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Loyalists
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In American history, the Loyalists, or Tories, were the men and women who refused to renounce allegiance to the British crown after July 1776; they demonstrated that the AMERICAN REVOLUTION was a civil war as well as a quest for independence. Approximately 500,000 persons, 20 percent of the white population, actively opposed independence; probably a like number were passive Loyalists. There were Loyalists in every colony, but they were most numerous in the Mid-Atlantic states and in the South.
Although the incidence of loyalism was greatest among crown officials, Anglican clergy, social and economic elites, and cultural minorities, the king's friends came from all racial, religious, ethnic, economic, class, and occupational groups. Some, like Joseph GALLOWAY of Pennsylvania, were Whig Loyalists who opposed British policies but also rejected secession from the empire. Sometimes families were divided; Benjamin Franklin's son, William, was a Loyalist. Vested interest, temperament, or political philosophy could separate Patriot from Loyalist.
As much as the Patriots did, the Loyalists put their lives, fortunes, and honor on the line during the Revolution. Besides those who served in the regular British Army, some 19,000 men fought in over 40 Loyalist units, the largest of which was Cortlandt Skinner's New Jersey Volunteers. Refugees gathered in British-occupied New York City, where the Board of Associated Loyalists, headed by William Franklin, helped direct military activities. During the war crown supporters suffered physical abuse, ostracism, disenfranchisement, confiscation of property, imprisonment, banishment, even death. However, only 4,118 Loyalists requested compensation from Britain's Royal Claims Commission after the war, receiving a total of about 3,000,000 pounds.
The Revolution forced approximately 100,000 persons, 2.4 percent of the population (compared with 0.5 percent in the French Revolution), into exile. Some refugees went to England, others to Florida or the Caribbean; at least half went to Canada, where the new colony of NEW BRUNSWICK was created (1784) to meet their demands for lands and recognition. The United Empire Loyalists, a hereditary organization created by the Canadian government in 1789 to honor those who rallied to the crown before the peace of 1783, remains today the Loyalist counterpart to the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution.
Larry R. Gerlach Bibliography: Allen, R., ed., The Loyal Americans (1983);Brown, W., The King's Friends (1965); Calhoon, R. C., The Loyalists in Revolutionary America (1973) and The Loyalist Perception and Other Essays (1989); Colley, L., In Defense of Oligarchy (1982);
