As soon as it was known that your Memorialist had escaped, the Commissioners of Sequestration immediately seized upon all they could find of his Estate both real and personal, turned his family out of doors, and after stripping them of Everything except a small part of their wearing apparel sent his wife and Eight of his children to him in a most distressed and Deplorable condition.
Dr. Peter Huggeford, 17851
By any standard, Dr. Huggeford was a wealthy man before the Revolutionary War. A practicing physician in the town of White Plains, New York since his arrival there in 1741, his loyalty to the King resulted in tremendous hardship for himself, his wife and twelve children. Unable to support them on his military salary, Dr. Huggeford relinquished his commission as a surgeon with the Loyal American Regiment to pursue what little remained of his practice in New York, then Saint John upon the latter's capitulation. "Stripped of almost all his property . . . and unable in his advanced time of life to begin a settlement among the woods", Dr. Huggeford was left with little choice but to leave his sickly wife and five remaining children in New Brunswick to press his case for compensation before the Royal Commission on the Losses and Service of American Loyalists in London.2
The situation was not entirely dissimilar from that of Lewis Huestis, a Sergeant in the locally raised Guides and Pioneers Regiment. With family in tow, they too were forced to joined the great migration of New York Loyalists bound for the new colony in Nova Scotia, but not before his property was confiscated by a Committee of Sequestration to pay off a £60 debt owing to James Cook of Dutchess County, New York. Unable to refute the charge, and unwilling to venture back into such hostile territory, Huestis surrendered the property, valued at £162, in its entirety.3
Such actions were clearly a contravention of the spirit of Articles V and VI of the Treaty of Paris, which called upon Congress "to recommend it to the legislatures of the respective States, to provide for the restitution of all estates, rights and properties, which have been confiscated," and proclaimed "that there shall be no future confiscations [sic] made, nor any prosecutions commenced against any person or persons for, or by reason of the part which he or they may have taken in the present war."4 Yet, as Mr. Wilburforce complained in Parliament, "what could Ministers do?"5 That the Americans were unable, or unwilling, to consider the Loyalist issue was insufficient reason to go to war; for, as American commissioner John Adams reasoned to his British counterpart at the peace negotiations: "You must carry on this war six or nine months certainly for this compensation, and consequently spend, in the prosecution of it, six or nine times the sum necessary . . . to pay for the forfeited estates."6
Knowing full well that Congress was powerless to do more than recommend compensation to its states, the unwillingness of Parliament to continue the war to maintain Loyalist interests only reinforced orator Joseph Galloway's argument that "the British Government has become the security for their indemnification".7 Yet, if this was true, to what degree was Britain liable? More so, having subsequently rejected or reduced a majority of Loyalist claims for losses, and delayed reparation for as long as thirteen years in some cases, was not Britain's culpability in this matter equal to, if not greater than, America's 'bad faith'?
