direct result of the persecution of the Loyalists, and sums up that ‘humanity to the adherents of the Crown and prudent regard for our own interests required a general amnesty’.[181] The Americans, for their own future, would have done well to conciliate rather than to punish, to retain citizens by friendly treatment not to force them into exile. Their policy bore its inevitable fruit, and the most determined opponents of the United States in after years were the men and the children of the men who were driven out and took refuge in Canada. [Sidenote: Reasons for the persecution of the Loyalists.] [Sidenote: The American War of Independence as contrasted with the later war between the North and the South.] The policy was unwise, but it was intelligible; and it is the more intelligible when viewed in the light of the contrast furnished by the sequel to the great civil war between the Northern and the Southern states. As time goes on and the world becomes more civilized, public and private vendettas tend to go out of fashion and individuals and nations alike find it a little easier to forgive, though possibly not to forget. In any case, therefore, the outcome of a war eighty years later than the American War of Independence might have been expected to bear traces of kindlier feeling and broader humanity. But there were other reasons for the contrast between the attitude taken up by the victorious Northern states towards the defeated Southern confederacy and that of the successful Revolutionary party towards their Loyalist opponents. The cause for which the Northerners fought and conquered was the maintenance of the Union; the cause for which the partisans of the Revolution fought and conquered was separation. It was therefore logical and consistent, when the fighting was over, in the former case to do what could be done to cement the Union, in the latter to do all that would accentuate and complete separation. Amnesty was in a sense the natural outcome of the later war, proscription was in a sense the natural outcome of the earlier. Slowly and reluctantly the revolting states came to the determination to part company with the mother country. Having made their decision and staked their all upon carrying it to a successful issue, they were minded also to part company for all time with those among them who held the contrary view. They were a new people, not wholly sure of their ground; they would not run the risk, as it seemed, of trying to reconcile men whose hearts were not with theirs.