What happened, generally, to loyalist civilians during the US Revolutionary war? I know there were deprivations by individuals on both sides directed at isolated members of the other group that they found. I’m thinking more of an enforceable, legal, sense.
I can assume, by some legal definition, the United States existed starting the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, and I suppose the Continental Army could enforce martial law against Loyalists attacking. And I know that after the war, the Treaty of Ghent had provisos to prevent reprisals against former Loyalists. Who often fled to Canada, or other British colonies anyway, because reprisals happened anyway…
But I really wonder what happened to truly non-combative Loyalists bring the events of the war. I have an assumption that arbitrary privations, by regular army commanders, would have cost the nascent nation credibility: with European powers, with some neutral Loyalists, with some more moderate US revolutionary folks, so I expect there aren’t mass hangings for not being thoroughly gung-ho about joining the Revolution. But I don’t really know what happened to neutral Tories during the war.
Not the best example but, after the Siege of Boston, a loyalist with a name you could only find 200 years ago – Crean Brush, was captured along with his ship full of linen and woolen goods taken by the fleeing British, meant to deny them from the Rebels. Our man Crean didn’t shoot any Revolutionaries, or spy against them. And I don’t think he can be tried, outside of military court, for treason. And I don’t know what happened next – outside of the revolutionaries bundling up against the cold.
Legend has it that Washington County here in Rhode Island is known as South County because loyalists there didn’t want the name it was given. I don’t know if that was true, but if it were, since the name has endured to the point where a lot of Rhode Islanders don’t know that it’s name is not South County then it doesn’t sound like the pitchforks and torches were brought out.
Probably, by the average folks or low level soldier. Or even worse, killed. And some loyalists, fresh from Britain, were brutal to the families of rebels they found. But what I’m most interested in is formal, Continental Army Officer level actions. Stuff that could have filtered all the way up to a General who goes – “Woah, way to far there, we go this far, not further.”
Before the war started, there were a lot of folks who favored remaining loyal to the British, a lot of folks who wanted to rebel, and a lot of folks who really didn’t care much either way. Once things turned nasty, a lot of loyalists expected that their fellow loyalists would rise up in large numbers to fight against the revolution. While some did take arms against the rebels, many did not. Many loyalists were surprised that the turnout against the rebellion was so much less than what they had expected.
For those that didn’t join the British in the actual fighting, a lot depended on how vocal they had been with their loyalist opinions before the hostilities started and how vocal they remained. Those that expressed their loyalist ideas more vocally were treated more harshly, often having their property and belongings confiscated for the war effort. Some fled to areas that were more tolerant of loyalists. In some areas, loyalists (especially those who were vocal in their opinions) were threatened with violence or some sort of public punishment like whipping or tarring and feathering. Those that were caught giving aid to the British troops were often executed publicly for treason. A lot of loyalists ended up keeping a low profile so that they wouldn’t end up dead or burned out of their homes.
After the war, some ended up fleeing to Canada and other British controlled lands like Florida or islands in the Caribbean, giving up whatever property they may have held. Those that hadn’t been so vocal in their support for the British often ended up just going with the flow and becoming American citizens along with everyone else. Some ended up with their reputations a bit smeared due to their loyalist support. Others were able to put the past behind them and some even rose to prominent positions in the new American governments (state, local, and federal).
All of them? Most of them? As a matter of course? Provide cite please.
Right. And as far as I can tell, there was no great decampment, when the independence outcome was at hand. Certainly some groups went to Canada or elsewhere. Settlements in the States did not depopulate by that first third. Most people remained living around the same places, and about the same ways, as they had before.
Nova Scotia has the oldest black population in Canada many can even trace their descent from Black Loyalists who were documented by records (Book of Negroes) to have escaped the US during loyalist evacuations after the Revolutionary War. In fact, about 10% of the Loyalists who escaped to Canada were Black Loyalists.
Richard Pierpoint was one such Black Loyalist who (after gaining his freedom by fighting on the British side) petitioned for a militia company of Negroes (Captain Runchey’s Company of Coloured Men) to defend Canada from America’s invasion during the war of 1812.
If you’re wondering what happened to Brush himself, he was arrested for looting, found not guilty and then thrown in prison anyway, because rebels don’t need no stinkin’ laws, his property was seized, and then after 19th months, with the help of his wife, he managed to escape and got to British held New York, where he set about trying to recover his property. Not having any luck, and in despair, he committed suicide.
