For all the excitement and enthusiasm created by independence and the end of the war, Americans could never forget that they were still a part of the larger world, just as they had been as colonists. While they had freed themselves from the British Empire, they still had to deal with a world dominated by such empires. The export of farm produce and forest products, of catches from the sea, had always been a vital part of American colonial life, and so had the import of manufactured goods from the mother country. The new nation could not exist without such dealings, and its status and legal position among the other nations of the world became a matter of vital importance.
Most of America’s trade and financial connections were of course limited almost exclusively to Great Britain. While the colonies had been a part of the Empire, the British acts of trade and navigation had both helped and hindered them, but many Americans greeted freedom from these measures as if they had just been released from slavery. Thus the Massachusetts Sentinel wrote in July of 1784 that Americans should be grateful “to the supreme ruler of the universe by whose beneficence our commerce is freed from those shackles it used to be cramped with, and bids fair to extend to every part of the globe without passing through the medium of England, that rotten island, absorbed in debt, and crumbling fast to annihilation.”
Obviously, such invectives were inspired by more than economic restrictions, real or imagined. The fact was that a large part of the American population had for so long now been indoctrinated into a hatred of all things British. Before 1775, the propaganda of the revolutionary leaders had drummed the fear of British tyranny into the consciousness of the population, and during the war itself, much was made of British ‘atrocities.’ Some of it was true and some of it was not, but the revolutionary leaders indiscriminately spread such stories in order to keep up popular enthusiasm for the cause. And once the war was over, hundreds of real or imagined offenses by a vengeful Great Britain kept the rumor mills churning. This antagonism became deeply embedded in American minds, reinforced for generations to come by popular histories, by anniversaries of such events as the Boston Massacre, Bunker Hill, Fourth of July celebrations, not to mention years of more or less serious disputes with the former mother country.
At the close of the Revolutionary War, moreover, such feelings were reinforced with the return of many of the Loyalists and the question of what to do with people who, in spirit or in action, had supported the British cause. Some had simply fled to Great Britain, and some had remained in America behind the British lines. But others had actually taken up arms against their fellow-colonists, and now that the war was over, many would have liked to return to their old homes, or at least remain in their homeland after the British army had been withdrawn.
During the peace negotiations, they began to appeal for protection of some sort, and two articles in the final Treaty of Paris did in fact address their problems. Article Five declared that Congress should recommend to the states’ legislatures that the property of British citizens should be returned, as long as they had not taken up arms against the Americans. All other persons were to have liberty to return for a period of one year to seek recovery of any property that had been confiscated. Article Six provided that there be no further confiscation of property, that there be no further prosecution of persons for their actions during the war, and that all Loyalists still held in confinement at the time of ratification of the peace treaty be released.
Other Loyalists had meanwhile already assured their property and safety even before the peace treaty terms were being worked out. Many of them had kept up their contacts and friendships with Patriot Americans despite their differences, and as the war ended, they sought the help of these friends. And they did not appeal in vain. Many a conservative Patriot held similar political and social views, even if they had disagreed on the question of independence. Many of the wealthy conservative Americans were, in fact, Loyalists at heart themselves, but had sided with the Patriots in order to preserve their estates and their way of life. Men like Alexander Hamilton wrote to a friend that he thought “we have already lost too large a number of valuable citizens,” and deplored the fact that “second class merchants” with no apparent social graces and of no political consequence were now growing rich on dealings that had previously been reserved for the aristocratic members of society. Timothy Pickering, prominent general and future United States Cabinet member, openly declared that if some of those who had remained in the country could be exchanged for some who had fled, the country as a whole would be better for it.
The Loyalists thus had strong and influential friends among conservative Americans in nearly all the states, and most everywhere the legislatures gradually removed all barriers against their return. But the feelings of the conservative elements among the Patriots were clearly not those of the people in general, including many of the democratic leaders, who would never forgive the Tories, and were determined that they be never allowed to return and enjoy the independence which they had fought to avoid. Thousands of their kind were leaving for Canada, reported William Paterson of New Jersey, and he wished “speed to them all!” From Philadelphia it was reported that associations were being formed everywhere to keep the Loyalists from returning to Pennsylvania and the other Northern states. In New York, too, in community after community all over the state, public meetings were held and resolutions were passed, insisting that those who had joined the British should not be allowed to return.
Still, by the time of the United States Constitutional Convention, practically all the states had repealed their wartime measures against the Loyalists. But though many of them were gradually admitted back into American society, and though some of them were even elected to important state positions, few were ever able to recover their confiscated properties. Those who chose to stay in exile in Great Britain lived out their lives in lonely isolation. Those who had settled in Canada, where they had been granted some three million acres of land by the British government, brought a new vigor and valuable imperial sentiment to Upper Canada and Nova Scotia. By 1782, the British government was paying £ 70,000 in pension to Loyalist exiles, and was paying compensation to those who had lost offices and property. But even decades later, the government was still being besieged to meet debts outstanding to English merchants by her former American colonies.