Excerpt from Evacuation Day, 1783, Its Many Stirring Events
The news of peace with Great Britain, which was officially pub lished at New York on April 8th, 1783, was hailed with delight by every friend of his countrv. But it spread consternation and dis may among the loyalists. Its efi’ects upon the latter class, and the scenes which ensued, beggar all description. The receipt of death warrants could hardly have been more appalling. Some of these who had zealously taken up commissions in the king’s service, amid the excitement of the hour tore the lapels from their coats and stamped them under foot, crying out that they were ruined forever Others, in like despair, uttered doleful complaints, that after sacrificing their all, to prove their loyalty, they should now be left to shift for themselves, with nothing to hope for, either from king or country. In the day of their power these had as sumed the most insolent bearing towards their fellow-citizens who were suspected of sympathy for their suffering country; while those thrown among them as prisoners of war, met their studied scorn and abuse, and were usually accosted, with the more popu lar than elegant epithet, of damned rebel The tables were now turned all this injustice and cruelty stared them in the face, and, to their excited imaginations, clothed with countless terrors that coming day, when, their protectors being gone, they could expect naught but a dreadful retribution Under such circum stances, Sir Guy Carleton, the English commander at New York, was in honor bound not to give up the City till he had provided the means Of conveying away to places within the British posses sions, all those who should decide to quit the country. It was not pure humanity, but shrewd policy as well, for the king, by his agents, thus to promote the settlement of portions of hisdominions which were cold, barren, uninviting, and but sparsely populated.
By the cessation of hostilities the barriers to commercial inter course between the City and other parts of the State, &c., were removed, and the navigation of the Hudson, the Sound, and con useted waters was resumed as before the war. Packets brought in the produce of the country, and left laden with commodities suited to the needs of the rural population, or with the British gold in their purses; for all the staples of food, as flour, beef, pork and butter, were in great demand, to victual the many fleets preparing to sail, freighted with troops, or with loyalists. The country people in the vicinity also flocked to the public markets, bringing all kinds of provisions, which they readily sold at mode rate rates for hard cash and thus the adjacent country was supplied and enriched with specie. The fall in prices, which during the war had risen eight hundred per cent, brought a most grateful relief to the consumers. Simultaneously with these tokens of better days, the order for the release of all the prisoners of war from the New York prisons and prisonships, with their actual liberation from their gloomy cells, came as a touching te minder that the horrors of war were at an end.
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