He could join the British army and fight against his oppressors, and this he did: New York furnished about fifteen thousand men to fight on the British side.
Plundered himself, he could plunder his enemies, and this too he did both by land and sea.

In the autumn of 1778 ships manned chiefly by Loyalist refugees were terrorizing the coast from Massachusetts to New Jersey.

They plundered Martha's Vineyard, burned some lesser towns, such as New Bedford, and showed no quarter to small parties of American troops whom they managed to intercept.
What happened on the coast happened also in the interior.

At Wyoming in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, in July, 1778, during a raid of Loyalists, aided by Indians, there was a brutal massacre, the horrors of which long served to inspire hate for the British.

A little later in the same year similar events took place at Cherry Valley, in central New York.