of the church edifices having been
desecrated and applied to profane uses; the dwellings, which their
owners had vacated on the approach of the enemy, being occupied by the
refugee loyalists, and officers and attaches of the British army, were
despoiled and dilapidated; while a large area of the City, ravaged by
fires, still lay in ruins!

The news of peace with Great Britain, which was officially published at
New York on April 8th, 1783, was hailed with delight by every friend of
his country. But it spread consternation and dismay among the loyalists.
Its effects upon the latter class, and the scenes which ensued, beggar
all description. The receipt of death warrants could hardly have been
more appalling. Some of these who had zealously taken up commissions in
the king's service, amid the excitement of the hour tore the lapels from
their coats and stamped them under foot, crying out that they were
ruined forever! Others, in like despair, uttered doleful complaints,
that after sacrificing their all, to prove their loyalty, they should
now be left to shift for themselves, with nothing to hope for, either
from king or country. In the day of their power these had assumed the
most insolent bearing towards their fellow-citizens who were suspected
of sympathy for their suffering country; while those thrown among them
as prisoners of war, met their studied scorn and abuse, and were usually
accosted, with the more popular than elegant epithet, of "damned rebel!"
The tables were now turned; all this injustice and cruelty stared them
in the face, and, to their excited imaginations, clothed with countless
terrors that coming day, when, their protectors being gone, they could
expect naught but a dreadful retribution! Under such circumstances, Sir
Guy Carleton, the English commander at New York, was in honor bound not
to give up the City till he had provided the means of conveying away to
places within the British possessions, all those who should decide to
quit the country. It was not pure humanity, but shrewd policy as well,
for the king, by his agents, thus to promote the settlement of portions
of his dominions which were cold, barren, uninviting, and but sparsely
populated.

By the cessation of hostilities the barriers to commercial intercourse
between the City and other parts of the State, &c., were removed, and
the navigation of the Hudson, the Sound, and connected waters was
resumed as before the war. Packets brought in the