THE HISTORY
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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THE HISTORYOF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA |
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THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
JOHN FISKE
Since the year 1875 we have witnessed, in many parts
of the United States, public processions, meetings, and speeches in
commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of some important event in the course
of our struggle for national independence. This series of centennial
celebrations, which has been of great value in stimulating American patriotism
and awakening throughout the country a keen interest in American history, will
naturally come to an end in 1889. The close of President Cleveland's term of
office marks the close of the first century of the government under which we
live, which dates from the inauguration of President Washington on the balcony
of the Federal building in Wall street, New York, on the 30th of April, 1789. It
was on that memorable day that the American Revolution may be said to have been
completed. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 detached the American people
from the supreme government to which they had hitherto owed allegiance, and it
was not until Washington's inauguration in 1789 that the supreme government to
which we owe allegiance today was actually put in operation. The period of
thirteen years included between these two dates was strictly a revolutionary
period, during which it was more or less doubtful where the supreme authority
over the United States belonged. First, it took the fighting and the diplomacy
of the revolutionary war to decide that this supreme authority belonged in the
United States themselves, and not in the government of Great Britain; and then
after the war was ended, more than five years of sore distress and anxious
discussion had elapsed before the American people succeeded in setting up a new
government that was strong enough to make itself obeyed at home and respected
abroad.
It is the story of this revolutionary period, ending
in 1789, that we have here to relate in its principal outlines. When we stand
upon the crest of a lofty hill and look about in all directions over the
landscape, we can often detect relations between distant points which we had not
before thought of together. While we tarried in the lowland, we could see blue
peaks rising here and there against the sky, and follow babbling brooks hither
and thither through the forest. It was more homelike down there than on the
hilltop, for in each gnarled tree, in every moss-grown boulder, in every wayside
flower, we had a friend that was near to us; but the general bearings of things
may well have escaped our notice. In climbing to our lonely vantage-ground,
while the familiar scenes fade from sight, there are gradually unfolded to us
those connections between crag and meadow and stream that make the life and
meaning of the whole. We learn the "lay of the land," and become, in a humble
way, geographers. So in the history of men and nations, while we remain immersed
in the study of personal incidents and details, as what such a statesman said or
how many men were killed in such a battle, we may quite fail to understand what
it was all about, and we shall be sure often to misjudge men's characters and
estimate wrongly the importance of many events. For this reason we cannot
clearly see the meaning of the history of our own times. The facts are too near
us; we are down among them, like the man who could not see the forest because
there were so many trees. But when we look back over a long interval of years,
we can survey distant events and personages like points in a vast landscape and
begin to discern the meaning of it all. In this way we come to see that history
is full of lessons for us. Very few things have happened in past ages with which
our present welfare is not in one way or another concerned. Few things have
happened in any age more interesting or more important than the American
Revolution.
II
THE COLONIES IN 1750.
It is always difficult in history to mark the
beginning and end of a period. Events keep rushing on and do not pause to be
divided into chapters; or, in other words, in the history which really takes
place, a new chapter is always beginning long before the old one is ended. The
divisions we make when we try to describe it are merely marks that we make for
our own convenience. In telling the story of the American Revolution we must
stop somewhere, and the inauguration of President Washington is a very proper
place. We must also begin somewhere, but it is quite clear that it will not do
to begin with the Declaration of Independence in July, 1776, or even with the
midnight ride of Paul Revere in April, 1775. For if we ask what caused that
"hurry of hoofs in a village street," and what brought together those
five-and-fifty statesmen at Philadelphia, we are not simply led back to the
Boston Tea-Party, and still further to the Stamp Act, but we find it necessary
to refer to events that happened more than a century before the Revolution can
properly be said to have begun. Indeed, if we were going to take a very wide
view of the situation, and try to point out its relations to the general history
of mankind, we should have to go back many hundreds of years and not only cross
the ocean to the England of King Alfred, but keep on still further to the
ancient market-places of Rome and Athens, and even to the pyramids of Egypt; and
in all this long journey through the ages we should not be merely gratifying an
idle curiosity, but at every step of the way could gather sound practical
lessons, useful in helping us to vote intelligently at the next election for
mayor of the city in which we live or for president of the United States.
We are not now, however, about to start on any such
long journey. It is a much nearer and narrower view of the American Revolution
that we wish to get. There are many points from which we might start, but we
must at any rate choose a point several years earlier than the Declaration of
Independence. People are very apt to leave out of sight the "good old colony
times" and speak of our country as scarcely more than a hundred years old.
Sometimes we hear the presidency of George Washington spoken of as part of
"early American history;" but we ought not to forget that when Washington was
born the commonwealth of Virginia was already one hundred and twenty-five years
old. The first governor of Massachusetts was born three centuries ago, in 1588,
the year of the Spanish Armada. Suppose we take the period of 282 years between
the English settlement of Virginia and the inauguration of President Benjamin
Harrison, and divide it in the middle. That gives us the year 1748 as the
half-way station in the history of the American people. There were just as many
years of continuous American history before 1748 as there have been since that
date. That year was famous for the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which put an end
to a war between England and France that had lasted five years. That war had
been waged in America as well as in Europe, and American troops had played a
brilliant part in it. There was now a brief lull, soon to be followed by another
and greater war between the two mighty rivals, and it was in the course of this
latter war that some of the questions were raised which presently led to the
American Revolution. Let us take the occasion of this lull in the storm to look
over the American world and see what were the circumstances likely to lead to
the throwing off of the British government by the thirteen colonies, and to
their union under a federal government of their own making.
The four New England colonies.
In the middle of the eighteenth century there were
four New England colonies. Massachusetts extended her sway over Maine, and the
Green Mountain territory was an uninhabited wilderness to which New York and New
Hampshire alike laid claim. The four commonwealths of New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island had all been in existence, under
one form or another, for more than a century. The men who were in the prime of
life there in 1750 were the great-grandsons and great-great-grandsons of the men
who crossed the ocean between 1620 and 1640 and settled New England. Scarcely
two men in a hundred were of other than English blood. About one in a hundred
could say that his family came from Scotland or the north of Ireland; one in
five hundred may have been the grandchild of a Huguenot. Upon religious and
political questions these people thought very much alike. Extreme poverty was
almost unknown, and there were but few who could not read and write. As a rule
every head of a family owned the house in which he lived and the land which
supported him. There were no cities; and from Boston, which was a town with
16,000 inhabitants, down to the smallest settlement in the White Mountains, the
government was carried on by town-meetings at which, almost any grown-up man
could be present and speak and vote. Except upon the sea-coast nearly all the
people lived upon farms; but all along the coast were many who lived by fishing
and by building ships, and in the towns dwelt many merchants grown rich by
foreign trade. In those days Massachusetts was the richest of the thirteen
colonies, and had a larger population than any other except Virginia.
Connecticut was then more populous than New York; and when the four New England
commonwealths acted together—as was likely to be the case in time of danger—they
formed the strongest military power on the American continent.
Virginia and Maryland
Among what we now call southern states there were
two that in 1750 were more than a hundred years old. These were Virginia and
Maryland. The people of these commonwealths, like those of New England, had
lived together in America long enough to become distinctively Americans. Both
New Englander and Virginian had had time to forget their family relationships
with the kindred left behind so long ago in England; though there were many who
did not forget it, and in our time scholars have by research recovered many of
the links that had been lost from memory. The white people of Virginia were as
purely English as those of Connecticut or Massachusetts. But society in Virginia
was very different from society in New England. The wealth of Virginia consisted
chiefly of tobacco, which was raised by negro slaves. People lived far apart
from each other on great plantations, usually situated near the navigable
streams of which that country has so many. Most of the great planters had easy
access to private wharves, where their crops could be loaded on ships and sent
directly to England in exchange for all sorts of goods. Accordingly it was but
seldom that towns grew up as centres of trade. Each plantation was a kind of
little world in itself. There were no town-meetings, as the smallest political
division was the division into counties; but there were county-meetings quite
vigorous with political life. Of the leading county families a great many were
descended from able and distinguished Cavaliers or King's-men who had come over
from England during the ascendency of Oliver Cromwell. Skill in the management
of public affairs was hereditary in such families, and during our revolutionary
period Virginia produced more great leaders than any of the other colonies.
New York and Delaware.
There were yet two other American commonwealths that
in 1750 were more than a hundred years old. These were New York and little
Delaware, which for some time was a kind of appendage, first to New York,
afterward to Pennsylvania. But there was one important respect in which these
two colonies were different alike from New England and from Virginia. Their
population was far from being purely English. Delaware had been first settled by
Swedes, New York by Dutchmen; and the latter colony had drawn its settlers from
almost every part of western and central Europe. A man might travel from
Penobscot bay to the Harlem river without hearing a syllable in any other tongue
than English; but in crossing Manhattan island he could listen, if he chose, to
more than a dozen languages. There was almost as much diversity in opinions
about religious and political matters as there was in the languages in which
they were expressed. New York was an English community in so far as it had been
for more than eighty years under an English government, but hardly in any other
sense. Accordingly we shall find New York in the revolutionary period less
prompt and decided in action than Massachusetts and Virginia. In population New
York ranked only seventh among the thirteen colonies; but in its geographical
position it was the most important of all. It was important commercially because
the Mohawk and Hudson rivers formed a direct avenue for the fur-trade from the
region of the great lakes to the finest harbour on all the Atlantic coast. In a
military sense it was important for two reasons; first, because the
Mohawk valley was the home of the most powerful confederacy of Indians on the
continent, the steady allies of the English and deadly foes of the French; secondly, because the centre of the French power was at Montreal and
Quebec, and from those points the route by which the English colonies could be
most easily invaded was formed by Lake Champlain and the Hudson river. New York
was completely interposed between New England and the rest of the English
colonies, so that an enemy holding possession of it would virtually cut the
Atlantic sea-board in two. For these reasons the political action of New York
was of most critical importance.
The two Carolinas and Georgia; New Jersey and
Pennsylvania.
Of the other colonies in 1750, the two Carolinas and
New Jersey were rather more than eighty years old, while Pennsylvania had been
settled scarcely seventy years. But the growth of these younger colonies had
been rapid, especially in the case of Pennsylvania and North Carolina, which in
populousness ranked third and fourth among the thirteen. This rapid increase was
mainly due to a large immigration from Europe kept up during the first half of
the eighteenth century, so that a large proportion of the people had either been
born in Europe, or were the children of people born in Europe. In 1750 these
colonies had not had time enough to become so intensely American as Virginia and
the New England colonies. In Georgia, which had been settled only seventeen
years, people had had barely time to get used to this new home on the wild
frontier.
The population of these younger colonies was very
much mixed. In South Carolina, as in New York, probably less than half were
English. In both Carolinas there were a great many Huguenots from France, and
immigrants from Germany and Scotland and the north of Ireland were still pouring
in. Pennsylvania had many Germans and Irish, and settlers from other parts of
Europe, besides its English Quakers. With all this diversity of race there was a
great diversity of opinions about political questions, as about other matters.
We are now beginning to see why it was that
Massachusetts and Virginia took the lead in bringing on the revolutionary war.
Not only were these two the largest colonies, but their people had become much
more thoroughly welded together in their thoughts and habits and associations
than was as yet possible with the people of the younger colonies. When the
revolutionary war came, there were very few Tories in the New England colonies
and very few in Virginia; but there were a great many in New York and
Pennsylvania and the two Carolinas, so that the action of these commonwealths
was often slow and undecided, and sometimes there was bitter and bloody fighting
between men of opposite opinions, especially in New York and South Carolina.
The two republics; Connecticut and Rhode Island
If we
look at the governments of the thirteen colonies in the middle of the eighteenth
century, we shall observe some interesting facts. All the colonies had
legislative assemblies elected by the people, and these assemblies levied the
taxes and made the laws. So far as the legislatures were concerned, therefore,
all the colonies governed themselves. But with regard to the executive
department of the government, there were very important differences. Only two of
the colonies, Connecticut and Rhode Island, had governors elected by the people.
These two colonies were completely self-governing. In almost everything but name
they were independent of Great Britain, and this was so true that at the time of
the revolutionary war they did not need to make any new constitutions for
themselves, but continued to live on under their old charters for many
years,—Connecticut until 1818, Rhode Island until 1843. Before the revolution
these two colonies had comparatively few direct grievances to complain of at the
hands of Great Britain; but as they were next neighbours to Massachusetts and
closely connected with its history, they were likely to sympathize promptly with
the kind of grievances by which Massachusetts was disturbed.
Three of the colonies, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and
Maryland, had a peculiar kind of government, known as proprietary
government. Their territories had originally been granted by the crown to a
person known as the Lord Proprietary, and the lord-proprietorship descended from
father to son like a kingdom. In Maryland it was the Calvert family that reigned
for six generations as lords proprietary. Pennsylvania and Delaware had each its
own separate legislature, but over both colonies reigned the same lord
proprietary, who was a member of the Penn family. These colonies were thus like
little hereditary monarchies, and they had but few direct dealings with the
British government. For them the lords proprietary stood in the place of the
king, and appointed the governors. In Maryland this system ran smoothly. In
Pennsylvania there was a good deal of dissatisfaction, but it generally assumed
the form of a wish to get rid of the lords proprietary and have the governors
appointed by the king; for as this was something they had not tried they were
not prepared to appreciate its evils.
The crown colonies, and their royal
governors.
In the other eight colonies—New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and
Georgia—the governors were appointed by the king, and were commonly known as
"royal governors." They were sometimes natives of the colonies over which they
were appointed, as Dudley and Hutchinson of Massachusetts, and others; but were
more often sent over from England. Some of them, as Pownall of Massachusetts and
Spotswood of Virginia, were men of marked ability. Some were honest gentlemen,
who felt a real interest in the welfare of the people they came to help govern;
some were unprincipled adventurers, who came to make money by fair means or
foul. Their position was one of much dignity, and they behaved themselves like
lesser kings. What with their crimson velvets and fine laces and stately
coaches, they made much more of a show than any president of the United States
would think of making to-day. They had no fixed terms of office, but remained at
their posts as long as the king, or the king's colonial secretary, saw fit to
keep them there.
Now it was generally true of the royal governors
that, whether they were natives of America or sent over from England, and
whether they were good men or bad, they were very apt to make themselves
disliked by the people, and they were almost always quarrelling with their
legislative assemblies. Questions were always coming up about which the governor
and the legislature could not agree, because the legislature represented the
views of the people who had chosen it, while the governor represented his own
views or the views which prevailed three thousand miles away among the king's
ministers, who very often knew little about America and cared less. One of these
disputed questions related to the governor's salary. It was natural that the
governor should wish to have a salary of fixed amount, so that he might know
from year to year what he was going to receive. But the people were afraid that
if this were to be done the governor might become too independent. They
preferred that the legislature should each year make a grant of money such as it
should deem suitable for the governor's expenses, and this sum it might increase
or diminish according to its own good pleasure. This would keep the governor
properly subservient to the legislature. Before 1750 there had been much bitter
wrangling over this question in several of the colonies, and the governors had
one after another been obliged to submit, though with very ill grace.
Sometimes the thoughts of the royal governors and
their friends went beyond this immediate question. Since the legislatures were
so froward and so niggardly, what an admirable plan it would be to have the
governors paid out of the royal treasury and thus made comparatively independent
of the legislatures! The judges, too, who were quite poorly paid, might fare
much better if remunerated by the crown, and the same might be said of some
other public officers. But if the British government were to undertake to pay
the salaries of its officials in America, it must raise a revenue for the
purpose; and it would naturally raise such a revenue by levying taxes in America
rather than in England. People in England felt that they were already taxed as
heavily as they could bear, in order to pay the expenses of their own
government. They could not be expected to submit to further taxation for the
sake of paying the expenses of governing the American colonies. If further taxes
were to be laid for such a purpose, they must in fairness be laid upon
Americans, not upon Englishmen in the old country.
Such was the view which people in England would
naturally be expected to take, and such was the view which they generally did
take. But there was another side to the question which was very clearly seen by
most people in America. If the royal governors were to be paid by the crown and
thus made independent of their legislatures, there would be danger of their
becoming petty tyrants and interfering in many ways with the liberties of the
people. Still greater would be the danger if the judges were to be paid by the
crown, for then they would feel themselves responsible to the king or to the
royal governor, rather than to their fellow-citizens; and it would be easy for
the governors, by appointing corrupt men as judges, to prevent the proper
administration of justice by the courts, and thus to make men's lives and
property insecure. Most Americans in 1750 felt this danger very keenly. They had
not forgotten how, in the times of their grandfathers, two of the noblest of
Englishmen, Lord William Russell and Colonel Algernon Sidney, had been murdered
by the iniquitous sentence of time-serving judges. They had not forgotten the
ruffian George Jeffreys and his "bloody assizes" of 1685. They well remembered
how their kinsmen in England had driven into exile the Stuart family of kings,
who were even yet, in 1745, making efforts to recover their lost throne. They
remembered how the beginnings of New England had been made by stout-hearted men
who could not endure the tyranny of these same Stuarts; and they knew well that
one of the worst of the evils upon which Stuart tyranny had fattened had been
the corruption of the courts of justice. The Americans believed with some
reason, that even now, in the middle of the eighteenth century, the
administration of justice in their own commonwealths was decidedly better than
in Great Britain; and they had no mind to have it disturbed.
But worse than all, if the expenses of governing
America were to be paid by taxes levied upon Americans and collected from them
by king or parliament or any power whatsoever residing in Great Britain, then
the inhabitants of the thirteen American colonies would at once cease to be free people. A free country is one
in which the government cannot take away people's money, in the shape of taxes,
except for strictly public purposes and with the consent of the people
themselves, as expressed by some body of representatives whom the people have
chosen. If people's money can be taken from them without their consent, no
matter how small the amount, even if it be less than one dollar out of every
thousand, then they are not politically free. They do not govern, but the power
that thus takes their money without their consent is the power that governs; and
there is nothing to prevent such a power from using the money thus obtained to
strengthen itself until it can trample upon people's rights in every direction,
and rob them of their homes and lives as well as of their money. If the British
government could tax the Americans without their consent, it might use the money
for supporting a British army in America, and such an army might be employed in
intimidating the legislatures, in dispersing town-meetings, in destroying
newspaper-offices, or in other acts of tyranny.
