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 Historical Overview of: Toryism in Maryland, Delaware and Virginia
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   English troops occupied none of the cities in Virginia, Delaware or Maryland, so loyalists could find no protection and little encouragement from the mother nation or its troops. Whatever royal support there may have been never really developed. Delaware had no frontier, but tories did manage to arouse the Amerindians to massacres in the other two states.
 
   Delaware had a substantial loyalist population, reliably estimated at about half the population. Most of Delaware's population had been moderate in its politics in the pre-Revolutionary era. The pre-war legislature remained loyal but was circumscribed by a larger patriot climate of opinion. There are strong claims that as many as half of the people were loyal to the crown.
 
   Several incidents are often cited in support of the high incidence of loyalism. In June 1776 loyalists collected some 5000 signatures on a petition opposing the Declaration of Independence in Kent County while patriots could barely manage to gather 300 signers. An ensuing major insurrection in Kent County cost over $100,000 to quell. When Governor Caesar Rodney asked his militiamen to sign a petition for independence only 26 of 68 men present were willing to commit. When other loyalists attempted to deliver it to Congress they were mobbed. Robinson gathered 1500 loyalists to restore order. Having no arms they appealed to Sir Andrew Hammond, skipper of the Roebuck, for support. Hammond stayed aloof and 1500 patriot riflemen arrived on orders from the Philadelphia Council of Safety. There were few strong statements of loyalist sentiment in the state which was not directly occupied. There were, however, some active loyalists in Delaware. Colonel Alfred Clifton was a Catholic Delaware loyalist who successfully raised a troop of loyal cavalry.
 
   In September 1777 the British army invaded Delaware, bringing many loyalists to declare in favor of king and country. Many of the active Delaware loyalists defected to the British while Howe controlled Philadelphia and left with him when he withdrew from the city. President Rodney received complaints of tory activity in Murderkill Hundred, Duck Creek, Dover and Kent County. Anglican minister Daniel Currie helped to persuade many of the righteousness of the royalist cause. In September 1778 Methodist preacher Freeborn Garretson attempted to preach a loyalist sermon in Dover, but a mob accused him of being a tory and a follower of Cheney Clow.
 
   The notorious tory Cheney Clow in April 1778 had led a tory revolt near Kenton. The Delaware militia responded to a call from Colonel Pope, located more than a hundred tories entrenched in a fortified position and prepared for an assault once the full company arrived. Clow retreated. The militia burned his fort and captured about half of his followers who were forced to enlist in the patriot army. Finally, in 1782 a sheriff's posse, with some militia as reinforcements, captured Clow. He claimed protection as a prisoner of war since he had a British commission with the rank of captain. In May 1783 a jury found him guilty of robbery, plunder and murder and ordered him to be hanged. In this case did Delaware witness significant popular support for the tories.
 
   Following Lord Cornwallis' withdrawal from the Carolinas, Sir Henry Clinton received a proposal from William Rankin of Pennsylvania to use force to establish a loyalist haven. Rankin, a loyalist militia colonel, believed that there was a substantial reservoir of royalist sentiment in southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware which, if properly cultivated, could serve to augment his majesty's forces. Both Clinton and the home government were, at this moment, grasping for any evidence that royal government could be reestablished. Cornwallis, having been falsely seduced into believing similar promises about the Carolinas, opposed the idea, for he saw in it nothing that convinced him that it was in any way superior to the Carolina plan. Clinton liked the idea and thought to implement it in the autumn of 1781, which is why Clinton retained Cornwallis' army in Virginia. Although the northern army had comparatively little to do after 1778, and Clinton possessed the authority and resources to attempt to implement Rankin's plan without Cornwallis, nothing came of it. The appearance of the French navy in the Chesapeake Bay made the operation too dangerous to attempt.
 
   Most loyalists in Maryland were white, first-generation English immigrants, engaged in business as merchants, free professionals, small tradesmen, artisans, inn-keepers and mariners. Most lived in Baltimore or Annapolis, with a few others from Frederick. Despite the fact that Maryland had been established as a haven for Roman Catholics from England, political power for many decades before the revolution had been firmly held by a conservative, aristocratic Protestant minority. In the last decade before the revolution, the court party had defended its own powers more readily than the king's prerogatives. In the years immediately preceding the war for independence the royalist court party, which became the core of loyalism after war came, saw its power draining away. The governor in the last royalist years (1769-1776), George Chalmers, was partially sympathetic to the American complaints and did little to oppose independence. And, as elsewhere, the Anglican clergy remained firmly royalist. The popular lower house of the legislature and the minor and local governmental officers supported the cause of independence. The British army never captured or occupied any major Maryland city, so loyalism had little chance of spreading among the timid or undecided citizenry.
 
   Moderate loyalists defended the king's powers with pen. Daniel Dulaney had produced a refutation of the patriot arguments of the Stamp Act Congress. James Chalmers offered Plain Truth in refutation to Tom Paine's Common Sense. Reverend Jonathan Boucher attacked those fellow clergymen, notably Episcopal, who sided with the patriots.
 
