A Look at the Loyalist Cause
When many Americans think of the Loyalist or Tory cause, the stereotypes of a prim and proper aristocrat with a British accent and a tarred-and feathered tax collector quickly surface. When examining the views and motivations of over two-and-a-half-million people living in the Thirteen Colonies during the Revolution, hardly any views were uniform. Even supporters of a major faction such as the Loyalists had a diverse array of misgivings about the rebellion against the British Crown. Many Americans opposed the Revolution for a wide variety of reasons: most notably, personal ties and attachment to Britain. These attachments took several forms, including fear and intimidation from mob rule, as well as religious and …show more content…
To protect themselves, many clergymen fled and closed their churches. Additionally, clergymen were some of the most well-educated men in colonial American society, and as a result many in the clergy as well as loyalists overall were also very reliant on Britain for their economic livelihoods, and opposed the Revolution on economic grounds. Many sectors of American commerce were very reliant on strong British ties. Some like merchants, required British goods to import and sell, in addition to protection of merchant fleets by the Royal Navy. Samuel Johnson, a noted British writer of the time, summarized the economic relationship between Britain and America in the pamphlet Taxation No Tyranny:
Nothing dejects a trader like the interruption of his profits. A commercial people, however magnanimous, shrinks at the thought of declining traffick and an unfavourable balance…That the Americans are able to bear taxation, is indubitable…Of every empire all the subordinate communities are liable to taxation, because they all share the benefit of government, and, therefore, ought to furnish their proportion of the …show more content…
Crevecoeur, like many Tories, fled their homes, never to return. Many fled the colonies altogether, settling in places like Canada or Florida after the war. In New York, Native American groups, such as the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy tended to favor the British in the Revolutionary War. This is evident in the petition of Sarah McGinn which stated:
An Indian was going with a Belt of Wampam to the different Indians from General Schulyer acquainting all the Six Nations that all the King’s Troops had been defeated and taken Prisoner at Saratoga by the American Army… which Belt your pensioner stopt and prevailed upon the Indian to carry an account of a different Nature favorable to Government and encouraged the Six Nations, who soon afterward went to war against the Rebels on the Frontiers.

This shows that Loyalists often had to engage in covert manipulations to assist the British war effort, particularly when the Rebels seemed to have the upper hand. Yet, Native Americans were not only nonwhite group to favor the British. Many enslaved African-Americans in the South also took up arms for