John Stark Quotes
There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!
Stark, Caleb. Memoir and Official Correspondence of Gen. John Stark. G. Parker Lyon, 1860, p. 54.
John Adams, 2nd President of the U.S.
The simplistic view that the American colonists were patriots and the British were the colonizers against whom the colonists revolted is not really accurate. The American colonists were polarized into patriots and loyalists. The Loyalist Americans ranged from many of those merchants whose business depended upon England, those whose family were still in England, those whose religion made them loyal to the Church of England, slaves who would be free under British law, Americans who had strong cultural and intellectual ties to England and those Americans who were great believers in monarchy and whose honor required that they fulfill the oath that they had taken to the King of England. Some of the worst atrocities of the American Revolution occurred in the battles of these Americans against each other. See {82105} for more on this point.
This was written more than a year before the American Revolution Battles began. It took time to ship the men and supplies to America and the British did not handle that task with much efficiency. See {636926} for another of the King’s statements.
Christie was a Tory—a British supporter, but what he did that was so offensive was that he had requested that British Troops come to Maryland to control the rebellion.
At the time of the American Revolution there were strong abolitionist forces working against slaver and the slave trade. Southern American slave-owners, the political leadership of the South, feared that England would force slavery reforms on their colonies. Hence, severance from England eliminated that threat. In retrospect, they were quite right for it was England which outlawed the slave trade and led the worldwide anti-slavery movement which had little effect on the new independent America and the political bias in favor of the south of the American compact caused slavery to survive in America, long after the vast majority of the population would have it ended. It took the Civil War to do it.
Most Canadians supported the English despite the letter.
The “abrupt departure” referred to the Tories. The phraseology is today almost comical were it not so serious a matter. This first New Hampshire Constitution was a very short one developed quickly out of necessity.
Clark had Hancock and Adams for dinner. Paul Revere arrived to announce that “the British are coming.” The guests asked Reverend Clark if he thought that the people of Lexington would fight. They did, and some died.
Americans were by no means united in wanting to take up arms against Britain. Relatively few of the loyalist quotations have come down to us, but here is one. It also illustrates why some Americans wanted complete independence: So that they could escape their debts to English merchants. Most however had more noble and unselfish motives. As a matter of fact, the American Revolution is unusual in the sense that there were so many men of substance who sacrificed much of their material wealth for the American ideal. There were also the rogues and opportunists as Galloway describes.
John Stark was a New Hampshire native who served as an officer in the British Army during the French and Indian war and a major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. He became widely known as the "Hero of Bennington" for his exemplary service at the Battle of Bennington in 1777.
