The American Loyalists: Notes on Their Organization and Numerical Strength

Abstract

WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY of a venerable appraisal, generally attributed to John Adams, that approximately one-third of the American population was loyal, one-third supported the Revolution, and one-third remained uncommitted or indifferent.2 Conditioned to such generalities, one is not surprised that even a comparatively recent loyalist estimate by an acknowledged authority should find refuge in a plausible generalization: among the "politically active population" the loyalists constituted "a third" and the revolutionists "two-thirds."3 In a similar manner, the same author's assessment of the distribution of the loyalists, which aspires to greater precision, necessarily remains comfortably vague: in New York the loyalists numbered "half the population," in the South "hardly... more than a fourth or a third," and in New England "scarcely a tenth."4 In short, one can yet only rarely find reliable statistics on the loyalists' strength in either individual states or the entire thirteen.5 And despite a comparative outburst of literature on the loyalists in recent years, we remain today nearly as far from the truth about the strength of the loyalists as we were a half-century ago. The obstacles to calculating the exact strength of the loyalists are formidable, indeed even insurmountable. Furthermore, no workable definition, applicable equally to persons from all colonies and to both the earlier and later years of the War for Independence, can be formulated to help reduce the task to manageable proportions. Too little attention, 2 The origin and spread of this estimate is a curious historical anomaly that reveals more about the readiness of historians to accept plausible information than about the strength of the loyalists. Adams did indeed once write that "nearly one third of the people of the colonies" were loyal in the sense that before I775 that many Americans were "seduced and deluded" by the British, a definition which would satisfy most Americans. Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, X (Boston, i856), I93. But the more widely publicized statement that "full one third were averse to the Revolution.... An opposite third conceived a hatred of the English.. .. The middle third ... were rather lukewarm," probably owes its popularity to Sydney George Fisher's reproduction of an i8I5 Adams letter to James Lloyd that analyzed the division of opinion in the United States over the issue of the French rather than the American Revolution. Ibid., ii0; and Sydney George Fisher, The True History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia, I902), 233. 3 William H. Nelson, The American Tory (New York, i96i), 92. Actually Nelson's estimates and assessments are among the most usable and meaningful that I have seen. 4Ibid. 5 Undoubtedly the best available are those for Connecticut, which are based upon the returns of the I774 provincial elections. Oscar Zeichner, Connecticut's Years of Controversy, 1750-1776 (Chapel Hill, I949), 233-234. Zeichner concludes that Connecticut had about 2,500 loyalists who comprised abou...

History and Its “Losers”

“…The American Revolution is seen as the democratic uprising of a whole people against foreign tyranny (short shrift is given to the French and Spanish help to the revolutionaries, which is acknowledged, but not emphasized). It is therefore an inconvenient fact that fully one-third of the population-roughly the same proportion as those that filled the rebel ranks (the remaining third-those uncommitted or indifferent-belonged to neither camp)-remained faithful to Great Britain and its king 8 [17][18][19]. Moreover, these "Loyalists", as they came to be known-disparagingly in the United States, and less so in their future countries of settlement-were not all Tory grandees 9 .…”

Les Loyalistes noirs dans les Provinces Maritimes de l’Amérique du Nord britannique après 1792 : une histoire marginalisée ?

“…Leur présence dans les sources et la confirmation de leur statut dans ce document valident la perception des Noirs libres comme Loyalistes par leurs contemporains et, de ce fait, ne justifient pas leur omission dans l'historiographie pour des raisons de terminologie. D'autres publications ont justifié l'idée que d'anciens esclaves devenus libres ne pouvaient appartenir au groupe loyaliste par manque de conscience idéologique, de sentiment d'appartenance ou de « tradition » loyaliste (CAHILL 1999, SMITH 1968, BELL 1983. Ces trois auteurs établissent une distinction entre les esclaves fugitifs ou capturés, et les individus nés libres ou affranchis.…”

Economic Lessons from the Musical Hamilton

“…This would mean an enormous opportunity cost, as the cost of independence is war with one of the most formidable armies ever (at the time). The trade-offs that the colonists were facing would not have made this an easy decision and can help explain why about 16 percent of the total American population (19.8 percent of total white Americans) during the revolution did not support independence from 1775 to late 1783 (Smith, 1968). Reasons for colonists to stay loyal to the crown included the possible loss of their farms or property if no revenue was earned during the span of their military service, the potential loss of overall economic mobility if they were not loyal, and the chance of losing their lives (Ferling, 2010).…”