Loyalist Despairs at British Defeat
On this day in 1781, Loyalist lawyer Ward Chipman of Boston wrote despairingly to his friend Jonathan Sewall who had gone into exile in London. Chipman confessed, "the mortification of seeing our Enemies . . . triumphant in such a cause is too much for my Spirits." Chipman, Sewall, and many others in Massachusetts did not support the war for independence. Some abandoned estates and fortunes and "quit America" when war broke out, seeking to escape, as Sewall said, "bombs, great guns, . . . battles, sieges, murder, plague, . . . famine, rebellion, and the Devil." They expected to return when the British troops had suppressed the rebellion. The Sewalls spent 12 years in England before moving to Canada in 1787.
Related Moments
Battle Begins on Lexington Common
Battle Begins on Lexington Common
On this day in 1775, the first shots were fired in the cause of American independence. In Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous poem, "the shot heard 'round the world" came from the musket of a Concord...
Boston Celebrates First Evacuation Day
Boston Celebrates First Evacuation Day
On this day in 1901, the City of Boston officially celebrated Evacuation Day for the first time. In early March of 1776, Continental troops managed to move heavy cannon to the top of Dorchester Heights....
John Adams Dies
John Adams Dies
On this day in 1826, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence was adopted in Philadelphia, John Adams died at home in Braintree. One of the great men of the Revolutionary generation and the second...
