’The rage of tory-hunting’: Loyalist Prisoners, Civil War, and the Violence of American Independence

At the outset of the American Revolution (April 1775), the revolutionaries were unprepared for the challenges of civil war. How would they treat those Americans who remained loyal to Britain? Initially, the Revolutionary leadership strove to conduct the war according to European customs that stressed the humane treatment of enemy prisoners. But in the months following the Declaration of Independence (July 1776), they began to re-imagine loyalists as rebels and traitors. This re-conceptualization had dire consequences for loyalist prisoners in their hands. No longer shielded by the humane conventions of Enlightenment warfare, loyalists were subject to violence scarcely imaginable when the conflict began.