Two weeks before General Cornwallis surrendered his army at
Yorktown, a Loyalist yeoman farmer who had fought alongside the
British for six years was hanged as a spy at Schuylerville, New
York before a crowd of his former friends and neighbors. Like the
vast majority of the estimated 500,000 Loyalists who gambled on a
British victory, Thomas Loveless and his family were ordinary
people swept up by social and political forces beyond their
control. Tory Spy analyzes this "Loyalist Dilemma," making use of
British and American documents of the period and providing useful
illustrations, maps, appendices, footnotes, and an index. A few
years ago, the movie "The Patriot" starring Mel Gibson graphically
portrayed Rebel-Tory warfare in the Carolinas during 1779-1780. The
Rebel family in "The Patriot" was a fictional composite, but the
trials of the "Loyalist" Thomas Loveless family of Albany County,
New York were real. Located astride the principal invasion corridor
between Canada and the U.S., and a hotbed of Rebel-Tory conflict,
Albany County became a battleground between a cadre of refugee
"Tory Spies" based in Canada and their Rebel former neighbors. Tory
Spy offers a rare snapshot of the Revolutionary War as a
multi-level conflict, in which brother fought brother, neighbor
betrayed neighbor, and vague charges of espionage meant a quick
route to the gallows. It is a largely untold story which offers new
insights into the price paid by many of the Loyalists who were the
hidden losers of America's first "civil war." This is a story for
our times-it is about people responding to the pressures of
revolutionary change. Their world was coming apart, and the outcome
was unpredictable. Tory Spy forces the reader to ask: What would my
family and I do if our neighborhood became a war zone torn apart by
bloody battles and increasingly lethal intelligence warfare, and we
were viewed as potential spies or combatants? Contemporary
Americans may be surprised by what Tory Spy tells them about the
violent social conflict that gave birth to their country. Yet the
book's interwoven stories-a Loyalist farm family's struggle to
survive amidst the partisan violence in Albany County, the father's
British military service and later exploits as an officer in the
"Tory Secret Service," and the bizarre circumstances surrounding
his capture, trial, and execution-were among the harsh realities of
America's Revolution. More than 230 years after the signing of the
Declaration of Independence, these exciting stories remain part of
America's revolutionary heritage, and they deserve to be told.
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