   Maryland also produced some loyal men of action. Hugh Kelly formed the Maryland Royal Retaliators which, by 1781, had raised at least 1300 men. The patriots captured Kelly, effectively closing out this chapter in Maryland loyalism. The British army commissioned James Chalmers a lieutenant-colonel, sent him to Maryland and ordered him to raise a loyalist militia. He failed to raise his quota, bit appeared in British service as late as 1782, with the notation that his militia was "deficient in numbers." In September 1783 he fled to New York and from thence to St. John, New Brunswick.
 
   Virginia, with Massachusetts, led the patriot cause. Its House of Burgesses had established a remarkable record of independent action. Nathaniel Bacon's Rebellion may have been the first incident of armed American resistance to British rule; and both colonial and state governments had issued proclamations bordering on claims of sovereignty long before 1776. The last royal governor Lord Dunmore initially resisted independence, was defeated at Great Bridge in 1775 and abandoned Virginia completely in July 1776. Virginia contributed heavily to the patriot cause in the early years while suffering few depravations except joint tory-Amerindian raids on the frontier.
 
   Loyalism was as weak in Virginia as anywhere in the former colonies. Two classes of men led the loyalists in Virginia: the Anglican clergy and the wealthier seaboard merchants. Most Scots living in Virginia sided with the crown. Loyalism was found primarily in the Norfolk area, which the British raided but could not afford to occupy. Additional loyalists came from Williamsburg, Petersburg and Portsmouth. Among the loyalist units formed in Virginia was the Queen's Own Loyal Virginians, later incorporated into the Queen's Rangers.
 
   In the spring and summer of 1780 a general Tory revolt took place in western Virginia and spread to Redstone and Fort Pitt. Important lead mines in Montgomery County, Virginia, were disrupted. By September, Colonel Brodhead feared an attack upon Fort Pitt by a combined force of Tories from the western counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia and British regulars and Amerindian warriors allegedly advancing from Fort Detroit. No such force materialized, despite continual rumors, and by the spring of 1781 many of the Tories had fled to British protection at Detroit.
 
   The British authorities recruited John Connolly, a physician from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who lived near Pittsburgh. They charged Connolly with raising a mixed force of Tories and Amerindians to be called the Loyal Forresters. This unit was active as late as 1782 although Conolly was captured before he could lead any effective raids. Lord Dartmouth, upon the recommendation of Virginia's last royal Governor Dunmore, had commissioned Connolly as a lieutenant-colonel in the Queen's Royal Rangers on 5 November 1776. Dunmore immediately sent Connolly on a secret mission among the Amerindians on the western frontier, inciting them to rise against the settlers in violation of treaty provisions. Dunmore hoped that Connolly could incite a bloody war on the frontier, moving southeastward from Detroit to Pittsburgh toward Alexandria, where Dunmore would join with him. Connolly had implemented his orders by hatching a plot, Washington wrote, to join his militia, now being formed in Quebec, with Sir John Johnson's 3000 Amerindian warriors and Tory militiamen, and invade south along the Allegheny River. The object of Connolly's attention was to be Fort Pitt. Meanwhile, Connolly, Johnson and McKee had sent spies and agitators, which may have included Elliott and one of more of the Girtys, among the inhabitants of the western frontier of both Pennsylvania and Virginia to seek support, supplies and men. Brodhead and General William Irvine brought in artificers and engineers and volunteers from the patriot militia who strengthened Fort Pitt's defenses. The bitter winter, combined with reports reaching Connolly and McKee of the strength of refurbished fort, persuaded the Tories to wait. Connolly was captured in Maryland while trying to line up additional support among the Amerindians there. General George Washington wrote to Brodhead, informing him that a notorious Tory leader, John Connolly, whom Continental authorities exchanged on 25 October 1780, was now in western Canada, recruiting militia among the loyalist refugees. The attack never took place and by the early autumn of 1782 Sir Guy Carleton had issued orders forbidding any attacks on the frontier from originating in Canada. Peace talks had begun and Carleton had never been an enthusiastic supporter of the strategy of using the Amerindians to attack the patriots.
 
   Why Lord Cornwallis decided to abandon the most southerly colonies and march northward to Virginia is still the subject of much speculation. Howe still believed that occupation of South Carolina, Georgia and perhaps North Carolina would bring forth a torrent of loyalist support, and, more importantly, of sorely needed manpower. He thought this policy merited a fair trial. Retreat into Virginia made no political sense for it was the state least likely of all former colonies south of Massachusetts to support tory revolt. But Cornwallis probably made his decision for military, not political, reasons, wishing to use Virginia as a base for future military actions. He had also come to distrust the tories politically and as a potential source of military enlistments. He thought that British policy after defeat at Saratoga to reestablish political control through tory assistance was not feasible based on his own observations and experience in the south. For Cornwallis, reliance on loyalists to produce substantial armed forces ended at the Battle of King's Mountain. His march into Virginia merely emphasized his opinion.
 
   Lord Cornwallis continued to believe that Virginia should be the focus of British efforts to recapture the colonies. He had rejected any thought of an attack on Philadelphia, or of establishing a loyalist safe haven along the Chesapeake Bay. For uncertain reasons, Cornwallis thought more loyalists could be found in Virginia. As it was, fate took a hand and following his entrapment and subsequent surrender at Yorktown, he was never able to prove his theory about liberation of Virginia.
 
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