The Wars Between England and America
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Title: The Wars Between England and America
Author: Theodore Clarke Smith
Release date: May 2, 2007 [eBook #21276]
Most recently updated: January 2, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WARS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA ***
Produced by Al Haines
THE WARS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA
BY
T. C. SMITH
PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY IN WILLIAMS
COLLEGE, WILLIAMSTOWN MASS., U.S.A.
LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
[Transcriber's note: Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers
enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page
breaks occurred in the original book, in accordance with Project
Gutenberg's FAQ-V-99. For its Index, a page number has been placed
only at the start of that section.]
First printed 1914/15.
{v}
PREFACE
The purpose of this volume is to show how social, economic, and
political causes led to a period of almost continuous antagonism
between England and the American communities from 1763 to the
ratification of the Treaty of Ghent in 1815, and how that antagonism
was ended. The war of American Independence, 1775-1783, and the war of
1812-1815 give their names to the book, not because of their military
or naval importance, but because they mark, in each case, the outcome
of successive years of unavailing efforts on the part of each country
to avoid bloodshed. With this aim in view, no more detailed study of
the internal political history or institutions of either country can be
included than is necessary to account for different political habits;
nor can the events of diplomatic history be developed beyond what is
called for to explain persistent lines of action or the conclusion of a
significant treaty.
{vi}
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE ELEMENTS OF ANTAGONISM, 1763 . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
II THE CONTEST OVER PARLIAMENTARY TAXATION, 1763-1773 . . . 28
III THE DISRUPTION OF THE EMPIRE, 1773-1776 . . . . . . . . . 51
IV THE CIVIL WAR IN THE EMPIRE, 1776-1778 . . . . . . . . . 75
V FRENCH INTERVENTION AND BRITISH FAILURE, 1778-1781 . . . 96
VI BRITISH PARTIES AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, 1778-1783 . . 114
VII THE FORMATION OF THE UNITED STATES, 1781-1793 . . . . . . 129
VIII THE FIRST PERIOD OF COMMERCIAL ANTAGONISM, 1783-1795 . . 149
IX THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1795-1805 169
X THE SECOND PERIOD OF COMMERCIAL ANTAGONISM, 1805-1812 . . 189
XI THE WAR FOR "SAILORS' RIGHTS" AND WESTWARD
EXPANSION, 1812-1815 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
XII END OF THE ANTAGONISM: A CENTURY OF PEACE . . . . . . . . 236
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
{9}
THE WARS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA
CHAPTER I
THE ELEMENTS OF ANTAGONISM, 1763
In 1763, by the Peace of Paris, England won a position of unapproached
supremacy in colonial possessions and in naval strength. The entire
North American continent east of the Mississippi River was now under
the British flag, and four West India sugar islands were added to those
already in English hands. In India, the rivalry of the French was
definitely crushed and the control of the revenues and fortunes of the
native potentates was transferred to the East India Company. Guided by
the genius of Pitt, British armies had beaten French in Germany and
America, and British fleets had conquered French and Spanish with
complete ease. The power of the Empire seemed beyond challenge. Yet
within this Empire itself there lay already the seeds of a discord
which was soon {10} to develop into an irrepressible contest, leading
to civil war; then, for a generation, to drive the separated parts into
renewed antagonism, and finally to cause a second war. Between the
North American colonies and the mother country there existed such
moral, political, and economic divergence that nothing but prudent and
patient statesmanship on both sides of the Atlantic could prevent
disaster.
The fundamental source of antagonism lay in the fact that the thirteen
colonies had developed a wholly different social and political life
from that of the mother country. Originally, the prevailing ideas and
habits of the colonists and of the Englishmen who remained at home had
been substantially the same. In England, as in America, the gentry and
middle classes played a leading part during the years from 1600 to
1660. But by 1763 England, under the Hanoverian kings, had become a
state where all political and social power had been gathered into the
hands of a landed aristocracy which dominated the government, the
Church, and the professions. In parliament, the House of Commons--once
the body which reflected the conscious strength of the gentry and
citizens,--had now fallen under the control of the peers, owing to the
decayed condition of scores of ancient parliamentary boroughs. Nearly
one-third of the seats were actually {11} or substantially owned by
noblemen, and of the remainder a majority were venal, the close
corporations of Mayor and Aldermen selling freely their right to return
two members at each parliamentary election. In addition, the influence
and prestige of the great landowners were so powerful that even in the
counties, and in those boroughs where the number of electors was
considerable, none but members of the ruling class sought election. So
far as the members of the middle class were concerned--the merchants,
master weavers, iron producers, and craftsmen,--they were strong in
wealth and their wishes counted heavily with the aristocracy in all
legislation of a financial or commercial nature; but of actual part in
the government they had none. As for the lower classes,--the
labourers, tenant farmers, and shopkeepers,--they were able as a rule
to influence government only by rioting and uproar. Without the
ballot, they had no other way.
Owing to the personal weakness of successive monarchs since the death
of William III, there had grown up the cabinet system of government
which, in 1763, meant the reduction of the King to the position of an
honorary figurehead and the actual control of officers, perquisites,
patronage, and preferment, as well as the direction of public policy,
by the leaders of parliamentary groups. The King was {12} obliged to
select his ministers from among the members of noble families in the
Lords or Commons, who agreed among themselves after elaborate bargains
and negotiations upon the formation of cabinets and the distribution of
honours. In this way sundry great Whig family "connections," as they
were called, had come to monopolize political power, excluding Tories,
or adherents of the Stuarts, and treating government as solely a matter
of aristocratic concern. Into this limited circle, a poor man could
rise only by making himself useful through his talents or his eloquence
to one of the ruling cliques, and the goal of his career was naturally
a peerage.
The weakness of this system of government by family connection lay in
its thorough dependence upon customs of patronage and perquisite. The
public offices were heavily burdened with lucrative sinecures, which
were used in the factional contests to buy support in Parliament, as
were also peerages, contracts, and money bribes. When George III
ascended the throne, in 1760, he found the most powerful Minister in
the Cabinet to be the Duke of Newcastle, whose sole qualification,
apart from his birth, was his pre-eminent ability to handle patronage
and purchase votes. That such a system did not ruin England was due to
the tenacity and personal courage of this aristocracy and to {13} its
use of parliamentary methods, whereby the orderly conduct of
legislation and taxation and the habit of public attack and defence of
government measures furnished political training for the whole ruling
class. Further, the absence of any sharp caste lines made it possible
for them to turn, in times of crisis, to such strong-fibred and
masterful commoners as Walpole and Pitt, each of whom, in his way,
saved the country from the incompetent hands of titled ministries.
This system, moreover, rested in 1763 on the aquiescence of practically
all Englishmen. It was accepted by middle and lower classes alike as
normal and admirable; and only a small body of radicals felt called
upon to criticize the exclusion of the mass of taxpayers from a share
in the government. Pitt, in Parliament, was ready to proclaim a
national will as something distinct from the voice of the
borough-owners, but he had few followers. Only in London and a few
counties did sundry advocates of parliamentary reform strive in the
years after 1763 to emphasize these views by organizing the freemen to
petition and to "instruct" their representatives in the Commons. Such
desires evoked nothing but contempt and antipathy in the great majority
of Englishmen. Especially when they became audible in the mouths of
rioters did they appear revolutionary and {14} obnoxious to the lovers
of peace, good order, and the undisturbed collection of rents and
taxes. Nothing but a genuine social revolution could bring such ideas
to victory and that, in 1763, lay very far in the future. For the time
conservatism reigned supreme.
In the thirteen colonies, on the other hand, the communities of
middle-class Englishmen who emigrated in the seventeenth century had
developed nothing resembling a real aristocracy. Social distinctions,
modelled on those of the old country, remained between the men of large
wealth--such as the great landed proprietors in New York and the
planters in the South, or the successful merchants in New England and
the Middle colonies--and the small farmers, shopkeepers, and fishermen,
who formed the bulk of the population; while all of these joined in
regarding the outlying frontiersmen as elements of society deserving of
small consideration. Men of property, education, and "position"
exercised a distinct leadership in public and private life. Yet all
this remained purely social; in law no such thing as an aristocracy
could be found, and in government the colonies had grown to be very
nearly republican. Here lay the fundamental distinction between the
England and the America of 1763. In America, a title or peerage
conferred no political rights {15} whatever; these were founded in
every case on law, on a royal charter or a royal commission which
established a frame of government, and were based on moderate property
qualifications which admitted a majority of adult males to the suffrage
and to office.
In every colony the government consisted of a governor, a council, and
an assembly representing the freemen. This body, by charter, or royal
instructions, had the full right to impose taxes and vote laws; and,
although its acts were liable to veto by the governor, or by the Crown
through the Privy Council, it possessed the actual control of political
power. This it derived immediately from its constituents and not from
any patrons, lords, or close corporations. Representation and the
popular will were, in fact, indissolubly united.
The governor in two colonies, Connecticut and Rhode Island, was chosen
by the freemen. Elsewhere, he was appointed by an outside authority:
in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland by the hereditary proprietor to
whom the charter had been granted, in all other colonies by the Crown.
The councillors, who commonly exercised judicial functions in addition
to their duties as the governor's advisers and as the upper house of
the legislature, were appointed in all colonies except the three in New
England; {16} and they were chosen in all cases from among the socially
prominent colonists. The judges, also, were appointed by the governor;
and they, with governor and council, were supposed to represent the
home government in the colonies.
But in reality there was no effective imperial control. The Crown, it
is true, appeared to have large powers. It granted charters,
established provinces by commissions, exercised the right to annul laws
and hear appeals from colonial decisions, exacted reports from
governors, sent instructions, and made appointments and removals at
will. But nearly all the colonial officials, except the few customs
officers, were paid out of colonial appropriations, and this one fact
sufficed to deprive them of any independent position. In nearly every
colony, the assembly, in the course of two-thirds of a century of
incessant petty conflict, of incessant wrangling and bargaining, of
incessant encroachments on the nominal legal powers of the governor,
had made itself master of the administration. The colonists resisted
all attempts to direct their military or civil policy, laid only such
taxes as they chose, raised only such troops as they saw fit, passed
only such laws as seemed to them desirable, and tied the governor's
hands by every sort of device. They usurped the {17} appointment of
the colonial treasurer, they appointed committees to oversee the
expenditure of sums voted, they systematically withheld a salary from
the governor, in order to render him dependent upon annual "presents,"
liable to diminution or termination in case he did not satisfy the
assembly's wishes. The history of the years from 1689 to 1763 is a
chronicle of continual defeat for governors who were obliged to see one
power after another wrenched away from them. Under the circumstances,
the political life of the thirteen colonies was practically republican
in character, and was as marked for its absence of administrative
machinery as the home government was for its aristocracy and
centralization.
Another feature of colonial life tended to accentuate this difference.
Although religion had ceased to be a political question, and the
English Church was no longer regarded, save in New England, as
dangerous to liberty, the fact that the great majority of the colonists
were dissenters--Congregational, Presbyterian, or Reformed, with a
considerable scattering of Baptists and other sects--had an effect on
the attitude of the people toward England. In the home country, the
controlling social classes accepted the established church as part of
the constitution; but in the colonies it had small {18} strength, and
even where it was by law established it remained little more than an
official body, the "Governor's church." This tended to widen the gap
between the political views of the individualistic dissenting and
Puritan sects in the colonies and the people at home.
The American of 1763 was thus a different kind of man from the
Englishman. As a result of the divergent development on the two sides
of the Atlantic from a common ancestry, their political habits had
become mutually incomprehensible. To the Englishman, the rule of the
nobility was normal--the ideal political system. He was content, if a
commoner, with the place assigned to him. To the colonist, on the
other hand, government in which the majority of adult male inhabitants
possessed the chief power was the only valid form,--all others were
vicious. Patriotism meant two contradictory things. The Englishman's
patriotism was sturdy but unenthusiastic, and showed itself almost as
much in a contempt for foreigners as in complacency over English
institutions. The colonist, on the contrary, had a double allegiance:
one conventional and traditional, to the British crown; the other a
new, intensely local and narrow attachment to his province. England
was still the "old home," looked to as the source of political
authority, of manners and literature. It was for many of {19} the
residents their recent abode and, for all except a few of Dutch,
German, or French extraction, their ancestral country. But already
this "loyalty" on the part of the colonists was dwindling into
something more sentimental than real. The genuine local patriotism of
the colonists was shown by their persistent struggle against the
representatives of English authority in the governors' chairs. There
had developed in America a new sort of man, an "American," who wished
to be as independent of government as possible, and who, while
professing and no doubt feeling a general loyalty to England, was in
fact a patriot of his own colony.
The colonists entered very slightly into the thoughts of the English
noblemen and gentry. They were regarded in a highly practical way,
without a trace of any sentiment, as members of the middle and lower
classes, not without a large criminal admixture, who had been helped
and allowed to build up some unruly and not very admirable communities.
Nor did the English middle classes look upon the colonists with much
interest, or regard them as, on the whole, their equals. The
prevailing colonial political habits, as seen from England, suggested
only unwarrantable wrangling indicative of political incompetence and a
spirit of disobedience. Loyalty, to an {20} Englishman, meant
submission to the law. To men trained in such different schools, words
did not mean the same thing. The time had come when the two peoples
were scarcely able to understand each other.
A second cause for antagonism, scarcely less fundamental and destined
to cause equal irritation, is to be found in the conflict between the
economic life of the American communities and the beliefs of the mother
country concerning commercial and naval policy. Great Britain, in
1763, was predominantly a trading country. Its ships carried goods for
all the nations of Europe and brought imports to England from all
lands. Although the manufacturers were not yet in possession of the
new inventions which were to revolutionize the industries of the world,
they were active and prosperous in their domestic production of
hardware and textiles, and they furnished cargoes for the shipowners to
transport to all quarters. To these two great interests of the middle
classes, banking and finance were largely subsidiary. Agriculture, the
mainstay of the nobility and gentry, continued to hold first place in
the interests of the governing classes, but the importance of all
sources of wealth was fully recognized.
In the colonies, on the contrary, manufacture scarcely existed beyond
the domestic {21} production of articles for local use; and the
inhabitants relied on importations for nearly all finished commodities
and for all luxuries. Their products were chiefly things which Great
Britain could not itself raise, such as sugar in the West Indies;
tobacco from the islands and the southern mainland colonies; indigo and
rice from Carolina; furs, skins, masts, pine products; and, from New
England, above all, fish. The natural market for these articles was in
England or in other colonies; and in return British manufactures found
their natural market in the new communities. When the Economic
Revolution transformed industry, and factories, driven by steam, made
England the workshop of the world, the existing tendency for her to
supply America with manufactured products was intensified regardless of
the political separation of the two countries. Not until later
economic changes supervened was this normal relationship altered.
The traditional British policy in 1763 was that of the so-called
Mercantile System, which involved a thoroughgoing application of the
principle of protection to the British shipowner, manufacturer, and
corn-grower against any competition. An elaborate tariff, with a
system of prohibitions and bounties, attempted to prevent the landowner
from being undersold by foreign corn, and the {22} manufacturer from
meeting competition from foreign producers. Navigation Acts shut out
foreign-built, -owned, or -manned ships from the carrying trade between
any region but their home country and England, reserving all other
commerce for British vessels. Into this last restriction there entered
another purely political consideration, namely, the perpetuation of a
supply of mariners for the British navy, whose importance was fully
recognized. So far as the colonies were concerned, they were brought
within the scope of mercantilist ideas by being considered as sources
of supply for England in products not possible to raise at home, as
markets which must be reserved for British manufacturers and traders,
and as places which must not be allowed to develop any rivalry to
British producers. Furthermore, they were so situated that by proper
regulations they might serve to encourage British shipping even if this
involved an economic loss.
The Navigation Acts accordingly, from 1660 to 1763, were designed to
put this theory into operation, and excluded all foreign vessels from
trading with the colonies, prohibited any trade to the colonies except
from British ports and enumerated certain commodities--sugar, cotton,
dye woods, indigo, rice, furs--which could be sent only to England. To
ensure the carrying out of these {23} laws, an elaborate system of
bonds and local duties was devised, and customs officers were
appointed, resident in the colonies, while governors were obliged to
take oath to enforce the Acts. As time revealed defects or unnecessary
stringencies, the restrictions were frequently modified. The
Carolinas, for instance, were allowed to ship rice not only to England,
but to any place in Europe south of Cape Finisterre. Bounties were
established to aid the production of tar and turpentine; but special
Acts prohibited the export of hats from the colonies, or the
manufacture of rolled iron, in order to check a possible source of
competition to British producers. In short, the Board of Trade, the
administrative body charged with the oversight of the plantations,
devoted its energies to suggesting devices which should aid the
colonists, benefit the British consumer and producer, and increase
"navigation."
It does not appear that the Acts of Trade were, in general, a source of
loss to the colonies. Their vessels shared in the privileges reserved
for British-built ships. The compulsory sending of the enumerated
commodities to England may have damaged the tobacco-growers; but in
other respects it did little harm. The articles would have gone to
England in any case. The restriction of importation to goods from
England was no {24} great grievance, since British products would, in
any case, have supplied the American market. Even the effort, by an
Act of 1672, to check intercolonial trade in enumerated commodities was
not oppressive, for, with one exception noted below, there was no great
development of such a trade. By 1763, according to the best evidence,
the thirteen colonies seem to have adjusted their habits to the
Navigation Acts, and to have been carrying on their flourishing
commerce within these restrictions.
To this general condition, however, there were some slight exceptions,
and one serious one. The colonists undoubtedly resented the necessity
of purchasing European products from English middlemen, and were
especially desirous of importing Spanish and Portuguese wines and
French brandies directly. Smuggling in these articles seems to have
been steadily carried on. Much more important--and to the American
ship-owners the kernel of the whole matter--was the problem of the West
India trade. It was proved, as the eighteenth century progressed, that
the North American colonies could balance their heavy indebtedness to
the mother country for excess of imports over exports only by selling
to the French, as well as the British West Indies, barrel staves,
clapboards, fish and food products. In {25} return, they took sugar
and molasses, developing in New England a flourishing rum manufacture,
which in turn was used in the African slave trade. By these means the
people of the New England and Middle colonies built up an active
commerce, using their profits to balance their indebtedness to England.
This "triangular trade" disturbed the British West India planters, who,
being largely non-residents and very influential in London, induced
Parliament, in 1733, to pass an Act imposing prohibitory duties on all
sugar and molasses of foreign growth. This law, if enforced, would
have struck a damaging blow at the prosperity of the Northern colonies,
merely to benefit the West India sugar-growers by giving them a
monopoly; but the evidence goes to show that it was systematically
evaded and that French sugar, together with French and Portuguese
wines, was still habitually smuggled into the colonies. Thus the
Navigation Acts, in the only points where they would have been actually
oppressive, were not enforced. The colonial governors saw the serious
consequences and shrank from arousing discontent. It is significant
that the same colonists who contended with the royal governors did not
hesitate to violate a parliamentary law when it ran counter to their
interests.
