ost constantly on the brink of failure?

The main hope of success on the English side lay in the idea that the
spirit and acts of resistance to the authority of the mother-country
were in reality only on the part of a turbulent minority; that the bulk
of the people desired to be loyal. It is certain indeed that the
struggle was, in America itself, much more of a civil war than the
Americans are now generally disposed to admit. In December, 1780, there
were eight thousand nine hundred fifty-four provincials among the
British forces in America, and on March 7, 1781, a letter from Lord
George Germain to Sir H. Clinton, intercepted by the Americans, says,
"The American levies in the King's service are more in number than the
whole of the enlisted troops in the service of Congress."

As late as September 1, 1781, there were seven thousand two hundred
forty-one. We hear of "loyal associates" in Massachusetts, Maryland, and
Pennsylvania, of "associated loyalists" in New York, of a fort built and
maintained by "associated refugees," and everywhere of "Tories," whose
arrest Washington is found suggesting to Governor Trumbull, of
Connecticut, as early as November 12, 1775. New England may indeed be
considered to have been cleared of active opposition to the American
cause when more than one thousand refugees left Boston in March, 1776,
with the British troops. But New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania
remained long full of Tories. By June 28, 1776, the disaffected on Long
Island had taken up arms, and after the evacuation of New York by
Washington a brigade of loyalists was raised on the island, and
companies were formed in two neighboring counties to join the King's
troops.

During Washington's retreat through New Jersey "the inhabitants, either
from fear or disaffection, almost to a man refused to turn out." In
Pennsylvania the militia, instead of giving any assistance in repelling
the British, exulted at their approach, and over the misfortunes of
their countrymen. On the 20th of that month the British were "daily
gathering strength from the disaffected." In 1777 the Tories who joined
Burgoyne in his invasion from the north are said to have doubled his
force. In 1778 Tories joined the Indians in the devastation of Wyoming
and Cherry Valley; and although the indiscriminate ravages of the
British, or of the Germans in their pay, seem to have roused the three
States above mentioned to self-defence, yet, as late as May, 1780,