After War Years
After the British left New York City in 1783, he returned to the city installing himself in a mansion on the Bowling Green and reviving the Sons of Liberty. By March, he was calling for the expulsion of any remaining Loyalists in the state by May 1. He and other members of the Sons of Liberty won enough seats in the New York State Assembly in December, 1784 to enact a set of harsh anti-Loyalist laws. He was exposed for buying up soldier's pay certificates at depressed prices and using them to speculate in forfeited Loyalist property. The public regarded this as the height of venality and cynicism. He was again elected to the assembly in 1786, but by then he was deeply in debt and he left the state to avoid arrest. Sears became supercargo on a merchant ship on a trading venture to China. He contracted a fever and died in Canton on October 28, 1786.
Read more about this topic: Isaac Sears
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or years:
“The dead have been awakened—shall I sleep?
The world’s at war with tyrants—shall I crouch?
The harvest’s ripe—and shall I pause to reap?
I slumber not; the thorn is in my couch;
Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear,
Its echo in my heart.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)