The only reason why the radical difference {26} between the colonies
and the home government did not cause open conflict long before 1763 is
to be found in the absorption of the English ministries in
parliamentary manoeuvring at home, diplomacy, and European wars. The
weakness of the imperial control was recognized and frequently
complained of by governors, Boards of Trade, and other officials; but
so long as the colonies continued to supply the sugar, furs, lumber and
masts called for by the Acts, bought largely from English shippers and
manufacturers, and stimulated the growth of British shipping, the Whig
and Tory noblemen were content. The rapidly growing republicanism of
the provincial and proprietary governments was ignored and allowed to
develop unchecked. A half-century of complaints from thwarted
governors, teeming with suggestions that England ought to take the
government of the colonies into its own hands, produced no results
beyond creating in official circles an opinion unfavourable to the
colonists.
In the years of the French war, 1754-1760, the utter incompatibility
between imperial theories on the one hand and colonial political habits
on the other, could no longer be disregarded. In the midst of the
struggle, the legislatures continued to wrangle with governors over
points of privilege; they were slow to vote supplies; they were {27}
dilatory in raising troops; they hung back from a jealous fear that
their neighbour colonies might fail to do their share; they were ready
to let British soldiers do all the hard fighting. Worse still, the
colonial shipowners persisted in their trade with the French and
Spanish West Indies, furnishing their enemies with supplies, and buying
their sugar and molasses as usual. When, in Boston, writs of
assistance were employed by the customs officials, in order that by a
general power of search they might discover such smuggled property, the
merchants protested in the courts, and James Otis, a fiery young
lawyer, boldly declared the writs an infringement of the rights of the
colonists, unconstitutional, and beyond the power of Parliament to
authorize. To Ministers engaged in a tremendous war for the overthrow
of France, the behaviour of the colonies revealed a spirit scarcely
short of disloyalty, and a weakness of government no longer to be
tolerated. The Secretaries, the Board of Trade, the customs officials,
army officers, naval commanders, colonial governors, and judges all
agreed that the time had come for a thorough and drastic reform. They
approached the task purely and simply as members of the English
governing classes, ignorant of the colonists' political ideas and
totally indifferent to their views; and their measures were framed in
the spirit {28} of unquestioning acceptance of the principles of the
Acts of Trade as a fundamental national policy.
CHAPTER II
THE CONTEST OVER PARLIAMENTARY TAXATION, 1763-1773
The Prime Minister responsible for the new colonial policy was George
Grenville, who assumed his position in May, 1763, shortly after the
final treaty of Paris. Every other member of his Cabinet was a
nobleman, Grenville himself was brother of an earl, and most of them
had had places in preceding Ministries. It was a typical
administration of the period, completely aristocratic in membership and
spirit, quite indifferent to colonial views, and incapable of
comprehending colonial ideals even if they had known them. To them the
business in hand was a purely practical one; and with confident energy
Grenville pushed through a series of measures, which had been carefully
worked out, of course, by minor officials unknown to fame, during the
preceding months, {29} but which were destined to produce results
undreamed of by any one in England.
In the first place, there were a number of measures to strengthen and
revivify the Acts of Trade. Colonists were given new privileges in the
whale fishery, hides and skins were "enumerated," and steps were taken
to secure a more rigorous execution of the Acts by the employment of
naval vessels against smuggling. A new Sugar Act reduced the tariff on
foreign sugar to such a point that it would be heavily protective
without being prohibitive, and at the same time imposed special duties
on Portuguese wines, while providing additional machinery for
collecting customs. This was clearly aimed at the weak point in the
existing navigation system; but it introduced a new feature, for the
sugar duties, unlike previous ones, were intended to raise a revenue,
and this, it was provided in the Act, should be used to pay for the
defence of America.
A second new policy was inaugurated in a proclamation of October, 1763,
which made Florida and Canada despotically governed provinces, and set
off all the land west of the head-waters of the rivers running into the
Atlantic as an Indian reservation. No further land grants were to be
made in that region, nor was any trade to be permitted with the Indians
save by royal licence. The {30} Imperial government thus assumed
control of Indian policy, and endeavoured to check any further growth
of the existing communities to the West. Such a scheme necessitated
the creation of a royal standing army in America on a larger scale than
the previous garrisons; and this plan led to the third branch of the
new policy, which contemplated the positive interposition of Parliament
to remedy the shortcomings of colonial assemblies. An Act of 1764
prohibited the future issue of any paper money by any colony, thus
terminating one of the chief grievances of British governors and
merchants. But still more striking was an Act of 1765, which provided
with great elaboration for the collection of a stamp tax in the
colonies upon all legal documents, newspapers, and pamphlets. The
proceeds were to be used to pay about one-third of the cost of the new
standing army, which was to consist of ten thousand men. Taken in
connection with the announced intention of using the revenue from the
Sugar Act for the same purpose, it is obvious that Grenville's measures
were meant to relieve the Imperial government from the necessity of
depending in future upon the erratic and unmanageable colonial
legislatures. They were parts of a general political and financial
programme. There is not the slightest evidence that Grenville or his
associates dreamed {31} that they were in any way affecting the
colonists' rights or restricting their liberties. Grenville did
consult the colonial agents--individuals authorized to represent the
colonial assemblies in England--but simply with a view to meeting
practical objections. The various proclamations or orders were issued
without opposition, and the bills passed Parliament almost unnoticed.
The British governing class was but slightly concerned with colonial
reform: the Board of Trade, the colonial officials, and the responsible
Ministers were the only people interested.
To the astonishment of the Cabinet and of the English public, the new
measures, especially the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act, raised a storm of
opposition in the colonies unlike anything in their history. The
reasons are obvious. If the new Sugar Act was to be enforced, it meant
the end of the flourishing French West India intercourse and the death
of the "triangular" trade. Every distiller, shipowner, and exporter of
fish, timber, or grain, felt himself threatened with ruin. If the
Stamp Act were enforced, it meant the collection of a tax from
communities already in debt from the French wars, which were in future
to be denied the facile escape from heavy taxes hitherto afforded by
bills of credit. But the economic burdens threatened were almost lost
sight of in the political {32} dangers. If England meant to impose
taxes by parliamentary vote for military purposes, instead of calling
upon the colonists to furnish money and men, it meant a deadly blow to
the importance of the assemblies. They could no longer exercise
complete control over their property and their finances. They would
sink to the status of mere municipal bodies. So far as the Americans
of 1765 were concerned, the feeling was universal that such a change
was intolerable, that if they ceased to have the full power to give or
withhold taxes at their discretion they were practically slaves.
In every colony there sprang to the front leaders who voiced these
sentiments in impassioned speeches and pamphlets; for the most part
young men, many of them lawyers accustomed to look for popular approval
in resisting royal governors. Such men as James Otis and Samuel Adams
in Massachusetts, William Livingston in New York, Patrick Henry in
Virginia, Christopher Gadsden in South Carolina denounced the Stamp Act
as tyrannous, unconstitutional, and an infringement of the liberties of
the colonists. Popular anger rose steadily until, in the autumn, when
the stamps arrived, the people of the thirteen colonies had nerved
themselves to the pitch of refusing to obey the Act. Under pressure
from crowds of angry men, {33} every distributor was compelled to
resign, the stamps were in some cases destroyed, and in Boston the
houses of unpopular officials were mobbed and sacked. Before the
excitement, the governors stood utterly helpless. They could do
nothing to carry out the Act.
In October, delegates representing nearly all the colonies met at New
York, and drafted resolutions expressing their firm belief that no tax
could legally be levied upon them but by their own consent, given
through their legislatures. It was the right of Englishmen not to be
taxed without their consent. Petitions in respectful but determined
language were sent to the King and to Parliament, praying for the
repeal of the Stamp Act and the Sugar Act. For the first time in their
history, the colonies stood together in full harmony to denounce and
reject an Act passed by Parliament. As a social and political fact,
this unanimous demonstration of colonial feeling was of profound
significance. The ease and ability with which the lawyers, planters,
farmers, or merchants directed the popular excitement into effective
channels showed the widespread political education of the Americans. A
not dissimilar excitement in London in the same years found no other
means of expressing itself than bloody rioting. It was American {34}
republicanism showing its strongest aspect in political resistance.
The issue thus presented to the British government was one demanding
the most careful consideration and far-seeing wisdom in its treatment.
Grenville's measures, however admirable and reasonable in themselves,
had stirred the bitter opposition of all the colonists, and the
enforcement or modification of them called for steadiness and courage.
Were the English governing noblemen of the day ready to persist in the
new policy? If so, it meant violent controversy and possibly colonial
insurrection; but the exertion of British authority, if coupled with
strong naval pressure, ought to prevail. Angry as the colonists were,
their language indicates that revolution was not in their thoughts;
and, if there was one quality beyond all others in which the British
aristocracy excelled, it was an inflexible tenacity when once a policy
was definitely embraced. Unfortunately for both sides, the clear-cut
issue thus raised was obscured and distorted by the presence on the
throne of an ambitious young prince with a policy which threw British
domestic affairs into unexampled confusion.
George III, obstinate, narrow-minded, and determined to make his own
will felt in the choice of Ministers and the direction of affairs, had
succeeded his grandfather in 1760. Too {35} astute to violate the
fast-bound tradition of the British constitution that he must govern
only through Ministers, he saw that to have his own way he must secure
political servants who, while acting as Cabinet Ministers, should take
their orders from him. He also saw that to destroy the hold of the
Whig family cliques he must enter politics himself and buy, intimidate,
and cajole in order to win a following for his Ministers in parliament.
With this ideal in view, he subordinated all other considerations to
the single one of getting subservient Ministers, and fought or
intrigued against any Cabinet which did not accept his direction,
until, in 1770, he finally triumphed. In the meantime he had kept
England under a fluctuating succession of Ministries which forbade the
maintenance of any coherent or authoritative colonial policy such as
alone could have prevented disaster.
In 1761 George III tried to induce Parliament to accept the leadership
of the Earl of Bute, his former tutor, who had never held public
office; but his rapid rise to the Premiership aroused such jealousy
among the nobility and such unpopularity among the people that the
unfortunate Scot quailed before the storm of ridicule and abuse. He
resigned in 1763, and was succeeded by Grenville, who instantly showed
George III that he would take no dictation. On the contrary, {36} he
drove the King to the point of fury by his masterfulness. In
desperation, George then turned to the Marquis of Rockingham who, if
equally determined to decline royal dictation, was personally less
offensive to him; and there came in a Ministry of the usual type, all
noblemen but two minor members, and all belonging to "connections"
different from those of the Grenville Ministry. Thus it was that, when
the unanimous defiance of the Americans reached England, the Ministers
responsible for the colonial reforms were out of office, and the
Rockingham Whigs had assumed control, feeling no obligation to continue
anything begun by their predecessors. George III's interposition was
responsible for this situation.
When Parliament met in January, 1766, the colonists received powerful
allies, first in the British merchants, who petitioned against the Act
as causing the practical stoppage of American purchases, and second in
William Pitt, who, in a burning speech, embraced in full the colonists'
position, and declared that a parliamentary tax upon the plantations
was absolutely contrary to the rights of Englishmen. He "rejoiced that
America has resisted." This radical position found few followers; but
the Whig Ministry, after some hesitation, decided to grant the colonial
demands while insisting {37} on the imperial rights of Parliament.
This characteristically English action was highly distasteful to the
majority in the House of Lords, who voted to execute the law, and to
George III, who disliked to yield to mutinous subjects; but they were
forced to give way. The Stamp Act was repealed, and the sugar duties
were reduced to a low figure. At the same time a Declaratory Act was
passed, asserting that Parliament had full power to bind the colonies
"in all cases whatsoever." Thus the Americans had their way in part,
while submitting to seeing their arguments rejected.
The consequences of this unfortunate affair were to bring into sharp
contrast the British and the American views of the status of the
colonies. The former considered them as parts of the realm, subject
like any other part to the legislative authority of King, Lords, and
Commons. The contention of the colonists, arising naturally from the
true situation in each colonial government, that the rights of
Englishmen guaranteed their freedom from taxation without
representation, was answered by the perfectly sound legal assertion
that the colonists, like all the people of England, were "virtually"
represented in the House of Commons. The words, in short, meant one
thing in England, another thing in America. English speakers {38} and
writers pointed to the scores of statutes affecting the colonies,
calling attention especially to the export duties of the Navigation Act
of 1672, and the import duties of the Act of 1733, not to mention its
revision of 1764. Further, Parliament had regulated provincial coinage
and money, had set up a postal service, and established rates.
Although Parliament had not imposed any such tax as the Stamp Act, it
had, so far as precedent showed, exercised financial powers on many
occasions.
To meet the British appeal to history, the colonists developed the
theory that commercial regulation, including the imposition of customs
duties, was "external" and hence lay naturally within the scope of
imperial legislation, but that "internal" taxation was necessarily in
the hands of the colonial assemblies. There was sufficient
plausibility in this claim to commend it to Pitt, who adopted it in his
speeches, and to Benjamin Franklin, the agent for Pennsylvania, already
well known as a "philosopher," who expounded it confidently when he was
examined as an expert on American affairs at the bar of the Commons.
It was, however, without any clear legal justification, and, as English
speakers kept pointing out, it was wholly incompatible with the
existence of a genuine imperial government. That it was {39} a
perfectly practical distinction, in keeping with English customs, was
also true; but that was not to be realized until three-quarters of a
century later.
With the repeal of the objectionable law the uproar in America ceased,
and, amid profuse expressions of gratitude to Pitt, the Ministry, and
the King, the colonists returned to their normal activities. The other
parts of the Grenville programme were not altered, and it was now
possible for English Ministers, by a wise and steady policy, to improve
the weak spots in the colonial system without giving undue offence to a
population whose sensitiveness and obstinate devotion to entire
self-government had been so powerfully shown. Unfortunately, the King
again interposed his influence in such wise as to prevent any rational
colonial policy. In the summer of 1766, tiring of the Rockingham
Ministry, he managed to bring together an odd coalition of political
groups under the nominal headship of the Duke of Grafton. Pitt, who
disliked the family cliques, accepted office and the title of Earl of
Chatham, hoping to lead a national Ministry. The other elements were
in part Whig, and in part representatives of the so-called "King's
Friends"--a growing body of more or less venal politicians who clung to
George's support for the sake of the patronage to be {40} gained--and
several genuine Tories who looked to a revived royal power to end the
Whig monopoly. From such a Cabinet no consistent policy was to be
expected, save under leadership of a man like Pitt. Unfortunately the
latter was immediately taken with an illness which kept him out of
public life for two years; and Grafton, the nominal Prime Minister, was
utterly unable to hold his own against the influence and intrigues of
the King. From the start, accordingly, the Ministry proved weak and
unstable, and it allowed a new set of colonial quarrels to develop.
Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, one of the originators
of the new colonial policy under the Bute Ministry, was so ill-advised
as to renew the attempt to raise a colonial revenue by parliamentary
taxation. His manner of proposing the measure gave the impression that
it was a piece of sheer bravado on his part, intended to regain the
prestige which he had lost by failing to carry all of his first budget;
but the nature of the scheme indicates its close connection with the
Grenville ideals. Avoiding the appearance of a direct internal tax, he
caused the imposition of duties on glass, painters' colours, paper, and
tea, without any pretence of regulating commerce, but for the announced
purpose of defraying the expenses {41} of governors and judges in the
colonies. Another measure established an American Board of
Commissioners for customs. Still another punished the province of New
York for failing to comply with an Act of 1765 authorizing quartering
of troops in the colonies. The assembly was forbidden to pass any law
until it should make provision for the soldiers in question.
Ex-governor Pownall of Massachusetts, now in Parliament, did not fail
to warn the House of the danger into which it was running; but his
words were unheeded, and the Bills passed promptly.
The result of these measures was inevitable. Every political leader in
the colonies--nay, every voter--saw that the Townshend duties, while in
form "external," were pure revenue measures, unconnected with the Acts
of Trade, and intended to strike at colonial independence in a vital
point. If Great Britain undertook henceforward to pay the salaries of
royal officials, one of the principal sources of power would be taken
away from the assemblies. Instantly the distinction of "external" and
"internal" taxation was abandoned; and from end to end of the Atlantic
seaboard a cry went up that the duties were an insidious attack on the
liberties of the Americans, an outrageous taking of their property
without their consent, and a wanton interference with their {42}
governments. Not merely agitators such as the shrewd Samuel Adams and
the eloquent Patrick Henry uttered these views, but men of far more
considerable property and station--such as John Jay and New York
landowners and importers, John Dickinson and the Philadelphia
merchants, George Washington and the Virginia planters. While no
general Congress was summoned, the legislatures of the colonies adopted
elaborate resolutions, pamphleteers issued a stream of denunciations,
and, most important of all, a concerted effort was made to break down
the Acts by abstaining from any importations, not only of the taxed
commodities, but, so far as possible, of any British products.
Commercial boycott, it was hoped, would have the same effect as at the
time of the Stamp Act.
By this time the colonial argument had come to assume a much broader
character, for, in order to deny the validity of the New York Assembly
Act and the Townshend duties, it became necessary to assert that
Parliament, according to "natural rights," had no legislative authority
over the internal affairs of a colony. This was vested, by the
constitution of each province or chartered colony, in the Crown and the
colonial legislature. Such a theory reduced the imperial tie to little
more than a personal union through the monarch, coupled with the {43}
admitted power of Parliament to regulate commerce and navigation.
Evidently, as in all such cases, the theory was framed to justify a
particular desire, namely, to keep things where they had been prior to
1763. The sole question at issue was, in reality, one of power, not of
abstract or legal right. Once more it was clear to men of penetrating
vision that the American colonies needed extremely careful handling.
Whether their arguments were sound or fallacious, loyal or seditious,
it was significant that the whole continent spoke with one voice and
felt but one desire--to be allowed to exercise complete financial
discretion and to retain full control over governors and judges.
Unfortunately the condition of things in England was such that a cool
or steady treatment of the question was becoming impossible. In the
first place, the Grafton Ministry was reconstituted in 1768, the
"Pittite" elements withdrawing, and being replaced by more King's
Friends and Tories, while George III's influence grew predominant.
Townshend died in September, 1767, but his place was taken by Lord
North, a Tory and especially subservient to the King. A new
secretaryship for the colonies was given to Lord Hillsborough, who had
been in the Board of Trade in the Grenville Ministry, and represented
his views. Neither of these {44} men was inclined to consider colonial
clamour in any other light than as unpardonable impudence and sedition.
In the second place, the old Whig family groups were fast assuming an
attitude of bitter opposition to the new Tories, and by 1768 were
prepared to use the American question as a convenient weapon to
discredit the Ministry. They were quite as aristocratic in temper as
the ministerial party, but advocated forbearance, conciliation, and
calmness in dealing with the Americans, in speeches as remarkable for
their political good sense as for their ferocity toward North,
Hillsborough, and the rest. While the Ministry drew its views of the
American situation from royal governors and officials, the Whigs
habitually consulted with Franklin and the other colonial agents, who
occupied a quasi-diplomatic position. Thus the American question
became a partisan battleground. The Tories, attacked by the Whigs,
developed a stubborn obstinacy in holding to a "firm" colonial policy,
and exhibited a steady contempt and anger toward their American
adversaries which was in no small degree due to the English party
antagonism.
Still further to confuse the situation, there occurred at this time the
contest of John Wilkes, backed by the London mob, against the Grafton
Ministry. This demagogue, able {45} and profligate, had already come
into conflict with the Grenville Ministry in 1765, and had been driven
into exile. Now, in 1768, he returned and was repeatedly elected to
the Commons, and as often unseated by the vindictive ministerial
majority. Riots and bloodshed accompanied the agitation; and Wilkes
and his supporters, backed by the parliamentary Whigs, habitually
proclaimed the same doctrines of natural rights which were universally
asserted in America. To the King and his Cabinet, Wilkes and the
American leaders appeared indistinguishable. They were all brawling,
disorderly, and dangerous demagogues, deserving of no consideration.
