00:00Ah, the American Revolution, the great victory of liberty over tyranny for all freedom-loving American patriots.
00:09The way most of us imagine this tea-dumping spectacle usually involves a lot of fireworks, bald eagles, and the
00:16jolly singing of Yankee Doodle.
00:18But we here at SideQuest, my friends, know that history isn't so black and white, and that it oftentimes makes
00:27for awkward conversations at the dinner table.
00:30Because, you see, not everyone in the 13 colonies rebelled against the British Empire.
00:36In fact, as much as a quarter of the colonial population at the time remained loyal to the crown.
00:42These loyalists came from all walks of life, from farmers and labourers to craftsmen, merchants, lawyers, soldiers, and clergymen.
00:53They had little in common, but their opposition to the revolution and their reasons for staying loyal were as diverse
01:00as their backgrounds.
01:02Many of the wealthier loyalists had strong ties to Britain, in some cases depending on the crown for their wealth.
01:09Poorer tenant farmers supported the crown to oppose their patriot landlords, while many recent immigrants from places like Scotland found
01:18it too risky to rebel.
01:21Others feared that democracy would devolve into mob rule, which indeed at many times it did.
01:27As one reverend put it, it's better to be ruled by one tyrant 3,000 miles away than 3,000
01:35tyrants nearby.
01:36And some just bet on the losing side, lest we forget, Great Britain was the hegemonic empire of the day,
01:43so it wasn't all that questionable to bet on it.
01:47And keep in mind, it wasn't just white colonists doing the betting.
01:52Thousands of black slaves sided with Britain to win their freedom, as did many Native Americans, correctly anticipating that the
02:00patriots would void the British treaties and invade their homelands.
02:04Now, while we're on the topic of homelands and heritage, I'd like to say a big thank you to MyHeritage
02:12for making this video possible.
02:14Over the past few weeks, I've been delving deep into the history of my family tree, and thanks to MyHeritage,
02:21I've managed to go back generations.
02:24As soon as I added the first few generations of my relatives, MyHeritage managed to dig up, quite literally, centuries
02:32of history.
02:33Here's one branch of my family tree that extends all the way back to the 11th century Oxfordshire.
02:40MyHeritage was able to find all this information thanks to advanced AI technology, and it helped me learn quite a
02:47lot about nearly everyone in MyFamilyTree.
02:51This is an article about my great-grandfather, Harold, when he became head of the International Labour Office in 1920.
02:59I particularly loved the instant discoveries feature.
03:03It really helped me build out the extra branches.
03:06It really is like magic.
03:08You just click on the button, and you instantly get hundreds of matches going generations back.
03:13It does make sense.
03:16After all, MyHeritage has access to over 36 billion historical records.
03:21They also have a marvelous feature that lets you colorize old photographs, and you can even animate them using AI.
03:30But best of all, MyHeritage are offering a 14-day free trial to SideQuest subscribers,
03:36if you click on the link in the description, or scan the QR code that's on screen now.
03:43Click on the link to start your MyHeritage journey, and trust me, you won't want to end it after 14
03:49days,
03:50as learning about your history is a very rewarding endeavor.
03:54But, going back to the 18th century, altogether, some half a million people supported the crown against the patriots.
04:03Some passively, others by agitating, spying, or even taking up arms.
04:09Being a loyalist was a dangerous business, especially in the areas outside direct British occupation,
04:16as every single state passed Confiscation Acts to seize loyalist properties, and to suspend their civil liberties.
04:24So, depending on where you lived, you couldn't vote, sell your land, sue in court, or work as any public
04:33profession.
04:34But perhaps worse than the legal threats were the extrajudicial mobs of patriots,
04:39who roamed around cities and the countryside, searching for traitors to punish.
04:44These so-called Committees of Safety would demand you sign a Patriot Oath of Allegiance, renouncing the king.
04:53And, if you didn't, you'd be tarred and feathered, which is a lot more painful than cartoons would have you
05:00believe.
05:01If you were unlucky, you'd get your house burned down, and your possessions stolen.
05:06And, if you were particularly unlucky, you'd just be killed.
05:09It is from this lovely period that we get the term lynching, named after the Patriot Colonel Charles Lynch,
05:18who organized makeshift courts in Virginia to judge loyalists when the real courts were closed.
05:24Keep in mind that there was a lot of back and forth between the Patriots and the British in the
05:30eight long years of the war.
05:32Cities and territories changed hands many times, as did loyalties.
05:38Britain occupied most major port cities, but had no realistic way of asserting control over the vast countryside stretching across
05:47the Atlantic seaboard.
05:48So, when one of its two armies was caught in a trap in 1781 at Yorktown, Britain's resolve for war
05:56crumbled.
05:56Parliament voted to cease all offensives, and the government of Prime Minister North collapsed.
06:04This left the Loyalists in a very awkward position.
06:08The crown they had sworn allegiance to had just called it quits from the 13 colonies,
06:14but it had yet to negotiate an actual peace settlement.
06:17And it was entirely unclear what would happen with all the confiscated property,
06:23which, presumably, had already been sold off by the states to pay for the war.
