Local politics had much to do with the side that a group or an individual might choose in the Revolution. Many who came from New York, and especially those from Tryon County, had a strong personal loyalty to the Johnson family. Sir William Johnson had come to western New York from Ireland in 1738 to manage his uncle’s lands. A dynamic leader with magnetic appeal for whites and Indians alike, Johnson quickly rose to become superintendent of the Northern Indian Department and a great landowner. He exercised an impressive influence in his own area; he had been responsible for the creation of Tryon County and its officers were personally loyal to him. Through the large sum expended by the Indian Department and the British army, Johnson also controlled a munificent amount of patronage along the western frontier, and many were beholden to him. Although Sir William died on the eve of the Revolution, his son Sir John and his nephew Guy ably managed the family’s interests and took many of their tenants and dependants with them to the British side. A substantial segment of these tenants were Scottish Highland Catholics who had arrived in 1773 and were dependent upon, and owed gratitude to, their landlord.
But if some tenants followed their landlords, others were fighting against them. New York had been the scene of bitter struggles over land which erupted into major tenant riots in 1766. Many of the rich landowners sided with the Patriots. Numbers of their tenants, not surprisingly, favoured the Loyalists; they hoped for land reform if the king defeated their landlords. Loyal farmers from Albany County, for example, were often in revolt against the leading landlords, the rebel Livingstons. In other areas of New York, where the landlords were Tory, the tenants tended to be Whig. Land was also an issue in Pennsylvania, especially in the border area with New York where a decade before the Revolution the Susquehanna Company, run by Yankees from Connecticut, had claimed ownership of the land. They had been unsuccessfully opposed by Pennsylvanians in what amounted to a small land war. When the Revolution came, many of the Pennsylvanians joined the Loyalist regiments.
Human nature being what it is, not all Americans were avid Tories or Whigs. Many of those favourable to the royal cause preferred to remain passive during the Revolution, living out their daily lives quietly and ignoring the conflagration. In such cases, circumstances – rebel persecution, the success of British arms or pressure from their own side – could be a major factor in forcing them to openly choose sides. To strengthen the wavering and ferret out secret Loyalists, all the revolting American colonies passed at least one law requiring inhabitants to take oaths, which usually involved foreswearing their old loyalties and pledging allegiance to the new regime and faith in the Revolution. Those who hesitated or refused could find themselves facing penalties ranging from disfranchisement and exclusion from political office through extra taxation and confiscation of property to imprisonment, banishment, and execution for exiles who returned. In November 1777 the Continental Congress recommended the confiscation of Loyalist estates, a suggestion which in some places had already been acted upon. All the states finally taxed or confiscated Loyalist property. The harshness of the penalties imposed on Tories and the thoroughness of their application varied from state to state and were usually severest where Loyalists were most numerous and therefore most dangerous. The areas from which Ontario Loyalists came were not noted for their leniency. New York was considered one of the most punitive of the states, but Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Rhode Island were all harsh. Those who tended towards the royal cause and therefore faced extreme penalties often found themselves with little alternative other than to join openly the Loyalists.
Sympathy for the crown could be a dangerous sentiment in the brave new republic. Those who defied the Revolution could find themselves non-persons without civil rights, turned out of their homes with no more than the clothes on their backs or flung into a prison. The most famous of the Loyalist prisons was Simsbury Mines in Connecticut. The cells there were forty yards below the surface into which “the prisoners are let down by windlass into the dismal cavern, through a hole, which answers the purpose of conveying their food and air, as to light, it scarcely reaches them.” Many Loyalists were murdered, lynched or executed for such acts as spying, recruiting, counterfeiting or guiding troops to the attack.
Loyalists also suffered in ways that were not the direct result of legislation or government action. Many social pressures were brought to bear on them. The lucky ones might experience nothing more than social ostracism; others suffered under mob attacks, and many had their homes looted or burned. A favourite punishment for loyalism, which at times threatened to reach the proportions of a national sport, consisted of stripping the victim to the “buff and breaches” and coating him with hot tar and feathers. The damage to the skin could be extensive and the awful goo was virtually irremovable. The tarring ceremony was often followed by a cruel round of “riding the rail,” which consisted of jogging the victim along with a sharp-edged rail between his legs. In the face of such vengeance, many who remained loyal sought refuge within the British lines.
The Most Notorious Loyalist Prison: a line engraving, “A Prospective View of Old Newgate Connecticut’s State Prison,” by Richard Brunton
Simsbury, or Granby, copper mines ceased production by 1773 and were converted into Connecticut’s gaol. Renamed after the London prison, Newgate, the mines soon gained a fitting reputation. Loyalists and prisoners of war suffered ghastly privations in its subterranean cells.
Certainly the existence of a strong military presence in an area encouraged many Loyalists to declare themselves, just as major British military campaigns prompted many to come forward and actively join the cause. Thus the fact that the British held New York City throughout the war and the fact that a number of major campaigns were fought in New York State encouraged Loyalism there and in adjoining parts of Connecticut and New Jersey. The capture of Philadelphia clearly had a bearing on loyalism in Pennsylvania, in nearby Delaware and in southern New Jersey. Reluctant loyalists who were neither compelled by the vengeance of the Patriots nor encouraged by the successes of the British might still have to face compulsion from the recruiting parties of their own side, whose methods were sometimes far from gentle. Barnabas Kelly, a settler in the Mohawk Valley, reported that he had “heard John Young of Butternut read a proclamation from Butler [John Butler, leader of the Loyalist Butler’s Rangers] desiring all the friends of government to join him, and bring their cattle together with their wives and families and they would be kindly received by the said Butler.” For those for whom the carrot was not sufficient, there was a stick. Shortly after the reading of the proclamation, the loyal Indian leader Joseph Brant appeared on the scene with a party of warriors. He ordered a number of the settlers to go with him, or if they did not, “to take their own risks.” His meaning could not be mistaken and the settlers went.6 Episodes such as this make it clear that desperate conditions in the war led to drastic measures and some consequent blurring of the lines between Tory and Whig. Indeed, especially in the frontier regions, the issues which initially divided Patriot and Loyalist were often lost in the confusion of raids, massacres and lawlessness, blood spilt and vengeance extracted, as the revolutionary conflict became increasingly savage.
Given the swirl of disparate motives that could decide loyalty or rebellion, it is not surprising that for many colonists the final decision was a highly individual one. If many small farmers in New York and Pennsylvania fought for the crown, the vast majority of farmers across the colonies did not. If many German-Americans remained loyal, German-Americans were also at the core of the successionist movement in New York. Large numbers of North American Indians actively supported the British but many more remained apathetic. The Revolution split families and divided business partnerships. Old friends became bitter enemies.
A contemporary account of the War of 1812 contains this revealing account of an incident in that war involving the Glengarry Fencibles:
In this regiment there were a father and three sons, American U.E. Loyalists, all of them