Journal and letters of the late Samuel Curwen judge of admiralty, etc., a loyalist-refugee in England, during the American revolution. To which are added, illustrative documents and other eminent men

Front matter

Qass Book hV^'

OF THE LATE

SAMUEL CURWEN,

Preface

The original manuscripts from which the body of the following work has been compiled, were sent in detached parts by the respected writer to his niece, a grand-parent of the editor, (in whose family they have remained for more than sixty years,) with the following injunction, viz. :

" These papers were written partly by way of pastime, and partly with a view to future amusement, should it please the Sovereign Disposer of life to lengthen mine l^yond the period of banishment and restore me again to my native country; otherwise may they prove an entertainment to my friends, to whom I commend them, requesting their care to keep them from the inspection of all others, they being negligently written and but for the eye of candor and friendship, without method or order, as memory served, whereby many faults and anachronisms happened (if a technical expression applied to more important events may be used about such insignificant trifles) ; if they shall afford them the least amusement, my purpose will be answered."

The editor considers the present pubhcation of these papers not only as in no wise a violation of the injunction of his venerated relative, but as due to his memory, to exhibit to his countrymen the purity of his motives, and the ardent affection he bore towards his native land, even when constrained by a sense of duty to turn his back upon it. Another inducement for the publication is furnished by the incidental light thrown upon the character of his brethren in exile, of whom scarcely any now survive, but whose numerous descendants feel a deep sense of the injustice to which most of them, in a season of great popular excitement, were unfortunately subjected, who, under less adverse circumstances, had filled with honor civil posts of high trust, and led to victory our arms in the provincial wars. As the just fame of such as have distinguished themselves in important public concerns has ever been esteemed among the most valued treasures of civilized nations, that of these loyalists, banished for opinion's sake, seems to call for a proper vindication at the hands of an impartial posterity, while the contrast of their iv PREFACE.

•

later with their earlier fortunes presents strong claims to the sympathy of mankind.

The success of recent publications in the department of historical writing having induced the belief that the period has arrived when a sealed book may be opened, and a dispassionate examination had of the circumstances connected with that portion of our history in which the character of this proscribed class of our countrymen is involved, this work is offered with the hope of removing to some extent, if not fully, whatever obloquy has been unjustly cast upon their names, and to show that they were, in many instances, not the less actuated by lofty principle than those who embraced the popular opinions of the day, and adopted measures which resulted in such transcendant success.

The editor has endeavored to present in the Supplement, if not a full, at least a brief account of every prominent loyalist, as well as of other persons of note, mentioned in the work; and he regrets that want of information, notwithstanding every effort to obtain it, has in some cases rendered his notices extremely imperfect, and in others left no alternative but to omit them altogether.

Before the publication was decided upon, the editor submitted the work to Dr. Sparks, the distinguished American historian, and to George Folsom, Esq., of the publishing committee of the New York Historical Society, and editor of the society's recent excellent volume of Collections ; whose favorable opinion of the historical value of the journal and correspondence of Judge Curwen, expressed in their respective letters already laid before the public, confirmed him in the design of giving to the light these interesting relics of a former generation, to which he feared his private regard for the memory of the venerated author might have attached undue importance. He presents his sincere thanks to those gentlemen for their encouraging letters, and the kind interest they have taken in the matter.

The work is now submitted to the public by the Editor, without endorsing principles at variance with the spirit of the age; and should it prove successful and draw into this new field more competent laborers, the chief end of the publication will be attained.

G. A. Ward.

J\retv-York, JYovember, 1842.

PKEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

The favorable reception of this work has induced the publication of an enlarged edition.

It is gratifying to the editor that his labors have attracted attention, and drawn others into this fruitful field to rescue from the " tooth of time"' documents and letters illustrative of this neglected portion of our history, and embody them in a less ephemeral form.

