WEBVTT NOTE 13. The Suppression of the Tories Begins 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.520 Volume 4, Part 2, Suppressing Tories 2 00:00:04.520 --> 00:00:10.520 Volume 4, Chapter 13, The Suppression of Tories Begins 3 00:00:10.520 --> 00:00:19.020 Throughout the rebellious colonies developed the pattern of governmental authority largely devoted to fighting the War of the Revolution, 4 00:00:19.020 --> 00:00:26.520 and exercised by illegal representative bodies, provincial congresses or conventions, 5 00:00:26.520 --> 00:00:50.520 Realizing that the executive function should be inherently subordinate to the law-making function, the rebels created a highly democratic system, making committees of safety, operating committees of the legislature, the major executive arms of the provinces, which could function when the legislatures were not in session. 6 00:00:50.520 --> 00:01:13.520 On the local level, the old committees of inspection, observation and correspondence which had enforced the Continental Association naturally evolved into new city and rural committees to run the war, specifically to raise and operate the militia, and especially to crush dissenting Tories. 7 00:01:13.520 --> 00:01:20.000 The Americans had had no chance to hear present-day opinion that they were merely fighting a conservative 8 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:25.920 and moderate revolution. Hence, they went at the Tories with a zeal that went beyond 9 00:01:25.920 --> 00:01:33.960 the bounds of libertarian principle. The concept of enemy of American liberty was quickly extended 10 00:01:33.960 --> 00:01:40.360 from violators of the continental boycott to any one critical of the revolution. Known 11 00:01:40.360 --> 00:02:03.800 Letters, especially to England, were seized at the post offices and carefully examined. 12 00:02:03.800 --> 00:02:10.160 Spies eagerly took on the task of keeping watch on suspected Tories, and in contrast 13 00:02:10.160 --> 00:02:15.620 to enforcement of the Continental Association, committees did not try to confine punishment 14 00:02:15.620 --> 00:02:24.060 of Tories to voluntary boycott and ostracism. Instead, fines, imprisonment, confiscation, 15 00:02:24.060 --> 00:02:30.620 and banishment came increasingly into play. Persons were hauled before local committees 16 00:02:30.620 --> 00:02:36.720 for Criticizing the Continental Congress, Belittling the Massachusetts Army, Criticizing 17 00:02:36.720 --> 00:02:42.800 Presbyterian Prominence in the Revolution, and a host of other Errors of Opinion. 18 00:02:42.800 --> 00:02:48.480 The new extra-legal Massachusetts General Court urged Harvard College to dismiss all 19 00:02:48.480 --> 00:02:54.900 faculty members having Tory views. Individual Tories were not only boycotted and forced 20 00:02:54.900 --> 00:03:00.080 to recant their heresies, stronger methods of punishment were adopted as soon as the 21 00:03:00.080 --> 00:03:13.760 As early as May 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress recommended to local selectmen and 22 00:03:13.760 --> 00:03:21.200 committees that they confiscate the arms of all unfriendly to the rebel cause and forbid 23 00:03:21.200 --> 00:03:28.240 anyone to leave the province without special permission of the local committee or the Congress. 24 00:03:28.240 --> 00:03:34.120 The following month, the Provincial Congress directed the town committees and select men 25 00:03:34.120 --> 00:03:40.600 to confiscate and take charge of the property of all Tories who had fled behind the British 26 00:03:40.600 --> 00:03:44.400 lines at Boston or elsewhere. 27 00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:50.680 In New Hampshire, the Provincial Congress, as the supreme judicial body of the province, 28 00:03:50.680 --> 00:03:57.780 sentenced Tory Colonel John Fenton to indefinite imprisonment as an enemy to the liberties 29 00:03:57.780 --> 00:04:04.220 of America. In September, the New York Provincial Congress created a hierarchy of penalties 30 00:04:04.220 --> 00:04:11.780 for Tories, including fines, disarming, prison and banishment. And in November, the Rhode 31 00:04:11.780 --> 00:04:18.620 Island General Assembly passed a law decreeing death and forfeit of property to anyone assisting 32 00:04:18.620 --> 00:04:25.340 the British Army with information or supplies. One of the critical litmus tests used by 33 00:04:25.340 --> 00:04:31.480 by the Local Committees to Smoke Out Tories was a public oath of loyalty to a defense 34 00:04:31.480 --> 00:04:37.340 association succeeding the old Continental Association. 