Divided We Stood, I
by
Frederick D. Malkinson
Delivered to
The Chicago Literary Club
March 31, 2003
Summary
This paper describes America's first and truly ruthless civil war, as
the rebels battled both the Loyalists and the British armies. Severe
deprivation of civil rights and astounding acts of physical violence marked
the struggle for the Loyalists' cause, as the Tories actively aided the
British campaign. During and after the war large numbers of Loyalists
fled to Europe while others further colonized Canada and the Caribbean
islands. A brief biography of Count Rumford illustrates the rare later
success of individual Loyalists abroad. The still-persisting legacies of this
first American civil war are also discussed.
President Harry Truman once said, "The only thing new in the
world is the history that you don't know."
From the time of the American Revolution until well into the
twentieth century, the historiography of that war almost totally ignored the
experience of at least 20 per cent of the colonial population. While the
"War Between the States" has always been considered to be a unique
event in our history, the American Revolution was both a revolution and,
in reality, the first, and much more vicious, American civil war. That war
was not sectional, but raged throughout all of the colonies, resulting in
incredible violence and in a massive deprivation of civil rights never seen
before or since in the United States. Thousands upon thousands of
colonists persecuted, tortured, robbed and killed each other, and at least
100,000, armed or unarmed, exerted every possible effort to defeat the
colonial army and the revolutionary movement. What, then, were the
setting and origins of this still little appreciated internal struggle that
accompanied the epochal war with England? And, importantly, too, what
were the legacies of that struggle?
The setting reveals that in 1775 2˝ million people populated the 13
colonies. Ninety per cent of the population was rural, but there were five
major cities including Philadelphia which, with its 40,000 people, was
larger than any in the British empire except London. These five cities,
including New York, Boston, Newport and Charleston, had already
achieved considerable progress in such diverse areas as fire-fighting, water
supply development, road building, some outdoor lighting and even
small-scale initiation of rudimentary smallpox vaccinations. Farmers,
fishermen and merchants populated the North. In the South, an
aristocratic planter society had arisen. Shipbuilding, iron mining,
smelting, flour milling, small crafts (printing, tanning, etc.) and home
industries such as weaving, spinning and production of farm implements
all flourished. The colonies were largely exporters of raw materials and
importers of finished goods.
Social and political leadership in the realm of local self-government
was provided by a wealthy class of farmers, merchants, planters and
professionals. Creditable societal achievements included scientific
advances, such as Benjamin Franklin's experiments in the fields of
electricity and oceanography, the founding of nine colleges and
universities, early schooling producing a high literacy rate, the founding
of 25 newspapers and several magazines, establishment of a post office
system and several public and private libraries and the early flowering of
poetry and painting.
Despite their various accomplishments, life in America was
extremely hard for most inhabitants. The colonies suffered from British
restrictions on trade, an adverse trade balance, shortage of hard cash and
chronic indebtedness. Clashes with Indians on the frontiers were frequent
and bloody, and the problems of slavery were already becoming
recognized. Also there were occasional sectional quarrels and transient
battles between some of the colonies. These had led Franklin to propose
achieving peace and unified strength through colonial unification in
alliance with the British government. Although a meeting of colonial
delegates in Albany in 1754 approved a plan for unification, it failed
miserably when no colonial legislature would yield its political powers,
especially taxation rights, to a central government.
The Peace of Paris between France and England in 1763, with the
ceding of Canada to the British, marked the beginning of problems
between England and the colonies which led to the Revolutionary War 12
years later. The war ending in 1763 had left England with enormous
debts and continuing high costs in administering the enlarging American
colonial domains with their rapidly increasing populations. The
subsequent oppressive revenue-raising acts of Parliament over the next12
years, which cannot be reviewed here but which aroused progressively
more fierce colonial opposition to British rule, stemmed largely from
England's grave need for cash. The subsequent battles of Lexington and
Concord in 1775, the formation of the second Continental Congress in
May of that year, the raising of a colonial army under Washington's
command and the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, all finally
led to outright war between the colonies and England.
Adherence to the rebel cause was not unanimous by any means. By
1774, the term Loyalist or Tory had arisen to label those who, though
opposed to many of Parliament's anti-colonial acts, nonetheless wished to
maintain strong ties with England and favored reconciliation. This
division of loyalty in the general population first became overt after
enactment of the Stamp Act in 1765. Ultimately the Loyalists numbered
about a quarter of the non-black colonial population, or about 500,000
people, though the majority "were neither willing nor able to abandon
their homes, speak out against their rebel neighbors, or take up arms to
defend their point of view." About 100,000, however, actively and
openly sided with the British.
