For the next seven years, New York suffered all the humiliations that fall to the lot of a conquered city. The kings troops held it as a garrison town, under military rule, and made it the headquarters of their power in America. Their foraging parties and small expeditionary columns ravaged the neighboring counties, not only of New York, but of New Jersey and Connecticut. The country in the immediate vicinity of the city was overawed by the formidable garrison and remained Loyalist; beyond this came a wide zone or neutral belt where the light troops and irregular forces of both sides fought one another and harried the wretched inhabitants. Privateers were fitted out to cruise against the shipping of the other States, precisely as the privateers of the patriots had sailed from the harbor against the shipping of Britain in the earlier days of the war.
Most of the active patriots among the townsfolk had left the city; only the poor and the faint-hearted remained behind, together with the large Tory element, and the still larger portion of the population which strove to remain neutral in the conflict. This last division contained the only persons whose conduct must be regarded as thoroughly despicable. Emphatically the highest meed of praise belongs to the resolute, high-minded, far-seeing men of the patriot party,as distinguished from the mere demagogues and mob