12 HALVDAN KOHT. [No. 3. 



As England had her little Whig opposition against her 

 American policy, so America had her Tories in the War ol 

 Independence. Bancroft describes the American rebellion as a 

 civil war until the Declaration of Independence; the latest histo- 

 rians are satisfied that it continned a civil war until the con- 

 clusion of peace, partly even after that. It was not America that 

 rebelled; it was a party in America. And it must not be im- 

 plied that the partisans of the union with England, by the mere 

 fact of Iheir stand-point, were reactionary eiiemies of liberty ; 

 many of them were men who entertained a deep feeling of 

 respect for popular will. 



American historical researches have not yet fully cleared up 

 the dividing lines of American parties in the Revolution \ and, 

 obviously, various motives have played their part in deciding men's 

 party adhesion. Church affiliations carried a great force, espe- 

 cially in New England, vvhere the members of the Anglican 

 church enthusiastically took the loyalist side. But church prefe- 

 rences did not every vvhere work in the same way. In Virginia, 

 to be sure, the dissenters most strongly supported the rebellion, 

 while in New York and Pennsylvania, as well as in South 

 Carolina and Georgia, they were preferably loyalists. 



The class interest, the antagonism between poor and rich, 

 had a still wider effect. In the American revolution, just as in 

 most other revolutions, we perceive how the inherent force of 

 events urges forward to more and more radical demands; the 

 leadership falls into the hands of the lovvei- classes that the 

 revolution itself has summoned into the arena, while numerous 

 elements of the upper classes are repelled and detach themselves 

 from the movement. This development can be very clearly 

 observed in the progress of rebellion in Massachusetts and New 

 York. In Massachusetts the loyalists alvvays formed a compara- 

 tively small minority, although even there they might be reckoned 

 by thousands, and those among the most prominent citizens. 

 In New York almost the whole upper class were loyalists, more 



1 See the books and articles cited by Van Tyne in The American Nation: 

 a History, Vol. IX. 338-340. 