The Americans in the middle of the eighteenth
century well understood that the principle of "no taxation without
representation" is the fundamental principle of free government. It was the
principle for which their forefathers had contended again and again in England,
and upon which the noble edifice of English liberty had been raised and
consolidated since the grand struggle between king and barons in the thirteenth
century. It had passed into a tradition, both in England and in America, that in
order to prevent the crown from becoming despotic, it was necessary that it
should only wield such revenues as the representatives of the people might be
pleased to grant it. In England the body which represented the people was the
House of Commons, in each of the American colonies it was the colonial
legislature; and in dealing with the royal governors, the legislatures acted
upon the same general principles as the House of Commons in dealing with the
king.
It was not until some time after 1750 that any grand
assault was made upon the principle of "no taxation without representation," but
the frequent disputes with the royal governors were such as to keep people from
losing sight of this principle, and to make them sensitive about acts that might
lead to violations of it. In the particular disputes the governors were
sometimes clearly right and the people wrong. One of the principal objects, as
we shall presently see, for which the governors wanted money, was to maintain
troops for defence against the French and the Indians; and the legislatures were
apt to be short-sighted and unreasonably stingy about such matters. Again, the
people were sometimes seized with a silly craze for "paper money" and "wild-cat
banks"—devices for making money out of nothing—and sometimes the governors were
sensible enough to oppose such delusions but not altogether sensible in their
manner of doing it. Thus in 1740 there was fierce excitement in Massachusetts
over a quarrel between the governor and the legislature about the famous "silver
bank" and "land bank." These institutions were a public nuisance and deserved to
be suppressed, but the governor was obliged to appeal to parliament in order to
succeed in doing it. This led many people to ask, "What business has a
parliament sitting the other side of the ocean to be making laws for us?" and
the grumbling was loud and bitter enough to show that this was a very dangerous
question to raise.
It was in the eight colonies which had royal
governors that troubles of a revolutionary character were more likely to arise
than in the other five, but there were special reasons, besides those already
mentioned, why Massachusetts and Virginia should prove more refractory than any
of the others. Both these great commonwealths had bitter memories. Things had
happened in both which might serve as a warning, and which some of the old men
still living in 1750 could distinctly remember. In Virginia the misgovernment of
the royal governor Sir William Berkeley had led in 1675 to the famous rebellion
headed by Nathaniel Bacon, and this rebellion had been suppressed with much
harshness. Many leading citizens had been sent to the gallows and their estates
had been confiscated. In Massachusetts, though there were no such scenes of
cruelty to remember, the grievance was much more deep-seated and enduring.
Massachusetts had not been originally a royal
province, with its governors appointed by the king. At first it had been a
republic, such as Connecticut and Rhode Island now were, with governors chosen
by the people. From its foundation in 1629 down to 1684 the commonwealth of
Massachusetts had managed its own affairs at its own good pleasure. Practically
it had been not only self-governing but almost independent. That was because
affairs in England were in such confusion that until after 1660 comparatively
little attention was paid to what was going on in America, and the liberties of
Massachusetts prospered through the neglect of what was then called the "home
government." After Charles II. came to the throne in 1660 he began to interfere
with the affairs of Massachusetts, and so the very first generation of men that
had been born on the soil of that commonwealth were engaged in a long struggle
against the British king for the right of managing their own affairs. After more
than twenty years of this struggle, which by 1675 had come to be quite bitter,
the charter of Massachusetts was annulled in 1684 and its free government was
for the moment destroyed. Presently a viceroy was sent over from England, to
govern Massachusetts (as well as several other northern colonies) despotically.
This viceroy, Sir Edmund Andros, seems to have been a fairly well meaning man.
He was not especially harsh or cruel, but his rule was a despotism, because he
was not responsible to the people for what he did, but only to the king. In
point of fact the two-and-a-half years of his administration were characterized
by arbitrary arrests and by interference with private property and with the
freedom of the press. It was so vexatious that early in 1689, taking advantage
of the Revolution then going on in England, the people of Boston rose in
rebellion, seized Andros and threw him into jail, and set up for themselves a
provisional government. When the affairs of New England were settled after the
accession of William and Mary to the throne, Connecticut and Rhode Island were
allowed to keep their old governments; but Massachusetts in 1693 was obliged to
take a new charter instead of her old one, and although this new charter revived
the election of legislatures by the people, it left the governors henceforth to
be appointed by the king.
In the political controversies of Massachusetts,
therefore, in the eighteenth century, the people were animated by the
recollection of what they had lost. They were somewhat less free and independent
than their grandfathers had been, and they had learned what it was to have an
irresponsible ruler sitting at his desk in Boston and signing warrants for the
arrest of loved and respected citizens who dared criticise his sayings and
doings. "Taxation without representation" was not for them a mere abstract
theory; they knew what it meant. It was as near to them as the presidency of
Andrew Jackson is to us; there had not been time enough to forget it. In every
contest between the popular legislature and the royal governor there was some
broad principle involved which there were plenty of well-remembered facts to
illustrate.
These contests also helped to arouse a strong
sympathy between the popular leaders in Massachusetts and in Virginia. Between
the people of the two colonies there was not much real sympathy, because there
was a good deal of difference between their ways of life and their opinions
about things; and people, unless they are unusually wise and generous of nature,
are apt to dislike and despise those who differ from them in opinions and
habits. So there was little cordiality of feeling between the people of
Massachusetts and the people of Virginia, but in spite of this there was a great
and growing political sympathy. This was because, ever since 1693, they had been
obliged to deal with the same kind of political questions. It became intensely
interesting to a Virginian to watch the progress of a dispute between the
governor and legislature of Massachusetts, because whatever principle might be
victorious in the course of such a dispute, it was sure soon to find a practical
application in Virginia. Hence by the middle of the eighteenth century the two
colonies were keenly observant of each other, and either one was exceedingly
prompt in taking its cue from the other. It is worth while to
remember this fact, for without it there would doubtless have been rebellions or
revolutions of American colonies, but there would hardly have been one American
Revolution, ending in a grand American Union.
III
THE FRENCH WARS, AND THE FIRST PLAN OF UNION.
It was said a moment ago that one of the chief
objects for which the governors wanted money was to maintain troops for defence
against the French and the Indians. This was a very serious matter indeed. To
any one who looked at a map of North America in 1750 it might well have seemed
as if the French had secured for themselves the greater part of the continent.
The western frontier of the English settlements was generally within two hundred
miles of the sea-coast. In New York it was at Johnson Hall, not far from
Schenectady; in Pennsylvania it was about at Carlisle; in Virginia it was near
Winchester, and the first explorers were just making their way across the
Alleghany mountains. Westward of these frontier settlements lay endless
stretches of forest inhabited by warlike tribes of red men who, everywhere
except in New York, were hostile to the English and friendly to the French.
Since the beginning of the seventeenth century French towns and villages had
been growing up along the St. Lawrence, and French explorers had been pushing
across the Great Lakes and down the valley of the Mississippi river, near the
mouth of which the French town of New Orleans had been standing since 1718. It
was the French doctrine that discovery and possession of a river gave a claim to
all the territory drained by that river. According to this doctrine every acre
of American soil from which water flowed into the St. Lawrence and the
Mississippi belonged to France. The claims of the French thus came up to the
very crest of the Alleghanies, and they made no secret of their intention to
shut up the English forever between that chain of mountains and the sea-coast.
There were times when their aims were still more aggressive and dangerous, when
they looked with longing eyes upon the valley of the Hudson, and would fain have
broken through that military centre of the line of English commonwealths and
seized the keys of empire over the continent.
From this height of their ambition the French were
kept aloof by the deadly enmity of the most fierce and powerful savages in the
New World. The Indians of those days who came into contact with the white
settlers were divided into many tribes with different names, but they all
belonged to one or another of three great stocks or families. First, there were
the Mobilians, far down south; to this stock belonged the Creeks,
Cherokees, and others. Secondly, there were the Algonquins, comprising
the Delawares to the south of the Susquehanna; the Miamis, Shawnees, and others
in the western wilderness; the Ottawas in Canada; and all the tribes still left
to the northeast of New England. Thirdly, there were the Iroquois, of
whom the most famous were the Five Nations of what is now central New York.
These five great tribes—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and
Senecas—had for several generations been united in a confederacy which they
likened to a long wigwam with its eastern door looking out upon the valley of
the Hudson and its western toward the falls of Niagara. It was known far and
wide over the continent as the Long House, and wherever it was known it was
dreaded. When Frenchmen and Englishmen first settled in America, this Iroquois
league was engaged in a long career of conquest. Algonquin tribes all the way
from the Connecticut to the Mississippi were treated as its vassals and forced
to pay tribute in weapons and wampum. This conquering career extended through
the seventeenth century, until it was brought to an end by the French. When the
latter began making settlements in Canada, they courted the friendship of their
Algonquin neighbours, and thus, without dreaming what deadly seed they were
sowing, they were led to attack the terrible Long House. It was easy enough for
Champlain in 1609 to win a victory over savages who had never before seen a
white man or heard the report of a musket; but the victory was a fatal one for
the French, for it made the Iroquois their eternal enemies. The Long House
allied itself first with the Dutch and afterwards with the English, and thus
checked the progress of the French toward the lower Hudson. We too seldom think
how much we owe to those formidable savages.
The Iroquois pressed the French with so much vigour
that in 1689 they even laid siege to Montreal. But by 1696 the French, assisted
by all the Algonquin tribes within reach, and led by their warlike viceroy,
Count Frontenac, one of the most picturesque figures in American history, at
length succeeded in getting the upperhand and dealing the Long House a terrible
blow, from the effects of which it never recovered. The league remained
formidable, however, until the time of the revolutionary war. In 1715 its
fighting strength was partially repaired by the adoption of the kindred Iroquois
tribe of Tuscaroras, who had just been expelled from North Carolina by the
English settlers, and migrated to New York. After this accession the league,
henceforth known as the Six Nations, formed a power by no means to be despised,
though much less bold and aggressive than in the previous century.
After administering a check to the Iroquois, the
French and Algonquins kept up for more than sixty years a desultory warfare
against the English colonies. Whenever war broke out between England and France,
it meant war in America as well as in Europe. Indeed, one of the chief objects
of war, on the part of each of these two nations, was to extend its colonial
dominions at the expense of the other. France and England were at war from 1689
to 1697; from 1702 to 1713; and from 1743 to 1748. The men in New York or Boston
in 1750, who could remember the past sixty years, could thus look back over at
least four-and-twenty years of open war; and even in the intervals of professed
peace there was a good deal of disturbance on the frontiers. A most frightful
sort of warfare it was, ghastly with torture of prisoners and the ruthless
murder of women and children. The expense of raising and arming troops for
defence was great enough to subject several of the colonies to a heavy burden of
debt. In 1750 Massachusetts was just throwing off the load of debt under which
she had staggered since 1693; and most of this debt was incurred for expeditions
against the French and Algonquins.
Under these circumstances it was natural that the
colonial governments should find it hard to raise enough money for war expenses,
and that the governors should think the legislatures too slow in acting. They
were slow; for, as is apt to be the case when money is to be borrowed without
the best security, there were a good many things to be considered. All this was
made worse by the fact that there were so many separate governments, so that
each one was inclined to hold back and wait for the others. On the other hand,
the French viceroy in Canada had despotic power; the colony which he governed
never pretended to be self-supporting; and so, if he could not squeeze money
enough out of the people in Canada, he just sent to France for it and got it;
for the government of Louis XV. regarded Canada as one of the brightest jewels
in its crown, and was always ready to spend money for damaging the English.
Accordingly the Frenchman could plan his campaign, call his red men together,
and set the whole frontier in a blaze, while the legislatures in Boston or New
York were talking about what had better be done in case of invasion. No wonder
the royal governors fretted and fumed, and sent home to England dismal accounts
of the perverseness of these Americans! Many people in England thought that the
colonies were allowed to govern themselves altogether too much, and that for
their own good the British government ought to tax them. Once while Sir Robert
Walpole was prime minister (1721-1742) some one is said to have advised him to
lay a direct tax upon the Americans; but that wise old statesman shook his head. It was bad enough, he
said, to be scolded and abused by half the people in the old country; he did not
wish to make enemies of every man, woman, and child in the new.
But if the power to raise American armies for the
common defence, and to collect money in America for this purpose, was not to be
assumed by the British government, was there any way in which unity and
promptness of action in time of war could be secured? There was another way, if
people could be persuaded to adopt it. The thirteen colonies might be joined
together in a federal union; and the federal government, without interfering in
the local affairs of any single colony, might be clothed with the power of
levying taxes all over the country for purposes of common defence. The royal
governors were inclined to favour a union of the colonies, no matter how it
might be brought about. They thought it necessary that some decisive step should
be taken quickly, for it was evident that the peace of 1748 was only an armed
truce. Evidently a great and decisive struggle was at hand. In 1750 the Ohio
Company, formed for the purpose of colonizing the valley drained by that river,
had surveyed the country as far as the present site of Louisville. In 1753 the
French, taking the alarm, crossed Lake Erie, and began to fortify themselves at
Presque Isle, and at Venango on the Alleghany river. They seized persons trading
within the limits of the Ohio Company, which lay within the territory of
Virginia; and accordingly Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, selected George
Washington—a venturous and hardy young land-surveyor, only twenty-one years old,
but gifted with a sagacity beyond his years—and sent him to Venango to warn off
the trespassers. It was an exceedingly delicate and dangerous mission, and
Washington showed rare skill and courage in this first act of his public career,
but the French commander made polite excuses and remained. Next spring the
French and English tried each to forestall the other in fortifying the
all-important place where the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers unite to form the
Ohio, the place long afterward commonly known as the "Gateway of the West," the
place where the city of Pittsburgh now stands. In the course of these
preliminary manœuvres Washington was besieged in Fort Necessity by overwhelming
numbers, and on July 4, 1754, was obliged to surrender the whole of his force,
but obtained leave to march away. So the French got possession of the
much-coveted situation, and erected there Fort Duquesne as a menace to all
future English intruders. As yet war had not been declared between France and
England, but these skirmishings indicated that war in earnest was not far off.
The Congress at Albany, 1754.
In view of the approaching war a meeting was
arranged at Albany between the principal chiefs of the Six Nations and
commissioners from several of the colonies, that the alliance between English
and Iroquois might be freshly cemented; and some of the royal governors improved
the occasion to call for a Congress of all the colonies, in order to prepare
some plan of confederation such as all the colonies might be willing to adopt.
At the time of Washington's surrender such a Congress was in session at Albany,
but Maryland was the most southerly colony represented in it. The people nowhere
showed any interest in it. No public meetings were held in its favour. The only
newspaper which warmly approved it was the "Pennsylvania Gazette," which
appeared with a union device, a snake divided into thirteen segments, with the
motto "Unite or Die!"
The editor of this paper was Benjamin Franklin, then
eight-and-forty years of age and already one of the most famous men in America.
In the preceding year he had been appointed by the crown postmaster-general for
the American colonies, and he had received from the Royal Society the Copley
medal for his brilliant discovery that lightning is a discharge of electricity.
Franklin was very anxious to see the colonies united a federal body, and he was
now a delegate to the Congress. He drew up a plan of union which the Congress
adopted, after a very long debate; and it has ever since been known as the
Albany Plan. The federal government was to consist, first, of a President
or Governor-general, appointed and paid by the crown, and holding office during
its pleasure; and secondly, of a Grand Council composed of
representatives elected every third year by the legislatures of the several
colonies. This federal government was not to meddle with the internal affairs of
any colony, but on questions of war and such other questions as concerned all
the colonies alike, it was to be supreme; and to this end it was to have the
power of levying taxes for federal purposes directly upon the people of the
several colonies. Philadelphia, as the most centrally situated of the larger
towns, was mentioned as a proper seat for the federal government.
The end of our story will show the wonderful
foresightedness of Franklin's scheme. If the Revolution had never occurred, we
might very likely have sooner or later come to live under a constitution
resembling the Albany Plan. On the other hand, if the Albany Plan had been put
into operation, it might perhaps have so adjusted the relations of the colonies
to the British government that the Revolution would not have occurred. Perhaps,
however, it would only have reproduced, on a larger scale, the irrepressible
conflict between royal governor and popular assembly. The scheme failed for want
of support. The Congress recommended it to the colonial legislatures, but not
one of them voted to adopt it. The difficulty was the same in 1754 that it was
thirty years later,—only much stronger. The people of one colony saw but little
of the people in another, had but few dealings with them, and cared not much
about them. They knew and trusted their own local assemblies which sat and voted
almost under their eyes; they were not inclined to grant strange powers of
taxation to a new assembly distant by a week's journey. This was a point to
which people could never have been brought except as the alternative to
something confessedly worse.
The failure of the Albany Plan left the question of
providing for military defence just where it was before, and the great Seven
Years' War came on while governors and assemblies were wrangling to no purpose.
In 1755 Braddock's army was unable to get support except from the steadfast
personal exertions of Franklin, who used his great influence with the farmers of
Pennsylvania to obtain horses, wagons, and provisions, pledging his own property
for their payment. Nevertheless, as the war went on and the people of the
colonies became fully alive to its importance, they did contribute liberally
both in men and in money, and at last it appeared that in proportion to their
wealth and population they had done even more than the regular army and the
royal exchequer toward overthrowing the common enemy.
Overthrow of the French power in America.
When the war came to an end in 1763 the whole face
of things in America was changed. Seldom, if ever, had the world seen so
complete a victory. France no longer possessed so much as an acre of ground in
all North America. The unknown regions beyond the Mississippi river were handed
over to Spain in payment for bootless assistance rendered to France toward the
close of the war. Spain also received New Orleans, while Florida, which then
reached westward nearly to New Orleans, passed from Spanish into British hands.