Reasons for adoption of the Loyalist cause, which was basically to
maintain the political status quo, were multiple and diverse. American
royal officials, merchants in international trade, and wealthy planters had
obvious political and economic motives. Loyalists also included some
Americans educated in Britain and infused there with English customs and
traditions, former British and Scottish soldiers who had seen military
service in America and had settled here, and many recent British
immigrants. Others simply welcomed the feeling of security and
protection afforded as part of the greatest empire of the time, or believed
England to be invincible in a war with the rebels. Many Anglican church
leaders and adherents, pledged to allegiance to Church and king, also
espoused Loyalisim. Large numbers of farmers, through apathy, physical
remoteness from the political turbulence, or fear of losing land titles
joined the Loyalist cause. Loyalism received further support later on from
the tens of thousands of African-Americans who joined the British army
when freedom was promised for doing so, and from Indians in the West
who had long established trade relations with the British and who strongly
opposed the relentless push of Americans westward.
In general, Loyalists' beliefs centered around a dread of social
change and a fear that a truly democratic form of government would
degenerate into anarchy and societal upheaval. Loyalists, too, were
greatly impressed by the continuing strong growth of the colonies under
British rule, both economic and, to some extent, political with their
self-governing colonial legislatures. They also were great admirers of the
unique English constitution, despite the fact that some British laws were
applied far differently in the colonies than in England.
After passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, some of the American
royal governors became the initial target of the growing, but still small,
rebel or Whig population. Those in New York, Massachusetts and
Connecticut were attacked verbally in print or replaced in office. A few
of the early Loyalists left the country at this time, unreconciled to the
strong patriot stand and mob actions being taken in a few locales against
the British. Nevertheless, until the occurrence of the "Boston Tea Party"
in December, 1773, few people in the general population supported the
idea of complete independence from Britain. In fact, the First Continental
Congress, called in 1774, contained several Loyalists, notably Joseph
Galloway. Reviving the idea of the failed Albany meeting twenty years
earlier, Galloway proposed, as a last gap measure, "a colonial union with
internal autonomy subject to the authority of (two) Parliament(s), one
colonial, one British." Amazingly, that proposal failed of adoption by just
one vote.
Soon thereafter the colonies formed the Continental Association,
which contained articles of agreement to neither import nor use British
goods, together with a plan of enforcement. Individuals failing to support
the Association were blackballed and their names printed in the local
newspapers. Formation of local committees in each colony, established to
oppose the British by force, were followed by a Congressional act
declaring that all individuals opposed to the patriotic cause be disarmed.
These acts now resulted in major declarations of outright Loyalist
sympathies, although many families were divided, often resulting in
long-lasting severance of family relationships.
On June 24, 1776, the Continental Congress "declared that all
colonists who adhered to or fought for Great Britain were guilty of
treason and should be suitably punished by the colonial legislatures."
Finally it was this proclamation, followed ten days later by the
Declaration of Independence, that overtly turned the Revolutionary War
into a bloody and bitter civil war as well.
I cannot relate here the chain of events between the warring rebels
and the British, but will concentrate on the Loyalists' wartime
experiences. There is no doubt that their most significant actions by far
were all directed toward aiding the British war effort. From the
beginning, many thousands of Loyalists provided England with a wide
variety of wartime services. "In (British) occupied areas they dug as
sappers, (made) gunpowder and cartridges, (served) under a paymaster or
barrack master or with civil departments of the army (commissary,
ordnance, or hospitals) or joined the various companies that helped to
police occupied towns.." Many of these assumed duties freed additional
British soldiers for battle. Some Loyalists were allowed to commission
privateers to prey on rebel ships, while others served as guides to landing
parties or as British ship pilots in shallow or treacherous waters. Tories
stole rebel supplies of gunpowder, salt, flour or other provisions, as well
as horses for sale to the British. Sharing the same language, as well as
indistinguishable dress and physical features, Loyalists passed easily back
and forth through military lines. This enabled them to act as spies,
encourage rebel soldiers to desert, recruit for the British army, aid British
prisoners to escape, conduct message services between British-held New
York and Canada, and raid the colonial mails. George Washington
repeatedly complained of the "diabolical and insidious acts and schemes
carried on by the Tories to raise distrust and divisions among us."
