A History of the American People

ultimately drove the law through parliament, which outlawed the international slave trade in
1807.
The consequence for white Americans were mixed too. Like most wars of liberation' the American War of Independence was a bitter civil war too. One contemporary guess divided the people into three: the patriots, one-third, the Tory loyalists, one-third, and the remainder prepared to go along with either party. It is likely, however, that those who declined to take an active part were fully half the nation, the militants being almost equally divided, though the Tories, by their very nature, lacked leaders and the extremism which drove the liberators. They looked to leadership from England and were poorly served. They were the biggest losers of all. Indeed, they lost everything-jobs, houses, estates, savings, often their lives. Some families were severed for ever, a typically tragic example being Franklin's. His son William, governor of New Jersey, stayed loyal, and Franklin cut him out of his will, which stated:The part he acted against
me in the late war, which is of public notoriety, will account for me leaving him no more of an
estate he endeavored to deprive me of.' William died in exile, destitute, in 1813. Another, typical,
loser was Philip Richard Fendall, one of the fourth generations of Fendalls who farmed on the
lower Western Shore of Charles County, Maryland. When he boarded ship for England, he
surrendered his career as a merchant, his income as county clerk, his profits from a 700-acre
tobacco plantation on the Potomac, his large, elegant brick dwelling house' which was ina
beautiful healthy situation, and commands an extensive view up and down the river'-everything
in fact. What became of him we do not know.
Most loyalists in the Thirteen States had no alternative but to stay where they were and
swallow their feelings. Of course this worked both ways. In Jamaica, Barbados, and Grenada, the
local assemblies declared their sympathy with the patriots, but British naval supremacy
prevented them from doing anything more. Bermuda and the Bahamas remained formally loyal
but would have shifted if the patriots had been able to offer military help. Florida was loyal
because it needed British protection from Spain. Recent research shows that the loyalists were
strongest, in proportion to population, in Georgia, New York, and the largest number of loyalists,
having three or four times more supporters of the crown than any other colony/state. Royalists
remained relatively strong in New Jersey and Massachusetts, weaker in Rhode Island, North
Carolina, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire, and impotent in Virginia, Maryland,
and Delaware.
Loyalty or patriotism was determined to some extent by ethnic origins and religion. People of
English origins were divided by temperament, as they had been in the English Civil War 130
years before. The Scots Highlanders who were clannish and had recently arrived with generous
land-grants, were fanatically loyal. Scots Lowlanders were also loyal, though less so. Irish and
Scotch-Irish (Ulstermen) were fanatically anti-British, if they were Catholic and still more (at
this stage) if they were Presbyterian. The Dutch were divided. The Germans were neutral,
tending to go along with the prevailing mood in their locality. The Huguenots were patriots.
Religion was a big factor, as it was and is in everything connected with America. The Quakers of
Pennsylvania were inclined to side with the King but were prevented by their pacifism from
fighting for him. In Philadelphia Benjamin Franklin found great difficulty in persuading Quakers
to serve in the civil defense forces, man the fire-brigade, or tend the wounded. The Roman
Catholics were patriots. The first Catholic bishop in America, Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore,
actually went on a mission to Canada to try to persuade Canadian Catholics to help or at least
remain neutral.