The whole country north of Florida and east of the Mississippi river, including
Canada, was now English. A strong combination of Indian tribes, chiefly
Algonquin, under the lead of the Ottawa sachem Pontiac, made a last desperate
attempt, after the loss of their French allies, to cripple the English; but by
1765, after many harrowing scenes of bloodshed, these red men were crushed.
There was no power left that could threaten the peace of the thirteen colonies
unless it were the mother-country herself. "Well," said the French minister, the
Duke de Choiseul, as he signed the treaty that shut France out of North America,
"so we are gone; it will be England's turn next!" And like a prudent seeker
after knowledge, as he was, the Duke presently bethought him of an able and
high-minded man, the Baron de Kalb, and sent him in 1767 to America, to look
about and see if there were not good grounds for his bold prophecy.
IV.
THE STAMP ACT, AND THE REVENUE LAWS.
It did not take four years after the peace of 1763
to show how rapidly the new situation of affairs was bearing fruit in America.
The war had taught its lessons. Earlier wars had menaced portions of the
frontier, and had been fought by single colonies or alliances of two or three.
This war had menaced the whole frontier, and the colonies, acting for the first
time in general concert, had acquired some dim notion of their united strength.
Soldiers and officers by and by to be arrayed against one another had here
fought as allies,—John Stark and Israel Putnam by the side of William Howe;
Horatio Gates by the side of Thomas Gage,—and it had not always been the
regulars that bore off the palm for skill and endurance. One young man, of
immense energy and fiery temper, united to rare prudence and fertility of
resource, had already become famous enough to be talked about in England; in
George Washington the Virginians recognized a tower of strength.
The overthrow of their ancient enemy, while further
increasing the self-confidence of the Americans, at the same time removed the
principal check which had hitherto kept their differences with the British
government from coming to an open rupture. Formerly the dread of French attack
had tended to make the Americans complaisant toward the king's ministers, while
at time it made the king's ministers unwilling to lose the good will of the
Americans. Now that the check was removed, the continuance or revival of the old
disputes at once foreboded trouble; and the old occasions for dispute were far
from having ceased. On the contrary the war itself had given them fresh
vitality. If money had been needed before, it was still more needed now. The war
had entailed a heavy burden of expense upon the British government as well as
upon the colonies. The national debt of Great Britain was much increased, and
there were many who thought that, since the Americans shared in the benefits of
the war they ought also to share in the burden which it left behind it. People
in England who used this argument did not realize that the Americans had really
contributed as much as could reasonably be expected to the support of the war,
and that it had left behind it debts to be paid in America as well as in
England. But there was another argument which made it seem reasonable to many
Englishmen that the colonists should be taxed. It seemed right that a small
military force should be kept up in America, for defence of the frontiers
against the Indians, even if there were no other enemies to be dreaded. The
events of Pontiac's war now showed that there was clearly need of such a force;
and the experience of the royal governors for half a century had shown that it
was very difficult to get the colonial legislatures to vote money for any such
purpose. Hence there grew up in England a feeling that taxes ought to be raised
in America as a contribution to the war debt and to the military defence of the
colonies; and in order that such taxes should be fairly distributed and promptly
collected, it was felt that the whole business ought to be placed under the
direct supervision and control of parliament. In accordance with this feeling
the new prime minister, George Grenville in 1764 announced his intention of
passing a Stamp Act for the easier collection of revenue in America. Meanwhile
things had happened in America which had greatly irritated the people,
especially in Boston, so that they were in the mood for resisting anything that
looked like encroachment on the part of the British government. To understand
this other source of irritation, we must devote a few words to the laws by which
that government had for a long time undertaken to regulate the commerce of the
American colonies.
When European nations began to plant colonies in
America, they treated them in accordance with a theory which prevailed until it
was upset by the American Revolution. According to this ignorant and barbarous
theory, a colony was a community which existed only for the purpose of enriching
the country which had founded it. At the outset, the Spanish notion of a colony
was that of a military station, which might plunder the heathen for the benefit
of the hungry treasury of the Most Catholic monarch. But this theory was
short-lived, like the enjoyment of the plunder which it succeeded in extorting.
According to the principles and practice of France and England—and of Spain
also, after the first romantic fury of buccaneering had spent itself—the great
object in founding a colony, besides increasing one's general importance in the
world and the area of one's dominions on the map, was to create a dependent
community for the purpose of trading with it. People's ideas about trade were
very absurd. It was not understood that when two parties trade with each other
freely, both must be gainers, or else one would soon stop trading. It was
supposed that in trade, just as in gambling or betting, what the one party gains
the other loses. Accordingly laws were made to regulate trade so that, as far as
possible, all the loss might fall upon the colonies and all the gain accrue to
the mother-country. In order to attain this object, the colonies were required
to confine their trade entirely to England. No American colony could send its
tobacco or its rice or its indigo to France or to Holland, or to any other
country than England; nor could it buy a yard of French silk or a pound of
Chinese tea except from English merchants. In this way English merchants sought
to secure for themselves a monopoly of purchases and a monopoly of sales. By a
further provision, although American ships might take goods to England, the
carrying-trade between the different colonies was strictly confined to British
ships. Next, in order to protect British manufacturers from competition, it was
thought necessary to prohibit the colonists from manufacturing. They might grow
wool, but it must be carried to England to be woven into cloth; they might smelt
iron, but it must be carried to England to be made into ploughshares. Finally,
in order to protect British farmers and their landlords, corn-laws were enacted,
putting a prohibitory tariff on all kinds of grain and other farm produce
shipped from the colonies to ports in Great Britain.
Such absurd and tyrannical laws had begun to be made
in the reign of Charles II, and by 1750 not less than twenty-nine acts of
parliament had been passed in this spirit. If these laws had been strictly
enforced, the American Revolution would probably have come sooner than it did.
In point of fact they were seldom strictly enforced, because so long as the
French were a power in America the British government felt that it could not
afford to irritate the colonists. In spite of laws to the contrary, the
carrying-trade between the different colonies was almost monopolized by vessels
owned, built, and manned in New England; and the smuggling of foreign goods into
Boston and New York and other seaport towns was winked at.
It was in 1761, immediately after the overthrow of
the French in Canada, that attempts were made to enforce the revenue laws more
strictly than heretofore; and trouble was at once threatened. Charles Paxton,
the principal officer of the custom-house in Boston, applied to the Superior
Court to grant him the authority to use "writs of assistance" in searching for
smuggled goods. A writ of assistance was a general search-warrant, empowering
the officer armed with it to enter, by force if necessary, any dwelling-house or
warehouse where contraband goods were supposed to be stored or hidden. A special
search-warrant was one in which the name of the suspected person, and the house
which it was proposed to search, were accurately specified, and the goods which
it was intended to seize were as far as possible described. In the use of such
special warrants there was not much danger of gross injustice or oppression,
because the court would not be likely to grant one unless strong evidence could
be brought against the person whom it named. But the general search-warrant, or
"writ of assistance," as it was called because men try to cover up the ugliness
of hateful things by giving them innocent names, was quite a different affair.
It was a blank form upon which the custom-house officer might fill in the names
of persons and descriptions of houses and goods to suit himself. Then he could
go and break into the houses and seize the goods, and if need be summon the
sheriff and his posse to help him in overcoming and browbeating the
owner. The writ of assistance was therefore an abominable instrument of tyranny.
Such writs had been allowed by a statute of the evil reign of Charles II; a
statute of William III had clothed custom-house officers in the colonies with
like powers to those which they possessed in England; and neither of these
statutes had been repealed. There can therefore be little doubt that the issue
of such search-warrants was strictly legal, unless the authority of Parliament
to make laws for the colonies was to be denied.
James Otis.
James Otis then held the crown office of
advocate-general, with an ample salary and prospects of high favour from
government. When the revenue officers called upon him, in view of his position,
to defend their cause, he resigned his office and at once undertook to act as
counsel for the merchants of Boston in their protest against the issue of the
writs. A large fee was offered him, but he refused it. "In such a cause," said
he, "I despise all fees." The case was tried in the council-chamber at the east
end of the old town-hall, or what is now known as the "Old State-House," in
Boston. Chief-justice Hutchinson presided, and Jeremiah Gridley, one of the
greatest lawyers of that day, argued the case for the writs in a very powerful
speech. The reply of Otis, which took five hours in the delivery, was one of the
greatest speeches of modern times. It went beyond the particular legal question
at issue, and took up the whole question of the constitutional relations between
the colonies and the mother-country. At the bottom of this, as of all the
disputes that led to the Revolution, lay the ultimate question whether Americans
were bound to yield obedience to laws which they had no share in making. This
question, and the spirit that answered it flatly and doggedly in the negative,
were heard like an undertone pervading all the arguments in Otis's wonderful
speech, and it was because of this that the young lawyer John Adams, who was
present, afterward declared that on that day "the child Independence was born."
Chief-justice Hutchinson was a man of great ability and as sincere a patriot as
any American of his time. He could feel the force of Otis's argument, but he
believed that Parliament was the supreme legislative body for the whole British
empire, and furthermore that it was the duty of a judge to follow the law as it
existed. He reserved his decision until advice could be had from the
law-officers of the crown in London; and when next term he was instructed by
them to grant the writs, this result added fresh impetus to the spirit that
Otis's eloquence had aroused. The custom-house officers, armed with their writs,
began breaking into warehouses and seizing goods which were said to have been
smuggled. In this rough way they confiscated private property to the value of
many thousands of pounds; but sometimes the owners of warehouses armed
themselves and barricaded their doors and windows, and thus the officers were
often successfully defied, for the sheriff was far from prompt in coming to aid
them.
While such things were going on in Boston, the
people of Virginia were wrought into fierce excitement by what was known as the
"Parsons' Cause." The Church of England was at that time established by law in
Virginia, and its clergymen, appointed by English bishops, were unpopular. In
1758 the legislature, under the pressure of the French war, had passed an act
which affected all public dues and incidentally diminished the salaries of the
clergy. Complaints were made to the Bishop of London, and the act of 1758 was
vetoed by the king in council. Several clergymen then brought suits to recover
the unpaid portions of their salaries. In the first test case there could be no
doubt that the royal veto was legal enough, and the court therefore decided in
favour of the plaintiff. But it now remained to settle before a jury the amount
of the damages. It was on this occasion, in December, 1763, that the great
orator Patrick Henry made his first speech in the court-room and at once became
famous. He declared that no power on earth could take away from Virginia the
right to make laws for herself, and that in annulling a wholesome law at the
request of a favoured class in the community "a king, from being the father of
his people, degenerates into a tyrant, and forfeits all right to obedience."
This bold talk aroused much excitement and some uproar, but the jury instantly
responded by assessing the parson's damages at one penny, and in 1765 Henry was
elected a member of the colonial assembly.
Thus almost at the same time in Massachusetts and in
Virginia the preliminary scenes of the Revolution occurred in the court-room. In
each case the representatives of the crown had the letter of the law on their
side, but the principles of the only sound public policy, by which a Revolution
could be avoided, were those that were defended by the advocates of the people.
At each successive move on the part of the British government which looked like
an encroachment upon the rights of Americans, the sympathy between these two
leading colonies now grew stronger and stronger.
It was in 1763 that George Grenville became prime
minister, a man of whom Macaulay says that he knew of "no national interests
except those which are expressed by pounds, shillings, and pence." Grenville
proceeded to introduce into Parliament two measures which had consequences of
which, he little dreamed. The first of these measures was the Molasses Act, the
second was the Stamp Act.
The Molasses Act.
Properly speaking, the Molasses Act was an old law
which Grenville now made up his mind to revive and enforce. The commercial
wealth of the New England colonies depended largely upon their trade with the
fish which their fishermen caught along the coast and as far out as the banks of
Newfoundland. The finest fish could be sold in Europe, but the poorer sort found
their chief market in the French West Indies. The French government, in order to
ensure a market for the molasses raised in these islands, would not allow the
planters to give anything else in exchange for fish. Great quantities of
molasses were therefore carried to New England, and what was not needed there
for domestic use was distilled into rum, part of which was consumed at home, and
the rest carried chiefly to Africa wherewith to buy slaves to be sold to the
southern colonies. All this trade required many ships, and thus kept up a lively
demand for New England lumber, besides finding employment for thousands of
sailors and shipwrights. Now in 1733 the British government took it into its
head to "protect" its sugar planters in the English West Indies by compelling
the New England merchants to buy all their molasses from them; and with this end
in view it forthwith laid upon all sugar and molasses imported into North
America from the French islands a duty so heavy that, if it had been enforced,
it would have stopped all such importation. It is very doubtful if this measure
would have attained the end which the British government had in view. Probably
it would not have made much difference in the export of molasses from the
English West Indies to New England, because the islanders happened not to want
the fish which their French neighbours coveted. But the New Englanders could see
that the immediate result would be to close the market for their cheaper kinds
of fish, and thus ruin their trade in lumber and rum, besides shutting up many a
busy shipyard and turning more than 5000 sailors out of employment. It was
estimated that the yearly loss to New England would exceed £300,000. It was
hardly wise in Great Britain to entail such a loss upon some of her best
customers; for with their incomes thus cut down, it was not to be expected that
the people of New England would be able to buy as many farming tools, dishes,
and pieces of furniture, garments of silk or wool, and wines or other luxuries,
from British merchants as before. The government in passing its act of 1733 did
not think of these consequences; but it proved to be impossible to enforce the
act without causing more disturbance than the government felt prepared to
encounter. Now in 1764 Grenville announced that the act was to be enforced, and
of course the machinery of writs of assistance was to be employed for that
purpose. Henceforth all molasses from the French islands must either pay the
prohibitory duty or be seized without ceremony.
Loud and fierce was the indignation of New England
over this revival of the Molasses Act. Even without the Stamp Act, it might very
likely have led that part of the country to make armed resistance, but in such
case it is not so sure that the southern and middle colonies would have come to
the aid of New England. But in the Stamp Act Grenville provided the colonies
with an issue which concerned one as much as another, and upon which they were
accordingly sure to unite in resistance. It was also a much better issue for the
Americans to take up, for it was not a mere revival of an old act; it was a new
departure; it was an imposition of a kind to which the Americans had never
before been called upon to submit, and in resisting it they were sure to enlist
the sympathies of a good many powerful people in England.
The Stamp Act.
The Stamp Act was a direct tax laid upon the whole
American people by Parliament, a legislative body in which they were not
represented. The British government had no tyrannical purpose in devising this
tax. A stamp duty had already been suggested in 1755 by William Shirley, royal
governor of Massachusetts, a worthy man and much more of a favourite with the
people than most of his class. Shirley recommended it as the least disagreeable
kind of tax, and the easiest to collect. It did not call for any hateful
searching of people's houses and shops, or any unpleasant questions about their
incomes, or about their invested or hoarded wealth. It only required that legal
documents and commercial instruments should be written, and newspapers printed,
on stamped paper. Of all kinds of direct tax none can be less annoying, except
for one reason; it is exceedingly difficult to evade such a tax; it enforces
itself. For these reasons Grenville decided to adopt it. He arranged it so that
all the officers charged with the business of selling the stamped paper should
be Americans; and he gave formal notice of the measure in March, 1764, a year
beforehand, in order to give the colonies time to express their opinions about
it.
Samuel Adams.
In the Boston town-meeting in May, almost as soon as
the news had arrived, the American view of the case was very clearly set forth
in a series of resolutions drawn up by Samuel Adams. This was the first of the
remarkable state papers from the pen of that great man, who now, at the age of
forty-two, was just entering upon a glorious career. Samuel Adams was a graduate
of Harvard College in the class of 1740. He had been reared in politics from
boyhood, for his father, a deacon of the Old South Church, had been chief
spokesman of the popular party in its disputes with the royal governors. Of all
the agencies in organizing resistance to Great Britain none were more powerful
than the New England town-meetings, among which that of the people of Boston
stood preeminent, and in the Boston town-meeting for more than thirty years no
other man exerted so much influence as Samuel Adams. This was because of his
keen intelligence and persuasive talk, his spotless integrity, indomitable
courage, unselfish and unwearying devotion to the public good, and broad
sympathy with all classes of people. He was a thorough democrat. He respected
the dignity of true manhood wherever he found it, and could talk with sailors
and shipwrights like one of themselves, while at the same time in learned
argument he had few superiors. He has been called the "Father of the
Revolution," and was no doubt its most conspicuous figure before 1775, as
Washington certainly was after that date.
This earliest state paper of Samuel Adams contained
the first formal and public denial of the right of Parliament to tax the
colonies, because it was not a body in which their people were represented. The
resolutions were adopted by the Massachusetts assembly, and a similar action was
taken by Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina. The
colonies professed their willingness to raise money in answer to requisitions
upon their assemblies, which were the only bodies competent to lay taxes in
America. Memorials stating these views were sent to England, and the colony of
Pennsylvania sent Dr. Franklin to represent its case at the British court.
Franklin remained in London until the spring of 1775 as agent first for
Pennsylvania, afterward for Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia,—a kind of
diplomatic representative of the views and claims of the Americans.
The Virginia Resolutions, 1765.
Grenville told Franklin that he wished to do things
as pleasantly as possible, and was not disposed to insist upon the Stamp Act, if
the Americans could suggest anything better. But when it appeared that no
alternative was offered except to fall back upon the old clumsy system of
requisitions, Grenville naturally replied that there ought to be some more
efficient method of raising money for the defence of the frontier. Accordingly
in March, 1765, the Stamp Act was passed, with so little debate that people
hardly noticed what was going on. But when the news reached America there was an
outburst of wrath that was soon heard and felt in London. In May the Virginia
legislature was assembled. George Washington was sitting there in his seat, and
Thomas Jefferson, then a law-student, was listening eagerly from outside the
door, when Patrick Henry introduced the famous resolutions in which he declared,
among other things, that an attempt to vest the power of taxation in any other
body than the colonial assembly was a menace to the common freedom of
Englishmen, whether in Britain or in America, and that the people of Virginia
were not bound to obey any law enacted in disregard of this principle. The
language of the resolutions was bold enough, but a keener edge was put upon it
by the defiant note which rang out from Henry in the course of the debate, when
he commended the example of Tarquin and Cesar and Charles I to the attention of
George III "If this be treason," he exclaimed, as the speaker tried to call him
to order, "if this be treason, make the most of it!"
