Loyalists Fighting in the American Revolution

Many Americans fought for the British cause in the American Revolution. These men were Loyalists (often called Tories, or, occasionally, Royalists or King's Men). They were Americans who remained loyal to Great Britain and the British Crown during the conflict.

In this article, the Loyalists will be called "Tories," and George Washington's winning side will be called, as they often were then, "Patriots." For a detailed analysis of the psychology and social origins of the Tories, see Loyalist (American Revolution).

This article is an overview of some of the prominent Tory military units of the Revolution, and of the fighting they did for their King against fellow Americans, during what was in fact the first American civil war.

The Tories
John Adams, the second President of the United States, discussing the Revolution, said "We were about one third Tories, and [one] third timid, and one third true blue." The number of Tories is still debated. However, one historian estimates that about five hundred thousand Americans remained loyal to Britain during the Revolution. This would be about sixteen per cent of the total population, or a little more than nineteen per cent of Americans of European origin.

The Tories were a minority in every colony. However, they were as socially diverse as their Patriot opponents. The ranks of the Tories included many Anglicans (Episcopalians), 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, Highland Scots in the South, and many Iroquois Indians. In every colony, some of the wealthy and socially established families never wavered from their loyalty to the Crown. In the last analysis, allegiance to the Tory cause can't be fully explained by reference to religious, social, ethnic or other categories. Some Americans simply chose to remain faithful to their traditional allegiances, rather than embracing the revolutionary cause.

The longer the Revolutionary War went on, the more fluid and dynamic the "Patriot" and "Tory" categories became; and the larger the population became that did not fit neatly into either camp.

Arming the Tories in New England
As early as 1774, the Tory Edward Winslow met secretly with the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, who approved Winslow's raising a "Tory Volunteer Company", whose purpose was to protect Tory families from roving mobs, as the colony headed toward revolution.

Before fighting began, Colonel Thomas Gilbert of Massachusetts had already raised the first Tory military unit in the colonies. This was a force of three hundred men, armed by the British. Gilbert stored muskets, powder and bullets in his home. Shortly thereafter, Brigadier General Timothy Ruggles formed a Tory military unit called the Loyal American Association, also in Massachusetts. Tories in New Hampshire also were arming. However, Patriots were arming and drilling all over New England, and outright revolution broke out on April 19, 1775, with the battles of Lexington and Concord, near Boston.

The war begins
Tories were present at the outset: British general Lord Hugh Percy's relief column, coming to the rescue of the redcoats reeling back from Concord and Lexington, was accompanied by armed Tories in civilian clothes, members of a unit called Friends of the King. One of their number, Edward Winslow, had his horse shot out from under him, and was personally cited by Percy for bravery. Another, Samuel Murray, was captured but later released.

After the British were besieged inside Boston, Tory recruits inside the city continued to join the British side. After the Battle of Bunker Hill, Tory auxiliary units helped to maintain order inside the city. But that was all they were permitted to do, prior to the British evacuation of the city.

The invasions of Canada
Main articles: Battle of Quebec (1775); Battle of Fort Cumberland

The first organized Tory unit permitted to fight in a serious battle of the Revolution was Allan Maclean's 84th Regiment of Foot (Royal Highland Emigrants), who helped the British successfully defend Quebec after the American invasion of Canada in the last days of 1775.

In 1776, Josiah Eddy, a Nova Scotian who favoured the Patriot cause, got the blessing of George Washington to try to capture Nova Scotia for the Revolution. In November, 1776, Eddy, commanding a Patriot force of Indians, exiled Acadians and Maine Patriot militia, appeared at the gates of Fort Cumberland, Nova Scotia, and demanded its surrender. His plan was then to march on Halifax.

The fort was manned by the Tory Royal Fencible Americans. They repelled two assaults by Eddy's men, and were later joined by elements of the Royal Highland Emigrants, after which Eddy's invasion fizzled out.

Highland Tories in America
Highland Scots who had emigrated to America overwhelmingly favored the King over the Revolutionary cause. In the South, many Highland Scots organized quickly in the royal cause. But they early on suffered a devastating defeat. In early 1776, under the command of Brigadier General Donald Macdonald, a substantial force of North Carolina Tories, possibly as many as five thousand, began a march to the seacoast to join a British assault on Charleston. However, on February 27, 1776, a large Highland force under Macdonald encountered a Patriot force at Moore's Creek Bridge. The Patriots waited until an advance guard of Tories had crossed the bridge, then annihilated them with devastating musket and cannon fire. The Tories were routed.

The British invade New York
There were many Tories on Long Island and in New York City; the city was sometimes called "Torytown". In August, 1776, the British commander, William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe, landed a huge force of British and Hessian troops on Long Island, and won a sweeping victory that drove Washington's army from the island and the city of New York. Many Long Island Tories, wearing pieces of red cloth on their hats to show their sympathies, landed with Howe, and participated in the fighting.

As his men fled New York, Washington had wanted to burn the city as a nest of Tories, but Congress forbade it.