35 00:04:37.340 --> 00:04:44.100 As historian Alexander C. Flick concluded, the association became the first decisive 36 00:04:44.100 --> 00:04:50.260 test of the politics of individuals. It stamped the individual as a Whig or Tory in the eyes 37 00:04:50.260 --> 00:05:03.700 Hesitation to sign involved suspicion, refusal, guilt. The loyalist who was true to his convictions, 38 00:05:03.700 --> 00:05:10.380 creed and king, was detested, reviled, and if prominent, ruined in business, tarred and 39 00:05:10.380 --> 00:05:17.980 feathered, mobbed, ostracized or imprisoned, and all this at the will of a committee, self-constituted 40 00:05:17.980 --> 00:05:24.840 and Responsible to No One. Thus, a revolution and revolutionaries dedicated to the cause 41 00:05:24.840 --> 00:05:32.640 of liberty moved to suppress crucial liberties of their opposition, an ironic but not unsurprising 42 00:05:32.640 --> 00:05:39.020 illustration of the inherent contradiction between liberty and power, a conflict that 43 00:05:39.020 --> 00:05:47.700 can all too readily come into play even when power is employed on behalf of liberty. Hesitant 44 00:05:47.700 --> 00:05:54.000 to take any steps that might lead irrevocably to independence, the Continental Congress 45 00:05:54.000 --> 00:06:01.060 refused to do anything about hunting and combating Tories, leaving the task to the separate towns 46 00:06:01.060 --> 00:06:08.060 and provinces. This despite the request from Massachusetts and Maryland for a general congressional 47 00:06:08.060 --> 00:06:17.060 test oath for all the colonies. In October 1775, however, Congress learned that Dr. Benjamin 48 00:06:17.060 --> 00:06:22.900 George, one of the top revolutionary leaders of Massachusetts and chief surgeon of the 49 00:06:22.900 --> 00:06:29.900 Continental Army, was a traitor in the pay of the British. This grave shock led Congress 50 00:06:31.260 --> 00:06:37.500 to urge the various local committees to crack down on everyone who might endanger the safety 51 00:06:37.500 --> 00:06:43.340 of the colony or liberties of America. The committees redoubled their efforts in rounding 52 00:06:43.340 --> 00:06:58.540 The Continental Army was also authorized to aid in suppressing Tories. 53 00:06:58.540 --> 00:07:03.780 Even as conservative a man as George Washington wondered why the Tories, a bombable pest of 54 00:07:03.780 --> 00:07:08.940 society who are preying upon the vitals of their country, should be suffered to stalk 55 00:07:08.940 --> 00:07:15.060 at large, whilst we know that they will do us every mischief in their power. 56 00:07:15.060 --> 00:07:20.360 In their grave concern with the American Tories, the American revolutionaries were not striking 57 00:07:20.360 --> 00:07:22.260 at phantoms. 58 00:07:22.260 --> 00:07:28.060 While the idea that Tory and rebel sentiment among the people was equally matched is a 59 00:07:28.060 --> 00:07:34.320 historical misreading of John Adams, it remains true that the Tories constituted a real and 60 00:07:34.320 --> 00:07:37.540 substantial threat to the revolution. 61 00:07:37.540 --> 00:07:43.100 A letter by John Adams has been traditionally interpreted by historians as judging that 62 00:07:43.100 --> 00:07:49.220 one-third of the Americans supported the revolution, one-third were opposed, and one-third were 63 00:07:49.220 --> 00:07:57.220 neutral. In fact, Adams was referring to American attitudes toward the later French, not the 64 00:07:57.220 --> 00:08:03.740 American Revolution. In another letter, Adams estimated that the American Revolution was 65 00:08:03.740 --> 00:08:10.220 was supported by two-thirds of those taking sides one way or the other. 66 00:08:10.220 --> 00:08:15.900 About one-third of politically interested Americans were Tories or loyalists, while 67 00:08:15.900 --> 00:08:20.980 the Revolution held the allegiance of the other two-thirds. 68 00:08:20.980 --> 00:08:26.540 Also neglected is what the Tories did during the Revolutionary War, for even the historians 69 00:08:26.540 --> 00:08:33.540 concentrating on the Tories have been so sympathetic to them as to highlight their status as refugees 70 00:08:33.740 --> 00:08:42.780 and to play down their considerable role as armed and militant warriors of counter-revolution. 