Two Loyalists, Benjamin Church and his brother-in-law, John
Fleming, became historically probably the first to suggest-on this occasion
to the British-that counterfeit money be used as a wartime economic
weapon. This operation, along with the colonies' already excess printing
of paper currency to pay wartime debts, was so successful in producing
incredible inflation that by 1781, 167 dollars of Congressional money was
worth only one dollar in gold or silver. It was this ruinous effect on the
Continental Congress's paper currency that gave rise to the phrase, "not
worth a Continental." The Loyalists were so involved in the successful
production and dissemination of counterfeit money that one historian has
stated, "If everything had turned on American economic strength, the
British would have crushed the Revolution easily."
At one time or another, thirty to fifty thousand Loyalists enlisted in
the British army. The large number of Loyalist volunteers encouraged the
British to form entire Loyalist regiments with Loyalist commanding
officers, some of whom were so skilled that they ultimately rose to the
rank of general. Many more Loyalists joined organized militia and
guerilla groups. "There is no doubt that the best Loyalist troops were the
equal of any the patriots produced" and the guerilla forces were
sometimes even more effective, winning several decisive victories. One
Loyalist guerilla leader, colonel John Butler, with the help of some
American Indian allies, ravaged the Cherry and Mohawk Valleys in New
York and the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, widely massacring
peaceful farmers. Butler was so successful in laying waste to these areas
that he was made the villain of D. W. Griffith's last epic film entitled,
"America." Benedict Arnold, turned traitor, led the Loyalists to rout and
murder the entire garrison at Fort Griswold in Connecticut. In the south,
one Loyalist officer, Colonel David Fanning, even captured North
Carolina governor Burke and his entire council.
Particularly vicious battles between Loyalists and patriots alone
occurred widely throughout the colonies, sometimes resulting in the
massive slaughter of hundreds of men on both sides, with even more
combatants wantonly and deliberately murdered after one side or the other
had actually surrendered. These losses were substantial in a war in which Washington's
ertire army, by way of comparison, often comprised only 8 or 9 thousand men. During the
course of the war, for example, in the colony of South Carolina alone, 103 battles were
fought exclusively between only patriots and Loyalists. Captured patriots were usually
imprisoned by the Loyalists or British troops, but Loyalists, captured by
the patriots, were considered traitors and were often executed.
During the entire war, Loyalists were thoroughly deprived of their
civil rights throughout the colonies. Mob actions often led to looting of
their homes, arbitrary seizure and sale of property, or outright arson.
Loyalists' names were frequently printed in local newspapers, often
resulting in social ostracism, refusal of services from laborers and
merchants and loss of their own clients or customers, leading in turn to
loss of livelihood. Loyalists were forbidden to practice any profession.
They were denied all legal assistance, prohibited from buying or selling
land, and deprived of the vote, freedom of speech, resort to the press and
executor rights. Upon a Loyalists' death, his property was left completely
to the mercy of his fellow men. For some Loyalists these various actions
led to severe mental disturbances, especially depression or suicide.
"Tarring and feathering became classic Whig treatment (for) the
Tories as were wanton executions without due process of law."
Public floggings and maimings too, were not uncommon. A
contemporary description of the range of Loyalist punishments
included "chaining men together by the dozens, and driving them like
herds of cattle into distant provinces, flinging them into loathsome
jails, shooting them in swamps and woods, hanging them after a mock
trial; and all this because they would not abjure their right sovereign and
bear arms against him." "it is possible that the term 'Lynch law' derives
from Charles Lynch, a (Virginian) justice of the peace renowned for his
drastic cruel action against neighboring Tories." "As with many later day
lynchings, government officials knew about the proceedings but did not
care to stop them."
Execution of captured Loyalists was the fate met with not only by
those in British army units, but also by captured Tory river pilots,
counterfeiters, recruiters and spies. Even excepting these convicted of
outright treasonable actions, it is clear that the number of Loyalists
otherwise executed or murdered was substantial. Escape from the
ubiquitous violence and atrocities was so common that, in addition to
ocean routes, a series of hiding places for Tories was established leading
from New York to Canada, not unlike the "underground railroad" route of
later years established for escaped African-American slaves.
The severe and continuing oppression of Loyalists exacted
reciprocal vengeful reactions in and around the few restricted areas of
Tory concentration, especially New York and Charleston. "Legal
persecution (of Whigs), mob actions (against them), imprisonment aboard
horrific British prison ships and all the excesses of civil war ...." were
seen in these areas as well. Fortunately for the Whigs, instances of
persecution and murder were far less frequent than the myriads of those
suffered by the Loyalists simply because of the few small geographical
areas involved.