Under these circumstances, the complaints of the colonists, although
supported by the Whigs and by Chatham, received scant courtesy in
England. The Grafton Ministry showed nothing but an irritated
intention to maintain imperial supremacy by insisting on the taxes and
demanding submissiveness on the part of the assemblies. A series of
"firm" instructions was sent out by Hillsborough, typical of which was
an order that the Massachusetts legislature must rescind its circular
letter of protest under threat of dissolution, and that the other
assemblies must repudiate the letter under a similar menace. The sole
result was a series of embittered wrangles, dissolutions, protests,
{46} and quarrels which left the colonists still more inflamed. Then,
at the suggestion of the Commissioners of Customs, two regiments of
troops were sent to Boston to over-awe that particularly defiant
colony. There being no legislature in session, the Massachusetts towns
sent delegates to a voluntary convention which drafted a protest.
Immediately, this action was denounced by Hillsborough as seditious and
was censured by Parliament; while the Duke of Bedford moved that an old
statute of Henry VIII, by which offenders outside the realm could be
brought to England for trial, should be put into operation against the
colonial agitators. When the Virginia legislature protested against
this step, it was dissolved. Hillsborough and North acted as though
they believed that a policy of scolding and nagging, if made
sufficiently disagreeable, would bring the colonists to their senses.
That the Whigs did not cease to pour contempt and ridicule on the folly
of such behaviour was probably one reason why the government persisted
in its course. The American question was coming to be beyond the reach
of reason.
Yet in 1769 the Ministry could not avoid recognizing that as financial
measures the Townshend duties were a hopeless failure, since their net
proceeds were less than 300 pounds and the increased military expenses
were {47} declared by Pownall to be over 170,000 pounds. On May 1,
1769, the Cabinet voted to repeal the taxes on glass, colours, and
paper, but by a majority of one determined to keep the tea duty. This
decision was due to the complaisance of Lord North, who saw the
unwisdom of the step, but yielded to the King's wish to retain one tax
in order to assert the principle of parliamentary supremacy. A year
later, the Grafton Ministry finally broke up; and Lord North assumed
control, with a Cabinet composed wholly of Tories and supported by
George III to the full extent of his power, through patronage, bribes,
social pressure, and political proscription. North himself was
inclined to moderation in colonial matters. He carried the promised
repeal of all the duties but the tea tax, and in 1772 replaced the
arrogant and quarrelsome Hillsborough with the more amiable Lord
Dartmouth. It looked for a while as though the political skies might
clear, for the American merchants, tired of their self-imposed
hardships, began to weaken in opposition. In 1769 the New York
assembly voted to accept the parliamentary terms; and in 1770 the
merchants of that colony voted to abandon general non-importation,
keeping only the boycott on tea. This led to the general collapse of
the non-importation agreements; but the colonial temper continued to be
defiant and {48} suspicious, and wrangling with governors was incessant.
Occasional cases of violence confirmed the English Tories in their low
view of the Americans. In March, 1770, a riot in Boston between town
rowdies and the soldiers brought on a shooting affray in which five
citizens were killed. This created intense indignation throughout the
colonies, regardless of the provocation received by the soldiers, and
led to an annual commemoration of the "Boston Massacre," marked by
inflammatory speeches. The soldiers, however, when tried for murder in
the local courts, were defended by prominent counsel, notably John
Adams, and were acquitted. Two years later, on June 9, 1772, the
_Gaspee_, a naval schooner, which had been very active in chasing
smugglers in Rhode Island waters, was burned by a mob, and its captain
taken prisoner. The utmost efforts of the home government failed to
secure the detection or punishment of any one of the perpetrators.
Finally, in December, 1773, a still more serious explosion occurred.
The North Ministry, desirous of assisting the East India Company, which
was burdened with debt, removed practically all restrictions on the
exportation of tea to America in hopes of increasing the sale by
reducing the price. To the colonial leaders, now in a state of {49}
chronic irritation, this measure seemed an insulting and insidious
attempt to induce the Americans to forget their principles and buy the
tea because it was cheap. It was denounced from end to end of the
country in burning rhetoric; and when the cargoes of tea arrived their
sale was completely prevented by the overwhelming pressure of public
opinion. Consignees, waited on by great crowds, hastened to resign;
and the tea was either seized for nonpayment of duties and allowed to
spoil, or was sent back. In Boston, however, the Governor, Hutchinson,
stiffly refused to let the tea ships depart without landing the tea,
whereat the exasperated citizens watched an organized mob of disguised
men board the ships and throw the tea into the harbour. Once more the
unanimous voice of the colonies defied a parliamentary Act.
Such was the situation in 1773. Thirteen groups of British colonists,
obstinately local in their interests, narrowly insistent on
self-government, habituated to an antagonistic attitude toward royal
governors, but, after all has been said, unquestionably loyal to the
Crown and the home country, had been transformed into communities on
the verge of permanent insubordination. Incapable of changing all
their political habits, they could see in the British policy only a
purpose {50} to deprive them of that self-government which was
inseparable from liberty. The Crown Ministers, on the other hand,
unable to discover anything illegal, oppressive, or unreasonable in any
of their measures, found no explanation of the extravagant
denunciations of the colonial radicals other than a determination to
foment every possible difficulty with a view to throwing off all
obedience. While Adams, Dickinson, Henry, Gadsden and the rest
demanded their "rights," and protested against "incroachments" on their
liberties, Bedford, Hillsborough, North, and Dartmouth insisted on the
"indecency," "insolence," and "disloyalty" shown by the Americans. The
colonial republicans and the British noblemen were unable to speak the
same language. Yet the time had come to face the situation, and it was
the duty of the Ministers to assume the task with something more
serious than reproofs and legal formulae. The contest for power now
begun must lead, unless terminated, straight to a disruption of the
Empire.
{51}
CHAPTER III
THE DISRUPTION OF THE EMPIRE, 1773-1776
When the news reached England that the people of the town of Boston had
thrown the tea of the East India Company into the harbour, the patience
of the North ministry, already severely strained, reached an end. Its
members felt--and most of the English people felt with them--that to
submit to such an act of violence was impossible. Every consideration
of national dignity demanded that Boston and its rioters should be
punished, and that the outrage done to the East India Company should
receive atonement. Hitherto, they said, the contumacious colonists had
been dealt with chiefly by arguments, reproofs, and, as it seemed to
most Englishmen, with concessions and kindnesses which had won only
insult and violence.
It was resolved to make an example of the delinquent community; and the
first step was to humiliate its representative, Benjamin Franklin.
Ever since 1765 he had been residing in England, respected as a
philosopher and admired as a wit, bearing a sort of diplomatic
character through his position as agent for the assemblies of
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. In close {52} association
with the Whig opposition, he was undoubtedly the best-known American,
and among the most influential. Now, in 1774, having to present a
petition from Massachusetts to the Privy Council for the removal of
Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, Franklin found it an awkward feature of
the case that the colony's charges were based on private letters which
he himself had in some way acquired and sent to Boston. The Court
party determined to crush him, and at the hearing put forward
Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General--a typical King's Friend--who passed
over the subject of the petition to brand Franklin in virulent
invective as a thief and scoundrel. Amidst general applause, the
petition was rejected as false and scandalous, and Franklin was
dismissed from his position of colonial Postmaster-General.
When Parliament met, it was instantly made clear that the sole idea
controlling King, Cabinet, and the majority of Members was to bring the
Massachusetts colonists to their senses by severe punitive legislation.
The Whig opposition did not attempt to defend the destruction of the
tea; but it spared no effort to make the Ministers see the folly of
striking at effects and ignoring causes. In a masterly speech of April
19, 1774, Burke showed that the insistence on submission regardless of
the grievances and of the nature {53} of the colonists was a dangerous
and absurd policy, and Pownall and Chatham repeated his arguments, but
without avail. The Ministerial party saw no danger, and felt nothing
but the contempt of an irritated aristocracy. The original ideals of a
general colonial reform were now lost sight of; the men responsible for
them had all passed off the stage; Grenville, Townshend, and Halifax
were dead, and North, careless and subservient to George III,
Hillsborough, Suffolk, Sandwich, and Rochford--all noblemen, and in
many cases inefficient--did not see beyond the problem of coercing
noisy and troublesome rioters, indistinguishable from the followers of
Wilkes. Over and over again they reiterated that the colonists'
resentment was not to be feared, that they would submit to genuine
firmness, that they were all cowardly and dared not resist a few
regular troops. Lord George Germaine earned the thanks of Lord North
by declaring that the colonists were only "a tumultuous and noisy
rabble," men who ought to be "following their mercantile employment and
not attempting to govern." Not a gleam of any other statesmanship
appears in any of the Ministerial speeches than that displayed in the
determination to exact complete submission.
There were passed, accordingly, by the full Ministerial majority, five
measures known as {54} the Coercive Acts, or, in America, as the Five
Intolerable Acts. The first one punished Boston by closing the port to
all trade until the offending town should recompense the East India
Company for the tea destroyed. The next altered the government of
Massachusetts Bay by making the councillors appointive instead of
elective, by placing the appointment and removal of all judicial
officers entirely in the hands of the governor, by placing the
selection of jurors in the hands of the sheriffs and prohibiting
town-meetings--apart from the annual one to elect officers--without the
governor's permission. A third Act authorized the transfer to England
for trial of British officers charged with murder committed while in
discharge of their duties. A fourth Act re-established the system of
quartering troops.
The fifth Act reorganized the province of Quebec, whose government,
under the Proclamation of 1763, had proved defective in several
respects. The legal institutions of the new colony were not well
adapted to the mixed French and British inhabitants, and the religious
situation needed definition. The Quebec Act altered the government of
the province by the creation of an appointive council, authorized the
Catholic Church to collect tithes, and allow the French to substitute
an oath of allegiance for the oath of {55} supremacy. Moreover, French
civil law was permitted to exist. At the same time the boundaries of
the province were extended into the region west of the mountains so as
to include the lands north of the Ohio River.
With the passage of these Acts, the original causes for antagonism were
superseded. The commissioners of customs might have enforced the
Navigation Acts indefinitely; the objectionable Tea Act might have
stood permanently on the statute-book; but, without a more tangible
grievance, it is not easy to conceive of the colonists actually
beginning a revolution. The time had now come when a more serious
issue was raised than the right of Parliament to collect a revenue by a
tariff in the colonies. If Parliament was to be allowed to crush the
prosperity of a colonial seaport, to centralize a hitherto democratic
government created by a royal charter, and to remove royal officers
from the scope of colonial juries, it was clear that the end of all the
powers and privileges wrung from royal or proprietary governors by
generations of struggle was at hand. Yet the striking feature in this
punitive legislation was that the North Ministry expected it to meet no
resistance, although its execution, so far as the government of
Massachusetts was concerned, rested on the consent of the colonists.
There was, under the British {56} system, no administrative body
capable of carrying out these laws, no military force except the few
regiments in Boston, and no naval force beyond a few frigates and
cruisers. The mere passage of the laws, according to North and to Lord
Mansfield, was sufficient to bring submission.
Nothing more clearly shows the profound ignorance of the Tory Ministry
than this expectation, for it was instantly disappointed. At the news
of the Acts, the response from America was unanimous. Already the
colonial Whigs were well organized in committees of correspondence, and
now they acted not merely in Massachusetts but in every colony. The
town of Boston refused to vote compensation, and was immediately closed
under the terms of the Port Act. Expressions of sympathy and gifts of
provisions came pouring into the doomed community; while public
meetings, legislatures, political leaders and clergymen, in chorus
denounced the Acts as unconstitutional, cruel, and tyrannous. The
Quebec Act, extending the Catholic religion and French law into the
interior valley under despotic government, was regarded as scarcely
less sinister than the Regulating Act itself.
Under the efficient organization of the leaders a Continental Congress
met in Philadelphia in October, 1774, to make united {57} protest.
This body, comprising without exception the most influential men in the
colonies, presented a clear contrast to Parliament in that every man
was the representative of a community of freemen, self-governing and
equal before the law. The leaders did not regard themselves in any
sense as revolutionaries. They were simply delegates from the separate
colonies, met to confer on their common dangers. Their action
consisted in the preparation of a petition to the King, addresses to
the people of England, the people of Quebec, and the people of the
colonies, but not to Parliament, since they denied its right to pass
any such laws as those under complaint. The Congress further drew up a
declaration of rights which stated sharply the colonial claims, namely,
that Parliament had no right to legislate for the internal affairs of
the separate colonies. It also adopted a plan for putting commercial
pressure on England by forming an Association whose members pledged
themselves to consume no English products, and organize committees in
every colony to enforce this boycott. The leaders in the body were
destined to long careers of public prominence--such men as George
Washington, Lee, and Patrick Henry of Virginia, Rutledge of South
Carolina, Dickinson of Pennsylvania, Jay of New York, Samuel and John
Adams of {58} Massachusetts. They differed considerably in their
temper, the Massachusetts men being far more ready for drastic words
and deeds than the others; but they held together admirably. If such
protests as theirs could not win a hearing in England, it was hardly
conceivable that any could.
Meanwhile the situation gave signs of being more explosive in reality
than the respectful words of the Congress implied. In Massachusetts,
the town of Boston showed no sign of submitting, and endured distress
and actual starvation, although much cheered by gifts of food from all
parts of the continent. The new government under the Regulating Act
proved impossible to put into operation, for the popular detestation
was visited in such insulting and menacing forms that the new
councillors and judges dared not serve. More radical action followed.
When Gage, having caused the election of a legislature, prorogued it
before it had assembled, the members none the less gathered. Declaring
that the Regulating Act was invalid, they elected a council, appointed
a committee of safety, and named a receiver of taxes. On February 1,
1775, a second Provincial Congress was chosen by the towns, which had
not even a nominal sanction by the governor. The colony was, in fact,
in peaceful revolution, for Gage found himself unable to collect {59}
taxes or to make his authority respected as governor beyond the range
of his bayonets. Equally significant was it that in several other
colonies, where the governors failed to call the legislatures,
provincial congresses or conventions were spontaneously elected to
supervise the situation and choose delegates to the Continental
Congress.
So deep was the popular anger in Massachusetts Bay that the collection
of arms and powder and the organization of militia were rapidly begun.
Clearly, the Massachusetts leaders were preparing to persist to the
verge of civil war. But by this time there began to be felt in the
colonies a countercurrent of protest. As the situation grew darker,
and men talked openly of possible separation unless the intolerable
wrongs were redressed, all those whose interests or whose loyalty
revolted at the idea of civil war became alarmed at the danger. Soon
men of such minds began to print pamphlets, according to the fashion of
the time, and to attempt to prevent the radicals from pushing the
colonies into seditious courses. But the position of these
conservatives was exceedingly difficult, for they were obliged to
apologize for the home country at a time when every act on the part of
that country indicated a complete indifference to colonial prejudices.
Their arguments against {60} revolution or independence left, after
all, no alternative except submission. Denounced as Tories by the
hotter radicals, they found themselves at once more and more alarmed by
the daring actions of the Whigs, and more detested by the excited
people of their communities.
The action of the British government after these events showed no
comprehension of the critical situation into which they were rushing.
George III and North secured in the election of 1774 a triumphant
majority of the Commons, and felt themselves beyond reach of danger at
home. The arguments of the colonists, the protests of the Continental
Congress, fell upon indifferent ears. Although Burke and Chatham
exerted themselves with astonishing eloquence in the session of
Parliament which began in November 1774, the Whig motions for
conciliation were voted down by the full Ministerial majority.
Petitions from merchants, who felt the pressure of the Non-importation
Association, were shelved. So far as the policy of the Ministry may be
described, it consisted of legislation to increase the punishment of
Massachusetts Bay and extend it to other colonies, and to offer a
conditional exemption from Parliamentary taxation. Both houses of
Parliament declared Massachusetts Bay to be in rebellion, and voted to
{61} crush all resistance. An Act was passed on March 30, to restrain
the trade of New England, shutting off all colonial vessels from the
fisheries, and forbidding them to trade with any country but England or
Ireland. By a second Act, in April, this restriction was extended to
all the colonies except New York and Georgia. The only purpose of this
Act was punitive. Every step was fought by the Whig opposition, now
thoroughly committed to the cause of the colonists, but their arguments
had the inherent weakness of offering only a surrender to the
colonists' position which the parliamentary majority was in no mood to
consider. In fact it was only with great difficulty and after a stormy
scene that North induced his party to vote a so-called conciliatory
proposition offering to abstain from taxing any colony which should
make such a fixed provision for civil and judicial officers as would
satisfy Parliament.
It was only a few days after the passage of the restraining Acts by
Parliament that the long-threatened civil war actually broke out in
Massachusetts. General Gage, aware of the steady gathering of powder
and war material by the revolutionary committee of safety, finally came
to the conclusion that his position required him to break up these
threatening bases of supplies. On April 19, 1775, he sent out a force
of 800 men to {62} Lexington and Concord--towns a few miles from
Boston--with orders to seize or destroy provisions and arms. They
accomplished their purpose, after dispersing with musketry a squad of
farmers at Lexington, but were hunted back to Boston by many times
their number of excited "minute men," who from behind fences and at
every crossroad harassed their retreat. A reinforcement of 1500 men
enabled the raiding party to escape, but they lost over 800 men, and
inflicted a total loss of only 90 in their flight.
Thus began the American Revolution, for the news of this day of bloody
skirmishing, as it spread, started into flame the excitement of the
colonial Whigs. From the other New England colonies men sprang to
arms, and companies marched to Boston, where they remained in rude
blockade outside the town, unprovided with artillery or military
organization, but unwilling to return to their homes. From the
hill-towns, a band of men surprised Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain,
taking the cannon for use around Boston. In every other colony militia
were organized, officers chosen and arms collected, and almost
everywhere, except in Quaker Pennsylvania and in proprietary Maryland,
the governors and royal officials fled to the seacoast to take refuge
in royal ships of war, or resigned their positions at the command {63}
of crowds of armed "minute men." Conventions and congresses, summoned
by committees of safety, were elected by the Whigs and assumed control
of the colonies, following the example of Massachusetts. The British
colonial government, in short, crumbled to nothing in the spring of
1775. Only Gage's force of a few regiments, shut up in Boston, and a
few naval vessels, represented the authority of England in America.
Again there met a Continental Congress at Philadelphia, whose duty it
was to unify colonial action and to give the colonial answer to the
late parliamentary acts. Once more the ablest men of the colonies were
present, now gravely perturbed over the situation, and divided into two
camps. On the one hand, most of the New Englanders, led by Samuel
Adams and John Adams, his cousin, felt that the time for parley was at
an end, that nothing was to be hoped for from the North Ministry, and
that the only reasonable step was to declare independence. Others
still hoped that George III would realize the extent of the crisis and
be moved to concessions, while yet others, who hoped little, thought
that one more effort should be made to avoid revolution. But none
dreamed of surrender. Of the growing number of Americans who recoiled
in horror from {64} the possibility of independence, and were beginning
to show their dread in every way, not one was in this body. It
represented only the radicals in the several colonies.
