been a change.
American historians of a new school have revised the
history of the Revolution, and a tardy reparation has
been made to the memory of the Tories of that day. Tyler,
Van Tyne, Flick, and other writers have all made the
_amende honorable_ on behalf of their countrymen. Indeed,
some of these writers, in their anxiety to stand straight,
have leaned backwards; and by no one perhaps will the
ultra-Tory view of the Revolution be found so clearly
expressed as by them. At the same time the history of
the Revolution has been rewritten by some English
historians; and we have a writer like Lecky declaring
that the American Revolution 'was the work of an energetic
minority, who succeeded in committing an undecided and
fluctuating majority to courses for which they had little
love, and leading them step by step to a position from
which it was impossible to recede.'
Thus, in the United States and in England, the pendulum
has swung from one extreme to the other. In Canada it
has remained stationary. There, in the country where they
settled, the United Empire Loyalists are still regarded
with an uncritical veneration which has in it something
of the spirit of primitive ancestor-worship. The interest
which Canadians have taken in the Loyalists has been
either patriotic or genealogical; and few attempts have
been made to tell their story in the cold light of
impartial history, or to estimate the results which have
flowed from their migration. Yet such an attempt is worth
while making - an attempt to do the United Empire Loyalists
the honour of painting them as they were, and of describing
the profound and far-reaching influences which they
exerted on the history of both Canada and the United
States.
In the history of the United States the exodus of the
Loyalists is an event comparable only to the expulsion
of the Huguenots from France after the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. The Loyalists, whatever their social
status (and they were not all aristocrats), represented
the conservative and moderate element in the revolting
states; and their removal, whether by banishment or
disfranchisement, meant the elimination of a very wholesome
element in the body politic. To this were due in part no
doubt many of the early errors of the republic in finance,
diplomacy, and politics. At the same time it was a
circumstance which must have hastened by many years the
triumph of democracy. In the tenure of land, for example,
the emigration produced a revolution. The confiscated
estates of the great Tory landowners were in most cases
cut up into small lots and sold to the common people;
and thus the process of levelling and making more democratic
the whole social structure was accelerated.
On the Canadian body politic the impress of the Loyalist
migration is so deep that it would be difficult to
overestimate it. It is no exaggeration to say that the
United Empire Loyalists changed the course of the current
of Canadian history. Before 1783 the clearest observers
saw no future before Canada but that of a French colony
under the British crown. 'Barring a catastrophe shocking
to think of,' wrote Sir Guy Carleton in 1767, 'this
country must, to the end of time, be peopled by the
Canadian race, who have already taken such firm root,
and got to so great a height, that any new stock
transplanted will be totally hid, except in the towns of
Quebec and Montreal.' Just how discerning this prophecy
was may be judged from the fact that even to-day it holds
true with regard to the districts that were settled at
the time it was written. What rendered it void was the
unexpected influx of the refugees of the Revolution. The
effect of this immigration was to create two new
English-speaking provinces, New Brunswick and Upper
Canada, and to strengthen the English element in two
other provinces, Lower Canada and Nova Scotia, so that
ultimately the French population in Canada was outnumbered
by the English population surrounding it. Nor should the
character of this English immigration escape notice. It
was not only English; but it was also filled with a
passionate loyalty to the British crown. This fact serves
to explain a great deal in later Canadian history. Before
1783 the continuance of Canada in the British Empire was
by no means assured: after 1783 the Imperial tie was
well-knit.
Nor can there be any doubt that the coming of the Loyalists
hastened the advent of free institutions. It was the
settlement of Upper Canada that rendered the Quebec Act
of 1774 obsolete, and made necessary the Constitutional
Act of 1791, which granted to the Canadas representative
assemblies. The Loyalists were Tories and Imperialists;
but, in the colonies from which they came, they had been
accustomed to a very advanced type of democratic government,
and it was not to be expected that they would quietly
reconcile themselves in their new home to the arbitrary
system of the Quebec Act. The French Canadians, on the
other hand, had not been accustomed to representative
institutions, and did not desire them. But when Upper
Canada was granted an assembly, it was impossible not to
grant an assembly to Lower Canada too; and so Canada was
started on that road of constitutional development which
has brought her to her present position as a self-governing
unit in the British Empire.
