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Loyalists During the American Revolution






Americans today think of the War for Independence as a revolution, but in important respects it was also a civil war.  American Loyalists, or "Tories" as their opponents called them, opposed the Revolution, and many took up arms against the rebels. Estimates of the number of Loyalists range as high as 500,000, or 20 percent of the white population of the colonies.

My Comments:  History is not being rewritten, but some history is just being left out.  Here is a quote from Tupper Saussy Book " Rulers of Evil"  page 85 & 86. Book review click here  Of the 2,500,000 enumerated inhabitants in 1787 America, the Roman Catholic population consisted of no more than 16,000 in Maryland, 7,000 in Pennsylvania, 1,500 in New York, and 200 in Virginia.(what that means in per cent is: 1% of the population benefited and the 99% had to go along with the 1%) Once the Constitution was in place, a steady influx of European immigrants transformed Roman Catholicism from America's smallest to the largest religious denomination.  By 1850, the higher powers at Rome could view the United States as a viable tributary, if not another papal state.  The revolution was not about taxes, it was about religion. Understand Catholicism was illegal to pratice in the public or to hold public office prior to 1776. The 1% were Catholics and the 99% were Protestants. Click here for more information.  Now lets fast forward to 2015. There are 28 Jesuit Universities in America and 50 Jesuit high schools.  The highest concentration  of Jesuit influence than any other country in the world.  Understand they Jesuits are in 112 countries.    Who benefited from the American Revolution??  

What motivated the Loyalists?  Most educated Americans, whether Loyalist or Revolutionary, accepted John Locke's theory of natural rights and limited government.  Thus, the Loyalists, like the rebels, criticized such British actions as the Stamp Act and the Coercive Acts. Loyalists wanted to pursue peaceful forms of protest because they believed that violence would give rise to mob rule or tyranny.  They also believed that independence would mean the loss of economic benefits derived from membership in the British mercantile system.(Again it is what they are leaving out of this article.  Nothing is being said of Religion.   Religion is behind Politics, not Politics behind Religion.  Click here for the two missing links in the founding of America)

Loyalists came from all walks of life. The majority were small farmers, artisans and shopkeepers. Not surprisingly, most British officials remained loyal to the Crown. Wealthy merchants tended to remain loyal, as did Anglican ministers, especially in Puritan New England. Loyalists also included some blacks (to whom the British promised freedom), Indians, indentured servants and some German immigrants, who supported the Crown mainly because George III was of German origin.

The number of Loyalists in each colony varied. Recent estimates suggest that half the population of New York was Loyalist; it had an aristocratic culture and was occupied throughout the Revolution by the British. In the Carolinas, back-country farmers were Loyalist, whereas the Tidewater planters tended to support the Revolution.

During the Revolution, most Loyalists suffered little from their views.  However, a minority, about 19,000 Loyalists, armed and supplied by the British, fought in the conflict.

The Paris Peace Treaty required Congress to restore property confiscated from Loyalists. The heirs of William Penn in Pennsylvania, for example, and those of George Calvert in Maryland received generous settlements. In the Carolinas, where enmity between rebels and Loyalists was especially strong, few of the latter regained their property. In New York and the Carolinas, the confiscations from Loyalists resulted in something of a social revolution as large estates were parceled out to yeoman farmers.

About 100,000 Loyalists left the country, including William Franklin, the son of Benjamin, and John Singleton Copley, the greatest American painter of the period. Most settled in Canada. Some eventually returned, although several state governments excluded the Loyalists from holding public office. In the decades after the Revolution, Americans preferred to forget about the Loyalists. Apart from Copley, the Loyalists became nonpersons in American history.

We know that Patriots fought for independence from Great Britain. They are mostly the people we hear about in school; we don't normally hear about the Loyalist side of the war.  A Loyalist is someone who is loyal to King George III. A Tory is a British soldier; that's what the Patriots called them, at least.

Some Loyalists didn't fight because they were not dissatisfied.  They may have been wealthy or simply believed that Great Britain was justified in its actions. Patriots would insult Loyalists and mistrusted them because they did not believe in the Patriots' cause.

Another group of people who did not wish to fight during the American Revolution were Quakers, or Friends. A Quaker was someone who just wanted peace, or wouldn't fight because it was against their religion.  They were often mistakenly referred to as Loyalists because they wouldn't fight.

Neutralists were those who either didn't want to fight, lived too far away to fight, or believed in both Loyalist and Patriot principles. German hired soldiers called Hessians were paid by the British government or Parliament to go and fight on the British side.When they were first sent over to the colonies, there were 25,000 German Hessian troops and 5,000 American Casualties.

Image courtesy of Art Today.

After the war, many of the Loyalists and Quakers moved up to Canada and made their own community.

The Hessians returned to Germany.

