The ‘Sgnik Sdneirf’

LOYALISTS

The ‘Sgnik Sdneirf’

When a young Englishman named Nicholas Cresswell was touring the Colonies last year, his journal guardedly referred to the “Sgnik Sdneirf that he met. Cresswell’s code was transparent. But the need for protective secrecy on behalf of the “King’s Friends” in the New World is dramatic enough. By now, the harassing of known Loyalists—an estimated 15% of the population—has reached a point that might best be described by a bit of tavern-house doggerel: “Tories with their brats and wives Should fly to save their wretched lives.”

In most cases there is no law to justify Patriot attacks on Loyalist sympathizers. Often it is simply a matter of mob violence. When a crowd of Patriots seized a Massachusetts customs official named John Malcohn, a witness recalls: “Being disarmed of sword, cane, hat and wig, he was genteelly tarred and feathered [until] he had more the appearance of the devil than any human being.” Malcohn survived that mauling —only to be trapped by another mob three months later. This time “he was stript stark naked, one of the severest cold nights this winter, his body covered all over with tar, then with feathers, his arm dislocated in tearing off his cloaths. Some beating him with clubs … for about five hours.”

Anglican churchmen have been special targets for abuse. New York’s Reverend Samuel Seabury once tried to argue the case for Loyalism in his Letters of a Westchester Farmer (“If I must be enslaved, let it be by a KING at least, and not by a parcel of upstart, lawless Committeemen. If I must be devoured, let me be devoured by the jaws of a lion, and not gnawed to death by rats and vermine”). Instead of being devoured, he was kidnaped and imprisoned for a month by a marauding band of Connecticut Patriots.

Jonathan Boucher of Annapolis was equally vehement (“If you are wrong, as in some degree I think you are,” he wrote to George Washington, “it is my duty frankly to tell you so, and yours to listen to me with patience”). Indeed, when 20 Patriots gathered threateningly around his pulpit, he seized the group’s leader by the collar, “and with my cocked pistol in the other hand, assuring him that if any violence was offered to me I would instantly blow his brains out.” But Boucher has given up the struggle and returned to England.

Civil violence has extended widely into commerce. Merchants who sell British goods have had their store windows daubed with human feces, and if that is not enough, they are variously burned in effigy or hoisted by the belts to the top of liberty poles. Most newspapers sympathetic to Britain—or even willing to print both sides of the political debate—have been put out of business by rioters. “All law and government, here as well as elsewhere, seems now nearly at an end,” said Sir James Wright, the Royal Governor of Georgia, shortly before quitting the Colonies. Better one tyrant 3,000 miles away, says Boston Minister Mather Byles, than “three thousand tyrants not a mile away.”

It is their belief in law and order, as well as their belief in King George, that inspires the Loyalists to their loyalty. But since their view of order is a minority view, and since they are attacked for arguing their case, their only alternatives are to remain silent, or fight, or flee. As of now, about 1,500 Loyalists are serving the British, most of them in newly formed companies such as the Royal Greens, raised by New York Landholder Sir John Johnson. The Greens operate from the Niagara frontier and harry the settlers in New York’s Mohawk valley. Several hundred others have joined units of the British Army, where they bitterly complain of discrimination in rank and pay.

More than 3,000 Loyalists have so far settled in Canada, mostly in Nova Scotia, a region that has lately become known as “Nova Scarcity.” Only a relative few of the wealthier Loyalists can afford £20 ship fare from here to London, let alone the cost of living there afterward. One of those who went to London, Boston Judge Jonathan Sewall, describes the British capital as a place that causes “vexation of the spirit.”

The roots of decisions for or against independence often lie far deeper than personal advantage, as can be seen by the splitting of fathers from sons, friends from friends. Virginia’s aristocratic John Randolph, 49, examined all the arguments last year and, as he put it, heeding the voice of reason, decided for the King and moved to England. But his son, Edmund Randolph, 23, served as aide-de-camp to General Washington last year. John Randolph is also a cousin of Thomas Jefferson’s. Years ago they made a pact: if Jefferson died first, Randolph would inherit £800 worth of his books; if Randolph, he would leave Jefferson his favorite violin. When Randolph embarked for Britain, the violin was sold to Jefferson for £13.

The word Tory—now so political and conservative in meaning—had its origin in a Gaelic word meaning a pursued or persecuted person, hence an outlaw. If General Howe’s invasion fails, thousands more colonists will know the bitterest meaning of the word.