Beyond the bitterness
Part 3 of a series looks at the United Empire Loyalists after the Revolutionary War
Recent writing son the Loyalists have stressed, as we have seen, that Loyalists and Loyalist emigrants were more winners than losers, and their influence was felt widely both during and after the Revolution in what became the new British Empire. A very recent book indirectly confirmed my findings that it took 40 years to forget the Revolution or at least to move beyond the bitterness of those years.
Holger Hoock, Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth (NY, Crown, 2017) removes generations of whitewashing and tells the period of the American Revolution as one of tense rivalry and brutal bloodshed on all sides: Patriots, Loyalists, Indians. The campaign of General John O’Sullivan to wipe out Iroquoia in 1779 was particularly brutal; scorched earth tactics such as Sherman’s march across Georgia in 1864. But some Loyalists were treated brutally, too. Many of these stories were shared in the Loyalist petitions. The southern campaign after 1778 had elements of scorched earth tactics, and was particularly bitter; each side blaming the other. However, some were hardened by the war and the longer it went on the less sensitivity was felt for the other side.
How could the British keep a large enough army in America without running into the truism: an army live son its stomach. It was not easy to live off the land. And the difficulties tied to bringing food to America before the invention of refrigeration made it impossible to supply the army units from Britain.
After the battle of Yorktown (where some 7,000 British and German soldiers went into captivity) the British decided not to send more troops to America. They had since 1778 overestimated the strength of Loyalist and Loyalist the British Troops support in the South. The British had about 15,000 troops in New York City; 10,000 across the South, and more in Canada.
The American general, George Washington, who emerges in this book as very unlike able, brutal and vindictive, still wanted the French to fight some more. However, for both Britain and France, the war was global.
The British defeated three Mysore armies in India in 1781; seized all Dutch trading ports in India, and captured stations in Padang and on Sumatra, and in west Africa and Ceylon. After setbacks against France and Spain, the British won a key battle( Battle of the Saintes) in 1782 that saved Jamaica and gave a boost to British morale.
However, once a peace treaty officially ended the American Revolution, what was the fate of the Loyalists? First, the Indians did not participate in the treaty making, and they probably suffered worse than any; even the Oneida who had sided with the Patriots were left without protection against land-hungry Americans. Second, the British negotiators gave far more territory to the new Americans than had ever been considered likely (900,000 square miles, nearly three times the size of the 13 colonies).
Third, the Blacks were hard hit, no matter on which side they sided. They may have done better with Loyalists. About 15,000 blacks left as slaves with the Loyalists; at least, 9,000 free Black Loyalists were among those that went into exile. Many went to Nova Scotia; and many of those were among the founders of Sierra Leone.
Fourth, the Loyalists and their properties were not protected by the treaty, because Benjamin Franklin and John Jay were adamant that Loyalists, more than all others, should be punished. During the later Southern campaigns that pitted Loyalists against Patriots in the South long after Yorktown made it difficult for the British to promote or get reconciliation. In both north and south, the reverberations of the bloody war lingered long after.
Article X of the treaty of capitulation signed by Cornwallis after Yorktown made a distinction between British troops who would be prisoners of war and Loyalist soldiers, who could be treated as “treasonous citizens” to be punished under civil government. The British abandoned the Loyalists. Cornwall is had surrendered a huge army but his reputation in England remained firm; the only black mark was that he had not guaranteed the safety of the Loyalists.
Alexander Hamilton, who had served as aide-de-camp to George Washington, advocated that Americans should not seek revenge even as the peace treaty was being negotiated, because it would cost them the high moral ground.
Holger Hoock discussed the “Returning Lose rs .” The treatment of Loyalists was the first issue that the British and American envoys writing the peace treaty considered; it was the last that they settled. Benjamin Franklin wanted to tie the treatment of Loyalists to considerations of reparations to the Americans for the wartime damage which he wanted to blame on the British and Loyalist troops. The return of Loyalist exiles “in cited deep anxiety among their Patriot neighbors” (364)
“If the 60,000 or so white Loyalists who went into permanent exile after the war faced uncertain futures, the several hundred thousand who wished to stay in their home communities or return there had to brace themselves for what might lie in store.”
Mob rule was scary.
In the environs of New York after 1783, many Loyalists were able to use networks to recover some property, often with taxes attached, and some even received pardons, residency and property rights. “Many were actively prevented from returning even for brief visits, the guarantees in the peace treaty notwithstanding. These guarantees depended very much on the attitudes of local state governments; there was no national protection.
Ward Chipman and Thomas A. Coffin, fairly inoffensive individuals and Loyalists who had hoped to resettle in New York or Massachusetts felt unsafe and chose to become permanent exiles. In the South, the atmosphere was worse. Private feuds were dressed in Patiotic clothing.
Still, some Loyalists, as Holger Hoo ck ob serves, were able to re settle in America. Alexander Hamilton, who became the Secretary of the Treasury, argued that America needed all who wished to settle there. Former Loyalists, many of whom had been merchants, could help re-establish Anglo-American trade. Even though the French had been allies of the Patriots in war, the better trade links afterwards were with English merchants.
In 1784, in a test case, Alexander Hamilton defended a rich Loyalist against the Patriot widow Elizabeth Rutgers. When British troops came into New York in 1776, the Rutgers fled abandoning the family’ s alehouse and brewery. By 1778, British merchants re fitted the derelict property, and by 1780 were paying rent to the British Army. A fire in 1783 caused £4,000 damage. Rutgers now wanted to sue a British merchant for back rent under a new law, called the Trespass Act and enacted by New York which allowed former owners to sue for damages caused by British occupants. Patriots had returned in force after the Loyalists left New York. Hamilton’s argument was that the British occupants had restored the property and had acted properly under British military law. He also argued that the New York law contravened the peace treaty, which prohibited punitive suits. Hamilton wanted the court to knock down the law. The judge allowed Mrs. Rutgers back rent, but only for the period to 1780. He implicit ly accepted the validity of Hamilton’s argument.
The Trespass Act was repealed in 1787; Alexander Hamilton, then an assemblyman, was co-sponsor of the repeal. Hamilton hired Loyalist Tench Coxe as his assistant secretary in the Department of the Treasury. Here and there, efforts at reintegration involved both former patriots and former loyalists.
However, Loyalists were not included in the process of nationbuilding, the annual celebration of past events; or what Hoock called whitewashing of the revolutionary experience. These were what he called the “scars of independence.”
In areas where there had not been intense confrontations during the war, I think that there was peaceful reintegration. However, even so, it took 40 years for Anglicans to move beyond the damage of the Revolutionary era. Put another way, it took that long for the message of the Loyalists to be incorporated into the new nation.
Elwood H. Jones, Archivist, Trent Valley Archives and Professor Emeritus of History at Trent University, can be reached at elwood@trentvalleyarchives.com.