Such is the account of this melancholy affair by Dr. Ramsay, a friend of General Washington, and a distinguished officer in the American army. Let us note Dr. Ramsay's admissions and his omissions. He admits that the Tories or Loyalists had been persecuted, imprisoned, plundered, and banished; that no less than twenty-seven of them had been taken, and sent to Hartford, in Connecticut, but were afterwards released; yet he might have added that they were kept prisoners nearly a year, and then discharged for want of any evidence against them. It is also admitted that "others of the same description (as those who had been sent prisoners to Connecticut) were instigated by _revenge_ against the Americans, from whom some of them had suffered banishment and loss of property." It is likewise admitted that the whole invading party consisted of but 1,100 men, of whom only 200 were Tories, the remaining 900 being Indians. But it is not stated that those Indians were neighbours, and many of them the connections of the northern tribes of those Indians whose settlements had been invaded, their fields and towns destroyed, as a precaution lest they should co-operate with the British; nor is it said that many of these Indians were residents in the neighbourhood, and were treated like the Tories.
It furthermore appears from this narrative that the Americans in Wyoming were not even taken by surprise, but were prepared for their enemy; that none were killed except in the conflict of the battle; that the thirty men and two hundred women in the garrison were not murdered, but were "permitted (with their effects) to cross the Susquehanna and retreat to Northampton." The taking of the cattle and burning of the houses and barns was after the example of the Americans in invading and destroying the Indian settlements. It is therefore clear, according to Dr. Ramsay's own narrative, that the "Massacre of Wyoming" was not an _unprovoked aggression_, like that of the Americans against the more Southern Indians, but a _retaliation_ for injuries previously inflicted by the aggressors.[85]
But as the "Massacre of Wyoming" is the case selected by American historians and poets to exhaust their indignation against English cruelty in employing the Indians in the civil war, we will not dismiss it with the above cursory remarks, but will examine it with some degree of minuteness.