[Footnote 51: A history of the Tories on Long Island and in New York--the trouble they gave in the present campaign, and the measures taken for their suppression--properly forms a subject by itself. The scope of the present work admits of but brief allusions to them. However honest this class of the population may have been in taking sides with the British, and whatever sympathy may be expressed for them in their trials, losses, and enforced dispersion during and at the end of the war, there was obviously no course left to the Americans, then in the midst of a deadly struggle, but to treat them as a dangerous and obstructive set. The New York Provincial Congress, in the fall of the year and later, dealt with them unsparingly; and no man wished to see the element rooted out more than John Jay--a fact to be borne in mind by those who condemn Lee and other American officers for attempting to banish the Long Island Tories, as a military precaution, in the early part of the year.] While Lee was in command he saw no solution of the problem other than to remove the entire Tory population to some other quarter where they could do less mischief in the event of active operations; but Congress, to the regret of Washington, could not sanction so radical a method. Greene did his best to root out this element, but we may imagine that it was uncongenial work, and that he took far more interest in the progress of his redoubts than in chasing suspected persons on the island.[52] [Footnote 52: What General Greene thought of the Tories, and what treatment he proposed in certain cases, appears from a report on the subject signed by Generals Heath, Spencer, Greene, and Stirling, and submitted to Washington towards the close of June: "With regard to the disaffected inhabitants who have lately been apprehended," say these officers, "we think that the method at present adopted by the County Committee, of discharging them on their giving bonds as a security for their good behavior, is very improper and ineffectual, and therefore recommend it to your Excellency to apply to the Congress of this province to take some more effectual method of securing the good behavior of those people, and in the mean time that your Excellency will order the officers in whose custody they are to discharge no more of them until the sense of the Congress be had thereon."--_Journals of the N.Y. Prov. Congress_, vol. ii.