Voluntary exodus or outright exile of Tories from the colonies had
begun before the war, had increased in 1774 and had then numbered
many more thousands of refugees leaving for the British Isles when the
war ended, in part because of renewed outbreaks of triumphant patriot
violence. Most refugees reaching England were destitute, and the poorest
received only meager governmental aid. Some ended in debtors' prison or
the workhouse. England's hierarchical society with tremendous poverty
provided few economic opportunities for newly arrived Americans.
Britain still had massive debt problems and faced continuing enmity from
powerful countries such as France and Spain. The British also had vastly
overestimated Loyalist strength and numbers in America, in part at least
from exaggerated Loyalist estimates, which had resulted in substantially
reduced shipment of English army reinforcements from home.
Consequently, the British placed part of the blame for loss of the war on
the Loyalists, although "they (had done) next to nothing to organize,
support, maintain and reward Loyalist military cooperation."
England did, however, recognize some responsibility for the
expatriates and established a 5-man commission to examine financial
claims. These were sharply restricted in number, however, since only
certain specific losses (salaries, property, professional income) were
allowed, provided loyalty to Britain and proof of losses could be
established. Claimants were not always interviewed, moreover, nor were
they permitted legal representation. Although claims were substantially
reduced, "most historians agree that Britain acted generously. Over 4000
of the more than 5000 (qualified) claims (submitted) were awarded in
excess of 3 million pounds, reduced from the 8 million pounds
requested." Many of these pensions were continued well beyond 1790.
Although, at British insistence, the Treaty of Paris ending the
Revolutionary War had promised restitution of rights and property to the
Loyalists by the colonies, these provisions were widely ignored. Property
was seldom restored and confiscation and persecution continued.
Consequently, most Loyalists no longer regarded their exile as temporary,
and very few returned, at least initially, to America. Even some who did
faced physical violence, imprisonment, especially for debt, outright
lynching or renewed exile. However, some patriot leaders, such as John
Adams and Alexander Hamilton, urged conciliation. A few states
(Connecticut, New Jersey, North Carolina) passed leniency laws and
welcomed Loyalists back. By 1790 most states had followed suit,
although Loyalists who had engaged in active warfare were still denied
readmission to the newly named United States. Some laws directed
against the Tories actually remained on a few state statute books for
35-40 years after the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783.
Altogether, at least 80,000 to 100,000 Loyalists had fled from the
colonies. Some settled in England, as I have described, and in Germany.
However, by far the largest number left for the two already colonized
Canadian provinces, about 30,000 to Nova Scotia and another 15,000 to
20,000 to non-French speaking Quebec. Here, paradoxically, the Loyalists
produced their most notable achievements, as Canadian historian Wallace
Brown describes it, laying "the foundation of modern, democratic English
speaking Canada, which had previously been mainly a conquered alien
territory." These Loyalist emigrés were lured by generous British offers
of free transportation and shipment of property, as well as provision of
various necessities for resettlement. Initially the early settlers found
farming life hard, as the land supported few crops. Gradually, though,
conditions improved substantially, aided further by the presence of
plentiful game, timber and fish.
The first lieutenant governor of the later named Upper Canada was
a former Loyalists army commander, John Simcoe, who now offered 200
acres of free land to anyone pledging allegiance to the King, thereby
attracting many more former Loyalists from the United States, as well as
a great number of Americans seeking improved circumstances. "By 1812
four-fifths of the 100,000 inhabitants of Upper Canada were American
born.." Thereafter the Loyalists became "a stabilizing force" and
"dominated the struggle for responsible government" in Canada, while
seizing their "last hope of remaining British." As Wallace Brown has
written, "Reviled or forgotten in the United States, the Loyalists are
venerated in Canada as founding fathers."
In addition to Britain, Europe and Canada, the last major site of
exodus for the Loyalists was the Caribbean islands. Most of the refugees
came from the modern-day states of Florida, Alabama and Mississippi,
territories gained by the British from Spain in 1763. Florida had been the
main refuge for some 5,000 Loyalists and their accompanying 8,000
African-American slaves. When Britain ceded these territories back to
Spain in 1783, some of the Loyalists attempted to return to the United
States, but most left for the Bahamas, Jamaica, Dominica, St. Vincent and
Bermuda. In the British controlled islands, refugees received some
financial compensation, and land parcels were widely distributed. Some
Loyalists were given important offices of governor, chief justice or
customs official, especially in Bermuda and the Bahamas. Loyalist
Americans soon came to dominate the populations and politics of some of
the islands, especially the Bahamas. In almost all of them, moreover,
they brought "spectacular commercial and agricultural growth."
