The Loyalists of Massachusetts Part 10

At the treaty of peace, 1783, the banishment and extermination of the Loyalists was a foregone conclusion. The bitterest words ever uttered by Washington were in reference to them: "He could see nothing better for them than to recommend suicide." Neither Congress nor state governments made any recommendation that humane treatment should be meted out to these Loyalists. John Adams had written from Amsterdam that he would "have hanged his own brother had he taken part against him."[84]

[84] Address to the "United Empire Loyalists," by Edward Harris, Toronto, 1897.

At the close of the war the mob were allowed to commit any outrage or atrocity, while the authorities in each state remained apparently indifferent. An example of Loyalist ill-treatment is to be found in a letter written October 22, 1783, to a Boston friend, and preserved in New York City manual, 1870:--

"The British are leaving New York every day, and last week there came one of the d----d refugees from New York to a place called Wall Kill, in order to make a tarry with his parents, where he was taken into custody immediately. His head and eyebrows were shaved, tarred and feathered, a hog-yoke put on his neck, and a cowbell thereon; upon his head a very high hat and feathers were set, well plumed with tar, and a sheet of paper in front with a man drawn with two faces, representing the traitor Arnold and the devil."

Some American writers have been extremely severe upon Americans who served in the royal armies. Such condemnation is certainly illogical and unjust. They must have reasoned they were fighting to save their country from mob rule, from the domination of demagogues and traitors, and to preserve to it what, until then, all had agreed to be the greatest of blessings, the connection with Great Britain, the privilege of being Englishmen, heirs of all the free inst.i.tutions which were embodied in a "great and glorious const.i.tution." If the Loyalists reasoned in this manner, we cannot blame them, unless we are ready to maintain the proposition that the cause of every revolution is necessarily so sacred that those who do not sympathize with it should abstain from opposing it.

Very early in the Revolution the disunionists tried to drive the Loyalists into the rebel militia or into the Continental army by fines, and by obliging them to hire subst.i.tutes. The families of men who had fled from the country to escape implication in the impending war were obliged to hire subst.i.tutes, and they were fined for the misdeeds of the mercenary whom they had engaged. Fines were even imposed upon neutral and unoffending persons for not preventing their families from entering the British service. If the fines were refused, the property was recklessly sold to the amount of the fine and costs of action. Loyalists convicted of entering the enemy's lines could be fined as high as 2000 pounds, and even the unsuccessful attempt to enter might be punished by a fine of 1000 pounds.[85] If the property of the offender failed to answer for his offence, he became subject to corporal punishment, whipping, branding, cropping of ears, and exposure in the pillory being resorted to in some of the states.

[85] "Acts of New Jersey," Oct. 8, 1778, p. 60.

The Disunionists had early a covetous eye upon the property of the Loyalists. The legislative bodies hastened to pa.s.s such laws as would prevent those suspected of Loyalism from transferring their property, real or personal, by real or pretended sale. Friends who tried to guard the property of refugees nailed up the doors that led to the room containing valuable furniture, but were obliged by bullying committeemen to remove their barricades and give up their treasures.

The members of one wealthy refugee's family were reduced in their housekeeping to broken chairs and teacups, and to dipping the water out of an iron skillet into a pot, which they did as cheerfully as if they were using a silver urn. The furniture had been removed, though the family picture still hung in the blue room, and the harpsichord stood in the pa.s.sage way to be abused by the children who pa.s.sed through. These two aristocratic ladies were obliged to use their coach-house as a dining-room, and the "fowl-house" as their bed chamber. The picture continues: "In character the old lady looks as majestic even there, and dresses with as much elegance as if she were in a palace."[86] This mansion was General Putnam's headquarters at the battle of Bunker Hill, and was afterward confiscated.

[86] James Murray, Loyalist, p. 245, 253.

When the treaty of peace was signed, the question of amnesty and compensation for the Loyalists was long and bitterly discussed. Even the French minister had urged it. John Adams, one of the commission, favored compensating "the wretches, how little soever they deserved it, nay, how much soever they deserve the contrary."[87]

[87] John Adams' Works, Vol. IX., p. 516.

The commission hesitated "to saddle" America with the Loyalists because they feared the opposition at home, especially by the individual states.

