less well-to-do but from many of the professional class, especially lawyers, most of the great planters of the south, and a number of merchants.
While the course of events after the passage of the Coercive Acts left the loyalists appalled and frightened, the King might well have effected an alliance with them and, by timely concessions, so strengthened their position that the patriots would have found it difficult to proceed with hostilities. But George III had no intention of making concessions. In September 1774, scorning a petition by Philadelphia Quakers, he wrote, “The die is now cast, the Colonies must either submit or triumph.” This cut the ground from under the loyalists or “Tories,” as they were coming to be called.
GeneralThomas Gage, an amiable English gentleman with an American-born wife, was in command of the garrison at Boston, where political