The Congress has been charged with inconsistency, for some of its
measures were impelled by the most radical members, others by the
conservatives. On the one hand, it declined to adopt a form of
federation suggested by Franklin, and authorized Dickinson to draw up a
final, respectful, almost obsequious petition to the King to avoid
war--a document called the "Olive Branch"; but, on the other hand, it
appointed Washington to command the troops near Boston as a Continental
commander, adopted a report censuring the conciliatory proposition in
bold language, and issued an address justifying with extravagant
rhetoric the taking up of arms. Still more daring, it went so far as
to arrange to pay the so-called "Continental army" by means of bills of
credit, redeemable by the united colonies. Later, in 1775, it
appointed a secret committee to correspond with friends abroad, and
undertook extensive measures for raising troops and accumulating
military stores. To the revolted colonies, who found themselves with
no legal authorities, it gave the advice to form such governments as
would secure peace and good order during the continuance {65} of the
existing dispute, a step which was promptly taken by several.
Fighting meanwhile went on. General Gage, on June 17, undertook to
drive from Charlestown, across the harbour from Boston, a body of about
1,500 provincial troops who had intrenched themselves on Breed's Hill.
In all, about 3,000 British were brought to the attack, while gunboats
raked the peninsula between Charlestown and the mainland, hindering the
arrival of reinforcements. With true British contempt for their
adversaries, the lines of red-uniformed troops marched under the hot
sun up the hill, to be met with a merciless fire at short range from
the rifles, muskets, and fowling pieces of the defenders. Two frontal
attacks were thus repelled with murderous slaughter; but a third
attack, delivered over the same ground, was pushed home, and the
defenders were driven from their redoubt. Never was a victory more
handsomely won or more dearly bought. The assailants lost not less
than 1,000 out of 3,000 engaged, including 92 officers. The Americans
lost only 450, but that was almost as large a proportion. It was
obvious to any intelligent officer that the Americans might have been
cut off from behind and compelled to surrender without being attacked;
but Gage and his subordinates were anxious to teach the rebels a
lesson. The {66} result of this action, known in history as "Bunker
Hill," was to render him and nearly all the officers who served against
Americans unwilling ever again to storm intrenchments. They discovered
that, as Putnam, who commanded part of the forces, observed, the
militia would fight well if their legs were covered. They were later
to discover the converse, that with no protection militia were almost
useless.
From this time the British force remained quietly in Boston, fed and
supplied from England at immense cost, and making no effort to attack
the miscellaneous levies which General Washington undertook to form
into an army during the summer and autumn. Nothing but the inaction of
the British made it possible for Washington's command to remain, for
they lacked powder, bayonets, horses and, most serious of all, they
lacked all military conceptions. The elementary idea of obedience was
inconceivable to them. Washington's irritation over the perfectly
unconcerned democracy of the New Englanders was extreme; but he showed
a wonderful patience and tenacity, and by sheer persistence began to
create something like a military organization. Yet, even after months
of drill and work the army remained little more than an armed mob. At
length, in March, 1776, Washington managed to {67} place a force on
Dorchester heights, which commanded the harbour from the south. At
first Gage had some idea of attacking, but storms intervened; and
finally, without another blow, he evacuated the city and sailed with
all his force to Halifax. So ended a siege which ought never to have
lasted a month had the British generals been seriously minded to break
it up.
Other military events consisted of a few skirmishes in Virginia and
North Carolina, where the governors managed to raise small forces of
loyalists, who were thoroughly defeated by the Whig militia, and of a
gallant but hopeless attempt by the rebels to capture Canada. After
some futile efforts on the part of Congress to induce the French to
revolt, two bodies of men, in the autumn of 1775, made their way across
the border. One, entering Canada by way of Lake Champlain, occupied
Montreal, and then advanced against Quebec, where it was joined by the
other, which, with great hardships, had penetrated through the
wilderness of northern Maine. The commanders, Richard Montgomery,
Benedict Arnold, and Daniel Morgan of Virginia, were men of daring, but
their force, numbering not more than 1,000, was inadequate; and, after
the failure of an effort to carry the place by surprise on the night of
December 31--in which Montgomery was {68} killed and Morgan
captured--they were unable to do more than maintain a blockade outside
the fortress.
The action of the North Ministry during these months showed no
deviation from its policy of enforcing submission. The Olive Branch
petition was refused a reception, and a proclamation was issued
declaring the colonies in rebellion and warning all subjects against
traitorous correspondence. When Parliament met in November, 1775, the
opposition, led as usual by Burke, made one more effort to avoid civil
war; but the Ministerial party rejected all proposals for conciliation,
and devoted itself to preparing to crush the rebellion. On December
22, an Act became law which, if enforced, would have been a sentence of
death to all colonial economic life. It superseded the Boston Port Act
and the restraining Acts, absolutely prohibited all commerce with the
revolted colonies, and authorized the impressment into the navy of all
seamen found on vessels captured under the Act.
Military and naval preparations were slow and costly. The Admiralty
and War Office, unprepared for a general war, had insufficient troops
and sailors, and had to collect or create supplies and equipment. The
Earl of Sandwich showed activity but slight capacity as First Lord of
the Admiralty. Viscount {69} Barrington had been Secretary at War
under Pitt during the French war, but he lacked force and influence.
Hence, although Parliament voted 50,000 troops, there was confusion and
delay. To secure a prompt supply of men, the Ministry took the step of
hiring German mercenaries from the lesser Rhine princes--Hesse,
Waldeck, and others,--at a rate per head with a fixed sum for deaths.
This practice was customary in wars when England was obliged to protect
Hanover from the French; but to use the same method against their own
kindred in America was looked upon with aversion by many English, and
aroused ungovernable indignation in all Americans. It seemed to show a
callousness toward all ties of blood and speech which rendered any hope
of reconciliation futile. The war was not, in fact, popular in
England. The task of conquering rebels was not relished by many, and
officers and noblemen of Whig connections in some cases resigned their
commissions rather than serve. The parliamentary opposition denounced
the war with fiery zeal as an iniquity and a scandal. Nevertheless,
the general opinion in England supported the Ministry in its
determination to assert the national strength; for the colonial
behaviour seemed to the average Englishman as nothing more or less than
impudent sedition, to yield to which would be disgrace.
{70}
To the Americans, the British action in 1776 showed that the only
alternatives were submission or fighting; and, if the latter must be
chosen, then it was the feeling of a growing number that independence
was the only outcome. There now went on a contest between
conservatives, including on one side those who opposed all civil war,
those who were willing to fight to defend rights but who were unwilling
to abandon hopes of forcing England to surrender its claims, and those
whose businesses and connections were closely interwoven with the
mother country and all the radicals on the other. Unfortunately for
the conservatives they had only fear, or sentiment, for arguments,
since the North Ministry gave them nothing to urge upon doubtful men.
Still more unfortunately, they were, as a rule, outside the
revolutionary organizations of conventions and committees, and were
themselves without means of co-operating.
In the excitement and tension of the time, the ruder and rougher
classes tended to regard all reluctance to join in the revolution as
equivalent to upholding the North policy, and to attack as Tories all
who did not heartily support the revolutionary cause. Violence and
intimidation rapidly made themselves felt. Loyalists were threatened,
forced by mobs to sign the Association; their houses {71} were defiled,
their movements watched. Then [Transcriber's note: Their?] arms were
taken from them, and if they showed anger or temper they were
occasionally whipped or even tarred and feathered. In this way a
determined minority backed by the poorer and rougher classes, overrode
all opposition and swelled a rising cry for independence.
The Congress was slow, for it felt the need of unanimity; and such
colonies as New York and Pennsylvania were controlled by moderates.
But at length, in June, 1776, spurred on by the Virginia delegates and
by the tireless urgings of the Massachusetts leaders, the body acted.
Already some of the colonies had adopted constitutions whose language
indicated their independence. Now the Continental Congress, after a
final debate, adopted a Declaration of Independence, drafted by
Jefferson of Virginia and supported by the eloquence of John Adams and
the influence of Franklin. Basing their position on the doctrines of
the natural right of men to exercise full self-government and to change
their form of government when it became oppressive, the colonies, in
this famous document, imitated the English Declaration of Rights of
1689 in drawing up a bill of indictment against George III's
government. In this can be discovered every cause of resentment and
every variety of {72} complaint which the thirteen colonies were ready
to put forward. Practically all were political. There were allusions
in plenty to the wrangles between governors and assemblies,
denunciations of the parliamentary taxes and the coercing Acts, but no
reference to the Acts of Trade. To the end, the colonists, even in the
act of declaring independence, found their grievances in the field of
government and not in economic regulation. What they wanted was the
unrestricted power to legislate for themselves and to tax or refrain
from taxing themselves. When these powers were diminished, their whole
political ideal was ruined, and they preferred independence to what
they considered servitude. Such ideas were beyond the comprehension of
most Englishmen, to whom the whole thing was plain disloyalty, however
cloaked in specious words and glittering generalities.
It has been said that the rupture was due to a spirit of independence
in America which, in spite of all disclaimers, was determined to be
entirely free from the mother country. Such was the assertion of the
Tories and officials of the time, and the same idea is not infrequently
repeated at the present day. But the truth is that the colonists would
have been contented to remain indefinitely in union with England,
subjects of the British {73} crown, sharers of the British commercial
empire, provided they could have been sure of complete local
self-government. The independence they demanded was far less than that
now enjoyed by the great colonial unions of Canada, Australia, and
South Africa. It may be assumed, of course, that unless Parliament
exercised complete authority over internal as well as external
matters--to employ the then customary distinction--there was no real
imperial bond. Such was the position unanimously taken by the North
Ministry and the Tories in 1776. But in view of the subsequent history
of the English colonies it seems hardly deniable that some relationship
similar to the existing colonial one might have been perpetuated had
the Whig policy advocated by Burke been adopted, and the right of
Parliament "to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever" been allowed
to drop, in practice. The obstinate localism of the colonies was such
that not until a generation after the Revolution did a genuine American
national sentiment appear. The colonies were driven to act together in
1774-1776, but not to fuse, by a danger not to national but to local
independence. This fact indicates how sharply defined was the field
which the Americans insisted on having free from parliamentary
invasion. Had it been possible for England {74} to recognize this
fact, there would have been no revolution.
It is, of course, obvious that the traditional American view of the
Revolution as caused by tyranny and oppression is symbolical, if not
fictitious. The British government, in all its measures, from 1763 to
1774, was moderate, hesitating, and at worst irritating. Its action
threatened to destroy the practical independence of the colonial
assemblies; but the danger was political. Even the five "intolerable
Acts" inflicted hardship on the town of Boston alone. It was not until
the year 1775, when Parliament imposed severe commercial restrictions,
that anything resembling actual oppression began; but by that time the
colonies were in open revolt.
This fact only emphasizes, as Burke pointed out, the criminal folly of
the North Ministry in allowing the situation to become dangerous. It
was the misfortune of the British people in the eighteenth century
that, in the critical years after 1767, George III and his Ministers
were unable to conceive of any value in colonies which were not in the
full sense dependencies, and were narrowly limited by the economic
ideas of their time and the social conventions of their class. Since
the colonies had developed, unchecked, their own political life under
British government, it was not their duty humbly to {75} surrender all
that had come to be identical with liberty in their eyes. It was the
duty of British statesmen to recognize the situation and deal with it.
This they failed to do, and the result was revolution.
{75}
CHAPTER IV
THE CIVIL WAR IN THE EMPIRE, 1776-1778
In the war which now began, the military situation was such that
neither side could look forward to an easy victory. Great Britain
outweighed the colonies in population by three or four to one, and in
every element of military strength to a much greater degree. There was
a standing army, an ample sufficiency of professional officers, the
most powerful navy in the world, the full machinery of financial
administration, abundant credit, and wealthy manufacturing and
agricultural classes which has already shown their power to carry the
burdens of a world contest without flinching. With a powerful party
Ministry endowed with full discretion in the ordering of military
affairs, there was little danger of divided {76} councils or of
inability to secure responsible direction. North, Sandwich at the
Admiralty, Barrington as Secretary at War, Germaine as Secretary for
the Colonies, could command the active support of the King, the
Parliament, and, it appeared, of the people.
On the other hand, it was necessary to carry on war at 3,000 miles
distance from the base of supplies, and to feed and clothe the armies
entirely from home. The cost was certain to be extremely heavy, and
the practical difficulties of management arising from the distance were
sure to be great, unless a competent commander were to be given
complete authority in the colonies. Then, too, the problem was not one
of conquering cities or single strategic points, or of defeating a
rival state, but of so thoroughly beating down resistance as to lead
the Americans to abandon their revolution and submit to the extinction
of their new-formed confederation. Armies must operate inland from a
seacoast where landing was easy in hundreds of places, but where almost
every step took them into a rough country, ill-provided with roads and
lacking in easily collected supplies. In spite of all advantages of
military power, the problem before the British government was one
calling for the highest forms of military capacity, and this, by an
unexplained ill-fortune, was conspicuously {77} lacking. Not a British
general who commanded in America failed to show fighting ability and
tactical sense, but not one of them possessed the kind of genius which
grasps the true military ends of any campaign and ignores minor points
for the sake of winning decisive advantages. Perhaps it would be
unjust to apply to the British forces in this war the designation won
in 1774--"armies of lions led by asses"; but the analogy is at least
suggested.
Still more serious was the fact that the North Ministry was chosen
mainly on the basis of the willingness of its members to execute the
King's orders and use their influence and parliamentary power and
connections in his behalf. North himself, able as a parliamentarian,
was irresolute in policy, ignorant of war, and careless in
administration; Weymouth and Suffolk, the Secretaries, were of slight
ability; Lord George Germaine, Secretary for the Colonies, was
arrogant, careless, and lacking in military insight; Barrington,
Secretary at War, possessed administrative ability, but was without
personal weight in the cabinet; Sandwich at the Admiralty was grossly
inefficient. There was not a single member of the Cabinet fitted to
carry on war, or able to influence George III. For such a body of men
to undertake to direct the operations in America {78} at the distance
of 3,000 miles was a worse blunder than it would have been to commit
the conduct of the war to any one of the generals in the field, however
commonplace his abilities.
On the side of the colonists, the problem of fighting the full power of
England was apparently a desperate one. The militia, with superior
numbers, had chased the British from Concord, and had made a stubborn
defence at Bunker Hill; but the British were about to move with
overwhelming strength. To raise, equip, clothe, and feed armies was
the task of a strong administration, and there was nothing of the kind
in America. The ex-colonists not only had never known efficient
administration; they had fought against any and all administration for
generations, and their leaders had won their fame as opponents of all
executive power. To thunder against royal oppression won applause, but
indicated no ability at raising money and organizing such things as
commissariat, artillery, or a navy; and it may be said of such men as
Samuel Adams, Robert Morris, Roger Sherman, John Rutledge, Patrick
Henry, and Thomas Jefferson that their administrative training was as
far below that of their enemies in the North Ministry as their
political capacity was, in general, superior.
{79}
The Continental Congress, moreover, which assumed responsibility for
the army, could only recommend measures to the States, and call upon
them to furnish troops and money. In contrast to the States, which
derived their powers unquestionably from the voters within their
boundaries and could command their obedience, the Congress had no legal
or constitutional basis, and was nothing more than the meeting place of
delegates from voluntary allies. Such military authority as it
exercised rested entirely upon the general agreement of the States.
National government, in short, did not exist. Still more serious was
the fact that there were very few trained officers in America. The
American military leaders, such as Washington, Greene, Wayne, Sullivan,
were distinctly inferior in soldiership to their antagonists, although
Washington and Greene developed greater strategic ability after many
blunders. It was only through sundry military adventurers, some
English--such as Montgomery, Gates, Lee, Conway,--others European--such
as De Kalb, Steuben, Pulaski--that something of the military art could
be acquired.
Most serious of all, there were no troops in America who comprehended
the nature of military discipline. The conception of obedience to
orders, of military duty, of the {80} absolute necessity of holding
steady, was beyond the range of most Americans. They regarded war as
something to be carried on in their own neighbourhoods, and resisted
obstinately being drawn outside their own States. They refused to
enlist for longer than a few months, since they felt it imperative to
return to look after their farms. They had little regard for men from
different districts, distrusted commanders from any State but their
own, and had no loyalty of any description to the Continental Congress.
They were, in short, still colonists, such as generations of training
had made them; very angry with Great Britain, infuriated at Tories, and
glad to be independent, but unable to realize the meaning of it all
even under the terrible stress of war.
Under the circumstances, the task of the men to whose lot it fell to
lead the American forces was such as to tax to the utmost not only
their military skill, but their ability to control, inspire, and
persuade the most refractory and unreliable of material. When to this
were added the facts that the colonies were almost wholly lacking in
manufactures except of the most rudimentary sort, that they had little
capital except in the form of land, buildings, vessels, and crops, and
that whatever revenue they had been in the habit of deriving from
commerce was {81} liable to be destroyed by the British naval
supremacy, it is easily seen that the disadvantages of the home country
were actually counterbalanced by the still more crushing disadvantages
of the revolting colonies.
In the summer of 1776, the British advanced from two quarters. In the
north, as soon as navigation opened, men-of-war sailed up the St.
Lawrence and brought reinforcements to Quebec. The relics of the
American force, unable to maintain themselves in Canada, abandoned
their conquests without a blow, and retreated into the Lake Champlain
region, there intending to hold the forts at Crown Point and
Ticonderoga. Col. Guy Carleton, the new commander, was soon able to
move southward with overwhelming numbers; but, after reaching the
northern end of Lake Champlain, he found that body of water commanded
by a small squadron of gunboats under Benedict Arnold, and, deeming it
impossible to advance, delayed all summer in order to construct a rival
fleet. Meanwhile, all operations came to a standstill in that region.
Eleven thousand men, chiefly regular troops, were thus kept inactive
for months.
The principal British force gathered at Halifax, and sailed directly
against New York. It was there joined by the remains of a naval
expedition which had endeavoured in June, {82} 1776, to capture
Charleston, South Carolina, but had suffered severely in an attempt to
bombard Fort Moultrie and been compelled to withdraw. This success,
which raised the spirits of the rebels, was, however, the last they
were to enjoy for many months. The main British expedition was
expected to overpower all colonial resistance, for it comprised a fleet
of men-of-war, and an army of no less than 81,000 men, including German
mercenaries, fully equipped, drilled, and provisioned. The admiral in
command, Lord Howe, a Whig, was authorized to issue pardons in return
for submission, and evidently expected the mere presence of so powerful
an armament to cause the collapse of all resistance. His brother, Sir
William Howe, who commanded the army, was a good officer in actual
fighting, but a man of little energy or activity, and unwilling,
apparently, to cause the revolted colonies any more suffering than was
necessary. He was, moreover, quite without military insight of the
larger kind, failing to recognize the peculiar character of the war
upon which he was entering and acting, when pushing on a campaign,
precisely as though he were operating against a European army in west
Germany.
In spite of all deficiencies, it seemed as though Howe could not fail
to crush the {83} undisciplined collection of 17,000 militia and minute
men with which Washington endeavoured to meet him at New York.
Controlling the harbour and the rivers with his fleet, he could move
anywhere and direct superior numbers against any American position.
The first blow, struck after futile efforts at negotiation, was aimed
at an American force which held Brooklyn Heights on Long Island. About
20,000 British and Hessian troops were landed on August 22; and five
days later they outflanked and crushed a body of Americans placed to
obstruct their advance. There remained the American intrenchments,
which were weak and ill-defended; but Howe refused to attack, probably
with memories of Bunker Hill in his mind. Washington managed, owing to
favourable rainy weather, to remove his beaten force by night on August
29, but only the inaction of Howe enabled them to escape capture.
