proof that any violence was done by the Loyalists to
women and children. On his return from Wyoming, Colonel
Butler reported: 'I can with truth inform you that in
the destruction of this settlement not a single person
has been hurt of the inhabitants, but such as were armed;
to those indeed the Indians gave no quarter.'

In defence of the Loyalists, two considerations may be
urged. In the first place, it must be remembered that
they were men who had been evicted from their homes, and
whose property had been confiscated. They had been placed
under the ban of the law: the payment of their debts had
been denied them; and they had been forbidden to return
to their native land under penalty of death without
benefit of clergy. They had been imprisoned, fined,
subjected to special taxation; their families had been
maltreated, and were in many cases still in the hands of
their enemies. They would have been hardly human had they
waged a mimic warfare. In the second place, their
depredations were of great value from a military point
of view. Not only did they prevent thousands of militiamen
from joining the Continental army, but they seriously
threatened the sources of Washington's food supply. The
valleys which they ravaged were the granary of the
revolutionary forces. In 1780 Sir John Johnson destroyed
in the Schoharie valley alone no less than eighty thousand
bushels of grain; and this loss, as Washington wrote to
the president of Congress, 'threatened alarming
consequences.' That this work of destruction was agreeable
to the Loyalists cannot be doubted; but this fact does