The following extract from a notice of this w*ork by W. Smith, Esq., in the Southern Review of July, 1843, is introduced for its liberal spirit and the contrast it bears to the sentiments expressed in a prominent Eastern Review, to which hereinafter a more particular reference will be had.

" It is not to be expected," says Mr. Smith, " that as a nation we should cherish with any popular fondness or pride, and blazon upon our republican escutcheons, the memories of those men who did not participate with the heroes of our Revolution in the successful struggle which achieved our independence, but were notable only for their opposition to its measures. At the same time there is too close a tie existing between us and the native loyalists of the Revolution, for us not to feel a portion of sympathy in their histories and character. We do not allude so much to the private interest which some among us might more especially have, who may be their descendants, but more particularly to the public claim, which, as natives of the same land — professing the same attachment to it — and as men, many of them eminent in our provincial annals, whose virtues reflected honor upon their country and humanity, they have upon us generally. We may very well, without doing any injury to our patriotic sentiments, reserve a share of generous ii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

and manly sympathy for the misguided and unfortunate ' in the times that tried men's souls ;'' whom we believe to have been actuated by pure and high motives, by their best judgment of their country's good, and by a fearless devotion to their principles.

"A more trying situation cannot be imagined than that in which the recusant loyalist was placed, who found himself, amid an opposing current of popular opinion, subjected to the fierce violence or harsh decrees of party rage or necessity, and forced to the alternative of either recanting and abandoning his principles or becoming a martyr. And if, on the one hand, we admire and are proud of recalling to recollection the noble chivalry which graced our fathers and bore them triumphantly through a contest in which the odds appeared so greatly against them ; we may, on the other, pay a just tribute of respect and honor to the character of those who acted also from lofty impulses, whose only transgression was a difference of political opinion, and whose hearts as patriots, in their view of things, must have deeply bled at the dangers with which their country was threatened, and at their cruel exile from it and

all that it contained which they held most dear."

*******

" The loyalist who honestly bejieved that America would be happier under the government of the mother country, or who saw in the disaffection of his countrymen only the rebellious overthrow' of law and order, — a weak attempt at resistance, without the prospect of success, the consequence of which would be, in all probability, a disgraceful submission to British authority, under terms more onerous than those which were in disputation, would be doing but his duty to oppose, in the first instance, measures in his opinion fraught only with evil and wrong; but such a course was no doubt a source of secret chagrin and bitter discontent afterwards to many, who, in their unfortunate banishment, humiliated by the reverses of fortune, insulted by the taunts and revilings cast upon Americans, perplexed by their own mistakes of judgment, and brooding with feelings of wounded pride over the injuries sustained at the hands of their countrymen, must have been harassed by opposite anxieties and conflicting sentiments — at one time flattering themselves that their wisdom would be manifest, and America, subdued and repentant, return to her allegiance, to a just sense of her real

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Ill

interest and security — a close connexion with the mother country ; — at another, cherishing in secret and with pride the behef of the inability of England to overcome America, and appearing even to anticipate the actual issue of the contest."

The foregoing sentiments, worthy of a warm-hearted and patriotic Carolinian, whose home was a battlefield of the revolution, may nobly be contrasted with the following extracts from a frigid and fastidious criticism of this work, contained in the North American Review of January, 1843, understood to have been contributed by Charles F. Adams, Esq., a son of the ex-president of the United States.

The reviewer states that " Nearly all of the judicial bench (of Massachusetts), most of the leading members of the bar, all the officers attached to the custom-house, a considerable number* of the graduates of Harvard College, many leading merchants, and most of the fashionable gentry, must be ranked upon the tory side at the commencement of the struggle. Comparatively few persevered in their principles at the cost of banishment and the confiscation of their property. But some did so, and it has been one of the objects of the editor of this book to gather in it such information relative to their fate as might still be of general interest. Efforts of the same kind have lately been made in other quarters, and all with indifferent success. Probably if their history were known, it would be comprised in few words. Like trees transplanted after they have attained maturity, they experienced a blight of their prosperity and vigor which no length of time could entirely remedy. The most fortunate repaired to other possessions of Great Britain, there to contribute to the formation of new systems of colonial vassalage, in return for the royal bounty not very graciously accorded to them ; while the remainder struggled on, in the home of their preference, with insult and neglect while living, and died at last unpitied and unknown."

