The Americans, however, do not deserve any credit for abstaining from the use of Indian allies. They tried very hard to make use of them, but without success. A few Englishmen in the Mohawk Valley, faithful to the traditions of just and honest treatment of the Indians, which had been inherited from the Dutch, had succeeded in making the Iroquois regard them as friends, but everywhere else the Indian and the colonist were bitter and irreconcilable foes. The savage had long scores of hatred to pay, not upon the English nation or English army, but upon the American settlers who had stolen his lands, shot his sons, and debauched his daughters. The employment of the Mohawks by the English was an outrage and a crying shame upon civilization; but the responsibility of it lies directly upon the government which allowed it, and the commanding generals who sanctioned the expeditions, and only indirectly upon the men who carried out the directions of their superiors.[163] It is interesting to remember in this connection that the courteous and chivalrous Lafayette raised a troop of Indians to fight the British and the Tories, though his reputation has been saved by the utter and almost ludicrous failure of his attempt. The fact is that, as far as the Americans were engaged in it, the war of the Revolution was a civil war, in which the two sides were not far different in numbers or in social condition, and very much the same in their manners and customs. The loyalists contended all through the war that they were in a numerical majority, and that if they had been properly supported by the British forces and properly treated by the British generals, the war could have been ended in 1777, before the French alliance had given new hopes and new strength to the separatist party.[164] Sabine, in his well-known work on the loyalists of the Revolution, computes that there were at least twenty thousand Americans in the military service of the king at one time or another during the war.[165] Other authorities think this estimate too high, but the number was extremely large. In New York and New Jersey it is probable that the opponents of separation outnumbered the patriot party, and the same is probably true of the Carolinas and Georgia. Even in New England, the nursery of the Revolution, the number was large and so formidable, in the opinion of the revolutionary leaders, that in order to suppress them they established a reign of terror and anticipated the famous “Law of the Suspected” of the French Revolution. An irresponsible tyranny was established of town and country committees at whose beck and call were the so-called “Sons of Liberty.” To these committees was entrusted an absolute power over the lives and fortunes of their fellow-citizens, and they proceeded on principles of evidence that would have shocked and scandalized a grand inquisitor.