NOTES.

NOTES.152Franklin’sMemoirs(London, 1818, p. 201), (Sparks, p. 176). “In 1754, war with France being again apprehended, a congress of commissioners from the different colonies was by an order of the lords of trade to be assembled in Albany; there to confer with the chiefs of the six nations, concerning the means of defending both their country and ours.We met the other commissioners at Albany about the middle of June. In our way thither I projected and drew up a plan for the union of all the colonies under one government, so far as might be necessary for defence, and other important general purposes. As we passed through New York, I had there shown my project to Mr. James Alexander and Mr. Kennedy, two gentlemen of great knowledge in public affairs, and being fortified by their approbation, I ventured to lay it before the congress. It then appeared that several of the commissioners had formed plans of the same kind. A previous question was first taken, whether a union should be established, which passed in the affirmative, unanimously. A committee was then appointed, one member from each colony, to consider the several plans and report. Mine happened to be preferred, and with a few amendments was accordingly reported. By this plan the general government was to be administered by a President General appointed and supported by the Crown; and a grand Council to be chosen by the representatives of the people of the several colonies met in their respective assemblies. The debates upon it in congress went on daily hand in hand with the Indian business. Many objections and difficulties were started, but at length they were all overcome, and the plan was unanimously agreed to, and copies ordered to be transmitted to the board of trade and to the assemblies of the several provinces. Its fate was singular: the assemblies did not adopt it, as they all thought there was too much prerogative in it; and in England it was judged to have too much of the democratic. The different and contrary reasons of dislike to my plan make me suspect that it was really the true medium: and I am still of opinion it would have been happy for both sides if it had been adopted. The colonies so united would have been sufficiently strong to have defended themselves: there would then have been no need of troops from England; of course the subsequent pretext for taxing America, and the bloody contest it occasioned, would have been avoided.”The plan proposed may be found in Franklin’sWorks(Sparks, i. 36), (London, 1833, v. 299);N. Y. Col. Doc., vi. 889. The proceedings of the Congress inN. Y. Col. Doc., vi. 853, other accounts of the Congress by members; Hutchinson,Hist. Mass. Bay, iii. 19–25; William Smith,History of New York, ii. 180; Stephen Hopkins,A true representation of the plan formed at Albany (in 1754) for uniting all the British northern Colonies, in order to their common safety and defence(R. I. Historical Tracts, No. 9). For an excellent brief statement of the attempts at consolidation and plans suggested for that purpose, see Winsor,Narrative and Critical History of the U. S., v. 611.153The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was founded in 1701. A previous organization bearing a similar name had been founded during the period of the Commonwealth, especially for work among the aborigines in New England, and it is to this association that we owe that most interesting of missionary relics, Eliot’s Indian Bible. Great interest was taken in this by the celebrated Robert Boyle, and scholarships were endowed by Sir Leoline Jenkyns in Jesus College, Oxford, one condition of which was that the beneficiary should devote his life after taking his degree to missionary work in the plantations. The reports of Commissary Bray, who had been sent out to Maryland, of the spiritual destitution of the American colonies and of the difficulties under which the ministers of the Church of England labored, led to the organization and incorporation of the Society, which has been from that day to this an active agency in the spread of religion and knowledge in the colonies of Great Britain. Humphreys,Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Hawkins,Missions of the Church of England.154For a full account of this most interesting revolution, see E. Edwards Beardsley, D. D.,The History of the Church in Connecticut. See alsoLife and Correspondence of Samuel Johnson, D. D., andYale College and the Church(History of the American Episcopal Church, vol. i. 561). Humphreys,Historical Account, 339.155Franklin’sMemoirs, vol. i. pp. 218, 220. An amusing instance of the prevailing ignorance in regard to American affairs even among its friends is given by Benjamin Vaughan in a note in Franklin’sMemoirs, vol. v. p. 320. “To guard against the incursions of the Indians a plan was sent over to America (and, as I think, by authority) suggesting the expediency of clearing away the woods and bushes from a tract of land, a mile in breadth, and extending along the back of the colonies.” It is said that this plan was the contribution of Dean Tucker towards the solution of the Indian problem of the day.156Jones,Hist. New York, ii. 291, 559.Political Magazine, Apr., 1780. Hutchinson,History Mass. Bay, iii. 86–88, 166note, 254, 293. Hutchinson’sDiary, i. 65. For reasons assigned by Hutchinson for the patriotism of John Adams,Hist.iii. 297.157North American Review, lix. p. 270 (Sabine). “It may be asked, why, when the oppressions of the mother country were so very flagrant and apparent, there was not greater unanimity than appears to have existed; and why a party, so large in numbers, which in so many colonies included persons so respectable, and hitherto so universally esteemed, was seemingly, or in fact, averse to breaking away from British dominion. These questions have been put to loyalists themselves. They have answered, that, upon the original formation of parties, they were generally regarded as the common organizations of the ins and outs; the one striving to retain, and the other to gain, patronage and place; and that the mass in taking sides with or against the royal governors, were stimulated by the hopes which politicians have always been able to excite in their followers.”158Moore’sDiary of the American Revolution, i. 37–52, 138.Massachutensis, Letters I., III., IV. Hutchinson,History of Mass. Bay, iii. passim. A. W. Farmer,The Congress Canvassed, p. 8. The name Tory was given first in 1763, as a title of reproach to officers of the crown and such as were for keeping up their authority.Hist. Mass. Bay, iii. 103.159Adams’sWorks, ii. 362.160For the manner in which the temperate remonstrance of the loyal colony of New York was treated, seeParliamentary Register, vol. i. 467–478.161A specimen from a comparatively moderate article upon the loyalists may serve to substantiate the statement of the text (No. Am. Rev., lxv. p. 142): “The meanest, most dastardly, and most cruel scenes and deeds of the Revolution were enacted as the proper fruits of a civil war by a large majority of the Tories, who remained at home, and who, as regulars, as volunteers, in gangs, or as individual outlaws, were the instigators of nearly every foul and atrocious act in the whole strife. It is from these, the majority of the whole number, that the name of Tory has received its hateful associations, which will cling to it to the end of time. A class that includes an Arnold and a Butler can never hope for complete redemption, at least so long as Judas remains in ‘his own place.’”One is glad to appeal from this intemperate and exaggerated language to the essay upon the loyalists by Dr. George E. Ellis, in Winsor’sNarrative and Critical History, vol. vii. It would be as undesirable as it is unnecessary to supply, as could readily be done, instances of gross cruelty and barbarity inflicted by the Whigs upon the unfortunate loyalists “who remained at home.” The Correspondence of Lord Cornwallis gives a most painful picture of the condition of things in the South (Corr., i. 73), and the letters of Count Fersen, who cannot be suspected of prejudice, reveal the hardly less savage condition of affairs in the North. He says, for example, of Rhode Island (Letters, i. 40, 41):“C’est un pays qui sera fort heureux s’il jouit d’une paix longue, et si les deux partis qui le divisent à present ne lui font subir le sort de la Pologne et de tant d’autres républiques. Ces deux partes sont appelés les Whigs et les Torys. Le premier est entièrement pour la liberté et l’independance; il est composé de gens de la plus basse extraction qui ne possédent point de biens; la plupart des habitants de la compagne en sont. Les Torys sont pour les Anglais, ou, pour mieux dire, pour la paix, sans trop se soucier d’être libres ou dépendants; ce sont les gens d’une classe plus distinguée, les seuls qui eussent des biens dans le pays. Lorsque les Whigs sont les plus forts, ils pillent les autres tant qu’ils peuvent.”162Simcoe, Lt.-Col. J. G.,A History of the Operations of a Partisan Corps called the Queen’s Rangers, commanded by Lt.-Col. J. G. Simcoe, during the war of the American Revolution. New York: Bartlett and Welford, 1884, 8vo, pp. 328.163The Americans made several attempts to make use of the Indians: Montgomery used them in his Canadian expedition; they were in the New England army which laid siege to Boston; in April, 1776, Washington wrote to Congress urging their employment in the army, and reported on July 13th that, without special authority, he had directed General Schuyler to engage the Six Nations on the best terms he and his colleagues could procure; and again, submitting the propriety of engaging the Eastern Indians. John Adams thought “we need not be so delicate as to refuse me assistance of Indians, provided we cannot keep them neutral.” A treaty was exchanged with the Eastern Indians on July 17, 1776, whereby they agreed to furnish six hundred Indians for a regiment which was to be officered by the whites. As a result of this, the Massachusetts Council subsequently reported that seven Penobscot Indians, all that could be procured, were enlisted in October for one year; and in November Major Shaw reported with a few Indians who had enlisted in the Continental service. Winsor,Narr. and Crit. Hist., vol. vi. 656, 657. The following brief entry in a diary will show that even among the patriot forces savage customs sometimes found place: “On Monday the 30th sent out a party for some dead Indians. Toward morning found them, and skinned two of them from their hips down for boot legs: one pair for the major, the other for myself.”Proceedings N. J. Hist. Soc., ii. p. 31.164North American Review, lix. 264 (Sabine). “The opponents of the Revolution were powerful in all the thirteen colonies; in some of them they were nearly if not quite equal in number to its friends the Whigs. On the departure of Hutchinson he was addressed by upwards of two hundred merchants, lawyers and other citizens of Boston, Salem and Marblehead. On arrival of Gage, forty-eight from Salem presented their dutiful respects; on his retirement he received the ‘Loyal address from gentlemen and principal inhabitants of Boston’ to the number of ninety-seven, and eighteen country gentlemen and official personages who had taken refuge in Boston.” ...