Even clergymen were not free from the attentions of the mob.  The Rev. Jonathan Boucher tells us that he was compelled to preach with loaded pistols placed on the pulpit cushions beside him.  On one occasion he was prevented from entering the pulpit by two hundred armed men, whose leader warned him not to attempt to preach.  ‘I returned for answer,’ says Boucher, ’that there was but one way by which they could keep me out of it, and that was by taking away my life.  At the proper time, with my sermon in one hand and a loaded pistol in the other, like Nehemiah I prepared to ascend my pulpit, when one of my friends, Mr David Crauford, having got behind me, threw his arms round me and held me fast.  He assured me that he had heard the most positive orders given to twenty men picked out for the purpose, to fire on me the moment I got into the pulpit.’

That the practices of the mob were not frowned upon by the revolutionary leaders, there is good reason for believing.  The provincial Congress of New York, in December 1776, went so far as to order the committee of public safety to secure all the pitch and tar ’necessary for the public use and public safety.’  Even Washington seems to have approved of persecution of the Tories by the mob.  In 1776 General Putnam, meeting a procession of the Sons of Liberty who were parading a number of Tories on rails up and down the street’s of New York, attempted to put a stop to the barbarous proceeding.  Washington, on hearing of this, administered a reprimand to Putnam, declaring ’that to discourage such proceedings was to injure the cause of liberty in which they were engaged, and that nobody would attempt it but an enemy to his country.’

Very early in the Revolution the Whigs began to organize.  They first formed themselves into local associations, similar to the Puritan associations in the Great Rebellion in England, and announced that they would ’hold all those persons inimical to the liberties of the colonies who shall refuse to subscribe this association.’  In connection with these associations there sprang up local committees.

   From garrets, cellars, rushing through the street,
   The new-born statesmen in committee meet,

sang a Loyalist verse-writer.  Very soon there was completed an organization, stretching from the Continental Congress and the provincial congresses at one end down to the pettiest parish committees on the other, which was destined to prove a most effective engine for stamping out loyalism, and which was to contribute in no small degree to the success of the Revolution.