fort, relieved the sentries, hoisted the American colors, and

The "very good news was the thanks of the Virginia House of Burgesses to Clark for his capture of the Mississippi posts and a major's commission for Captain Bowman. Clark wrote to the Speaker of the House ten days before quitting Vincennes :

Dr Sir,

Fort St. Henry St. Vincent, Mar. 10, 1779

I received your kind letter with the thanks of the House inclosed. I must confess, Sir, that I think my country has done me more honor than I merited, but may rest assured that my study shall be to deserve that Honor they have already conferr'd on me.

by my publick letters you will be fully acquainted with my late successful expedition against Lt. Govr Hamilton who has fallen into my hands with all the principal Partizans of Detroit. This stroke will nearly put an end to the Indian war, had I but men enough to take advantage of the present confusion of the Indian nations, I could silence the whole in two months. I learn that five hundred men is ordered out to reinforce me. If they arrive with what I have in the country, I am in hopes will enable me to do something clever,

I am with respect Sir,

Tories

Soon after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, 39. The the Loyalists, or Tories, in America addressed the following "humble and dutiful declaration to the king's most excellent majesty, to both houses of parliament, and the

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people of Great Britain." The Declaration appeared in the London Chronicle of March 9, 1782.

We, his majesty's most dutiful and faithful subjects, the loyal inhabitants of America, who have happily got within the protection of the British forces, as well as those who, though too wise not to have foreseen the fatal tendency of the present wanton and causeless rebellion, yet from numberless obstacles, and unexampled severities, have hitherto been compelled to remain under the tyranny of the rebels, and submit to the measures of congressional usurpation; animated with the purest principles of duty and allegiance to his majesty and the British parliament, beg leave, with the deepest humility and reverence, on the present calamitous occasion of public and national misfortune, in the surrender of lord Cornwallis, and the army under his lordship's command, at Yorktown, humbly to entreat that your majesty, and the parliament, would be graciously pleased to permit us to offer this renewed testimony of loyalty and attachment to our most gracious sovereign, and the British nation and government; and thus publicly to repeat our most heart-felt acknowledgments for the infinite obligations we feel ourselves under for the heavy expenses that have been incurred, and the great national exertions that have been made, to save and rescue us, and your American colonies, from impending ruin, and the accumulated distresses and calamities of civil war. ... Our sufferings as men, and our duty as loyal subjects, point out to us at once, the propriety, in our present situation, of thus publicly repeating our assurances, that we revere, with a kind of holy enthusiasm, the ancient constitution of the American colonies; and that we cannot but lament every event, and be anxiously solicitous to remove every cause or suspicion, that might have the most distant tendency to separate the two countries.

...

Unhappily, indeed, for ourselves, and we cannot but think unfortunately too for Great Britain, the number of well affected inhabitants in America to the parent country, cannot, for obvious reasons, be exactly ascertained. . . . The penalty under which any American subject enlists in his majesty's service, is no less than the immediate forfeiture of all his goods and chattels, lands

and tenements; and if apprehended [captured], and convicted by the rebels of having enlisted, or prevailed on any other person to enlist in his majesty's service, it is considered as treason, and punished with death. . . . Yet, notwithstanding all these discouraging circumstances, there are many more men in his majesty's provincial regiments than there are in the Continental service. Hence it cannot be doubted but that there are more loyalists in America than there are rebels; and also that their zeal must be greater, or so many would not have enlisted into the provincial service under such very unequal circumstances. ... We also infer from the small number of militia collected by General Greene, the most popular and able general in the service of congress, in the long circuitous march he took through many of the most populous, and confessedly the most rebellious counties in that country, that there must be a vast majority of loyalists in that part of America, as well as elsewhere. . . .1

Relying with the fullest confidence upon national justice and compassion to our fidelity and distresses, we can entertain no doubts but that Great Britain will prevent the ruin of her American friends, at every risk short of certain destruction to herself. But if compelled, by adversity of misfortune, from the wicked and perfidious combinations and designs of numerous and powerful enemies abroad, and more criminal and dangerous enemies at home, an idea should be formed by Great Britain of relinquishing her American colonies to the usurpation of congress, we thus solemnly call God to witness, that we think the colonies can never be so happy or so free as in a constitutional connexion with, and dependence on Great Britain; convinced, as we are, that to be a British subject, with all its consequences, is to be the happiest and freest member of any civil society in the known world.