There followed a delay of two weeks, during which Admiral Howe
tried to secure an interview with American leaders, in hopes of
inducing the rebels to submit; but, finding Franklin, Adams and
Rutledge--commissioners named by Congress--immovably committed to
independence, he was compelled to renew hostilities. There ensued a
slow campaign in which General Howe easily {84} forced Washington to
evacuate New York, to retreat northward, and after various skirmishes
to withdraw over the Hudson River into New Jersey. At no time did
Washington risk a general engagement; at no time did he inflict any
significant loss upon his antagonist or hinder his advance. The
militia were, in fact, almost useless in the open field, and only dared
linger before the oncoming redcoats when intrenched or when behind
walls and fences. Many of them from New England grew discouraged and
homesick, and left the moment their short enlistments expired; so that
without any serious battles Washington's so-called army dwindled week
by week. On November 16, a severe loss was incurred through the effort
of General Greene to hold Fort Washington, which commanded the Hudson
River from the heights at the northern end of Manhattan Island. This
stronghold, besieged by Howe, made a fair defence, but was taken by
storm, and the whole garrison captured. The American army then, in two
detachments under Washington and Lee respectively, was obliged to
retreat across New Jersey, followed by the British under Cornwallis,
until, by December 8, the remnant was at Philadelphia in a state of
great discouragement and demoralization. The Continental Congress,
fearing capture, fled to Baltimore and, moved to {85} desperate
measures, passed a resolution, giving Washington for six months
unlimited authority to raise recruits, appoint and dismiss officers,
impress provisions, and arrest loyalists. Howe felt that the rebellion
was at an end. On November 30 he issued a proclamation offering pardon
to all who would take the oath of allegiance within sixty days; and
farmers in New Jersey took it by hundreds, securing in return a
certificate of loyalty. The rebels' cause seemed lost. But at the
moment when, if ever, it was worth while to push pursuit to the
uttermost, with the prospect of reducing three colonies and breaking up
all show of resistance, Howe, satisfied with his campaign, began to
prepare winter quarters.
To the northward, a similar fatality seemed to prevent full British
success. During the summer, General Guy Carleton waited at the
northern end of Lake Champlain while his carpenters built gunboats.
Month after month went by until, on October 11, the British vessels
engaged Arnold's inferior flotilla. Two days of hot fighting with
musketry and cannon resulted in the destruction of the American
squadron, so that the way seemed clear for Carleton to advance; but the
season was late, the difficulties of getting provisions from Canada
seemed excessive, and on November 2 the British {86} withdrew. Here
again only extreme caution and slowness permitted the colonial army to
hold its ground. Yet it seemed doubtful whether the American cause
might not collapse even without further pressure, for the "armies" were
almost gone by sheer disintegration. General Schuyler had a scanty
3,000 near Lake Champlain; Washington could not muster over 6,000 at
Philadelphia, and these were on the points of going home. The attempt
to carry on the war by voluntary militia fighting was a visible failure.
At this stage, the darkest hour, Washington, who had never dared to
risk a battle, took the bold step of re-crossing the Delaware with part
of his half-starved and shivering troops, and captured nearly all of a
Hessian encampment at Trenton on December 25. Further, he drew on
Cornwallis to advance against him, skirmished successfully on January
2, and then, moving by a night march to the British rear, defeated a
regiment at Princeton. Cornwallis, with 7,000 men, was out-generalled
by Washington in this affair, which was the first really aggressive
blow struck by the Americans. The result was to lead Howe to abandon
the effort to hold all of New Jersey; while Washington was able to post
his men in winter quarters at Morristown, where he could watch every
British move. This masterly {87} little campaign, carried on under
every disadvantage, made Washington's fame secure, and undoubtedly
saved the American revolution from breaking down. It revived the
fighting spirit, encouraged the Congress and the people, and created a
faith in Washington on the part of the soldiers and farmers which was
destined to grow steadily into love and veneration. With no particular
military insight beyond common sense and the comprehension of military
virtues, he was a man of iron will, extreme personal courage, and a
patience and tenacity which had no limit.
Congress now showed that its members realized in part the military
lesson, for it authorized a standing regular army, and gave Washington
power to establish it and appoint lower officers. It was a hard task
to induce any Americans to enlist in such an organization; but little
by little there were collected "Continental troops" who did not rush
back to their family duties at the end of three months, but stayed and
grew in discipline and steadiness. Yet Washington could never count on
more than a few thousand such; Americans in general simply would not
fight except under pressure of invasion and in defence of their homes.
During 1776-7, the revolted communities assumed something of the
appearance of settled governments. The States replaced {88} their
revolutionary conventions with constitutions closely modelled upon
their provincial institutions, but with elective governors, and, to
safeguard liberty, full control over legislation, taxation, and most
offices placed in the hands of the legislatures. Executive power was
confined mainly to military matters. The Continental Congress
continued to act as a grand committee of safety, framing
recommendations and requests to the States, and issuing paper money on
the credit of its constituents. Military administration proved a task
beyond the capacity of the new governments, even for such diminutive
armies as those which guarded the northern frontier and New Jersey, and
the forces suffered from lack of food, covering, and powder. The
country had few sources of supplies and wretched roads.
In 1777, when spring opened, the British armies slowly prepared to push
matters to a definite conclusion. The North Cabinet, especially Lord
George Germaine, had no single coherent plan of operations beyond
continuing the lines laid down in 1776. It was early planned to have
the Canadian force march southward and join Howe, collecting supplies
and gathering recruits as it traversed New York. Howe was told that he
was expected to co-operate, but was not prevented from substituting a
plan of his {89} own which involved capturing Philadelphia, the chief
American town and, as the seat of the Continental Congress, the "rebel
capital." Germaine merely intimated that Howe ought to make such
speedy work as to return in time to meet the Canadian force, but did
not give him any positive order, so Howe considered his plan approved.
In leisurely fashion he tried twice to march across New Jersey in June;
but, although he had 17,000 to Washington's 8,000, he would not risk
leaving the latter in his rear and withdrew. He next determined to
move by water, and began the sea journey on July 5. This process
occupied not less than six weeks, since he first tried to sail up the
Delaware, only to withdraw from before the American forts; and it was
not until August 22 that he finally landed his men at the head of
Chesapeake Bay.
Meanwhile, General Burgoyne, a man of fashion as well as an officer,
had begun his march southward from Lake Champlain with 7,500 men and
some Indian allies, forced the Americans to evacuate Fort Ticonderoga
without a blow, and chased the garrison to the southward and eastward.
Pushing forward in spite of blocked roads and burned bridges, he
reached the Hudson River on August 1 without mishap, and there halted
to collect provisions and await {90} reinforcements from Tories and
from a converging expedition under St. Leger, which was to join him by
way of Lake Ontario and the Mohawk Valley. Up to this time the
American defence had been futile. It seemed as though nothing could
stop Burgoyne's advance. Congress now appointed a new general, Gates,
to whom Washington sent General Morgan with some of his best troops.
While Burgoyne waited, the militia of New England began collecting, and
presently, on August 15 and 16, two detachments of the British sent to
seize stores at Bennington were surrounded and captured. St. Leger,
unable to manage his Indian allies, or force the surrender of the
American Fort Stanwix, was obliged, on August 22, to retreat.
Burgoyne, with diminishing numbers and no hope of reinforcement, found
himself confronted by rapidly growing swarms of enemies. At the moment
when his need of co-operation from Howe became acute, the latter
general was two hundred miles away in Pennsylvania.
Under the circumstances, the two campaigns worked themselves out to
independent conclusions. In Pennsylvania, Washington boldly marched
his summer army with its nucleous of veterans out to meet the British,
and challenged a battle along the banks of the Brandywine creek. On
September 11, Howe, with 18,000 men, methodically attacked {91}
Washington, who had not over 11,000, sent a flanking column around his
right wing, and after a stiff resistance pushed the Americans from the
field. There was no pursuit; and four days later Washington was
prevented only by bad weather from risking another fight. He did not
feel able to prevent Howe from entering Philadelphia on September 27;
but on October 3, taking advantage of a division of the British army,
he assumed the offensive at Germantown and brought his unsteady forces
into action, only to suffer another defeat. With this Washington was
forced to abandon operations in the field and to go into winter
quarters at Valley Forge, not far from the city; while Howe besieged
and on November 2 took the American forts on the Delaware. The British
campaign was successful; Philadelphia was theirs, and they had won
every engagement. But nothing shows more clearly Washington's ability
as a fighter and leader than his stubborn contest against odds in this
summer.
Meanwhile, the Northern campaign came to its conclusion. By September,
Gates, the new commander, found himself at the head of nearly 20,000
men, and Burgoyne's case grew desperate. He made two efforts to break
through to the southward, at Freeman's Farm, and again at Bemis
Heights, but was {92} met by superior numbers and overwhelmed, in spite
of the gallantry of his troops. Forced back to Saratoga on the Hudson
River, he was surrounded and at length compelled to surrender, on
October 17. Sir Henry Clinton, who commanded the British garrison of
New York in Howe's absence, sent a small expedition up the Hudson; but
it did not penetrate nearer than sixty miles from the spot where
Burgoyne stood at bay, and it achieved nothing more than a raid. So
the northern British force, sent to perform an impossible task, was
destroyed solely because neither Howe nor his superiors realized the
necessity of providing for certain co-operation from the southward.
The prisoners, according to the terms of the surrender, were to be
returned to England; but Congress, owing in part to some complaints of
Burgoyne, chose to violate the agreement, and the captive British and
Hessians were retained. Burgoyne himself returned to England, burning
with anger against Howe and the North Ministry.
The winter of 1777-8 found the two British armies comfortably housed in
New York and Philadelphia, and Washington, with his handful of
miserably equipped men, presenting the skeleton of an army at Valley
Forge. Congress, now manned by less able leaders than at first, was
almost won over to {93} displacing the unsuccessful commander by Gates,
the victor of Saratoga; and it did go so far as to commit the
administration of the army to a cabal of Gates's friends, who carried
on a campaign of depreciation and backbiting against Washington. But
the whole unworthy plot broke down under a few vigorous words from the
latter, the would-be rival quailing before the Virginian's personal
authority. He was not a safe man to bait. The military headship
remained securely with the one general capable of holding things
together.
In the winter of 1778, however, a new element entered the game, namely,
the possibility of French intervention. From the outbreak of the
Revolution, very many Americans saw that their former deadly enemy,
France, would be likely to prove an ally against England; and as early
as 1776 American emissaries began to sound the court of Versailles. In
March, 1776, Silas Deane was regularly commissioned by the Continental
Congress, and in the autumn he was followed by no less a person than
Benjamin Franklin. It was the duty of these men to get whatever aid
they could, especially to seek an alliance. The young king, Louis XVI,
was not a man of any independent statecraft; but his ministers, above
all Vergennes, in charge of foreign affairs, were anxious to secure
revenge {94} upon England for the damage done by Pitt, and the tone of
the French court was emphatically warlike. The financial weakness of
the French government, destined shortly to pave the way for the
Revolution, was clearly visible to Turgot, the Minister of Finances,
and he with a few others protested against the expense of a foreign
war; but Vergennes carried the day.
As early as the summer of 1776, French arms and munitions were being
secretly supplied, while the Foreign Minister solemnly assured the
watchful Lord Stormont, the English Ambassador, of his government's
perfect neutrality. Thousands of muskets, hundreds of cannon, and
quantities of clothes were thus shipped, and sums of money were also
turned over to Franklin. Beaumarchais, the playwright and adventurer,
acted with gusto the part of intermediary; and the lords and ladies of
the French court, amusing themselves with "philosophy" and speculative
liberalism, made a pet of the witty and sagacious Franklin. His
popularity actually rivalled that of Voltaire when the latter, in 1778,
returned to see Paris and die. But not until the colonies had proved
that they could meet the English in battle with some prospect of
success would the French commit themselves openly; and during 1776 and
1777 the tide ran too steadily against {95} the insurgents. Finally,
in December, when the anxieties of Franklin and his associates were
almost unendurable, the news of Burgoyne's surrender was brought to
Paris. The turning-point was reached. Vergennes immediately led the
French King to make two treaties, one for commercial reciprocity, the
other a treaty of military alliance, recognizing the independence of
the United States, and pledging the countries to make no separate
peace. In the spring of 1778 the news reached America; and the war now
entered upon a second stage.
There can be little doubt that under abler commanders the British
armies might have crushed out all armed resistance in the middle
colonies. In spite of all drawbacks, the trained British soldiers and
officers were so superior in the field to the American levies on every
occasion where the forces were not overwhelmingly unequal that it is
impossible for any but the most bigoted American partisan to deny this
possibility. Had there been a blockade, so that French and Dutch goods
would have been excluded; had General Howe possessed the faintest spark
of energy in following up his successes; had the North Cabinet not
failed to compel Howe to co-operate with Burgoyne, the condition of
things in 1778 might well have been so serious for the colonists' cause
that {96} Vergennes would have felt a French intervention to be
fruitless. In that case, it is hard to see how the rebellion could
have failed to be crushed in the next year. As it was, the Americans,
by luck and by the tenacity of Washington and a few other leaders, had
won the first victory.
CHAPTER V
FRENCH INTERVENTION AND BRITISH FAILURE, 1778-1781
During the two years of fighting, the party situation in England had
grown increasingly bitter. The Whigs, joined now by young Charles Fox,
unremittingly denounced the war as a crime, sympathized with the
rebels, and execrated the cruelty of the Ministers while deriding their
abilities. Parliament rang with vituperation; personal insults flew
back and forth. From time to time Chatham took part in the attack,
joining Burke and Fox in an opposition never surpassed for oratorical
power. But the Ministerial party, secure in its strength, pushed on
its way. The King now regarded the war as the issue {97} upon which he
had staked his personal honour, and would tolerate no faltering. Yet
in the winter of 1778 the rumours of a French alliance thickened; and,
when the probability seemed to be a certainty, North made a desperate
effort to end the war through a policy of granting everything except
independence. In a speech of incredible assurance, he observed that he
had never favoured trying to tax America, and brought in a Bill by
which every parliamentary measure complained of by the Americans was
repealed, and the right of internal taxation was expressly renounced.
Amid the dejection of the Tories and the sneers of the Whigs, this
measure became law, March 2, 1778; and commissioners, empowered to
grant general amnesty, were sent with it to the United States.
At no other time in English history would it have been possible for a
Ministry thus utterly to reverse its policy and remain in office; but
North's tenure depended on influences outside the House of Commons, and
he continued in his place. So severe was the crisis that an effort was
made to arrange a coalition Ministry, with the aged Chatham at its
head; George III, however, positively refused to permit North to
surrender the first place. He would consent to Whigs entering the
Cabinet only in subordinate positions. This {98} obstinacy and the
sudden death of Chatham blocked all coalition proposals, and left the
war to continue as a party measure, not national in its character--the
"King's war."
In America, the task of the commissioners proved hopeless. The men now
in control of the Continental Congress and the State governments were
pledged to independence from the bottom of their souls; and in the
course of months of appeals, and attempts at negotiations, the
commissioners failed to secure even a hearing. Congress ratified the
French treaties with enthusiasm. That their proposal if made before
the Declaration would have been successful can scarcely be doubted. It
might even have produced an effect after 1776 had it been made by a
Whig Ministry, headed by Chatham. But coming in 1778, after three
years of war, when every vestige of the former sentiment of loyalty was
dead, and offered by the same North Ministry which had brought on the
revolution, it was foredoomed to defeat.
The war now entered upon a second phase, in which England found itself
harder pressed than at any time in its history. It had not an ally in
the world, and could count on no Rhine campaigns to exhaust French
resources. For the first time England engaged France in a purely naval
war; and for the only time France was sufficiently strong in
sail-of-the-line {99} to meet England on equal terms. The French
fleet, rebuilt since 1763, was in excellent condition; the British
navy, on the contrary, under the slack administration of Lord Sandwich,
was worse off in equipment, repairs, number of sailors, and _esprit de
corps_ than at any time in the century. The French were able to send
fleets unhindered wherever they wished; and when Spain entered as an
ally, in 1779, their combined navies swept the Channel, driving the
humiliated British fleet into port. England was called upon to make
defensive war at home, at Gibraltar, in the West Indies, and finally in
India, at a time when the full strength of the country was already
occupied with the rebellion.
This led to an alteration of military methods in America. The policy
of moving heavy armies was abandoned; and the British, forced to
withdraw troops to garrison the West Indies and Florida, began the
practice of wearing down the revolted colonies by raids and destruction
of property. George III especially approved this punitive policy. As
a first step, the army in Philadelphia marched back to New York,
attacked on its retreat by Washington at Monmouth on June 27, 1778.
The American advance was badly handled by General Lee, and fell back
before the British; but Washington in person rallied his men, resumed
the attack, and held his position. {100} Clinton, who succeeded Howe,
continued his march, and the British army now settled down in New York,
not to depart from its safe protection except on raids.
Washington accordingly posted his forces, as in 1777, outside the city,
and awaited events. He could assume the offensive only in case a
French fleet should assist him, and this happened but twice, in 1778,
and not again for three years. The first time, Admiral D'Estaing with
a strong fleet menaced New York and then Newport, the latter in
conjunction with an American land force. But before each port he was
foiled by the superior skill of Admiral Howe; and he finally withdrew
without risking a battle, to the intense disgust of the Americans. For
the rest, the war in the northern States dwindled to raids by the
British along the Connecticut coast and into New Jersey, and outpost
affairs on the Hudson, in some of which Washington's Continental troops
showed real brilliancy in attack. But with the British in command of
the sea little could be done to meet the raids, and southern
Connecticut was ravaged with fire and sword.
At the same time, the States suffered the horrors of Indian war, since
the Tories and British from Canada utilized the Iroquois and the Ohio
Valley Indians as allies. The New York frontier was in continual
distress; {101} and the Pennsylvania and Maryland and Virginia
settlements felt the scalping knife and torch. Hamilton, the British
commander at the post of Detroit, paid a fixed price for scalps, and
was known as "the hair buyer." Against the Iroquois, Sullivan led an
expedition in 1779 which could not bring the savages to a decisive
battle, although he ravaged their lands and crippled their resources.
Against the north-western Indians, a daring Virginian, George Rogers
Clark, led a counter-raid which captured several posts in the territory
north of the Ohio River, and finally took Hamilton himself prisoner at
Vincennes. In every such war the sufferings of the settlers
outnumbered a hundred-fold all that they could inflict in return, and
this consciousness burned into their souls a lasting hatred of England,
the ally of the murdering, torturing devils from the forests.
While the British fleets fought indecisive actions in European waters,
or near the West Indies, the British raiding policy was transferred to
a new region, namely, the southern States, which thus far had known
little of the severities of war. In December, 1778, an expedition
under Prevost easily occupied Savannah, driving the Georgia militia
away. The next year an effort was made by an American force, in
combination with the French fleet under D'Estaing, who returned from
{102} the West Indies, to recapture the place. The siege was formed,
and there appeared some prospects of a successful outcome, but the
French admiral, too restless to wait until the completion of siege
operations, insisted on trying to take the city by storm on October 9.
