Loyalists Quotes

The die is now cast. The colonies must either submit or triumph.

After being Washington's aide for four years and becoming the hero of Yorktown, Hamilton was viewed with a great deal of suspicion because of his association with Tories.

The American Revolution produced two new countries—The United States and Canada

The American Revolution was a conservative revolution.

The American Revolution was as much a civil war as a revolution.

The pressure of an all-powerful totalitarian state creates an emotional tension in its citizens that determines their acts. When people are divided into "loyalists" and "criminals" a premium is placed on every type of conformist, coward, and hireling; whereas among the "criminals" one finds a singularly high percentage of people who are direct, sincere, and true to themselves.

The number of Loyalist émigrés who fled the United States ultimately exceeded the number of Frenchmen who fled their revolution.

Those damn Presbyterian Indians!

For a very long time, loyalists were often left out of patriotic American histories of the revolution. Or they were caricatured as upper-class Tory reactionaries, or - rather like the Jacobites - made the subject only of nostalgic antiquarianism.

Protected by a no-fly zone, surrounded by protesters, Trump Tower is buzzing with intensity. The president-elect's family, loyalist advisers and wannabes all jockeying for position.

There were more Americans in the British Army during the Revolution than there were in the American Army.

Had they taken a poll in Philadelphia in 1776, [the founders] would have scrapped the whole idea of independence. A third of the country was for it, a third of the country was against it, and the remaining third, in the old human way, was waiting to see who came out on top.

Instead of contributing to the restoration of liberty they enlist of their own free will under the flag of the Spanish tyrants and most actively co-operate to our destruction

I descend from both Philadelphia Quakers and Carolina colonists whose families were separated by the Revolutionary War. That helped give me insight into the agony of Patriots who, until the British government denied their claims, had always, like Ben Franklin himself, thought of themselves as free-born Englishmen.

The dead-enders are still with us, those remnants of the defeated regimes who'll go on fighting long after their cause is lost.

More than one person was appointed provisional governor who could not take the oath of office required by act of Congress. Other persons in the same predicament were appointed in the revenue service. The effect of these appointments was disastrous. They were in the nature of notice to rebels everywhere, that participation in the rebellion was no bar to office. If one of their number could be appointed governor, if another could be appointed to a confidential position in the Treasury Department, then there was nobody on the long list of blood who might not look for preferment. And thus all offices from governor to constable were handed over to a disloyal scramble. Rebels crawled forth from their retreats. Men who had hardly ventured to expect their lives were now candidates for office, and the rebellion became strong again. The change was felt in all the gradations of government, whether in States, counties, towns, or villages. Rebels found themselves in places of trust, while the true-hearted Unionists, who had watched for the coming of our flag and ought to have enjoyed its protecting power, were driven into hiding-places. All this was under the auspices of Andrew Johnson

Dalton Trumbo was constantly criticizing the membership [in the Communist Party], and was opposite to being a loyalist.

I surround myself with loyalists and people that I would die for. I just would rather die than make bad stuff for people because I'm a terrible dishwasher and a terrible lover and a terrible pet owner.

Many of us came away from our youth thinking that the story of the Revolution was that the Americans were patriots fighting the oppressive British. It was kind of good versus evil, liberty versus tyranny. When you get into it, you find that it was much more complicated.

The true history of the American Revolution can never be written… A great many if the people in those days were not at all what they seemed, nor what they were generally believed to be.

… persons, whose design, from the beginning of their opposition to the Stamp Act, was to throw off all subordination and connection with Great Britain; who meant by every fiction, falsehood and fraud, to delude the people from their due allegiance, to throw the subsisting Governments into anarchy, to incite the ignorant and vulgar to arms, and with those arms to establish American Independence --- were Congregational and Presbyterian republicans, or men of bankrupt fortunes, overwhelmed in debt to the British merchants.

Today, when you're marketing a brand, you can't try to appeal to everybody. You should speak to a group of people and create them as loyalists.

Before the end of the [American Revolutionary] war came South Carolina and Georgia were very nearly demoralized. In the course of the conflict South Carolina lost not less than 25,000 slaves, about one-fifth of all she had. Georgia did not lose so many, but proportionally suffered even more. Some of the Negroes went into the British army, some went away with the loyalists, and some took advantage of the confusion and escaped to the Indians … some slaves entered the Continental Army as free Negroes.

This is someone [Michael Flynn] who is considered a loyalist and as we have watched this transition process unfold, again roiled by reports of turmoil, Donald Trump seems to be really focusing right now in this initial phase on loyalists.

I think all of these things, there are always names floated - Newt Gingrich's name is out there. Sometimes you just want to make the loyalists happy by floating those names.