Among those styled by the reviewer as " the most fortunate" there were from his own neighborhood Leonard, Blowers, Bliss, Upham, Sewall, Putnam, Browne, Wentworth, and Chipman, all either Governors or Chief Justices of British provinces, besides

* Upwards of sixty of these were banished. — Ed.

iv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

many Judges, all of whose'names are emblazoned in capitals on the catalogue of Mr. Adams's alma mater, and who have, in several instances, been succeeded in their high stations by their posterity : — and as for the remainder, to which he refers as having " struggled on with insult and neglect,^'' many were ennobled ; and we are as much at loss to understand how their flace of banishment could have been " the home of their preference,'^ as that such loyalists as Sir Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford), Isaac Royall, and William Erving (of whose generous bequests to Harvard College our reviewer has availed himself), could have " died unpitied and unknown ! T* Mr. Adams goes on to say that " much allowance should be made for the influence which any favorite pursuit will have in vitiating the judgment of the person engaged in it. But to excuse such cases, that judgment should at least be seen to be always sound where the peculiar bias is not strong enough to prevent its action. We do not perceive that this is the fact with Mr. Ward. The error which he commits in the preface (in stating that the loyalists were in many instances not the less actuated by lofty principles than those who embraced the popular opinions of the day), re-appears in almost every page of his composition in the volume; and it is for that reason we feel that we must do our best to expose it. He surely need not be told that his doctrine, if adopted, would destroy the standard of right and wrong in public conduct completely."

*******

" If the editor had only claimed for the refugees honesty in the maintenance of their opinions, we should have had no disposition whatever, in many instances, to dispute it. But when Mr. Ward goes farther, and says that the loyalists were actuated by principles not less lofty than those who embraced the popular opinions of the day, &c., we must demur to the use of the word ' lofty,' so applied, as well as to any comparison being made at all between the classes thus brought together."

Mr. Adams admits that '• some of the loyalists persevered in

* For an account of those noble foundations, the " Rumford," ^^Boi/- all" and " Smn"-" professorshipsj see duincy's History of the University.

Preface To The Second Edition. V

their 'principles at the cost of banishment and the confiscation of their property ^^^ and we would ask if the motives to such sacrifices could have been ignoble ?

Mr. Adams says, " Of Gov. Hutchinson, as a man, we cannot entertain the exalted opinion which the editor expresses. We believe that he was respectable in private life, but selfish, grasping, and profligate, as a politician. Above all, we know that he was born an American, had been cradled in the nursery of republican principles, had raised himself to general consideration among his fellows by the support of them, and that he sacrificed them for a mess of pottage."

Surely Mr. Adams never read his grandfather's Novanglus in reply to his antagonist, wherein he says, " What does Massachusettensis mean by independence ? Does he mean independent of Great Britain, and an independent government in America 7 No doubt he intended the undistinguishing should understand him so. If he did, nothing can be more wicked, or a greater slander on the wliigs — because he knows there is not a man in the province among the whigs, or ever was, who harbors a wish of that sort."

Mr. Adams well knows that Mr. Hutchinson relinquished with great reluctance the office of Chief Justice (which he had filled to universal acceptance), and assumed the executive government, at the certain sacrifice of his popularity, and also that he afterwards refused a Baronetcy, which satisfied the world generally of the sincerity of his principles. And as we look in vain through his history for proof " that he was a selfish, grasping, profligate politician,^^ we are constrained to impute the harshness of Mr. Adams's observations to obdurate and unyielding prejudice, imbibed from those by whom his political principles and habits of thought have probably been moulded.

