26% of America’s colonial population favored independence from Britain and King George. How come the 74% of loyalists didn’t lock up the 26% of independence seeking patriots on their 4th of July insurrection?
Um, ‘cause they had guns, and the loyalists mostly didn’t want to fight; they just wanted to sit around being loyal?
Go with the flow, go along to get along people probably were the largest minority in that 3 way division.
“26% of America’s colonial population favored independence from Britain and King George. How come the 74% of loyalists...”
You’ve made the mistake of assuming everyone who wasn’t for independence was a loyalist. That’s a bad assumption to make.
The better assumption is that, just like today, there were probably 25-30% die hards on each side, and then the rest of the people in the middle were a bunch of cowards who didn’t want to pick a side until they could guess which side was going to win. Then they would pretend “I’ve always been for independence” afterwards.