What is a document that perfectly sums up the loyalists point of view in the Revolutionary War?

by donkeybowser
TRB1783

If you're looking for perfection of any sort, I'm afraid you're studying the wrong species. Loyalists' reasons for opposing the Revolution were as varied and numerous as the loyalists themselves.

To parse your question a bit further, I assume you're asking about white loyalists, since they left the most documents and the reasoning of African-Americans and Native Americans is a bit more straightforward.

Two important loyalist arguments were that the Patriots were little better than an anarchic mob and that even a successful war of independence would lead to the financial ruin of America, as they would have just pissed off the largest trade empire in human history. These arguments are well-made in Samuel Seabury's Letters of a Westchester Farmer, a series of pamphlets published in 1774-5. Beverly Robinson, an important loyalist soldier from New York, appeared before that state's Committee to Detect and Defeat Conspiracies and promised to stay neutral if the Patriots would only leave him alone. When they failed to do so, he fled New York City and raised a regiment that went on to be effective in combat against his former neighbors.