Joyce Lee Malcolm Describes the American Revolution as 'The Times That Try Men's Souls'

In The Times That Try Men’s Souls: The Adams, the Quincys, and the Battle for Loyalty in the American Revolution, historian and Constitutional scholar, Joyce Lee Malcolm, delves intimately into our nation’s history and spotlights the lives of prominent families during the time of the American Revolution. In her research, she found that the Revolutionary War was more like a civil war, often dividing families and loved ones who disagreed over America’s independence from Great Britain. While some colonists remained Loyalists and stayed true to Britain, others became Patriots, rejecting British rule and supporting the Revolution. Malcolm explained, “I tried to get as close to what it would have been like living through it as possible. John Adams said, ‘Posterity! You will never know what it costs the present generation to preserve your liberty!’ and part of what it cost was the divisions of families. The splits that were not healed between fathers and children, husbands and wives, and sisters and brothers, and that was the kind of sadness and poignancy that, I think, gets overlooked… I tried to take a close look at the Quincys, the Adams’, some of the other people in the area, whose information I got. A lot of the founders had divided families and also the people who defended, or at least, sided with Britain, went into exile. So, these were Loyalists, but they never raised their arms against the Americans, they just left for their own safety and were called absentees, thinking they would be able to come back quickly.”

As Malcolm expressed in her book, the American Revolution was much more crippling to our country than the Civil War. Many of the Loyalists who fled the country and thought they could come back after the war found that they were banished and were punished, even executed, if they tried to return. She said, “This one, in some ways, it’s harder because the American Civil War was mostly divided along geographical lines, but here, you have within families. You know, members of the Continental Congress who had families who were exiled and were still wanting to execute Loyalists at home. It was much more mixed and very hard to be neutral because you had to take an oath to support the opposition to Britain… it was difficult whatever you did, whether you left, whether you stayed, or whether you tried not to take any side whatsoever, but it really was a civil war and I think they saw it that way.”