Loyalist Literature

An Annotated Bibliographic Guide to the Writings on the Loyalists of the American Revolution

Robert S. Allen

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 1982
• ISBN:
  9781459713604
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

This highly readable guide is more than a bibliography. Written in a narrative style, it is as well a short history of the Loyalists: who they were, why they left, where they settled, and what their legacy is.

1

General References

The study of Loyalist history can prudently begin with a review of general bibliographical reference sources. Good introductions are: Wallace Brown, ‘Loyalist Historiography,’ Acadiensis, Vol. 4, No. 1 (August, 1974), pp. 133-8, and ‘The View at Two Hundred Years: The Loyalists of the American Revolution,’ Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Vol. 80, Part 1 (April, 1970), pp. 25-47; Oscar Handlin et al., Harvard Guide to American History (New York: Atheneum, 1967), pp. 301-2 (The Loyalists); and Jo-Ann Fellows, ed., ‘A Bibliography of Loyalist Source Material in Canada,’ Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Vol. 82, Part 1 (April, 1972), pp. 67-256.

As well, a forthcoming multi-authored book of Loyalist biographies entitled, Eleven Exiles (Toronto: Dundurn Press) under the general editorship of Dr. Phyllis R. Blakeley and John Grant will provide a good accounting of individual Loyalists and their times in various geographic regions of British North America. Finally, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Toronto) has several entries devoted to prominent Loyalists.

In the United States, the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, Massachusetts) has sponsored The Programme for Loyalist Studies and Publications which has undertaken to publish over the next several years an estimated twenty volumes of Loyalist papers from collections in the United States, Great Britain and Canada. Andrew Oliver, ed., The Journal of Samuel Curwen, Loyalist (2 vols., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), an account of a moderate and exile in England who admired the British constitutional system and desired a well ordered state and reconciliation with the colonies, heralded the formal beginning of this series. The Canadian Committee of the Programme centered at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton was primarily concerned with the study of those Loyalists who settled in British North America. Sadly and unfortunately, the death of W.S. MacNutt and the departure of Jo-Ann Fellows has left the Loyalist Programme at U.N.B. moribund.

Reprints of older works provide insights into Loyalist history in that they reflect the perceptions of an earlier age. The Mika Publishing Company (Belleville, Ontario), for instance, has introduced the Canadiana Reprint Series which has republished facsimile editions of county histories. These works, many of which were written before 1900, are useful for details on early Loyalist settlement and family records. The Loyalist Library of The American Revolutionary Series (Boston: Gregg Press, 1972) has also republished a combination of primary source documents and secondary works. Some local or state examples are: Wilbur H. Siebert, The Loyalists of Pennsylvania (1920); Otis Grant Hammond, Tories of New Hampshire (1917); and E.A. Jones, The Loyalists of New Jersey (1926). Also, the Genealogical Publishing Company of Baltimore has reprinted E.A. Jones, The Loyalists of Massachusetts: Their memorials, Petitions, Claims, Etc., From English Records (1930; 1969), and with a new introduction by Milton Rubincam, The Old United Empire Loyalists List (1885; 1976).

Pamphlet literature is useful for assessing the passion and unabashed subjectivism of those Loyalists most directly affected by the upheaval of the American Revolution. Magdalen Casey, Catalogue of Pamphlets in the Public Archives of Canada, 1493-1877, No. 13 (Ottawa: The King’s Printer, 1931) includes such representative examples as: 637, p. 95, ‘The Case and Claim of the American Loyalists impartially stated and considered;’ and 695, p. 104, Joseph Galloway, ‘The Claim of the American Loyalists, Reviewed and Maintained upon incontrovertible Principles of Law and Justice.’ The Bibliography of Canadiana (1959) also offers opinion of this nature as best illustrated by 4780, p. 40, a sermon delivered in 1793 by Charles Inglis, Bishop of Nova Scotia, entitled ‘Steadfastness in Religion and Loyalty,’ the text taken from Proverbs XXIV.21, ‘My Son, fear thou the Lord and the King and meddle not with them that are given to change.’ Bernard Bailyn, ed., Pamphlets of the American Revolution (2 vols., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965) is weighted toward the rebel ideology.

Theses listed by the Public Archives of Canada (Ottawa) through the Canadian Historical Association in the Register of Post-Graduate Dissertations in Progress in History and Related Subjects relate in part to Loyalists. For example, Janice Potter, Ph.D., Queen’s, ‘Is this the Liberty we Seek? Loyalist Ideology in Colonial New York and Massachusetts’ (No. 12 (1977), 1748, p. 75) was completed in December 1977. Other examples of Loyalist-related theses include: E.S. Thomas, ‘Benjamin Ingraham, Loyalist: A Case Study,’ Ph.D., Concordia; John L. Tottenham, ‘Loyalists in Arms: Recruitment, Organization and Operations of Armed Loyalists in the American Revolutionary War,’ Ph.D., Michigan; M. Barkley, ‘The Loyalist Tradition in Canada, 1812-1920,’ Ph.D., Toronto; and M.S. Waltman, ‘Patterns of Loyalist Settlement in the Bay of Quinté/Upper St. Lawrence Region, 1783-1791,’ M.A., Queen’s.