Of course, the last thing the Americans wanted was a resettlement of British refugees amongst their own population. They did not trust the Loyalists, whom they considered seditious and liable to make further trouble for the American states. It was upon this very basis that Foreign Secretary Robert Livingston justified confiscation of Loyalist property in the first place: "There can be little doubt, that every society may rightfully banish among them those, who aim at subversion, and forfeit the property, which they can only be entitled to by the laws, and under the protection of the society, which they attempt to destroy."8
In any case, restitution presented its own problems, for, as Livingston concluded, "To restore their property in many instances is now become impossible. It has been sold from hand to hand; the money arising from it has been sunk by depreciation in the public treasury."9 More likely was the fact that much of this sequestered property had been purchased by wealthy Americans, who were as equally averse to forgoing potential profits from the resale of their newly acquired assets as was government. If the example of New York was any indication, confiscation was hardly the redistribution of landed wealth and democratizing influence it was intended to be. In actuality, many tenant farmers, who had toiled upon Loyalist tracts for decades but never wavered in their rebellious convictions, were evicted from their homes at the loss of their inprovements.10
Certainly, the pace of confiscation and forfeiture accelerated in the period just prior to the settlement of the treaty. It remains, however, that the States were clearly in control of their own laws and the Loyalist property in their possession, and that Congress was merely an observer. While Congress might have been in a position to ratify the terms of the treaty as negotiated by their delegates, they could in no way guarantee their enforcement. In any case, the issue of Loyalist compensation hardly merited their concern; for, in their defence, their is some merit to American negotiator Benjamin Franklin's contention that, "if an account was to be brought against us for their losses, we should more than balance it by an account of the ravages they had committed all along the coast of America."11
While fellow negotiators John Adams and John Jay were in agreement with Franklin's moral argument, neither were persuaded as to the strength of their position. As both sides gathered at Versailles for the commencement of peace talks, Adams often rebuked the French position, which supported Britain in regard to the Loyalists. In spite of their moral fortitude, Adams claimed that he would sooner "compensate the wretches, how little they deserve it" and "cut the knot" with France, than watch their firm negotiating style deteriorate along with their position on other key issues to the more subtle French approach.12
Others, such as George Washington, were even more sympathetic to the Loyalist plight, if not entirely powerless to help them. Addressing the case of Mrs. Mary Briston of Virginia, whose property was confiscated upon the death of her Loyalist husband, Washington was quite clear in his government's impotence in compelling the States to act in good faith upon the terms of the Treaty of Paris: "it is to be feared however, as the Lands were involved in the act of general confiscation, previous to the preliminary Articles of Peace, that unless there is something in this case more discriminating than Minority (which I understand is not an exclusion in the Law) you will receive very little redress."13 Washington's sincerity is without doubt; perhaps pointing a finger at his own Virginian legislature, he openly questioned the moral justification in confiscating Loyalist estates: "How far the Law or national good is just, or the expediency of it in the political scale, wise and proper, I will not undertake to determine; but of this I am convinced, that the most wretched management of the sales has pervaded every State, without . . . exception".14
Despite American protestations, the position of the English negotiators led by Richard Oswald and Henry Strachey had always centered around the fate of Loyalist estates. Conflicting loyalties between the will of the people and the hesitancy of the state, however, made their task extremely difficult. Being the first point addressed, and the last agreed to, a frustrated John Adams had all but conceded the British position. Were it not for Franklin's tenacity on the issue, and their ability to divide British merchants from Loyalist interests, the American commissioners might very well have been forced into a less favorable compromise regarding "the views of Congress and the Sovereign rights of the States as it now stands.15 Even the strategic Ohio valley and the province of Maine, which Prime Minister Lord Shelburne prefered to maintain for the financial benefit of Loyalists, was dealt away in consequence to their weakening position.16
As evidenced by the debates in both Houses of Parliament concerning the articles of peace, the issue of Loyalist property was an emotional one for its members, many of whom questioned the competency of the British administrators who agreed to such a diluted and shameful agreement. One of the more vocal critics, Lord Carlisle, strove to compare the obligations of the state to that of its people: "Protection and allegiance were mutual . . . It was contrary to natural justice and humanity to sacrifice to the cruel and inveterate malice of their enemies, men who had preserved, in the midst of the greatest perils and dangers, in their loyalty to Britain: men who had left their families, given up their fortunes, and risqued [sic] their lives in the service of Government."17 Indeed, if the state could not protect its Loyalists, what was their incentive to remain loyal?
One can not, however, blame this settlement entirely upon Oswald and Strachey. Under the circumstances, they obtained the best terms that could be arranged. That both sides were so optomistic with the wording of Article V is a testament to their ignorance of the real conditions facing the Loyalists in the United States. As Strachey reported to Secretary of State, Thomas Townsend, "The American Commissioners continued to assert . . . that the Recommendation of the Congress would have all the Effect we proposed."18 There is no evidence to support complicity of the part of the Americans in this regard. As author Mary Beth Norton points out, however, all three American negotiators had been absent from the United States for a period of years, and may have misjudged the strong American sentiment against the British Loyalists.19 In any event, Shelburne pledged that, should the United States reneg in their commitement to this aspect of the treaty, England would not be "so lost to gratitude, and all the feelings of humanity, as not to afford them asylum."20
In many ways, this echoed the sentiments of the Loyalists themselves. Joseph Galloway, a leading Loyalist and representative to the Committee of the American Loyalists, argued that the surrender of their property for the good of all Britains obligated the state to compensate them for their losses. Based entirely upon the principle of eminent domain, Galloway wrote that the whole of the British population, as represented by government, "and having purchased peace with the property of the attainted Loyalists, is bound, by the principles of moral, as well as political justice, to ensure it to them."21 In effect, Galloway was advocating the recovery of Loyalist compensation through increased taxation.
