forest. But in its effects upon the campaign, Oriskany was for the Americans a success, though an incomplete one. St. Leger was not crushed, but he was badly crippled. The sacking of Johnson's camp injured his prestige in the neighborhood, and the Indian allies, who had lost more than a hundred of their best warriors on that fatal morning, grew daily more sullen and refractory, until their strange behavior came to be a fresh source of anxiety to the British commander. While he was pushing on the siege as well as he could, a force of 1200 troops under Arnold was marching up the Mohawk valley to complete his discomfiture.

As soon as he had heard the news of the fall of Ticonderoga, Washington had dispatched Arnold to render such assistance as he could to the northern army, and Arnold had accordingly arrived at Schuyler's headquarters about three weeks ago. Before leaving Philadelphia, he had appealed to Congress to restore him to his former rank relatively to the five junior officers who had been promoted over him, and he had just learned that Congress had refused the request. At this moment, Colonel Willett and another officer, after a perilous journey through the wilderness, arrived at Schuyler's headquarters, and, bringing the news of Oriskany, begged that a force might be sent to raise the siege of Fort Stanwix. Schuyler understood the importance of rescuing the stronghold and its brave garrison, and called a council of war; but he was bitterly opposed by his officers, one of whom presently said to another, in an audible whisper, "He only wants to weaken the army!" At this vile insinuation, the indignant general set his teeth so hard as to bite through the stem of the pipe he was smoking, which fell on the floor and was smashed. "Enough!" he cried. "I assume the whole responsibility. Where is the brigadier who will go?" The brigadiers all sat in sullen silence; but Arnold, who had been brooding over his private grievances, suddenly jumped up. "Here!" said he, "Washington sent me here to make myself useful: I will go." The commander gratefully seized him by the hand, and the drum beat for volunteers. Arnold's unpopularity in New England was mainly with the politicians. It did not extend to the common soldiers, who admired his impulsive bravery and had unbounded faith in his resources as a leader. Accordingly, 1200 Massachusetts men were easily enlisted in the course of the next forenoon, and the expedition started up the Mohawk

valley. Arnold pushed on with characteristic energy, but the natural difficulties of the road were such that after a week of hard work he had only reached the German Flats, where he was still more than twenty miles from Fort Stanwix. Believing that no time should be lost, and that everything should be done to encourage the garrison and dishearten the enemy, he had recourse to a stratagem, which succeeded beyond his utmost anticipation. A party of Tory spies had just been arrested in the neighborhood, and among them was a certain Yan Yost Cuyler, a queer, half-witted fellow, not devoid of cunning, whom the Indians regarded with that mysterious awe with which fools and lunatics are wont to inspire them, as creatures possessed with a devil. Yan Yost was summarily condemned to death, and his brother and gypsylike mother, in wild alarm, hastened to the camp to plead for his life. Arnold for a while was inexorable, but presently offered to pardon the culprit on condition that he should go and spread a panic in the camp of St. Leger. Yan Yost joyfully consented, and started off forthwith, while his brother was detained as a hostage to be hanged in case of his failure. To make the matter still surer, some friendly Oneidas were sent along to keep an eye upon him and act in concert with him. Next day, St. Leger's scouts, as they stole through the forest, began to hear rumors that Burgoyne had been totally defeated, and that a great American army was coming up the valley of the Mohawk. They carried back these rumors to the camp, and toward evening, while officers and soldiers were standing about in anxious consultation, Yan Yost came running in, with a dozen bullet holes in his coat and terror in his face, and said that he had barely escaped with his life from the resistless American host which was close at hand. As many knew him for a Tory, his tale found ready belief, and when interrogated as to the numbers of the advancing host he gave a warning frown, and pointed significantly to the countless leaves that fluttered on the branches overhead. Nothing more was needed to complete the panic. It was in vain that Johnson and St. Leger exhorted and threatened the Indian allies. Already disaffected, they now began to desert by scores, while some, breaking open the camp chests, drank rum till they were drunk, and began to assault the soldiers. All night long the camp was a perfect Pandemonium. The riot extended to the Tories, and by noon of the next day St. Leger took to flight and his whole army

was dispersed. All the tents, artillery, and stores fell into the hands of the Americans. The garrison, sallying forth, pursued St. Leger for a while, but the faithless Indians, enjoying his discomfiture, and willing to curry favor with the stronger party, kept up the chase nearly all the way to Oswego, laying ambushes every night, and diligently murdering the stragglers, until hardly a remnant of an army was left to embark with its crestfallen leader for Montreal.

CHARACTER OF THE LOYALISTS.1

BY MOSES COIT TYLER.

(From the "Literary History of the American Revolution.")

