Histories of the American Revolution written by rebel partisans as well as many later chroniclers have not treated the loyalists kindly. Often such accounts portray Americans who opposed independence as traitors at worst or, at best, timid, misguided souls. But within the last generation, many historians have taken a more dispassionate view, finding that many colonials who took up the king's cause had not lacked sympathy for the resistance. Loyalist leaders like Joseph Galloway and Daniel Leonard had opposed the Stamp Act in 1765 and disapproved of imperial policy thereafter. It was not until the crisis reached a fever pitch in 1774 that more colonials cast their lot with the king. Worse than British taxation, in their view, was the radicalism of American resistance—the dumping of tea into Boston harbor, the forming of the Association, and the defying of royal authority.

Such acts of defiance touched what was for loyalists the rawest nerve: a deep-seated fear of the divisions and instability of colonial society. Without the British around to maintain order, they warned, differences among Americans would result in civil war. On the eve of the Revolution, Jonathan Boucher, a New York loyalist, warned with uncanny foresight that "we should as soon expect to see . . . the wolf and the lamb feed together, as Virginians form a cordial union with the saints of New England." It would take the passage of less that a century for such fears to be borne out by events—the Union divided and the North and South locked in a fratricidal war. In prizing liberty over order, the rebels acted on principle. But as the loyalists predicted, that choice came at a terrible cost both to them and to their descendants.

1			Read this Loyalist essay written in response to Thomas Paine's Common Sense. How does this author reconcile his proclaimed patriotism and his antagonism to the rebellion? Why does he offer such steadfast opposition to the Revolution? What specific parts of Paine's arguments does he attack? How does he come to the conclusion that "independence and slavery are synonymous terms"? http://users.erols.com/candidus/plain-t.htm Now read the essay on the difficulties Pennsylvania Quakers faced in offering their allegiance to either side in this war. How were the Quakers' concerns similar to those of James Chalmers? How were they different? Do these two documents enable you to make any broader conclusions about what kinds of people chose to remain loyal to the British during the Revolution? http://revolution.h-net.msu.edu/essays/wulf.html