The Committee itself, known alternatively as the Board of Loyalist Agents, was formed in London in February of 1783 to deal directly with Parliament on issues of Loyalist claims and British indemnification. Encompassing the elite of the former colonies, representatives Galloway, William Pepperrell and William Franklin were fundamental in propagating the financial plight of all Loyalists. Their repeated calls to Parliament have largely been credited with bringing down the Shelburne administration in April of 1783, and for aiding in the subsequent establishment of the Royal Commission.
Having agreed in principle to the Loyalist position, Shelburne failed to anticipate the economic ramifications that his pledge would place upon his government. While many outside of government questioned America's committment to Article V of the treaty, both the Prime Minister and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Pitt, held out against direct compensation in the belief that restitution might still be forthcoming from the United States. It was not until July of 1783 that, with the re-appointment of Lord Carlisle as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the new North-Fox Coalition, the issue of restitution was finally addressed.
As a matter of national honor and political expediency, the coalition had little choice but to immediately recognized Britain's obligation towards the Loyalists, even as they upheld Shelburne's peace treaty which, in opposition, they had resoundly opposed. The five man Royal Commission on the Losses and Service of American Loyalists led by John Wilmot and Daniel Coke was appointed "to make some solid provision for those who shall not be relieved under the Treaty itself".22 Empowered by the Compensation Act, it was their responsibility to determine the "Losses and Services of those who had suffered in their Rights, Properties, and Professions, in consequence of their Loyalty to his Majesty and Attachment to the British Government."23 Their mandate was tempered, however, by rigid guidelines for qualification, a limitation upon the types of losses that could be compensated, and the understanding that Loyalists themselves bore a burden of a portion of their losses -- refered by the Commission as the "General Rules, and Principles" -- but the terms of which were never revealed to prospective claimants until Wilmot's publication of the same in 1815. While the Loyalist Agents claimed that the Commission was excessive in its task, most agreed that some form of mechanism was required to minimize the number of illegitimate claims submitted to the Commission.
The cause of such scrutiny is certainly subject to debate. There is strong indication, however, that many in authority simply did not believe that Loyalist claimants possessed the property or income supposedly lost during the war. Commissioner Wilmot himself pointed out that "all of the claimants and all of the witnesses were in turn Parties and Witnesses for each other; they had of course a natural bias to support each other's claim."24 This potential for abuse led at least one Member of Parliament to suggest that "if the Loyalists were paid the whole of their Loss, they would be in a better situation that they were before the war."25 While such a statement appears exaggerated at the very least, it lends creedance to Benjamin Franklin's more sinister interpretation that "England was not under any obligations to them, since it was by their misinterpretations and bad counsels, she had been drawn into this miserable war."26
True or not, every effort was made to ensure that all elligible persons could take advantage of the Commission. To this end, and in recognition of the fact that many Loyalists who had resettled in North America were experiencing difficulties in transmitting their claims to London, William Pitt, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer appointed Prime Minister upon the desolution of the North-Fox Coalition in late 1783, extended the deadline of submission an additional two years to May 1, 1786. Furthermore, and contrary to his previous position, Pitt bowed to pressure from the Board of Loyalist Agents in the summer of 1785 to advance a part of their finalized claims, and so alleviate their continued dependance upon the Crown.