CHAPTER II
LOYALISM IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES
It was a remark of John Fiske that the American Revolution
was merely a phase of English party politics in the
eighteenth century. In this view there is undoubtedly an
element of truth. The Revolution was a struggle within
the British Empire, in which were aligned on one side
the American Whigs supported by the English Whigs, and
on the other side the English Tories supported by the
American Tories. The leaders of the Whig party in England,
Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, Colonel Barre, the great
Chatham himself, all championed the cause of the American
revolutionists in the English parliament. There were many
cases of Whig officers in the English army who refused
to serve against the rebels in America. General Richard
Montgomery, who led the revolutionists in their attack
on Quebec in 1775-76, furnishes the case of an English
officer who, having resigned his commission, came to
America and, on the outbreak of the rebellion, took
service in the rebel forces. On the other hand there were
thousands of American Tories who took service under the
king's banner; and some of the severest defeats which
the rebel forces suffered were encountered at their hands.
It would be a mistake, however, to identify too closely
the parties in England with the parties in America. The
old Tory party in England was very different from the
so-called Tory party in America. The term Tory in America
was, as a matter of fact, an epithet of derision applied
by the revolutionists to all who opposed them. The
opponents of the revolutionists called themselves not
Tories, but Loyalists or 'friends of government.'
There were, it is true, among the Loyalists not a few
who held language that smacked of Toryism. Among the
Loyalist pamphleteers there were those who preached the
doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance. Thus
the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, a clergyman of Virginia, wrote:
Having then, my brethren, thus long been tossed to
and fro in a wearisome circle of uncertain traditions,
or in speculations and projects still more uncertain,
concerning government, what better can you do than,
following the apostle's advice, 'to submit yourselves
to every ordinance of man, for the Lord's sake; whether
it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors, as
unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of
evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well?
For, so is the will of God, that with well-doing ye
may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men; as
free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of
maliciousness, but as servants of God. Honour all men:
love the brotherhood: fear God: honour the king.'
Jonathan Boucher subscribed to the doctrine of the divine
right of kings:
Copying after the fair model of heaven itself, wherein
there was government even among the angels, the families
of the earth were subjected to rulers, at first set
over them by God. 'For there is no power, but of God:
the powers that be are ordained of God.' The first
father was the first king... Hence it is, that our
church, in perfect conformity with the doctrine here
inculcated, in her explication of the fifth commandment,
from the obedience due to parents, wisely derives the
congenial duty of 'honouring the king, and all that
are put in authority under him.'
Dr Myles Cooper, the president of King's College, took
up similar ground. God, he said, established the laws of
government, ordained the British power, and commanded
all to obey authority. 'The laws of heaven and earth'
forbade rebellion. To threaten open disrespect of government
was 'an unpardonable crime.' 'The principles of submission
and obedience to lawful authority' were religious duties.
But even Jonathan Boucher and Myles Cooper did not apply
these doctrines without reserve. They both upheld the
sacred right of petition and remonstrance. 'It is your
duty,' wrote Boucher, 'to instruct your members to take
all the constitutional means in their power to obtain
redress.' Both he and Cooper deplored the policy of the
British ministry. Cooper declared the Stamp Act to be
contrary to American rights; he approved of the opposition
to the duties on the enumerated articles; and he was
inclined to think the duty on tea 'dangerous to
constitutional liberty.'
It may be confidently asserted that the great majority
of the American Loyalists, in fact, did not approve of
the course pursued by the British government between 1765
and 1774. They did not deny its legality; but they doubted
as a rule either its wisdom or its justice. Thomas
Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, one of the
most famous and most hated of the Loyalists, went to
England, if we are to believe his private letters, with
the secret ambition of obtaining the repeal of the act
which closed Boston harbour. Joseph Galloway, another of
the Loyalist leaders, and the author of the last serious
attempt at conciliation, actually sat in the first
Continental Congress, which was called with the object
of obtaining the redress of what Galloway himself described
as 'the grievances justly complained of.' Still more
instructive is the case of Daniel Dulany of Maryland.
