The American Revolution and the Fate of the Loyalists (Online)

The American Revolution and the Fate of the Loyalists

When Benedict Arnold realized his plan to defect to the British had been exposed, the first thing he did was tell Peggy Shippen, his loyalist-leaning wife who had helped him plan his treachery.

After the war, Parliament announced plans to resettle refugees like the Arnolds in Canada in order to strengthen Britain’s power in its remaining possessions. Sixty thousand loyalists seized this opportunity—Shippen and Arnold among them. Yet the new lives that awaited the Arnolds there proved to be hard-scrabble, scarring, and wretched, a microcosm of the hardships faced by American loyalists during and after the Revolution. 

Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland and author of the book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award and the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Center for History and Culture and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Image credit: Margaret Shippen Arnold, circa 1778, a watercolor copy of an original pencil sketch by John André (1751–1780).

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