1 The last royal governor of New York, James Robertson, in his proclamation of April 15, 1780, spoke of "the ingenuous thousands of America 99 who were faithful to the King; and of "the Few" rebels who had "found Means to acquire Sway in the Management of your affairs." "Can they want Evidence at this day," he continues, " of the Detestation of their Measures, by an increasing Majority of their own Countrymen?" E. B. O'Callaghan, Documentary History of New York, Vol. IV, p. 1086.

While it is certain that the number of the Loyalists was exaggerated in their own eyes and in those of the British officers, nevertheless the very violence of the denunciations. of them by the Revolutionists from Washington himself down to the pettiest patriot scribe shows that they were a real danger. Had they been only a tiny harmless minority, like the northern opponents of the Civil War in 1861, for example, or the denouncers of the Philippine War in 1899, they probably would have been treated with contemptuous neglect or good-natured ridicule by the patriots, in spite of the zeal of the Sons of Liberty. The following article from the Pennsylvania Packet of August 5, 1779, illustrates the patriot's animus:

Among the many errors America has been guilty of during her contest with Great Britain, few have been greater, or attended with more fatal consequences to these States, than her lenity to the Tories. . . . We can no longer be silent on this subject, and see the independence of the country, after standing every shock from without, endangered by internal enemies. Rouse, America! your danger is great-great from a quarter where you least expect it. The Tories, the Tories will yet be the ruin of you! 'Tis high time they were separated from among you. They are now busy engaged in undermining your liberties. They have a thousand ways of doing it, and they make use of them all. Who were the occasion of this war? The Tories! Who persuaded the tyrant of Britain to prosecute it in a manner before unknown to civilized nations, and even shocking to barbarians? The Tories!... Who corrupt the minds of the good people of these States by every species of insidious counsel? The Tories! Who hold a traitorous correspondence with the enemy? The Tories!... Who prevent your battalions from being filled? The Tories!... Who persuade those who have enlisted to desert? The Tories!... In short, who wish to see us conquered, to see us Slaves, to see us hewers of wood and drawers of water? The Tories.

And is it possible that we should suffer men, who have been guilty of all these and a thousand other calamities which this country has experienced, to live among us! To live among us, did I say? Nay, do they not move in our assemblies? Do they not insult us with their impudence? Do they not hold traitorous assemblies of their own? Do they not walk the streets at noonday, and taste the air of liberty?

Believe not a spark of . . . virtue is to be found in the Tory's breast; for what principle can that wretch have who would sell his soul to subject his country to the will of the greatest tyrant the world at present produces? 'Tis time to rid ourselves of these bosom vipers. An immediate separation is necessary. I dread to think of the evils every moment is big with, while a single Tory remains among us. . . . Awake, Americans, to a sense of your danger. No time to be lost. Instantly banish every Tory from among you. Let America be sacred alone to freemen.

Drive far from you every baneful wretch who wishes to see you fettered with the chains of tyranny. Send them where they may enjoy their beloved slavery to perfection— send them to the island of Britain; there let them drink the cup of slavery and eat the bread of bitterness all the days of their existence there let them drag out a painful life, despised and accursed by those very men whose cause they have had the wickedness to espouse. Never let them return to this happy land never let them taste the sweets of that independence which they strove to prevent. Banishment, perpetual banishment, should be their lot.

First among the Tory satirists, both in the power and in the venom of his pen, was Jonathan Odell, a graduate of Princeton College in 1754, surgeon in the British army in the West Indies, then rector in the Anglican Church in the province of New Jersey. Up to the last battle of the Revolution, and while there was a British soldier left in America, Odell maintained his confidence that the "rebellion" would be crushed. When America won the fight, Odell retired to Nova Scotia, where he lived in poverty,