The result was a complete repulse, after which D'Estaing sailed away,
and the American besiegers were obliged to withdraw. The real
interests of the French were, in fact, in the West Indies, where they
were gradually capturing English islands; their contributions so far to
the American cause consisted in gifts of munitions and loans of money,
together with numerous adventurous officers who aspired to lead the
American armies. The most amiable and attractive of these was the
young Marquis de Lafayette, owing largely to whose influence a force of
French soldiers under de Rochambeau was sent in 1780 to America. But
for months this force was able to do no more than remain in camp at
Newport, Rhode Island, blockaded by the English fleet.
In 1780, the British raiding policy was resumed in the southern States
and achieved a startling success. In January, Clinton sailed from New
York with a force of 8,000 men, and after driving the American levies
into the city of Charleston, South Carolina, besieged and took it on
May 12, with all its {103} defenders. He then returned to New York,
leaving Lord Cornwallis with a few troops to complete the conquest of
the State. Congress now sent General Gates southward to repeat the
triumph of Saratoga. At Camden, on August 16, 1780, the issue was
decided. The American commander, with only 3,000 men, encountered
Cornwallis, who had about 2,200, and, as usual, the militia, when
attacked by British in the open field, fled for their lives at the
first charge of the redcoats, leaving the few continentals to be
outnumbered and crushed.
For a period of several weeks all organized American resistance
disappeared. Only bands of guerillas, or "partisans," as they were
called, kept the field. Clinton had issued a proclamation calling all
loyalists to join the ranks; and Cornwallis made a systematic effort to
compel the enrolment of Tory militia. The plan bore fruit in an
apparent large increase of British numbers, but also in the outbreak of
a murderous civil war. Raiding parties on both sides took to
ambuscades, nocturnal house-burning, hanging of prisoners, and
downright massacres. Pre-eminent for his success was the British
Colonel Tarleton, who with a body of light troops swept tirelessly
around, breaking up rebel bands, riding down militia, and rendering his
command a terror to the {104} State. Marion, Sumter, and other
Americans struggled vainly to equal his exploits.
Occasional American successes could not turn back the tide. On October
18, 1780, a band of Tories under General Ferguson ventured too far to
the westward, and at King's Mountain were surrounded and shot or taken
prisoners by a general uprising of the frontiersmen. General Greene,
who replaced Gates in December, managed to rally a few men, but dared
not meet Cornwallis in the field. His lieutenant, Morgan, when pursued
by Tarleton, turned on him at the Cowpens, and on January 17 managed to
inflict a severe defeat. The forces were diminutive--less than a
thousand on each side--but the battle was skilfully fought. After it,
however, both Morgan and Greene were forced to fly northward, and did
not escape Cornwallis's pursuit until they were driven out of North
Carolina. The State seemed lost, and on February 23, Cornwallis issued
a proclamation calling upon all loyalists to join the royal forces.
Meanwhile, encouraged by the striking successes in the Carolinas,
Clinton sent a force under Arnold to Virginia, which marched unopposed
through the seaboard counties of that State in the winter of 1781. It
seemed as though the new British policy were on the verge of a great
triumph.
{105}
By this time it was becoming a grave question whether the American
revolution was not going to collapse from sheer weakness. The
confederation, as a general government, seemed to be on the verge of
breaking down. The State governments, although badly hampered wherever
British raids took place, were operating regularly and steadily, but
the only common government continued to be the voluntary Continental
Congress, whose powers were entirely undefined, and rested, in fact, on
sufferance. In 1776 a committee, headed by John Dickinson, drafted
Articles of Confederation which, if adopted promptly, would have
provided a regular form of government; but, although these were
submitted in 1777 for ratification, inter-state jealousy sufficed to
block their acceptance. It was discovered that all those States which,
by their original charters, were given no definite western boundaries,
were disposed to claim an extension of their territory to the
Mississippi River. Virginia, through her general, Clark, actually
occupied part of the region claimed by her, and assumed to grant lands
there. The representatives of Maryland in Congress declared such
inequality a danger to the union, and refused to sign the Articles
unless the land claims west of the mountains were surrendered to the
general government. {106} This determination was formally approved by
the Maryland legislature in February, 1779, and matters remained at a
standstill. At last, in 1780, Congress offered to hold any lands which
might be granted to it, with the pledge to form them into States, and,
following this, New York, and Virginia intimated a willingness to make
the required cessions. Then Maryland yielded and ratified the
Articles, so that they came into operation on March 2, 1781.
The self-styled "United States" had now travelled so far on the road to
bankruptcy that the adoption of the "Articles of Perpetual Union"
seemed scarcely more than an empty form. In the first place, the
federal finances were prostrate. The device of issuing paper money had
proved fatal, for, after a brief period, in 1775, the excessive issues
depreciated in spite of every effort to hinder their decline by
proclamations, price conventions, and political pressure. The only way
of sustaining such notes, namely, the furnishing by the States of a
full and sufficient revenue, was never attempted; for the States
themselves preferred to issue notes, rather than to tax, and when
called upon by the Continental Congress for requisitions they turned
over such amounts of paper as they saw fit. By 1780, the "continental
currency" was {107} practically worthless. Congress could rely only
upon such small sums of money as it could raise by foreign loans
through Franklin and by the contributions of a few patriotic people,
notably Robert Morris.
The maintenance of the army exhausted the resources of Congress, and
every winter saw the story of Valley Forge repeated. To secure
supplies, Congress was driven to authorize seizure and impressment of
food and payment in certificates of indebtedness. It was for this
reason, as well as from the unwillingness of the Americans to enlist
for the war, that the Continental forces dwindled to diminutive numbers
in 1781. Nothing but Washington's tireless tenacity and loyalty held
the army together, and kept the officers from resigning in disgust.
Yet it seemed impossible that Washington himself could carry the burden
much longer. The general government appeared to be on the point of
disintegrating, leaving to the separate States the task of defending
themselves. Everywhere lassitude, preoccupation with local matters, a
disposition to leave the war to the French, a willingness to let other
States bear the burdens, replaced the fervour of 1776. In other words,
the old colonial habits were reasserting themselves, and the separate
States, reverting to their former accustomed negative politics, were
{108} behaving toward the Continental Congress precisely as they had
done toward England itself during the French wars. With hundreds of
thousands of men of fighting age in America it was impossible, in 1781,
to collect more than a handful for service away from their homes. The
essentially unmilitary nature of the Americans was not to be changed.
Fortunately for the rebels, the policy of Great Britain was such as to
give them a lease of hope. In spite of the great British naval power
during the first two years of the war, no blockade had been attempted;
and after 1778 the British fleets were thoroughly occupied in following
and foiling the French. The result was that commerce of a sort
continued throughout the war, armed privateers and merchantmen
venturing from the New England and other ports, and trading with
France, Spain and the West Indies. Hundreds were taken by British
cruisers, but hundreds more continued their dangerous trade, and so
America continued to receive imports. The Dutch, especially, supplied
the revolted colonies with some of the commodities which their
exclusion from British ports rendered scarce. So, except for paper
money, there was no economic distress.
In 1781, when if ever the British might hope to reduce the colonies,
the Empire was itself in sore straits for men to fill its ships and
{109} garrison its forts. This made it difficult for England to send
any reinforcements to America, and left Clinton and Cornwallis with
about 27,000 men to complete their raiding campaign. The task proved
excessive. In March, 1781, Greene, having assembled a small force,
gave battle to Cornwallis at Guilford Court House. The little army of
British veterans, only 2,219 in all, drove Greene from the field after
a stiff fight, but were so reduced in numbers that Cornwallis felt
obliged to retreat to Wilmington on the coast, where he was entirely
out of the field of campaign. On April 25 he marched northward into
Virginia to join the force which had been there for several months,
took command, and continued the policy of marching and destroying.
Before his arrival, Washington had tried to use the French force at
Newport against the Virginia raiders; but the French squadron, although
it ventured from port in March, 1781, and had a successful encounter
with a British fleet, declined to push on into the Chesapeake, and the
plan was abandoned. Cornwallis was able to march unhindered by any
French danger during the summer of 1781.
But while the British were terrifying Virginia and chasing militia, the
forces left in the Carolinas were being worn down by {110} Greene and
his "partisan" allies. On April 25, at Hobkirk's Hill, Rawdon, the
British commander defeated Greene, and then, with reduced ranks,
retreated. During the summer, further sieges and raids recaptured
British posts, and on September 8 another battle took place at Eutaw
Springs. This resulted, as usual, in a British success on the
battlefield and a retreat afterwards. By October, the slender British
forces in the southernmost States were cooped up in Charleston and
Savannah, and a war of extermination was stamping out all organized
Tory resistance. The raiding policy had failed through weakness of
numbers. The superior fighting ability and tactical skill of
Cornwallis, Rawdon, Stuart, and Tarleton were as obvious as the courage
and steadiness of their troops; but their means were pitifully
inadequate to the task assigned them.
Further north, a still greater failure took place. Washington was not
deterred by the futile outcome of his previous attempts to use French
co-operation from making a patient and urgent effort to induce De
Grasse, the French admiral in the West Indies, to come north and join
with him and Rochambeau in an attack on Cornwallis in Virginia. He was
at last successful; and on August 28 the wished-for fleet, {111} a
powerful collection of twenty-eight sail-of-the-line, with frigates,
reached Chesapeake Bay. Already the French troops from Newport, and
part of the American army from outside New York, had begun their
southward march, carefully concealing their purposes from Clinton, and
were moving through Pennsylvania. As a third part of the combination,
the French squadron from Newport put to sea, bringing eight more
sail-of-the-line, which, added to De Grasse's, would overmatch any
British fleet on the western side of the Atlantic.
The one disturbing possibility was that the British West India fleet,
which very properly had sailed in pursuit, might defeat the two French
fleets singly. This chance was put to the test on September 5. On
that day Admiral Graves, with nineteen men-of-war, attacked De Grasse,
who brought twenty-four into line outside Chesapeake Bay; and the
decisive action of the Revolution took place. Seldom has a greater
stake been played for by a British fleet, and seldom has a naval battle
been less successfully managed. Graves may have intended to
concentrate upon part of the French line, but his subordinates
certainly failed to understand any such purpose; and the outcome was
that the head of the British column, approaching the French line at
{112} an angle, was severely handled, while the rear took no part in
the battle. The fleets separated without decisive result, and the
British, after cruising a few days irresolutely, gave up and returned
to New York. The other French squadron had meanwhile arrived, and the
allied troops had come down the Chesapeake. Cornwallis, shut up in
Yorktown by overwhelming forces, defended himself until October 17, and
then surrendered with 8,000 men to the man who had beaten him years
before at Trenton and Princeton. Clinton, aware at last of his danger,
sailed with every vessel he could scrape together, and approached the
bay on October 24 with twenty-five sail-of-the-line and 7,000 men; but
it was too late. He could only retreat to New York, where he remained
in the sole British foothold north of Charleston and Savannah.
Washington would have been glad to retain De Grasse and undertake
further combined manoeuvres; but the French admiral was anxious to
return to the West Indies, and so the military operations of the year
ended. More was in reality unnecessary, for the collapse of the
British military policy was manifest, and the surrender of Cornwallis
was a sufficiently striking event to bring the war to a close.
Washington had not won the last fight with his own {113} Continentals.
The co-operation not only of the French fleet but of the French troops
under Rochambeau had played the decisive part. Yet it was his
planning, his tenacity, his personal authority with French and
Americans that determined the combined operation and made it
successful. In the midst of a half-starved, ill-equipped army, a
disintegrating, bankrupt government, and a people whose fighting spirit
was rapidly dwindling, it was he with his officers who had saved the
Revolution at the last gasp.
It was no less the British mismanagement which made this possible, for
had not Howe, by delays, thrown away his chances; had not Howe and
Burgoyne and Clinton and Cornwallis, by their failures to co-operate,
made it possible for their armies to be taken separately; had not the
navy omitted to apply a blockade; had not the Ministry, in prescribing
a raiding policy, failed to strain every nerve to furnish an adequate
supply of men, the outcome would have been different. As it was, the
British defeat could no longer be concealed by the end of 1781. The
attempt to conquer America had failed.
{114}
CHAPTER VI
BRITISH PARTIES AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, 1778-1783
When the news of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown reached
England, it was recognized by Whigs and Tories alike that the time had
come to admit the failure of the war. The loss of 7,000 troops was not
in itself a severe blow, at a time when England had over 200,000 men
under arms in various parts of the world; but it actually marked the
breakdown of the American campaign, and, what was still more
significant, the political bankruptcy of the North Ministry. Ever
since 1778, the tide had been rising against the royal policy. At
first, when the French war began, the nation rallied against the
ancient foe and there was some enthusiasm displayed in recruiting and
furnishing supplies; but, as general after general returned from
America--first Burgoyne, then Howe and his brother, the admiral,--to
rise in Parliament and denounce the administrative incompetence which
had foiled their efforts; as month after month passed and no victory
either in America or Europe came to cheer the public; worst of all,
when, in 1779, and again in 1780, combined French and Spanish fleets
swept the Channel {115} in overpowering numbers, driving the English
fleet into Torbay harbour--the war spirit dwindled, and bitter
criticism took its place.
The Whig Opposition, no longer hampered by having the defence of the
revolted colonists as their sole issue, denounced in unmeasured
language the incompetence, corruption, and despotism of the North
Ministry, singling out Sandwich, at the Admiralty, and Germaine,
Secretary for the Colonies, as objects for especial invective. Party
hatred festered in army and navy, Whig and Tory admirals distrusting
each other and engaging in bitter quarrels, Whig and Tory generals
criticizing one another's plans and motives. On his part, Lord North
felt, as early as 1779, that his task was hopeless, and sought
repeatedly to resign; but in spite of secessions from the Ministry, in
spite of defeats and humiliations such as the control by the allies of
the Channel, nothing could shake George's determination. He would
never consent to abandon the colonies or permit North to surrender to
the detested Whigs.
In 1780, the Opposition, led by Fox and Burke, began to direct its fire
at the King himself; and finally, in March of that year, they had the
satisfaction of carrying in the Commons, by votes of men who once had
been on the administration side, a resolution to the effect that "the
power of the Crown {116} has increased, is increasing, and ought to be
diminished." This was carried, by 283 votes to 215, in a House where
four years before the total Opposition mustered only a hundred.
Measures to cut down sinecures, to limit the secret service fund, to
take away opportunities for royal corruption, were introduced by Burke
and, although defeated, drew large votes.
The tenacious politician who wore the crown was not yet beaten. In the
summer of 1780, the disgraceful Gordon riots broke out in London; and
the King, by his courageous personal bearing and bold direction of
affairs, won momentary prestige. The news from America, moreover, was
brighter than for a long time, and the British defence of Gibraltar was
unshaken. Suddenly dissolving Parliament, the King employed every
resource of influence or pressure, and managed to secure once more a
majority in the House of Commons. During the year 1781, the North
Ministry breathed more freely, and was able to repel Whig attacks by
safe majorities. But the respite was short.
In the winter session of 1782, the news of Yorktown shook the Ministry
to its centre, and on top of that came the reports of the surrender of
Minorca, St. Kitts, and Nevis. Held together only by the inflexible
determination of George III never to yield American {117} independence
or "stoop to opposition," the Ministers fought bitterly though
despairingly against a succession of Whig motions, censuring the
Admiralty, demanding the withdrawal of the troops, and finally
censuring the Ministry. Majorities dwindled as rats began to leave the
sinking ship. On March 8, North escaped censure by ten votes only.
The King made repeated efforts to induce members of the Opposition to
come into some sort of coalition, but the hatred was too fierce, the
divergence of principle too wide. Rockingham would accept only
absolute surrender. On March 15, a resolution of want of confidence
was lost by nine only.
Five days later, in face of a renewed motion of the same kind, North
announced his resignation. The end had come. The system of George III
had broken down, ruined by the weaknesses of the Tory Cabinet in
administration, in war, and in diplomacy, the most disastrous Ministry
in the history of England. There was no possible doubt as to the
significance of the collapse, for Lord Rockingham took office with a
Whig Cabinet, containing Shelburne and Fox, steadfast friends of
America, as Secretaries of State, and with the avowed purpose of
conceding independence to the former colonies, while maintaining the
contest with Spain and France.
{118}
Interest now shifted from the battlefield to the regions of diplomacy,
where the situation was complicated and delicate, owing to the unusual
relations of the parties involved. The United States and France were
in alliance, each pledged not to make a separate peace. Spain was in
alliance with France for the purpose of recovering Gibraltar, Minorca,
and Florida, but was not in any alliance with the United States. The
French government, tied thus to two allies, recognized the possible
contingency of diverging interests between Spain and the United States,
and exerted all the influence it could to keep diplomatic control in
its own hands. This it accomplished through its representatives in
America, especially de la Luzerne, who wielded an immense prestige with
the members of the Continental Congress, not only through his position
as representative of the power whose military, naval, and financial aid
was absolutely indispensable, but also by means of personal intrigues
of a type hitherto more familiar in European courts than in simple
America. Under his direction, Congress authorized its European
representatives, Franklin, Jay, and Adams, accredited to France, Spain,
and the Netherlands respectively, to act as peace commissioners and to
be guided in all things by the advice and consent of the French
Minister, {119} Vergennes. Their instructions designated boundaries,
indemnity for ravages and for the taking of slaves, and a possible
cession of Canada, but all were made subject to French approval. When,
accordingly, in 1781, both Shelburne and Fox of the Rockingham Ministry
sought to open negotiations with the American representatives, while
pushing on vigorously the war against France and Spain, they
interjected an embarrassing element into the situation. Vergennes
could not prohibit American negotiation, but he relied upon the
instructions of the commissioners to enable him to prevent the making
of any separate peace, contrary to the treaty of 1778.
The first steps were taken by Franklin and Shelburne, who opened
unofficial negotiations through Richard Oswald, a friend of America.
It seems to have been Shelburne's plan to avoid the preliminary
concession of independence, hoping to retain some form of connection
between America and England, or at least to use independence as a
make-weight in the negotiations. Hence Oswald, his agent, was not
commissioned to deal with the United States as such. Fox, Secretary
for Foreign Affairs, felt, on the other hand, that the negotiation
belonged to his field, and he sent Thomas Grenville to Paris,
authorized to deal with France {120} and, indirectly, with the United
States. Over this difference in the Cabinet, and over other matters,
an acute personal rivalry developed between Fox and Shelburne, which
culminated when Rockingham died in July, 1782. George III, who much
preferred Shelburne to Fox, asked him to form a Ministry, and upon his
acceptance Fox, absolutely refusing to serve under him, withdrew from
the Cabinet, carrying his friends with him. Thus the triumphant Whig
party was split within a few months after its victory. The whole
responsibility now rested on Shelburne.
Meanwhile, a new situation had developed in Paris, for Jay and Adams,
the other two commissioners, had brought about a change in the American
policy. Franklin, deeply indebted to the French court and on the best
of terms with Vergennes, was willing to credit him with good intentions
and was ready to accept his advice to negotiate with England under the
vague terms of Oswald's commission; but Jay, who had had a mortifying
experience in Spain, suspected treachery and insisted that England
must, in opening negotiations, fully recognize American independence.