Dulany, one of the most distinguished lawyers of his
time, was after the Declaration of Independence denounced
as a Tory; his property was confiscated, and the safety
of his person imperilled. Yet at the beginning of the
Revolution he had been found in the ranks of the Whig
pamphleteers; and no more damaging attack was ever made
on the policy of the British government than that contained
in his _Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes
in the British Colonies_. When the elder Pitt attacked
the Stamp Act in the House of Commons in January 1766,
he borrowed most of his argument from this pamphlet,
which had appeared three months before.
This difficulty which many of the Loyalists felt with
regard to the justice of the position taken up by the
British government greatly weakened the hands of the
Loyalist party in the early stages of the Revolution. It
was only as the Revolution gained momentum that the party
grew in vigour and numbers. A variety of factors contributed
to this result. In the first place there were the excesses
of the revolutionary mob. When the mob took to sacking
private houses, driving clergymen out of their pulpits,
and tarring and feathering respectable citizens, there
were doubtless many law-abiding people who became Tories
in spite of themselves. Later on, the methods of the
inquisitorial communities possibly made Tories out of
some who were the victims of their attentions. The outbreak
of armed rebellion must have shocked many into a reactionary
attitude. It was of these that a Whig satirist wrote,
quoting:
This word, Rebellion, hath frozen them up,
Like fish in a pond.
But the event which brought the greatest reinforcement
to the Loyalist ranks was the Declaration of Independence.
Six months before the Declaration of Independence was
passed by the Continental Congress, the Whig leaders had
been almost unanimous in repudiating any intention of
severing the connection between the mother country and
the colonies. Benjamin Franklin told Lord Chatham that
he had never heard in America one word in favour of
independence 'from any person, drunk or sober.' Jonathan
Boucher says that Washington told him in the summer of
1775 'that if ever I heard of his joining in any such
measures, I had his leave to set him down for everything
wicked.' As late as Christmas Day 1775 the revolutionary
congress of New Hampshire officially proclaimed their
disavowal of any purpose 'aiming at independence.'
Instances such as these could be reproduced indefinitely.
When, therefore, the Whig leaders in the summer of 1776
made their right-about-face with regard to independence,
it is not surprising that some of their followers fell
away from them. Among these were many who were heartily
opposed to the measures of the British government, and
who had even approved of the policy of armed rebellion.
but who could not forget that they were born British
subjects. They drank to the toast, 'My country, may she
always be right; but right or wrong, my country.'
Other motives influenced the growth of the Loyalist party.
There were those who opposed the Revolution because they
were dependent on government for their livelihood, royal
office-holders and Anglican clergymen for instance. There
were those who were Loyalists because they thought they
had picked the winning side, such as the man who candidly
wrote from New Brunswick in 1788, 'I have made one great
mistake in politics, for which reason I never intend to
make so great a blunder again.' Many espoused the cause
because they were natives of the British Isles, and had
not become thoroughly saturated with American ideas: of
the claimants for compensation before the Royal
Commissioners after the war almost two-thirds were persons
who had been born in England, Scotland, or Ireland. In
some of the colonies the struggle between Whig and Tory
followed older party lines: this was especially true in
New York, where the Livingston or Presbyterian party
became Whig and the De Lancey or Episcopalian party Tory.
Curiously enough the cleavage in many places followed
religious lines. The members of the Church of England
were in the main Loyalists; the Presbyterians were in
the main revolutionists. The revolutionist cause was
often strongest in those colonies, such as Connecticut,
where the Church of England was weakest. But the division
was far from being a strict one. There were even members
of the Church of England in the Boston Tea Party; and
there were Presbyterians among the exiles who went to
Canada and Nova Scotia. The Revolution was not in any
sense a religious war; but religious differences contributed
to embitter the conflict, and doubtless made Whigs or
Tories of people who had no other interest at stake.
It is commonly supposed that the Loyalists drew their
strength from the upper classes in the colonies, while
the revolutionists drew theirs from the proletariat.
There is just enough truth in this to make it misleading.
It is true that among the official classes and the large
landowners, among the clergymen, lawyers, and physicians,
the majority were Loyalists; and it is true that the mob
was everywhere revolutionist. But it cannot be said that
the Revolution was in any sense a war of social classes.