* * * * *“The division of parties in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire was much the same as in Massachusetts. New York was the loyalists’ stronghold, and contained more of them than any colony in America. While proof to sustain this assertion can be adduced to almost any extent, we shall cite but a single though conclusive fact; namely, that soon after the close of the war the Assembly of that State passed a bill prohibiting adherents of the crown from holding office, which was objected to and returned by the Council of Revision, who, among other reasons for their course, stated, that if it were suffered to become a law, there would be difficulty, and in some places an impossibility, of finding men of different political sympathies, even to conduct the elections. In some of the southern colonies, the loyalists were almost as numerous as in New York. In the Carolinas it may be hard to determine which party had the majority; and it will be found that there were occasions when the royal generals obtained twelve or fifteen hundred recruits among the inhabitants, merely by issuing a proclamation or call upon them to stand by their allegiance to “the best of sovereigns.... Few of the Carolinians would enlist under the American banner; but after the capitulation (of Charlestown) they flocked to the royal standard by hundreds.” See also Sabine’sLoyalists, Introductory Sketch; Ryerson,Loyalists of America, ii. 57, 124. For remarks on the war, as a civil war, see Ramsay,Hist. U. S., ii. 467–9.165Sabine, i. 65.166A. W. Farmer,The Congress Canvassed, pp. 17–19, exhibits the manner in which delegates to Congress were chosen in New York. “The New York City committee (a self-appointed body) applied to the supervisors in the several counties to call the people together and to choose committees, which committees were to meet in one grand committee; and this grand committee of committees were to choose the delegates for the county or to declare their approbation of the New York delegates, and if any county did not meet and choose their committee it was to be taken for granted that they acquiesced in the New York choice.” Again as to delegates chosen by the Assemblies: “The Assembly has no legal right to act by itself and claim to represent the people in so doing. The people are not bound by any act of their representatives till it hath received the approbation of the other branches of the legislature. Delegates so appointed are, at best, but delegates of delegates, but representatives of representatives. When therefore the delegates at Philadelphia, in the preamble to their Bill of Rights, and in their letter to his Excellency General Gage, stiled their body ‘a full and free representation of ... all the Colonies from Nova Scotia to Georgia,’ they were guilty of a piece of impudence which was never equalled since the world began, and never will be exceeded while it shall continue.” Again: “No provincial legislature (even if complete) can give them such powers as were lately exercised at Philadelphia. The legislative authority of the province cannot extend further than the province extends. None of its acts are binding one inch beyond its limits. How then can it give authority to a few persons, to make rules and laws for the whole continent?... Before such a mode of legislation can take place, the constitution of our colonies must be subverted and their present independency on one another must be annihilated.”The logic of the loyalist writers is unanswerable, and their legal reasoning is usually correct and precise; the fallacy of their position was that they were in face of a revolution. Elements had been introduced into the struggle which, like the presence of an infinite quantity in an equation, vitiated the reasoning, however correct the process may have been. The author argues, for example: “To talk of subjection to the King of Great Britain, while we disclaim submission to the Parliament of Great Britain, is idle and ridiculous. It is a distinction made by the American Republicans to serve their own rebellious purposes, a gilding with which they have enclosed the pill of sedition, to entice the unwary colonists to swallow it the more readily down. The King of Great Britain was placed on the throne by virtue of an Act of Parliament: And he is king of America, by virtue of being king of Great Britain. He is therefore king of America by Act of Parliament. And if we disclaim that authority which made him our king, we, in fact, reject him from being our king, for we disclaim that authority by which he is king at all.” It may be noticed that the fundamental Whig doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament, which is here so strongly urged, was never understood or appreciated by those who called themselves Whigs in America.167Clinton-Cornwallis Correspondence, i. pp. 263, 265.168Clinton-Cornwallis Correspondence, ii. pp. 308, 309.169Jones, Thomas,History of New York, i. 362–3, 172–176.170Christian Examiner, viii. pp. 127, 128 (Dabney). Curwen,Journal, 475, 479.171Sabine,North American Review, lix. pp. 287, 288.Loyalists, i. 71–81. Ryerson,Loyalists of America, ii. 130, 136.172No. Am. Rev., lix. p. 289.173The Journal and Letters of the late Samuel Curwen, New York and Boston, 1842, p. 147.174Parliamentary History, vol. xxiii. 411, 412, 430, 481. The following extracts may be added to those given in the text; Mr. Burke said: “Better to have left the whole to future negotiation, and to have been totally silent upon the subject in the treaty, than to have consented to have set our hands to a gross libel on the national character, and in our flagitious article plunged the dagger into the hearts of the loyalists, and manifested our own impotency, ingratitude and disgrace” (p. 468). In the same debate Mr. Lee said: “Europe, Asia, Africa and America beheld the dismembership and diminution of the British Empire. But this, alarming and calamitous as it was, was nothing when put in competition with another of the crimes of the present peace, the cession of men into the hands of their enemies, and delivering over to confiscation, tyranny, resentment and oppression the unhappy men who trusted to our fair promises and deceitful words. This was the great ground of his objection: and he called it a disgraceful, wicked and treacherous peace; inadequate to its object, and such as no man could vote to be honorable without delivering his character over to damnation for ever” (p. 492).175Ryerson, ii. 64. Curwen’sJournal, 367. Jones,History of N. Y., ii. The bitterness of the mortification, and resentment at the treatment they had received from the hands of their friends, is well exhibited in Judge Jones’s remarkable work, which, however trustworthy or the reverse it may be in other respects, may be followed implicitly as an exhibition of loyalist feeling towards the mother country.176Jones, ii. 645–654. Wilmot,Historical View of the Commission for Enquiry into the Losses, etc., London, 1815. Ryerson, ii. 159–182.Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, ii. 435–437. Sabine, i. 86–90. In March, 1784, the number of persons who had preferred their petitions was 2,063, and the alleged losses £7,046,278, besides outstanding debts in America amounting to £2,354,135. “In 1788 Mr. Pitt submitted a plan for classifying the claimants, and of classifying and apportioning the nature and amount of consolation to be allotted to each; and to those whose losses had been caused principally by the deprivation of official or professional incomes, he proposed a system of pensions. By the 5th of April, this year (1790), the Commissioners in England had heard and determined 1,680 claims, and had liquidated the same at the sum of £1,887,548. It appeared, finally, that the number of applicants from England, and from the Canadian provinces, attained to the aggregate of 5,072, of which 954 either withdrew their applications or failed to press them, and the sum of the losses is stated to have been £8,026,045. Another return is made out by Mr. J. E. Wilmot, one of the Commissioners, wherein the amount of the claim is given as £10,358,413, and the amount of the claims allowed at £3,033,091. The subject was again raised in Parliament in 1821, but though there was much sympathy expressed for the sufferings of those who had trusted to their country to recompense their fidelity, the sympathy exhausted itself in words.” See also Lecky,England in the Eighteenth Century, iv. 268. Curwen, 367, 368.177Ryerson, ii. 127.No. Am. Rev., lix. 279. Hawkins,Missions of the Church of England, 249.The Frontier Missionary, or Life of the Rev. Jacob Bailey, by W. S. Bartlett, New York, 1853 (Collections of the Protestant Episcopal Historical Society, vol. ii.). This work gives a pathetic account of the hardships and privations undergone by the exiles in Nova Scotia, as well as a graphic picture of the methods used by the town committees in New England with those who adhered to the cause of the king.178Hawkins,Missions, 371–3. Ryerson, ii. 206.Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Oct., 1886, p. 95. For the treatment of the loyalists in the United States after the treaty of peace, see especially Jones,Hist. New York, vol. ii. Roberts,Hist. of New York, ii. 449 ff. Lecky (Hist. England in the Eighteenth Century, iv. 267) remarks rather sharply: “The loyalists to a great extent sprung from and represented the old gentry of the country. The prospect of seizing their property had been one great motive which induced many to enter the war. The owners of the confiscated property now grasped the helm. New men exercised the social influence of the old families, and they naturally dreaded the restoration of those whom they had displaced.”179Vide supra, Note 11.180No. Am. Rev., lix. 262 (Sabine). Lecky’s tribute to the loyalists may be added: “There were brave and honest men in America who were proud of the great and free empire to which they belonged, who had no desire to shrink from the burden of maintaining it, who remembered with gratitude the English blood that had been shed around Quebec and Montreal, and who, with nothing to hope for from the crown, were prepared to face the most brutal mob violence and the invectives of a scurrilous press, to risk their fortunes, their reputations, and sometimes even their lives, in order to avert civil war and ultimate separation. Most of them ended their days in poverty and exile, and as the supporters of a beaten cause history has paid but a scanty tribute to their memory, but they comprised some of the best and ablest men America has ever produced, and they were contending for an ideal which was at least as worthy as that for which Washington fought. The maintenance of one free, industrial and pacific empire, comprising the whole English race, may have been a dream, but it was at least a noble one.”History of England in the Eighteenth Century, iii. 418. For historical notices of the loyalists in Canada, the following are also useful:Settlement of Upper Canada(1872), by William Canniff;Toronto of Old(1873), by Dr. H. Scadding;Centennial of the Settlement of Upper Canada by the United Empire Loyalists, 1784–1884;The Celebrations at Adolphustown, Toronto, and Niagara, Toronto, 1885.

