Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| leaders who, of course, are to be found associated with every great popular movement. We can also heartily respect the honest and gallant Loyalists who sacrificed all by their devotion to the king’s cause. But the selfish time-servers, the timid men, and those who halt between two burdens, and can never make up their minds which side to support in any great political crisis, are only worthy of contempt. |
| The king’s troops were not cruel conquerors; but they were insolent and overbearing, and sometimes brutal. The Loyalists were in a thoroughly false position. They had drawn the sword against their countrymen; and yet they could not hope to be treated as equals by those for whom they were fighting. They soon found to their bitter chagrin that their haughty allies regarded them as inferiors, and despised an American Tory almost as much as they hated an American Whig. The native army had not behaved well in the half-Tory city of New York; but the invading army which drove it out behaved much worse. The soldiers broke into and looted the corporation, the college, and the small public libraries, hawking the books about the streets, or exchanging them for liquor in the low saloons. They also sacked the Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, and Huguenot churches, which were later turned into prisons for the captured Americans; while on the other hand, the |