Source: https://ameri.download/blog/en-us/what-happened-to-the-loyalists-after-the-american-revolution [Back to Blog](https://ameri.download/blog/en-us) General # What Happened to Loyalists After the American Revolution? November 10, 2026 5 min read --- ![A crowded wooden dock in 1783 where families with trunks and bundles wait beside a tall sailing ship, with a black cat sitting on a barrel.](https://ameri.download/blog-images/loyalists-leaving-1783.webp) Most Loyalists stayed in the United States and became citizens, but tens of thousands did not. Somewhere between about 60,000 and 100,000 people left, depending on who counts, and most of them went to what is now Canada. Others went to Britain, Florida and the Caribbean. Those who left often lost their land, and the British government paid back only part of what they had lost. ## Who were the Loyalists? Loyalists were colonists who stayed loyal to the British Crown during the war. Patriots often called them Tories. They were not one group. Some were royal officials and merchants tied to Britain, some were farmers who disliked the rebel committees, and some were enslaved people who joined the British side because of the promise of freedom. The disagreement over Parliament's authority that began with [the Stamp Act protests](https://ameri.download/blog/en-us/why-did-colonists-object-to-the-stamp-act) split neighbors and families, and the war made that split permanent. ## What did the Treaty of Paris promise them? The Treaty of Paris was signed on 3 September 1783. The word "Loyalists" does not appear in it. Instead, Article 5 says Congress would urge the states to restore confiscated property to British subjects and to people who lived in British-held areas and had not fought against the United States. Those owed property could travel to any state for twelve months to pursue their claims. Article 6 says there should be "no future Confiscations" for actions taken during the war, and that people jailed for them should be released. The key word in Article 5 is "urge." Congress had no power to order the states to give anything back, and the states had their own laws. Massachusetts had banished 46 Boston merchants in 1778, and South Carolina named 232 Loyalists as liable to lose their property, though most of them appealed and were forgiven, and others paid a fine of 10 percent of the value of their property. Many Loyalists saw the promises as weak and chose to leave rather than test them. ## How many Loyalists left, and where did they go? Nobody knows the exact number, and the sources disagree. Records were incomplete, and small numbers kept leaving after 1783. Some of the estimates reported in the encyclopedia articles and histories I read: - About one hundred thousand Loyalists, along with many formerly enslaved people, according to a Digital History textbook. - About 80,000 who permanently left the United States, an estimate by the historian Wallace Brown. - About 60,000 who went to British North America, including about 50,000 white people, according to the historian Maya Jasanoff. - Only about 20,000 adult white Loyalists who went to Canada, according to Philip Ranlet. These numbers are not as far apart as they look, because they count different things: all exiles or only those who went to Canada, adults or whole families, free people or enslaved people. Jasanoff's breakdown gives a sense of the map: about 36,000 to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, about 6,600 to Quebec, about 2,000 to Prince Edward Island, about 13,000 to Britain (including 5,000 free Black people), about 6,000 white Loyalists to Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, and about 5,090 white Loyalists to Florida, who brought around 8,285 enslaved people with them. ## What happened to the Black Loyalists? Enslaved people who reached British lines were promised freedom, and the British commander recorded those who left with the army in the Book of Negroes. Around 4,000 went to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and over 2,500 settled in Birchtown, Nova Scotia. Life there was hard. About 1,200 of them left Nova Scotia for Sierra Leone in 1791, and some hundreds went to London. You can read more in [why enslaved African Americans fought for the British](https://ameri.download/blog/en-us/why-did-enslaved-african-americans-fight-for-the-british). ## What did Britain pay the Loyalists? The British government set up commissions to hear claims for losses. Reported totals vary by source, but one account says Loyalists who left received over 3 million pounds, about 37 percent of their losses. Another reports that of nearly 5 million pounds in claims examined in Britain, only 1,420,000 pounds was judged good. The two figures measure different things, so they do not contradict each other, but both show that most Loyalists were not made whole. Many also received land in Canada, which helped to create the English-speaking settlements of the Maritimes and Ontario. The settlers there came to be called United Empire Loyalists. ## Did any Loyalists return? Some did. A few hundred Loyalists who went to Florida returned to Georgia in 1783 and 1784. Perhaps 10 percent of the refugees to New Brunswick came back to the United States, and the number for Nova Scotia is unknown. Most states repealed their harshest laws against Loyalists by 1787, though being called a Tory stayed an insult for another generation. The question of lost property was still alive in 1794, when it was part of the Jay Treaty negotiations, and under a convention of 1802 the United States paid 600,000 pounds. Later, in the 1790s, more than 20,000 and perhaps as many as 30,000 "Late Loyalists" moved to Ontario because of cheap land and low taxes, so not everyone who crossed the border was a political refugee. ## Why does it matter? The Revolution was also a civil war, and the losers had to find a place to live. Their departure shaped Canada, drained the new states of many educated and wealthy people, and left a question the framers faced when they met at [the Constitutional Convention](https://ameri.download/blog/en-us/when-did-the-constitutional-convention-start): how a new government could hold together people who had been on opposite sides. ## Sources - [Treaty of Paris, National Archives](https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/treaty-of-paris) - [Loyalist (American Revolution), Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalist_(American_Revolution)) - [Digital History, University of Houston](https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=173)