In the aftermath of the British victory many Tories came forth to be organized into uniformed Tory regiments. Tory militia patrolled the streets of New York. Tory spies were extensively used to get information about Washington's dispositions. By the end of 1776 about eighteen hundred Tory soldiers had been recruited, most from Long Island, Staten Island and Westchester County. Brigadier General De Lancey, a member of a prominent New York Tory family, organized De Lancey's Brigade. The King's American Regiment was formed. The French and Indian War hero Robert Rogers organized a Tory regiment, and by the end of 1776, seven hundred of Rogers' Rangers were raiding Patriot outposts in Westchester. Recently unearthed documents indicate that it was Rogers and his Rangers who captured the famous Patriot Nathan Hale. There was a bloody little clash between Continental troops and Rogers' men at Mamaroneck in October, 1776. Rogers was retired soon after, but his unit, now called the Queen's Rangers, went on under the command of John Graves Simcoe, to fight throughout the Revolution.

More Tories enlist—lost opportunities
As Howe's army burst out of the colony of New York, new Tory regiments sprang into being. One was the New Jersey Volunteers (Skinner's Greens) who wore green coats, as did so many other Tory soldiers that they were often called "greencoats". The Prince of Wales' American Regiment was also raised. The British continued to recruit in southern New York, so much so that "Tory" New York eventually contributed more soldiers to the British side than to the Patriots.

These men became part of a savage and ongoing civil war in New Jersey and New York. Many Tories had been beaten and taunted by revolutionary mobs, or ejected from their homes, or forced to hide from Washington's army. Now it was their turn. Extreme cruelty on both sides was commonplace. Many died. Kidnappings were also common. Tories seized Richard Stockton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and after imprisonment and cruel treatment, he broke down, and signed an oath of allegiance to George III.

A British commander called the unceasing Tory raids "desolation warfare". Another scion of the Tory De Lancey family raised De Lancey's Cowboys, which relentlessly raided Patriot houses and farms. The Patriots paid the De Lanceys back by burning down a De Lancey family mansion.

In some ways, at this early stage of the war, the Tory soldiers were wasted, used for guard duties and keeping order, or distracted with civil warfare. The reason lay in the persistent British tendency to underestimate American fighting men, an erroneous attitude they applied not only to the rebels, but to their own Tory allies.

Burgoyne's invasion
Main articles: Saratoga Campaign; Battle of Oriskany; Battle of Bennington; Battle of Saratoga The war on the frontier was bitter. On the frontier, Tories were very harshly treated, and they reacted in many instances by joining Tory military units, knowing that they could never return to their homes unless the British prevailed.

A number of influential Tories in northern New York quickly set to work building military forces. The King's Royal Regiment of New York was raised by the wealthy Tory Sir John Johnson. John Butler recruited the famous (or infamous) force called Butler's Rangers. Large numbers of Iroquois Indians were recruited to the British side by the famous Mohawk leader Joseph Brant (Thayendenegea).

In the spring of 1777, the British General John Burgoyne was ordered to invade northern New York by way of Lake Champlain. Burgoyne started south from Canada at the end of June, 1777, with a force of nearly eight thousand British regulars, German mercenaries, French Canadians, Tories and Indians.

Burgoyne's plan called for the British Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger, commanding a force of eighteen hundred, to capture the Patriot Fort Schuyler (Fort Stanwix) at the head of the Mohawk Valley. The British besieged the fort. On August 6, 1777, a Patriot force of eight hundred men, commanded by Colonel Nicholas Herkimer, set out to relieve the Patriot garrison at the fort. The strung-out Patriot column was ambushed by a force of Indians, Butler's Rangers, and the King's Royal Regiment. The Patriots were devastated by the firing, and Herkimer severely wounded. The dying Herkimer propped himself against a tree and oversaw a battle which saw very heavy casualties on both sides. At one point, a column of Tories turned their green jackets inside out as a ruse, and got very close to Herkimer's men; this was followed by savage hand-to-hand fighting. The Indians finally fled, and the Tories retreated.

Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum's detachment of Hessian mercenaries, accompanied by Tories, Indians and French Canadians, was sent by Burgoyne in the direction of Bennington, Vermont. Their mission was to seize supplies. On August 16, 1777, the British column was met by a large Patriot force under John Stark. In the ensuing battle, many of the Tory, French Canadian and Indian positions were quickly overrun, and the defenders fled or were captured. The Tory Queen's Loyal Rangers were shot to pieces, with more than two hundred of their men killed, wounded or captured. The Germans eventually surrendered, in what was a major Patriot victory.

Burgoyne's invasion was now in serious trouble. His supplies were low, Tories were not rallying to the colors in the numbers expected, and a huge force of Patriots was gathering against him. At Saratoga, in a decisive battle, Tories, Indians and French Canadians acted as scouts and sharpshooters for the British, but the fighting ended with a shattering defeat for the royal cause—the surrender of Burgoyne and his army on October 17, 1777.

