In Tryon county alone, 12,000 farms went out of cultivation; fully two-thirds of the population either died or fled, While of the one-third who remained 300 were widows and 2,000 orphans. And yet, as I have said, the losses of the Iroquois were greater still. But it is with the causes which led to this savage work that I am here to deal. For quite 100 years, Joseph Brant and the Tories of the Mohawk Valley, with Col. Guy and Sir John Johnson, and John and Walter Butler, at their head, were generally accepted as the original and inspiring forces in all the barbarities committed. The greater offenders, however, were men of much higher station and more ample powers -- men who had never seen the val'leys of the Susquehanna and the Mohawk, but who lived in London, and as members of the King's Cabinet were in direct charge of the war in America. One of them was the Earl of Dartmouth, the other Lord George Germaine ; but it is to Germaine that we must ascribe the chief odium. The administration of the Province of New York, when the Revolution began, was completely in the hands of Loyalists. New York was still a Crown colony, officials holding their appointments directly from London. Outside the official class, however, there were patriots in plenty ; none of the colonies possessed more ; but as New York City was completely dominated by Tory influences, so was the M'ohawk Valley dominated by the Johnsons and their army of followers, in whom loyalty to England was a deep-seated sentiment and a fixed principle of conduct. Sir William Johnson had died just as the Revolution was about to begin. His successors became not only as great Loyalists as ever he had been, but, being men of smaller minds and fewer talents.