The British demand had been finally met with the mere promise that Congress would recommend to the states a conciliatory policy with reference to the Loyalists. This solution neither satisfied the Loyalists nor the more chivalrous Englishmen. They declared that the provision concerning the Loyalists was "precipitate, impolitic," and cruelly neglectful of their American friends.[88] But all of this cavilling was unreasonable and hasty, for England had gotten for the Loyalists the utmost attainable in the treaty, and later proved honorable and generous in the highest degree by compensating the Loyalists out of her own treasury--an act only excelled in the next century by the purchase and emanc.i.p.ation of all the slaves in the British Empire, for which the people of Great Britain taxed only themselves--the most generous act ever performed by any nation in the history of mankind.

[88] Stevens' "Facsimiles," 1054.

In spite of the recommendation of Congress which had been made in accordance with the terms of the treaty, confiscation still went on actively. Governors of the states were urged to exchange lists of proscribed persons, that no Loyalists might find a resting-place in the United States, and in every state they were disfranchised, while in many localities they were tarred and feathered, driven from town and warned never to return again. Some were murdered and maltreated in the most horrible manner. Thousands of inconspicuous Loyalists did, nevertheless, succeed in remaining in the larger cities, where their ident.i.ty was lost, and they were not the objects of jealous social and political exclusion as in the small town. In some localities where they were in the majority, the hostile minority was not able to wreak its vengeance.

With the treaty of peace there came a rush for British American territory. The numbers were increased in Canada to some 25,000 during the next few years, and those in Nova Scotia and other British territory swelled the number to 60,000.

Most of these exiles became, in one way or another, a temporary expense to the British government, and the burden was borne honorably and ungrudgingly. The care began during the war. The Loyalists who aided Burgoyne were provided with homes in Canada, and before the close of 1779 nearly a thousand refugees were cared for in houses and barracks and given fuel, household furniture, and even pensioned with money.

After the peace, thousands of exiles at once turned to the British government for temporary support. The vast majority had lost but little, and asked only for land and supplies to start life with. The minority who had lost lands, offices and incomes, demanded indemnity. As for the members of the humbler cla.s.s, the government ordered that there should be given 500 acres of land to heads of families, 300 acres to single men, and each township in the new settlements was to have 2000 acres for church purposes and 1000 for schools. Building material and tools, an axe, spade, hoe and plow, were furnished each head of a family. Even clothing and food were issued to the needy, and as late as 1785 there were 26,000 ent.i.tled to rations. Communities were equipped with grindstones and the machinery for grist and saw mills. In this way $5,000,000 were spent to get Nova Scotia well started, and in Upper Canada, besides the three million acres given to the Loyalist, some $4,000,000 were expended for this benefit before 1787.

But there was a far greater burden a.s.sumed by the British government in granting the compensation asked for by those who had sacrificed everything to their loyalty. Those who had lost offices or professional practice were, in many cases, cared for by the gift of lucrative offices under the government, and Loyalist military officers were put on half pay. It is said with truth that the defeated government dealt with the exiled and fugitive Loyalists with a far greater liberality than the United States bestowed upon their victorious army.

After the peace, over five thousand Loyalists submitted claims for losses, usually through agents appointed by the refugees from each American colony. In July of 1783, a commission of five members was appointed by Parliament to cla.s.sify the losses and services of the Loyalists. They examined the claims with an impartial and judicial severity. The claimant entered the room alone with the commissioners and, after telling his services and losses, was rigidly questioned concerning fellow claimants as well as himself. The claimant then submitted a written and sworn statement of his losses. After the results of both examinations were critically scrutinized, the judges made the award. In the whole course of their work, they examined claims to the amount of forty million of dollars, and ordered nineteen millions to be paid.

If to the cost of establishing the Loyalists in Nova Scotia and Canada we add the compensation granted in money, the total amount expended by the British government for their American adherents was at least thirty million dollars. There is evidence that the greatest care that human ingenuity could devise was exercised to make all these awards in a fair and equitable manner. The members of the commission were of unimpeachable honesty. Nevertheless there was much complaint by the Loyalists because of the partial failure of giving the loyal exiles a new start in life. The task was no easy one--to transfer a disheartened people to a strange land and a trying climate, and let them begin life anew. But when, years later, they had made of the land of this exile a mighty member of the British empire, they began to glory in the days of trial through which they had pa.s.sed.

At a council meeting held at Quebec, November 9, 1789, an order was pa.s.sed for "preserving a register of the Loyalists that had adhered to the unity of the empire, and joined the Royal Standard previous to the treaty of peace in 1783, to the end that their posterity may be distinguished from future settlers in the rank, registers, and rolls of the militia of their respective districts, as proper objects for preserving and showing the fidelity and conduct so honorable to their ancestors for distinguished benefit and privileges."

