federal level. Commentators speculated that some Alliance members would take offence to the term. Nevertheless, it was officially adopted by the merged party during the 2004 leadership convention. Stephen Harper, former leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and Prime Minister from 2006 to 2015, regularly refers to himself as a Tory and says the new party is a natural evolution of the conservative political movement. However, there were some dissident Red Tories who were against the merger. They formed the rival Progressive Canadian Party. United States The term "Loyalist" was used in the American Revolution for those who remained loyal to the British Crown. About 80% of the Loyalists remained in the United States after the war. The 60,000 or so Loyalists who settled in Nova Scotia, Quebec, the Bahamas, or returned to Great Britain after the American War of Independence are known as United Empire Loyalists. On February 12, 1798, Thomas Jefferson (of the Democratic-Republican Party) described the conservative Federalist Party as "[a] political Sect [...] believing that the executive is the branch of our government which the most needs support, [who] are called federalists, sometimes aristocrats or monocrats, and sometimes Tories, after the corresponding sect in the English Government of exactly the same definition".<ref>letter to John Wise in Francis N. Thorpe, ed "A Letter from Jefferson on the Political Parties, 1798," American Historical Review v.3#3 (April 1898) pp 488–89</ref> However, that was clearly a hostile description by the Federalists' foes of whom Jefferson was one and not a name used by the Federalists themselves. The Federalist Party was dissolved in 1835 with no successor parties. Later the Democratic-Republican Party splintered in different parties, with the two dissidences being the National Republican Party and the Whig Party. The rest of the party would become the Democratic Party. The Republican National Party would then merge with the Whig Party, giving rise to what would be called the Second Party System. Before the American Civil War two major parties dominated the political landscape: the Democratic Party and the Whig Party. A British traveler in the US at the time, due to the names of the parties being partially similar to of the parties of his homeland, could considered the Democrats at this time period to be the "American Tories", as the party that opposed them was called the "Whig Party" in addition to the fact that the Democratic Party of