The other colonies were not slow in acting.
Massachusetts called for a general congress, in order that all might discuss the
situation and agree upon some course to be pursued in common. South Carolina
responded most cordially, at the instance of her noble, learned, and far-sighted
patriot, Christopher Gadsden. On the 7th of October, delegates from nine
colonies met in a congress at New York, adopted resolutions like those of
Virginia, and sent a memorial to the king, whose sovereignty over them they
admitted, and a remonstrance to Parliament, whose authority to tax them they
denied. The meeting of this congress was in itself a prophecy of what was to
happen if the British government should persist in the course upon which it had
now entered.
Stamp Act riots.
Meanwhile the summer had witnessed riots in many
places, and one of these was extremely disgraceful. Chief-justice Hutchinson had
tried to dissuade the ministry from passing the Stamp Act, but an impression had
got abroad among the wharves and waterside taverns of Boston that he had not
only favoured it but had gone out of his way to send information to London,
naming certain merchants as smugglers. Under the influence of this mistaken
notion, on the night of the 26th of August a drunken mob plundered Hutchinson's
house in Boston and destroyed his library, which was probably the finest in
America at that time. Here, as is apt to be the case, the mob selected the wrong
victim. Its shameful act was denounced by the people of Massachusetts, and the
chief-justice was indemnified by the legislature. In the other instances the
riots were of an innocent sort. Stamp officers were forced to resign. Boxes of
stamped paper arriving by ship were burned or thrown into the sea, and at length
the governor of New York was compelled by a mob to surrender all the stamps
entrusted to his care. These things were done for the most part under the
direction of societies of workingmen known as "Sons of Liberty," who were
pledged to resist the execution of the Stamp Act. At the same time associations
of merchants declared that they would buy no more goods from England until the
act should be repealed, and lawyers entered into agreements not to treat any
document as invalidated by the absence of the required stamp. As for the
editors, they published their newspapers decorated with a grinning skull and
cross-bones instead of the stamp.
These demonstrations produced their effect in
England. In July, 1765, the Grenville ministry fell, and the new government,
with Lord Rockingham at its head, was more inclined to pay heed to the wishes
and views of the Americans. The debate over the repeal of the Stamp Act lasted
nearly three months and was one of the fiercest that had been heard in
Parliament for many a day. William Pitt declared that he rejoiced in the
resistance of the Americans, and urged that the act should be repealed because
Parliament ought never to have passed it; but there were very few who took this
view. As the result of the long debate, at the end of March, 1766, the Stamp Act
was repealed, and a Declaratory Act was passed in which Parliament said in
effect that it had a right to make such laws for the Americans if it chose to do
so.
The people of London, as well as the Americans,
hailed with delight the repeal of the Stamp Act; but the real trouble had now
only begun. The resolutions of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry and their approval
by the Congress at New York had thrown the question of American taxation into
the whirlpool of British politics, and there it was to stay until it worked a
change for the better in England as well as in America.
The principle that people must not be taxed except
by their representatives had been to some extent recognized in England for five
hundred years, and it was really the fundamental principle of English liberty,
but it was only very imperfectly that it had been put into practice. In the
eighteenth century the House of Commons was very far from being a body that
fairly represented the people of Great Britain. For a long time there had been
no change in the distribution of seats, and meanwhile the population had been
increasing very differently in different parts of the kingdom. Thus great cities
which had grown up in recent times, such as Sheffield and Manchester, had no
representatives in Parliament, while many little boroughs with a handful of
inhabitants had their representatives. Some such boroughs had been granted
representation by Henry VIII in order to create a majority for his measures in
the House of Commons. Others were simply petty towns that had dwindled away,
somewhat as the mountain villages of New England have dwindled since the
introduction of railroads. The famous Old Sarum had members in Parliament long
after it had ceased to have any inhabitants. Seats for these rotten boroughs, as
they were called, were simply bought and sold. Political life in England was
exceedingly corrupt; some of the best statesmen indulged in wholesale bribery as
if it were the most innocent thing in the world. The country was really governed
by a few great families, some of whose members sat in the House of Lords and
others in the House of Commons. Their measures were often noble and patriotic in
the highest degree, but when bribery and corruption seemed necessary for
carrying them, such means were employed without scruple.
George III and his political
schemes.
When George III came to the throne in 1760, the
great families which had thus governed England for half a century belonged to
the party known as Old Whigs. Under their rule the power of the crown had been
reduced to insignificance, and the modern system of cabinet government by a
responsible ministry had begun to grow up. The Tory families during this period
had been very unpopular, because of their sympathy with the Stuart pretenders
who had twice attempted to seize the crown and given the country a brief taste
of civil war. By 1760 the Tories saw that the cause of the Stuarts was hopeless,
and so they were inclined to transfer their affections to the new king. George
III was a young man of narrow intelligence and poor education, but he
entertained very strong opinions as to the importance of his kingly office. He
meant to make himself a real king, like the king of France or the king of Spain.
He was determined to break down the power of the Old Whigs and the system of
cabinet government, and as the Old Whigs had been growing unpopular, it seemed
quite possible, with the aid of the Tories, to accomplish this. George was quite
decorous in behaviour, and, although subject to fits of insanity which became
more troublesome in his later years, he had a fairly good head for business.
Industrious as a beaver and obstinate as a mule, he was an adept in political
trickery. In the corrupt use of patronage he showed himself able to beat the Old
Whigs at their own game, and with the aid of the Tories he might well believe
himself capable of reviving for his own benefit the lost power of the crown.
The "New Whigs" and parliamentary
reform.
Beside these two parties a third had been for some
time growing up which was in some essential points opposed to both of them. This
third party was that of the New Whigs. They wished to reform the representation
in Parliament in such wise as to disfranchise the rotten boroughs and give
representatives to great towns like Leeds and Manchester. They held that it was
contrary to the principles of English liberty that the inhabitants of such great
towns should be obliged to pay taxes in pursuance of laws which they had no
share in making. The leader of the New Whigs was the greatest Englishman of the
eighteenth century, the elder William Pitt, now about to pass into the House of
Lords as Earl of Chatham. Their leader next in importance, William Petty, Earl
of Shelburne, was in 1765 a young man of eight-and-twenty, and afterward came to
be known as one of the most learned and sagacious statesmen of his time. These
men were the forerunners of the great liberal leaders of the nineteenth century,
such men as Russell and Cobden and Gladstone. Their first decisive and
overwhelming victory was the passage of Lord John Russell's Reform Bill in 1832,
but the agitation for reform was begun by William Pitt in 1745, and his famous
son came very near winning the victory on that question in 1782.
Now this question of parliamentary reform was
intimately related to the question of taxing the American colonies. From some
points of view they might be considered one and the same question. At a meeting
of Presbyterian ministers in Philadelphia, it was pertinently asked, "Have two
men chosen to represent a poor English borough that has sold its votes to the
highest bidder any pretence to say that they represent Virginia or Pennsylvania?
And have four hundred such fellows a right to take our liberties?" In
Parliament, on the other hand, as well as at London dinner tables, and in
newspapers and pamphlets, it was repeatedly urged that the Americans need not
make so much fuss about being taxed without being represented, for in that
respect they were no worse off than the people of Sheffield or Birmingham. To
this James Otis replied, "Don't talk to us any more about those towns, for we
are tired of such a flimsy argument. If they are not represented, they ought to
be;" and by the New Whigs this retort was greeted with applause.
The opinions and aims of the three different parties
were reflected in the long debate over the repeal of the Stamp Act. The Tories
wanted to have the act continued and enforced, and such was the wish of the
king. Both sections of Whigs were in favour of repeal, but for very different
reasons. Pitt and the New Whigs, being advocates of parliamentary reform, came
out flatly in support of the principle that there should be no taxation without
representation. Edmund Burke and the Old Whigs, being opposed to parliamentary
reform and in favour of keeping things just as they were, could not adopt such
an argument; and accordingly they based their condemnation of the Stamp Act upon
grounds of pure expediency. They argued that it was not worth while, for the
sake of a little increase of revenue, to irritate three million people and run
the risk of getting drawn into a situation from which there would be no escape
except in either retreating or fighting. There was much practical wisdom in this
Old Whig argument, and it was the one which prevailed when Parliament repealed
the Stamp Act and expressly stated that it did so only on grounds of expediency.
There was one person, however, who was far from
satisfied with this result, and that was George III. He was opposed to
parliamentary reform for much the same reason that the Old Whigs were opposed to
it, because he felt that it threatened him with political ruin. The Old Whigs
needed the rotten boroughs in order to maintain their own control over
Parliament and the country. The king needed them because he felt himself able to
wrest them from the Old Whigs by intrigue and corruption, and thus hoped to
build up his own power. He believed, with good reason, that the suppression of
the rotten boroughs and the granting of fair and equal representation would soon
put a stronger curb upon the crown than ever. Accordingly there were no men whom
he dreaded and wished to put down so much as the New Whigs; and he felt that in
the repeal of the Stamp Act, no matter on what ground, they had come altogether
too near winning a victory. He felt that this outrageous doctrine that people
must not be taxed except by their representatives needed to be sternly rebuked,
and thus he found himself in the right sort of temper for picking a fresh
quarrel with the Americans.
Charles Townshend and his revenue acts, 1767.
An occasion soon presented itself. One of the king's
devices for breaking down the system of cabinet government was to select his
ministers from different parties, so that they might be unable to work
harmoniously together. Owing to the peculiar divisions of parties in Parliament
he was for some years able to carry out this policy, and while his cabinets were
thus weak and divided, he was able to use his control of patronage with telling
effect. In July, 1766, he got rid of Lord Rockingham and his Old Whigs, and
formed a new ministry made up from all parties. It contained Pitt, who had now,
as Earl of Chatham, gone into the House of Lords, and at the same time Charles
Townshend, as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Townshend, a brilliant young man,
without any political principles worth mentioning, was the most conspicuous
among a group of wire-pullers who were coming to be known as "the king's
friends." Serious illness soon kept Chatham at home, and left Townshend
all-powerful in the cabinet, because he was bold and utterly unscrupulous and
had the king to back him. His audacity knew no limits, and he made up his mind
that the time had come for gathering all the disputed American questions, as far
as possible, into one bundle, and disposing of them once for all. So in May,
1767, he brought forward in Parliament a series of acts for raising and applying
a revenue in America. The colonists, he said, had objected to a direct tax, but
they had often submitted to port duties, and could not reasonably refuse to do
so again. Duties were accordingly to be laid on glass, paper, lead, and
painter's colours; on wine, oil, and fruits, if carried directly to America from
Spain and Portugal; and especially on tea. A board of commissioners was to be
established at Boston, to superintend the collection of revenue throughout the
colonies, and writs of assistance were to be expressly legalized. The salaries
of these commissioners were to be paid out of the revenue thus collected.
Governors, judges, and crown-attorneys were to be made independent of the
colonial legislatures by having their salaries paid by the crown out of this
same fund. A small army was also to be kept up; and if after providing for these
various expenses, any surplus remained, it could be used by the crown in giving
pensions to Americans and thus be made to serve as a corruption-fund. These
measures were adopted on the 29th of June, and as if to refute anybody who might
be inclined to think that rashness could no further go, Townshend accompanied
them with a special act directed against the New York legislature, which had
refused to obey an order concerning the quartering of troops. By way of
punishment, Townshend now suspended the legislature. A few weeks after carrying
these measures Townshend died of a fever, and his place was taken by Lord North,
eldest son of the Earl of Guilford. North was thirty-five years of age. He was
amiable and witty, and an excellent debater, but without force of will. He let
the king rule him, and was at the same time able to show a strong hand in the
House of Commons, so that the king soon came to regard him as a real treasure.
Soon after North's appointment, Lord Chatham and other friends of America in the
cabinet resigned their places and were succeeded by friends of the king. From
1768 to 1782 George III was to all intents and purposes his own prime minister,
and contrived to keep a majority in Parliament. During those fourteen years the
American question was uppermost, and his policy was at all hazards to force the
colonists to abandon their position that taxation must go hand in hand with
representation.
This purpose was already apparent in Charles
Townshend's acts. They were not at all like previous acts imposing port duties
to which the Americans had submitted. British historians sometimes speak of the
American Revolution as an affair which grew out of a mere dispute about money;
and even among Americans, in ordinary conversation and sometimes in current
literature, the unwillingness of our forefathers to pay a tax of threepence a
pound on tea is mentioned without due reference to the attendant circumstances
which made them refuse to pay such a tax. We cannot hope to understand the
fierce wrath by which they were animated unless we bear in mind not only the
simple fact of the tax, but also the spirit in which it was levied and the
purpose for which the revenue was to be used. The Molasses Act threatening the
ruin of New England commerce was still on the statute-book, and commissioners,
armed with odious search-warrants for enforcing this and other tyrannical laws,
were on their way to America. For more than half a century the people had
jealously guarded against the abuse of power by the royal governors by making
them dependent upon the legislatures for their salaries. Now they were all at
once to be made independent, so that they might even dismiss the legislatures,
and if need be call for troops to help them. The judges, moreover, with their
power over men's lives and property, were no longer to be responsible to the
people. If these changes were to be effected, it would be nothing less than a
revolution by which the Americans would be deprived of their liberty. And, to
crown all, the money by which this revolution was to be brought about was to be
contributed in the shape of port duties by the Americans themselves! To expect
our forefathers to submit to such legislation as this was about as sensible as
it would have been to expect them to obey an order to buy halters and hang
themselves.
When the news of the Townshend acts reached
Massachusetts, the assembly at its next session took a decided stand. Besides a
petition to the king and letters to several leading British statesmen, it issued
a circular letter addressed to the other twelve colonies, asking for their
friendly advice and cooperation with reference to the Townshend measures. These
papers were written by Samuel Adams. The circular letter was really an
invitation to the other colonies to concert measures of resistance if it should
be found necessary. It enraged the king, and presently an order came across the
ocean to Francis Bernard, royal governor of Massachusetts, to demand of the
assembly that it rescind its circular letter, under penalty of instant
dissolution. Otis exclaimed that Great Britain had better rescind the Townshend
acts if she did not wish to lose her colonies. The assembly decided, by a vote
of 92 to 17, that it would not rescind. This flat defiance was everywhere
applauded. The assemblies of the other colonies were ordered to take no notice
of the Massachusetts circular, but the order was generally disobeyed, and in
several cases the governors turned the assemblies out of doors. The atmosphere
of America now became alive with politics; more meetings were held, more
speeches made, and more pamphlets printed, than ever before.
In England the dignified and manly course of the
Americans was generally greeted with applause by Whigs of whatever sort, except
those who had come into the somewhat widening circle of "the king's friends."
The Old Whigs,—Burke, Fox, Conway, Savile, Lord John Cavendish, and the Duke of
Richmond; and the New Whigs,—Chatham, Shelburne, Camden, Dunning, Barré, and
Beckford; steadily defended the Americans throughout the whole of the
Revolutionary crisis, and the weight of the best intelligence in the country was
certainly on their side. Could they have acted as a united body, could Burke and
Fox have joined forces in harmony with Chatham and Shelburne, they might have
thwarted the king and prevented the rupture with America. But George III
profited by the hopeless division between these two Whig parties; and as the
quarrel with America grew fiercer, he succeeded in arraying the national pride
to some extent upon his side and against the Whigs. This made him feel stronger
and stimulated his zeal against the Americans. He felt that if he could first
crush Whig principles in America, he could then turn and crush them in England.
In this he was correct, except that he miscalculated the strength of the
Americans. It was the defeat of his schemes in America that ensured their defeat
in England. It is quite wrong and misleading, therefore, to remember the
Revolutionary War as a struggle between the British people and the American
people. It was a struggle between two hostile principles, each of which was
represented in both countries. In winning the good fight, our forefathers won a
victory for England as well as for America. What was crushed was George III and
the kind of despotism which he wished to fasten upon America in order that he
might fasten it upon England. If the memory of George III. deserves to be
execrated, it is especially because he succeeded in giving to his own selfish
struggle for power the appearance of a struggle between the people of England
and the people of America; and in so doing, he sowed seeds of enmity and
distrust between two glorious nations that, for their own sakes and for the
welfare of mankind, ought never for one moment to be allowed to forget their
brotherhood. Time, however, is rapidly repairing the damage which George III's
policy wrought, and it need in nowise disturb our narrative. In this brief
sketch we must omit hundreds of interesting details; but, if we would look at
things from the right point of view, we must bear in mind that every act of
George III, from 1768 onward, which brought on and carried on the Revolutionary
War, was done in spite of the earnest protest of many of the best people in
England; and that the king's wrong-headed policy prevailed only because he was
able, through corrupt methods, to command a parliament which did not really
represent the people. Had the principles in support of which Lord Chatham joined
hands with Samuel Adams for one moment prevailed, the king's schemes would have
collapsed like a soap-bubble.
As it was, in 1768 the king succeeded, in spite of
strong opposition, in carrying his point. He saw that the American colonies were
disposed to resist the Townshend acts, and that in this defiant attitude
Massachusetts was the ringleader. The Massachusetts circular pointed toward
united action on the part of the colonies. Above all things it was desirable to
prevent any such union, and accordingly the king decided to make his principal
attack upon Massachusetts, while dealing more kindly with the other colonies.
Thus he hoped Massachusetts might be isolated and humbled, and in this belief he
proceeded faster and more rashly than if he had supposed himself to be dealing
with a united America. In order to catch Samuel Adams and James Otis, and get
them sent over to England for trial, he attempted to revive an old statute of
Henry VIII about treason committed abroad; and in order to enforce the revenue
laws in spite of all opposition, he ordered troops to be sent to Boston.
