A member of our book club selected “Dreams of Glory” by Thomas Fleming as the book to be read for the April/May meeting. That fiction book is about espionage during the Revolutionary War, including a plan to kidnap George Washington. Reading that book convinced me I should learn more about the Loyalists. I selected the book by Claude Halstead Van Tyne copywrited in 1902. The book was written in formal language, and I wouldn’t characterize it as easy to read. The author makes it clear he was sympathetic to the Loyalists. He writes in the preface that the young American republic made many “…youthful errors…” that could have been avoided if the Loyalists had been part of the new country instead of being vilified and driven into exile. One of his primary references was “…files of Rivington’s Gazette, the greatest Loyal newspaper from 1774 until the close of the war.” The author asserts that most people in America were indifferent to the Revolution, although they would be “…ready to stampede along with the successful party.” He also quotes John Adams as saying that Great Britain “…seduced and deluded nearly one third of the people in the colonies.” The author adds that “influential Americans” and “worthy gentlemen” (the upper class) mostly remained loyal to the king. The book refers to the revolutionaries as Whigs. The Whigs and Tories were opposing political parties in the English parliament beginning in the mid 1600s.

The discussion and analysis of the tax placed on tea is fascinating and different than what I recall from high school history. The tax was three pence a pound, and the three pence sterling has a current value of five cents. A Wikipedia article says the tax was equated to about 10% of the cost of the tea. The king attempted to mollify the colonists and their resistance to the tax by compensating the East India Company to make English tea cheaper than other sources even with the tax. People such as John Adams weren’t impressed, continued to protest that there should be no taxation without representation, and the Boston Tea Party was the result. The author referred to those who participated in that event as “…the immortal band of Boston Indians…” Parliament reacted by passing five acts to further regulate American affairs. The one that attracted the most attention was an act to shut down Boston harbor until the town repaid the East India Company for the destroyed tea, which would be required to convince the king that Boston would submit to his authority. The colonists did not react submissively. One group issued a statement ridiculing the idea of paying for the tea. “If a man draws his sword on me…and I break his sword ought I pay for the sword?” The rest, as the saying goes, is history. The serving of tea was interpreted to be an insult to the revolution, and people began to refer to serving tea as “white coffee” to avoid visits from angry neighbors.

The English miscalculated that the colonists couldn’t or wouldn’t fight. Their arrogance in this manner (my interpretation) resulted in their failure to actively seek support from of the Loyalists who wanted to fight for the king until later in the conflict. Whigs pressured Loyalists to abandon their support of the king, and those who resisted were punished. There was insistence from some that the only acceptable path was full support of the revolution with dire results without that support. “Like the Koran, it was to be propagated with the sword.” Committees were elected to determine offenses and set punishments. The brutal practice of tarring and feathering by the Sons of Liberty, called “poor degenerate children” by the author, apparently became common. (Wikipedia says the first record of the punishment was an edit issued by Richard I of England in 1189 to the navy and involved pouring hot pitch on a shaved head followed by a covering of feathers or straw.) Loyalists were pursued, hounded, and punished until nine hundred of them accepted being transported by a fleet of ships to Nova Scotia.

There were significant differences between the states in the support of the revolution. For example, the central areas of South Carolina were dominantly Tory until the English angered them by enlisting Indians as allies. There were large numbers of “Quakers and Dutchmen” in Pennsylvania who remained neutral. New York was the last state to agree to the Declaration of Independence, and New York City remained a safe haven for Tories under the protection of British troops. The resources of the city were strained by the large numbers of Tories seeking protection. A popular argument in Tory areas was that soldiers in Washington’s camps had thirteen kings and no bread and that it would be better to serve one king and have plenty of bread.

The author’s description of how the Tories reacted to the American alliance with France is humorous. The alliance was a strategic blow to their hopes. They offset that by spreading stories that George Washington was to become Lieutenant General of France and that the French king was preparing a fleet to transport tons of holy water and crucifixes to convert Americans to Catholicism. Hordes of French dancing masters, garlic, and dried frogs were also said to be on the way. The fleet from France apparently never arrived, and Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. He requested that Loyalists not be punished in his articles of capitulation. Washington refused the request, but countered that a British ship would be allowed to depart for New York with news of the surrender. The ship was filled with forlorn Loyalists. Some Loyalists fled to England, the West Indies, and the Bahamas. There were 60,000 exiled Loyalists who fled to Canada where they were given land.

All did not go well in Nova Scotia, where people lived in snow-bound tents and many starved. Some returned to the United States, but others couldn’t. It was said that poverty was the only thing that kept them there. Loyalists who remained in America often had a better fate. Many were tried and convicted of treason, but most were pardoned. There were 1,000 such cases in New York, and many were released after taking an oath of allegiance. Some who refused to take the oath were imprisoned. Two articles of the peace treaty sought conciliation. Loyalists were to be given safe passage to their former homes and the states were asked to allow restoration of confiscated property. The British government provided thirty million dollars in compensation.