The Tory and Indian raids
Main articles: Battle of Cobleskill; Battle of Wyoming; Cherry Valley Massacre

The British general Guy Carleton, impressed by the ambush at Oriskany, authorized John Butler to raise eight more companies of Tory Rangers, "to serve with the Indians, as occasion shall require". Butler's headquarters were established at Fort Niagara. This gave the Tories access to the river valleys of northern New York.

The destruction of Burgoyne's force seems to have persuaded the British that raids upon frontier settlements were the correct path to follow. An early raid was made in May, 1778, on Cobleskill, New York, where three hundred Tories and Indians, led by Brant, defeated a small Patriot force of militia and Continental regulars, then burned homes, crops and barns. But this was only a prelude.

In late June, 1778, a mixed force of Indians and John Butler's Tory Rangers attacked the settlement in Wyoming Valley, in Pennsylvania. The raiders were resisted by a force of inexperienced Patriot militia. These were badly defeated. The Tories and Indians devastated the whole area. Reports indicated that some prisoners and fleeing Patriots were tortured and murdered. One historian has said, "The Tories usually neither gave nor expected any quarter, and when this vengeful spirit was augmented by the Indian propensity for total war, the results were almost invariably grim."

Now Tories and Indians swept through the Mohawk Valley in "endless raids". In November, 1778, a mixed force of Tories and Indians attacked settlements in Cherry Valley, New York. The Tory commander this time was Walter Butler, son of John. Again, there was enormous devastation, and innocent people were murdered. A contemporary account depicts the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant (whom the Patriots called a "savage") stopping some of Butler's men from murdering a woman and child with the words "... that child is not an enemy to the King, nor a friend to Congress." In retaliation for all this, George Washington ordered a full-scale attack by regular troops of the Continental Army. Generals John Sullivan and James Clinton and Colonel Daniel Brodhead, at the head of forty-six hundred men, advanced on the Indians, their objective "the total destruction and devastation" of the Iroquois settlements. A vast amount of damage was done, and much cruelty-in-return inflicted, such as scalping, skinning dead Indians to make leggings, and the burning alive of at least one woman and child. Astoundingly, after this huge effort, the Tory and Indian raids went on. Indeed, as hopes for a British victory waned, the Tory raids in New York became more and more relentless, as will be narrated below.

The British turn south
Main articles: Battle of Crooked Billet; Capture of Savannah; Battle of Kettle Creek; Siege of Savannah

Throughout Lord Howe's campaigning in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, many uniformed Tory troops had continued to be used for guard duties, keeping order and foraging. Many saw action too. John Graves Simcoe and his Queen's Rangers executed a shattering raid on Patriot forces in the Battle of Crooked Billet, in May, 1778. At Brandywine, the Queen's American Rangers fought throughout the day, and sustained heavy casualties. But things were about to change. Howe resigned, after his victories and capture of Philadelphia failed to knock Washington and his army out of the war. The British were beginning to realize that victory in America, if it came at all, would be a hard, drawn-out affair. They were planning a new strategy. The Tory soldiers from the North who had been chafing to get into battle, and the downtrodden Tories of the South who had also long wanted to fight for their King, were about to get their wish. The British were being told that large numbers of Tories eagerly awaited their arrival in the South. It was decided to tap this supposed loyal sentiment. Slowly, British sentiment shifted toward a major Southern effort. To begin with, Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell, in command of a British regiment, two Hessian regiments, four Tory battalions and artillery, was dispatched to Georgia. On December 29, 1778, the Patriots were badly defeated near Savannah, with New York Tories proving invaluable in the victory. Savannah was soon in British hands. The British Southern strategy called for the wholescale enlistment of Southern Tories, who had suffered much since the war began. This imaginative policy showed that the British had learned from their experiences farther north: that simply defeating the Continental Army in the field would not win the war. That they had frequently done, but the victories availed them little when most of the countryside remained dominated by Patriot sentiment. The British thought that in the South, they could reverse this. Local Tories would be widely enlisted. With the aid of the northern Tory regiments now arriving in the South, it was hoped that the local Tories could maintain control over their neighborhoods, slowly enlarging the scope of British domination, while the regulars concentrated on wiping out the Continental Army. The policy was energetically pursued, and its eventual failure has much to do with the Patriot victory in the Revolution.

An early setback for the policy lay in the fate of the eight hundred North and South Carolina Tories who gathered at the Broad River under Captain Boyd. These Tories marched toward the Savannah, inflicting a great deal of devastation. On February 14, 1779, at Kettle Creek, Georgia, a vengeful Patriot force caught up with them, and after vicious fighting, the Tories were defeated. Five of their leaders were hanged for treason. But the recruitment of Tories proceeded. The British position in the South was strengthened when British and Tory forces repelled a French and Patriot siege of Savannah in the fall of 1779, with great loss of life to the besiegers.