If you’re interested in the subject, a good book is Simon Schama’s “Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution”, which is a look at black loyalists, both during the war, and then afterwards, in both Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, and really the hardships they suffered in all three places. (Colonies had been established in what’s now Sierra Leone by the British abolitionist Granville Sharp as a new homeland for free blacks, and in 1792, a bunch of Black Loyalists, sick of the weather and the racism in Nova Scotia, heard about Sharp’s efforts, and set up the settlement of Freeport in what’s now Sierra Leone.
No names here, but New York was captured by Britain in 1776 & occupied until the Treaty of Paris was signed. It was a haven for Loyalists.
(I wonder how many of those upstanding citizens urging vengeance against Loyalists had just fled New York to hide out in the country? Did their war records compare to Hamilton’s?)
There were Loyalists who took up arms & fought alongside the British (& quite a few Germans). Especially in the Southern campaign. The Continentals & militia dealt with them.
The Brits were able to conquer–but unable to occupy large swathes of the country. As they occupied a city (Boston, Philadelphia, New York) they encouraged the Loyalists to declare themselves. Then, when they abandoned that city, they took many Loyalists with them. (Not all blacks were Black Loyalists–some were owned by White Loyalists.) The civilian authorities handled Tories who had not taken up arms and remained.
I can’t really think of many. There was Dr. Richard Bayley, who had served as a surgeon in the British army in Newport for about a year, until his wife died, and he left the army to move back to New York. He was able to put that behind him and became the first Health Officer appointed to the Port of New York in 1796. (As a footnote, Bayley was the father of Mother Seaton, a Catholic nun who was the first native born citizen of the US to be canonized by the Catholic church.)
With the exception of him, though, I can’t think of any other prominent loyalists who held any sort of public role in the US after the Revolutionary War. Plenty in Canada, Britain and the Caribbean, of course, but not the US. In fact, a lot of states passed laws forbidding former Loyalists from holding public office.
Now that is an interesting legal maneuver, next to the British army, he’d signed chits for what he took. Outside of British control, the receipts aren’t recognized, and he’s simply a thief.
And the system works. What a happy ending.
Ahhh. Yeaah. The system works about as well as you’d suspect.
Well, some sort of system works, if you can arrange it. Anyway, after the Treaty of Ghent, everything went OK for him, Wikipedia seems to say so regarding the aftermath …
Yeah, or in his case, things didn’t go well for him. Well, his story is probably the best answer to my question of what happened to Loyalists who didn’t evacuate, didn’t aid the British directly, weren’t too loud about their sentiments before or during that they ended up killed, but didn’t endure the harsh attitudes that provisos in the Threat of Ghent should have protected them from.
If you have good citations, you ought to put the story up on Wikipedia, to fill in the gaps in information I’ve highlighted in this thread.
I only know about my own family tree that started at the 1st Colony of Jamestown on my paternal side with Richard Pace I. His descendants were my great x grandfathers and they were Southern Tories until after the Revolutionary War. As far as I can tell based on everything I know, they didn’t get bothered by it one whit. They just carried on running plantations while very slowly moving south from Virginia to North Carolina and then Georgia over several generations.
The whole Tory thing just faded out after a while. There was never any conflict or attempt to move. The fact that I am still here with the same last name and a history of a very slow but continuous migration pattern shows that some of them just carried on as always even though they had losing political views. They didn’t even know much of anything about mother England by the time of the Revolutionary War. They had already been in the U.S. for 150 years.
I take exception to Wikipedia’s claim that the American Revolution was a a “civil war”.
As discussed in this thread, most loyalists stayed out of the actual fighting. Washington’s Continental Army couldn’t have defeated a major loyalist uprising and the British army.
The loyalists who did take up arms and sided with the Brits caused considerable problems until the Patriot’s recruiting caught up. Wikipedia discusses them under military operations.
It is notable that (just as with the some of the southern families in the US Civil War), some families had members on both sides of the fight, with an understanding that in this manner whichever side won, the family would retain property.
Curiously enough, the Quintards of Stamford CT were in this category, and in the US Civil War, one Quintard became a chaplain for the Confederacy (later Episcopal Bishop of Tennessee), while his brother was engaged in making the engines for the Monitor. (Both were pro-Union, by the way)
