The Loyalists of Massachusetts Part 6

"Driven to desperation the Loyalists rose against their guards. About 10 o'clock at night, on the 18th of May, 1781, when all the guards but two had retired to rest, a wife of one of the prisoners appeared, to whom permission was given to visit her husband in the cavern. Upon the hatches being removed to admit her pa.s.sing down, the prisoners who were at the door, and prepared for the encounter, rushed up, seized the gun of the sentry on duty, who made little or no resistance, and became master of the guard-room before those who were asleep could be aroused to make defence. The officer of the guard who resisted was killed, and others wounded. The guard was easily overcome, a few sought safety in flight, but the greater number were disarmed by the prisoners. The prisoners, numbering twenty-eight persons, having equipped themselves with the captured arms, escaped, and, with few exceptions avoided recapture."[48]

[48] "History of Simsbury and Granby," pp. 123, 124.

The heart sickens at the recital of the sufferings of the Loyalists, and we turn in disgust from the views which the pen of faithful history records.

After the legislation of 1778 every grievance the colonists had put forward as a reason for taking up arms had been redressed, every claim they had presented had been abandoned, and from the time when the English parliament surrendered all right of taxation and internal legislation in the colonies, and when the English Commissioners laid their propositions before the Americans, the character of the war had wholly changed. It was no longer a war for self-taxation and const.i.tutional liberty. It was now an attempt, with the a.s.sistance of France and Spain, to establish independence by shattering the British empire.

There were brave and honest men in America who were proud of the great and free empire to which they belonged, who had no desire to s.h.i.+rk the burden of maintaining it, who remembered with grat.i.tude that it was not colonial, but all English blood that had been shed around Quebec and Montreal in defence of the colonies. Men who with nothing to hope for from the crown were prepared to face the most brutal mob violence and the invectives of a scurrilous press; to risk their fortunes, their reputation, and sometimes even their lives, in order to avert civil war and ultimate separation. Most of them ended their days in poverty and exile, and, as the supporters of a beaten cause, history has paid but a scanty tribute to their memory. But they comprised some of the best and ablest men America has ever produced, and they were contending for an ideal which was at least as worthy as that for which Was.h.i.+ngton fought.

It was the maintenance of one great, free, industrial, and pacific empire, comprising the whole British race, holding the richest plains of Asia in possession, blending all that was most venerable in an ancient civilization with the abundant energies of a youthful social combination likely in a few generations to outstrip every commercial compet.i.tor, and to acquire an indisputable ascendency among the nations. Such an ideal was a n.o.ble one, and there were Americans who were prepared to make any personal sacrifice to realize it. These men were the LOYALISTS of the Revolution. Consider what the result would be today had not this "Anglo-Saxon Schism," as Goldwin Smith calls it, taken place. There would be a great English-speaking nation of 130,000,000 that could dominate the world. They would in all substantial respects be one people, in language, literature, inst.i.tutions, and social usages, whether settled in South Africa, in Australia, in the primitive home, or in North America.

Because the Revolution had its origin in Ma.s.sachusetts, and the old Bay State furnished a large part of the men and the means to carry it to a successful issue,[49] it seems to have been taken for granted that the people embraced the popular side almost in a ma.s.s.

[49] The Southern States furnished 59,330 men; the Middle States 54,116, and New England 118,355, of which number Ma.s.sachusetts furnished 67,907.

("General Knox's Report.")

A more mistaken opinion than this has seldom prevailed. At the evacuation of Boston, General Gage was accompanied by eleven hundred Loyalists, which included the best people of the town. Boston at that time had a population of 16,000. "Among these persons of distinguished rank and consideration there were members of the council, commissioners, officers of the customs, and other officials, amounting to one hundred and two; of clergymen, eighteen; of inhabitants of country towns, one hundred and five; of merchants and other persons who resided in Boston, two hundred and thirteen; of farmers, mechanics and traders, three hundred and eighty-two."[50]

[50] Sabine, "Loyalists of the Revolution," Vol. I., page 25.