This was a very harsh measure, and some excuse was
needed to justify it before Parliament. It was urged that Boston was a
disorderly town, and the sacking of Hutchinson's house could be cited in support
of this view. Then in June, 1768, there was a slight conflict between
townspeople and revenue officers, in which no one was hurt, but which led to a
great town-meeting in the Old South Meeting-House, and gave Governor Bernard an
opportunity for saying that he was intimidated and hindered in the execution of
the laws. The king's real purpose, however, in sending troops was not so much to
keep the peace as to enforce the Townshend acts, and so the people of Boston
understood it. Except for these odious and tyrannical laws, there was nothing
that threatened disturbance in Boston. The arrival of British troops at Long
Wharf, in the autumn of 1768, simply increased the danger of disturbance, and in
a certain sense it may be said to have been the beginning of the Revolutionary
War. Very few people realized this at the time, but Samuel Adams now made up his
mind that the only way in which the American colonies could preserve their
liberties was to unite in some sort of federation and declare themselves
independent of Great Britain. It was with regret that he had come to this
conclusion, and he was very slow in proclaiming it, but after 1768 he kept it
distinctly before his mind. He saw clearly the end toward which public opinion
was gradually drifting, and because of his great influence over the Boston
town-meeting and the Massachusetts assembly, this clearness of purpose made him
for the next seven years the most formidable of the king's antagonists in
America.
The people of Boston were all the more indignant at
the arrival of troops in their town because the king in his hurry to send them
had even disregarded the act of Parliament which provided for such cases.
According to that act the soldiers ought to have been lodged in Castle William
on one of the little islands in the harbour. Even according to British-made law
they had no business to be quartered in Boston so long as there was room for
them, in the Castle. During the next seventeen months the people made several
formal protests against their presence in town, and asked for their removal. But
these protests were all fruitless until innocent blood had been shed. The
soldiers generally behaved no worse than rough troopers on such occasions are
apt to do, and the townspeople for the most part preserved decorum, but quarrels
now and then occurred, and after a while became frequent. In September, 1769,
James Otis was brutally assaulted at the British Coffee House by one of the
commissioners of customs aided and abetted by two or three army officers. His
health was already feeble and in this affray he was struck on the head with a
sword and so badly injured that he afterward became insane. After this the
feeling of the people toward the soldiers was more bitter than ever. In
February, 1770, there was much disturbance. Toward the end of the month an
informer named Richardson fired from his window into a crowd and killed a little
boy about eleven years of age, named Christopher Snyder. The funeral of this
poor boy, the first victim of the Revolution, was attended on Monday, the 26th,
by a great procession of citizens, including those foremost in wealth and
influence.
The "Boston Massacre"
The rest of that week was full of collisions which
on Friday almost amounted to a riot and led the governor's council to consider
seriously whether the troops ought not to be removed. But before they had
settled the question the crisis came on Monday evening, March 5, in an affray
before the Custom House on King street, when seven of Captain Preston's company
fired into the crowd, killing five men and wounding several others. Two of the
victims were innocent bystanders. Two were sailors from ships lying in the
harbour, and they, together with the remaining victim, a ropemaker, had been
actively engaged in the affray. One of the sailors, a mulatto or half-breed
Indian of gigantic stature, named Crispus Attucks, had been especially
conspicuous. The slaughter of these five men secured in a moment what so many
months of decorous protest had failed to accomplish. Much more serious bloodshed
was imminent when Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson arrived upon the scene and
promptly arrested the offending soldiers. The next day there was an immense
meeting at the Old South, and Samuel Adams, at the head of a committee, came
into the council chamber at the Town House, and in the name of three thousand
freemen sternly commanded Hutchinson to remove the soldiers from the town.
Before sunset they had all been withdrawn to the Castle. When the news reached
the ears of Parliament there was some talk of reinstating them in the town, but
Colonel Barré cut short the discussion with the pithy question, "if the officers
agreed in removing the soldiers to Castle William, what minister will dare to
send them back to Boston?"
Thus the so-called "Boston Massacre" wrought for the
king a rebuff which he felt perhaps even more keenly than the repeal of the
Stamp Act. Not only had his troops been peremptorily turned out of Boston, but
his policy had for the moment weakened in its hold upon Parliament. In the
summer of 1769 the assembly of Virginia adopted a very important series of
resolutions condemning the policy of Great Britain and recommending united
action on the part of the colonies in defence of their liberties. The governor
then dissolved the assembly, whereupon its members met in convention at the
Raleigh tavern and adopted a set of resolves prepared by Washington, strictly
forbidding importations from England until the Townshend acts should be
repealed. These resolves were generally adopted by the colonies, and presently
the merchants of London, finding their trade falling off, petitioned Parliament
to reconsider its policy. In January, 1770, Lord North became prime minister. In
April all the duties were taken off, except the duty on tea, which the king
insisted upon retaining, in order to avoid surrendering the principle at issue.
The effect of even this partial concession was to weaken the spirit of
opposition in America, and to create a division among the colonies. In July the
merchants of New York refused to adhere any longer to the non-importation
agreement except with regard to tea, and they began sending orders to England
for various sorts of merchandise. Rhode Island and New Hampshire also broke the
agreement. This aroused general indignation, and ships from the three delinquent
colonies were driven from such ports as Boston and Charleston.
Union among the colonies was indeed only skin deep.
The only thing which kept it alive was British aggression. Almost every colony
had some bone of contention with its neighbours. At this moment New York and New
Hampshire were wrangling over the possession of the Green Mountains, and
guerrilla warfare was going on between Connecticut and Pennsylvania in the
valley of Wyoming. It was hard to secure concerted action about anything. For
two years after the withdrawal of troops from Boston there was a good deal of
disturbance in different parts of the country; quarrels between governors and
their assemblies were kept up with increasing bitterness; in North Carolina
there was an insurrection against the governor which was suppressed only after a
bloody battle near the Cape Fear river; in Rhode Island the revenue schooner
Gaspee was seized and burned, and when an order came from the ministry requiring
the offenders to be sent to England for trial, the chief-justice of Rhode
Island, Stephen Hopkins, refused to obey the order. But amid all these
disturbances there appeared nothing like concerted action on the part of the
colonies. In June, 1772, Hutchinson said that the union of the colonies seemed
to be broken, and he hoped it would not be renewed, for he believed it meant
separation from the mother-country, and that he regarded as the worst of
calamities.
V
THE CRISIS
The surest way to renew and cement the union was to
show that the ministry had not relaxed in its determination to enforce the
principle of the Townshend acts. This was made clear in August, 1772, when it
was ordered that in Massachusetts the judges should henceforth be paid by the
crown. Popular excitement rose to fever heat, and the judges were threatened
with impeachment should they dare accept a penny from the royal treasury. The
turmoil was increased next year by the discovery in London of the package of
letters which were made to support the unjust charge against Hutchinson and some
of his friends that they had instigated and aided the most extreme measures of
the ministry.
In the autumn of 1772 Hutchinson refused to call an
extra session of the assembly to consider what should be done about the judges.
Samuel Adams then devised a scheme by which the towns of Massachusetts could
consult with each other and agree upon some common course of action in case of
emergencies. For this purpose each town was to appoint a standing committee, and
as a great part of their work was necessarily done by letter they were called
"committees of correspondence." This was the step that fairly organized the
Revolution. It was by far the most important of all the steps that preceded the
Declaration of Independence. The committees did their work with great efficiency
and the governor had no means of stopping it. They were like an invisible
legislature that was always in session and could never be dissolved; and when
the old government fell they were able to administer affairs until a new
government could be set up. In the spring of 1773 Virginia carried this work of
organization a long step further, when Dabney Carr suggested and carried a
motion calling for committees of correspondence between the several colonies.
From this point it was a comparatively short step to a permanent Continental
Congress.
It happened that these preparations were made just
in time to meet the final act of aggression which brought on the Revolutionary
War. The Americans had thus far successfully resisted the Townshend acts and
secured the repeal of all the duties except on tea. As for tea they had plenty,
but not from England; they smuggled it from Holland in spite of custom-houses
and search-warrants. Clearly unless the Americans could be made to buy tea from
England and pay the duty on it, the king must own himself defeated.
Since it appeared that they could not be forced into
doing this, it remained to be seen if they could be tricked into doing it. A
truly ingenious scheme was devised. Tea sent by the East India Company to
America had formerly paid a duty in some British port on the way. This duty was
now taken off, so that the price of the tea for America might be lowered. The
company's tea thus became so cheap that the American merchant could buy a pound
of it and pay the threepence duty beside for less than it cost him to smuggle a
pound of tea from Holland. It was supposed that the Americans would of course
buy the tea which they could get most cheaply, and would thus be beguiled into
submission to that principle of taxation which they had hitherto resisted. Ships
laden with tea were accordingly sent in the autumn of 1773 to Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, and Charleston; and consignees were appointed to receive the tea
in each of these towns.
Under the guise of a commercial operation, this was
purely a political trick. It was an insulting challenge to the American people,
and merited the reception which they gave it. They would have shown themselves
unworthy of their rich political heritage had they given it any other. In New
York, Philadelphia, and Charleston mass-meetings of the people voted that the
consignees should be ordered to resign their offices, and they did so. At
Philadelphia the tea-ship was met and sent back to England before it had come
within the jurisdiction of the custom-house. At Charleston the tea was landed,
and as there was no one to receive it or pay the duty, it was thrown into a damp
cellar and left there to spoil.
In Boston things took a different turn. The stubborn
courage of Governor Hutchinson prevented the consignees, two of whom were his
own sons, from resigning; the ships arrived and were anchored under guard of a
committee of citizens; if they were not unloaded within twenty days, the
custom-house officers were empowered by law to seize them and unload them by
force; and having once come within the jurisdiction of the custom-house, they
could not go out to sea without a clearance from the collector or a pass from
the governor. The situation was a difficult one, but it was most nobly met by
the men of Massachusetts. The excitement was intense, but the proceedings were
characterized from first to last by perfect quiet and decorum. In an earnest and
solemn, almost prayerful spirit, the advice of all the towns in the commonwealth
was sought, and the response was unanimous that the tea must on no account
whatever be landed. Similar expressions of opinion came from other colonies, and
the action of Massachusetts was awaited with breathless interest. Many
town-meetings were held in Boston, and the owner of the ships was ordered to
take them away without unloading; but the collector contrived to fritter away
the time until the nineteenth day, and then refused a clearance. On the next
day, the 16th of December, 1773, seven thousand people were assembled in
town-meeting in and around the Old South Meeting-House, while the owner of the
ships was sent out to the governor's house at Milton to ask for a pass. It was
nightfall when he returned without it, and there was then but one thing to be
done. By sunrise next morning the revenue officers would board the ships and
unload their cargoes, the consignees would go to the custom-house and pay the
duty, and the king's scheme would have been crowned with success. The only way
to prevent this was to rip open the tea-chests and spill their contents into the
sea, and this was done, according to a preconcerted plan and without the
slightest uproar or disorder, by a small party of men disguised as Indians.
Among them were some of the best of the townsfolk, and the chief manager of the
proceedings was Samuel Adams. The destruction of the tea has often been spoken
of, especially by British historians, as a "riot," but nothing could have been
less like a riot. It was really the deliberate action of the commonwealth of
Massachusetts, and the only fitting reply to the king's insulting trick. It was
hailed with delight throughout the thirteen colonies, and there is nothing in
our whole history of which an educated American should feel more proud.
The Retaliatory Acts, April, 1774.
The effect upon the king and his friends was
maddening, and events were quickly brought to a crisis. In spite of earnest
opposition retaliatory acts were passed through Parliament in April, 1774. One
of these was the Port Bill, for shutting up the port of Boston and stopping its
trade until the people should be starved and frightened into paying for the tea
that had been thrown overboard. Another was the Regulating Act, by which the
charter of Massachusetts was annulled, its free government swept away, and a
military governor appointed with despotic power like Andros. These acts were to
go into operation on the 1st of June, and on that day Governor Hutchinson sailed
for England, in the vain hope of persuading the king to adopt a milder policy.
It was not long before his property was confiscated, like that of other Tories,
and after six years of exile he died in London. The new governor, Thomas Gage,
who had long been commander of the military forces in America, was a mild and
pleasant man without much strength of character. His presence was endured but
his authority was not recognized in Massachusetts. Troops were now quartered
again in Boston, but they could not prevent the people from treating the
Regulating Act with open contempt. Courts organized under that act were
prevented from sitting, and councillors were compelled to resign their places.
The king's authority was everywhere quietly but doggedly defied. At the same
time the stoppage of business in Boston was the cause of much distress which all
the colonies sought to relieve by voluntary contributions of food and other
needed articles.
The events of the last twelve months had gone
further than anything before toward awakening a sentiment of union among the
people of the colonies. It was still a feeble sentiment, but it was strong
enough to make them all feel that Boston was suffering in the common cause. The
system of corresponding committees now ripened into the Continental Congress,
which held its first meeting at Philadelphia in September, 1774. Among the
delegates were Samuel and John Adams, Robert Livingston, John Rutledge, John
Dickinson, Samuel Chase, Edmund Pendleton, Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and
George Washington. Their action was cautious and conservative. They confined
themselves for the present to trying the effect of a candid statement of
grievances, and drew up a Declaration of Rights and other papers, which were
pronounced by Lord Chatham unsurpassed for ability in any age or country. In
Parliament, however, the king's friends were becoming all-powerful, and the only
effect produced by these papers was to goad them toward further attempts at
coercion. Massachusetts was declared to be in a state of rebellion, as in truth
she was.
While Samuel Adams was at Philadelphia, the lead in
Boston was taken by his friend Dr. Warren. In a county convention held at Milton
in September, Dr. Warren drew up a series of resolves which fairly set on foot
the Revolution. They declared that the Regulating Act was null and void, and
that a king who violates the chartered rights of his subjects forfeits their
allegiance; they directed the collectors of taxes to refuse to pay the money
collected to Gage's treasurer; and they threatened retaliation in case Gage
should venture to arrest any one for political reasons. These bold resolves were
adopted by the convention and sanctioned by the Continental Congress. Next month
the people of Massachusetts formed a provisional government, and began
organizing a militia and collecting military stores at Concord and other inland
towns.
Battle of Lexington, April 19,
1775.
General Gage's position at this time was a trying
one for a man of his temperament. In an unguarded moment he had assured the king
that four regiments ought to be enough to bring Massachusetts into an attitude
of penitence. Now Massachusetts was in an attitude of rebellion, and he realized
that he had not troops enough to command the situation. People in England were
blaming him for not doing something, and late in the winter he received a
positive order to arrest Samuel Adams and his friend John Hancock, then at the
head of the new provisional government of Massachusetts, and send them to
England to be tried for high treason. On the 18th of April, 1775, these
gentlemen were staying at a friend's house in Lexington; and Gage that evening
sent out a force of 800 men to seize the military stores accumulated at Concord,
with instructions to stop on the way at Lexington and arrest Adams and Hancock.
But Dr. Warren divined the purpose of the movement, and his messenger, Paul
Revere, succeeded in forewarning the people, so that by the time the troops
arrived at Lexington the birds were flown. The soldiers fired into a company of
militia on Lexington common and slew eight or ten of their number; but by the
time they reached Concord the country was fairly aroused and armed yeomanry were
coming upon the scene by hundreds. In a sharp skirmish the British were defeated
and, without having accomplished any of the objects of their expedition, began
their retreat toward Boston, hotly pursued by the farmers who fired from behind
walls and trees after the Indian fashion. A reinforcement of 1200 men at
Lexington saved the routed troops from destruction, but the numbers of their
assailants grew so rapidly that even this larger force barely succeeded in
escaping capture. At sunset the British reached Charlestown after a march which
was a series of skirmishes, leaving nearly 300 of their number killed or wounded
along the road. By that time yeomanry from twenty-three townships had joined in
the pursuit. The alarm spread like wildfire through New England, and fresh bands
of militia arrived every hour. Within three days Israel Putnam and Benedict
Arnold had come from Connecticut and John Stark from New Hampshire, a cordon of
16,000 men was drawn around Boston, and the siege of that town was begun.
The belligerent feeling in New England had now grown
so strong as to show itself in an act of offensive warfare. On the 10th of May,
just three weeks after Lexington, the fortresses at Ticonderoga and Crown Point,
controlling the line of communication between New York and Canada, were
surprised and captured by men from the Green Mountains and Connecticut valley
under Ethan Allen and Seth Warner. The Congress, which met on that same day at
Philadelphia, showed some reluctance in sanctioning an act so purely offensive;
but in its choice of a president the spirit of defiance toward Great Britain was
plainly shown. John Hancock, whom the British commander-in-chief was under
stringent orders to arrest and send over to England to be tried for treason, was
chosen to that eminent position on the 24th of May. This showed that the
preponderance of sentiment in the country was in favour of supporting the New
England colonies in the armed struggle into which they had drifted. This was
still further shown two days later, when Congress in the name of the "United
Colonies of America" assumed the direction of the rustic army of New England men
engaged in the siege of Boston. As Congress was absolutely penniless and had no
power to lay taxes, it proceeded to borrow £6000 for the purchase of gunpowder.
It called for ten companies of riflemen from Virginia, Maryland, and
Pennsylvania, to reinforce what was henceforth known as the Continental army;
and on the 15th of June it appointed George Washington commander-in-chief. The
choice of Washington was partly due to the general confidence in his ability and
in his lofty character. In the French War he had won a military reputation
higher than that of any other American, and he was already commander-in-chief of
the forces of Virginia. But the choice was also partly due to sound political
reasons. The Massachusetts leaders, especially Samuel Adams and his cousin John,
were distrusted by some people as extremists and fire-eaters. They wished to
bring about a declaration of independence, for they believed it to be the only
possible cure for the evils of the time. The leaders in other colonies, upon
which the hand of the British government had not borne so heavily, had not yet
advanced quite so far as this. Most of them believed that the king could be
brought to terms; they did not realize that he would never give way because it
was politically as much a life and death struggle for him as for them.