Since I have presented the adverse collective experiences of the
Loyalists during the Revolutionary War, it is superfluous here to add
some minibiographies of individual Loyalist's sufferings. Conversely,
however, there was a small number of individuals who achieved happiness
and successful careers in their lands of exile, particularly as merchants,
major landowners, artists or holders of political office, even in Parliament.
But one expatriate Loyalist has been said to have been the most
successful American abroad ever, and his varied career is of particular
interest.
Benjamin Thompson was born into a poor family in Woburn,
Massachusetts, on March 26, 1753. His schooling ended at age 13, but he
later obtained tutoring in a variety of subjects, his main interests lying in
science and technology. At age 18 he became a tutor himself and a year
later was invited by Reverend Timothy Walker to become director of a
school of 106 students in Concord, New Hampshire. At age 21 he
married Walker's daughter, who gave birth to a daughter, Sally, 2 years
later. Loyalists sympathies led Thompson to accept a commission as
major in New Hampshire's royalist Fifteenth Regiment from that state's
Loyalist governor, John Wentworth. In exchange, he agreed to collect
rebel intelligence for the British generals, Gage and Howe. When his
Loyalist activities soon aroused hostility in Concord, he fled without his
family in fact, he never saw his wife again to the sanctuary of British
occupied Boston. When the British evacuated that city in March, 1776,
Thompson sailed for England. There he undertook a career that would
bring him international fame and fortune.
Letters of recommendation from Governor Wentworth and General
Howe and Thompson's charisma and keen intellect earned him a position
with Lord Germain, Secretary of State for the colonies. Within four
years, Thompson rose to the position of Undersecretary of State. With his
continuing interest in science and encouragement from the military,
Thompson undertook novel experiments to demonstrate that wet
gunpowder was inferior to dry, despite a widely held curious myth to the
contrary. His paper demolishing this idea, published in the Royal
Society's "Transactions", earned him prompt election as a fellow of that
Society. Thompson then bought a lieutenant colonel's commission and,
toward the end of the war, successfully led a marauding regiment of
Loyalist soldiers in America. At war's end he was promoted to colonel
and pensioned off by the British with half pay for life at age 30.
Seeking further military action, Thompson headed to Vienna to help
fight the Turks. En route he met the nephew of Karl Theodor, Elector of
Bavaria, who persuaded him to go to Munich instead. There Karl
Theodor appointed him colonel and aide-de-camp, and Britain awarded
him a knighthood in exchange for gathering secret information to improve
British Bavarian relations. Given an elaborate laboratory, Thompson
spent the next 16 years in Bavaria where "he developed various scientific
instruments, including a photometer to measure light-intensity, and a
candle so consistent in the level of light it gave off.... (that it) became the
international standard for measuring illumination in ' candlepower.'"
Bavaria was a backward state of the Holy Roman Empire and
Thompson now complained to the Elector that soldiers robbed and
tormented the peasants, and that officers were officious with underlings.
With a mandate for reform and promotions to major general, Commander
of the Army, and Minister of War and Interior Affairs, Thompson
dismissed 800 top officers, built barracks for the soldiers, established
schools for them and set some to building roads. He had other
detachments undertake farming, where he added the potato as a food
staple and introduced the idea of crop rotation.
Next, Thompson cleared the city of organized beggars and
converted a factory into a dormitory for them with kitchens, craft shops
and classrooms, both to teach adults various trades and to educate
children. Later, this unique social experiment returned many of the
impoverished residents to the community as self-reliant and useful
citizens. Thompson went on to establish orphanages and public schools
and to reform the prisons, "encouraging humane treatment and retraining
of convicts." He inaugurated soup kitchens for the impoverished and
underfed, a practice later adopted in many European countries.
By now Thompson was so revered by the Bavarian people for these
pioneering social reforms that he was made imperial regent of the Holy
Roman Empire with a peerage for which he selected the title, Count
Rumford, Rumford being the previous name of Concord, New Hampshire.