[MOSES COIT TYLER, American educator and author, was born at Griswold, Conn., August 2, 1835; studied theology at Yale and Andover; and for a few years held the pastorate of a Congregational church in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was professor of English in the University of Michigan (1867-1881), and since 1883 has occupied the chair of American history at Cornell. He is a frequent contributor to magazines and reviews, and the author of a "History of American Literature during the Colonial Time" (1878), "A Manual of English Literature" (1879) "Life of Patrick Henry" (1888), and "Literary History of the American Revolution."]

AFTER the question of number, very properly comes that of quality. What kind of people were these Tories, as regards intelligence, character, and standing in their several communities?

And here, brushing aside, as unworthy of historical investigators, the partisan and vindictive epithets of the controversy, many of which, however, still survive even in the historical writings of our own time, we shall find that the Loyalists were, as might be expected, of all grades of personal worth and worthlessness; and that, while there was among them, no doubt, the usual proportion of human selfishness, malice, and rascality, as a class they were not bad people, much less were they execrable people, as their opponents at the time commonly declared them to be.

In the first place, there was, prior to 1776, the official class; that is, the men holding various positions in the civil and military and naval services of the government, their im

1 Copyright, 1887, by G. P. Putnam's Sons.

mediate families, and their social connections. All such persons may be described as inclining to the Loyalist view in consequence of official bias.

Next were certain colonial politicians who, it may be admitted, took a rather selfish and an unprincipled view of the whole dispute, and who, counting on the probable, if not inevitable, success of the British arms in such a conflict, adopted the Loyalist side, not for conscience' sake but for profit's sake, and in the expectation of being rewarded for their fidelity by offices and titles, and especially by the confiscated estates of the rebels, after the rebels themselves should have been defeated, and their leaders hanged or sent into exile.

As composing still another class of Tories may be mentioned, probably a vast majority of those who stood for the commercial interests, for the capital and the tangible property of the country, and who, with the instincts natural to persons who have something considerable to lose, disapproved of all measures for pushing the dispute to the point of disorder, riot, and civil war.

Still another class of Loyalists was made up of people of professional training and occupation, - clergymen, physicians, lawyers, teachers, a clear majority of whom seem to have been set against the ultimate measures of the Revolution.

Finally, and in general, it may be said that a majority of those who, of whatever occupation, of whatever grade of culture or of wealth, would now be described as conservative people, were Loyalists during the American Revolution. And by way of concession to the authority and force of truth, what has to be said respecting the personal quality commonly attaching to those who, in any age or country, are liable to be classed as conservative people? Will it be denied that within that order of persons one may usually find at least a fair portion of the cultivation, of the moral thoughtfulness, of the personal purity and honor, existing in the entire community to which they happen to belong?

Precisely this description, at any rate, applies to the conservative class in the American colonies during that epoch,

a majority of whom dissented from those extreme measures which at last transformed into a revolution a political movement which began with the avowed purpose of confining itself to a struggle for redress of grievances, and within the limits of constitutional opposition. If, for example, we consider the

point with reference to cultivation and moral refinement, it may seem to us a significant fact that among the members of the Loyalist party are to be found the names of a great multitude of the graduates of our colonial colleges - especially of Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Princeton, and Pennsylvania. Thus, in an act of banishment passed by Massachusetts, in September, 1778, against the most prominent of the Tory leaders in that State, one may now read the names of three hundred and ten of her citizens. And who were they? Let us go over their names. Are these the names of profligates and desperadoes, or even of men of slight and equivocal consideration? To any one at all familiar with the history of colonial New England, that list of men, denounced to exile and loss of property on account of their opinions, will read almost like the beadroll of the oldest and noblest families concerned in the founding and upbuilding of New England civilization. Moreover, of that catalogue of three hundred and ten men of Massachusetts, banished for an offense to which the most of them appear to have been driven by conscientious convictions, more than sixty were graduates of Harvard. This fact is probably a typical one; and of the whole body of the Loyalists throughout the thirteen colonies, it must be said that it contained, as one of its ablest antagonists long after admitted, "more than a third of influential characters," that is, a very considerable portion of the customary chiefs and representatives of conservatism in each community.

By any standard of judgment, therefore, according to which we usually determine the personal quality of any party of men and women in this world,-whether the standard be intellectual, or moral, or social, or merely conventional, the Tories of the Revolution seem to have been not a profligate party, nor an unprincipled one, nor a reckless or even a light-minded one, but, on the contrary, to have had among them a very considerable portion of the most refined, thoughtful, and conscientious people in the colonies. So true is this, that in 1807 a nobleminded Scottish woman, Mistress Anne Grant of Laggan, who in her early life had been familiar with American colonial society, compared the loss which America suffered in consequence of the expatriation of the Loyalists by the Revolution, to the loss which France suffered in consequence of the expatriation of so many of her Protestants by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.