We had bloody work
enough then to balance our idleness in the years we had covered
outposts above New York, and 'twas but a small fraction of our number
that came home alive at last. I never met Philip while we were both in
the South, nor saw him till the war was over.
Shiploads of our New York loyalists left, after Cornwallis's defeat at
Yorktown showed what the end was to be; some of them going to England
but many of them sailing to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, there to
begin afresh the toiling with the wilderness, and to build up new
English colonies in North America. Others contrived to make their way
by land to Canada, which thereby owes its English population mainly to
those who fled from the independent states rather than give up their
loyalty to the mother country. The government set up by the victorious
rebels had taken away the lands and homes of the loyalists, by acts of
attainder, and any who remained in the country did so at the risk of
life or liberty. What a time of sad leave-taking it was!--families
going forth poor to a strange land, who had lived rich in that of
their birth--what losses, what wrenches, what heart-rendings! And how
little compensation England could give them, notwithstanding all their
claims and petitions! Well, they would deserve little credit for their
loyalty if they had followed it without willingness to lose for it.
But my mother and I had possessed nothing to lose in America but our
house and ground, our money being in the English funds.
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