Early British victories in the South
Main articles: Siege of Charleston; Battle of Waxhaws; Battle of Ramsour's Mill; Battle of Camden A much more shattering British victory followed with the siege and surrender of Charleston, in the spring of 1780. This was one of the most agonizingly fought engagements of the war. Some of the British combatants were Tories, under the command of a remarkable British officer, Patrick Ferguson. Now the civil war in the South turned into an inferno. Part of it was stoked by the Englishman Banastre Tarleton. Tarleton commanded the Loyal Legion, later known as the British Legion, at first a force consisting mostly of Pennsylvanians, but which was quickly augmented by Tory volunteers from the South. At one point, the British Legion grew to nearly two thousand men. It—and Tarleton—were hated and feared by Patriots, and this feeling grew when Tarleton and his men defeated a Patriot force at Waxhaws, South Carolina, on May 29, 1780. An almost incredible seventy to seventy-five per cent of the Patriot force were killed or wounded, and the Tories were reputed to have killed many of the wounded or those trying to surrender. After that, Patriots who captured Tories gave them what they called "Tarleton's quarter"—meaning none.

The murderous fighting in the South between Patriots and Tories came close to equaling in ferocity anything that had been done by the Tories and Indians to the frontier settlers of the North, or to the Indians by Washington's Continentals. Both sides resorted to the burning of farms and homes, torture, and summary execution on a huge scale. The self-consuming hatred and ferocity of both sides was clearly seen in the Battle of Ramsour's Mill, North Carolina, on June 20, 1780. The combatants on both sides were untrained militia, few if any in uniform. The battle was fought with incredible ferocity between neighbors, close relations and personal friends. More than half the Patriots in the battle were killed or wounded, and Tory casualties were very high. After the butchery, the Tories retreated and left the Patriots in possession of the field. A prominent historian called this "... the most desperate engagement of the war in terms of the proportion of casualties to men involved on each side". It was a terrible omen of what was to come.

British fortunes reached their high point in August, 1780, when Lord Charles Cornwallis's force of British regulars and Tories inflicted a shattering defeat on Patriot forces at the Battle of Camden. This was one of the most spectacular British victories of the war. A substantial number of Cornwallis's three thousand men were Tories—North Carolina Tory regulars and militia, a unit called the Volunteers of Ireland, and the infantry and cavalry of the British Legion. It might have been expected that Lord Cornwallis would oppose his Tories to the Patriot militia, and send his regulars against the Continental regulars. Instead, the Tories faced the Patriot regulars, and the redcoats attacked the inexperienced Patriot militia, routing them, exposing the Patriot flank, and causing the collapse and total rout of the whole Patriot army. The entire Patriot strength in the South now seemed to be spent. It appeared to the British, and to many Americans on both sides, that the British had decisively conquered the South.

Continuing Tory and Indian raids
Despite Washington's huge retaliation, the Tory and Indian raids on the frontier intensified. The first order of business for the British was to destroy the Oneidas, the one tribe in New York which supported the Patriot cause. Supported by British regulars and Tories, the Mohawks, Senecas and Cayugas destroyed the Oneida settlements, driving the Oneidas away and destroying their usefulness as an early warning line to alert defenders that the Indian and Tory raiders were coming.

Now Joseph Brant's Tory Indians devastated the frontier. In May, 1780, Sir John Johnson, commanding four hundred Tories and two hundred Indians, attacked in the Mohawk Valley, doing an immense amount of damage. Brant then led his men down the Ohio, where he ambushed a detachment of troops under the command of George Rogers Clark. In the autumn of 1780, Johnson, commanding over a thousand Tories and Indians, launched another devastating series of raids. Revenge was soon to follow, however. In 1781, after renewed raids, the Patriot leader Marinus Willett inflicted two defeats on the Tories and Indians. The second one was won over a force composed of eight hundred Tories and British regulars, accompanied by a much smaller force of Indians. This Patriot victory was decisive, and in it Walter Butler was killed. This renowned Tory leader epitomizes the bitterness and violence of the civil war taking place within the Revolution. Marinus Willett's son said that Butler "had exhibited more instances of enterprise, had done more injury, and committed more murder, than any other man on the frontiers." Yet only six years before, he had been a lawyer in Albany, a member of a prominent family, a handsome, graceful man.

The tide turns in the South
Main articles: Battle of Fishing Creek; Battle of Kings Mountain; Battle of Cowpens; Pyle's Massacre; Battle of Guilford Court House; Battle of Hobkirk's Hill; Siege of Ninety-Six

After Camden, Banastre Tarleton's and Patrick Ferguson's Tory forces had seemed almost invincible. An example was Tarleton's vanquishing of Patriot raiders at Fishing Creek, shortly after the battle at Camden. Tarleton's and Ferguson's successes had greatly demoralized the Patriots of the South. It seemed that the strategy of using Tories, both northerners and locals, to defeat local Patriots and dominate the South, while the redcoats went about the business of destroying the Continental Army, was succeeding.

