Thousands of British Loyalists Were Forced to Leave the Newly Independent United States
At one level, the American Revolution was what it purported to be: locals fighting for their independence from a distant overseas imperial power. At another level, it was also a civil war between the locals who wanted independence and the ones who did not. Conventional wisdom during the American Revolution had it that about a third of the colonists favored the Patriot cause and independence, a third remained loyal to the British crown, and another third were uncommitted and simply wanted to be left alone. Modern scholarship estimates the actual Loyalist figure at around 20%, but whatever it was, it was a considerable percentage of the population.
The uncommitted could jump on the bandwagon of whichever side won, and most of them probably discovered their inner Patriot in a hurry when the rebels won. But for those Loyalists who favored or even fought for the British, the surrender of King George III’s men at Yorktown in 1781 was bad news. Not just because their side lost, but because it meant that they, too, were about to personally lose – and for quite a few of them, they were about to lose in a big way.
That is because the decisions of revolutions are seldom like the decisions of elections, with the losers getting another chance in a few years. The losers in revolutions often lose for good, especially when it comes to violent revolutions that drag on for years of fighting and bloodshed and suffering, like the American Revolution. Even more so in those parts of the country where the fighting had turned into guerrilla warfare, with neighbors forming into pro and anti British militias that raided and terrorized their opponents. The victors, with memories of prolonged suffering and just how much it cost them to secure victory still fresh on their minds, are seldom magnanimous. So it was with the victorious Patriots, who frequently proved anything but magnanimous towards the losing Loyalists.
In small groups or in huge mobs, Patriots and those who felt the need to demonstrate their Patriot chops – particularly those who had remained uncommitted during the war – fell upon known Loyalists. Some Loyalists were dragged out of their homes and beaten. Others were tarred and feathered – a punishment that often left its victims scarred and disfigured for life from the hot tar, while some were so badly burned that they died of their injuries. Some were robbed. Others had their houses and places of business put to the torch. Yet others were unceremoniously kicked out of their homes and chased out of their community at gunpoint, and their property was seized by the victors. Others were simply killed out of hand.
With the Loyalists’ neighbors turning on them due to patriotic zeal or opportunism, the immediate aftermath of the Patriots’ victory was not a good time to have been one of the colonists who had sided with the British. The hostility of the victors, and fears of even worse to come once the British finally withdraw, convinced many Loyalists that the new United States was not the place of them. So as the British withdrew, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Loyalists upped stakes and withdrew with them, most of them resettling in Canada or British colonies in the Caribbean.