Today their descendants are organized as the United Empire Loyalists, and count it an honor that their ancestors suffered persecution and exile rather than yield the principle and idea of union with Great Britain.

The cause of the Loyalists failed, but their stand was a natural one and was just and n.o.ble. They were the prosperous and contended men--the men without a grievance. Conservatism was the only policy that one could expect of them. Men do not rebel to rid themselves of prosperity.

Prosperous men seek to conceive prosperity. The Loyalist obeyed his nature, but as events proved, chose the ill-fated cause, and when the struggle ended, his prosperity had fled, and he was an outcast and an exile.

If, when George III. and his government recognized the independence of the thirteen colonies, the Loyalists had been permitted to remain here and become, if they would, American citizens, the probabilities are that, long before this time, an expansion would have taken place in the national domain which would have brought under its control the entire American continent north of the United States, an extension brought about in an entirely peaceful and satisfactory manner. The method of exclusion adopted peopled Canada, so far as its English-speaking inhabitants were concerned, with those who went from the United States as political exiles, and who carried with them to their new homes an ever-burning sense of personal wrong and a bitter hatred of those who had abused them.

The indifference shown to treaty obligations by Congress and the states, and the secret determination to eradicate everything British from the country, is now known to have been the deliberate, well-considered policy of the founders of the Republic.

This old legacy of wrongdoing has been a barrier in the way of a healthful northern development of the United States. The contentions which gave rise to these hostile feelings have been forgotten, but the feelings themselves have long outlived the causes which gave rise to them.

CHAPTER IX.

_THE WAR OF 1812 AND THE ATTEMPTED CONQUEST OF CANADA._

When the Revolutionary War had ended came the long twenty-three years'

war in which Great Britain, for the most part, single-handed, fought for the freedom of Europe against the most colossal tyranny ever devised by a victorious general. No nation in the history of the world carried on a war so stubborn, so desperate, so costly, so vital. Had Great Britain failed, what would now be the position of the world? At the very time when Britain's need was the sorest, when every ship, every soldier and sailor that she could find was needed to break down the power of the man who had subjugated all Europe except Russia and Great Britain, the United States, the land of boasted liberty, did her best to cripple the liberating armies by proclaiming war against Britain in the hour of her sorest need.

Napoleon was at the height of his power, with an army collected at Boulogne for the invasion of England. England was growing exhausted by the contest. Her great Prime Minister, Pitt, had died broken hearted.

Every indication was favorable to the conquest of Canada by the United States and therewith the extinction of all British interests on the western continent.

In the motherland it seemed, to the popular imagination, that on the other side of the Atlantic lived an implacable enemy, whose rancor was greater than their boasted love of liberty. Fisher Ames, who was regarded by his party as its wisest counsellor and chief ornament, expresses this general feeling on their part in a letter to Mr. Quincy, dated Dedham, Dec. 6, 1807, in which he says: "Our cabinet takes council of the mob, and it is now a question whether hatred of Great Britain and the reproach fixed even upon violent men, if they will not proceed in their violence, will not overcome the fears of the maritime states, and of the planters in Congress. The usual levity of a democracy has not appeared in regard to Great Britain. We have been steady in our hatred of her, and when popular pa.s.sions are not worn out by time, but argument, they must, I should think, explode in war."[89]

[89] Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 119.

The action of the United States in declaring war against Great Britain when she was most sorely pressed in righting for the liberty of mankind is best set forth in the famous speech of Josiah Quincy, delivered before Congress on the 5th of January, 1813. It was, as he himself says of it, "most direct, pointed and searching as to the motive and conduct of our rulers. It exposed openly and without reserve or fear the iniquity of the proposed invasion of Canada. I was sparing of neither language nor ill.u.s.tration." Its author, on reading it over in his old age, might well say that "he shrunk not from the judgment of after times." Its invective is keen, its sarcasm bitter, its denunciations heavy and severe, but the facts from which they derive their sting or their weight are clearly stated and sustained.

As a means of carrying on the war, he denounces the invasion of Canada as "cruel, wanton, senseless, and wicked--an attempt to compel the mother country to our terms by laying waste an innocent province which had never injured us, but had long been connected with us by habits of good neighborhood and mutual good offices." He said "that the embarra.s.sment of our relations with Great Britain and the keeping alive between this country and that of a root of bitterness has been, is, and will continue to be, a main principle of the policy of this American Cabinet."

The Democratic Party having attained power by fostering the old grudge against England, and having maintained itself in power by force of that antipathy, a consent to the declaration of war had been extorted from the reluctant Madison as the condition precedent of his nomination for a second term of office.

