“The division of parties in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire was much the same as in Massachusetts. New York was the loyalists’ stronghold, and contained more of them than any colony in America. While proof to sustain this assertion can be adduced to almost any extent, we shall cite but a single though conclusive fact; namely, that soon after the close of the war the Assembly of that State passed a bill prohibiting adherents of the crown from holding office, which was objected to and returned by the Council of Revision, who, among other reasons for their course, stated, that if it were suffered to become a law, there would be difficulty, and in some places an impossibility, of finding men of different political sympathies, even to conduct the elections. In some of the southern colonies, the loyalists were almost as numerous as in New York. In the Carolinas it may be hard to determine which party had the majority; and it will be found that there were occasions when the royal generals obtained twelve or fifteen hundred recruits among the inhabitants, merely by issuing a proclamation or call upon them to stand by their allegiance to “the best of sovereigns.... Few of the Carolinians would enlist under the American banner; but after the capitulation (of Charlestown) they flocked to the royal standard by hundreds.” See also Sabine’s _Loyalists_, Introductory Sketch; Ryerson, _Loyalists of America_, ii. 57, 124. For remarks on the war, as a civil war, see Ramsay, _Hist. U. S._, ii. 467–9. [165] Sabine, i. 65.