Cambridge lost nearly all her men of mark and high standing; nearly all the country towns were thus bereft of the very persons who had been the most honored and revered. With the exiles were nearly one hundred graduates of Harvard college.

Among the proscribed and banished were members of the old historic families, Hutchinson, Winthrop, Saltonstall, Quincy, the Sewells, and Winslows, families of which the exiled members were not one whit behind those that remained, in intelligence, social standing and moral worth.

At the evacuation of New York and Savannah no fewer than 30,000 persons left the United States for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. From northern New York and Vermont the Loyalists crossed over into Upper Canada, and laid the foundations of that prosperous province under the vigorous leaders.h.i.+p of Governor Simcoe, who, during the war, commanded a regiment of Loyalist rangers which had done efficient service. Many of the Southern Loyalists settled in Florida, the Bahamas and the West India Islands.

Familiar New England names meet one at every turn in the maritime provinces, especially Nova Scotia. Dr. Inglis, from Trinity church, New York, was the first bishop, and Judge Sewell, of Ma.s.sachusetts, the first chief justice there. The harshness of the laws and the greed of the new commonwealth had driven into exile men who could be ill spared, and whose absence showed itself in the lack of balance and of political steadiness which characterized the early history of the republic, while the newly-founded colonies, composed almost exclusively of conservatives, were naturally slow, but sure, in their development. The men who were willing to give up home, friends and property, for an idea, are not men to be despised; they are, rather, men for us to claim with pride and honor as American--men of the same blood, and the same speech as ourselves; Americans who were true to their convictions and who suffered everything except the loss of liberty, for their political faith. We look in vain among the lists of voluntary and banished refugees from Ma.s.sachusetts for a name on which rests any tradition of disgrace or infamy, to which the finger of scorn can be pointed. Can this be said of the Revolutionary leaders of Ma.s.sachusetts, the so-called patriots, to whom the Revolution owes its inception? If the reader has any doubts on this subject, then let him compare the lives of the Loyalists, as given in this work, with those of Samuel Adams, John Hanc.o.c.k, and other Revolutionary leaders. The Loyalists were generally people of substance; their stake in the country was greater, even, than that of their opponents; their patriotism, no doubt, fully as fervent.

"There is much that is melancholy, of which the world knows but little, connected with this expulsion from the land they sincerely loved. The estates of the Loyalists were among the fairest, their stately mansions stood on the sightliest hill-brows, the richest and best-tilled meadows were their farms; the long avenue, the broad lawn, the trim hedge about the garden, servants, plate, pictures, for the most part these things were at the homes of the Loyalists. They loved beauty, dignity and refinement." The rude contact of town meetings was offensive to their tastes. The crown officials were courteous, well-born and congenial gentlemen.

"The graceful, the chivalrous, the poetic, the spirits over whom these feelings had power, were sure to be Loyalists. Democracy was something rude and coa.r.s.e, and independence to them meant a severance of those connections of which a colonist ought to be proudest."

"Hence when the country rose, many a high-bred, honorable gentleman, turned the key in his door, drove down his tree-lined avenue with his refined dame and carefully-guarded children at his side, turned his back on his handsome estate, and put himself under the shelter of the proud banner of St. George. It was a mere temporary refuge, he thought, and he promised himself a speedy return when discipline and loyalty should have put down the rabble and the misled rustics."

"But the return was never to be. The day went against them; they crowded into s.h.i.+ps, with the gates of their country barred forever behind them.

They found themselves penniless upon sh.o.r.es sometimes bleak and barren, always showing scant hospitality to outcasts who came empty-handed, and there they were forced to begin life anew. Consider the condition of Hutchinson, Apthorp, Gray, Clarke, Faneuil, Sewell, Royal, Va.s.sall, and Leonard, families of honorable note bound in with all that was best in the life of the Province." "Who can think of their destiny unpityingly."[51]

[51] Hosmer's "Life of Hutchinson." pages 321, 322.

