ans of removing; and their animosity to the
Americans led them often to the wanton destruction of what they could
neither use nor carry off. By their means, thousands had been involved
in distress."[117]

It was therefore in South Carolina, more than any other State, that
animosity might be expected to be intense and prolonged against the
Loyalists; but among these men of the South, with their love of freedom,
and dash and energy in war, there was a potent element of chivalry and
British generosity which favourably contrasts with the Massachusetts
school of persecuting bigotry and of hatred, from generation to
generation, to England and English institutions. Accordingly we learn
from Moultrie's Memoirs, Vol. II., p. 326, that "after the peace, a
Joint Committee from the Senate and House of Representatives in South
Carolina, chosen to hear the petitions of Loyalists who had incurred the
penalties of the confiscation, banishment, and amercement laws, made a
report to the separate Houses in favour of the great majority of the
petitioners; and a great part of those names which were upon the
confiscation, banishment and amercement lists were struck off."

"The petitions of others were afterwards presented from year to year,
and ultimately almost the whole of them had their estates restored to
them, and they were received as citizens."[118]

As to the proceedings of the other States, after the close of the war,
in regard to the United Empire Loyalists, the following summary, from
the _Historical Introduction_ to Colonel Sabine's _Biography of the
American Loyalists_, will be sufficient:

"At the peace, justice and good policy both required a general amnesty,
and the revocation of the acts of disability and banishment, so that
only those who had been guilty of flagrant crimes should be excluded
from becoming citizens. Instead of this, however, the State Legislatures
generally continued in a course of hostile action, and treated the
conscientious and pure, and the unprincipled and corrupt, with the same
indiscrimination as they had done during the struggle. In some parts of
the country there really appears to have been a determination to place
these misguided but then humbled men beyond the pale of human sympathy.
In one legislative body, a petition from the banished, praying to be
allowed to return to their homes, was rejected without a division; and a
law was passed which denied to such as had remained within the State,
a