It is too painful to comment upon all the narrow views taken by the reviewer in his elaborate article, and it is unnecessary, as they are without doubt exclusively his own ; since we notice with pride, among others, the following remarks on an analogous subject, in a subsequent number of the distinguished journal which contained his critique :*

" Look, then, at the conduct, the speeches, and the writings of

* North Am. Review, April, 1844.

vi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

the earlier patriots, the proper ' fathers of the revolution,' — of such men as James Otis, John Dickinson, and Dr. Franklin. They all boasted of the connexion of the country with England, and gloried in the title of British subjects ; they were strongly attached to the land which they still called their 'home;' they acknowledged the duty of allegiance to the crown, and spoke with the gloomiest apprehensions of measures for a separation that might be forced upon them, if the ministry persisted in their schemes. The General Court of Massachusetts, in a memorial against the ' Sugar Act,' which they transmitted to their agent in England in the summer of 1764, declared, that ' the connexion between Great Britain and her Colonies is so natural and strong, as to make their mutual happiness depend upon their mutual support. Nothing can tend more to the destruction of both, and to forward the measures of their enemies, than sowing the seeds of jealousy, animosity, and dissension between the mother country and the Colonies.' James Otis, in his * Rights of the British Colonies,' published the same year, writes thus : ' We all think ourselves happy under Great Britain. We love, esteem, and reverence our mother country, and adore our king.' As late as July, 1774, John Dickinson, 'the Pennsylvania Farmer,' wrote the ' instructions ' presented by the deputies of several counties in Pennsylvania to their representatives in the General Assembly, from which we make the following extract : —

" ' We well know that the Colonists are charged by many persons in Great Britain, with attempting to obtain such an exclusion [of any power of parliament over these Colonies], and a total independence of her. As well we know the accusation to be utterly false. We can safely appeal to that Being from whom no thought can be concealed, that our warmest wish and utmost ambition is, that we and our posterity may ever remain subordinate to and dependent upon our parent state. This submission our reason approves, our affection dictates, our duty commands, and our interest enforces.' "

Mr. Adams seems to coincide in opinion with " the sons of liberty," referred to in the Life of Hamilton, 2d vol., p. 260, " through whose proceedings intolerance sought to conceal its deformity under the mask of the demagogue." The editor of that valuable work goes on to say, that " The proscribed loyalists from New York petitioned for permission to return — this was a moment mag-

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Vli

nanimity would have embraced to shield the defenceless, but the Governor in his opening speech threw the weight of his influence into the popular scale, and they were rejected."

General Washington thus addressed his friend Bryan Fairfax, a loyalist, upon obtaining for him permission to retreat to England : "The friendship which I ever professed and felt for you met with no diminution from the difference in our political opinions. I knew the rectitude of my own sentiments, and believing in the sincerity of yours, lamented, although I did not condemn, your renunciation of the creed I had adopted."

General Washington also recommended Congress to authorize a proclamation of pardon to such of the refugees as would return and signify their allegiance to their native country. That pure patriot, John Jay, was American Minister to Madrid when the New- York Confiscation Act of 1779 was passed. In a letter to Gov. George Clinton, dated May, 1780, he says, " An English paper contains what they call, but which I can hardly believe to be, your Confiscation Act. If truly printed, New-York is disgraced by injustice too palpable to admit even of palliation." Upon this the biographer of Mr. Jay remarks — " The Confiscation Act referred to, was unfortunately authentic. Mr. Jay, in after life, often spoke of it with strong indignation. He regarded the dispute with Britain as one in which men might conscientiously take opposite sides ; and while he was ever ready to take all proper measures for preventing the loyalists from injuring the American cause, he abhorred the idea of punishing them for their opinions. His wish was that no estate should be confiscated except such as belonged to those who had been either perfidious or cruel. By the act alluded to, many were attainted who had been perfectly inoffensive, and he believed ^no tives of avarice had led to their proscription. He always declined purchasing any property that had been confiscated by this law."

