Choosing Sides: Loyalists in Revolutionary America by Ruma Chopra

Abstract

Book Reviews 125 nar. Chopra must be commended for her account of the “unnatural rebellion ” that New York’s loyalists endured at the hands of revolutionaries and the British. Choosing Sides: Loyalists in Revolutionary America. By Ruma Chopra. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013, 241 pages, $45.00 Cloth. Reviewed by David Hoogland Noon, University of Alaska Southeast Loyalists during the Revolutionary period have enjoyed a revival among historians in the past few years. Maya Jasanoff (Liberty’s Exiles), Thomas B. Allen (Tories), Jeffrey Bannister and Liam Liordan (The Loyal Atlantic), and Ruma Chopra (Unnatural Rebellion) have contributed to a new appreciation of the complexity of loyalist ideology and activity throughout the British world. As a follow-up to Chopra’s study of loyalists in New York City, Choosing Sides offers a collection of primary sources as well as an extended introductory essay that challenge prevailing assumptions about who the loyalists were and why they chose to maintain their allegiance to the crown. Comprised of letters, court affidavits, newspaper editorials, diaries, and memoirs, this body of documents calls into question the prevailing interpretation of loyalists as merely “colonial aristocrats who selfishly pursue[d] wealth and position.” Instead, Chopra highlights the “diversity and potential of the loyalists,” revealing the complexity of motives and interests that led colonists from varying socio-economic backgrounds to resist the lure of rebellion (2). As Chopra explains in her introductory essay, mainstream loyalists were committed to maintaining the integrity of the British Empire. They identified with British culture, held its constitutional system in reverence, and worried about the consequences that might result from ruptures to the social and political order. In public and private settings, they displayed pessimism regarding the motives of rebels, believing the rebels would emerge from the revolution as demagogues conspiring against the liberties created and nurtured under British rule. As one loyalist newspaper warned in October 1776, rebels had embarked on a war against “their lawful Sovereign,” were “aiming to sap the foundations of the British Empire,” 126 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY and intended to set into power a “desperate and malevolent faction” of “base and unworthy men” (110). Among the documents, we find extended laments from powerful officials, including Massachusetts chief justice Peter Oliver, New Jersey Governor (and son of Benjamin Franklin) William Franklin, New York Governor William Tryon, and Governor Josiah Martin of North Carolina. Their letters reveal a complexity and diversity of attitudes toward the rebellious in their midst. Loyalist observers were by turns indignant and fearful of rebel misbehavior; disappointed by a lack of support from British authorities at home; and worried about the “fatal consequences” of rebellion (as Oliver described it) for ordinary citizens led astray by their leaders (77). They were also horrified by the violence and coercion employed by rebels. Several of the documents describe presumed loyalists being sewn up in ox carcasses, dragged through the streets by horses, thrown from courthouse windows during public debates, and chased from their homes by vigilance committees. One British agent, assigned to an anti-smuggling commission, described a young boy “belonging to the Admiral’s Ship” who was “thrown down by a person who swore he would break his leg,” who then “wrenched it til it snap[p]ed” (67). At the same time, however, loyalists were not blind to the faults of royal officials, whose policies and actions had provoked insurgents to take up arms in the first place. Disappointed by Parliamentary overreach and frustrated by the often tactless responses to colonial discontent, loyalists nevertheless believed some plausible compromise might be achieved. Chopra’s collection includes proposals from leading colonists like Joseph Galloway (New Jersey), William Smith, Jr. (New York), and John Randolph (Virginia), who at various points—prior to and during the Revolution— offered detailed proposals that aimed to preserve, and even enhance, colonial autonomy within the empire. Even as late as 1780, exiled loyalists like Randolph maintained hope that rebellious colonists might yet give “Proofs that they have recover’d their Senses, and feel the Value of a Connection with G. Britain” (102). Exploring the contours of loyalism outside the realm of elites, Choosing Sides illuminates the dilemmas of non-elites as well as those who...