Then it all went wrong at King's Mountain, on the border of the Carolinas, on October 7, 1780. Major Patrick Ferguson commanded a Tory force which was enjoying great success in pacifying northern South Carolina for the royal cause. But a Patriot force of over one thousand "over-the-mountain men", tough pioneers from the westernmost settlements, experts in the use of the rifle, was coming after him. Augmented by several hundred Patriot militiamen from the Carolinas, this force cornered Ferguson at King's Mountain.

Ferguson had nine hundred Tory troops, made up of militia and detachments from the King's American Rangers, the Queen's Rangers and the New Jersey Volunteers. It was ironic that Ferguson, inventor of a breech-loading rifle, found himself in a situation where his Tories were armed with muskets, and the Patriots with rifles, whose range was greater. The fighting was ferocious. A series of fierce Tory bayonet charges drove the over-the-mountain men back several times, but eventually Tory resistance collapsed. Ferguson was killed. After the Tory force surrendered, the frontiersmen fired point-blank into a mass of defenseless Tory prisoners, killing nearly a hundred of them. Other Tories were summarily hanged. Ferguson's force was completely destroyed, a huge blow to the British. Now another catastrophe lay in store for the other seemingly invincible commander of Tories—Banastre Tarleton. On January 17, 1781, Tarleton went into action against the Patriot commander Daniel Morgan at Cowpens, South Carolina. Tarleton had over five hundred Tory infantry and cavalry of his British Legion, along with Tory militia and British regulars. His eleven hundred men slightly outnumbered Morgan's force, which consisted of Continental regulars and Patriot militia. The fighting was as brutal as ever. The culminating moment of the battle occurred when the Patriot right gave way. The Tories thought that the Patriots were panicking, as they had at Camden. The Tories began to advance, and Tarleton ordered one of the impetuous charges for which the British Legion was famous. This time, it was a disaster. The Tories ran into massed Patriot fire, and then were taken on their flank by an expertly timed Patriot cavalry charge. It was all over very quickly. Tarleton and a few others escaped, leaving behind a hundred killed, and over eight hundred captured, including two hundred and twenty-nine wounded. Another important Tory force had been nearly destroyed.

Another blow followed on February 24, 1781, at the Haw River, North Carolina. The Patriot Commander Colonel Henry Lee (father of Robert E. Lee) was in pursuit of Tarleton, who was moving around the area with a renewed force, recruiting Tories. A force of four hundred Tories under John Pyle was moving to join Tarleton. But they made a disastrous mistake. Lee's men wore green coats, like Tories, rather than the usual Patriot blue. Pyle and his men rode up to meet what they assumed was Tarleton's Legion (Tarleton himself was only a mile away). Lee actually grasped Pyle's hand, intending to demand surrender. At the last minute, a Tory officer recognized the ruse and ordered his men to open fire. Ninety Tories were then killed and many more wounded; not a single Patriot died. This was probably "Tarleton's Quarter" with a vengeance. On March 15, 1781, the British won a Pyrrhic victory at Guilford Court House, North Carolina. Tarleton's cavalry was present. This pivotal battle, a tactical British victory with huge losses, made it clear that British power in the South was waning. On April 25, 1781, another battle was fought at Hobkirk's Hill, near Camden, scene of a previous Patriot disaster. An American historian has called Lord Rawdon's outnumbered nine-hundred-man British force "a motley collection of Loyalists stiffened by a few regulars". In fact, the British force consisted mostly of the King's American Regiment, the New York Volunteers, the Volunteers of Ireland and a South Carolina militia unit. The "motley collection" distinguished themselves in a brutally fought engagement which eventually saw the Patriot forces driven from the field. But Hobkirk's Hill re-proved the lesson of Guilford Court House: the royal cause in the South was losing, because the British were losing large numbers of irreplaceable men, while Patriot forces kept increasing in size.

Now the forts established by the British and manned by Tories fell to the Patriots, or were abandoned one by one. Tories could take some comfort, though, from the heroic and successful defense of the fort at Ninety-Six, South Carolina, from May 22 to June 19, 1781. The defenders consisted of five hundred and fifty Tories, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel John Cruger, a New Yorker. Three hundred and fifty of Cruger's men were members of regular Tory regiments; the rest were South Carolina Tory militia. The besiegers consisted of a thousand Patriots under the great general Nathanael Greene. The Patriots at Ninety-Six used classic siege warfare techniques, inching ever closer to the Tory fortifications. Cruger ordered attack after attack on the Patriot lines, to try to disrupt the work. Exhorted to surrender, Cruger defied Greene's "promises or threats". Hearing that Lord Rawdon was marching to the relief of the fort, Greene ordered a general attack. It was a bloodbath. One hundred and eighty-five Patriot attackers were killed or wounded. In a few more days, the fort would have fallen, but Greene broke off the engagement and retreated.

The story of the Ninety-Six siege from the Tory point of view is told in detail in the classic novel Oliver Wiswell, by Kenneth Roberts.

The endgame was now at hand. Cornwallis's exhausted and depleted army marched into Virginia. Tory units marched with Cornwallis. But the British were soon to be defeated at the siege of Yorktown by a numerically far superior Patriot and French force, and their surrender on October 19, 1781 effectively ended the war.