152Franklin’sMemoirs(London, 1818, p. 201), (Sparks, p. 176). “In 1754, war with France being again apprehended, a congress of commissioners from the different colonies was by an order of the lords of trade to be assembled in Albany; there to confer with the chiefs of the six nations, concerning the means of defending both their country and ours.We met the other commissioners at Albany about the middle of June. In our way thither I projected and drew up a plan for the union of all the colonies under one government, so far as might be necessary for defence, and other important general purposes. As we passed through New York, I had there shown my project to Mr. James Alexander and Mr. Kennedy, two gentlemen of great knowledge in public affairs, and being fortified by their approbation, I ventured to lay it before the congress. It then appeared that several of the commissioners had formed plans of the same kind. A previous question was first taken, whether a union should be established, which passed in the affirmative, unanimously. A committee was then appointed, one member from each colony, to consider the several plans and report. Mine happened to be preferred, and with a few amendments was accordingly reported. By this plan the general government was to be administered by a President General appointed and supported by the Crown; and a grand Council to be chosen by the representatives of the people of the several colonies met in their respective assemblies. The debates upon it in congress went on daily hand in hand with the Indian business. Many objections and difficulties were started, but at length they were all overcome, and the plan was unanimously agreed to, and copies ordered to be transmitted to the board of trade and to the assemblies of the several provinces. Its fate was singular: the assemblies did not adopt it, as they all thought there was too much prerogative in it; and in England it was judged to have too much of the democratic. The different and contrary reasons of dislike to my plan make me suspect that it was really the true medium: and I am still of opinion it would have been happy for both sides if it had been adopted. The colonies so united would have been sufficiently strong to have defended themselves: there would then have been no need of troops from England; of course the subsequent pretext for taxing America, and the bloody contest it occasioned, would have been avoided.”The plan proposed may be found in Franklin’sWorks(Sparks, i. 36), (London, 1833, v. 299);N. Y. Col. Doc., vi. 889. The proceedings of the Congress inN. Y. Col. Doc., vi. 853, other accounts of the Congress by members; Hutchinson,Hist. Mass. Bay, iii. 19–25; William Smith,History of New York, ii. 180; Stephen Hopkins,A true representation of the plan formed at Albany (in 1754) for uniting all the British northern Colonies, in order to their common safety and defence(R. I. Historical Tracts, No. 9). For an excellent brief statement of the attempts at consolidation and plans suggested for that purpose, see Winsor,Narrative and Critical History of the U. S., v. 611.

