Loyalists who stayed behind
Some stayed in the new U.S .: Part 2 of a look at the Loyalist diaspora in the 18th century
According to Canadian historians the Loyalist emigrants who came to Canada might have felt like losers in the first years as they struggled to regain lost possessions and begin anew in rough situations. However, the opportunity to regain their pride came at moments when Canadians had to fight American aggressiveness.
In the Canadian story, the War of 1812 was the first opportunity to get even and also to articulate a political philosophy that reflected the post -1783 experience. To some American observers, the Loyalists introduced a Tory streak to our political ideas.
Such an approach, in my view, overlooks the truth that the Loyalists and Loyalist emigrants in the revolutionary era read the same books as the Patriots. Canadian political ideas need to be examined within the framework of American and British political ideas. Loyalists who came to Canada were more likely to be Whig than To ry. Only after the War of 1812 did the descendants of the Loyalists add the Tory streak.
However, even though the size of the Loyalist diaspora was 70,000, of which half came to Canada, the numbers pale in comparison to those who stayed in American territories. Also, there were Loyalists who did not emigrate, and there were Loyalists who had fled during the Revolution and were able to return to their former locations after 1783.
Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World, (NY, 2011) takes an expansive view of the Loyalist experiences, the Spirit of 1783. Jasanoff explores the total diaspora of the American Loyalists in a single volume. To me, this is the most exciting book ever written about Loyalists. It forces us to see more than we ever imagined. She feels that the scope of the disruption to the world of those who opposed the American Revolution is lost when history is focused on national boundaries. While it is reasonable that the history of the Loyalists would be written by sources close at hand, collected in local libraries and archives, Jasanoff wants to summarize the total experience.
She thinks that it is now easier than it was for historians to trace and study the scattered works of the Loyalists: “personal letters, diaries, memoirs, petitions, muster rolls, diplomatic dispatches, legislative proceedings.” Certainly, travel is easier, the best archival institutions emphasize accessibility, and the internet brings many of these documents to your computer screen. However, as she take san international perspective there are fresh problems. There were different contexts, considerations and relationships in the several parts of the world that received Loyalists. As well, the diversity of the Loyalists was wide; the diaspora included First Nations, freed slaves, and people from the aristocratic to the low-born.
Maybe it is now easier to tackle anew the problem with which I was obsessed: what became of the Americans who did not have to leave America?
Some, of course,mayhave moved to new communities, as the western frontier was moving quite rapidly. The British had in 1763 restricted westward movement of non-indigenous people to the peak of the Appalachians. In the 1783 treaty, Britain ceded to the new nation a boundary roughly defined by the Mississippi River. Many Indians, including the Six Nations of the Iroquois, felt betrayed; they were not consulted or included in the negotiations of the Treaty of Paris. So, there was room to absorb people who were uncomfortable with their neighbours.
Since a significant proportion of Loyalists were Anglican could we use the fate of Anglicans in the new republic, United States of America, to show how former and continuing Loyalists became absorbed in the new nation?
In broad strokes, some of the devices are seen in the history of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Throughout the colonial period there were no Anglican bishops residing in America. The clergy were trained in England, and the Bishop of London looked after the appointments, and oversaw the SPG and the SPCK. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who resided in Lambeth, not far from the political institutions of Westminster, was consulted and at times was a close partner of the Bishop of London.
With the American Revolution, the Archbishop of Canterbury appointed the first colonial bishop, the Rt Rev Charles Inglis, with his see city in Halifax. Inglis had been one of the key Loyalist pamphleteers, and had been evacuated from New York to Halifax, via London (and four years).
The Anglicans in the United States came up with a different device, and the first Anglican bishop in America was the Rt. Rev. William White. The line of succession, so important to Anglicans, was maintained through Scottish bishops.
In my Loyalist Project, I decided to pursue the question of what happened to the Loyalists that were not exiles, or if exiles briefly, were able to return to the new United States.
The Rev. William Mac-Claneghan became my point of entry, quite by accident. Mac-Claneghan had been a Presbyterian missionary in the Narragansetts valley, and was upset when he was converted to an Anglican and then assigned by the Bishop of London to be the Anglican missionary in the same valley. He looked for opportunities in nearby Boston but was directed to Virginia, where the Anglican church was established and where countless counties had no clergy. This took him through Philadelphia where Anglicans in Christ Church, self-sufficient and selfsupporting, were wowed by Mac-Claneghan whose long and dramatic sermons seemed charismatic. St. Paul’s Church was created only blocks away to support Mac-Claneghan. The English prelates blew their leadership and despite them St. Paul’ s emerged as an independent Anglican parish, and indeed the beacon of evangelical Anglicanism for a century and a half, at least.
After visiting the archives of Lambeth Palace, I was able to re construct the details behind the actions of the Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury. The episcopal issue in the coming American Revolution was mainly about Anglicans. The insensitivity of bishops across the Atlantic making decisions in the colonies on issues where they lacked firsthand information or experience helped fuel the wisdom that decisions should be made by those closest to the impact of such decisions; not by those distant at many levels. It was not the Congregationalists in Massachusetts and Baptists in Virginia, but the Anglicans in Philadelphia that defined this issue.
Because the experience of the American Revolution reverber- ated widely, the archival sources for studying the Loyalists are widespread. American historians were using archival records in the United States, even when the crucial documents were in Britain. Anglican Loyalists were comfortable in Philadelphia because of the new Protestant Episcopal Church’ s ability to have prayers for American political leaders rather than the British monarch.
With respect to Virginia and Massachusetts, the Protestant Episcopal Church effectively sprouted wings, curious ly through revivalism, 40 years later, in the 1820s.
In short, it really took two generations, from 1760 to 1820, to overcome the obstacles that divided Loyalists from Patriots. And because of the experiences of those years, there was a Tory streak in America, too. As historians make better use of archival collections, our knowledge improves.
Elwood H. Jones, archivist, Trent Valley Archives can be reached at Elwood@trentvalleyarchives.com.