corn. Their cattle were maimed and poisoned. They could
not secure payment of debts due to them or, if payment was made, they
received it in the debased continental currency at its face value. They
might not sue in a court of law, nor sell their property, nor make a
will. It was a felony for them to keep arms. No Loyalist might hold
office, or practice law or medicine, or keep a school.

Some Loyalists were deported to the wilderness in the back country.
Many took refuge within the British lines, especially at New York. Many
Loyalists created homes elsewhere. Some went to England only to
find melancholy disillusion of hope that a grateful motherland would
understand and reward their sacrifices. Large numbers found their way to
Nova Scotia and to Canada, north of the Great Lakes, and there played
a part in laying the foundation of the Dominion of today. The city of
Toronto with a population of half a million is rooted in the Loyalist
traditions of its Tory founders. Simcoe, the first Governor of Upper
Canada, who made Toronto his capital, was one of the most enterprising
of the officers who served with Cornwallis in the South and surrendered
with him at Yorktown.

The State of New York acquired from the forfeited lands of Loyalists
a sum approaching four million dollars, a great amount in those days.
Other States profited in a similar way. Every Loyalist whose property
was seized had a direct and personal grievance. He could join the
British army and fight against his oppressors, and this he did: New
York furnished about fifteen thousand men to fight on the British side.
Plundered himself, he could plunder his enemies, and this too he did
both by land and sea. In the autumn of 1778 ships manned chiefly by
Loyalist refugees were terrorizing the coast from Massachusetts to New
Jersey. They plundered Martha's Vineyard, burned some lesser towns,
such as New Bedford, and showed no quarter to small parties of American
troops whom they managed to intercept.

What happened on the coast happened also in the interior. At Wyoming in
the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, in July, 1778, during a raid of
Loyalists, aided by Indians, there was a brutal massacre, the horrors of
which long served to inspire hate for the British. A little later in
the same year similar events took place at Cherry Valley, in central New
York. Burning houses, the dead bodies not only of men but of women and
children scalped by the savage allies of the Lo