By 1788, the commissioners in London and British North America had disposed of over five thousand claims. Of this number, approximately one in five were disallowed, leaving the remainder to share the total of £3,000,000 awarded to them.27 While this may appear fair compensation for their losses, not all Loyalists found equatable treatment. As authors Wallace Brown and Robert G. Mitchell point out, the Commission was much more favorable to those individuals who claimed more than £5,000, and/or who traveled to London to deal directly with the Commissioners there, even though claims in excess of £10,000 were subject to discount.28 Moreover, it hardly covered the total amount of compensation requested by Loyalist claimants. Although rare to see claims of direct fraud, few were spared the paring knife: some, for instance, were shown to be overinflated, or included property of dubious ownership; others included debts that were collectable under law, or were incurred after the outbreak of war. In any event, proper documentation and credible witnesses were a necessity for a successful claim.
The case of Dr. Huggeford illustrates the narrow discretion practiced by the Commission. Estimating his real and personal losses at £3531:1:16, Huggeford's claim was reduced to a mere £940 by the Commission, in additional to his previously awarded pension, and a grant of 700 acres in Nova Scotia. In spite of his well documented case, portions of Dr. Huggeford's claim were disallowed, such as that property for which their was reported to be an offsetting debt. To add insult to injury, the amount that was allowed, was only payable on a semi-annual basis over a period of the eight years that was to follow. While payment was an obvious relief to the many who had waited years for compensation, it was also a bitter disappointment for those who expected more of their claims for their sacrifices.
Joseph Galloway stated that, "In every Government, protection and allegiance, are reciprocal duties. They are so inseparably united, that one cannot exist without the other. . . obedience to the will of the State, communicated in its laws, entitles the subject to its protection";29 so reiterated a British government which claimed to represent the interests of its American Loyalists, but failed in its timely compensation of their just claims. While such a diametric character was to be expected of a succession of administrations haunted by defeat and barren of funds, it was hardly in keeping with its image as benevolent protector. That Britain would allow such confusion to take place in the first instance is evidence of its poor position at the bargaining table, the critical weaknesses of the Loyalist provisions contained in the Treaty of Paris, and perhaps, in small measure, the contempt of Englishmen for exprovincials.
As Hugh Egerton warned in his introduction to Commissioner Daniel Parker-Coke's personal notes on the subject, however, "It is obviously dangerous to take three thousand and odd claimants before the Commissioners as representative of the many thousands who became the founder's of New Brunswick and Upper Canada."31 In any event, these Loyalists could claim no significant loss that could not be repaid by other means of compensation, such as the granting of land in freehold tenure.32 Whether they were satisfied or not with such compensation, of course, is another question entirely.
For the most part, then, whether good or bad, those who had the most to lose were served by the commission; as for the remainder, who claimed little but their own faith in government, the treaty and subsequent compensation package can not be considered as notable a cause as the loss of their place in society. For the latter, satisfaction with government was measured not so much in dollars and cents but in their treatment as a whole.
1 Memorial of Dr. Peter Huggeford, England, 1786: PAC, MG 14, American Loyalist Claims. This is a reproduction of the actual claim held at the Public Records Office, London as A.O. 12, Series I, Vol. 21, p. 232.
2 Ibid., p. 234.; New York State Archives, A0200-49, Commissions of Forfeiture for Westchester County. To add insult to injury, Dr. Huggeford's home, valued at œ1200 New York currency, was subsequently sold by the state to finance an annuity for John Holder, one of the captors of Major Andr‚.
3 Westchester County Registry, Lands Division, Liber I, pp. 308-311.
4 Treaty of Paris, Articles V and VI: Adam Shortt and Arthur G. Doughty, Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759-1791 (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1918), Part I, p. 726.
5 House of Commons, 17 Feb 1783: A Full and Faithful Report of the Debates in Both Houses of Parliament, on Monday the 17th of February and Friday the 21st of February, 1783 on the Articles of Peace (London: S. Bladon, 1783), p. 8.
6 Diary, 15 Nov 1782: Charles Francis Adams, The Works of John Adams (Freeport: Books For Libraries Press, 1969), Vol. III, p. 310.