He was sure that Spain would gladly see the United States shut in to
the Atlantic coast away from Spanish territory, and he felt certain
{121} that Vergennes was under Spanish influence. Adams, who knew
nothing of Spain, but distrusted the French on general principles,
sided with Jay; and Franklin, submitting to his colleagues, agreed to a
curious diplomatic manoeuvre. Jay sent to Shelburne a secret message,
urging him to deal separately with the United States under a proper
commission and not seek to play into the hands of Spain and France. He
knew that a French emissary had visited Shelburne, and he dreaded
French double-dealing, especially on the question of boundaries and
fishery rights.
The British Prime Minister was in the odd position of being appealed to
by one of the three hostile powers to save it from the other two; but
underlying the situation was the fact that Shelburne, as a Whig since
the beginning of the American quarrel, was committed to a friendly
policy toward America. He knew, moreover, that when Parliament should
meet he must expect trouble from Fox and the dissatisfied Whigs, as
well as the Tories, and he was anxious to secure a treaty as soon as
possible. So yielding, on September 27, he gave Oswald the required
commission, but, suspecting that he was rather too complaisant, sent
Henry Strachey to assist him. During the summer, Franklin and Oswald,
in informal {122} discussions, had already eliminated various matters,
so that when negotiations formally opened it took not over five weeks
to agree upon a draft treaty.
During all this time the Americans violated their instructions by
failing to consult Vergennes. Here Franklin was again overruled by Jay
and Adams, whose antipathy to French and Spanish influence was
insuperable. It does not appear that Vergennes had any definite
intention to work against American boundaries or fishery rights; but
there can be no doubt that Rayneval and Marbois, two of his agents,
committed themselves openly in a sense unfavourable to American claims,
and it is likely that, had the negotiations taken place under his
control, the outcome would have been delayed in every way in order to
allow France to keep its contract with Spain, whose attacks on
Gibraltar were pushed all through the summer. As it was, the
negotiators managed to agree on a treaty of peace which reflected the
Whig principles of Shelburne and the skill and pertinacity of the three
Americans. Little trouble was encountered over boundaries, Shelburne
ceding everything east of the Mississippi and north of Florida, and
designating as a boundary between the United States and Canada in part
the same line as that in the Proclamation of 1763, from the {123} St.
Croix River to the eastward of Maine, to the Great Lakes and thence
westward by a system of waterways to the headwaters of the Mississippi.
At the especial urgence of Adams, whose Massachusetts constituents drew
much of their wealth from the Newfoundland fisheries, the right of
continuing this pursuit was comprised in the treaty, together with the
right to land and dry fish on unoccupied territories in Labrador and
Nova Scotia. As a possible make-weight, the navigation of the
Mississippi was guaranteed to citizens of both the United States and
Great Britain.
The chief difficulty arose over the question of the treatment of
American loyalists and the payment of British debts which had been
confiscated in every colony. Shelburne insisted that there must be
restoration of civil rights, compensation for damages, and a pledge
against any future confiscations or disfranchisements for loyalists,
and also demanded a provision for the payment of all debts due to
British creditors. Here the negotiation hung in a long deadlock, for
Franklin, Adams, and Jay were unanimously determined to concede no
compensation for individuals whom they hated as traitors; while the
British negotiators felt bound in honour not to abandon the men who had
lost all and suffered every indignity and {124} humiliation as a
penalty for their loyalty. At length, progress was made when Adams
suggested that the question of British debts be separated from that of
Tory compensation; so a clause was agreed upon guaranteeing the full
payment of bona fide debts heretofore contracted.
Finally, after Franklin had raised a counter-claim for damages due to
what he called the "inhuman burnings" of the British raids since 1778,
it was agreed to insert a clause against any future confiscations or
prosecutions of loyalists and to add that Congress should "earnestly
recommend" to the States the restoration of loyalists' estates and the
repealing of all laws against them. At the time the commissioners drew
up this article, they must have known that the Congress of the United
States had no power to enforce the treaty, and that any such
recommendations, however "earnest," would carry no weight with the
thirteen communities controlled by embittered rebels, who remembered
every Tory, alive or dead, with execration. Nevertheless, it offered a
way of escape, and the British representative signed, on November 30,
1782. The great contest was at an end.
When Franklin revealed to Vergennes that, unknown to the French court,
the American commissioners had agreed on a {125} draft treaty, the
French minister was somewhat indignant at the trick, and communicated
his displeasure to his agent in America. This induced the easily
worried Congress to instruct Livingston, the Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, to write a letter censuring the commissioners; but, although
Jay and Adams were hotly indignant at such servility, the matter ended
then and there. Vergennes's displeasure was momentary, and the French
policy continued as before. The European war was, in fact, wearing to
its end. Already, in April, 1782, Admiral Rodney had inflicted a sharp
defeat on De Grasse, capturing five of his vessels, including the
flagship with the admiral himself. This, together with the extreme
inefficiency of the Spanish fleet, put an end to the hope of further
French gains in the West Indies. Before Gibraltar, also, the allied
fleet of forty-eight vessels did not dare to risk a general engagement
with a British relieving fleet of thirty, and when in September, 1782,
a final bombardment was attempted, the batteries from the fort proved
too strong for their assailants. The allies felt that they had
accomplished all they could hope to, and agreed to terms of peace on
January 20, 1783. France gained little beyond sundry West India
Islands, but Spain profited to the extent of {126} regaining Minorca
and also Florida. It was at best a defeat for England, and the Whig
Ministry, which carried it through, was unable to prevent such an
outcome.
The American peace was made the pretext for Shelburne's fall, since a
coalition of dissatisfied Whigs and Tories united in March, 1783, to
censure it, thereby turning out the Ministry. But, although Fox
regained control of diplomatic matters and made some slight moves
toward reopening negotiations, he had no serious intention of
disturbing Shelburne's work, and the provisional treaty was made
definitive on September 3, 1783--the day on which the French treaty was
signed. Thus the Americans technically kept to the terms of their
alliance with France in agreeing not to make a separate peace, but as a
matter of fact hostilities had entirely ceased in America since
January, 1783, and practically since the fall of the North Ministry.
The British had remained quietly in New York and Charleston,
withdrawing from all other points, and Washington with his small army
stood at Newburg-on-the-Hudson. In October, 1783, the last British
withdrew, taking with them into exile thousands of Tories who did not
dare to remain to test the value of the clauses in the treaty of peace
intended to protect them. So the last traces of the long contest
disappeared, {127} and the United States entered upon its career.
The treaty, as must have been foreseen by the commissioners themselves,
remained a dead letter so far as the Tories were concerned. Congress
performed its part and gave the promised recommendation, but the States
paid no heed. The loyalists were not restored to civil or property
rights. The plain provision of the treaty prohibiting further
legislation against loyalists was defied in several States, and
additional disqualifications were placed upon those who dared to remain
in the country. The provision regarding the payment of debts remained
unfulfilled, since there was no mechanism provided in the treaty
through which the article could be enforced. Only from the British
government could the Tories receive any recompense for their
sufferings, and there they were in part relieved. Very many received
grants of land in Canada, where they formed a considerable part of the
population in several districts. More went to New Brunswick and Nova
Scotia to receive similar grants. Others spent their days in England
as unhappy pensioners, forgotten victims of a war which all Englishmen
sought to bury in oblivion. Those who remained in the United States
ultimately regained standing and fared better than the exiles, but not
until new {128} domestic issues had arisen to obliterate the memory of
revolutionary antagonisms.
With the Treaty of 1782, the mother country and the former colonies
definitely started on separate paths, recognizing the fundamental
differences which for fifty years had made harmonious co-operation
impossible. England remained as before, aristocratic in social
structure, oligarchic in government, military and naval in temper--a
land of strongly fixed standards of religious and political life, a
country where society looked to a narrow circle for leadership. Its
commercial and economic ideals, unaltered by defeat, persisted to guide
national policy in peace and war for two more generations. The sole
result of the war for England was to render impossible in future any
such perversion of Cabinet government as that which George III, by
intimidation, fraud, and political management, had succeeded for a
decade in establishing. Never again would the country tolerate royal
dictation of policies and leaders. England became what it had been
before 1770, a country where parliamentary groups and leaders bore the
responsibility and gained the glory or discredit, while the outside
public approved or protested without seeking in any other manner to
control the destinies of the State. While the English thus sullenly
fell back into their {129} accustomed habits, the former Colonies, now
relieved from the old-time subordination, were turned adrift to solve
problems of a wholly different sort.
CHAPTER VII
THE FORMATION OF THE UNITED STATES, 1781-1798
The British colonists, who assumed independent legal existence with the
adoption of Articles of Confederation in 1781, had managed to carry
through a revolution and emerge into the light of peace. They were now
required to learn, in the hard school of experience, those necessary
facts of government which they had hitherto ignored, and which, even in
the agonies of civil war, they had refused to recognize.
Probably with three-quarters of the American people, the prevailing
political sentiment was that of aversion to any governmental control,
coupled with a deep-rooted jealousy and distrust of all officials, even
those chosen by and dependent upon themselves. Their political ideals
contemplated {130} the government of each colony chiefly by the elected
representatives of the voters, who should meet annually to legislate
and tax, and then, having defined the duties of the few permanent
officers in such a way as to leave them little or no discretion, should
dissolve, leaving the community to run itself until the next annual
session. Authority of any kind was to them an object of traditional
dread, even when exercised by their own agents. The early State
constitutions concentrated all power in the legislature, leaving the
executive and judicial officials little to do but execute the laws.
The only discretionary powers enjoyed by governors were in connection
with military affairs.
In establishing the Articles of Confederation the statesmen of the
Continental Congress had no intention of creating in any sense a
governing body. All that the Congress could do was to decide upon war
and peace, make treaties, decide upon a common military establishment,
and determine the sums to be contributed to the common treasury. These
matters, moreover, called for an affirmative vote of nine States in
each case. There was no federal executive or judiciary, nor any
provision for enforcing the votes of the Congress. To carry out any
single thing committed by the Articles to the Congress, and duly voted,
required the {131} positive co-operation of the State legislatures, who
were under no other compulsion than their sense of what the situation
called for and of what they could afford to do.
Things were, in short, just where the colonists would have been glad to
have them before the Revolution--with the objectionable provincial
executives removed, all coercive authority in the central government
abolished, and the legislatures left to their own absolute discretion.
In other words, the average American farmer or trader of the day felt
that the Revolution had been fought to get rid of all government but
one directly under the control of the individual voters of the States.
Typical of such were men like Samuel Adams of Massachusetts and Patrick
Henry of Virginia. They had learned their politics in the period
before the Revolution, and clung to the old colonial spirit, which
regarded normal politics as essentially defensive and anti-governmental.
On the other hand, there were a good many individuals in the country
who recognized that the triumph of the colonial ideal was responsible
for undeniable disasters. Such men were found, especially, among the
army officers and among those who had tried to aid the cause in
diplomatic or civil office during the Revolution. Experience made them
realize that the practical abolition of all {132} executive authority
and the absence of any real central government had been responsible for
chronic inefficiency. The financial collapse, the lack of any power on
the part of Congress to enforce its laws or resolutions, the visible
danger that State legislatures might consult their own convenience in
supporting the common enterprises or obligations--all these
shortcomings led men like Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Webster, a
pamphleteer of New England, to urge even before 1781 that a genuine
government should be set up to replace the mere league. Their
supporters were, however, few, and confined mainly to those merchants
or capitalists who realized the necessity of general laws and a general
authority. It is scarcely conceivable that the inherited prejudices of
most Americans in favour of local independence could have been
overborne had not the Revolution been followed by a series of public
distresses, which drove to the side of the strong-government
advocates--temporarily, as it proved--a great number of American voters.
When hostilities ended, the people of the United States entered upon a
period of economic confusion. In the first place, trade was
disorganized, since the old West India markets were lost and the
privileges formerly enjoyed under the Navigation Acts were terminated
by the separation of the {133} countries. American shippers could not
at once discover in French or other ports an equivalent for the former
triangular trade. In the second place, British manufacturers and
exporters rushed to recover their American market, and promptly put out
of competition the American industries which had begun to develop
during the war. Specie, plentiful for a few months, now flowed rapidly
out of the country, since American merchants were no longer able to buy
British goods by drawing on West India credits. At the same time, with
the arrival of peace, the State courts resumed their functions, and
general liquidation began; while the State legislatures, in the effort
to adjust war finances, imposed what were felt to be high taxes. The
result was a general complaint of hard times, poverty, and insufficient
money. Some States made efforts to retaliate against Great Britain by
tariffs and navigation laws, but this only damaged their own ports by
driving British Trade to their neighbours'. Congress could afford no
help, since it had no power of commercial regulation.
The effect upon the working of the Confederation showed that a majority
of Americans had learned nothing from all their experiences, for the
State legislatures declined to furnish to the central government any
{134} more money than they felt to be convenient, regardless of the
fact that without their regular support the United States was certain
to become bankrupt. Robert Morris was appointed Financier in 1871, and
took energetic steps to introduce order into the mass of loan
certificates, foreign loans, certificates of indebtedness, and
mountains of paper currency; but one unescapable fact stood in his way,
that the States felt under no obligation to pay their quotas of
expenses. In spite of his urgent appeals, backed by resolutions of
Congress, the government revenues remained too scanty to pay even the
interest on the debt. Morris resigned in disgust in 1784; and his
successors, a committee of Congress, found themselves able to do
nothing more than confess bankruptcy. The people of the States felt
too poor to support their federal government, and, what was more, felt
no responsibility for its fate.
Without revenue, it naturally followed that the Congress of the
Confederation accomplished practically nothing. As will be shown
later, it could secure no treaties of any importance, since its
impotence to enforce them was patent. It managed to disband the
remaining troops with great difficulty and only under the danger of
mutiny, a danger so great that it took all of {135} Washington's
personal influence to prevent an uprising at Newburg in March, 1783.
For the rest, its leaders, men often of high ability--Hamilton,
Madison, King of Massachusetts, Sherman of Connecticut--found
themselves helpless. Naturally they appealed to the States for
additional powers and submitted no less than three amendments: first,
in 1781, a proposal to permit Congress to levy and collect a five per
cent. duty on imports; then, in 1783, a plan by which certain specific
duties were to be collected by State officers and turned over to the
government; and finally, in 1784, a request that Congress be given
power to exclude vessels of nations which would not make commercial
treaties. No one of these succeeded, although the first plan failed of
unanimous acceptance by one State only. The legislatures recognized
the need, but dreaded to give any outside power whatever authority
within their respective boundaries. While those who advocated these
amendments kept reiterating the positive necessity for some means to
avert national disgrace and bankruptcy, their opponents, reverting to
the language of 1775, declared it incompatible with "liberty" that any
authority other than the State's should be exercised in a State's
territory. By 1787, it was clear that any hope of specific amendments
was vain. Unanimity from {136} thirteen legislatures was not to be
looked for.
On the other hand, where the States chose to act they produced
important results. The cessions of western lands, which had been
exacted by Maryland as her price for ratifying the Articles, were
carried out by New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia until
the title to all territory west of Pennsylvania and north of the Ohio
was with the Confederation. Then, although nothing in the Articles
authorized such action, Congress, in 1787, adopted an Ordinance
establishing a plan for settling the new lands. After a period of
provincial government, substantially identical with that of the
colonies, the region was to be divided into States and admitted into
the union, under the terms of an annexed "compact" which prohibited
slavery and guaranteed civil rights. But where the States did not
co-operate, confusion reigned. Legislatures imposed such tariffs as
they saw fit, which led to actual inter-State commercial
discriminations between New York and its neighbours. Connecticut and
Pennsylvania wrangled over land claims. The inhabitants of the
territory west of New Hampshire set up a State government under the
name of Vermont, and successfully maintained themselves against the
State of New York, {137} which had a legal title to the soil, while the
frontier settlers in North Carolina were prevented only by inferior
numbers from carrying through a similar secession.
Finally, in the years 1785-7, the number of those who found the
unrestrained self-government of the separate States another name for
anarchy was enormously increased by a sudden craze for paper money,
"tender" laws, and "stay" laws which swept the country. The poorer
classes, especially the farmers, denounced the courts as agents of the
rich, clamoured for more money to permit the easy payment of
obligations, and succeeded in compelling more than half of the States
to pass laws hindering the collection of debts and emitting bills of
credit, which promptly depreciated. Worse remained. In New Hampshire,
armed bands tried to intimidate the legislature; and in Massachusetts
the rejection of such laws brought on actual insurrection. Farmers
assembled under arms, courts were broken up, and a sharp little civil
war, known as Shays' Rebellion, was necessary before the State
government could re-establish order.
In these circumstances, a sudden strong reaction against mob rule and
untrammelled democracy ran through the country, swinging all men of
property and law-abiding habits powerfully in favour of the demand
{138} for a new, genuinely authoritative, national government, able to
compel peace and good order. So the leaders of the reform party
struck; and at a meeting of Annapolis in October, 1786, summoned
originally to discuss the problem of navigating the Potomac River, they
issued a call for a convention of delegates from all the States to meet
at Philadelphia in May, 1787, for the purpose of recommending
provisions "intended to render the federal government adequate to the
exigencies of the Union." This movement, reversing the current of
American history, gained impetus in the winter of 1787. Congress
seconded the call; and, after Virginia had shown the way by nominating
its foremost men as delegates, the other States fell into line and sent
representatives--all but Rhode Island, which was the scene of an orgy
of paper-money tyranny, and would take no part in any such meeting.
Of the fifty-five men present at the Philadelphia convention, not more
than half-a-dozen were of the old colonial type, which clung to
individual State independence as the palladium of liberty. All the
others felt that the time had come to lay the most thoroughgoing
limitations upon the States, with the express purpose of preventing any
future repetition of the existing inter-State wrangles, and especially
of the financial {139} abuses of the time; and they were ready to gain
this end by entrusting large powers to the central government. They
divided sharply, however, on one important point, namely, whether the
increased powers were to be exercised by a government similar to the
existing one, or by something wholly new and far more centralized; and
over this question the convention ran grave danger of breaking up.
Discussion began in June, 1787, behind closed doors, with a draft plan
agreed upon by the Virginia members as the working project. This was a
bold scheme, calling for the creation of a single great State, relying
on the people for its authority, superior to the existing States, and
able, if necessary, to coerce them; in reality, a fusion of the United
States into a single commonwealth. In opposition to this, the
representatives of the smaller States--Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland
and Connecticut--aided by the conservative members from New York,
announced that they would never consent to any plan which did not
safeguard the individuality and equality of their States; and, although
the Virginia plan commanded a majority of those present, its supporters
were obliged to permit a compromise in order to prevent an angry
dissolution of the convention. In keeping with a suggestion of the
{140} Connecticut members, it was agreed that one House of the proposed
legislature should contain an equal representation of the States, while
the other should be based on population.
The adoption of this compromise put an end to the danger of disruption,
for all but a few irreconcilables were now ready to co-operate; and in
the course of a laborious session a final draft was hammered out, with
patchings, changes, and additional compromises to safeguard the
interests of the plantation States in the institution of slavery.
When the convention adjourned, it placed before the people of America a
document which was a novelty in the field of government. In part, it
aimed to establish a great State, on the model of the American States,
which in turn derived their features from the colonial governments. It
had a Congress of two Houses, an executive with independent powers, and
a judiciary authorized to enforce the laws of the United States.