The Tories fight on in the North
Main articles: Tryon's raid; William Franklin; Battle of Groton Heights

Tory resistance was intensified in the middle colonies and New England, even as the chances of British victory ebbed away. Indeed, minor Tory raids continued well after the surrender at Yorktown.

On July 2, 1779, William Tryon, a former royal governor, assembled a huge force of twenty-six hundred regulars, Hessians, and a major Tory regiment, the King's American Regiment. This force attacked New Haven, Connecticut. Colonel Edmund Fanning of the King's Americans dissuaded Tryon from burning Yale University and the town (Fanning was a Yale graduate). The sacking of New Haven gave birth to a Yale legend. Napthali Daggett, a former college president, was caught firing at the royal troops. A British officer asked him if he would fire on them again if his life was spared. "Nothing more likely", said Daggett, who was promptly bayoneted. But a former student of his, William Chandler, a Tory officer, saved his life. Tryon's force went on to sack and burn the nearby town of Fairfield, then the town of Norwalk. These acts were to earn the Tories the enmity and rage of the people of Connecticut. William Franklin was the Tory son of Benjamin Franklin, and the former royal governor of New Jersey. One historian has called Franklin "one of the most dangerous Tories in America". Now, by 1780, as hopes of a British victory began to fade, the Tories of the North became increasingly vengeful. Franklin's unit, the Associated Loyalists, launched a series of bloody raids in New Jersey. In a brutal episode which epitomizes the hatred between the two sides, the Associated Loyalists seized a well-known Patriot leader, Joshua Huddy. The Tories wanted revenge for the death of Philip White, a Tory who had been captured by Patriots and shot while trying to escape. The Tories hanged Huddy, leaving him swinging with a message pinned to his breast, reading in part "... Up goes Huddy for Philip White".

The last major event of the war in the North came in September, 1781, when Benedict Arnold, now a British general, led a mainly Tory force of seventeen hundred men, which included Arnold's own American Legion, some New Jersey Volunteers and other Tories, in burning down New London, Connecticut. This was the last of the major Tory raids in the North.

The Black Tories


Main articles: Black Loyalist; The Book of Negroes; Black Canadians

The Revolution was a remarkable saga in African-American history. This huge conflict offered an opportunity for vast numbers of slaves to fight, and many did, on both sides, in the hope of earning their freedom. It has been suggested that two revolutions went on at once—the Patriot one against the British, and a second one fought by blacks for their freedom.

Throughout the war, the British repeatedly offered freedom to those slaves who would join their side. This was the first large-scale opportunity in American history for slaves to escape from their bondage. One historian has said, "Thousands of blacks fought with the British." The white Tories were fighting out of loyalty to Great Britain, or out of an attachment to the British Crown, emotions which modern Americans cannot understand. The ex-slaves who joined the British cause were fighting for the most fundamental of American values—freedom—and they were fighting for it in a basic sense which no white Patriot could ever have equaled.

The historical neglect of the black Tories may not come entirely from the fact that they were not on the Patriot side. It may stem as well from the uncomfortable fact that, as an American historian has said regarding the Revolution, "... more often than otherwise, it is the British who are in the right and the Patriots who are in the wrong on the issue of [black] civil rights." The story began when Lord Dunmore, the former royal governor of Virginia, on November 7, 1775, proclaimed freedom for all slaves (or indentured servants) belonging to Patriots, if they were able and willing to bear arms, and joined the British forces. One historian has said, "The proclamation had a profound effect on the war, transforming countless slaveholders into Rebels and drawing thousands of slaves to the Loyalist side." Within a month of the proclamation, more than five hundred slaves left their masters and became Tories. The Ethiopian Regiment was raised, and put on uniforms with "Liberty to Slaves" across the chest. British regulars, white Tories and the Ethiopian Regiment attacked Great Bridge, near Norfolk, Virginia. The attack failed, and thirty-two captured blacks were sold by their captors back into slavery.

Some of the Ethiopian Regiment escaped with Dunmore to New York shortly after the city was captured by the British in 1776. There the regiment was disbanded, but some of its men joined the Black Pioneers. This unit had been formed by the British general Henry Clinton, in North Carolina, from slaves responding to Dunmore's proclamation. (A pioneer in the British Army was a soldier who built bridges and fortifications.)

In August 1775, South Carolina Patriots executed Thomas Jeremiah for treason. Jeremiah was a freed black man allegedly sympathetic to the British. Within three months of his death, five hundred blacks, a tenth of the black population of Charleston, had escaped to join the British forces, and both black and white Tories were raiding Patriot plantations.

At the end of 1775, the British officer Captain William Dalrymple proposed that blacks be used as "irregulars"—that is, for what we now call guerilla warfare. As the war ground on, an increasing number of blacks did indeed fight as Tory irregulars, or with the regular British forces. There can be no doubt that a yearning for freedom was their motivation.