7 Joseph Galloway, Observations on the Fifth Article of the Treaty With America and on the Necessity of Appointing a Judicial Enquiry into the Merits and Losses of the American Loyalists (London: J. Galloway, 1783), pp. 10-11.
8 Robert R. Livingston to Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia, 02 Jan 1782: Jared Sparks, ed., The Works of Benjamin Franklin (Boston: Hilliard, Gray and Co., 1840), Vol. IX, p. 139.
10 Harry B. Yoshpe, The Disposition of Loyalist Estates in the Southern District of the State of New York (New York: AMS Press, 1967), pp. 59-60.
11 Journal, 03 Jun 1782: Sparks, Franklin, Vol. IX, p. 315.
12 John Adams to Jonathon Jackson, Paris, 17 Nov 1782: Adams, Adams, Vol IV, p. 516.
13 George Washington to Mary Brinston, Mount Vernon, 15 Jun 1784: John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1970), Vol. 27, p. 423.
14 Washington to Governor George William Fairfax, Mount Vernon, 27 Feb 1785: Fitzpatrick, Washington, Vol. 28, p. 82; To illustrate but one example, a resolution of the Assembly of Virginia, dated 17 Dec 1782, states in part: "if virtuous citizens, in defence of their natural and constitutional rights, risk their life, liberty, and property on their success, the vicious citizens who side with tyranny and oppression, or who cloak themselves under the mask of neutrality, should at least hazard their property, and not enjoy the benefits procured by the labours and dangers of those whose destruction they wished."
15 The Commissioners to Livingston, Paris, 14 Dec 1782: Adams, Adams, Vol VIII, p. 19.
16 Shelburne's last minute instructions to Oswald to claim, "either by direct cession of territory in their favor or by half or some portion of the proceeds from the sale of the backlands, or at least by a favorable boundry for Nova Scotia" was in direct response to Franklin's own ill advised suggestion at the onset of talks to sell vacant land in Canada and use the proceeds "to pay for the Houses burnt by the British Troops and their Indians; and also to indemnify the Royalists for the Confiscation of their Estates": Gerald Stourzh, Benjamin Franklin and American Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 193-194.
17 House of Lords, 17 Feb 1783: Debates, p. 2.
18 Strachey to Townsend, 29 Nov 1782: F.O. 97/157, folio 221, in Mary Beth Norton, The British Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England 1774-1789 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co. 1972), p. 180.
20 William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London, 1806-1820), XXIII, pp. 412-3, in ibid., p. 183.
21 Joseph Galloway, The Claim of the American Loyalists Reviewed and Maintained Upon Incontrovertible Principles of Law and Justice (London: J. Galloway, 1788), pp. 10-11.
22 John Eardley-Wilmot, Historical View of the Commission For Enquiring into the Losses, Services, and Claims, of the American Loyalists (London: J. Nichols, 1815), p. 32n.
25 Honorable Charles James Fox, House of Commons Debates, 06 Jun 1788: ibid., p. 77.
26 Journal, 03 Jun 1782: Sparks, Franklin, Vol. IX, p. 315.
27 Wallace Brown, The Good Americans (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1969), p. 188.
28 Ibid., pp. 180-190; Robert G. Mitchell, "The Losses and Compensation of Georgia Loyalists", Georgia Historical Quarterly, 1984, 68(2), pp. 233-243.
29 Joseph Galloway, A Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great Britain, and the Colonies (London: J. Galloway, 1780), p. 27.
30 Hugh Edward Egerton, ed., The Royal Commission on the Losses and Services of American Loyalists, 1783 to 1785 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1971), p. XIII.
31 Wallace Brown, Friends, pp. 249 estimates that only 8% of all Loyalists submitted claims; p. 267. 55% of all claims were less than œ1000.
32 Brown, The King's Friends (Providence: Brown University Press, 1965), pp. 261-265. Brown's careful dissection of compensation claims disproves a number of myths concerning the Loyalists. In particular, his catagorization by amount of claim and occupation illustrates that most Loyalists were neither wealthy, nor of gentil birth.