The lessons of history are sometimes learned as much from what did
not happen as from what did. Thus a historian on a slow day might ask
himself what would have happened if Nelson Mandela, on taking office,
had denounced his opponents and then taken draconian measures against
them. What if Mandela had gone on to seize their lands, remove their
rights of citizenship, ban them from certain occupations, and levy
fines and heavy taxes upon them? What if, following such actions, a
million whites, including most of those prominent in government,
business, and the bureaucracy, had fled South Africa?
A country so reborn would now be on a life support system. It would
surely not appear on any list of emerging markets. The compilers of
country risk indices would find such a country an easy call. And yet
the circumstances described here--with a few small changes to conceal
the analogy--conform almost precisely to what happened in the early
years of the United States. The opponents of the new government in
the United States were the Loyalists, those who took their oath of
loyalty to the Crown seriously. They were dealt with in exactly the
way described, though some of this was done during a war in which the
Loyalists were in active support of the King. When the war was over,
there was little inclination on the part of the new government to
return the confiscated lands, and some of those who attempted to
recover their property were killed in the attempt. As moderate a man
as George Washington declared of Loyalists that "there never existed
a more miserable set of Beings than those wretched creatures", and
Benjamin Franklin dismissed them as "mongrels."
The situation caused the dean of Gloucester Cathedral, who regarded
himself as well disposed toward the United States, to say that