We met the other commissioners at Albany about the middle of June. In our way thither I projected and drew up a plan for the union of all the colonies under one government, so far as might be necessary for defence, and other important general purposes. As we passed through New York, I had there shown my project to Mr. James Alexander and Mr. Kennedy, two gentlemen of great knowledge in public affairs, and being fortified by their approbation, I ventured to lay it before the congress. It then appeared that several of the commissioners had formed plans of the same kind. A previous question was first taken, whether a union should be established, which passed in the affirmative, unanimously. A committee was then appointed, one member from each colony, to consider the several plans and report. Mine happened to be preferred, and with a few amendments was accordingly reported. By this plan the general government was to be administered by a President General appointed and supported by the Crown; and a grand Council to be chosen by the representatives of the people of the several colonies met in their respective assemblies. The debates upon it in congress went on daily hand in hand with the Indian business. Many objections and difficulties were started, but at length they were all overcome, and the plan was unanimously agreed to, and copies ordered to be transmitted to the board of trade and to the assemblies of the several provinces. Its fate was singular: the assemblies did not adopt it, as they all thought there was too much prerogative in it; and in England it was judged to have too much of the democratic. The different and contrary reasons of dislike to my plan make me suspect that it was really the true medium: and I am still of opinion it would have been happy for both sides if it had been adopted. The colonies so united would have been sufficiently strong to have defended themselves: there would then have been no need of troops from England; of course the subsequent pretext for taxing America, and the bloody contest it occasioned, would have been avoided.”