Estimates of the number of slaves who escaped to the British range from twenty thousand to one hundred thousand. Thomas Jefferson estimated that thirty thousand slaves fled their masters just during the brief British invasion of Virginia in 1781. Recent studies show that black soldiers fought in the British forces in large numbers, and one historian has said, that "... black soldiers were the secret of the imperial [British] army in North America."

In Massachusetts, the British organized both all-black and multi-racial units. In 1779, Emmerich's Chasseurs, a Tory unit in New York, included blacks who raided the Patriots. There were black soldiers in De Lancey's Brigade in Savannah. There were blacks in the Royal Artillery units in Savannah, and black dragoons (cavalry). There were also large numbers of black pioneers and other non-combatant troops. At one point, ten per cent of the British forces at Savannah were black. There were substantial numbers of black soldiers in the British forces at Charleston, and analyses of British records show that blacks were represented in British units in Rhode Island at about the same time (1779).

One of the most famous black Tories was an escaped slave named Tye. This charismatic young man escaped in 1775 from his master in New Jersey, at that time a colony where slavery was legal. In Virginia, Colonel Tye joined Dunmore's regiment. After the regiment was disbanded, Colonel Tye fought on the British side in the battle of Monmouth. He then founded a unit which the British called the Black Brigade. The Brigade relentlessly raided Patriot homes and farms in New Jersey, gathered intelligence for the British, kidnapped Patriot leaders, and gathered firewood and provisions for the British Army. Colonel Tye's men became a scourge to the Patriots. They were headquartered in a timber-built fortress at Bull's Ferry, New Jersey. George Washington was so angered by Tye's raids that he sent a thousand troops against the fortress. A force of black and white Tories fought them off after a bloody assault, and the raids went on. Colonel Tye finally died after being wounded in an assault by his men on the home of Joshua Huddy, the Patriot later hanged by William Franklin's Associated Loyalists.

In addition, from at least 1776 through 1779, other black Tories were heavily involved in raids against Patriot forces in New Jersey.

An American historian has said about the war in the South, condescendingly, "The more intelligent and articulate [sic] of the freed slaves were quite frequently used by the British as guides in raiding parties or assigned to the commissary…" (to help round up provisions). Eliza Wilkinson, daughter of slave-holding Patriots, recorded a Tory raid of which she predictably thought one of the most terrible features was the presence of "armed Negroes". Battalions of blacks fought in the successful defense of Savannah against a French and Patriot siege at the end of 1779. One British observer wrote, "Our armed Negroes [were] skirmishing with the rebels the whole afternoon", and, later, "... the armed Negroes brought in two Rebel Dragoons and eight Horses, and killed two Rebels who were in a foraging party." When Lord Cornwallis invaded Virginia in 1781, twenty-three of Jefferson's slaves escaped and joined the British forces. It was said that two or three thousand black Tories were with Cornwallis in the Carolinas. This may have included men and their wives and children, following in the wake of an army which could protect them from their former oppressors.

The British were not always kind to their black allies. Some British and Tory officers had compassionate attitudes toward the blacks; some were thoroughgoing racists. The black Tories were often housed in dreadfully crowded, disease-ridden conditions. One of the most terrible events occurred when British transports, leaving a Southern port for the West Indies, were not able to take on all the blacks who wanted to escape. The desperate former slaves, knowing too well what would happen to them if they were recaptured by their former masters, clung to the sides of ships (risking capsizing them) until their fingers were chopped off by British soldiers. Others were left to rot on an island where twenty years after the Revolution, the ground was littered with their bones.

When the war ended, the question arose as to what would happen to the Tories. The British were willing and anxious to reward white Tories and their families by helping them escape from the vengeance of Patriots. This particularly included those who had fought on the British side.

But what would happen to the blacks? As the fighting ended, escaped slaves were flooding into British-occupied New York City. Even there, blacks lived in terror of their former owners. Boston King, an escaped slave who had fought with the British, said "... we saw our old masters coming from Virginia, North Carolina, and other parts, and seizing upon their slaves in the streets of New York, or even dragging them out of their beds." Then the British government committed an act of betrayal against all the blacks who had fought for them, and trusted their offers of emancipation. The peace treaty ending the war said, in article 7, that the British were to leave the United States "without ... carrying away any Negroes".

But many of the senior British officers in North America were prepared to redeem the honor of the Royal Army. The British general Sir Guy Carleton (later Lord Dorchester), who commanded in New York City, thought that any black American who had served the mother country was not property; he (and his family) were British subjects. In defiance of the plain language of the treaty, (and of his own political masters in London), he began to issue passes which allowed the black bearer to go to Nova Scotia, or wherever else the freed black thought proper. In May, 1783, George Washington met with Carleton. Washington was angry about the British carrying escaped slaves away. Carleton told Washington that the British were compiling a list of all the blacks who were being helped to escape, called The Book of Negroes. "Sir Guy Carleton observed that no interpretation could be put upon the article [article 7 of the peace treaty] inconsistent with prior [promises] binding the National Honor which must be kept with all colors", and Carleton rebuked Washington for the suggestion that a British officer would consent to a "notorious breach of the public faith towards people of any complexion". One black Tory who was eventually evacuated by Carleton had belonged to Thomas Jefferson, and three to George Washington.