Washington was not yet clearly in favour of independence, nor was Jefferson, who
a twelvemonth hence was to be engaged in writing the Declaration. It is doubtful
if any of the leading men as yet agreed with the Adamses, except Dr. Franklin,
who had just returned from England after his ten years' stay there, and knew
very well how little hope was to be placed in conciliatory measures. The
Adamses, therefore, like wise statesmen, were always on their guard lest
circumstances should drive Massachusetts in the path of rebellion faster than
the sister colonies were likely to keep pace with her. This was what the king
above all things wished, and by the same token it was what they especially
dreaded and sought to avoid. To appoint George Washington to the chief command
was to go a long way toward irrevocably committing Virginia to the same cause
with Massachusetts, and John Adams was foremost in urging the appointment. Its
excellence was obvious to every one, and we hear of only two persons that were
dissatisfied. One of these was John Hancock, who coveted military distinction
and was vain enough to think himself fit for almost any position. The other was
Charles Lee, a British officer who had served in America in the French War and
afterward wandered about Europe as a soldier of fortune. He had returned to
America in 1773 in the hope of playing a leading part here. He set himself up as
an authority on military questions, and pretended to be a zealous lover of
liberty. He was really an unprincipled charlatan for whom, the kindest thing
that can be said is that perhaps he was slightly insane. He had hoped to be
appointed to the chief command, and was disgusted when he found himself placed
second among the four major-generals. The first major-general was Artemas Ward
of Massachusetts; the third was Philip Schuyler of New York; the fourth was
Israel Putnam of Connecticut. Eight brigadier-generals were appointed, among
whom we may here mention Richard Montgomery of New York, William Heath of
Massachusetts, John Sullivan of New Hampshire, and Nathanael Greene of Rhode
Island. The adjutant-general, Horatio Gates, was an Englishman who had served in
the French War, and since then had lived in Virginia.
Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17,
1775.
While Congress was appointing officers and making
regulations for the Continental army, reinforcements for the British had landed
in Boston, making their army 10,000 strong. The new troops were commanded by
General William Howe, a Whig who disapproved of the king's policy. With him came
Sir Henry Clinton and John Burgoyne, who were more in sympathy with the king.
Howe and Burgoyne were members of Parliament. On the arrival of these
reinforcements Gage prepared to occupy the heights in Charlestown known as
Breed's and Bunker's hills. These heights commanded Boston, so that hostile
batteries placed there would make it necessary for the British to evacuate the
town. On the night of June 16, the Americans anticipated Gage in seizing the
heights, and began erecting fortifications on Breed's Hill. It was an exposed
position for the American force, which might easily have been cut off and
captured if the British had gone around by sea and occupied Charlestown Neck in
the rear. The British preferred to storm the American works. In two desperate
assaults, on the afternoon of the 17th, they were repulsed with the loss of
one-third of their number; and the third assault succeeded only because the
Americans were not supplied with powder. By driving the Americans back to Winter
Hill, the British won an important victory and kept their hold upon Boston. The
moral effect of the battle, however, was in favour of the Americans, for it
clearly indicated that under proper circumstances they might exhibit a power of
resistance which the British would find it impossible to overcome. It was with
George III as with Pyrrhus: he could not afford to win many victories at such
cost, for his supply of soldiers for America was limited, and his only hope of
success lay in inflicting heavy blows. In winning Bunker Hill his troops were
only holding their own; the siege of Boston was not raised for a moment.
The practical effect upon the British army was to
keep it quiet for several months. General Howe, who presently superseded Gage,
was a brave and well-trained soldier, but slothful in temperament. His way was
to strike a blow, and then wait to see what would come of it, hoping no doubt
that political affairs might soon take such a turn as to make it unnecessary to
go on with this fratricidal war. This was fortunate for the Americans, for when
Washington took command of the army at Cambridge on the 3d of July, he saw that
little or nothing could be done with that army until it should be far better
organized, disciplined, and equipped, and in such work he found enough to occupy
him for several months.
Meanwhile Congress, at the instance of John
Dickinson of Pennsylvania and John Jay of New York, decided to try the effect of
one more candid statement of affairs, in the form of a petition to the king.
This paper reached London on the 14th of August, but the king refused to receive
it, although it was signed by the delegates as separate individuals and not as
members of an unauthorized or revolutionary body. His only answer was a
proclamation dated August 23, in which he called for volunteers to aid in
putting down the rebellion in America. At the same time he opened negotiations
with the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, the duke of Brunswick, and other petty
German princes, and succeeded in hiring 20,000 troops to be sent to fight
against his American subjects. When the news of this reached America it produced
a profound effect. Perhaps nothing done in that year went so far toward
destroying the lingering sentiment of loyalty.
Americans invade Canada, Aug., 1775—June,
1776.
In the spring Congress had hesitated about
encouraging offensive operations. In the course of the summer it was ascertained
that the governor of Canada, Sir Guy Carleton, was planning an invasion of
northern New York and hoping to obtain the cooperation of the Six Nations and
the Tories of the Mohawk valley. Congress accordingly decided to forestall him
by invading Canada. Two lines of invasion were adopted. Montgomery descended
Lake Champlain with 2000 men, and after a campaign of two months captured
Montreal on the 12th of November. At the same time Benedict Arnold and Daniel
Morgan set out from Cambridge with 1200 men, and made their way through the
wilderness of Maine, up the valley of the Kennebec and down that of the
Chaudière, coming out upon the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec on the 13th of
November. This long march through the primeval forest and over rugged and
trackless mountains was one of the most remarkable exploits of the war. It cost
the lives of 200 men, but besides this the rear-guard gave out and went back to
Cambridge, so that when Arnold reached Quebec he had only 700 men, too few for
an attack upon the town. After Montgomery joined him, it was decided to carry
the works by storm, but in the unsuccessful assault on December 31, Montgomery
was killed, Arnold disabled, and Morgan taken prisoner. During the winter
Carleton was reinforced until he was able to recapture Montreal. The Americans
were gradually driven back, and by June, 1776, had retreated to Crown Point.
Carleton then resumed his preparations for invading New York.
While the northern campaign was progressing thus
unfavourably, the British were at length driven from Boston. Howe had
unaccountably neglected to occupy Dorchester heights, which commanded the town;
and Washington, after waiting till a sufficient number of heavy guns could be
collected, advanced on the night of March 4 and occupied them with 2000 men. His
position was secure. The British had no alternative but to carry it by storm or
retire from Boston. Not caring to repeat the experiment of Bunker Hill, they
embarked on the 17th of March and sailed to Halifax, where they busied
themselves in preparations for an expedition against New York. Late in April
Washington transferred his headquarters to New York, where he was able to muster
about 8000 men for its defence. Thus the line of the Hudson river was now
threatened with attack at both its upper and lower ends.
This change in the seat of war marks the change that
had come over the political situation. It was no longer merely a rebellious
Massachusetts that must be subdued; it was a continental Union that must be
broken up. During the winter and spring the sentiment in favour of a declaration
of independence had rapidly grown in strength. In November, 1775, Lord Dunmore,
royal governor of Virginia, sought to intimidate the revolutionary party by a
proclamation offering freedom to such slaves as would enlist under the king's
banner. This aroused the country against Dunmore, and in December he was driven
from Norfolk and took refuge in a ship of war. On New Year's Day he bombarded
the town and laid it in ashes from one end to the other. This violence rapidly
made converts to the revolutionary party, and further lessons were learned from
the experience of their neighbours in North Carolina.
That colony was the scene of fierce contests between
Whigs and Tories. As early as May 31, 1775, the patriots of Mecklenburg county
had adopted resolutions pointing toward independence and forwarded them to their
delegates in Congress, who deemed it impolitic, however, to lay them before that
body. Josiah Martin, royal governor of North Carolina, was obliged to flee on
board ship in July. He busied himself with plans for the complete subjugation of
the southern colonies, and corresponded with the government in London, as well
as with his Tory friends ashore. In pursuance of these plans Sir Henry Clinton,
with 2000 men, was detached in January, 1776, from the army in Boston, and sent
to the North Carolina coast; a fleet under Sir Peter Parker was sent from
Ireland to meet him; and a force of 1600 Tories was gathered to assist him as
soon as he should arrive. But the scheme utterly failed. The fleet was buffeted
by adverse winds and did not arrive; the Tories were totally defeated on
February 27 in a sharp fight at Moore's Creek; and Clinton, thus deprived of his
allies, deemed it most prudent for a while to keep his troops on shipboard. On
the 12th of April the patriots of North Carolina instructed their delegates in
Congress to concur with other delegates in a declaration of independence. On the
14th of May Virginia went further, and instructed her delegates to propose such
a declaration. South Carolina, Georgia, and Rhode Island expressed a willingness
to concur in any measures which Congress might think best calculated to promote
the general welfare. In the course of May town-meetings throughout Massachusetts
expressed opinions unanimously in favour of independence.
Massachusetts had already, as long ago as July,
1775, framed a new government in which the king was not recognized; and her
example had been followed by New Hampshire in January, 1776, and by South
Carolina in March. Now on the 15th of May Congress adopted a resolution advising
all the other colonies to form new governments, because the king had "withdrawn
his protection" from the American people, and all governments deriving their
powers from him were accordingly set aside as of no account. This resolution was
almost equivalent to a declaration of independence, and it was adopted only
after hot debate and earnest opposition from the middle colonies.
Richard Henry Lee's motion in Congress.
On the 7th of June, in accordance with the
instructions of May 14 from Virginia, Richard Henry Lee submitted to Congress
the following resolutions:—
"That these United Colonies are, and of right ought
to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance
to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the
State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved;
"That it is expedient forthwith to take the most
effectual measures for forming foreign alliances;
"That a plan of confederation be prepared and
transmitted to the respective colonies for their consideration and approbation."
This motion of Virginia, in which Independence and
Union went hand in hand, was at once seconded by Massachusetts, as represented
by John Adams. It was opposed by John Dickinson and James Wilson of
Pennsylvania, and by Robert Livingston of New York, on the ground that the
people of the middle colonies were not yet ready to sever the connection with
the mother country. As the result of the discussion it was decided to wait three
weeks, in the hope of hearing from all those colonies which had not yet declared
themselves.
The messages from those colonies came promptly
enough. As for Connecticut and New Hampshire, there could be no doubt; and their
declarations for independence, on the 14th and 15th of June respectively, were
simply dilatory expressions of their sentiments. They were late, only because
Connecticut had no need to form a new government at all, while New Hampshire had
formed one as long ago as January. Their support of the proposed declaration of
independence was already secured, and it was only in the formal announcement of
it that they were somewhat belated. But with the middle colonies it was
different. There the parties were more evenly balanced, and it was not until the
last moment that the decision was clearly pronounced. This was not because they
were less patriotic than the other colonies, but because their direct grievances
were fewer, and up to this moment they had hoped that the quarrel was one which
a change of ministry in Great Britain might adjust. In the earlier stages of the
quarrel they had been ready enough to join hands with Massachusetts and
Virginia. It was only on this irrevocable decision as to independence that they
were slow to act.
But in the course of the month of June their
responses to the invitation of Congress came in,—from Delaware on the 14th, from
New Jersey on the 22d, from Pennsylvania on the 24th, from Maryland on the 28th.
This action of the middle colonies was avowedly based on the ground that, in any
event, united action was the thing most to be desired; so that, whatever their
individual preferences might be, they were ready to subordinate them to the
interests of the whole country. The broad and noble spirit of patriotism shown
in their resolves is worthy of no less credit than the bold action of the
colonies which, under the stimulus of direct aggression, first threw down the
gauntlet to George III.
On the 1st of July, when Lee's motion was taken up
in Congress, all the colonies had been heard from except New York. The
circumstances of this central colony were peculiar. We have already seen that
the Tory party was especially strong in New York. Besides this, her position was
more exposed to attack on all sides than that of any other state. As the
military centre of the Union, her territory was sure to be the scene of the most
desperate fighting. She was already threatened with invasion from Canada. As a
frontier state she was exposed to the incursions of the terrible Iroquois, and
as a sea-board state she was open to the attack of the British fleet. At that
time, moreover, the population of New York numbered only about 170,000, and she
ranked seventh among the thirteen colonies. The military problem was therefore
much harder for New York than for Massachusetts or Virginia. Her risks were
greater than those of any other colony. For these reasons the Whig party in New
York found itself seriously hampered in its movements, and the 1st of July
arrived before their delegates in Congress had been instructed how to vote on
the question of independence.
Richard Henry Lee had been suddenly called home to
Virginia by the illness of his wife, and so the task of defending his motion
fell upon John Adams who had seconded it. His speech on that occasion was so
able that Thomas Jefferson afterward spoke of him as "the Colossus of that
debate." As Congress sat with closed doors and no report was made of the speech,
we have no definite knowledge of its arguments. Fifty years afterwards, shortly
after John Adams's death, Daniel Webster wrote an imaginary speech containing
what in substance he might have said. The principal argument in
opposition was made by John Dickinson, who thought that before the Americans
finally committed themselves to a deadly struggle with Great Britain, they ought
to establish some stronger government than the Continental Congress, and ought
also to secure a promise of help from some such country as France. This advice
was cautious, but it was not sound and practical. War had already begun, and if
we had waited to agree upon some permanent kind of government before committing
all the colonies to a formal defiance of Great Britain, there was great danger
that the enemy might succeed in breaking up the Union before it was really
formed. Besides, it is not likely that France would ever have decided to go to
war in our behalf until we had shown that we were able to defend ourselves. It
was now a time when the boldest advice was the safest.
The Declaration of Independence, July 1 to 4, 1776.
During this debate on the 1st of July Congress was
sitting as a committee of the whole, and at the close of the day a preliminary
vote was taken. Like all the votes in the Continental Congress, it was taken by
colonies. The majority of votes in each delegation determined the vote of that
colony. Each colony had one vote, and two-thirds of the whole number, or nine
colonies against four, were necessary for a decision. On this occasion the New
York delegates did not vote at all, because they had no instructions. One
delegate from Delaware voted yea and another nay; the third delegate, Cesar
Rodney, had been down in the lower counties of his little state, arguing against
the loyalists. A special messenger had been sent to hurry him back, but he had
not yet arrived, and so the vote of Delaware was divided and lost. Pennsylvania
declared in the negative by four votes against three. South Carolina also
declared in the negative. The other nine colonies all voted in the affirmative,
and so the resolution received just votes enough to carry it. A very little more
opposition would have defeated it, and would probably have postponed the
declaration for several weeks.
The next day Congress took the formal vote upon the
resolution. Mr. Rodney had now arrived, so that the vote of Delaware was given
in the affirmative. John Dickinson and Robert Morris stayed away, so that
Pennsylvania was now secured for the affirmative by three votes against two.
Though Dickinson and Morris were so slow to believe it necessary or prudent to
declare independence, they were firm supporters of the declaration after it was
made. Without Morris, indeed, it is hard to see how the Revolution could have
succeeded. He was the great financier of his time, and his efforts in raising
money for the support of our hard-pressed armies were wonderful.
When the turn of the South Carolina delegates came
they changed their votes in order that the declaration might go forth to the
world as the unanimous act of the American people. The question was thus settled
on the 2d of July, and the next thing was to decide upon the form of the
declaration, which Jefferson, who was weak in debate but strong with the pen,
had already drafted. The work was completed on the 4th of July, when Jefferson's
draft was adopted and published to the world. Five days afterward the state of
New York declared her approval of these proceedings. The Rubicon was crossed,
and the thirteen English colonies had become the United States of America.
While these things were going on at Philadelphia,
the coast of South Carolina, as well as the harbour of New York, was threatened
by the British fleet. When the delegates from South Carolina gave their votes on
the question of independence, they did not know but the revolutionary government
in Charleston might already have been taken captive or scattered in flight.
After a stormy voyage Sir Peter Parker's squadron at length arrived off Cape
Fear early in May, and joined Sir Henry Clinton. Along with Sir Peter came an
officer worthy of especial mention. Charles, Earl Cornwallis, was then
thirty-eight years old. He had long served with distinction in the British army,
and had lately reached the grade of lieutenant-general. In politics he was a New
Whig, and had on several occasions signified his disapproval of the king's
policy toward America. As a commander his promptness and vigour contrasted
strongly with the slothfulness of General Howe. Cornwallis was the ablest of the
British generals engaged in the Revolutionary War, and among the public men of
his time there were few, if any, more high-minded, disinterested, faithful, and
pure. After the war was over, he won great fame as governor-general of India
from 1786 to 1794. He was afterward raised to the rank of marquis and appointed
lord-lieutenant of Ireland. In 1805 he was sent out again to govern India, and
died there.
On the arrival of the fleet it was decided to attack
and capture Charleston, and overthrow the new government there. General Charles
Lee was sent down by Congress to defend the city, but the South Carolina
patriots proved quite able to take care of themselves. On Sullivan's Island in
Charleston harbour Colonel William Moultrie built a low elastic fortress of
palmetto logs supported by banks of sand and mounting several heavy guns. In the
cannonade which took place on the 28th of June this rude structure escaped with
little injury, while its guns inflicted such serious damage upon the fleet that
the British were obliged to abandon for the present all thought of taking
Charleston. In the course of July they sailed for New York harbour to reinforce
General Howe. On the 12th of that month the general's brother, Richard, Lord
Howe, arrived at Staten Island to take the chief command of the fleet. He was
one of the ablest seamen of his time, and was a favourite with his sailors, by
whom, on account of his swarthy complexion, he was familiarly known as "Black
Dick." Lord Howe and his brother were authorized to offer terms to the Americans
and endeavour to restore peace by negotiation. It was not easy, however, to find
any one in America with whom to negotiate. Lord Howe was sincerely desirous of
making peace and doing something to heal the troubles which had brought on the
war; and he seems to have supposed that some good might be effected by private
interviews with leading Americans. To send a message to Congress was, of course,
not to be thought of; for that would be equivalent to recognizing Congress as a
body entitled to speak for the American people. He brought with him an assurance
of amnesty and pardon for all such rebels as would lay down their arms, and
decided that it would be best to send it to the American commander; but as it
was not proper to recognize the military rank which had been conferred upon
Washington by a revolutionary body, he addressed his message to "George
Washington, Esq.," as to a private citizen. When Washington refused to receive
such a message, his lordship could think of no one else to approach except the
royal governors. But they had all fled, except Governor Franklin of New Jersey,
who was under close confinement in East Windsor, Connecticut. All British
authority in the United States had disappeared, and there was no one for Lord
Howe to negotiate with, unless he should bethink himself of some way of laying
his case before Congress.
