I'm an American, and also an Anglophile. Like everyone else, I've become obsessed with the musical Hamilton, and I started to wonder which side I would have come down on if I'd been alive at the time. We don't hear much over here about the reasons for remaining a Loyalist. What, in your view, are the best reasons for an American colonist to remain a Loyalist leading up to and during the Revolution?
They generally fell into one of two categories. Category A were those who legitimately felt a connection to the Mother country. No different than than an American with the "my country right or wrong " mentality. It would be extremely heart-wrenching for many Americans to de liberately abandon their country AND commit treason against it. John Dickinson for example, simply wished to get his rights as an English subject.
Category B were those who felt the winning side was going to be Britain. Also not difficult to see the reasoning. John Adams estimated, and it's still relatively an accurate statement, that roughly a third supported the Patriots, a third were Loyalists, and another third didn't much care either way. So looking at it from a military standpoint: one side has arguably the best Navy in the world, a standing army of tens of thousands, money, equipment, powder, musket, and cannon production, plus leadership and training. The Americans had no real government structure, a semblance of a military, ill-trained with often little or poor leadership, literally no formal navy, few resources or facilities to produce weapons of war, and barely a third of the populace supported their cause. Many assumed the Patriots didn't stand a chance and acted accordingly.
(I'll have to edit tomorrow with sourcing, gotta get out some books and a grad-level paper I wrote on Loyalists) Edit: Sources: Boucher, Jonathan. Reminiscences of an American Loyalist: 1738-1789. Edited by Jonathan Bouchier. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1925. Reprint, Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1967.
Berkin, Carol. Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist. New York: Columbia University Press, 1974.
Burke, Edmund. Speeches and Letters on American Affairs. Introduction by Very Rev. Canon Peter McKevitt. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1908. Reprint, 1961.
Nelson, William H. The American Tory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961.
Galloway, Joseph. The Claim of the American Loyalists Reviewed and Maintained Upon Incontrovertable Principles of Law and Justice. The Loyalist Library. The American Revolutionary Series. Boston: Gregg Press, 1972.
Johnson, Elizabeth Lichtenstein. Recollections of a Georgia Loyalist. 1836. New York: The Bankside Press, M.F. Mansfield and Co., 1901.
The Journal of Samuel Curwen: Loyalist. Edited by Andrew Oliver. Vol. I. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Letters of Hugh Earl Percy From Boston and New York, 1774-1776. Edited by Charles Knowles Bolton. Boston: Charles E. Goodspeed, 1902. The Loyalist Library, The American Revolutionary Series. Boston: Gregg Press, 1972.
Letters of James Murray, Loyalist. Edited by Nina Moore Tiffany and Susan I. Lesley. Boston: n.p., 1901. The Loyalist Library. The American Revolutionary Series. Boston: Gregg Press, 1972.
Siebert, Wilbur Henry. The Loyalists of Pennsylvania. Columbus: Ohio State University, 1920. The Loyalist Library. The American Revolutionary Series. Boston, Gregg Press, 1972.
Upton, Leslie F.S. The Loyal Whig: William Smith of New York and Quebec. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969.
Im sure there would've been many factors. Mind at the time the British empire had what was widely regarded as the most powerful military force in the world. Certainly staying under the protection, and avoiding the wrath, of this military power would have been a large factor for many.
For some it would likely have been as simply as not wanting to give up their national identity as citizens of the Empire.
For a long time the loyalist perspective was actually the majority, however the "patriots" were keen to publicly shame or attack those who expressed such beliefs.
Interestingly, during the war, the british promised to free any slave who rebelled against their revolutionary master, and at the end of the war some 20000 african americans were evacuated by the british and resettled as free people.
Woah did you just finally explain it in a way my brain understands? Thanks man.
Conscription equals a draft, true? One reason giving up the colonies still surprises me is tobacco. Wonder if they didn’t quite get the culture of smoking it yet and let its potential economic powerhouse go.