71 00:08:42.780 --> 00:08:48.100 The population of the rebelling colonies at the time of outbreak totaled approximately 72 00:08:48.100 --> 00:08:56.540 2.5 million. Of these, about half a million were Negro slaves, who certainly were potential 73 00:08:56.540 --> 00:09:03.540 rebels against the revolutionaries and hence potential aides to the British. If we consider 74 00:09:03.740 --> 00:09:26.580 Who were the Tories? 75 00:09:26.580 --> 00:09:30.320 This question has suffered from insufficient research. 76 00:09:30.320 --> 00:09:36.360 Too many historians, in their eternal search for an American consensus of sweetness and 77 00:09:36.360 --> 00:09:43.000 light, have preferred to forget about the hard knot of American Tories and what was 78 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:48.940 done to them during the Revolutionary War. The first thing to be said is that the Tories 79 00:09:48.940 --> 00:09:55.940 were not at all uniformly distributed geographically. For example, the two major centers of population, 80 00:09:55.940 --> 00:10:02.780 In addition, New England and Virginia were relatively Tory-free. The few thousand Virginia 81 00:10:02.780 --> 00:10:08.780 Tories were concentrated among Ulster Scots on the frontier in western Virginia, settlers 82 00:10:08.780 --> 00:10:15.380 on the eastern shore, the Chesapeake Peninsula, and native Scottish merchants and factors 83 00:10:15.380 --> 00:10:21.260 concentrated on the coast near Norfolk. New England Tories were to be found in scattered 84 00:10:21.260 --> 00:10:28.260 Pockets, many in Newport, in the coastal towns of the Maine region, New Hampshire, Cape Cod, 85 00:10:28.260 --> 00:10:31.340 parts of western Massachusetts. 86 00:10:31.340 --> 00:10:36.380 Western Connecticut, near the New York border, was the only one of these regions where Tories 87 00:10:36.380 --> 00:10:42.300 approached a majority, even though the bulk of Connecticut was overwhelmingly rebel. 88 00:10:42.300 --> 00:10:48.180 All in all, New England Tories barely reached one-tenth of the population. 89 00:10:48.180 --> 00:10:52.640 There were more Tories in the other colonies of the South than in Virginia, and these 90 00:10:52.640 --> 00:10:57.780 were mainly concentrated in the back country of the Carolinas, the pockets of Highland 91 00:10:57.780 --> 00:11:04.260 Scots near Wilmington and Cape Fear in North Carolina, and the city of Charleston, and 92 00:11:04.260 --> 00:11:08.300 in royal bureaucrat-ridden and subsidized Georgia. 93 00:11:08.300 --> 00:11:15.180 However, in none of the major population areas of the South did the Tories constitute a majority, 94 00:11:15.180 --> 00:11:19.860 And all in all they totaled about 30 percent of southerners. 95 00:11:19.860 --> 00:11:25.500 The most ominous and threatening center of Tory strength lay in the middle colonies, 96 00:11:25.500 --> 00:11:30.140 which were almost evenly divided between Whig and Tory. 97 00:11:30.140 --> 00:11:34.700 This equal strength was particularly true of New York, the greatest Tory stronghold 98 00:11:34.700 --> 00:11:36.940 outside of Georgia. 99 00:11:36.940 --> 00:11:43.860 In such areas as western Long Island, upstate, and the lower Hudson Valley, Tory adherence 100 00:11:43.860 --> 00:11:52.140 was almost overwhelming. New Jersey, in Bergen County and in the South, was almost as fertile 101 00:11:52.140 --> 00:11:58.860 Tory ground. Toryism was particularly strong in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties, 102 00:11:58.860 --> 00:12:04.860 especially among the Quakers. Tories were also strong in Delaware and on Maryland's 103 00:12:04.860 --> 00:12:11.780 eastern shore. Ethnic and religious minorities within a region tended to oppose the dominant 104 00:12:11.780 --> 00:12:19.320 Majority, and hence to side with Great Britain. Thus, while Anglicans in the Low Church Anglican 105 00:12:19.320 --> 00:12:26.480 South were solidly revolutionary, the minority of Anglicans in the North, far more high church 106 00:12:26.480 --> 00:12:33.200 and attached to Britain, were predominantly Tory. Also in the North, many Baptists in 107 00:12:33.200 --> 00:12:40.640 the budding Methodist movement were restive and Tory. Most Dutch in New York and New Jersey 108 00:12:40.640 --> 00:12:47.100 and Quakers in southern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania and many native-born Scots tended 109 00:12:47.100 --> 00:12:54.140 to be Tories. The Ulster Scots, however, at least in the South, were rather evenly divided. 