In it father was arrayed against son and brother against
brother. Benjamin Franklin was a Whig; his son, Sir
William Franklin, was a Tory. In the valley of the
Susquehanna the Tory Colonel John Butler, of Butler's
Rangers, found himself confronted by his Whig cousins,
Colonel William Butler and Colonel Zeb Butler. George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, were not inferior
in social status to Sir William Johnson, Thomas Hutchinson,
and Joseph Galloway. And, on the other hand, there were
no humbler peasants in the revolutionary ranks than some
of the Loyalist farmers who migrated to Upper Canada in
1783. All that can be said is that the Loyalists were
most numerous among those classes which had most to lose
by the change, and least numerous among those classes
which had least to lose.
Much labour has been spent on the problem of the numbers
of the Loyalists. No means of numbering political opinions
was resorted to at the time of the Revolution, so that
satisfactory statistics are not available. There was,
moreover, throughout the contest a good deal of going
and coming between the Whig and Tory camps, which makes
an estimate still more difficult. 'I have been struck,'
wrote Lorenzo Sabine, 'in the course of my investigations,
with the absence of fixed principles, not only among
people in the common walks of life, but in many of the
prominent personages of the day.' Alexander Hamilton,
for instance, deserted from the Tories to the Whigs;
Benedict Arnold deserted from the Whigs to the Tories.
The Loyalists themselves always maintained that they
constituted an actual majority in the Thirteen Colonies.
In 1779 they professed to have more troops in the field
than the Continental Congress. These statements were no
doubt exaggerations. The fact is that the strength of
the Loyalists was very unevenly distributed. In the colony
of New York they may well have been in the majority. They
were strong also in Pennsylvania, so strong that an
officer of the revolutionary army described that colony
as 'the enemies' country.' 'New York and Pennsylvania,'
wrote John Adams years afterwards, 'were so nearly
divided - if their propensity was not against us - that if
New England on one side and Virginia on the other had
not kept them in awe, they would have joined the British.'
In Georgia the Loyalists were in so large a majority that
in 1781 that colony would probably have detached itself
from the revolutionary movement had it not been for the
surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. On the other hand,
in the New England colonies the Loyalists were a small
minority, strongest perhaps in Connecticut, and yet even
there predominant only in one or two towns.
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,
If breaking windows be the sport,
Who bravely breaks the most.
But oh! for him my fancy culls
The choicest flowers she bears,
Who constitutionally pulls
Your house about your ears.
When William Cowper wrote these lines, his sources of
information with regard to affairs in America were probably
slight; but had he been writing at the seat of war he
could not have touched off the treatment of the Loyalists
by the revolutionists with more effective irony.
There were two kinds of persecution to which the Loyalists
were subjected - that which was perpetrated by 'lawless
mobs,' and that which was carried out 'constitutionally.'
It was at the hands of the mob that the Loyalists first
suffered persecution. Probably the worst of the
revolutionary mobs was that which paraded the streets of
Boston. In 1765, at the time of the Stamp Act agitation,
large crowds in Boston attacked and destroyed the
magnificent houses of Andrew Oliver and Thomas Hutchinson.
They broke down the doors with broadaxes, destroyed the
furniture, stole the money and jewels, scattered the
books and papers, and, having drunk the wines in the
cellar, proceeded to the dismantling of the roof and
walls. The owners of the houses barely escaped with their
lives. In 1768 the same mob wantonly attacked the British
troops in Boston, and so precipitated what American
historians used to term 'the Boston Massacre'; and in
1773 the famous band of 'Boston Indians' threw the tea
into Boston harbour.
In other places the excesses of the mob were nearly as
great. In New York they were active in destroying
printing-presses from which had issued Tory pamphlets,
in breaking windows of private houses, in stealing live
stock and personal effects, and in destroying property.
A favourite pastime was tarring and feathering 'obnoxious
Tories.' This consisted in stripping the victim naked,
smearing him with a coat of tar and feathers, and parading
him about the streets in a cart for the contemplation of
his neighbours. Another amusement was making Tories ride
the rail. This consisted in putting the 'unhappy victims
upon sharp rails with one leg on each side; each rail
was carried upon the shoulders of two tall men, with a
man on each side to keep the poor wretch straight and
fixed in his seat.'
