In their efforts to prevent the Loyalists from effectively aiding the British, the American revolutionaries often used violence. There was no American Revolutionary Terror, but there was considerable terrorism. Loyalists were tarred and feathered, ridden on rails (a more painful experience than the phrase itself suggests), branded, imprisoned, and forced into exile, and occasionally shot or hanged.
The following four instances of terrorism against Loyalists are taken from: Douglas Adair and John A. Schutz, eds.: Peter Oliver’s Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View (1963), 155–7; Lorenzo Sabine: Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (1864), I, 597; Frank W. C. Hersey: “Tar and Feathers, The Adventures of Captain John Malcolm,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXXIV (April 1941), 450–1; Edward A. Jones: Loyalists of Massachusetts (1930), 243. See also Wallace Brown: The Good Americans: The Loyalists in the American Revolution (1969).
The Attorney General, Mr. Sewall, living at Cambridge, was obliged to repair to Boston under the protection of the King’s troops. His house at Cambridge was attacked by a mob, his windows broke, & other damage done; but by the intrepidity of some young gentlemen of the family, the mob were dispersed.
In November 1774, David Dunbar of Hallifax aforesaid, being an Ensign in the Militia, a mob headed by some of the Select Men of the Town, demand[ed] his colours of him. He refused, saying, that if his commanding officer demanded them he should obey, otherwise he would not part with them:—upon which they broke into his house by force & dragged him out. They had prepared a sharp rail to set him upon; & in resisting them they seized him (by his private parts) & fixed him upon the rail, & was held on it by his legs & arms, & tossed up with violence & greatly bruised so that he did not recover for some time. They beat him, & after abusing him about two hours he was obliged, in order to save his life, to give up his colours.
A parish clerk of an Episcopal Church at East Haddum in Connecticut, a man of 70 years of age, was taken out of his bed in a cold night, & beat against his hearth by men who held him by his arms & legs. He was then laid across his horse, without his cloaths, & drove to a considerable distance in that naked condition. His nephew Dr. Abner Beebe, a physician, complained of the bad usage of his uncle, & spoke very freely in favor of government; for which he was assaulted by a mob, stripped naked, & hot pitch was poured upon him, which blistered his skin. He was then carried to an hog sty & rubbed over with hog’s dung. They threw the hog’s dung in his face, & rammed some of it down his throat; & in that condition exposed to a company of women. His house was attacked, his windows broke, when one of his children was sick, & a child of his went into distraction upon this treatment. His gristmill was broke, & persons prevented from grinding at it, & from having any connections with him.
Kearsley, John. Of Philadelphia. Physician. A man of ardent feelings; his zealous attachment to the Royal cause, and his impetuous temper, made him obnoxious to those whose acts he opposed. He was seized at his own house, in the summer or autumn of 1775, and carted through the streets to the tune of the “Rogue’s March.” In the affray, he was wounded in the hand by a bayonet. When mounted, the mob gave a loud huzza; and the Doctor, to show his contempt of “the people,” took his wig in his injured hand, and swinging it around his head, huzzaed louder and longer than his persecutors. The ride over, it was determined to tar and feather him; but this was abandoned, to the disappointment of many. The doors and windows of his house were, however, broken by stones and brickbats. The same year he was put in prison, for writing letters abusive of the Whigs; and, while there, Stephen Bayard was allowed to attend to the settlement of his affairs. His sufferings caused insanity, which continued until his decease. He died in prison about fifteen months after his ride in the “Tory cart.” He was attainted of treason, and his estate confiscated. His uncle, of the same Christian name, and a physician of Philadelphia, died there in 1772.
The account written on January 31 by Miss Ann Hulton, sister of Henry Hulton, Commissioner of Customs at Boston, in a letter sent home to England, adds further particulars:
But the most shocking cruelty was exercised a few nights ago, upon a poor old man a tidesman one Malcolm he is reckond creasy, a quarrel was pickd with him, he was afterward taken, & tard, & featherd. Theres no law that knows a punishment for the greatest crimes beyond what this is, of cruel torture. And this instance exceeds any other before it, he was stript stark naked, one of the severest cold nights this winter, his body coverd all over with tar, then with feathers, his arm dislocated in tearing off his cloaths, he dragged in a cart with thousands attending, some beating him with clubs & knocking him out of the cart, then in again. They gave him several severe whipings, at different parts of the town. This spectacle of horror & sportive cruelty was exhibited for about five hours.
The unhappy wretch they say behavd with the greatest intrepidity, & fortitude all the while, before he was taken, defended himself a long time against numbers, & afterwards when under torture they demanded of him to curse his masters the K: Gov., &c which they coud not make him do, but he still cried, “Curse all traitors.” They brought him to the gallows & put a rope about his neck saying they woud hang him—he said he wished they woud, but that they coud not for God was above the Devil. The doctors say that it is impossible this poor creature can live. They say his flesh comes off his back in steaks.
Owen Richards emigrated from Wales to Boston about 1750. He was in his Majesty’s service by sea and land for nearly 30 years, mostly as a tidesman in the Customs at Boston. By his seizure of a cargo of sugar, etc., illegally imported in 1770, the disaffected inhabitants of Boston were so incensed that on the same night a tumultous mob of nearly 2,000 assembled outside his house and destroyed his furniture. He was dragged by the heels along the streets to the Custom House, and, after tearing off all his clothes, he was rolled in the channel and put in a cart, tarred and feathered, the feathers set on fire and a rope put around his neck. In this condition he was exposed round the town.