Hessian brutalities, Indian scalpings, Tarleton's harryings, and
the infamous prison ships of New York. The war had been a long
one. The tide of battle had ebbed and flowed. A district that was
Patriot one year was frequently Loyalist the next. These
circumstances engendered fear and suspicion and led to nervous
reprisals.

At least a third, if not a half, of the people of the old
colonies had been opposed to revolution. New York was strongly
Loyalist, with Pennsylvania, Georgia, and the Carolinas closely
following. In the end some fifty or sixty thousand Loyalists
abandoned their homes or suffered expulsion rather than submit to
the new order. They counted in their ranks many of the men who
had held first place in their old communities, men of wealth, of
education, and of standing, as well as thousands who had nothing
to give but their fidelity to the old order. Many, especially of
the well-to-do, went to England; a few found refuge in the West
Indies; but the great majority, over fifty thousand in all,
sought new homes in the northern wilderness. Over thirty
thousand, including many of the most influential of the whole
number (with about three thousand negro slaves, afterwards freed
and deported to Sierra Leone) were carried by ship to Nova
Scotia. They found homes chiefly in that part of the province
which in 1784 became New Brunswick. Others, trekking overland or
sailing around by the Gulf and up the River, settled in the upper
valley of the St. Lawrence--on Lake St. Francis, on the Cataraqui
and the Bay of Quinte, and in the Niagara District.

Though these pioneers were generously aided by the British
Government with grants of land and supplies, their hardships and