The Patriots started their own new government, called a Confederation.

The Loyalists in the Revolutionary War were the American colonists who supported King George III of England and did not want independence. They made up about 20 percent of the population in the colonies and, while only about 19,000 of them actually fought in the war, they made the conflict much more bitter by splitting the society into opposing camps. They had a variety of reasons for their opposition to the Revolution, and they made a variety of choices after the war was over.

Who Were the Loyalists?

The Loyalists in the Revolutionary War lived in each of the colonies, in urban and rural areas, and they practiced many different trades. However, some areas and social niches had a greater percentage of Loyalists than others. New York, which the British occupied during the American Revolution, had a heavily British culture and may have been as much as half Loyalist. The Carolinas also had a large Loyalist population, mostly among the rural farmers.

Anyone appointed by the British government tended to support the Crown; successful merchants and Anglican ministers usually favored England as well. Quakers tended to be Loyalist because they were pacifists, and being a revolutionary meant supporting the war. Store owners, farmers and craftsmen were also often Loyalist.

There were a few specific ethnic groups that tended to be Loyalists in the Revolutionary War: Germans favored Britain because of King George III's German background, and Native and African Americans alike often supported the British because the Crown had promised to end slavery. Indentured servants often felt the same way.

Why Did the Loyalists Support the Crown?

Aside from these particular ethnic and social reasons to remain loyal to Britain, the Loyalists had economic and political reasons for their affiliation. John Locke's theories, which supported a limited government, were widely accepted at the time, and acts like the Stamp Act and the Coercive Acts went against these theories. By and large, the Loyalists didn't approve of these acts any more than the revolutionaries did; however, they were afraid that a revolution would lead to either despotism or anarchy, and they preferred the devil they knew to the devil they didn't. Also, Britain had a strong, established economy and trading fleet, and the colonies were able to reap the benefits of that system. Severing ties with England would mean supporting themselves entirely as a country, and the Loyalists were concerned that the colonies were not prepared to do that.

What Became of the Loyalists After the War?

Many of the Loyalists had their property confiscated during or right after the war, until the Paris Peace Treaty of 1783, which gave it back to them. The Paris Peace Treaty also gave Loyalists the right to live and work safely in the United States, without fear of retribution for their support for the Crown. Nonetheless, between 60,000 and 80,000 Loyalists chose to leave the new country. Most of them moved to Canada; a group of 1,000 black Loyalists chose to move to Sierra Leone.

While the people who were Loyalist during the Revolution were legally safe and free to remain in the United States, many states prohibited them from working for their governments, and they were hated and mocked by their neighbors who had supported the revolution. The Loyalists in the Revolutionary War survived the change of power, but their association with the British Crown destroyed their reputations and their social standing in the new nation.

Resources

The entire text of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1783 is available at http://studyourhistory.com/studies/original-documents/the-paris-peace-treaty-of-1783.

An index of primary sources about the Loyalists in the American Revolution is available at http://www.royalprovincial.com/index.htm.

References

United States History - Loyalists During the American Revolution, http://countrystudies.us/united-states/history-33.htm

Loyalists and Loyalism in the American Revolution, http://hti.osu.edu/history-lesson-plans/united-states-history/loyalists

11b. Loyalists, Fence-sitters, and Patriots

After patriots tore down the statue of King George III in New York City on July 9, 1776, they melted parts of it down and made bullets to use against the British.

It is impossible to know the exact number of American colonists who favored or opposed independence.

For years it was widely believed that one third favored the Revolution, one third opposed it, and one third were undecided. This stems from an estimate made by John Adams in his personal writings in 1815.

Historians have since concluded that Adams was referring to American attitudes toward the French Revolution, not ours. The current thought is that about 20 percent of the colonists were Loyalists — those whose remained loyal to England and King George. Another small group in terms of percentage were the dedicated patriots, for whom there was no alternative but independence.

On the Fence

Often overlooked are the fence-sitters who made up the largest group.

With so many Americans undecided, the war became in great measure a battle to win popular support. If the patriots could succeed in selling their ideas of revolution to the public, then popular support might follow and the British would be doomed.

In "Common Sense," Thomas Paine argued for independence from Britain and the creation of a democratic republic. Its publication in January 1776 immediately added fuel to the patriots' cause.

Even with military victory, it would have been impossible for the Crown to regain the allegiance of the people. Revolution would merely flare up at a later date.

The British understood the need to attract American popular support for the parent country, as well. Some colonists who were not persuaded by the political struggle joined the British for personal gain or military glory. Some joined out of sheer loyalty to the Crown — they still believed themselves loyal British citizens. There were also many American farmers willing to sell their goods to the British for profit.

In the long run, however, the patriots were much more successful attracting support. American patriots won the war of propaganda. Committees of Correspondence persuaded many fence-sitters to join the patriot cause. Writings such as Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" stirred newfound American nationalism.

