under the ban of the law: the payment of their debts had
been denied them; and they had been forbidden to return
to their native land under penalty of death without
benefit of clergy. They had been imprisoned, fined,
subjected to special taxation; their families had been
maltreated, and were in many cases still in the hands of
their enemies. They would have been hardly human had they
waged a mimic warfare. In the second place, their
depredations were of great value from a military point
of view. Not only did they prevent thousands of militiamen
from joining the Continental army, but they seriously
threatened the sources of Washington's food supply. The
valleys which they ravaged were the granary of the
revolutionary forces. In 1780 Sir John Johnson destroyed
in the Schoharie valley alone no less than eighty thousand
bushels of grain; and this loss, as Washington wrote to
the president of Congress, 'threatened alarming
consequences.' That this work of destruction was agreeable
to the Loyalists cannot be doubted; but this fact does
not diminish its value as a military measure.

CHAPTER V

PEACE WITHOUT HONOUR

The war was brought to a virtual termination by the
surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.
The definitive articles of peace were signed at Versailles
on September 3, 1783. During the two years that intervened
between these events, the lot of the Loyalists was one
of gloomy uncertainty. They found it hard to believe that
the British government would abandon them to the mercy
of their enemies; and yet the temper of the revolutionists
toward them continued such that there seemed little hope
of concession or conciliation. Success had not taught
the rebels the grace of forgiveness. At the capitulation
of Yorktown, Washington had refused to treat with the
Loyalists in Cornwallis's army on the same terms as with
the British regulars; and Cornwallis had been compelled
to smuggle his Loyalist levies out of Yorktown on the
ship that carried the news of his surrender to New York.
As late as 1782 fresh confiscation laws had been passed
in Georgia and the Carolinas; and in New York a law had
been passed cancelling all debts due to Loyalists, on
condition that one-fortieth of the debt was paid into
the state treasury. These were straws which showed the
way the wind was blowing.

In the negotiations leading up to the Peace of Versailles
there were no clauses so long and bitterly discussed as
th