agreed that
Congress should request the state governments to repeal various laws
which they had made from time to time confiscating the property of
Tories and hindering the collection of private debts due from American
to British merchants. Congress did make such a request, but it was not
heeded. The laws hindering the payment of debts were not repealed; and
as for the Tories, they were so badly treated that between 1783 and 1785
more than 100,000 left the country. Those from the southern states went
mostly to Florida and the Bahamas; those from the north made the
beginnings of the Canadian states of Ontario and New Brunswick. A good
many of them were reimbursed for their losses by Parliament.

[Sidenote: Great Britain retaliates, presuming upon the weakness of
the feeling of union among the states.]

When the British government saw that these provisions of the treaty were
not fulfilled, it retaliated by refusing to withdraw its troops from
the northern and western frontier posts. The British army sailed from
Charleston on the 14th of December, 1782, and from New York on the 25th
of November, 1783, but in contravention of the treaty small garrisons
remained at Ogdensburgh, Oswego, Niagara, Erie, Sandusky, Detroit, and
Mackinaw until the 1st of June, 1796. Besides this, laws were passed
which bore very severely upon American commerce, and the Americans found
it impossible to retaliate because the different states would not agree
upon any commercial policy in common. On the other hand, the states
began making commercial war upon each other, with navigation laws and
high tariffs. Such laws were passed by New York to interfere with the
trade of Connecticut, and the merchants of the latter state began to
hold meetings and pass resolutions forbidding all trade whatever with
New York.

The old quarrels about territory were kept up, and in 1784 the troubles
in Wyoming and in the Green Mountains came to the very verge of civil
war. People in Europe, hearing of such things, believed that the Union
would soon fall to pieces and become the prey of foreign powers. It was
disorder and calamity of this sort that such men as Hutchinson had
feared, in case the control of Great Britain over the colonies should
cease. George III. looked upon it all with satisfaction, and believed
that before long the states would one after another become repentant and
beg to be taken back into the British empire.

[Sidenote: The craze for