Excerpt of "Common Sense"

IN the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense: and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day ...

The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair of a City, a County, a Province, or a Kingdom; but of a Continent — of at least one-eighth part of the habitable Globe. 'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed-time of Continental union, faith and honour. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters.

– Thomas Paine, "Common Sense" (1776)


.The American Revolution not only separated neighbors and friends, it devastated many families, including the Franklins. William Franklin, pictured here, a Loyalist, rarely, if ever, spoke to his Patriot father Ben after the war

Patriots subjected Loyalists to public humiliation and violence. Many Loyalists found their property vandalized, looted, and burned. The patriots controlled public discourse. Woe to the citizen who publicly proclaimed sympathy to Britain.

Families were sometimes divided over the revolution. Benjamin Franklin's son, William, a Loyalist governor of New Jersey, supported the British effort during the war.

What Happened to the Loyalists?

In the end, many Loyalists simply left America. About 80,000 of them fled to Canada or Britain during or just after the war. Because Loyalists were often wealthy, educated, older, and Anglican, the American social fabric was altered by their departure. American history brands them as traitors. But most were just trying to maintain the lifestyles to which they had become accustomed. After all, history is always written by the winners.

American Patriot Judge Charles Lynch


     Although the meaning is probably universally known, the origin of the term 'to Lynch' seems to have been almost lost in time, probably because it conjures up too horrific a scene to be compatible with the so called 'glorious' cause.
     In the 18th century American hinterland, rouge settlers used to just brutally take over Indian land and this was most likely the case for a certain Lynch clan, who settled either side of the Staunton River in the Blue Ridge foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, western Virginia.

     Even in 1774 the nearest courthouse was over two hundred miles away when Charles son of John Lynch decided to join the Virginia legislature to serve as a Justice of the Peace in Pittsylvania County.
In this role he had to deal with horse thieves and got used to handing out harsh punishments, as the accused could either receive 39 lashes, be strung up by the thumbs or hung.

     During the American Revolution matters had became tense between the colonists, with the Loyalists under constant threat by intimidating gangs of Patriots, while Loyalists in turn pointed out to the British the illegal activities of patriots and revealing the lairs of smugglers.

     Charles Lynch an ardent patriot, was active in equipping and mobilizing the insurgency, therefore no doubt stealing horses from Loyalists, so when Sir Henry Clinton's force convincingly took Charleston in April 1780 this generated much excitement in the local Loyalists who then started to prepare to join his army.

At least half the residents in Southside Virginia were considered to be 'Tories' and were then an increased threat to the Patriots, so they decided to act first, Charles Lynch used his position to check records to identify suspected Loyalists and in fact found them so numerous they were going to be easy to find. Armed with this information he self-appointed himself jury and sent out gangs of Patriot zealots to systematically visit the homesteads of these 'suspects'.

Under the guise of the law these mobs claimed that Loyalists were guilty of the heinous and felonious crime of treason, for which anyone likely to be a threat to them, was arbitrarily dragged out of their homes and strung up.

If the suspect was known to have been wealthy he was considered a Loyalist and fined thousands of pounds under the threat of lynching, but only to be then lynched by them anyway.  This one sided situation was mainly because Patriots were used to organising themselves as generally contemptuous of British laws considering them oppressors, whereas the Loyalists would look to the law, but were at a servere disadvantage when the law was being abused by a Judge and bands of lowlife bigots.

     These days the remaining focus of these atrocities is at Charles Lynch's former home at Green level (now Avoca) where hanging may have taken place from a walnut tree, the stump of which still remains, but a plaque has been placed there stating that no one was hung by Charles lynch on that spot. This may or may not be actually true, but it's inference is at least deceiving if not out right laughable.  As this statement is made ridiculous, by the fact that lynching was still being carried out in the south and mid United States until well into the 20th century e.g.Ku Klux Klan and that parts of Virginia went from having a majority of Loyalists to that of virtually none, meaning that hundreds if not thousands of Loyalists were lynched.

     Also after the war in the new United States, Laws were passed to allow no recourse against those who carried out the lynchings, either in Virginia or at any other location. Obviously no records exist, long since covered over by American authorities and historians, but Charles Lynch was exonerated by the state legislature and is considered to have an untarnished reputation as a patriot in his relentless quest to 'expose' Loyalists!

It was not until the 20th century that America developed a revulsion against lynching, so it's hard to find any unsanitized accounts of the notorious despot patriot Judge Lynch.

