Even among the Whigs there was a good deal of opposition
to the test laws. Peter Van Schaak, a moderate Whig of
New York state, so strongly disapproved of the test laws
that he seceded from the revolutionary party. 'Had you,'
he wrote, 'at the beginning of the war, permitted every
one differing in sentiment from you, to take the other
side, or at least to have removed out of the State, with
their property ... it would have been a conduct magnanimous
and just. But, now, after restraining those persons from
removing; punishing them, if, in the attempt, they were
apprehended; selling their estates if they escaped;
compelling them to the duties of subjects under heavy
penalties; deriving aid from them in the prosecution of
the war ... now to compel them to take an oath is an act
of severity.'
Of course, the test laws were not rigidly or universally
enforced. In Pennsylvania only a small proportion of the
population took the oath. In New York, out of one thousand
Tories arrested for failure to take the oath, six hundred
were allowed to go on bail, and the rest were merely
acquitted or imprisoned. On the whole the American
revolutionists were not bloody-minded men; they inaugurated
no September Massacres, no Reign of Terror, no
_dragonnades_. There was a distinct aversion among them
to applying the death penalty.
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