the Tories were greeted with a storm of popular indignation. Since the
beginning of the war these unfortunate persons had been treated with
severity both by the legislatures and by the people. Many had been
banished; others had fled the country, and against these refugees
various harsh laws had been enacted. Their estates had been confiscated,
and their return prohibited under penalty of imprisonment or death. Many
others, who had remained in the country, were objects of suspicion and
dislike in states where they had not, as in New York and the Carolinas,
openly aided the enemy or taken part in Indian atrocities. Now, on the
conclusion of peace, in utter disregard of Congress, fresh measures of
vengeance were taken against these "fawning spaniels," as they were
called, these "tools and minions of Britain." An article in the
"Massachusetts Chronicle" expressed the common feeling: "As Hannibal
swore never to be at peace with the Romans, so let every Whig swear, by
his abhorrence of slavery, by liberty and religion, by the shades of
departed friends who have fallen in battle, by the ghosts of those of
our brethren who have been destroyed on board of prison-ships and in
loathsome dungeons, never to be at peace with those fiends the refugees,
whose thefts, murders, and treasons have filled the cup of woe." Tons of
pamphlets, issued under the customary Latin pseudonyms, were filled with
this truculent bombast; and like sentiments were thundered from the
pulpit by men who had quite forgotten for the moment their duty of
preaching reconciliation and forgiveness of injuries. Why should not
these wretches, it was sarcastically asked, be driven at once from the
country? Of course they could not desire to live under a free government
which they had been at such pains to destroy. Let them go forthwith to
his majesty's dominions, and live under the government they preferred.
It would never do to let them stay here, to plot treason at their
leisure; in a few years they would get control of all the states, and
either hand them over to Great Britain again, or set up a Tory despotism
on American soil. Such was the rubbish that passed current as argument
with the majority of the people. A small party of moderate Whigs saw its
absurdity, and urged that the Tories had much better remain at home,
where they had lost all political influence, than go and found
unfriendly colonies to the northward. The moderate Whigs were in favour
of heeding the