In the aftermath of the Southern Civil War, the back of the independence movement in British Southern America had been broken. There Slaver Planters who had sided against the Crown were, by and large, ruined financially, and their loose coalition of anti-indian, pro-independence, and pro-annexationists (US) shattered in the wake of defeat by the British military and Loyalist bands (including their armed blacks and allied indians of the civilized tribes). For the first few years after the war, many former Confederationists were simply too stunned to do much. By the time the sting of defeat had diminished, many former Confederationists were more interested in regaining their position in the new Dominion, but a few diehards rallied for a time. Disgruntled Southerners, many of them veterans of the Confederationist army, formed small groups who mostly vented their gall against more prosperous blacks and indians by attacking them under cover of night and wearing masks. The most vocal and vicious of these groups was the Scarlet League (perhaps a somewhat ironic name, given the fame of the Sable League). The Scarlet League used ambushes, bombings, and lynchings to strike terror into the hearts of non-whites in the Dominion. Their cowardly attacks rarely targeted white Loyalists, who were ascendant in the Dominion. However, this forebearance did not save the members of the Scarlet League and other secret groups of their ilk from reaping the wrath of Loyalists, many of whom formed Loyalist Leagues. The Loyalist Leagues would march through the towns and cities of the South, sometimes with members of the Scarlet League who had been captured in the act (either by sheriffs, constables, Loyalist League patrollers, or even black and indian self-defense units) tarred and feathered, and then either run out of town or, in the most egregious cases, themselves in turn lynched by their captors. By the 1850s, the last of the Scarlet League leaders had been captured, killed, or fled the country, though occasional lone wolf attackers would raise their ugly visage under the banner of the defunct Scarlet League.