Congress was given full and exclusive power over commerce, currency,
war and peace, and a long list of enumerated activities involving
inter-State questions, and was authorized to pass all laws necessary
and proper to the carrying out of any of the powers named in the
constitution. Further, the constitution, the federal laws, and
treaties were declared to be the supreme {141} law of the land,
anything in a State law or constitution notwithstanding. In addition,
the States were expressly forbidden to enter the fields reserved to the
federal government, and were prohibited from infringing the rights of
property. On the other hand, the new government could not exist
without the co-operation of the States in providing for the election of
electors,--to choose a president--of senators, and of congressmen. It
was a new creation, a federal State.
There now followed a sharp and decisive contest to gain the necessary
ratification by nine commonwealths. At first, the advocates of strong
government, by a rapid campaign, secured the favourable votes of
half-a-dozen States in quick succession; but when it came the turn of
New York, Massachusetts, and Virginia, the conservative, localistic
instincts of the farmers and older people were roused to make a
strenuous resistance. The "Federalists," as the advocates of the new
government termed themselves, had to meet charges that the proposed
scheme would crush the liberties of the State, reduce them to ciphers,
and set up an imitation of the British monarchy. But, by the eager
urging of the foremost lawyers and most influential men of the day, the
tide was turned and ratification carried, although with the utmost
difficulty, and usually with {142} the recommendation of amendments to
perfect the constitution. In June, 1788, the contest ended; and,
although Rhode Island and North Carolina remained unreconciled, the
other eleven States proceeded to set up the new government.
In the winter of 1789, in accordance with a vote of the Congress of the
Confederation, the States chose electors and senators, and the people
voted for representatives. But one possible candidate existed for the
presidency, namely, the hero of the Revolutionary War; and accordingly
Washington received the unanimous vote of the whole electoral college.
With him, John Adams was chosen vice-president, by a much smaller
majority. The Congress, which slowly assembled, was finally able to
count and declare the votes, the two officers were inaugurated, and the
new government was ready to assume its functions.
There followed a period of rapid and fundamental legislation. In the
new Congress were a body of able men, by far the greater number of them
zealous to establish a strong authoritative government, and to complete
the victory of the Federalists. The defeated States' Rights men now
stood aside, watching their conquerors carry their plan to its
conclusion. Led for the most part by James Madison of the House, {143}
Congress passed Acts creating executive departments with federal
officials; establishing a full independent federal judiciary, resident
in every State, with a supreme court above all; imposing a tariff for
revenue and for protection to American industries, and appropriating
money to settle the debts of the late confederation. In addition, it
framed and submitted to the States a series of constitutional
amendments whose object was to meet Anti-federalist criticisms by
securing the individual against oppression from the federal government.
When Congress adjourned in September, 1789, after its first session, it
had completed a thoroughgoing political revolution. In place of a
loose league of entirely independent States, there now existed a
genuine national government, able to enforce its will upon individuals
and to perform all the functions of any State.
That the American people, with their political inheritance, should have
consented even by a small majority to abandon their traditional lax
government, remains one of the most remarkable political decisions in
history. It depended upon the concurrence of circumstances which, for
the moment, forced all persons of property and law-abiding instincts to
join together in all the States to remedy an intolerable situation.
{144} The leaders, as might be expected, were a different race of
statesmen, on the whole, from those who had directed events prior to
1776. Washington and Franklin favoured the change; but Richard Henry
Lee and Patrick Henry were eager opponents, Samuel Adams was
unfriendly, and Thomas Jefferson, in Paris, was unenthusiastic. The
main work was done by Hamilton, Madison, John Marshall, Gouverneur
Morris, Fisher Ames--men who were children in the days of the Stamp
Act. The old agitators and revolutionists were superseded by a new
type of politicians, whose interests lay in government, not opposition.
But the fundamental American instincts were not in reality changed;
they had only ebbed for the moment. No sooner did Congress meet in its
second session in January, 1790, and undertake the task of reorganizing
the chaotic finances of the country, than political unanimity vanished,
and new sectional and class antagonisms came rapidly to the front in
which could be traced the return of the old-time colonial habits. The
central figure was no longer Madison, but Hamilton, Secretary of the
Treasury, who aspired to be a second William Pitt, and submitted an
elaborate scheme for refunding the entire American debt. In addition,
he called for an excise tax, and {145} later recommended the chartering
of a National Bank to serve the same function in America that the Bank
of England performed in Great Britain.
Daring, far-sighted, based on the methods of English financiers,
Hamilton's plans bristled with points certain to arouse antagonism. He
proposed to refund and pay the debt at its face value to actual
holders, regardless of the fact that the nearly worthless federal stock
and certificates of indebtedness had fallen into the hands of
speculators; he recommended that the United States should assume, fund,
and pay the war debt of the States, disregarding the fact that, while
some States were heavily burdened, others had discharged their
obligations. He urged an excise tax on liquors, although such an
internal tax was an innovation in America and was certain to stir
intense opposition; he suggested the chartering of a powerful bank, in
spite of the absence of any clause in the constitution authorizing such
action. Hamilton was, in fact, a great admirer of the English
constitution and political system, and he definitely intended to
strengthen the new government by making it the supreme financial power
and enlisting in its support all the moneyed interests of the country.
Property, as in England, must be the basis of government.
{146}
Against his schemes, there immediately developed a rising opposition
which made itself felt in Congress, in State legislatures, in the
newspapers, and finally in Washington's own Cabinet. All the farmer
and debtor elements in the country disliked and dreaded the financial
manipulations of the brilliant secretary; and the Virginian planters,
universally borrowers, who had been the strongest single power in
establishing the new constitution, now swung into opposition to the
administration. Madison led the fight in the House against Hamilton's
measures; and Jefferson, in the Cabinet, laid down, in a memorandum of
protest against the proposed bank, the doctrine of "strict
construction" of the constitution according to which the powers granted
to the federal government ought to be narrowly construed in order to
preserve the State governments, the source of liberty, from
encroachment. He denounced the bank, accordingly, as unwarranted by
the constitution, corrupt, and dangerous to the safety of the country.
In the congressional contest Hamilton was successful, for all his
recommendations were adopted, but at the cost of creating a lasting
antagonism in the southern States and in the western regions.
In 1791, Jefferson and Madison co-operated to establish a newspaper at
Philadelphia whose sole occupation consisted in denouncing {147} the
corrupt and monarchical Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton retorted
by publishing letters charging Jefferson with responsibility for it;
and Washington, who steadily approved Hamilton's policies, found his
Cabinet splitting into two factions. By the year 1792, when the second
presidential election took place, the opposition, styling itself
"Republican," was sufficiently well organized to run George Clinton,
formerly the Anti-federalist leader of New York, for the
Vice-Presidency against the "monarchical" Adams. Washington was not
opposed, but no other one of the Hamiltonian supporters escaped attack.
There was, in short, the beginning of the definite formation of
political parties on lines akin to those which existed in the period
before 1787. Behind Jefferson and Madison were rallying all the
colonial-minded voters, to whom government was at best an evil and to
whom, under any circumstances, strong authority and elaborate finance
were utterly abhorrent. Around Hamilton gathered the men whose
interests lay in building up a genuine, powerful, national
government--the merchants, shipowners, moneyed men and creditors
generally in the northern States--and, of course, all Tories.
Up to 1793, the Federalist administration successfully maintained its
ground; and, when {148} the Virginian group tried in the House to prove
laxity and mismanagement against Hamilton, he was triumphantly
vindicated. Had the United States been allowed to develop in
tranquillity and prosperity for a generation, it is not unlikely that
the Federalist party might have struck its roots so deeply as to be
impervious to attacks. But it needed time, for in contrast to the
Jeffersonian party, whose origin is manifestly in the old-time colonial
political habits of democracy, local independence, and love of lax
finance, the Federalist party was a new creation, with no traditions to
fall back upon. Reflecting in some respects British views, notably in
its distrust of the masses and its respect for property and wealth, it
far surpassed any English party of the period, except the small group
led by William Pitt, in its demand for progressive and vigorous
legislation. In 1793, when matters were in this situation, the state
of European and British politics suddenly brought the United States
into the current of world politics, and subjected the new
administration to difficulties, which were ultimately to cause its
downfall.
{149}
CHAPTER VIII
THE FIRST PERIOD OF COMMERCIAL ANTAGONISM, 1783-1795
While the United States had been undergoing the important changes of
the period, 1783-1793, England had passed through an almost equally
significant political transformation, in course of which the two
countries entered upon a long history of difficult and unfriendly
diplomatic relations. The treaty of peace ended the political union of
the two communities, but it left the nature of their commercial
relations to be settled; and this, for the United States, was a problem
second only in importance to that of federal government. If the
prosperity of the thirteen States was to be restored, the old-time
trade routes of the colonial days must be re-established. The West
India market for fish, grain, and lumber, the British or European
market for plantation products must be replaced on a profitable basis,
and the United States must be prepared to purchase these privileges by
whatever concessions lay in its power to grant. It rested chiefly with
England to decide whether to permit the former colonies to resume their
earlier commercial system or begin a new policy, for it was with
Britain and the British colonies {150} that seven-eighths of American
commerce naturally was carried on.
Unfortunately for the people of the United States, and unfortunately
for the harmony of the two countries, the prevailing beliefs of English
merchants, shipowners, naval authorities, and, in general, the official
classes were such as to render a complete resumption of the former
trade relations almost impossible. According to the political and
economic doctrines underlying the Acts of Trade, the moment that the
two countries became separated their interests automatically became
antagonistic. American shipping, formerly fostered when under the
flag, now assumed the aspect of a formidable rival to the British
merchant marine and, as such, ought to be prevented from taking any
profit which by any device could be turned toward British ships.
The treaty of peace had scarcely been signed when there appeared a
pamphlet by Lord Sheffield, early in 1783, which won instant success,
passing through several editions. This announced that henceforward it
was the duty of the British government to discourage and crush American
navigation to the extent of its power in order to check a dangerous
rival, taking especial care to reserve the West Indies for exclusive
British control. At the possibility of losing the {151} profitable
American market through retaliatory measures, Sheffield laughed in
scorn. "We might as reasonably dread the effect of combinations among
the German as among the American States," he sneered, "and deprecate
the resolves of the Diet as those of Congress." There were elements,
of course, to whom these arguments of Sheffield were unwelcome,
particularly the West India planters themselves, and to a degree the
British manufacturers, who would gladly have resumed the trade of the
years before 1776; but, so far as the great majority of Englishmen was
concerned, it seems impossible to doubt that Lord Sheffield was a true
spokesman of their convictions.
In addition to the economic theories of the time, the temper of the
British people was sullen, hostile, and contemptuous toward the former
colonies. The bulk of the nation had come to condemn the policy of the
North Ministry which had led to the loss of the plantations, but they
did not love the Americans any the more for that. The sharp social
distinctions, which prior to 1776 had rendered the nobility, the
gentry, the clergy, and the professions contemptuous toward the
colonists, still reigned unchecked; and the Tories and most of the
ruling classes, regarding the Americans as a set of ungrateful and
spiteful people, whom it was well {152} to have lost as subjects,
ceased to take any interest in their existence. The United States was
dropped, as an unpleasant subject is banished from conversation; and
the relations of the two countries became a matter of national concern
only when the interests of shipowners, merchants, or naval authorities
were sufficiently strong to compel attention from the governing classes.
The Whig leaders should, of course, be excepted from this general
statement, for they and their followers--both their parliamentary
coterie and their middle-class adherents outside--retained a friendly
attitude, and tried to treat the United States with a consideration
which usually had no place in Tory manners. But Whigs as well as
Tories held the prevailing conceptions of naval and economic
necessities, and only scattered individuals, like William Pitt, were
affected by the new doctrines of Adam Smith. Their commercial policy
tended to differ only in degree from that of the more rigid Tories.
To make it certain that the United States should fail to secure
favourable commercial rights, the ascendancy of the Whigs came to a
sudden end within a year from its beginning. The Shelburne Ministry,
which made the peace, had to meet the opposition not only of the Tories
but of the group led by Fox. In the session of 1783, the Whig party
{153} was thus openly split, and presently all England was scandalized
to see Fox enter into a coalition with no less a person than Lord North
for the purpose of obtaining office. Shelburne resigned on February
24, after the passage of a resolution of censure on the Peace; and
George III, after trying every expedient to avoid what he considered a
personal disgrace, was forced, on April 2, to admit Fox and North as
Ministers under the nominal headship of the Duke of Portland. So
Tories were restored to a share in the government, since nearly half of
the coalition majority depended upon Tory votes. In December, 1783,
the King, by a direct exercise of his influence, caused the Lords to
throw out a Ministerial bill for the government of India and,
dismissing the coalition Ministers, he appealed to William Pitt. That
youthful politician, who had first entered office as Chancellor of the
Exchequer under Shelburne, succeeded, after a sharp parliamentary
contest, in breaking down the opposition majority in the House, and in
a general election in March, 1784, won a great victory. Then, at the
head of a mixed Cabinet, supported by Tories and King's Friends as well
as by his own followers from among the Whigs, Pitt maintained himself,
secure in the support of George III, but in no sense his agent or tool.
In the {154} next few years, he made his hold secure by his skill in
parliamentary leadership and his success in carrying financial and
administrative reforms. This was the first peace Ministry since that
of Pelham, 1746-1754, which won prestige through efficient government.
It was, however, mainly Tory in temper, and as such distinctly cold and
unfriendly toward America. Pitt himself was undoubtedly in favour of
liberal commercial relations; but in that respect, as in the question
of parliamentary reform, he followed the opinions of his supporters and
of the nation.
The British policy toward the United States, under the circumstances,
was dictated by a strict adherence to the principles set forth by Lord
Sheffield. Pitt, while Chancellor of the Exchequer under Shelburne,
introduced a very liberal Bill, which, if enacted, would have secured
full commercial reciprocity, including the West India trade. This
failed to pass, however, and was abandoned when Pitt left office in
April, 1783. The Fox-North Ministry followed a different plan by
causing Parliament to pass a Bill authorizing the Crown to regulate the
trade with the West Indies. They then, by proclamation, allowed the
islands to import certain articles from the United States, not
including fish or lumber, and {155} only in British bottoms. It was
hoped that Canada would take the place of the United States in
supplying the West India colonies, and that British vessels would
monopolize the carrying. In 1787 this action was ratified by
Parliament, and the process of discouraging American shipping was
adopted as a national policy. American vessels henceforward came under
the terms of the Navigation Acts, and could take part only in the
direct trade between their own country and England. When John Adams,
in 1785, arrived at London as Minister, and tried to open the subject
of a commercial treaty, he was unable to secure the slightest attention
to the American requests and felt himself to be in an atmosphere of
hostility and social contempt. The British policy proved in a few
years fairly successful. It reduced American shipping trading with
England, it drove American vessels from the British West Indies, and,
owing to the impossibility of the States retaliating separately, it did
not diminish the British market in America. Up to 1789, when the first
Congress of the United States passed a navigation act and adopted
discriminating duties, America remained commercially helpless. The
profit went to British shipowners and merchants.
The American government naturally {156} turned to the other powers
having American possessions, France and Spain, hoping to secure from
them compensating advantages. So far as France was concerned, the
government of Louis XVI was friendly; but its finances were in such
confusion and its administration so unsteady after 1783 that Jefferson,
Minister to France, could secure no important concessions save one. In
1784, as though to step into the place left vacant by the English, the
French crown, by royal order, permitted direct trade between the United
States and the French West Indies in vessels of less than sixty tons
burden. The result was striking. In a few years the American molasses
trade, driven from the British islands, took refuge at San Domingo,
building up a tremendous sugar export and more than filling the place
of the British trade. In 1790 the commerce of San Domingo surpassed
that of all the British Islands together. Here again, French
friendship shone in contrast to English antagonism. Every American
shipowner felt the difference, and remembered it.
With Spain the United States was less successful. Jay, Secretary for
Foreign Affairs, undertook negotiations through Diego Gardoqui, a
Spaniard who, during the Revolution, had furnished many cargoes of
supplies. He {157} found that country sharply dissatisfied over the
boundary assigned to the United States. The British, in ceding Florida
to Spain, had not turned over all of their province of 1763, but had
handed that part of it north of thirty-two degrees to the United
States, and, further, had granted the latter the free navigation of the
Mississippi, through Spanish territory. Gardoqui offered in substance
to make a commercial treaty provided the United States would surrender
the claim to navigate the Mississippi for twenty years. Jay, to whose
mind the interests of the seaboard shipowners and producers far
outweighed the desires of the few settlers of the interior waters, was
willing to make the agreement. But an angry protest went up from the
southern States, whose land claims stretched to the Mississippi, and he
could secure, in 1787, a vote of only seven States to five in Congress.
Since all treaties required the consent of nine States, this vote
killed the negotiations. Spain remained unfriendly, and continued to
intrigue with the Indian tribes in the south-western United States with
a view to retaining their support.
Further north, the United States found itself mortified and helpless
before British antagonism. After 1783 the country had Canada on its
northern border as a small but actively hostile neighbour, for there
{158} thousands of proscribed and ruined Tories had taken refuge. The
governors of Canada, Carlton and Simcoe, as well as the men commanding
the frontier posts, had served against the Americans and regarded them
as rivals. To secure the western fur trade and to retain a hold over
the western Indians was recognized as the correct and necessary policy
for Canada; and the British government, in response to Canadian
suggestions, decided to retain their military posts along the Great
Lakes within the boundaries of the United States. To justify them in
so doing, they pointed with unanswerable truth to the fact that the
United States had not carried out the provisions of the Treaty of 1783
regarding British debts, and that Tories, contrary to the letter and
spirit of that treaty, were still proscribed by law. The State courts
felt in no way bound to enforce the treaty, nor did State legislatures
choose to carry it out. British debts remained uncollectible, and the
British therefore retained their western posts and through them plied a
lucrative trade with the Indians to the south of the Great Lakes.
In the years after the war, a steady flow of settlers entered the Ohio
valley, resuming the movement begun before the Revolution, and took up
land in Kentucky and the Northwest territory. By 1792 Kentucky {159}
was ready to be admitted as a State, and Tennessee and Ohio were
organized as territories. These settlers naturally found the Indians
opposing their advance, and the years 1783-1794 are a chronicle of
smouldering border warfare, broken by intermittent truces. During all
this time it was the firm belief of the frontiersmen that the Indian
hostility was stimulated by the British posts, and hatred of England
and the English grew into an article of faith on their part.
Ultimately, the new government under Washington undertook a decisive
campaign. At first, in 1791, General St. Clair, invading Ohio with raw
troops, was fearfully defeated, with butchery and mutilation of more
than two-thirds of his force; but in 1794 General Wayne, with a more
carefully drilled body, compelled the Indians to retreat. Yet with the
British posts still there, a full control was impossible.
The new constitution, which gave the United States ample powers of
enforcing treaties and making commercial discriminations, did not at
once produce any alteration in the existing unsatisfactory situation.
Spain remained steadily indifferent and unfriendly. France, undergoing
the earlier stages of her own revolution, was incapable of carrying out
any consistent action. The Pitt Ministry, absorbed in the game of
European politics and in internal {160} legislation, sent a Minister,
Hammond, but was content to let its commercial and frontier policies
continue. But when, in 1792, the French Revolution took a graver
character, with the overthrow of the monarchy, and when in 1793 England
joined the European powers in the war against France, while all Europe
watched with horror and panic the progress of the Reign of Terror in
the French Republic, the situation of the United States was suddenly
changed.
In the spring of 1793 there came the news of the war between England
and France, and, following it by a few days only, an emissary from the
French Republic, One and Indivisible, "Citizen Edmo
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