For ten years, after the terms of peace was signed between England and the Independent States, the forts of Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, and Michilmicinac, with the garrison on Carleton Island, remained in the possession of the British troops. To this the grasping Americans warmly took exceptions. Although it would have been next to impossible to supply these places with provisions for troops of their own, they nevertheless wished to dispossess the Royal troops; we learn that the object was to starve out the refugees who had found shelter upon the borders, and who would be depending for years to these forts, for the very necessaries of life. In this, their cruelty exceeded that practised towards the Acadians. Having driven away the loyalists and dispossessed them at home, they would have followed them to their new wilderness home, there to cut off their supplies and leave them to perish. They wished to obtain possession of the forts not only to glut their vengeful feeling against the tories, but to secure the traffic carried on with the Indians. Dreams of aggrandizement floated through their avaricious minds. It was regarded an excellent stroke of policy to turn the current of the fur trade from the St. Lawrence, and starve out by degrees the refugees, and the French who would have none of _their_ “Liberty.” Hence their desire to get possession of the frontier forts. But it was destined that this valuable traffic should never come into the hands of the United States; or rather it should be said, the Americans had determined to pursue a course which would completely alienate the Indian tribes from them. Under such circumstances no possession of the forts could have turned the trade from its natural channel by the St. Lawrence, across the continent to New York.