Tories: Fighting for the King in America’s First
Civil War
By Thomas B. Allen
(Harper, 416 pages, $26.99)
First of all, let’s get rid of the myth (blamed on John Adams)
that during our War of Independence American opinion was neatly
divided into thirds — one third Patriot, one third Loyalist, and
one third who just wanted to be left alone. The Adams quote so
often cited was in a letter he wrote in 1813 and referred to public
opinion about the French Revolution and the subsequent war between
France and England that complicated his ill-starred presidency.
This book is the first attempt in a generation to study
the Loyalist side of what was really a nastier and more violent
civil war than the one that divided our nation a hundred years
later. And as historian Thomas Allen demonstrates in this
thoroughly researched and evocatively written examination of those
Americans who opposed separation from Mother England, there is a
lot about our one-sided founding Patriot history that is just
nonsense. In short, this book is a treat for your favorite
arm-chair historian and should be on everyone’s holiday gift
list.
The big myth that Allen puts to rest at once is the notion
that our sainted Founding Fathers set out from the beginning of
their taking up arms in a quest to build a new and independent
democracy on the still largely unsettled continent. In truth, for
quite some time after the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord in
the spring of 1775, nearly all of the roughly 2.5 million people in
the thirteen colonies merely wanted some reforms on taxes and
regulations of the kind enjoyed by Britons back home.
Certainly this was true of George Washington. Allen
recounts how Washington set out in early June 1775 from Mount
Vernon to take command of the rag-tag Continental Army drawn up
around the British garrison in Boston. He took the ferry at
Alexandria, Virginia, to get across the Potomac. He spotted the
Reverend Jonathan Boucher, an old friend and former tutor of his
stepson, on the ferry coming the other way. Washington ordered the
two craft to halt in mid-river to get the latest news from his
friend.
As Allen writes, “Boucher bluntly told Washington that
Americans would soon declare for independence. Washington denied
that he was ‘joining in any such measures,’ Boucher recalled. Like
most of his supporters, the new general believed that the colonies
were seeking a redress of grievances, not independence.” To the
point, the supposedly radicalized Continental Congress sent off yet
another groveling petition to King George III assuring him of their
devotion and loyalty to the Crown and begging for some relief from
the more onerous taxes and trade restraints. The king, to his cost,
refused to even read the document.
Another myth Allen lays to rest is the notion that the
struggle, once it began in earnest, would lead to an inevitable
victory for Our Side because of the nobility of Our Cause. In
truth, the war was one for the British to lose and they did so
through a combination of arrogance and stupidity that must cause
gasps of admiration among Pentagon strategists even today. The
British generals in charge of various campaigns just could not
bring themselves to treat the American Loyalist volunteers who
rallied to them as anything but social embarrassments. And despite
the overwhelming Loyalist sentiments in all the major colonial
cities — even Boston, but more so in New York, Philadelphia,
Charleston and Savannah — Washington managed to nullify that
advantage by keeping the war in the open countryside where
sentiment and supplies were more to his advantage.
More to the point, whatever the Tory sentiment among white
colonials throughout the long war, the British clearly had greater
support than the Patriots among two other critical population
groups — the Indian tribes on the western frontier and among the
roughly 500,000 free and enslaved Africans who, in some colonies,
outnumbered the white population.
Virginia’s royal governor the Earl of Dunmore as early as
1775 proclaimed freedom for all slaves who would joint his newly
raised Ethiopian Regiment; slaves from both Monticello and Mount
Vernon were among the thousands who flocked to the British side.
Washington at first banned any black volunteers from his army, but
finally relented and allowed only freedmen to enlist.
The Indian attacks on frontier settlements in the South
and service as scouts and guides in the campaigns through New
England provoked an instant horror among the Patriot side that may
have caused more harm than good for the British. Certainly, it
drove Highland Scots settlers in the Carolinas to the rebel cause
despite a preference for the Crown cause.
And Allen makes clear it did neither the Indians nor the
Loyalist blacks any real good either. At the end of the war the
British evacuation shipped hundreds of black allies and their
families to dismal exiles in Nova Scotia and the Caribbean. One has
to wonder how, when the drafters of the Constitution in 1786 came
to deal with the political questions involving the rights of
African and native Americans, whether the rancorous memory of their
disloyalty did not prompt some measure of revenge by the Founders,
especially those from the South.
And in the end another remarkable myth gets put away. It
is true that many thousands of Tories fled north to Canada or
uncomfortable exiles in Britain, but of the roughly half million
white Americans who survived the war and remained loyal to the King
and Crown, only about 100,000 of them then upped stakes and left
for new lives elsewhere. Remarkably, as Allen points out, within a
generation the emotional and political scars of that violent and
emotionally fraught clash had largely healed.
This is a long overdue part of our history which is well
and truly told by a seasoned historian. Savor it; give a copy to a
friend.
