uishing appeals of Loyalist widows, orphans,
and other ruined refugees. No sooner had the dire news
arrived that peace had been made with the Congress, and
that each of the thirteen United States was free to show
uncovenanted mercies towards its own Loyalists, than the
exodus began. Five thousand five hundred and ninety-three
Loyalists sailed for Halifax in the first convoy on the
17th of April with a strong recommendation from Carleton
to Governor Parr of Nova Scotia. 'Many of these are of
the first families and born to the fairest possessions.
I therefore beg that you will have them properly
considered.' Shipping was scarce; for the hostility of
the whole foreign naval world had made enormous demands
on the British navy and mercantile marine. So six thousand
Loyalists had to march overland to join Carleton's vessels
at New York, some of them from as far south as
Charlottesville, Virginia. They were carefully shepherded
by Colonel Alured Clarke, of whom we shall hear again.

Meanwhile Carleton and Washington had exchanged the usual
compliments on the conclusion of peace and had met each
other on the 6th of May at Tappan, where they discussed
the exchange of prisoners. By the terms of the treaty
the British were to evacuate New York, their last foothold
in the new republic, with all practicable dispatch; so,
as summer changed into autumn, the Congress became more
and more impatient to see the last of them. But Carleton
would not go without the Loyalists, whose many tributary
streams of misery were still flowing into New York. In
September, when the treaty of peace was ratified in
Europe, the Congress asked Carleton point-blank to name
the date of his own departure. But he replied that this
was impossible and that the more the Loyalists were
persecuted the longer he would be obliged to stay. The
correspondence between him and the Congress teems with
complaints and explanations. The Americans were very
anxious lest the Loyalists should take away any goods
and chattels not their own, particularly slaves. Carleton
was disposed to consider slaves as human beings, though
slavery was still the law in the British oversea dominions,
and so the Americans felt uneasy lest he might discriminate
between their slaves and other chattels. Reams of the
Carleton papers are covered with descriptive lists of
claimed and counter-claimed niggers--Julius Caesars,
Jupiters, Venuses, Dianas, and so on, who were either
'stout wenches' an