"In New York, the County Committees were authorized to apprehend and decide upon the guilt of such inhabitants as were supposed to hold correspondence with the enemy, or had committed some other specified act; and they might punish those whom they adjudged to be guilty with imprisonment for three months, or banishment. There, too, persons opposed to liberty and independence were prohibited from practising law in the Courts; and the effects of fifty-nine persons, of whom three were women, and their rights of remainder and reversion, were to pass by confiscation from them to the people. So, also, a parent whose sons went off and adhered to the enemy was subjected to a tax of ninepence on the pound of the parents' estate for each and every such son; and until a revision of the law, Whigs were as liable to this tax as others.
"In New Jersey, one Act was passed to punish traitors and disaffected persons; another, for taking charge of and leasing the real estates, and for forfeiting the personal estates of certain fugitives and offenders; and a third for forfeiting to, and vesting in the State, the real property of the persons designated in the second statute; and a fourth, supplemental to the Act first mentioned.
"In Pennsylvania, sixty-two persons, who were designated by name, were required by the Executive Council to surrender themselves to some Judge of a Court, or Justice of the Peace, within a specified time, and abide trial for treason, or in default of appearance to stand attainted; and by an Act of a subsequent time, the estates of thirty-six other persons, who were also designated by name, and who had been previously attainted of treason, were declared to be confiscated.
"The Act of Delaware provided that the property, both real and personal, of certain persons who were named, and who were forty-six in number, should be forfeited to the State, 'subject, nevertheless, to the payment of the said offenders' just debts,' unless, as in Pennsylvania, they gave themselves up to trial for the crime of treason in adhering to the royal cause.
"Maryland seized, confiscated, and appropriated all property of persons in allegiance to the British Crown, and appointed Commissioners to carry out the terms of three statutes which were passed to effect these purposes.
"In North Carolina, the Confiscation Act embraced sixty-five specified individuals, and four mercantile firms, and by its terms not only included the 'lands' of these persons and commercial houses, but their 'negroes and other personal property.'
"The law of Georgia, which was enacted very near the close of the struggle, declared certain persons to have been guilty of treason against that State, and their estates to be forfeited for their offences."[112]
"South Carolina surpassed all the other members of the confederacy, Massachusetts excepted. The Loyalists of the State, whose rights, persons, and property were affected by legislation, were divided into four classes. The persons who had offended the least, who were forty-five in number, were allowed to retain their estates, but were amerced twelve per cent. of their value. Soon after the fall of Charleston, and when disaffection to the Whig cause was so general, 210 persons, who styled themselves to be 'principal inhabitants' of the city, signed an address to Sir Henry Clinton, in which they state that they have every inducement to return to their allegiance, and ardently hope to be re-admitted to the character and condition of British subjects. These 'addressers' formed another class. Of these 210, sixty-three were banished and lost their property by forfeiture, either for this offence or the graver one of affixing their names to a petition to the royal general, to be armed on the royal side. Another class, composed of the still larger number of eighty persons, were also banished and divested of their estates, for the crime of holding civil or military commissions under the Crown, after the conquest of South Carolina. And the same penalties were inflicted upon thirteen others, who, on the success of Lord Cornwallis at Camden, presented his lordship with congratulations. Still fourteen others were banished and deprived of their estates because they were obnoxious. Thus, then, the 'addressers,' 'petitioners,' 'congratulators,' and 'obnoxious Loyalists,' who were proscribed, and who suffered the loss of their property (in South Carolina), were 170 in number; and if to these we add the forty-five who were fined twelve pounds in the hundred of the value of their estates, the aggregate will be 215.
"Much of the legislation of the several States appears to have proceeded from the recommendations made from time to time by Congress, and that body passed several acts and resolutions of its own. Thus they subjected to martial law and to death all who should furnish provisions and certain other articles to the King's troops in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware; and they resolved that all Loyalists taken in arms should be sent to the States to which they belonged, there to be dealt with as traitors" (not as prisoners of war, as were Americans taken in arms against the British).[113]
REMARKS ON THE CONFISCATION ACTS ABOVE CITED.