Volume 4, Chapter 14, Suppressing Tories in Rhode Island and Connecticut
While the Tories stood disunited and lacking firm British leadership, the revolutionaries
in colony after colony struck with keen efficiency and dispatch to disarm the actual and potential
traders in their midst.
In Massachusetts, support for the revolution was so ardent and widespread that there was
little organized Tory opposition, and the local revolutionary committees could work
their will on individual Tories, unchecked.
Most Massachusetts Tories were concentrated in the West, in the towns of the Upper Connecticut
River Valley, including Amherst, Hatfield, and especially Deerfield.
Their concentrations were to be found in the town of Worcester, which was, however, predominantly
revolutionary, and among the Baptist of the town of Ashfield. Tories were particularly
numerous among the royal judges and bureaucrats, and it has been estimated that fully half
the lawyers in western Massachusetts were Tories. However, no special measures had to
be taken against the Massachusetts Tories since they were so few in number relative
to the total population.
Toryism was much more threatening in Rhode Island, where Newport abounded in Loyalist.
Particularly embarrassing was Rhode Island's Governor, Joseph Wanton, who became an active
Tory and urged the Rhode Island Assembly to seek a separate peace with England.
In June 1775 the powerful assembly, moving toward deposing Wanton, quickly forbade the
oath of office from being administered to him and commissioned militia officers without
his signature.
In November it deposed Wanton as governor and replaced him with the radical Nicholas
Cook of Samuel Ward's old faction.
Throughout 1775, Rhode Island, particularly Newport, suffered from the plunder of a fleet
of British warships in lower Narragansett Bay, commanded by Captain James Wallace.
Wallace disrupted and plundered Rhode Island's foreign trade and shipping, and continually
threatened Newport with fire and destruction if the citizens did not furnish food and supplies
to the British army and fleet.
The U.S. finally did shell the defenseless town of Bristol, and thoroughly plundered
and partially burned Jamestown in 1775. Eventually, the months of British terror and imposed starvation
took their toll. The people of Newport began to flee the city. By early November, nearly
half of its citizens, largely women and children, had fled northward from the city. Most of
were rebels, so the revolutionary morale of Newport, never high at best, was weakened still further.
With the consent of the Rhode Island government and the Continental Congress, Newport agreed in the autumn of 1775
to supply the British fleet with provisions and to withdraw the colony's militia from the town.
In the meanwhile, however, the Rhode Island Assembly intensified its order to take stern
measures against the Tories. Thus, it decreed the punishment of death and confiscation of
property for anyone betraying the cause to the enemy or providing him with supplies.
The Newport agreement, of course, accepted. In December, Rhode Island authorities alarmed
Washington sent down his best man, General Lee, with a handful of troops. Lee heartened
the rebels and thoroughly frightened the Tories, enforcing upon them a public oath in support
of the Continental Congress and arresting three Tories who refused to take it. His energetic
and economic activities at the end of the year, including arrest of Tory leaders and issuance of mass loyalty oaths, succeeded in Cowan, the loyalist in Newport.
Tory opposition to the revolution in New England centered in southwestern Connecticut in sharp contrast to the fierce revolutionary fervor of the bulk of that colony.
Indeed, at the end of 1775, Connecticut became the first colony to enact a systematic body
of law against Tories, including such severe punishment as forfeiture of all property and
three years' imprisonment. For the first time in America, serving the king was officially
branded a crime to be severely punished. Connecticut's fervor was such that it was the best place
One of the principal prison sites in the colonies was the dank, abandoned copper mine at Simsbury.
The New Haven town meeting opposed taking up arms against Britain, and the meetings
of Litchfield and Danbury condemned the Continental Congress.
In Redding and New Milford, the majority of the inhabitants went so far as to swear to
loyalist oaths.
The most acute Tory threat to Connecticut appeared in May 1775, when the bulk of the
Waterbury militia, officers and enlisted men alike, declared their refusal to follow the
policy advised by the Continental Congress.
This threat was swiftly and efficiently countered by a secretly conducted night raid upon southwestern
The Tories of the entire area were disarmed by the raiders, and a dozen Tory leaders were
taken prisoner.