The plan proposed may be found in Franklin’sWorks(Sparks, i. 36), (London, 1833, v. 299);N. Y. Col. Doc., vi. 889. The proceedings of the Congress inN. Y. Col. Doc., vi. 853, other accounts of the Congress by members; Hutchinson,Hist. Mass. Bay, iii. 19–25; William Smith,History of New York, ii. 180; Stephen Hopkins,A true representation of the plan formed at Albany (in 1754) for uniting all the British northern Colonies, in order to their common safety and defence(R. I. Historical Tracts, No. 9). For an excellent brief statement of the attempts at consolidation and plans suggested for that purpose, see Winsor,Narrative and Critical History of the U. S., v. 611.

153The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was founded in 1701. A previous organization bearing a similar name had been founded during the period of the Commonwealth, especially for work among the aborigines in New England, and it is to this association that we owe that most interesting of missionary relics, Eliot’s Indian Bible. Great interest was taken in this by the celebrated Robert Boyle, and scholarships were endowed by Sir Leoline Jenkyns in Jesus College, Oxford, one condition of which was that the beneficiary should devote his life after taking his degree to missionary work in the plantations. The reports of Commissary Bray, who had been sent out to Maryland, of the spiritual destitution of the American colonies and of the difficulties under which the ministers of the Church of England labored, led to the organization and incorporation of the Society, which has been from that day to this an active agency in the spread of religion and knowledge in the colonies of Great Britain. Humphreys,Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Hawkins,Missions of the Church of England.

154For a full account of this most interesting revolution, see E. Edwards Beardsley, D. D.,The History of the Church in Connecticut. See alsoLife and Correspondence of Samuel Johnson, D. D., andYale College and the Church(History of the American Episcopal Church, vol. i. 561). Humphreys,Historical Account, 339.

155Franklin’sMemoirs, vol. i. pp. 218, 220. An amusing instance of the prevailing ignorance in regard to American affairs even among its friends is given by Benjamin Vaughan in a note in Franklin’sMemoirs, vol. v. p. 320. “To guard against the incursions of the Indians a plan was sent over to America (and, as I think, by authority) suggesting the expediency of clearing away the woods and bushes from a tract of land, a mile in breadth, and extending along the back of the colonies.” It is said that this plan was the contribution of Dean Tucker towards the solution of the Indian problem of the day.

156Jones,Hist. New York, ii. 291, 559.Political Magazine, Apr., 1780. Hutchinson,History Mass. Bay, iii. 86–88, 166note, 254, 293. Hutchinson’sDiary, i. 65. For reasons assigned by Hutchinson for the patriotism of John Adams,Hist.iii. 297.

157North American Review, lix. p. 270 (Sabine). “It may be asked, why, when the oppressions of the mother country were so very flagrant and apparent, there was not greater unanimity than appears to have existed; and why a party, so large in numbers, which in so many colonies included persons so respectable, and hitherto so universally esteemed, was seemingly, or in fact, averse to breaking away from British dominion. These questions have been put to loyalists themselves. They have answered, that, upon the original formation of parties, they were generally regarded as the common organizations of the ins and outs; the one striving to retain, and the other to gain, patronage and place; and that the mass in taking sides with or against the royal governors, were stimulated by the hopes which politicians have always been able to excite in their followers.”

158Moore’sDiary of the American Revolution, i. 37–52, 138.Massachutensis, Letters I., III., IV. Hutchinson,History of Mass. Bay, iii. passim. A. W. Farmer,The Congress Canvassed, p. 8. The name Tory was given first in 1763, as a title of reproach to officers of the crown and such as were for keeping up their authority.Hist. Mass. Bay, iii. 103.

159Adams’sWorks, ii. 362.

160For the manner in which the temperate remonstrance of the loyal colony of New York was treated, seeParliamentary Register, vol. i. 467–478.