Even clergymen were not free from the attentions of the
mob. The Rev. Jonathan Boucher tells us that he was
compelled to preach with loaded pistols placed on the
pulpit cushions beside him. On one occasion he was
prevented from entering the pulpit by two hundred armed
men, whose leader warned him not to attempt to preach.
'I returned for answer,' says Boucher, 'that there was
but one way by which they could keep me out of it, and
that was by taking away my life. At the proper time, with
my sermon in one hand and a loaded pistol in the other,
like Nehemiah I prepared to ascend my pulpit, when one
of my friends, Mr David Crauford, having got behind me,
threw his arms round me and held me fast. He assured me
that he had heard the most positive orders given to twenty
men picked out for the purpose, to fire on me the moment
I got into the pulpit.'
That the practices of the mob were not frowned upon by
the revolutionary leaders, there is good reason for
believing. The provincial Congress of New York, in December
1776, went so far as to order the committee of public
safety to secure all the pitch and tar 'necessary for
the public use and public safety.' Even Washington seems
to have approved of persecution of the Tories by the mob.
In 1776 General Putnam, meeting a procession of the Sons
of Liberty who were parading a number of Tories on rails
up and down the street's of New York, attempted to put
a stop to the barbarous proceeding. Washington, on hearing
of this, administered a reprimand to Putnam, declaring
'that to discourage such proceedings was to injure the
cause of liberty in which they were engaged, and that
nobody would attempt it but an enemy to his country.'
Very early in the Revolution the Whigs began to organize.
They first formed themselves into local associations,
similar to the Puritan associations in the Great Rebellion
in England, and announced that they would 'hold all those
persons inimical to the liberties of the colonies who
shall refuse to subscribe this association.' In connection
with these associations there sprang up local committees.
From garrets, cellars, rushing through the street,
The new-born statesmen in committee meet,
sang a Loyalist verse-writer. Very soon there was completed
an organization, stretching from the Continental Congress
and the provincial congresses at one end down to the
pettiest parish committees on the other, which was destined
to prove a most effective engine for stamping out loyalism,
and which was to contribute in no small degree to the
success of the Revolution.
Though the action of the mob never entirely disappeared,
the persecution of the Tories was taken over, as soon as
the Revolution got under way, by this semi-official
organization. What usually happened was that the Continental
or provincial Congress laid down the general policy to
be followed, and the local committees carried it out in
detail. Thus, when early in 1776 the Continental Congress
recommended the disarming of the Tories, it was the local
committees which carried the recommendation into effect.
During this early period the conduct of the revolutionary
authorities was remarkably moderate. They arrested the
Tories, tried them, held them at bail for their good
behaviour, quarantined them in their houses, exiled them
to other districts, but only in extreme cases did they
imprison them. There was, of course, a good deal of
hardship entailed on the Tories; and occasionally the
agents of the revolutionary committees acted without
authority, as when Colonel Dayton, who was sent to arrest
Sir John Johnson at his home in the Mohawk valley, sacked
Johnson Hall and carried off Lady Johnson a prisoner, on
finding that Sir John Johnson had escaped to Canada with
many of his Highland retainers. But, as a rule, in this
early period, the measures taken both by the revolutionary
committees and by the army officers were easily defensible
on the ground of military necessity.
But with the Declaration of Independence a new order of
things was inaugurated. That measure revolutionized the
political situation. With the severance of the Imperial
tie, loyalism became tantamount to treason to the state;
and Loyalists laid themselves open to all the penalties
of treason. The Declaration of Independence was followed
by the test laws. These laws compelled every one to abjure
allegiance to the British crown, and swear allegiance to
the state in which he resided. A record was kept of those
who took the oath, and to them were given certificates
without which no traveller was safe from arrest. Those
who failed to take the oath became liable to imprisonment,
confiscation of property, banishment, and even death.