On reference to this confiscation act, page 580 of this work, we find that the estates of the following ladies were forfeited for opinion's sake, viz., Margaret Inglis, Susannah Robinson, and Mary Morris.

We take leave of Mr. Adams with the single remark that he is probably almost the only person conversant w-ith our history that could not now join Mr. Gallatin in the noble sentiment he uttered vili PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

in the Legislative Halls of Pennsylvania more than three score years ago, when advocating a bill which permitted the loyalist refugees to return, viz., " If patriotism be a virtue, loyalty is no less so."

We close our preface by stating that the extent of the transgression of these loyalists was their retreat from troubles which, to their foreboding minds, were fast approaching. This was construed into high treason, and for it they were attainted, proscribed as conspirators, their property confiscated, and themselves banished. They maintained their allegiance to the government de facto and de jure, and obeyed the only law^s then in force ; and were absentees long before a government to which treason could apply had been created.

No men were more sensible than these refugees of the nature and extent of the grievances of which the colonists had cause tc complain, but were of opinion that redress might have been obtained without an appeal to arms.

G A. WARD.

New-York, August 1, 1844

Preface To The Third Edition

The very flattering encouragement given by friends at the South has called forth this edition, which comprises much iditicnal matter relating exclusively to Southern Loyalists and the revolutionary movements in that quarter.

The progress of liberal opinions towards the Loyalists has Ta"; surpassed the anticipations of the Editor when he first braved pc^; ular prejudice by pressing their claims upon the public. And nowhere has this been more apparent than in the pages of the North American Review. This distinguished journal for October last entirely recants the sentiments expressed in the first review of this work of January 1843, and contains amongst others the following remarks :

" And be the popular sentiment now what it may, we cannot doubt that Harrison Gray, Peter Van Schaick, Richard Salstontall, and hundreds of others, were actuated by a purer and stronger love of country, than were many who will go down to posterity as true and sound-hearted patriots. Men who give up home, who separate themselves from kindred, who surrender all the happiness and expectations of life in order to become exiles, — if of distinguished private worth, — are never to be stigmatized, but always to be respected and sometimes venerated. ' I will go to Worms,' said Luther, ' though I were certain to meet as many devils as there are tiles upon the houses.' Impelled by a sense of duty as high and as holy as this, some of the Loyalists abandoned their firesides to brave perils as alarming to them as any which beset the path of that great reformer. Why did you come here, when you and your

X PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

associates were almost certain to endure the sufferings and absolute want of shelter and food which you have narrated 1 asked an American gentleman of one of the first settlers of St. Johns, New Brunswick, a man whose life, which has just ended, was without a stain. ' Why did we come here /' replied he, with emotion which brought tears — * For our loyalty ! Think you that our principles were not as dear to us as yours to you V Will not even the prejudiced own that faithfulness to conscience is always a great virtue — never a sin 1

" Those who have not been at the pains to investigate will be surprised to learn that the opponents of the revolution were powerful in all the thirteen colonies ; and that in some of them they weft' nearly if not quite equal in number to its friends. * * * * * Of Massachusetts it may be remarked, that a large proportion of her people who opposed the revolution were persons of consideration, and many of them were eminent for virtue, were blessed with fine talents, and afterwards obtained distinguished places m the annals of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The division of parties in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, was much the same as Massachusetts. New-York was the strong hold of the loyalists, and contained more of them than any other colony. In some of the southern colonies, the loyalists were almost as numerous as in New-York, while in all they comprised a most formidable body.

" That there were occasions when the royal generals obtained twelve or fifteen hundred recruits among the inhabitants, merely by issuing a call upon them to stand to their 'allegiance" — that " all who calmly examine the events which led to General Lincoln's surrender of Charleston, must be satisfied that the inhabitants of the city and vicinity, as a body, preferred that both the American array and the city should fall into British hands ;" — that " few of the Carolinians would enlist under the American banner; but after the capitulation they flocked to the royal standard by hundreds.