Treaty of Tripoli

Unlike governments of the past, the American Fathers set up a government divorced from religion. The establishment of a secular government did not require a reflection to themselves about its origin; they knew this as an unspoken given. However, as the U.S. delved into international affairs, few foreign nations knew about the intentions of America. For this reason, an insight from at a little known but legal document written in the late 1700s explicitly reveals the secular nature of the United States to a foreign nation. Officially called the "Treaty of peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, of Barbary," most refer to it as simply the Treaty of Tripoli. In Article 11, it states:

Joel Barlow, U.S. Consul General of Algiers
Copyright National Portait Gallery Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource NY

"As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

The preliminary treaty began with a signing on 4 November, 1796 (the end of George Washington's last term as president). Joel Barlow, the American diplomat served as counsel to Algiers and held responsibility for the treaty negotiations. Barlow had once served under Washington as a chaplain in the revolutionary army. He became good friends with Paine, Jefferson, and read Enlightenment literature. Later he abandoned Christian orthodoxy for rationalism and became an advocate of secular government. Barlow, along with his associate, Captain Richard O'Brien, et al, translated and modified the Arabic version of the treaty into English. From this came the added Amendment 11. Barlow forwarded the treaty to U.S. legislators for approval in 1797. Timothy Pickering, the secretary of state, endorsed it and John Adams concurred (now during his presidency), sending the document on to the Senate. The Senate approved the treaty on June 7, 1797, and officially ratified by the Senate with John Adams signature on 10 June, 1797. All during this multi-review process, the wording of Article 11 never raised the slightest concern. The treaty even became public through its publication in The Philadelphia Gazette on 17 June 1797.

So here we have a clear admission by the United States that our government did not found itself upon Christianity. Unlike the Declaration of Independence, this treaty represented U.S. law as all treaties do according to the Constitution (see Article VI, Sect. 2).

Although the Christian exclusionary wording in the Treaty of Tripoli only lasted for eight years and no longer has legal status, it clearly represented the feelings of our Founding Fathers at the beginning of the U.S. government. 

Conclusion

The Framers derived an independent government out of Enlightenment thinking against the grievances caused by Great Britain.(Protestant Great Britain) Our Founders paid little heed to political beliefs about Christianity.(American Revolution ended Protestant rule, and gave us a Universal government)The 1st Amendment stands as the bulkhead against an establishment of religion and at the same time insures the free expression of any belief.(the mass is now made legal) The Treaty of Tripoli, an instrument of the Constitution, clearly stated our non-Christian foundation. We inherited common law from Great Britain which derived from pre-Christian Saxons rather than from Biblical scripture.

Today we have powerful Christian organizations(Ecumenism) who work to spread historical myths(David Barton Myths) about early America and attempt to bring a Christian theocracy(Roman Catholicism) to the government. If this ever happens, then indeed, we will have ignored the lessons from history. Fortunately, most liberal Christians today agree with the principles of separation of church and State, just as they did in early America.

"They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state.(Do you call this separation of church and state click here) I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point"

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

Historic Significance: Doughoregan Manor is a national treasure located in the heart of Howard County. It is a designated National Landmark of international importance, as the man who called it his home triggered events in the 1700's that changed the face of the world.

Threat: Development. A Maryland Historic Trust Easement protecting the property expired in May of 2007. The current family is contemplating development and preservation options.

Doughoregan Manor was built circa 1725 by Charles Carroll The Settler, and his son Charles Carroll of Annapolis. Charles Carroll III (the grandson of the Settler) was one of four patriots from Maryland who signed the Declaration of Independence. As the only Roman Catholic Signer and, at the time, the richest man in America, he had everything to lose in his pursuit of liberty and of freedom of religion. He is interred in the private Catholic chapel on the grounds of his beloved home. Doughoregan Manor was a frequent destination of many patriots, including George Washington, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock.(George Washington was his neigbor)

Additional historic features include one of the earliest private Catholic Chapels in Maryland; existing significant outbuildings, including barns and slave quarters; and historic cemeteries. The Carrolls were instrumental in creating the first leg of the National Road, which ran from Baltimore City to Ellicott City and westward to the Cumberland Gap. The road, which runs along the northern border of Doughoregan, was designated by Congress in 2002 as an "America’s Byway" - one of only two in Maryland. In 1998, it was designated by the Maryland State Highway Administration as a "Scenic Byway."

"He who postpones till to-morrow what can and ought to be done to-day, will never thrive in this world. It was not by procrastination this estate was acquired, but by activity, thought, perseverance, and economy,(He was one of the most wealthiest men in the colonys) and by the same means it must be preserved and prevented from melting away."   The Catholic founding Fathers. Click here
- Charles Carroll(click here) of Carrollton, July 10, 1801

In this world it really does not matter what your personal religious beliefs are, but what is happening in the world today has everything to do with Religion(Rome).  It does not matter if you believe in them or not, if the people who believe in them hold positions of power this will most assuredly affect you.

Two Occult Powers United For Final World Control

Who Rules?