istricts. But even these
Committees were not always very judicious or discriminating in the
exercise of despotic powers implied in that delicate trust.

"By the recent political changes, Tories and suspected persons became
exposed to dangers from the law as well as from mobs. Having boldly
seized the reins of government, the new State authorities claimed the
allegiance of all residents within their limits, and under the lead and
recommendation of Congress, those who refused to acknowledge their
authority, or who adhered to their enemies, were exposed to severe
penalties, confiscation of property, imprisonment, banishment, and
finally death."[105]

It does not appear that these lawless outrages upon "Tories" were ever
checked or discountenanced, or their authors ever even reproved by the
so-called authorities, but were actively or tacitly encouraged; so that
before and during the very first months of Independence, the Loyalists
were subject to the penalties of the mobs on one side and to the more
cruel penalties of new-made law by a newly self-created authority on the
other side. Perhaps no one did as much to promote this cruel policy
against the Loyalists as Mr. John Adams, who was the ruling spirit in
all the proceedings of Boston for years, the advocate of the Declaration
of Independence, and the chief member of the Secret Committee of
Congress for years, and was at length appointed Ambassador from the
American Congress to Holland, whence he wrote a letter to Thomas
Cushing, then Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, but which was
intercepted on board of the prize brigantine _Cabot_, and carried to St.
Christopher's, in the West Indies. This letter was published in the
Annual Register for 1781, pp. 259-261. It is dated "Amsterdam, December
15th, 1780," more than four years after the Declaration of Independence,
and fully indicates the source of all those cruel acts against the
Loyalists at the commencement and during the early years of the American
civil war. Mr. Adams says:

"It is true, I believe, what you suggest, that Lord North showed a
disposition to give up the contest, but was diverted from it not
unlikely by the representation of the Americans in London, who, in
connection with their coadjutors in America, have been thorns to us
indeed on both sides of the water; but I think their career might have
been stopt on your side if the executive officers had not been too timid
in a point which I so strenuously re