ended. Great Britain had urged especially
the case of the Loyalists, the return to them of their property and
compensation for their losses. She could not achieve anything. Franklin
indeed asked that Americans who had been ruined by the destruction of
their property should be compensated by Britain, that Canada should
be added to the United States, and that Britain should acknowledge her
fault in distressing the colonies. In the end the American Commissioners
agreed to ask the individual States to meet the desires of the British
negotiators, but both sides understood that the States would do nothing,
that the confiscated property would never be returned, that most of
the exiled Loyalists would remain exiles, and that Britain herself
must compensate them for their losses. This in time she did on a scale
inadequate indeed but expressive of a generous intention. The United
States retained the great Northwest and the Mississippi became the
western frontier, with destiny already whispering that weak and grasping
Spain must soon let go of the farther West stretching to the Pacific
Ocean. When Great Britain signed peace with France and Spain in January,
1783, Gibraltar was not returned; Spain had to be content with the
return of Minorca, and Florida which she had been forced to yield to
Britain in 1763. Each side restored its conquests in the West Indies.
France, the chief mainstay of the war during its later years, gained
from it really nothing beyond the weakening of her ancient enemy. The
magnanimity of France, especially towards her exacting American ally, is
one of the fine things in the great combat. The huge sum of nearly eight
hundred million dollars spent by France in the war was one of the chief
factors in the financial crisis which, six years after the signing of
the peace, brought on the French Revolution and with it the overthrow
of the Bourbon monarchy. Politics bring strange bedfellows and they have
rarely brought stranger ones than the democracy of young America and the
political despotism, linked with idealism, of the ancient monarchy of
France.

The British did not evacuate New York until Carleton had gathered there
the Loyalists who claimed his protection. These unhappy people made
their way to the seaports, often after long and distressing journeys
overland. Charleston was the chief rallying place in the South and from
there many sad-hearted people sailed away, never to see again their
former homes. The Br