When war against Great Britain was proposed at the last session, there were thousands in these United States, and I confess to you I was myself among the number, who believed not one word of the matter, I put my trust in the old-fashioned notions of common sense and common prudence.

That a people which had been more than twenty years at peace should enter upon hostilities against a people which had been twenty years at war, the idea seemed so absurd that I never once entertained it as possible. It is easy enough to make an excuse for any purpose. When a victim is destined to be immolated, every hedge presents sticks for the sacrifice. The lamb that stands at the mouth of the stream will always trouble the water if you take the account of the wolf who stands at the source of it. We have heard great lamentation about the disgrace of our arms on the frontier. Why, sir, the disgrace of our arms on the frontier is terrestrial glory in comparison with the disgrace of the attempt. Mr.

Speaker, when I contemplate the character and consequences of this invasion of Canada, when I reflect on its criminality and its danger to the peace and liberty of this once happy country, I thank the great Author and Source of all virtue that, through His grace, that section of country in which I have the happiness to reside, is in so great a degree free from the iniquity of this transgression. I speak it with pride. The people of that section have done what they could to vindicate themselves and their children from the burden of their sin.

Surely if any nation had a claim for liberal treatment from another, it was the British nation from the American. After the discovery of the error of the American government in relation to the repeal of the Berlin and Milan Decrees in November, 1810, they had declared war against her on the supposition that she had refused to repeal her orders in council after the French Decrees were in fact revoked, whereas it now appears that they were in fact not revoked. Surely the knowledge of this error was followed by an instant and anxious desire to redress the resulting injury. No, sir, nothing occurred. On the contrary the question of impressment is made the basis of continuing the war. They renewed hostilities. They rushed upon Canada. Nothing would satisfy them but blood.

I know, Mr. Speaker, that while I utter these things, a thousand tongues and a thousand pens are preparing without doors to overwhelm me, if possible, by their pestiferous gall. Already I hear in the air the sound of "Traitor," "British Agent," "British Gold!" and all those changes of calumny by which the imagination of the ma.s.s of men are affected and by which they are prevented from listening to what is true and receiving what is reasonable.[90]

[90] Life of Josiah Quincy, pp. 256, 280, 281, 282, 283, 286, 287, 288, 289, 291.

As will be noticed in the foregoing extract from Josiah Quincy's celebrated speech, New England refused to take any part in the war. In fact, it must be said in their favor that they refused absolutely to send any troops to aid in the invasion of Canada. They regarded the pretexts on which the war had been declared with contemptuous incredulity, believing them to be but thin disguises of its real object.

That object they believed to be the gratification of the malignant hatred the slave-holding states bore toward communities of free and intelligent labor, by the destruction of their wealth and prosperity.

A town meeting was held in Boston at Faneuil Hall on June 11, 1812, at which it was "Resolved: That in the opinion of this town, it is of the last importance to the interest of this country to avert the threatened calamity of war with Great Britain," etc. A committee of twelve was appointed to take into consideration the present alarming state of our public affairs, and report what measures, in their opinion, it is proper for the town to adopt at this momentous crisis.

The committee reported in part as follows: "While the temper and views of the national administration are intent upon war, an expression of the sense of this town, will of itself be quite ineffectual either to avert this deplorable calamity or to accelerate a return of peace, but believing as we do that an immense majority of the people are invincibly averse from conflict equally unnecessary and menacing ruin to themselves and their posterity, convinced as we are that the event will overwhelm them with astonishment and dismay, we cannot but trust that a general expression of the voice of the people would satisfy Congress that those of their representatives who had voted in favor of war, have not truly represented the wishes of their const.i.tuents, and thus arrest the tendency of their measures to this extremity."

Had the policy of government been inclined towards resistance to the pretentions of the belligerants by open war, there could be neither policy, reason or justice in singling out Great Britain as the exclusive object of hostility. If the object of war is merely to vindicate our honor, why is it not declared against the first aggressor?

If the object is defense and success, why is it to be waged against the adversary most able to annoy and least likely to yield? Why, at the moment when England explicitly declares her order in council repealed whenever France shall rescind her decrees, is the one selected for an enemy and the other courted as a conqueror? "Under present circ.u.mstances there will be no scope for valor, no field for enterprise, no chance for success, no hope of national glory, no prospect but of a war against Great Britain, in aid of the common enemy of the human race, and in the end an inglorious peace."

The resolution recommended by the committee was adopted and it was voted that the selectmen be requested to transmit a copy thereof to each town in this commonwealth.