Eventually, nearly three thousand ex-slaves were evacuated by Carleton to Nova Scotia. One of their leaders there was Colonel Stephen Blucke, commander of the Black Brigade after Colonel Tye's death. Some eventually went on to Sierra Leone. Boston King and his wife were among them. Many remained in Nova Scotia. Their lives in Canada were harsh. They and their descendants faced racism and discrimination well into the twentieth century. But Carleton's black Tories were not re-enslaved, nor beaten to death nor hanged as traitors or runaway slaves. Nor were Carleton's evacuees from New York City the only black Tories to escape being re-enslaved. Thousands of other blacks escaped to Canada by other means, many on ships leaving Charleston or Savannah. Others escaped to British Florida. A total of between ninety-one hundred and ten thousand four hundred black Tories eventually found refuge in Canada.

The fate of the Tories


Many Tories kept their heads down and made their peace with the new nation of the United States. A few returned from exile and took up life in the U.S. But remaining in the United States after the Revolution was not an option for many, including most of those who had fought. About one hundred thousand Tories were evacuated, most of them to Canada. There, land was sometimes allotted according to what regiment Tories had fought in. Thus, the King's Royal Regiment of New York, Butler's Rangers, Jessup's Corps, the King's Rangers and Joseph Brant's Iroquois got land in what is now Ontario; part of de Lancey's brigade, the Pennsylvania Loyalists, the King's American Dragoons, the New Jersey Volunteers, the Royal Fencible Americans, the Orange Rangers and others were given land in New Brunswick. Other Tories settled in Nova Scotia and Quebec.

The defeated Tories of the Revolution became the much-respected United Empire Loyalists of Canada, the first large-scale group of English-speaking immigrants to that country, and one which inevitably did much to shape Canadian institutions and the Canadian character.

Americans hated John Graves Simcoe, commander of the Queen`s Rangers, and the Tory frontier commanders John Butler and Joseph Brant. But Simcoe became the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada (Ontario), and the lovely city of Brantford, Ontario is named for one of the greatest Indian leaders in history, a man all but forgotten in the United States. There is a bust of John Butler at the Valiants Memorial in Ottawa.

The Tories prospered in Canada. And they left a legacy of more than money or land. An American historian has said, "Many Canadians believe that their nation's traditional devotion to law and civility, the very essence of being a Canadian, traces back to being loyal, as in Loyalist."

The Tories in popular culture
By the time of the Civil War, American popular hatred of the Tories was fading, to be replaced by a vague memory of a few malcontents who for some reason could not accept the Revolution. Yet Tories rear their heads sometimes in American popular culture. In Stephen Vincent Benet's short story, "The Devil and Daniel Webster", Webster in his quarrel with the devil demands "an American jury", and gets one containing the Tory officer Walter Butler. In the book and film Drums Along the Mohawk, villainous Tories are shown, looting and burning away with their Indian allies. The Disney television series The Swamp Fox (about the Patriot leader Francis Marion) showed Tories as cowardly guns-for-hire, and was condemned by the Canadian House of Commons for its portrayal of their beloved United Empire Loyalists. The 1985 Al Pacino film Revolution depicts a rich Tory family named the McConnahays, whose youthful daughter--Nastassja Kinski speaking with an improbable German accent--falls for Pacino and the Patriot cause. The film essentially perpetuates the myth that most Tories were wealthy hangers-on of the British. The film The Patriot has a psychopathic English character based on Banastre Tarleton. In history, Tarleton's men were mostly Tories. In the film only one, Captain Wilkins, is, although he is given a chance to declare his British allegiance at the beginning of the film, and despite being horrified by the Tarleton character's (imaginary) burning of a church full of Patriots, he is still seen loyally helping Cornwallis to the bitter end.

Some fans of The Patriot may have been moved by the scene where black and white Patriots bond together. The unfortunate reality is that Francis Marion, the real-life Patriot leader on whom the Mel Gibson character was based, was in actual history notorious for his brutal intimidation of blacks. Books are a better place to look for a balanced view of the Tories. The classic novel Oliver Wiswell, by the prominent American historical novelist Kenneth Roberts, tells the whole story of the Revolution from the Tory side. The book was much condemned when it appeared, because Roberts had enough artistic integrity not to portray his Tory hero as eventually seeing the error of his ways and returning to the American fold. Instead the book depicts Oliver Wiswell from his new home in Canada, (which he calls "land of liberty") as still having contempt for the revolution and its leaders. A lesser American historical novelist, Bruce Lancaster, also depicted Tories, although from a more conventional condemnatory point of view.

Two novels at least deal with the story of the black Tories. One is Washington and Caesar, by Christian Cameron, which tells the story of a black Tory fighting in the British forces. The distinguished Canadian novel The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill, depicts an enslaved black woman who helps the British and escapes with their help.