Many forces worked against those who,like Franklin,had a vision of national destiny.There were differences in economic interestcommerce and industry in the North and the planting system of the South.There were contests over the apportionment of taxes and the quotas of troops for common defense.To these practical difficulties were added local pride,the vested rights of state and village politicians in their provincial dignity,and the scarcity of men with a large outlook upon the common enterprise.
Nevertheless,necessity compelled them to consider some sort of federation.The second Continental Congress had hardly opened its work before the most sagacious leaders began to urge the desirability of a permanent connection.As early as July,1775,Congress resolved to go into a committee of the whole on the state of the union,and Franklin,undaunted by the fate of his Albany plan of twenty years before,again presented a draft of a constitution.Long and desultory debates followed and it was not until late in 1777that Congress presented to the states the Articles of Confederation.Provincial jealousies delayed ratification,and it was the spring of 1781,a few months before the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown,when Maryland,the last of the states,approved the Articles.This plan of union,though it was all that could be wrung from the reluctant states,provided for neither a chief executive nor a system of federal courts.It created simply a Congress of delegates in which each state had an equal voice and gave it the right to call upon the state legislatures for the sinews of governmentmoney and soldiers.
The Application of Tests of Allegiance.As the successive steps were taken in the direction of independent government,the patriots devised and applied tests designed to discover who were for and who were against the new nation in the process of ******.When the first Continental Congress agreed not to allow the importation of British goods,it provided for the creation of local committees to enforce the rules.Such agencies were duly formed by the choice of menfavoring the scheme,all opponents being excluded from the elections.Before these bodies those who persisted in buying British goods were summoned and warned or punished according to circumstances.As soon as the new state constitutions were put into effect,local committees set to work in the same way to ferret out all who were not outspoken in their support of the new order of things.
These patriot agencies,bearing different names in different sections,were sometimes ruthless in their methods.They called upon all men to sign the test of loyalty,frequently known as the "association test."Those who refused were promptly branded as outlaws,while some of the more dangerous were thrown into jail.The prison camp in Connecticut at one time held the former governor of New Jersey and the mayor of New York.Thousands were blacklisted and subjected to espionage.The blacklist of Pennsylvania contained the names of nearly five hundred persons of prominence who were under suspicion.Loyalists or Tories who were bold enough to speak and write against the Revolution were suppressed and their pamphlets burned.In many places,particularly in the North,the property of the loyalists was confiscated and the proceeds applied to the cause of the Revolution.
The work of the official agencies for suppression of opposition was sometimes supplemented by mob violence.A few Tories were hanged without trial,and others were tarred and feathered.One was placed upon a cake of ice and held there "until his loyalty to King George might cool."Whole families were driven out of their homes to find their way as best they could within the British lines or into Canada,where the British government gave them lands.Such excesses were deplored by Washington,but they were defended on the ground that in effect a civil war,as well as a warfor independence,was being waged.
The Patriots and Tories.Thus,by one process or another,those who were to be citizens of the new republic were separated from those who preferred to be subjects of King George.Just what proportion of the Americans favored independence and what share remained loyal to the British monarchy there is no way of knowing.The question of revolution was not submitted to popular vote,and on the point of numbers we have conflicting evidence.On the patriot side,there is the testimony of a carefuland informed observer,John Adams,who asMobbing the Toriesserted that twothirds of the people were for the American cause and not more than onethird opposed the Revolution at all stages.
On behalf of the loyalists,or Tories as they were popularly known,extravagant claims were made.Joseph Galloway,who had been a member of the first Continental Congress and had fled to England when he saw its temper,testified before a committee of Parliament in 1779that not onefifth of the American people supported the insurrection and that "many more than fourfifths of the people prefer a union with Great Britain upon constitutional principles to independence."At the same time General Robertson,who had lived in America twentyfour years,declared that "more than twothirds of the people would prefer the king's government to the Congress'tyranny."In an address to the king in that year a committee of American loyalists asserted that "the number of Americans in his Majesty's army exceeded the number of troops enlisted by Congress to oppose them."