The Loyalists and the American Revolution
The exile of the Loyalists, writes Wallace Brown, represented the removal of the crust of increasing aristocratic pretensions that was forming on Colonial society.
In the numerous celebrations of the American Civil War centenary now taking place, Northerners usually honour and respect the Southern rebels. But the losers of an earlier civil war, the War for Independence, are practically forgotten outside academic circles, and even there the only general study of the Loyalists, or Tories, is sixty years old; hence this article must be rather tentative in its conclusions.1
The Loyalists, those American colonists who opposed independence and wished to remain in the Empire, although often condemned out of hand during the nineteenth century have since been more fairly treated by historians; but the present neo-Bancroftian interpretations of the Revolution, which minimize social conflict within the colonies, apparently forget them.2
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