A man suspected of loyalty to the crown was not left at peace, but was liable to peremptory banishment unless he would swear allegiance to the "Sons of Liberty," and if he returned he was subject to forcible deportation, and to death on the gallows if he returned a second time.

One of the first acts of the revolutionary party when they returned to Boston after the British evacuation, was to confiscate and sell all property belonging to Loyalists and apply the receipts to supply the public needs. The names and fate of a considerable proportion of these Loyalists and those that preceded and succeeded the Boston emigration, will be found in succeeding pages. Most of them went to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and St. John, New Brunswick, where they endured great privation.

Many, however, subsequently went to England and there pa.s.sed the remainder of their lives. We find seventy or more of the Ma.s.sachusetts Loyalists holding offices of greater or less importance in the provinces, and many of them were employed in places of high trust and large influence in various parts of the Empire. They and their sons filled for more than half a century the chief offices in the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick judiciary, and they and their descendants must have contributed in a degree not easily estimated to the elevation and progress of those provinces.

Men whose fathers, mocked and broken For the honor of a name.

Would not wear the conqueror's token, Could not salt their bread with shame.

Plunged them in the virgin forest With their axes in their hands, Built a Province as a bulwark For the loyal of the lands.

Won it by the axe and harrow, Held it by the axe and sword, Bred a race with brawn and marrow, From no alien over-lord.

Gained the right to guide and govern; Then with labor strong and free Forged the land a s.h.i.+eld of Empire, Silver sea to silver sea.

--Duncan C. Scott.

In this way the United States, out of their own children, built upon their borders a colony of rivals in navigation and the fisheries, whose loyalty to the British crown was sanctified by misfortune. It is impossible to say how many of these Loyalists would have been on the Revolutionists' side had the party opposed to the crown been kept under the control of its leaders. But they were, most of them, of the cla.s.s of men that would have the least amount of tolerance for outrage and rapine, and when we consider how closely they were identified with the inst.i.tutions of their native province, and how little remains on record of anything like rancor or malignity on their part, there can be little doubt that a considerable proportion of them would have been saved for the republic but for the very acts which posterity has been foolish enough to applaud, and for their loss Ma.s.sachusetts was appreciably the poorer for more than one or two generations.

It is also admitted by those who are authorities on the subject, that if it had not been for the brutal and intolerant persecution of the Loyalists, the ruthless driving of these unfortunate people from their homes, with the subsequent confiscation of property, the attempt to throw off the authority of Great Britain at the time of the Revolutionary War would not have succeeded; that is, people entirely or at least reasonably content with the previous political condition were terrorized into becoming patriots by the fear of the consequences that would follow if they remained Loyalists.

The fact is, that, as far as the Americans were in it, the war of the Revolution was a civil war in which the two sides were not far from equality in numbers, in social conditions, and in their manners and customs. The Loyalists contended all through the war that they were in a numerical majority, and if they could have been properly supported by British forces, the war might have ended in 1777, before the French alliance had given hope and strength to the separatist party. Sabine computes that there were at least 25,000 Americans in the military service of the King, at one time or another, during the wars. In New York, New Jersey, the Carolinas, and Georgia, the Loyalists outnumbered the Revolutionists. Even in New England, the nursery of the Revolution, the number was so large and so formidable, in the opinion of the Revolutionary leaders, that in order to suppress them there was established a reign of terror, antic.i.p.ating the famous "Law of the Suspected" of the French Revolution. An irresponsible tyranny was established, of town and country committees, at whose beck and call were the so-called "Sons of Liberty." To these committees was entrusted absolute power over the lives and fortunes of their fellow citizens, and they proceeded on principles of evidence that would have shocked and scandalized a grand inquisitor.[52]

[52] "Essays in American History," 180-181.

The rigorous measures adopted by the new governments in New England States, and the activity of their town committees, succeeded in either driving out these Loyalist citizens, or reducing them to harmless inactivity. In New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the Carolinas and Georgia, they remained strong and active throughout the war, and loyalty was in those states in the ascendancy.