06:28Worse yet, the political persecution only escalated after the ceasefire.
06:34With the American courts reopened and Charles Lynch taking a long holiday,
06:39the expropriations and civil erasures could continue at a much greater pace.
06:44The Loyalists had to make a very difficult choice.
06:48They could stay on in the hostile political climate and try to ride out the storm by keeping their heads
06:54down,
06:55swearing allegiance to the flag, and definitely not asking for any of their property back.
07:01Or they could leave with whatever their backs could carry,
07:05hoping that Mother Britain would take them in and resettle them elsewhere in the Empire,
07:10preferably with a nice plot of fertile land and a slave or two for company.
07:16To its credit, Britain did take it upon herself to protect and resettle the Loyalists who had fought for the
07:23crown.
07:23It organized a dozen different relief fleets with hundreds of ships to evacuate the Loyalists
07:30and set up a Loyalist Claims Commission to compensate them.
07:35Unfortunately, by this point, Britain only held New York, Charleston and Savannah,
07:41so prospective evacuees had to journey there on their own,
07:46risking robbery and violence along the way.
07:49By the time Britain signed the formal peace treaty of Paris in September 1783,
07:55some 70,000 people had fled the U.S. for the safety of the British Empire.
08:02A final evacuation fleet departed New York on November 25th,
08:07bringing the total to 80,000 refugees and marking the official end of British occupation of American cities.
08:14When all was said and done, one in every 30 Americans had fled the colonies.
08:21Around half of the exiles settled along the maritime coast of Canada,
08:26which wasn't a unified country back then, but a bunch of scattered colonies and trade posts.
08:33The population of British Canada at the time was only 160,000 people,
08:39most of whom were French speakers.
08:41So you can imagine how disruptive this sudden influx of exiles was.
08:46In the first years of resettlement, there was famine, disease and banditry.
08:52But the Loyalist settlers nevertheless managed to survive and founded many cities.
08:59In some areas, the Loyalists outnumbered the locals,
09:02while in others they had to endure a fate worse than death,
09:07living under French language and law.
09:10To relieve them from such an unbearable burden,
09:14the King carved out two new provinces for the Loyalists from Quebec and Nova Scotia.
09:20And that's how today's Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Ontario came to be.
09:27Oh, and see that on the flag of New Brunswick?
09:30That's one of the relief ships that sailed from New York carrying the Loyalists.
09:35Even more interesting is that in 1789,
09:39the Quebec government created for the Loyalists Canada's only hereditary honorific title.
09:45Those migrants who had fought for Britain could append UE for United Empire after their names,
09:52a title you can still rarely see today.
09:55And in the province of Ontario,
09:58you can get a special license plate for your car to celebrate your Loyalist heritage.
10:03Now, it is worth noting that the Black Loyalists who emigrated to Canada
10:08fared a lot worse than their white compatriots.
10:11They were given the worst land,
10:13the fewest supplies,
10:14and had to endure racism that was just barely shy of being enslaved again.
10:19The situation got so bad that the Black Loyalists petitioned Britain for a second resettlement,
10:26and this time they emigrated all the way to West Africa,
10:31where they created the future country of Sierra Leone.
10:35Of course, it is worth noting that not all Loyalists chose to go north.
10:40Quite a few fled to East and West Florida,
10:43which had remained loyal to the crown throughout the war,
10:47the so-called Fourteenth and Fifteenth Colonies that Americans rarely talk about.
10:52Unfortunately, Britain ceded the Floridas back to Spain in the Peace of 1783,
10:59so the Loyalists who had settled there had to move again.
11:02The next most popular destination was the various British possessions in the Caribbean,
11:08where the Loyalists hoped to resume their plantation lifestyle with the thousands of slaves they brought along.
11:14Even those Black Loyalists, who the Crown had freed on record,
11:19were sometimes re-enslaved and shipped off to plantations, numbering in the hundreds.
11:25But what about those Loyalists who stayed behind?
11:28These half a million people had no chance to organize politically,
11:33because survival required total assimilation.
11:36To keep their heads, and hopefully some of their property,
11:40they had to swear allegiance to the New Republic, pay their taxes, and stop toasting the King.
11:47Children of Loyalists grew up hearing the heroic tales of the Patriots,
11:52and were never allowed to ask why their grandpa had been on vacation during the war.
11:58And so, within a generation, the Loyalist identity had completely vanished,
12:03leaving behind only dusty property records and some very bitter letters in the Canadian archives.
12:11In any case, my friends, if you enjoyed this look into the darker side of American independence,
12:17consider declaring your loyalty to us on Patreon.
12:21Your support ensures that we don't have to flee to Canada to escape the tyranny of the YouTube algorithm.
12:28Make sure to check out our friends over at MyHeritage,
12:32to discover just how far back your family tree goes,
12:35and tell us about your most surprising ancestor.
12:39Thank you very much for watching,
12:41and stay tuned for the next revolutionarily loyal episode of SideQuest.
12:49What was the Loyalists' favorite drink?
12:52Loyal Tea.