161A specimen from a comparatively moderate article upon the loyalists may serve to substantiate the statement of the text (No. Am. Rev., lxv. p. 142): “The meanest, most dastardly, and most cruel scenes and deeds of the Revolution were enacted as the proper fruits of a civil war by a large majority of the Tories, who remained at home, and who, as regulars, as volunteers, in gangs, or as individual outlaws, were the instigators of nearly every foul and atrocious act in the whole strife. It is from these, the majority of the whole number, that the name of Tory has received its hateful associations, which will cling to it to the end of time. A class that includes an Arnold and a Butler can never hope for complete redemption, at least so long as Judas remains in ‘his own place.’”One is glad to appeal from this intemperate and exaggerated language to the essay upon the loyalists by Dr. George E. Ellis, in Winsor’sNarrative and Critical History, vol. vii. It would be as undesirable as it is unnecessary to supply, as could readily be done, instances of gross cruelty and barbarity inflicted by the Whigs upon the unfortunate loyalists “who remained at home.” The Correspondence of Lord Cornwallis gives a most painful picture of the condition of things in the South (Corr., i. 73), and the letters of Count Fersen, who cannot be suspected of prejudice, reveal the hardly less savage condition of affairs in the North. He says, for example, of Rhode Island (Letters, i. 40, 41):“C’est un pays qui sera fort heureux s’il jouit d’une paix longue, et si les deux partis qui le divisent à present ne lui font subir le sort de la Pologne et de tant d’autres républiques. Ces deux partes sont appelés les Whigs et les Torys. Le premier est entièrement pour la liberté et l’independance; il est composé de gens de la plus basse extraction qui ne possédent point de biens; la plupart des habitants de la compagne en sont. Les Torys sont pour les Anglais, ou, pour mieux dire, pour la paix, sans trop se soucier d’être libres ou dépendants; ce sont les gens d’une classe plus distinguée, les seuls qui eussent des biens dans le pays. Lorsque les Whigs sont les plus forts, ils pillent les autres tant qu’ils peuvent.”

One is glad to appeal from this intemperate and exaggerated language to the essay upon the loyalists by Dr. George E. Ellis, in Winsor’sNarrative and Critical History, vol. vii. It would be as undesirable as it is unnecessary to supply, as could readily be done, instances of gross cruelty and barbarity inflicted by the Whigs upon the unfortunate loyalists “who remained at home.” The Correspondence of Lord Cornwallis gives a most painful picture of the condition of things in the South (Corr., i. 73), and the letters of Count Fersen, who cannot be suspected of prejudice, reveal the hardly less savage condition of affairs in the North. He says, for example, of Rhode Island (Letters, i. 40, 41):

“C’est un pays qui sera fort heureux s’il jouit d’une paix longue, et si les deux partis qui le divisent à present ne lui font subir le sort de la Pologne et de tant d’autres républiques. Ces deux partes sont appelés les Whigs et les Torys. Le premier est entièrement pour la liberté et l’independance; il est composé de gens de la plus basse extraction qui ne possédent point de biens; la plupart des habitants de la compagne en sont. Les Torys sont pour les Anglais, ou, pour mieux dire, pour la paix, sans trop se soucier d’être libres ou dépendants; ce sont les gens d’une classe plus distinguée, les seuls qui eussent des biens dans le pays. Lorsque les Whigs sont les plus forts, ils pillent les autres tant qu’ils peuvent.”

162Simcoe, Lt.-Col. J. G.,A History of the Operations of a Partisan Corps called the Queen’s Rangers, commanded by Lt.-Col. J. G. Simcoe, during the war of the American Revolution. New York: Bartlett and Welford, 1884, 8vo, pp. 328.

163The Americans made several attempts to make use of the Indians: Montgomery used them in his Canadian expedition; they were in the New England army which laid siege to Boston; in April, 1776, Washington wrote to Congress urging their employment in the army, and reported on July 13th that, without special authority, he had directed General Schuyler to engage the Six Nations on the best terms he and his colleagues could procure; and again, submitting the propriety of engaging the Eastern Indians. John Adams thought “we need not be so delicate as to refuse me assistance of Indians, provided we cannot keep them neutral.” A treaty was exchanged with the Eastern Indians on July 17, 1776, whereby they agreed to furnish six hundred Indians for a regiment which was to be officered by the whites. As a result of this, the Massachusetts Council subsequently reported that seven Penobscot Indians, all that could be procured, were enlisted in October for one year; and in November Major Shaw reported with a few Indians who had enlisted in the Continental service. Winsor,Narr. and Crit. Hist., vol. vi. 656, 657. The following brief entry in a diary will show that even among the patriot forces savage customs sometimes found place: “On Monday the 30th sent out a party for some dead Indians. Toward morning found them, and skinned two of them from their hips down for boot legs: one pair for the major, the other for myself.”Proceedings N. J. Hist. Soc., ii. p. 31.

164North American Review, lix. 264 (Sabine). “The opponents of the Revolution were powerful in all the thirteen colonies; in some of them they were nearly if not quite equal in number to its friends the Whigs. On the departure of Hutchinson he was addressed by upwards of two hundred merchants, lawyers and other citizens of Boston, Salem and Marblehead. On arrival of Gage, forty-eight from Salem presented their dutiful respects; on his retirement he received the ‘Loyal address from gentlemen and principal inhabitants of Boston’ to the number of ninety-seven, and eighteen country gentlemen and official personages who had taken refuge in Boston.” ...* * * * *“The division of parties in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire was much the same as in Massachusetts. New York was the loyalists’ stronghold, and contained more of them than any colony in America. While proof to sustain this assertion can be adduced to almost any extent, we shall cite but a single though conclusive fact; namely, that soon after the close of the war the Assembly of that State passed a bill prohibiting adherents of the crown from holding office, which was objected to and returned by the Council of Revision, who, among other reasons for their course, stated, that if it were suffered to become a law, there would be difficulty, and in some places an impossibility, of finding men of different political sympathies, even to conduct the elections. In some of the southern colonies, the loyalists were almost as numerous as in New York. In the Carolinas it may be hard to determine which party had the majority; and it will be found that there were occasions when the royal generals obtained twelve or fifteen hundred recruits among the inhabitants, merely by issuing a proclamation or call upon them to stand by their allegiance to “the best of sovereigns.... Few of the Carolinians would enlist under the American banner; but after the capitulation (of Charlestown) they flocked to the royal standard by hundreds.” See also Sabine’sLoyalists, Introductory Sketch; Ryerson,Loyalists of America, ii. 57, 124. For remarks on the war, as a civil war, see Ramsay,Hist. U. S., ii. 467–9.