If the Loyalists were really a majority, as they claimed to be, the disunionists were determined to break them up. Loyalists were tarred and feathered and carried on rails, gagged and bound for days at a time; stoned, fastened in a room with a fire and the chimney stopped on top; advertised as public enemies, so that they would be cut off from all dealings with their neighbors; they had bullets shot into their bedrooms, their horses poisoned or mutilated; money or valuable plate extorted from them to save them from violence, and on pretence of taking security for their good behavior; their houses and s.h.i.+ps burned; they were compelled to pay the guards who watched them in their houses, and when carted about for the mob to stare at and abuse, they were compelled to pay something at every town. For the three months of July, August and September of the year 1776, one can find in the American archives alone over thirty descriptions of outrages of this kind, and all this done by so-called "patriots" in the name of liberty! In short, lynch law prevailed for many years during the Revolution, and the habit became so fixed that it has never been given up. It was taken from the name of the brother of the man who founded Lynchburgh, Virginia.

Wherever the disunionists were most successful with this reign of terror, they drove all the judges from the bench, and abolished the courts, and for a long time there were no courts or public administration of the law, notably in New England.

To the mind of the Loyalists, all this lynching proceeding were an irrefragible proof not only that the disunionist party were wicked, but that their idea of independence of a country free from British control and British law were silly delusions, dangerous to all good order and civilization. That such a people could ever govern a country of their own and have in it that thing they were crying so much about, "liberty," was in their opinion beyond the bounds of intelligent belief.

A recent American writer says: "The revolution was not by any means the pretty social event that the ladies of the so-called 'patriotic'

societies suppose it to have been. It was, on the contrary, a rank and riotous rebellion against the long-established authority of a nation which had saved us from France, built us up into prosperity, and if she was ruling us today would, I am entirely willing to admit, abolish lynch-law, negro burning, munic.i.p.al and legislative corruption, and all the other evils about which reformers fret." The same writer also says: "All that saved this country from complete annihilation was the a.s.sistance after 1778 of the French army, fleet, provisions, clothes, and loans of money, followed by a.s.sistance from Spain, and, at the last moment, by the alliance of Holland, and even with all this a.s.sistance the cause was, even as late as the year 1780, generally believed to be a hopeless one."[53] "In fact, Was.h.i.+ngton, at this time, was prepared to become a guerilla." In case of being further pressed, he said: "We must retire to Augusta County, in Virginia. Numbers will repair to us for safety, and we will then try a predatory war. If overpowered, we must cross the Allegheny Mountains."[54]

[53] "The American Revolution and Boer War," By Sidney Fisher, 1902.

[54] Irving's "Life of Was.h.i.+ngton," Vol. II., chap. xli.

The question will naturally be asked why, if they were so numerous, were they not more successful, why did they yield to popular violence in New England, and desert the country while the contest was going on, Why did they not hold the Southern States, and keep them from joining the others in the Continental Congresses, and in the war?

In the first place, a negative att.i.tude is necessarily an inactive one, and in consequence of this, and the fact that they could not take the initiative in action, the Loyalists were put at a disadvantage before the much better organization of the Revolutionary leaders. Though these were few in number in the South, they were of families of great social influence, and in the North were popular agitators of long experience.

They manipulated the committee system so carefully that the colonies found themselves, before they were aware of the tendency of the actions of their deputies, involved in proceedings of very questionable legality, such as the boycotting agreement known as the "American a.s.sociation," and other proceedings of the Continental Congress.[55] In regard to the subject of legal attainder and exile, Mr. Sabine remarks, very moderately and sensibly: "Nor is it believed that either the banishment or the confiscation laws, as they stood, were more expedient than just. The latter did little towards relieving the public necessities, and served only to create a disposition for rapacity, and to increase the wealth of favored individuals. Had the estates which were seized and sold been judiciously or honestly managed, a considerable sum would have found its way to the treasury; but, as it was, the amount was inconsiderable. Some of the wisest and purest Whigs of the time hung their heads in shame because of the pa.s.sage of measures so unjustifiable, and never ceased to speak of them in terms of reprobation. Mr. Jay's disgust was unconquerable, and he never would purchase any property that had been forfeited under the Confiscation Act of New York."[56]

[55] "Essays in American History," 179. See also "Royalists' Archives,"

Ma.s.s. State House.