Rumford now undertook the problem of more scientific cooking,
since the widely used open hearth, as he said, "cook's the cook more than
the food." His remedy was to enclose numerous small fires in an
insulated brick or stone box and set the cooking pots on top, "thus
developing the forerunner of the modern kitchen range." Shortly these
ranges were then widely installed in institutions and homes throughout the
continent. In an era when soldiers individually cooked all their own
meals, Rumford also developed an army field kitchen, which was then
widely copied by many European armies. His Rumford Roaster, "of
which there are still a few in New England today", was the first
convection oven for hot air roasting. Rumford also devised both the first
pressure cooker and coffee drip machine. In his firm belief that all of his
inventions and improvements should be freely available to all, he never
sought a single patent.
In 1795, on leave in England, Rumford installed the first fireplace
damper and redesigned the Benjamin Franklin fireplace to throw 50%
more heat in the room, while decreasing fuel consumption and chimney
smoke. In 1797 and 1798 Rumford carried out and published his studies
on thermal conductivity for which he is best known, the first to link
calories of heat to joules of energy.
In 1798 Rumford left Munich for good to become minister to
England, a position he shortly resigned. Now enjoying a well-recognized
international reputation he was actually invited back to America by the
federal government to head a newly planned military academy, a most
surprising gesture probably unique for any Loyalist active in the war and
living abroad. Rumford decided to remain in England, however, and went
on, with Sir Joseph Banks, Captain Cook's chief scientist and world
renowned botanist, to raise funds and establish the Royal Institution "to
apply science to improve living standards." He bought the building and,
as director, supervised its interior design and construction of classrooms,
library, and laboratories. He recruited chemist Humphrey Davy as one of
the first lecturers, and it was Davy, whose first isolation of six of the elements
later brought international renown to the Royal Institution. The Institution
continues on its dynamic course even today, one of its recent directors,
Lord Porter, having shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967. At
about the time Rumford founded the Institution, "he also established the
Rumford professorship at Harvard and the Rumford Medals of both the
Royal Society in Britain and the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences."
In 1801 Rumford moved to France and, his wife having died in
1791, he married the widow of Antoine Lavoisier, the world famous
chemist. He became only the second American, after then President
Jefferson, to be elected to the National Institute of France, formerly the
French Academy. He lived and worked the remainder of his life in
France, inventing a colorimeter and experimenting in the field of light,
now having published over 70 scientific papers. He died in 1814 and was
buried in Auteuil. The inscription on his tomb reads, "A celebrated
physicist, enlightened philanthropist, whose discoveries in the field of
light and heat made his name illustrious and whose help to the poor will
always be dear to friends of humanity." In 1798, President John Adams
had called Rumford a genius. Much later, President Franklin Roosevelt,
who had probably studied Rumford's pioneering social programs, grouped
him with Jefferson and Franklin as, "the three greatest intellects America
ever brought forth."
In this first American civil war, the Loyalists were persistent losers,
while after 1865 the South gradually experienced total restoration, despite
the fact that, "the road to reunion was paved with the broken dreams of
African Americans." Reasons for the Loyalist failure were numerous and
include their relatively small numbers and their woeful lack of
organization, especially the absence of the inter-colonial linkage the
patriots so notably achieved. Further, Tory numbers continually decreased
during the war as up 100,000 active Loyalists fled the country. Many
more stayed, but were quiet and did little to aid the Loyalist cause. Also,
as British losses mounted, large numbers of Loyalist switched their
allegiance to the patriot side. Lastly, in England citizen and political
opposition to the war increased sharply as war costs and troop losses
mounted, and some high ranking officers (generals, admirals), opposed to
continuing the war, actually refused to fight on or resigned their
commissions.
Finally, one might ponder the incomparably sad legacies that the
vicious struggle between Whigs and Tories bequeathed to future American
generations and, perhaps, in part to the modern world in general. The
essentially complete deprivation of Loyalists' civil rights and, as already
enumerated, the astounding variety of atrocious acts committed repeatedly
by both sides have spawned a calamitous and continuing tradition of
violence in this country, illustrating James Baldwin's statement that,
"history is present in all that we do." "The War for Independence had
proven that Americans needed protection -- not just from Kings but from
themselves." Rebel legacies passed on to future American generations
include fierce attitudes toward righteous patriotism (exemplified well by
Stephen Decatur's, "My country right or wrong") and overwhelming
commitment to "Cause" without breach, even by reasoned dissent. In
conclusion, too, on the world stage, as Wallace Brown has written, "Of
the long-dead (active) Loyalists themselves, it must be recorded they were
a sad portent of things to come, the displaced persons' and war refugees
of their time....and that, in spite of all, (to their cause) their Loyalty they
kept."