" It may be asked ' why, when the oppressions of the mother country w^ere so flagrant and apparent, there was no greater unanimity than from what we have now said appears to have existed ; and why a party so large in numbers, which in many colonies included persons so respectable and hitherto so universally

Preface To The Third Edition. XI

esteemed, was seemingly, or in fact, averse to breaking away from British dominion V

" It has been answered, that few foresaw the issue to which the quarrel must come. It has been said also, that those who received the name of Tories were not at first, nor indeed for some years, resisting a revolution, but striving to preserve order, and an observance of the rights of person and property ; that many who .took sides at the outset as mere conservators of the peace, were denounced by those whose purposes they thwarted, and were finally compelled in pure self-defence to accept royal protection.

"Again, it has been stated that had the naked question of independence been discussed at the beginning, and before minor and in many cases local events had shaped their course, many who were driven forth to live and die as aliens and outcasts, would have terminated their career far differently. That there is force in these replies, the unprejudiced minds of this generation should be frank enough to admit.

" The wise man of Israel said, ' A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city, and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.' That many were needlessly ' offended' by the doings of persons who took to themselves the sacred names of ' sons of liberty,' we shall not hesitate to declare. What ' brother,' upon whose vision the breaking up of the colonial system, and the sovereignty of America had not dawned, and who saw, as even the Whigs professed to see, with the eyes only of a British subject, was ' to be won' over to the right by the arguments of mobbing^ tarring, burning, and smoking ? Did the cause of human ' freedom' gain strength by the deeds of the five hundred who mobbed Sheriff" I'yng, or by the speed of the hundred and sixty on horseback who pursued Commissioner Hallowell 1 Were the shouts of an excited multitude, and the crash of broken glass and demolished furniture, fit requiems for the dying Ropes ? Were Whig interests promoted because one thousand men shut up the courts of law in Berkshire, and five thousand did the same in Worcester, and mobs drove away the judges at Springfield, Taunton and Plymouth ? Because in one place a judge was stopped, insulted and threatened ; in another the whole bench were hissed and hooted, and in a third were required to do penance, hat in hand, in a procession of attor-

XII PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

neys and sheriffs? Did the driving oflngersoll from his estate, of Edson from his house, aiid the assault upon the house of Gilbert, and the shivering of Sewall's windov^^s, serve to wean them or their friends from their allegiance ? Did Ruggles, when subsequent events threw his countrymen into his power, forget that the creatures which grazed his pastures had been painted, shorn, maimed and poisoned — that he had been pursued on the highway day and night — that his house had been broken open, and his family had been driven from it ? What Tory turned Whig because Saltonstall was mobbed, and Oliver plundered, and Leonard shot in his own house ? Was the kingly arm actually weakened or strengthened for harm, because thousands surrounded the mansions of high functionaries, and forced them into resignation ; or because sheriffs were told that they would perform their duties ai the risk of their lives 1 Which party gained by waylaying and insulting at every corner the ' Rescinders," ' Protesters,' and the ' Addressers V Which by burning the mills of Putnam ? Had the widows and orphans no additional griefs because the Probate courts were closed by the laultitude, and their. officers were driven under British guns? Did it serve a good end'to endeavor to hinder Tories from getting tenants, or to prevent) persons who owed them from paying honest debts ? On whose cheek should have been the blush of shame when the habitation of the aged and feeble Foster was sacked, and he had no shelter but the woods — when Williams, as infirm as he, was seized at night, dragged away for miles and smoked in a room with fastened doors and a closed chimney top 1 What father who doubted, wavered and doubted still, whether to join or fly, determined to abide the issue in the land of his birth, because foul words were spoken to his daughters, or because they were pelted when riding or moving in the innocent dance ?