The Loyalist Gazette published by authority of the Dominion Council of the United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada has appeared semi-annually (spring and autumn) since 1963, but publication of a sporadic nature began about 1898 as Transactions of the United States Empire Loyalists’ Association of Ontario. Each issue contains articles on Loyalist history of which representative regional examples include: A.R.M. Lower, ‘The United Empire Loyalists,’ (Spring, 1969); James J. Talman, ‘Ontario: A Product of the American Revolution,’ (Autumn, 1968); A.G. Dorland, ‘The Great Loyalist Experiment in New Brunswick,’ (Spring, 1974); Watson Kirkconnell, ‘The Loyalists of Nova Scotia,’ (Autumn, 1969); and Robert S. Allen, ‘The Loyalists of Atlantic Canada,’ (Spring, 1982). Scholarly book reviews of the most recent Loyalist literature, reports from the twenty-one Branch Associations, and because of the paramountcy of genealogical interest within the Association, queries on UEL ancestors are also included in each issue. Although particularist, The Loyalist Gazette remains an important general reference source for Loyalist studies.

In addition, ‘A Position Paper on Nomenclature’ was completed in April 1977 by a committee appointed by the Council of the United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada. This detailed report attempted to define United Empire Loyalist, but concluded by recommending that because of the complexities involved only a broad interpretation would be appropriate. Nonetheless, historical examples were stressed to establish a general definition. First, the Loyalist Claims Commissioners classified or defined Loyalists in descending order of merit as:

1) Those who had rendered service to Great Britain.

2) Those who had borne arms against the Revolution.

3) Uniform Loyalists.

4) Loyalists resident in Great Britain.

5) Those who took the oath of allegiance to American States but afterwards joined the British.

6) Those who took up arms with the Americans and later joined the British army or navy.¹

Second, an Order-in-Council of 9 November 1789 passed by the Governor and Council of Québec put a ‘Mark of Honor’ upon those Loyalists who had ‘adhered to the Unity of the Empire, and joined the Royal Standard in America before the Treaty of Separation in the year 1783.’² Although not definitive, these two criteria provide a basic framework for determining who were accepted as Loyalists.

2

The American Revolution

A perusal of Lawrence H. Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution (14 vols., New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936-1971) would ensure a familiarity with colonial America, and thus provide a background for Loyalist studies. J.M. Bumsted, ‘The American Revolution: Some Thoughts on Recent Bicentennial Scholarship,’ Acadiensis, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Spring, 1977), pp. 3-22, agrees with the long-standing interpretation that the movement for political independence was mainly the concern of ruling élites in both Britain and America.³ In the American colonies internal power struggles erupted between various factions of the élite. With the advent of the revolutionary spirit, conservative planters, professionals, and urban merchants who had traditionally controlled colonial politics found that they had to contend simultaneously with new ‘popular’ leaders preaching egalitarian rhetoric and with Britain. Yet both élites, Loyalists and rebels, spoke for only the small rising middle class. The vast majority of the colonial population, about 80%, which included women, Indians, blacks, backwoodsmen, rural farmers, religious minorities, recent immigrants and urban labour, was either inarticulate or unrepresented.⁴

The diverse causal factors of the American Revolution can be gleaned from Jack P. Greene, ed., The Ambiguity of the American Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1968). Of particular importance is the article by Gordon S. Wood, ‘A Pluralistic Conception,’ which emphasizes the relationship between ideas and social forces in the colonies. Wood suggests that class interest and economic determinism were significant factors in bringing about the revolution and that a purely intellectual interpretation is too narrow a focus.⁵ Notwithstanding, Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), and ‘The Central Themes of the American Revolution: An Interpretation,’ in S.G. Kurtz and J.H. Hutson, eds., Essays on the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973), states that the revolution was ‘not the result of intolerable social and economic conditions and not undertaken to recast social order.’⁶ Instead, Bailyn, the leading exponent of the primacy of radical Whig ideology, is convinced that the colonial revolutionaries possessed a genuine fear that corruption in politics in England would lead to tyranny and oligarchic-rule, and eventually destroy liberty and freedom in the colonies.⁷ This ‘conspiracy thesis’ injected ‘moral passion and idealistic impulses’ into the minds of the revolutionary leaders, and deriving their philosophy and rhetoric from radical Whig ideology, they condemned as corrupt and oppressive the whole system by which the world was governed.⁸

Bailyn’s narrow interpretation would seem to leave little room for a positive assessment of the Loyalists in the American Revolution. In fact, Bailyn cannot understand how ‘any sensible and well-informed person could possibly have opposed the Revolution.’⁹ This viewpoint is illustrated in his The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974). By focusing on Hutchinson, a conservative devoted to an ideological commitment in a time of radical upheaval, Bailyn presents a general picture of Loyalists as misguided souls who lacked courage and were thus out of touch with the realities and exigencies of the times. To Bailyn there was something obviously wrong with those colonial Americans who refused to support the democratic mob and the ‘cause of liberty.’ He concludes with a worthwhile appendix smugly entitled ‘The Losers: Notes on the Historiography of Loyalism,’ pp. 283-408.

There are, of course, good alternatives and more balanced sources which in part counter the provocative and rather contrived interpretation of Bailyn. In reviewing the essays in The Development of a Revolutionary Mentality (Washington: Library of Congress, 1972), Jack Sosin notes that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 General References
• 2 The American Revolution
• 3 The Diaspora
• 4 The Loyalist Legacy
• Endnotes