The news of peace with Great Britain, which was officially published at New York on April 8th, 1783, was hailed with delight by every friend of his country. But it spread consternation and dismay among the loyalists. Its effects upon the latter class, and the scenes which ensued, beggar all description. The receipt of death warrants could hardly have been more appalling. Some of these who had zealously taken up commissions in the king's service, amid the excitement of the hour tore the lapels from their coats and stamped them under foot, crying out that they were ruined forever! Others, in like despair, uttered doleful complaints, that after sacrificing their all, to prove their loyalty, they should now be left to shift for themselves, with nothing to hope for, either from king or country. In the day of their power these had assumed the most insolent bearing towards their fellow-citizens who were suspected of sympathy for their suffering country; while those thrown among them as prisoners of war, met their studied scorn and abuse, and were usually accosted, with the more popular than elegant epithet, of "damned rebel!" The tables were now turned; all this injustice and cruelty stared them in the face, and, to their excited imaginations, clothed with countless terrors that coming day, when, their protectors being gone, they could expect naught but a dreadful retribution! Under such circumstances, Sir Guy Carleton, the English commander at New York, was in honor bound not to give up the City till he had provided the means of conveying away to places within the British possessions, all those who should decide to quit the country. It was not pure humanity, but shrewd policy as well, for the king, by his agents, thus to promote the settlement of portions of his dominions which were cold, barren, uninviting, and but sparsely populated.