[56] "North American Review," LIX., page 280.

Judge Curwen, a Salem Loyalist, says: "So infamously knavish has been the conduct of the commissioners, that though frequent attempts have been made to bring them to justice and to respond for the produce of the funds resting in their hands, so numerous are the defaulters in that august body, the _General Court_, that all efforts have hitherto proved in vain. Not two pence on the pound have arrived to the public treasury of all the confiscation."[57]

[57] The "Journal and Letters of Samuel Curwin," 147.

"The Loyalists, to a great extent, sprung from and represented the old gentry of the country. The prospect of seizing their property had been one great motive which induced many to enter the war. The new owners of the confiscated property now grasped the helm. New men exercised the social influence of the old families, and they naturally dreaded the restoration of those whom they had dispossessed."

At the close of the war, the Revolutionists committed a great crime.

Instead of repealing the proscription and banishment acts, as justice and good policy required, they manifested a spirit to place the humbled and unhappy Loyalists beyond the pale of human sympathy. Hostilities at an end, mere loyalty should have been forgiven. When, in the civil war between the Puritans and the Stuarts, the former gained the ascendancy, and when at a later period the Commonwealth was established, Cromwell and his party wisely determined not to banish nor inflict disabilities on their opponents, and so, too, at the restoration of the monarchy, so general was the amnesty act in its provisions that it was termed an act of oblivion to the _friends_ of Charles, and of grateful remembrance to his _foes_. The happy consequences which resulted from the conduct of _both_ parties, and in both cases, were before the men of their own political and religious sympathies, the Puritans of the North and the Cavaliers of the South in America, but neither of them profited by it, at that time; but since then the wisdom of it has been exemplified by the happy consequences which have resulted to both parties engaged in the war of secession, where the United States wisely determined not to banish, confiscate, or inflict any disabilities on their opponents in the late seceded states.

The crime having been committed, thousands ruined and banished, new British colonies founded, animosities to continue for generations made certain, the violent Revolutionists of Ma.s.sachusetts, New York and Virginia, were satisfied: all this accomplished and the statute-book was divested of its most objectionable enactments, and a few of the Loyalists returned to their old homes, but by far the greater part died in banishment.

No one who studies the history of the American Revolution can fail to be convinced that the persecution of the Loyalists had for its final result the severance of the North American continent into two nations. The people who inhabited Nova Scotia prior to the Revolution were largely New England settlers, who dispossessed the Acadians, and who for the most part sympathized with the revolutionary movement. But for the banishment of the Loyalists, Nova Scotia would have long continued with but a very spa.r.s.e population, and certainly could never have hoped to obtain so enterprising, active, and energetic a set of inhabitants as those who were supplied to it by the acts of the several states hostile to the Loyalists. The same can also be said of Upper Canada. The hold of the British government upon the British provinces of North America which remained to the crown, would have been slight indeed, but for the active hostility of the Loyalists to their former fellow-countrymen. They created the state of affairs which consolidated British power on this continent, and built it up into the Dominion of Canada, which in another century will probably contain one hundred million inhabitants.

The treaty of peace with Great Britain, like other doc.u.ments of its kind, contained provisions of give and take. After signature by the commissioners in Paris it was ratified with due consideration by the Continental Congress. The advantages which it secured were not merely of a sentimental nature, but material. It was justly regarded by enlightened citizens of the states as a triumph of diplomacy. The credit of Britain in the bargain was more of the heart than of the head. She was willing to concede substantial and important benefits in order to secure the lives and property of the Loyalists who had clung to her and had sustained her arms. Looking at the matter now, in a cool light, she blundered into sacrifices that were altogether needless, even with this aim in view, and knowledge of the knavery that was to follow.