* * * * *

“The division of parties in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire was much the same as in Massachusetts. New York was the loyalists’ stronghold, and contained more of them than any colony in America. While proof to sustain this assertion can be adduced to almost any extent, we shall cite but a single though conclusive fact; namely, that soon after the close of the war the Assembly of that State passed a bill prohibiting adherents of the crown from holding office, which was objected to and returned by the Council of Revision, who, among other reasons for their course, stated, that if it were suffered to become a law, there would be difficulty, and in some places an impossibility, of finding men of different political sympathies, even to conduct the elections. In some of the southern colonies, the loyalists were almost as numerous as in New York. In the Carolinas it may be hard to determine which party had the majority; and it will be found that there were occasions when the royal generals obtained twelve or fifteen hundred recruits among the inhabitants, merely by issuing a proclamation or call upon them to stand by their allegiance to “the best of sovereigns.... Few of the Carolinians would enlist under the American banner; but after the capitulation (of Charlestown) they flocked to the royal standard by hundreds.” See also Sabine’sLoyalists, Introductory Sketch; Ryerson,Loyalists of America, ii. 57, 124. For remarks on the war, as a civil war, see Ramsay,Hist. U. S., ii. 467–9.

165Sabine, i. 65.

166A. W. Farmer,The Congress Canvassed, pp. 17–19, exhibits the manner in which delegates to Congress were chosen in New York. “The New York City committee (a self-appointed body) applied to the supervisors in the several counties to call the people together and to choose committees, which committees were to meet in one grand committee; and this grand committee of committees were to choose the delegates for the county or to declare their approbation of the New York delegates, and if any county did not meet and choose their committee it was to be taken for granted that they acquiesced in the New York choice.” Again as to delegates chosen by the Assemblies: “The Assembly has no legal right to act by itself and claim to represent the people in so doing. The people are not bound by any act of their representatives till it hath received the approbation of the other branches of the legislature. Delegates so appointed are, at best, but delegates of delegates, but representatives of representatives. When therefore the delegates at Philadelphia, in the preamble to their Bill of Rights, and in their letter to his Excellency General Gage, stiled their body ‘a full and free representation of ... all the Colonies from Nova Scotia to Georgia,’ they were guilty of a piece of impudence which was never equalled since the world began, and never will be exceeded while it shall continue.” Again: “No provincial legislature (even if complete) can give them such powers as were lately exercised at Philadelphia. The legislative authority of the province cannot extend further than the province extends. None of its acts are binding one inch beyond its limits. How then can it give authority to a few persons, to make rules and laws for the whole continent?... Before such a mode of legislation can take place, the constitution of our colonies must be subverted and their present independency on one another must be annihilated.”The logic of the loyalist writers is unanswerable, and their legal reasoning is usually correct and precise; the fallacy of their position was that they were in face of a revolution. Elements had been introduced into the struggle which, like the presence of an infinite quantity in an equation, vitiated the reasoning, however correct the process may have been. The author argues, for example: “To talk of subjection to the King of Great Britain, while we disclaim submission to the Parliament of Great Britain, is idle and ridiculous. It is a distinction made by the American Republicans to serve their own rebellious purposes, a gilding with which they have enclosed the pill of sedition, to entice the unwary colonists to swallow it the more readily down. The King of Great Britain was placed on the throne by virtue of an Act of Parliament: And he is king of America, by virtue of being king of Great Britain. He is therefore king of America by Act of Parliament. And if we disclaim that authority which made him our king, we, in fact, reject him from being our king, for we disclaim that authority by which he is king at all.” It may be noticed that the fundamental Whig doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament, which is here so strongly urged, was never understood or appreciated by those who called themselves Whigs in America.

The logic of the loyalist writers is unanswerable, and their legal reasoning is usually correct and precise; the fallacy of their position was that they were in face of a revolution. Elements had been introduced into the struggle which, like the presence of an infinite quantity in an equation, vitiated the reasoning, however correct the process may have been. The author argues, for example: “To talk of subjection to the King of Great Britain, while we disclaim submission to the Parliament of Great Britain, is idle and ridiculous. It is a distinction made by the American Republicans to serve their own rebellious purposes, a gilding with which they have enclosed the pill of sedition, to entice the unwary colonists to swallow it the more readily down. The King of Great Britain was placed on the throne by virtue of an Act of Parliament: And he is king of America, by virtue of being king of Great Britain. He is therefore king of America by Act of Parliament. And if we disclaim that authority which made him our king, we, in fact, reject him from being our king, for we disclaim that authority by which he is king at all.” It may be noticed that the fundamental Whig doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament, which is here so strongly urged, was never understood or appreciated by those who called themselves Whigs in America.

167Clinton-Cornwallis Correspondence, i. pp. 263, 265.

168Clinton-Cornwallis Correspondence, ii. pp. 308, 309.

169Jones, Thomas,History of New York, i. 362–3, 172–176.

170Christian Examiner, viii. pp. 127, 128 (Dabney). Curwen,Journal, 475, 479.