Military operations were now taken up in earnest by
the British, and were briskly carried on for nearly six months. They were for
the most part concentrated upon the state of New York. Before 1776 it was
Massachusetts that was the chief object of military measures on the part of the
British. That was the colony that since the summer of 1774 had defied the king's
troops and set at naught the authority of Parliament; and the first object of
the British was to make an example of that colony, to suppress the rebellion
there, and to reinstate the royal government. The king believed that it would
not take long to do this, and there is some reason for supposing that if he had
succeeded in humbling Massachusetts, he would have been ready to listen to
Hutchinson's request that the vindictive acts of April, 1774, should be repealed
and the charter restored. At all events, he seems to have felt confident that
things could soon be made so quiet that Hutchinson could return and resume the
office of governor. If the king and his friends had not entertained such
ill-founded hopes, they would not have been so ready to resort to violent
measures. They made the fatal mistake of supposing that such a man as Samuel
Adams represented only a small party and not the majority of the people. They
had also supposed that the other colonies would not make common cause with
Massachusetts. But now, before they had accomplished any of their objects, and
while their troops had even been driven from Boston, they found that the
rebellion had spread through the whole country. They had a belligerent
government to confront, and must now enter upon the task of conquering the
United States.
The first and most obvious method of attempting this
was to strike at New York as the military centre. In such a plan everything
seemed to favour the British. The state was comparatively weak in population and
resources; a large proportion of the people were Tories; and close at hand on
the frontier, which was then in the Mohawk valley, were the most formidable
Indians on the continent. These Iroquois had long been under the influence of
the famous Sir William Johnson, of Johnson Hall, near Schenectady, and his son
Sir John Johnson. Their principal sachem, Joseph Brant, or Thayendanegea, was
connected by the closest bonds of friendship with the Johnsons, and the latter
were staunch Tories. It might reasonably be expected that the entire force of
these Indians could be enlisted on the British side. The work for the regular
army seemed thus to be reduced to the single problem of capturing the city of
New York and obtaining full control of the Hudson river.
If this could be done, the United States would be
cut in two. As the Americans had no ships of war, they could not dispute the
British command of the water. There was no way in which the New England states
could hold communication with the South except across the southern part of the
state of New York. To gain this central position would thus be to deal a fatal
blow to the American cause, and it seemed to the British government that, with
the forces now in the field, this ought easily to be accomplished. General
Carleton was ready to come down from the north by way of Lake Champlain, with
12,000 men, and General Schuyler could scarcely muster half as many to oppose
him. On Staten Island there were more than 25,000 British troops ready to attack
New York, while Washington's utmost exertions had succeeded in getting together
only about 18,000 men for the defence of the city. The American army was as yet
very poor in organization and discipline, badly equipped, and scantily fed; and
it seemed very doubtful whether it could long keep the field in the presence of
superior forces.
But in spite of all these circumstances, so
favourable to the British, there was one obstacle to their success upon which at
first they did not sufficiently reckon. That obstacle was furnished by the
genius and character of the wonderful man who commanded the American army. In
Washington were combined all the highest qualities of a general,—dogged tenacity
of purpose, endless fertility in resource, sleepless vigilance, and unfailing
courage. No enemy ever caught him unawares, and he never let slip an opportunity
of striking back. He had a rare geographical instinct, always knew where the
strongest position was, and how to reach it. He was a master of the art of
concealing his own plan and detecting his adversary's. He knew better than to
hazard everything upon the result of a single contest, and because of the
enemy's superior force he was so often obliged to refuse battle that some of his
impatient critics called him slow; but no general was ever quicker in dealing
heavy blows when the proper moment arrived. He was neither unduly elated by
victory nor discouraged by defeat. When all others lost heart he was bravest;
and at the very moment when ruin seemed to stare him in the face, he was
craftily preparing disaster and confusion for the enemy.
To the highest qualities of a military commander
there were united in Washington those of a political leader. From early youth he
possessed the art of winning men's confidence. He was simple without
awkwardness, honest without bluntness, and endowed with rare discretion and
tact. His temper was fiery and on occasion he could use pretty strong language,
but anger or disappointment was never allowed to disturb the justice and
kindness of his judgment. Men felt themselves safe in putting entire trust in
his head and his heart, and they were never deceived. Thus he soon obtained such
a hold upon the people as few statesmen have ever possessed. It was this grand
character that, with his clear intelligence and unflagging industry, enabled him
to lead the nation triumphantly through the perils of the Revolutionary War. He
had almost every imaginable hardship to contend with,—envious rivals, treachery
and mutiny in the camp, interference on the part of Congress, jealousies between
the states, want of men and money; yet all these difficulties he vanquished.
Whether victorious or defeated on the field, he baffled the enemy in the first
year's great campaign and in the second year's, and then for four years more
upheld the cause until heart-sickening delay was ended in glorious triumph. It
is very doubtful if without Washington the struggle for independence would have
succeeded as it did. Other men were important, he was indispensable.
Battle of Long Island, Aug. 27,
1776.
The first great campaign began, as might have been
expected, with defeat on the field. In order to keep possession of the city of
New York it was necessary to hold Brooklyn Heights. That was a dangerous
position for an American force, because it was entirely separated from New York
by deep water, and could thus be cut off from the rest of the American army by
the enemy's fleet. It was necessary, however, for Washington either to occupy
Brooklyn Heights or to give up the city of New York without a struggle. But the
latter course was out of the question. It would never do to abandon the Whigs in
New York to the tender mercies of the Tories, without at least one good fight.
So the position in Brooklyn must be fortified, and there was perhaps one chance
in a hundred that, through some blunder of the enemy, we might succeed in
holding it. Accordingly 9000 men were stationed on Brooklyn Heights under
Putnam, who threw forward about half of this force, under Sullivan and Stirling,
to defend the southern approaches through the rugged country between Gowanus bay
and Bedford. On the 22d of August General Howe crossed from Staten Island to
Gravesend bay with 20,000 men, and on the 27th he defeated Sullivan and Stirling
in what has ever since been known as the battle of Long Island. About 400 men
were killed and wounded on each side, and 1000 Americans, including both
generals, were taken captive. A more favourable result for the Americans was not
to be expected, as the British outnumbered them four to one, and could therefore
march where they pleased and turn the American flank without incurring the
slightest risk. The wonder is, not that 5000 half-trained soldiers were defeated
by 20,000 veterans, but that they should have given General Howe a good day's
work in defeating them.
The American forces were now withdrawn into their
works on Brooklyn Heights, and Howe advanced to besiege them. During the next
two days Washington collected boats and on the night of the 29th conveyed the
army across the East River to New York. With the enemy's fleet patrolling the
harbour and their army watching the works, this was a most remarkable
performance. To this day one cannot understand, unless on the supposition that
the British were completely dazed and moonstruck, how Washington could have done
it.
People were much disheartened by the defeat on Long
Island and the immediate prospect of losing New York. Lord Howe turned his
thoughts once more to negotiation, and at length, on September 11, succeeded in
obtaining an informal interview with Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge.
But nothing was accomplished, and seventeen eventful months elapsed before the
British again seriously tried negotiation. General Howe had extended his lines
northward, and on the 15th his army crossed the East River in boats, and landed
near the site of Thirty-Fourth street. On the same day Washington completed the
work of evacuating the city. His army was drawn up across the island from the
mouth of Harlem river to Fort Washington, and over on the Jersey side of the
Hudson, opposite Fort Washington, a detachment occupied Fort Lee. It was hoped
that these two forts would be able to prevent British ships from going up the
Hudson river, but this hope soon proved to be delusive.
On the 16th General Howe tried to break through the
centre of Washington's position at Harlem Heights, but after losing 300 men he
gave up the attempt, and spent the next three weeks in studying the situation. A
sad incident came now to remind the people of the sternness of military law.
Nathan Hale, a young graduate of Yale College, captain of a company of
Connecticut rangers, had been for several days within the British lines
gathering information. Just as he had accomplished his purpose, and was on the
point of departing with his memoranda, he was arrested as a spy and hanged next
morning, lamenting on the gallows that he had but one life to lose for his
country.
Battle of White Plains, Oct. 28,
1776.
As Howe deemed it prudent not to attack Washington
in front, he tried to get around into his rear, and began on October 12 by
landing a large force at Throg's Neck, in the Sound. But Washington baffled him
by changing front, swinging his left wing northward as far as White Plains.
After further reflection Howe decided to try a front attack once more; on the
28th he assaulted the position at White Plains, and carried one of the outposts,
losing twice as many men as the Americans. Not wishing to continue the fight at
such a disadvantage he paused again, and Washington improved the occasion by
retiring to a still stronger position at Northcastle. These movements had
separated Washington's main body from his right wing at Forts Washington and
Lee, and Howe now changed his plan. Desisting from the attempt against the
American main body, he moved southward against this exposed wing.
A sad catastrophe now followed, which showed how
many obstacles Washington had to contend with. It was known that Carleton's army
was on the way from Canada. Congress was nervously afraid of losing its hold
upon the Hudson river, and Washington accordingly selected West Point as the
strongest position upon the river, to be fortified and defended at all hazards.
He sent Heath, with 3000 men, to hold the Highland passes, and went up himself
to inspect the situation and give directions about the new fortifications. He
left 7000 of his main body at Northcastle, in charge of Lee, who had just
returned from South Carolina. He sent 5000, under Putnam, across the river to
Hackensack; and ordered Greene, who had some 5000 men at Forts Washington and
Lee, to prepare to evacuate both those strongholds and join his forces to
Putnam's.
If these orders had been carried out, Howe's
movement against Fort Washington would have accomplished but little, for on
reaching that place, he would have found nothing but empty works, as at
Brooklyn. The American right wing would have been drawn together at Hackensack,
and the whole army could have been concentrated on either bank of the great
river, as the occasion might seem to require. If Howe should aim at the
Highlands, it could be kept close to the river and cover all the passes. If, on
the other hand, Howe should threaten the Congress at Philadelphia, the whole
army could be collected in New Jersey to hold him in check.
But Washington's orders were not obeyed. Congress
was so uneasy that it sent word to Greene to hold both his forts as long as he
could. Accordingly he strengthened the garrison at Fort Washington, just in time
for Howe to overwhelm and capture it, on the 16th of November, after an
obstinate resistance. In killed and wounded the British loss was three times as
great as that of the garrison, but the Americans were in no condition to afford
the loss of 8000 men taken prisoners. It was a terrible blow. On the 19th Greene
barely succeeded in escaping from Fort Lee, with his remaining 2000 men, but
without his cannon and stores.
Bad as the situation was, however, it did not become
really alarming until it was complicated with the misconduct of General Lee.
Washington had returned from West Point on the 14th, too late to prevent the
catastrophe; but after all it was only necessary for Lee's wing of the army to
cross the river, and there would be a solid force of 14,000 men on the Jersey
side, able to confront the enemy on something like equal terms, for Howe had to
keep a good many of his troops in New York. On the 17th Washington ordered Lee
to come over and join him; but Lee disobeyed, and in spite of repeated orders
from Washington he stayed at Northcastle till the 2d of December. General Ward
had some time since resigned, so that Lee now ranked next to Washington. A good
many people were finding fault with the latter for losing the 3000 men at Fort
Washington, although, as we have seen, that was not his fault but the fault of
Congress. Lee now felt that if Washington were ruined, he would surely become
his successor in the command of the army, and so, instead of obeying his orders,
he spent his time in writing letters calculated to injure him.
Washington's retreat through New
Jersey.
Lee's disobedience thus broke the army in two, and
did more for the British than they had been able to do for themselves since they
started from Staten Island. It was the cause of Washington's flight through New
Jersey, ending on the 8th of December, when he put himself behind the Delaware
river, with scarcely 3000 men. Here was another difficulty. The American
soldiers were enlisted for short terms, and when they were discouraged, as at
present, they were apt to insist upon going home as soon as their time had
expired. It was generally believed that Washington's army would thus fall to
pieces within a few days. Howe did not think it worth while to be at the trouble
of collecting boats wherewith to follow him across the Delaware. Congress fled
to Baltimore. People in New Jersey began taking the oath of allegiance to the
crown. Howe received the news that he had been knighted for his victory on Long
Island, and he returned to New York to celebrate the occasion.
While the case looked so desperate for Washington,
events at the north had taken a less unfavourable turn. Carleton had embarked on
Lake Champlain early in the autumn with his fine army and fleet. Arnold had
fitted up a small fleet to oppose his advance, and on the 11th of October there
had been a fierce naval battle between the two near Valcour Island, in which
Arnold was defeated, while Carleton suffered serious damage. The British general
then advanced upon Ticonderoga, but suddenly made up his mind that the season
was too late for operations in that latitude. The resistance he had encountered
seems to have made him despair of achieving any speedy success in that quarter,
and on the 3d of November he started back for Canada. This retreat relieved
General Schuyler at Albany of immediate cause for anxiety, and presently he
detached seven regiments to go southward to Washington's assistance.
On the 2d of December Lee crossed the Hudson with
4000 men, and proceeded slowly to Morristown. Just what he designed to do was
never known, but clearly he had no intention of going beyond the Delaware to
assist Washington, whom he believed to be ruined. Perhaps he thought Morristown
a desirable position to hold, as it certainly was. Whatever his plans may have
been, they were nipped in the bud. For some unknown reason he passed the night
of the 12th at an unguarded tavern, about four miles from his army; and there he
was captured next morning by a party of British dragoons, who carried him off to
their camp at Princeton. The dragoons were very gleeful over this unexpected
exploit, but really they could not have done the Americans a greater service
than to rid them of such a worthless creature. The capture of Lee came in the
nick of time, for it set free his men to go to the aid of Washington. Even after
this force and that sent by Schuyler had reached the commander-in-chief, he
found he had only 6000 men fit for duty.
Battle of Trenton, Dec. 26, 1776.
With this little force Washington instantly took the
offensive. It was the turning-point in his career and in the history of the
Revolutionary War. On Christmas, 1776, and the following nine days, all
Washington's most brilliant powers were displayed. The British centre, 10,000
strong, lay at Princeton. The principal generals, thinking the serious business
of the war ended, had gone to New York. An advanced party of Hessians, 1000
strong, was posted on the bank of the Delaware at Trenton, and another one lower
down, at Burlington. Washington decided to attack both these outposts, and
arranged his troops accordingly, but when Christmas night arrived, the river was
filled with great blocks of floating ice, and the only division which succeeded
in crossing was the one that Washington led in person. It was less than 2500 in
number, but the moment had come when the boldest course was the safest. By
daybreak Washington had surprised the Hessians at Trenton and captured them all.
The outpost at Burlington, on hearing the news, retreated to Princeton. By the
31st Washington had got all his available force across to Trenton. Some of them
were raw recruits just come in to replace others who had just gone home. At this
critical moment the army was nearly helpless for want of money, and on New
Year's morning Robert Morris was knocking at door after door in Philadelphia,
waking up his friends to borrow the fifty thousand dollars which he sent off to
Trenton before noon. The next day Cornwallis arrived at Princeton, and taking
with him all the army, except a rear-guard of 2000 men left to protect his
communications, came on toward Trenton.
When he reached that town, late in the afternoon, he
found Washington entrenched behind a small creek just south of the town, with
his back toward the Delaware river. "Oho!" said Cornwallis, "at last we have run
down the old fox, and we will bag him in the morning." He sent back to
Princeton, and ordered the rear-guard to come up. He expected next morning to
cross the creek above Washington's right, and then press him back against the
broad and deep river, and compel him to surrender. Cornwallis was by no means a
careless general, but he seems to have gone to bed on that memorable night and
slept the sleep of the just.
Battle of Princeton, Jan. 3,
1777.
Washington meanwhile was wide awake. He kept his
front line noisily at work digging and entrenching, and made a fine show with
his campfires. Then he marched his army to the right and across the creek, and
got around Cornwallis's left wing and into his rear, and so went on gayly toward
Princeton. At daybreak he encountered the British rear-guard, fought a sharp
battle with it and sent it flying, with the loss of one-fourth of its number.
The booming guns aroused Cornwallis too late. To preserve his communications
with New York, he was obliged to retreat with all haste upon New Brunswick,
while Washington's victorious army pushed on and occupied the strong position at
Morristown.
There was small hope of dislodging such a general
from such a position. But to leave Washington in possession of Morristown was to
resign to him the laurels of this half-year's work. For that position guarded
the Highlands of the Hudson on the one hand, and the roads to Philadelphia on
the other. Except that the British had taken the city of New York—which from the
start was almost a foregone conclusion—they were no better off than in July when
Lord Howe had landed on Staten Island. In nine days the tables had been
completely turned. The attack upon an outpost had developed into a campaign
which quite retrieved the situation. The ill-timed interference of Congress,
which had begun the series of disasters, was remedied; the treachery of Lee was
checkmated; and the cause of American Independence, which on Christmas Eve had
seemed hopeless, was now fairly set on its feet. Earlier successes had been
local; this was continental. Seldom has so much been done with such slender
means.
