(04-20-2015, 02:55 PM)Natalie Mcbeef Wrote: You didn't read your own link. They were commissioned by the british army by american volunteers in british territory.They were raised as volunteers, yes they were commissioned by the British army to become a British army unit - how does this differ from Continental Militia? I really don't understand the distinction you're trying to make.
They were then sent to fight in Florida against the spanish. Yes there were loyalists, yes they joined the british cause, I'm not disputing that.
However as soon as America declared independence, England was a foreign power. They were troops volunteering with a foreign power. The declaration of independence, and the fact that all the colonies sighed it /Was/ the revolution. The war afterwards was great Britain invading this new country called America.
Yes Canada was loyalists fleeing, because they /fled/ they did not stage organize resistance against the revolution, and after England invaded they did join up in some numbers, but again, it's a foreign power.
The neat and tidy little distinction (with regards to a definitive line drawn where the Revolution began and ended, followed by a foreign invasion) you're trying to make is the stuff of the-winner-writes-the-history. I'd be curious to know what your opinion were on the American Civil War, given how you've set this one up.Â
Regardless, the point is that large numbers of Americans supported the British cause, and fought alongside them (however it is you're trying to categorize them). There was significant civil strife (because it was, in reality, a civil war - the final episode of the English Civil War, really). Communities and families were torn apart by competing loyalties, and atrocities were committed by both sides. Thousands died in open warfare, and as the war ended thousands more were uprooted from their homes to flee for safer climes forever reshaping the nature of North America.Â
It wasn't as bloody as the French Revolution (nothing in Western history to that point had been), but it was hardly peaceful!
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