[Footnote 50: _Letter from General Greene written at Fort Lee. Mrs. Williams' Life of Olney._]
Occasionally it was found necessary to give the soldiers a sharp reproof for insulting the inhabitants or trespassing on their property. When the complaint was brought to Greene that some of his men had been stealing watermelons, he promptly issued an order that such practices must be punished. "A few unprincipled rascals," he said, "may ruin the reputation of a whole corps of virtuous men;" and on another occasion he called upon the soldiers to behave themselves "with that decency and respect that became the character of troops fighting for the preservation of the rights and liberties of America." Perhaps the offenders found an excuse for their conduct in the Tory character of the complainants; but Greene, though no friend himself to such people, could never accept this as a provocation to justify a breach of military discipline.
The Tory element in the population required other and sterner treatment.[51] It had developed to such an extent in Kings and Queens counties as to require its suppression by the civil and military power combined. The refusal of the majority of the voters in Queens to send delegates to the New York Provincial Convention in 1775 indicated not only a confidence on their part that the Home Government would succeed in crushing the rebellion, but a secret intention as well to give the British troops upon their arrival all the aid and comfort in their power. As they provided themselves with arms and the British fleet with provisions, the Continental Congress took up the matter, ordered the arrest of the leaders, and dispatched Colonel Heard, of New Jersey, with a regiment of militia to execute the business. Arrests were made, but the complete suppression of the loyalists here was never effected.
[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.]