Even among the Whigs there was a good deal of opposition
to the test laws. Peter Van Schaak, a moderate Whig of
New York state, so strongly disapproved of the test laws
that he seceded from the revolutionary party. 'Had you,'
he wrote, 'at the beginning of the war, permitted every
one differing in sentiment from you, to take the other
side, or at least to have removed out of the State, with
their property ... it would have been a conduct magnanimous
and just. But, now, after restraining those persons from
removing; punishing them, if, in the attempt, they were
apprehended; selling their estates if they escaped;
compelling them to the duties of subjects under heavy
penalties; deriving aid from them in the prosecution of
the war ... now to compel them to take an oath is an act
of severity.'
Of course, the test laws were not rigidly or universally
enforced. In Pennsylvania only a small proportion of the
population took the oath. In New York, out of one thousand
Tories arrested for failure to take the oath, six hundred
were allowed to go on bail, and the rest were merely
acquitted or imprisoned. On the whole the American
revolutionists were not bloody-minded men; they inaugurated
no September Massacres, no Reign of Terror, no
_dragonnades_. There was a distinct aversion among them
to applying the death penalty. 'We shall have many unhappy
persons to take their trials for their life next Oyer
court,' wrote a North Carolina patriot. 'Law should be
strictly adhered to, severity exercised, but the doors
of mercy should never be shut.'
The test laws, nevertheless, and the other discriminating
laws passed against the Loyalists provided the excuse
for a great deal of barbarism and ruthlessness. In
Pennsylvania bills of attainder were passed against no
fewer than four hundred and ninety persons. The property
of nearly all these persons was confiscated, and several
of them were put to death. A detailed account has come
down to us of the hanging of two Loyalists of Philadelphia
named Roberts and Carlisle. These two men had shown great
zeal for the king's cause when the British Army was in
Philadelphia. After Philadelphia was evacuated, they were
seized by the Whigs, tried, and condemned to be hanged.
Roberts's wife and children went before Congress and on
their knees begged for mercy; but in vain. One November
morning of 1778 the two men were marched to the gallows,
with halters round their necks. At the gallows, wrote a
spectator, Roberts's behaviour 'did honour to human
nature.'
He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene
Addressing the spectators, he told them that his conscience
acquitted him of guilt; that he suffered for doing his
duty to his sovereign; and that his blood would one day
be required at their hands. Then he turned to his children
and charged them to remember the principles for which he
died, and to adhere to them while they had breath.
But if these judicial murders were few and far between,
in other respects the revolutionists showed the Tories
little mercy. Both those who remained in the country and
those who fled from it were subjected to an attack on
their personal fortunes which gradually impoverished
them. This was carried on at first by a nibbling system
of fines and special taxation. Loyalists were fined for
evading military service, for the hire of substitutes,
for any manifestation of loyalty. They were subjected to
double and treble taxes; and in New York and South Carolina
they had to make good all robberies committed in their
counties. Then the revolutionary leaders turned to the
expedient of confiscation. From the very first some of
the patriots, without doubt, had an eye on Loyalist
property; and when the coffers of the Continental Congress
had been emptied, the idea gained ground that the Revolution
might be financed by the confiscation of Loyalist estates.
Late in 1777 the plan was embodied in a resolution of
the Continental Congress, and the states were recommended
to invest the proceeds in continental loan certificates.
The idea proved very popular; and in spite of a great
deal of corruption in connection with the sale and transfer
of the land, large sums found their way as a result into
the state exchequers. In New York alone over 3,600,000
pounds worth of property was acquired by the state.
The Tory who refused to take the oath of allegiance became
in fact an outlaw. He did not have in the courts of law
even the rights of a foreigner. If his neighbours owed
him money, he had no legal redress. He might be assaulted,
insulted, blackmailed, or slandered, yet the law granted
him no remedy. No relative or friend could leave an orphan
child to his guardianship. He could be the executor or
administrator of no man's estate. He could neither buy
land nor transfer it to another. If he was a lawyer, he
was denied the right to practise his profession.
This strict legal view of the status of the Loyalist may
not have been always and everywhere enforced. There were
Loyalists, such as the Rev. Mather Byles of Boston, who
refused to be molested, and who survived the Revolution
unharmed. But when all allowance is made for these
exceptions, it is not difficult to understand how the
great majority of avowed Tories came to take refuge within
the British lines, to enlist under the British flag, and,
when the Revolution had proved successful, to leave their
homes for ever and begin life anew amid other surroundings.
