Should the U.S. even be a nation?
This pitted the loyalists against the revolutionaries. What were the interests of the loyalists?
From Wikipedia: The Loyalist population.
The number of Americans who adhered to the British side after fighting commenced is still debated. An American historian has estimated that about 450,000 Americans remained loyal to Britain during the Revolution. This would be about sixteen percent of the total population or about 20 percent of Americans of European origin. The Loyalists were as socially diverse as their Patriot opponents but some groups produced more Loyalists. Thus they included many Anglicans (Episcopalians) in the North East, many tenant farmers in New York and people of Dutch origin in New York and New Jersey, many of the German population of Pennsylvania, some Quakers, most of the Highland Scots in the South, and many Iroquois Indians. Many people with close business connections to Britain who lived in coastal towns remained loyal. Loyalists were most often people who were conservative by nature or in politics, valued order, were fearful of 'mob' rule, felt sentimental ties to the Mother Country, were loyal to the King or concerned that an independent new nation would not be able to defend themselves.
Some escaped slaves became Loyalists. They fought for the British not out of loyalty to the Crown, but from a desire for freedom, which the British promised them in return for their military service.
Yale historian Leonard Woods Larabee has identified eight characteristics of the Loyalists that made them essentially conservative and loyal to the King and to Britain:[10]They were older, better established, and resisted radical change.
- They felt that rebellion against the Crown—the legitimate government—was morally wrong.
- They saw themselves as Americans but loyal to the British Empire and saw a rebellion against Great Britain as a betrayal to the Empire. At the time the national identity of Americans was still in formation and the very idea of two separate peoples (nationalities) with their own sovereign states (the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States of America) was itself revolutionary.
- They felt alienated when the Patriots (seen by them as separatists who rebelled against the Crown) resorted to violence, such as burning down houses and tarring and feathering.
- They wanted to take a middle-of-the-road position and were not pleased when forced by Patriots to declare their opposition.
- They had business and family links with Britain.
- They felt that independence from Britain would come eventually, but wanted it to come about organically.
- They were wary that chaos, corruption, and mob rule would come about as a result of revolution.
- Some were “pessimists” who did not display the same belief in the future that the Patriots did. Others recalled the dreadful experiences of many Jacobite rebels after the failure of the last Jacobite rebellion as recently as 1745 who often lost their lands when the Hanoverian government won.
Other motives of the Loyalists included:
- They felt a need for order and believed that Parliament was the legitimate authority.
- In New York, powerful families had assembled colony-wide coalitions of supporters; men long associated with the French Huguenot/Dutch De Lancey faction went along when its leadership decided to support the crown.
- They felt themselves to be weak or threatened within American society and in need of an outside defender such as the British Crown and Parliament.
- Black Loyalists were promised freedom from slavery by the British.
- They felt that being a part of the British Empire was crucial in terms of commerce and their business operations.
From Wikipedia: Patriots.
Patriots (also known as Revolutionaries, Continentals, Rebels, or Whigs) were colonists in the Thirteen Colonies who opposed the Kingdom of Great Britain's control over the colonies during the American Revolution. Patriot politicians led colonial opposition to British policies regarding the American colonies, eventually adopting the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. After the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, Patriots fought a victorious conflict against the British and their allies, which saw the colonies gain their independence as the United States in 1783.
The beliefs of the Patriots were inspired by English and American republicanism, which rejected monarchy and aristocracy while promoting individual liberty and natural rights and legal rights. Prominent Patriot political theorists such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Thomas Paine spearheaded the American Enlightenment, which was in turn inspired by European thinkers such as Francis Bacon, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Though slavery existed in all of the Thirteen Colonies prior to the American Revolution, the issue divided Patriots, with some supporting its abolition while others espoused proslavery thought.
The Patriots included members of every social and ethnic group in the colonies, though support for the Patriot cause was strongest in the New England Colonies and weakest in the Southern Colonies. The American Revolution divided the colonial population into three groups: Patriots, who supported the end of British rule, Loyalists, who supported Britain's continued control over the colonies, and those who remained neutral. African Americans who supported the Patriots were known as Black Patriots, with their counterparts on the British side being referred to as Black Loyalists.
