natural accumulation of personal
effects, for the convenience of the officers, with their wives and
families. To carry away this army, its stores, and its belongings, there
was not at hand enough shipping.

But the difficulty was greater than this, for Howe had to consider the
Tories and their families. Long before this, when Gage was in command,
the ministry had written that in case of evacuation "the officers and
friends of government must not be left to the rage and insult of rebels,
who set no bounds to their barbarity." Howe's ships, therefore, were to
be at the service of the Tories, and with full knowledge of the involved
results, he so informed them.

When the realization of the situation burst upon the Tories, they were,
said a contemporary letter, "struck with paleness and
astonishment."[160] "Not the last trump," wrote Washington, "could have
struck them with greater consternation."[161] Until the very last, no
suspicion of such a result seems to have disturbed them; they had borne
themselves confidently, and had expected to see their enemies scattered
when the new forces should arrive. Among their Whig brethren they had
been very high-handed. "The selectmen say," wrote Eldad Taylor, who must
have been at Watertown when the selectmen arrived there with the news of
the evacuation, "that the Tories were the most dreadful of any, that all
the sufferings of the poor for the want of provisions and the
necessaries of life, were not equal to the dreadful scorn, derision, and
contempt from them."

Upon the Tories was now put the hard decision, whether to go or stay. In
order to decide, they needed to know what the Whigs would do to them;
and to know that, they had but to consider what they would do to the
Whigs in similar case. In their own prison languished the Whig Lovell.
They thought of the Whig prisons which might be waiting for them, and
they decided to go.

It is not to be denied that the decision was, under the circumstances,
wise. The loyalists were right in supposing that the treatment which
they would have meted to the Whigs, the Whigs would mete to them. For
the country was inflamed against the Tories; Washington himself shared
the sentiment against them. Much as we may regret this feeling, we must
remember that it was natural to the age. Kind treatment to an opponent
in civil war was not yet generally practised; it was Lincoln who made
the lesson acceptable to mankind.

Practically all of the Tori