110 00:12:54.140 --> 00:12:59.940 Had the British acted early and energetically to mobilize the Tories to organize their scattered 111 00:12:59.940 --> 00:13:06.940 centers of strength and to exploit the potential conflicts within American society, they might 112 00:13:06.940 --> 00:13:13.940 The Negro slaves, as we have pointed out, were a huge potential reservoir of discontent 113 00:13:17.020 --> 00:13:24.020 to mobilize against the Revolution. And New York, a fertile field, lay available for exploitation. 114 00:13:25.980 --> 00:13:31.300 The Revolution split the landed oligarchy of the province with the Anglican Delancies 115 00:13:31.300 --> 00:13:38.220 of New York City and Lower Hudson Valley Turning Tory, while the Presbyterian Livingstons 116 00:13:38.220 --> 00:13:44.440 of the Northern Hudson Valley supported the break with England, though only meekly. As 117 00:13:44.440 --> 00:13:50.780 a result, the disgruntled tenants of the Livingstons and their fellow Whig landlords naturally 118 00:13:50.780 --> 00:13:57.540 gave their support to the Tory cause, and many ulstermen of the back country Carolinas, 119 00:13:57.540 --> 00:14:04.060 Long unhappy about under-representation and governmental discrimination against them were 120 00:14:04.060 --> 00:14:10.340 Tories or lukewarm to a revolution made by the planters of the lowlands. 121 00:14:10.340 --> 00:14:17.740 However, the long-held view of historians that the old rebel regulators of the Carolinas 122 00:14:17.740 --> 00:14:24.740 later became Tories has been refuted by the recent researches of Johnson, Barnwell and 123 00:14:24.740 --> 00:14:33.380 The former regulators of both North and South Carolina were predominantly Whig revolutionaries. 124 00:14:33.380 --> 00:14:40.060 Indeed it was only the old South Carolina moderators who became largely Tory. 125 00:14:40.060 --> 00:14:45.860 The Tories, as we have seen, ranged through all social classes and occupations, from the 126 00:14:45.860 --> 00:14:52.660 aristocratic Delancies of New York to the lowly tenants of the Whig landlords and back-country 127 00:14:52.660 --> 00:15:22.660 Settlers of the Carolinas. 128 00:15:52.660 --> 00:15:59.580 List and welded together all the disparate threads of Tory and anti-wick potential would 129 00:15:59.580 --> 00:16:05.700 have required energy and ability that the British did not have. 130 00:16:05.700 --> 00:16:13.700 For one thing, the British, like all counter-revolutionaries always and everywhere, scoffed at the revolution 131 00:16:13.700 --> 00:16:21.540 as being a movement of a small fanatical minority rather than a majority, and as a movement 132 00:16:21.540 --> 00:16:29.260 of a Weak and Inferior Breed of Men. All counter-revolutionaries tend to gravely underestimate their enemies 133 00:16:29.260 --> 00:16:36.000 by treating rebellion as the work of a small subversive band of dogmatic and fanatical 134 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:45.000 ideologues. The vast majority, these arch-conservatives typically feel, are deeply loyal to the constituted 135 00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:51.760 Government. Therefore, the British confidently believed that no intensive coordination of 136 00:16:51.760 --> 00:16:59.000 the Tories was necessary. Surely they need only coal or land, and the great majority 137 00:16:59.000 --> 00:17:04.680 of loyal folk would rise up and help their rulers smite the traitors. 138 00:17:04.680 --> 00:17:10.440 A second cause of chronic British optimism, as we have seen, was the chauvinist contempt 139 00:17:10.440 --> 00:17:16.320 for the Americans as a People, and for their martial abilities, a contempt redoubled by 140 00:17:16.320 --> 00:17:22.240 the British devotion to orthodox military prescriptions and ignorance of guerrilla forms 141 00:17:22.240 --> 00:17:24.240 of warfare. 142 00:17:24.240 --> 00:17:31.240 The defeat of the Revolution also required an indomitable will, but General Howe, the 143 00:17:31.240 --> 00:17:37.280 commander-in-chief of the British armies after the removal of the disgraced Gage in October 144 00:17:37.280 --> 00:17:46.360 1775 was an ardent Whig opposed to the war. These inner convictions kept him valiantly 145 00:17:46.360 --> 00:17:53.060 trying for a compromise political peace, rather than a repressive military solution to the 146 00:17:53.060 --> 00:17:59.100 Conflict, thereby substantially weakening the resolve of the Counter-Revolution.