Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution: With an Historical Essay
By . TWO Volumes. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 8vo. pp. 608, 600.
MR. SABINE has attempted in these volumes to present in a judicial spirit a chapter of our Revolutionary history which usually bears the most of passion in its recital, — believing, as he does, that impartiality is identical with charity, in dealing with his theme. The first edition of his work, in a single volume, has been before the public seventeen years. The zeal and fidelity of his labor have been well appreciated. So far as his purpose has involved a plea or an apology for the Loyalists of the American Revolution, his critics who have at all abated their commendation of him have challenged him on the side where he might most willingly have been supposed to err, that of an excess of leniency. As to the class of men with whom he deals generally in his introductory essay, and individually in the elaborate biographical sketches which follow, the same difficulty presents itself which is encountered in all attempts to canvass the faults or the characteristics of any body of men who bear a common party-name or share a common opinion, while in the staple of real virtue or vice, of honor or baseness, of sincerity or hypocrisy, they may represent the poles of difference. The contemporary estimate of the Tories, and in large part the treatment of them which was thought to be just, were, in the main, adjusted with reference to the meanest and most malignant portion. Mr. Sabine, while by no means espousing the championship even of the best of them, would have the whole body judged with the candor which comes of looking at their general fellowship in the light of its natural prejudices, prepossessions, and embarrassments. It is to be considered also that the best of the class were a sort of warrant for the worst.
Those who are tolerably well read in the biographies and histories of our Revolutionary period are aware that Dr. Franklin, who, about most exciting and passion-stirring subjects, was a man of remarkably moderate and tolerant spirit, was eminently a hater of the Tories, unrelenting in his animosity towards them, and sternly set against all the measures proposed at the Peace for their relief, either by the British Government to enforce our remuneration of their losses, or by our own General or State Governments to soften the penalties visited upon them. The origin and the explanation of this intense feeling of animosity toward the Loyalists in the breast of that philosopher of moderation are easily traced to one of the most interesting incidents in his residence near the British Court as agent for Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. The incident is connected with the still unexplained mystery of his getting possession of the famous letters of Hutchinson, Oliver, etc. Franklin was living and directing all his practical efforts for enlightening and influencing those whom lie supposed to be simply the ignorant plotters of mischief against the Colonists, under tire full and most confident belief that those plotters were merely the stupid and conceited members of the British Cabinet. He never had dreamed that lie was to look either above them to the King, or behind them to any unknown instigators of their mischief. With perfect good faith on his own part, he gave them the benefit of their own supposed ignorance, wrong-headedness, wi I fulness, and ingenuity, such as it was, in inventing irritating and oppressive measures which, he warned them, would inevitably alienate the hearts and the allegiance of the Colonists. He records, that, while he had never had a thought but such as this imagined state of the facts had favored, a Liberal member of Parliament, an intimate friend of his, coming to him for a private interview, had told him that the Ministry were not the prime movers in this mischief, but were instigated to it by parties whom Franklin little suspected of such an agency. When the Doctor expressed his incredulity, the friend promised to give him decisive evidence of the full truth of his assertion. It came to Franklin in a form which astounded him, while it opened his eyes and fixed his indignation upon a class of men who from that moment onward were to him the exponents of all malignity and baseness. The evidence came in the shape of the originals, the autographs, of the above-named letters, written by natives of the American soil, office-holders under the Crown, who, while pampered and trusted by their constituents on this side of the water, w ore actually dictating, advising, and inspiriting the measures of the British Ministry most hatdul to the Colonists. Franklin never overcame the impression from that shock. W hen he was negotiating the treaty of peace, lie set his face and heart most resolutely against all the efforts and propositions made by die representatives of the Crown to secure to the Tories redress or compensation. lie insisted that Britain, in espousing their alleged wrongs, indicated that she herself ought to remunerate their losses ; that they, in “fact, had been her agents and instruments, as truly as were her Crown officials and troops. Their malignant hostility toward their fellow-Colonists, and the sufferings and losses entailed on America by their open assertion ot the rights of the Crown, and by the direct or indirect help which oppressive measures had received from them, had deprived them of all claim even on the pity of those who had triumphed in spite ot them. At any rate, Franklin insisted, and it was the utmost to which lie would assent, — his irony and sarcasm in making the offer showing the depth of his bitterness on the subject, — that a balance should be struck between, the losses of the Loyalists and those of the Colonists in the conflagration of their sea-ports and the outrages on the property of individual patriots.
The views and feelings of Franklin have been essentially those which have since prevailed popularly among us regarding the old Tories. Of course, when hard-pressed, he was willing to recognize a difference in the motives which prompted individuals and in the degrees of their turpitude. Mr. Sabine gives us in Iris introductory essay a most admirable analysis of the whole subject-matter, with an accurate and instructive array of all the facts bearing upon it. No man has given more thorough or patient inquiry to it, or has had better opportunities for gathering materials ot prime authority and perfect authenticity for the treatment of it. In the biographical sketches which crowd his volumes will be found matter of varied and profound interest, alternately engaging the tender sympathy and firing the indignation of the reader. One can hardly fail of bethinking himself that the moral and judicial reflections which come from perusing this work will by and by, under some slight modifications, attach to the review of the characters and course of some men who are in antagonism to their country’s cause in these days.