This will be a fun question to answer being that I’ve been conducting research for the past few months on the Loyalists and have been truly fascinated by their story:

Quick note: this post is mostly about the white British “Loyalists.” There is also much to say about Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, and other European settlers of the thirteen British colonies that I did not fully included. I can if there is interest! Thanks.

I want to begin with a quick introduction to some of the most interesting work being done on the “Loyalists” currently. I use the quotations around the title intentionally because many of the labeled “Loyalists” were anything but “loyal” to the British Crown. Popular myth, which I confess I too believed until recently, records that John Adams once remarked that during the American Revolution one-third of the American population were patriots, another third loyal, and a final third indifferent. As Michael Schellhammer rightly points out, Adams did indeed write that Americans were split into thirds about their opinions on war; however, he was writing in 1815 about Americans opinion on the French Revolution. Nonetheless, numerous historians have demonstrated that the thirteen colonies were incredibly divided during the war for independence. While trying to get exact numbers is impossible, we do know that following the war somewhere between 65,000-70,000 people (including black and white men, women, and children) fled the newly independent states for other regions of the British Empire including Nova Scotia, Canada, the British West Indies, the United Kingdom, and even India and Australia. This number also does not account for the thousands of Native American people who were forced to relocate along the new American western border that have been grossly understudied. While all these people shared in the experience of relocation, Ruma Chopra demonstrates in her book Loyalists in Revolutionary America, that their ideologies differed tremendously. While some Loyalists were indeed staunch supporters of British control in the thirteen colonies, many more simply chose the British cause because at the time it seemed to offer them the best protection. In this sense, it’s important to note that a great deal of Loyalists, perhaps the majority, chose sides not on an ideological basis, but on a practical, which is accurate when looking at both white and black “Loyalists.” (Don’t forget, the British offered “freedom” to slaves who escaped their rebellious masters and reached British lines. Unfortunately, for some enslaved people this promise was never fulfilled and they found themselves in a state of bondage in the West Indies, Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.)

Now that we have talked a bit about who the Loyalists were, and perhaps more importantly, who they were not, let’s look at what happened after the war. The important idea here is that the post-war experience was very much dependent upon your social status and the region in which you lived. Rebecca Brannon’s book From Revolution to Reunion: The Reintegration of the South Carolina Loyalists, explains that while many Loyalists found their property confiscated after the war, early SC leaders were willing to reintegrate Loyalists who remained in the state after the war, especially those who could support them and the state financially. While a large contingent of Loyalists left SC for Nova Scotia and others for Jamaica, other backcountry Loyalists and their urban counterparts remained rather than attempt to rebuild their lives in the British Empire. While it’s impossible to speak for all of these people, it is likely they were not ideologically opposed to the new American nation and when offered the opportunity to swear allegiance to the nation and regain their property nearly all of them jumped on board.

In other states, it was a bit more complicated. My own research has me located in New England where many Loyalists fled before the end of the war in 1783. While Loyalists from New York City settled famous settlements like Shelburne, NS after peace had been reached, many from New England, Massachusetts in particular, were forced to flee when fighting broke out in 1775. One family I’m looking at was forced out of their home and settled in Halifax just before 1776. An established merchant from Marblehead, Thomas Robie attempted to rebuild his business in Halifax; however, after working to build connections around the elite in Halifax, St. John, and London, Robie returned to Marblehead, MA with the majority of his family and by the time he died in the early ninteenth century, he was a well respected retailer of hardware in Salem. Furthermore, he descendants helped build the post-Revolutionary world of both Massachusetts and Nova Scotia. His son Simon Bradstreet Robie became an eminent politician in NS and his grandson (a Sewell) an important politician an outspoken abolitionist. While some Loyalists were able to return, other chose to never come back and the separation from family and friends remained forever.

We know a lot of about the community of Loyalists from the long process of Loyalists claiming compensation from the British government. While very few were awarded their entire claim, a good number of Loyalists who remained in the new United States received nothing at all. We can take this as evidence that the British government viewed these claims with the most skepticism and as Brannon acknowledges, it’s likely that a good number were able to reintegrate into the American nation a few years after the Revolution. I would argue that especially after the Federalist victory in the Constitution, many Loyalists recognized a taming of the dreaded “republicanism” that the most ideological Loyalists would have objected to. As the United States grew to look increasingly like England, and less like France, repatriation was a promising prospect for those who left and those who stayed found their decision to remain vindicated.

TL;DR: the postwar experience differed based on a lot of factors, as did the decision to be a “Loyalists,” as useless as that term really is. Despite the often vicious attacks against Loyalists during the early years of the war and legislation passed banning Loyalists in certain states, following the war a good number of “Loyalists” choose to stay and support the new government while others returned to the United States being disappointed in their prospects abroad and the increasing economic, if not social, success of the US.

Sources (only a few: let me know if you’d like more I have TONS)

Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles

Ruma Chopra, Loyalists in Revolutionary America

Amni Whitfield, North to Bondage

Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America

Ibid., An Empire Divided