171Sabine,North American Review, lix. pp. 287, 288.Loyalists, i. 71–81. Ryerson,Loyalists of America, ii. 130, 136.

172No. Am. Rev., lix. p. 289.

173The Journal and Letters of the late Samuel Curwen, New York and Boston, 1842, p. 147.

174Parliamentary History, vol. xxiii. 411, 412, 430, 481. The following extracts may be added to those given in the text; Mr. Burke said: “Better to have left the whole to future negotiation, and to have been totally silent upon the subject in the treaty, than to have consented to have set our hands to a gross libel on the national character, and in our flagitious article plunged the dagger into the hearts of the loyalists, and manifested our own impotency, ingratitude and disgrace” (p. 468). In the same debate Mr. Lee said: “Europe, Asia, Africa and America beheld the dismembership and diminution of the British Empire. But this, alarming and calamitous as it was, was nothing when put in competition with another of the crimes of the present peace, the cession of men into the hands of their enemies, and delivering over to confiscation, tyranny, resentment and oppression the unhappy men who trusted to our fair promises and deceitful words. This was the great ground of his objection: and he called it a disgraceful, wicked and treacherous peace; inadequate to its object, and such as no man could vote to be honorable without delivering his character over to damnation for ever” (p. 492).

175Ryerson, ii. 64. Curwen’sJournal, 367. Jones,History of N. Y., ii. The bitterness of the mortification, and resentment at the treatment they had received from the hands of their friends, is well exhibited in Judge Jones’s remarkable work, which, however trustworthy or the reverse it may be in other respects, may be followed implicitly as an exhibition of loyalist feeling towards the mother country.

176Jones, ii. 645–654. Wilmot,Historical View of the Commission for Enquiry into the Losses, etc., London, 1815. Ryerson, ii. 159–182.Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, ii. 435–437. Sabine, i. 86–90. In March, 1784, the number of persons who had preferred their petitions was 2,063, and the alleged losses £7,046,278, besides outstanding debts in America amounting to £2,354,135. “In 1788 Mr. Pitt submitted a plan for classifying the claimants, and of classifying and apportioning the nature and amount of consolation to be allotted to each; and to those whose losses had been caused principally by the deprivation of official or professional incomes, he proposed a system of pensions. By the 5th of April, this year (1790), the Commissioners in England had heard and determined 1,680 claims, and had liquidated the same at the sum of £1,887,548. It appeared, finally, that the number of applicants from England, and from the Canadian provinces, attained to the aggregate of 5,072, of which 954 either withdrew their applications or failed to press them, and the sum of the losses is stated to have been £8,026,045. Another return is made out by Mr. J. E. Wilmot, one of the Commissioners, wherein the amount of the claim is given as £10,358,413, and the amount of the claims allowed at £3,033,091. The subject was again raised in Parliament in 1821, but though there was much sympathy expressed for the sufferings of those who had trusted to their country to recompense their fidelity, the sympathy exhausted itself in words.” See also Lecky,England in the Eighteenth Century, iv. 268. Curwen, 367, 368.

177Ryerson, ii. 127.No. Am. Rev., lix. 279. Hawkins,Missions of the Church of England, 249.The Frontier Missionary, or Life of the Rev. Jacob Bailey, by W. S. Bartlett, New York, 1853 (Collections of the Protestant Episcopal Historical Society, vol. ii.). This work gives a pathetic account of the hardships and privations undergone by the exiles in Nova Scotia, as well as a graphic picture of the methods used by the town committees in New England with those who adhered to the cause of the king.

178Hawkins,Missions, 371–3. Ryerson, ii. 206.Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Oct., 1886, p. 95. For the treatment of the loyalists in the United States after the treaty of peace, see especially Jones,Hist. New York, vol. ii. Roberts,Hist. of New York, ii. 449 ff. Lecky (Hist. England in the Eighteenth Century, iv. 267) remarks rather sharply: “The loyalists to a great extent sprung from and represented the old gentry of the country. The prospect of seizing their property had been one great motive which induced many to enter the war. The owners of the confiscated property now grasped the helm. New men exercised the social influence of the old families, and they naturally dreaded the restoration of those whom they had displaced.”

179Vide supra, Note 11.

180No. Am. Rev., lix. 262 (Sabine). Lecky’s tribute to the loyalists may be added: “There were brave and honest men in America who were proud of the great and free empire to which they belonged, who had no desire to shrink from the burden of maintaining it, who remembered with gratitude the English blood that had been shed around Quebec and Montreal, and who, with nothing to hope for from the crown, were prepared to face the most brutal mob violence and the invectives of a scurrilous press, to risk their fortunes, their reputations, and sometimes even their lives, in order to avert civil war and ultimate separation. Most of them ended their days in poverty and exile, and as the supporters of a beaten cause history has paid but a scanty tribute to their memory, but they comprised some of the best and ablest men America has ever produced, and they were contending for an ideal which was at least as worthy as that for which Washington fought. The maintenance of one free, industrial and pacific empire, comprising the whole English race, may have been a dream, but it was at least a noble one.”History of England in the Eighteenth Century, iii. 418. For historical notices of the loyalists in Canada, the following are also useful:Settlement of Upper Canada(1872), by William Canniff;Toronto of Old(1873), by Dr. H. Scadding;Centennial of the Settlement of Upper Canada by the United Empire Loyalists, 1784–1884;The Celebrations at Adolphustown, Toronto, and Niagara, Toronto, 1885.

THE END.

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