The persecution to which they were subjected left them
no alternative.
CHAPTER IV
THE LOYALISTS UNDER ARMS
It has been charged against the Loyalists, and the charge
cannot be denied, that at the beginning of the Revolution
they lacked initiative, and were slow to organize and
defend themselves. It was not, in fact, until 1776 that
Loyalist regiments began to be formed on an extensive
scale. There were several reasons why this was so. In
the first place a great many of the Loyalists, as has
been pointed out, were not at the outset in complete
sympathy with the policy of the British government; and
those who might have been willing to take up arms were
very early disarmed and intimidated by the energy of the
revolutionary authorities. In the second place that very
conservatism which made the Loyalists draw back from
revolution hindered them from taking arms until the king
gave them commissions and provided facilities for military
organization. And there is no fact better attested in
the history of the Revolution than the failure of the
British authorities to understand until it was too late
the great advantages to be derived from the employment
of Loyalist levies. The truth is that the British officers
did not think much more highly of the Loyalists than they
did of the rebels. For both they had the Briton's contempt
for the colonial, and the professional soldier's contempt
for the armed civilian.
Had more use been made of the Tories, the military history
of the Revolution might have been very different. They
understood the conditions of warfare in the New World
much better than the British regulars or the German
mercenaries. Had the advice of prominent Loyalists been
accepted by the British commander at the battle of Bunker's
Hill, it is highly probable that there would have been
none of that carnage in the British ranks which made of
the victory a virtual defeat. It was said that Burgoyne's
early successes were largely due to the skill with which
he used his Loyalist auxiliaries. And in the latter part
of the war, it must be confessed that the successes of
the Loyalist troops far outshone those of the British
regulars. In the Carolinas Tarleton's Loyal Cavalry swept
everything before them, until their defeat at the Cowpens
by Daniel Morgan. In southern New York Governor Tryon's
levies carried fire and sword up the Hudson, into 'Indigo
Connecticut,' and over into New Jersey. Along the northern
frontier, the Loyalist forces commanded by Sir John
Johnson and Colonel Butler made repeated incursions into
the Mohawk, Schoharie, and Wyoming valleys and, in each
case, after leaving a trail of desolation behind them,
they withdrew to the Canadian border in good order. The
trouble was that, owing to the stupidity and incapacity
of Lord George Germain, the British minister who was more
than any other man responsible for the misconduct of the
American War, these expeditions were not made part of a
properly concerted plan; and so they sank into the category
of isolated raids.
From the point of view of Canadian history, the most
interesting of these expeditions were those conducted by
Sir John Johnson and Colonel Butler. They were carried
on with the Canadian border as their base-line. It was
by the men who were engaged in them that Upper Canada
was at first largely settled; and for a century and a
quarter there have been levelled against these men by
American and even by English writers charges of barbarism
and inhumanity about which Canadians in particular are
interested to know the truth.
Most of Johnson's and Butler's men came from central or
northern New York. To explain how this came about it is
necessary to make an excursion into previous history. In
1738 there had come out to America a young Irishman of
good family named William Johnson. The famous naval hero,
Sir Peter Warren, who was an uncle of Johnson, had large
tracts of land in the Mohawk valley, in northern New
York. These estates he employed his nephew in administering;
and, when he died, he bequeathed them to him. In the
meantime William Johnson had begun to improve his
opportunities. He had built up a prosperous trade with
the Indians; he had learned their language and studied
their ways; and he had gained such an ascendancy over
them that he came to be known as 'the Indian-tamer,' and
was appointed the British superintendent-general for
Indian Affairs. In the Seven Years' War he served with
great distinction against the French. He defeated Baron
Dieskau at Lake George in 1755, and he captured Niagara
in 1759; for the first of these services he was created
a baronet, and received a pension of 5,000 pounds a year.
During his later years he lived at his house, Johnson
Hall, on the Mohawk river; and he died in 1774, on the
eve of the American Revolution, leaving his title and