e Lorenzo Sabine, 'in the course of my investigations,
with the absence of fixed principles, not only among
people in the common walks of life, but in many of the
prominent personages of the day.' Alexander Hamilton,
for instance, deserted from the Tories to the Whigs;
Benedict Arnold deserted from the Whigs to the Tories.

The Loyalists themselves always maintained that they
constituted an actual majority in the Thirteen Colonies.
In 1779 they professed to have more troops in the field
than the Continental Congress. These statements were no
doubt exaggerations. The fact is that the strength of
the Loyalists was very unevenly distributed. In the colony
of New York they may well have been in the majority. They
were strong also in Pennsylvania, so strong that an
officer of the revolutionary army described that colony
as 'the enemies' country.' 'New York and Pennsylvania,'
wrote John Adams years afterwards, 'were so nearly
divided--if their propensity was not against us--that if
New England on one side and Virginia on the other had
not kept them in awe, they would have joined the British.'
In Georgia the Loyalists were in so large a majority that
in 1781 that colony would probably have detached itself
from the revolutionary movement had it not been for the
surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. On the other hand,
in the New England colonies the Loyalists were a small
minority, strongest perhaps in Connecticut, and yet even
there predominant only in one or two towns.

There were in the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the
Revolution in the neighbourhood of three million people.
Of these it is probable that at least one million were
Loyalists. This estimate is supported by the opinion of
John Adams, who was well qualified to form a judgment,
and whose Whig sympathies were not likely to incline him
to exaggerate. He gave it as his opinion more than once
that about one-third of the people of the Thirteen Colonies
had been opposed to the measures of the Revolution in
all its stages. This estimate he once mentioned in a
letter to Thomas McKean, chief justice of Pennsylvania,
who had signed the Declaration of Independence, and had
been a member of every Continental Congress from that of
1765 to the close of the Revolution; and McKean replied,
'You say that ... about a third of the people of the
colonies were against the Revolution. It required much
reflection before I could fix my opinion on this subject;
but on mature del