The Wrong Side of History: Loyalists in the American Revolution

The Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates Interview Series

The Not Old Better Show, 2018

Image licensed from Adobe Stock, 2018

The loyalists were the losers of the American Revolution. Americans who rejected independence and who fought to keep the colonies safely within the bosom of the British Empire forfeited almost everything when the patriots declared victory at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. History quickly lost sight of them, and from our contemporary perspective it’s hard to understand why so many ordinary Americans were bitterly opposed to the break with Britain and the birth of a new democratic nation.

Prof. Richard Bell, image courtesy of Richard Bell

Historian Richard Bell, left, my guest today on The Not Old Better Show, examines the American Revolution from the point of…