George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[222]

Chapter 10:

The war in the northern department.

---

1779.

while congress employed the summer in debates

Chap. X.} 1779.

on the conditions of peace, the compulsory inactivity of the British army at the north encouraged discontent and intrigues. There rose up in rivalry with Clinton a body styling themselves ‘the loyal associated refugees,’ who were impatient to obtain an independent organization under Tryon and William Franklin. Clinton wrote that his resources were insufficient for active operations: the refugees insisted that more alertness would crush the rebellion; they loved to recommend the employment of hordes of savages, and to prepare for confiscating the property of wealthy rebels by their execution or exile.

The Virginians, since the expulsion of Lord Dunmore, free from war within their own borders, were enriching themselves by the unmolested culture of tobacco, which was exported through the Chesapeake; or, when that highway was unsafe, by a short land