The American war had begun to awaken interest in
Europe, especially in France, whither Franklin, with Silas Deane and Arthur Lee,
had been sent to seek for military aid. The French government was not yet ready
to make an alliance with the United States, but money and arms were secretly
sent over to Congress. Several young French nobles had asked the king's
permission to go to America, but it was refused, and for the sake of keeping up
appearances the refusal had something of the air of a reprimand. The king did
not wish to offend Great Britain prematurely. One of these nobles was Lafayette,
then eighteen years of age, who fitted up a ship at his own expense, and sailed
from Bordeaux in April, 1777, in spite of the royal prohibition, taking with him
Kalb and other officers. Lafayette and Kalb, with the Poles, Kosciuszko and
Pulaski, who had come some time before, and the German Steuben, who came in the
following December, were the five most eminent foreigners who received
commissions in the Continental army.
During the winter season at Morristown the efforts
of Washington were directed toward the establishment of a regular army to be
kept together for three years or so long as the war should last. Hitherto the
military preparations of Congress had been absurdly weak. Squads of militia had
been enlisted for terms of three or six months, as if there were any likelihood
of the war being ended within such a period. While the men thus kept coming and
going, it was difficult either to maintain discipline or to carry out any series
of military operations. Accordingly Congress now proceeded to call upon the
states for an army of 80,000 men to serve during the war. The enlisting was to
be done by the states, but the money was to be furnished by Congress. Not half
that number of men were actually obtained. The Continental army was larger in
1777 than in any other year, but the highest number it reached was only 34,820.
In addition to these about 34,000 militia turned out in the course of the year.
An army of 80,000 would have taken about the same proportion of all the fighting
men in the country as an army of 1,000,000 in our great Civil War. Now in our
Civil War the Union army grew with the occasion until it numbered more than
1,000,000. But in the Revolutionary War the Continental army was not only never
equal to the occasion, but it kept diminishing till in 1781 it numbered only
13,292. This was because the Continental Congress had no power to enforce its
decrees. It could only ask for troops and it could only ask for
money. It found just the same difficulty in getting anything that the British
ministry and the royal governors used to find,—the very same difficulty that led
Grenville to devise the Stamp Act. Everything had to be talked over in thirteen
different legislatures, one state would wait to see what another was going to
do, and meanwhile Washington was expected to fight battles before his army was
fit to take the field. Something was gained, no doubt, by Congress furnishing
the money. But as Congress could not tax anybody, it had no means of raising a
revenue, except to beg, borrow, or issue its promissory notes, the so-called
Continental paper currency.
While Congress was trying to raise an adequate army,
the British ministry laid its plans for the summer campaign. The conquest of the
state of New York must be completed at all hazards; and to this end a threefold
system of movements was devised:—
The British plan for conquering New York in
1777.
First, the army in Canada was to advance upon
Ticonderoga, capture it, and descend the Hudson as far as Albany. This work was
now entrusted to General Burgoyne.
Secondly, in order to make sure of efficient support from
the Six Nations and the Tories of the frontier, a small force under Colonel
Barry St. Leger was to go up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario, land at Oswego,
and march down the Mohawk valley to reinforce Burgoyne on the Hudson.
Thirdly, after leaving a sufficient force to hold the city
of New York, the main army, under Sir William Howe, was to ascend the Hudson,
capture the forts in the Highlands, and keep on to Albany, so as to effect a
junction with Burgoyne and St. Leger.
It was thought that such an imposing display of
military force would make the Tory party supreme in New York, put an end to all
resistance there, and effectually cut the United States in two. Then if the
southern states on the one hand and the New England states on the other did not
hasten to submit, they might afterward be attacked separately and subdued.
In this plan the ministry made the fatal mistake of
underrating the strength of the feeling which, from one end of the United States
to the other, was setting itself every day more and more decidedly against the
Tories and in favour of independence. This feeling grew as fast as the
anti-slavery feeling grew among the northern people during our Civil War. In
1861 President Lincoln thought it necessary to rebuke his generals who were too
forward in setting free the slaves of persons engaged in rebellion against the
United States. In 1862 he announced his purpose to emancipate all such slaves;
and then it took less than three years to put an end to slavery forever. It was
just so with the sentiment in favour of separation from Great Britain. In July,
1775, Thomas Jefferson expressly declared that the Americans had not raised
armies with any intention of declaring their independence of the mother-country.
In July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence, written by Jefferson, was
proclaimed to the world, though the consent of the middle colonies and of South
Carolina seemed somewhat reluctant. By the summer of 1777 the Tories were almost
everywhere in a hopeless minority. Every day of warfare, showing Great Britain
more and more clearly as an enemy to be got rid of, diminished their strength;
so that, even in New York and South Carolina, where they were strongest, it
would not do for the British ministry to count too much upon any support they
might give.
It was natural enough that King George and his
ministers should fail to understand all this, but their mistake was their ruin.
If they had understood that Burgoyne's march from Lake Champlain to the Hudson
river was to be a march through a country thoroughly hostile, perhaps they would
not have been so ready to send him on such a dangerous expedition. It would have
been much easier and safer to have sent his army by sea to New York, to
reinforce Sir William Howe. Threatening movements might have been made by some
of the Canada forces against Ticonderoga, so as to keep Schuyler busy in that
quarter; and then the army at New York, thus increased to nearly 40,000 men,
might have had a fair chance of overwhelming Washington by sheer weight of
numbers. Such a plan might have failed, but it is not likely that it would have
led to the surrender of the British army. And if they could have disposed of
Washington, the British might have succeeded. It was more necessary for them to
get rid of him than to march up and down the valley of the Hudson. But it was
not strange that they did not see this as we do. It is always easy enough to be
wise after things have happened.
Even as it was, if their plan had really been
followed, they might have succeeded. If Howe's army had gone up to meet
Burgoyne, the history of the year 1777 would have been very different from what
it was. We shall presently see why it did not do so. Let us now recount the
fortunes of Burgoyne and St. Leger.
Burgoyne came up Lake Champlain in June, and easily
won Ticonderoga, because the Americans had failed to secure a neighbouring
position which commanded the fortress. Burgoyne took Ticonderoga from Mount
Defiance, just as the Americans would have taken Boston from Bunker Hill, if
they had been able to stay there, just as they afterward did take it from
Dorchester Heights, and just as Howe took New York after he had won Brooklyn
Heights. When you have secured a position from which you can kill the enemy
twice as fast as he can kill you, he must of course retire from the situation;
and the sooner he goes, the better chance he has of living to fight another day.
The same principle worked in all these cases, and it worked with General Howe at
Harlem Heights and at White Plains.
When it was known that Burgoyne had taken
Ticonderoga, there was dreadful dismay in America and keen disappointment among
those Whigs in England whose declared sympathies were with us. George III was
beside himself with glee, and thought that the Americans were finally defeated
and disposed of. But they were all mistaken. The garrison of Ticonderoga had
taken the alarm and retreated, so that Burgoyne captured only an empty fortress.
He left 1000 men in charge of it, and then pressed on into the wilderness
between Lake Champlain and the upper waters of the Hudson river. His real danger
was now beginning to show itself, and every day it could be seen more
distinctly. He was plunging into a forest, far away from all possible support
from behind, and as he went on he found that there were not Tories enough in
that part of the country to be of any use to him. As Burgoyne advanced, General
Schuyler prudently retreated, and used up the enemy's time by breaking down
bridges and putting every possible obstacle in his way. Schuyler was a rare man,
thoroughly disinterested and full of sound sense; but he had many political
enemies who were trying to pull him down. A large part of his army was made up
of New England men, who hated him partly for the mere reason that he was a New
Yorker, and partly because as such he had taken part in the long quarrel between
New York and New Hampshire over the possession of the Green Mountains. The
disaffection toward Schuyler was fomented by General Horatio Gates, who had for
some time held command under him, but was now in Philadelphia currying favour
with the delegates in Congress, especially with those from New England, in the
hope of getting himself appointed to the command of the northern army in
Schuyler's place. Gates was an extremely weak man, but so vain that he really
believed himself equal to the highest command that Congress could be persuaded
to give him. On the battle-field he seems to have been wanting even in personal
courage, as he certainly was in power to handle his troops; but in society he
was quite a lion. He had a smooth courteous manner and a plausible tongue which
paid little heed to the difference between truth and falsehood. His lies were
not very ingenious, and so they were often detected and pointed out. But while
many people were disgusted by his selfishness and trickery, there were always
some who insisted that he was a great genius. History can point to a good many
men like General Gates. Such men sometimes shine for a while, but sooner or
later they always come to be recognized as humbugs.
Battle of Hubbardton, July 7,
1777.
While Gates was intriguing, Schuyler was doing all
in his power to impede the enemy's progress. It was on the night of July 5 that
the garrison of Ticonderoga, under General St. Clair, had abandoned the fortress
and retreated southward. On the 7th a battle was fought at Hubbardton between
St. Clair's rear, under Seth Warner, and a portion of the British army under
Fraser and Riedesel. Warner was defeated, but only after such an obstinate
resistance as to check the pursuit, so that by the 12th St. Clair was able to
bring his retreating troops in safety to Fort Edward, where they were united
with Schuyler's army. Schuyler managed his obstructions so well that Burgoyne's
utmost efforts were required to push into the wilderness at the rate of one mile
per day; and meanwhile Schuyler was collecting a force of militia in the Green
Mountains, under General Lincoln, to threaten Burgoyne in the rear and cut off
his communications with Lake Champlain.
Burgoyne was accordingly marching into a trap, and
Schuyler was doing the best that could be done. But on the first of August the
intrigue against him triumphed in Congress, and Gates was appointed to supersede
him in the command of the northern army. Gates, however, did not arrive upon the
scene until the 19th of August, and by that time Burgoyne's situation was
evidently becoming desperate.
On the last day of July Burgoyne reached Fort
Edward, which Schuyler had evacuated just before. Schuyler crossed the Hudson
river, and continued his retreat to Stillwater, about thirty miles above Albany.
It was as far as the American retreat was to go. Burgoyne was already getting
short of provisions, and before he could advance much further he needed a fresh
supply of horses to drag the cannon and stores. He began to realize, when too
late, that he had come far into an enemy's country. The hostile feelings of the
people were roused to fury by the atrocities committed by the Indians employed
in Burgoyne's army. The British supposed that the savages would prove very
useful as scouts and guides, and that by offers of reward and threats of
punishment they might be restrained from deeds of violence. They were very
unruly, however, and apt to use the tomahawk when they found a chance.
Jane McCrea.
The sad death of Miss Jane McCrea has been described
in almost as many ways as there have been people to describe it, but no one
really knows how it happened. What is really known is that, on the 27th of July,
while Miss McCrea was staying with her friend Mrs. McNeil, near Fort Edward, a
party of Indians burst into the house and carried off both ladies. They were
pursued by some American soldiers, and a few shots were exchanged. In the course
of the scrimmage the party got scattered, and Mrs. McNeil was taken alone to the
British camp. Next day an Indian came into the camp with Miss McCrea's scalp,
which her friend recognized from its long silky hair. A search was made, and the
body of the poor girl was found lying near a spring, pierced with three
bullet-wounds. The Indian's story, that she was accidentally killed by a volley
from the American soldiers, may well enough have been true. It is also known
that she was betrothed to David Jones, a lieutenant in Burgoyne's army, and, as
her own home was in New Jersey, her visit to Mrs. McNeil may very likely have
been part of a plan for meeting her lover. These facts were soon woven into a
story, in which Jenny was said to have been murdered while on her way to her
wedding, escorted by a party of Indians whom her imprudent lover had sent to
take charge of her.
Battle of Bennington, Aug. 16,
1777.
The people of the neighbouring counties, in New York
and Massachusetts, enraged at the death of Miss McCrea and alarmed for the
safety of their own firesides, began rising in arms. Sturdy recruits began
marching to join Schuyler at Stillwater and Lincoln at Manchester in the Green
Mountains. Meanwhile Burgoyne had made up his mind to attack the village of
Bennington, which was Lincoln's centre of supplies. By seizing these supplies,
he could get for himself what he stood sorely in need of, while at the same time
the loss would cripple Lincoln and perhaps oblige him to retire from the scene.
Accordingly 1000 Germans were sent out, in two detachments under colonels Baum
and Breymann, to capture the village. But instead they were captured themselves.
Baum was first outmanœuvred, surrounded, and forced to surrender by John Stark,
after a hot fight, in which Baum was mortally wounded. Then Breymann was put to
flight and his troops dispersed by Seth Warner. Of the whole German force, 207
were killed or wounded, and at least 700 captured. Not more than 70 got back to
the British camp. The American loss in killed and wounded was 56.
This brilliant victory at Bennington had important
consequences. It checked Burgoyne's advance until he could get his supplies, and
it decided that Lincoln's militia could get in his rear and cut off his
communications with Ticonderoga. It furthermore inspired the Americans with the
exulting hope that Burgoyne's whole army could be surrounded and forced to
surrender.
If, however, the British had been successful in
gaining the Mohawk valley and ensuring the supremacy over that region for the
Tories, the fate of Burgoyne might have been averted. The Tories in that region,
under Sir John Johnson and Colonel John Butler, were really formidable. As for
the Indians of the Iroquois league, they had always been friendly to the English
and hostile to the French; but now, when it came to making their choice between
two kinds of English—the Americans and the British, they hesitated and differed
in opinion. The Mohawks took sides with the British because of the friendship
between Joseph Brant and the Johnsons. The Cayugas and Senecas followed on the
same side; but the Onondagas, in the centre of the confederacy, remained
neutral, and the Oneidas and Tuscaroras, under the influence of Samuel Kirkland
and other missionaries, showed active sympathy with the Americans. It turned
out, too, that the Whigs were much stronger in the valley than had been
supposed.
Battle of Oriskany, Aug. 6, 1777.
After St. Leger had landed at Oswego and joined
hands with his Tory and Indian allies, his entire force amounted to about 1700
men. The principal obstacle to his progress toward the Hudson river was Fort
Stanwix, which stood where the city of Rome now stands. On the 3d of August St.
Leger reached Fort Stanwix and laid siege to it. The place was garrisoned by 600
men under Colonel Peter Gansevoort, and the Whig yeomanry of the neighbourhood,
under the heroic General Nicholas Herkimer, were on the way to relieve it, to
the number of at least 800. Herkimer made an excellent plan for surprising St.
Leger with an attack in the rear, while the garrison should sally forth and
attack him in front. But St. Leger's Indian scouts were more nimble than
Herkimer's messengers, so that he obtained his information sooner than
Gansevoort. An ambush was skilfully prepared by Brant in a ravine near Oriskany,
and there, on the 6th of August, was fought the most desperate and murderous
battle of the Revolutionary War. It was a hand to hand fight, in which about 800
men were engaged on each side, and each lost more than one-third of its number.
As the Tories and Indians were giving way, their retreat was hastened by the
sounds of battle from Fort Stanwix, where the garrison was making its sally and
driving back the besiegers. Herkimer remained in possession of the field at
Oriskany, but his plan had been for the moment thwarted, and in the battle he
had received a wound from which he died.
Benedict Arnold had lately been sent by Washington
to be of such assistance as he could to Schuyler. Arnold stood high in the
confidence of both these generals. He had shown himself one of the ablest
officers in the American army, he was especially skilful in getting good work
out of raw troops, and he was a great favourite with his men. On hearing of the
danger of Fort Stanwix, Schuyler sent him to the rescue, with 1200 men. When he
was within twenty miles of that stronghold, he contrived, with the aid of some
friendly Oneidas and a Tory captive whose life he spared for the purpose, to
send on before him exaggerated reports of the size of his army. The device
accomplished far more than he could have expected. The obstinate resistance at
Oriskany had discouraged the Tories and angered the Indians. Distrust and
dissension were already rife in St. Leger's camp, when such reports came in as
to lead many to believe that Burgoyne had been totally defeated, and that the
whole of Schuyler's army, or a great part of it, was coming up the Mohawk. This
news led to riot and panic among the troops, and on August 22 St. Leger took to
flight and made his way as best he could to his ships at Oswego, with scarcely
the shred of an army left. This catastrophe showed how sadly mistaken the
British had been in their reliance upon Tory help.
The battle of Bennington was fought on the 16th of
August. Now by the overthrow of St. Leger, six days later, Burgoyne's situation
had become very alarming. It was just in the midst of these events that Gates
arrived, on August 19, and took command of the army at Stillwater, which was
fast growing in numbers. Militia were flocking in, Arnold's force was returning,
and Daniel Morgan was at hand with 500 Virginian sharpshooters. Unless Burgoyne
could win a battle against overwhelming odds, there was only one thing that
could save him; and that was the arrival of Howe's army at Albany, according to
the ministry's programme. But Burgoyne had not yet heard a word from Howe; and
Howe never came.
This failure of Howe to coöperate with Burgoyne was
no doubt the most fatal military blunder made by the British in the whole course
of the war. The failure was of course unintentional on Howe's part. He meant to
extend sufficient support to Burgoyne, but the trouble was that he attempted too
much. He had another plan in his mind at the same time, and between the two he
ended by accomplishing nothing. While he kept one eye on Albany, he kept the
other on Philadelphia. He had not relished being driven back across New Jersey
by Washington, and the hope of defeating that general in battle, and then
pushing on to the "rebel capital" strongly tempted him. In such thoughts he was
encouraged by the advice of the captive General Lee. That unscrupulous busybody
felt himself in great danger, for he knew that the British regarded him in the
light of a deserter from their army. While his fate was in suspense, he informed
the brothers Howe that he had abandoned the American cause, and he offered them
his advice and counsel for the summer campaign. This villainy of Lee's was not
known till eighty years afterward, when a paper of his was discovered that
revealed it in all its blackness. The Howes were sure to pay some heed to Lee's
opinions, because he was supposed to have acquired a thorough knowledge of
American affairs. He advised them to begin by taking Philadelphia, and supported
this plan by plausible arguments. Sir William Howe seems to have thought that he
could accomplish this early in the summer, and then have his hands free for
whatever might be needed on the Hudson river. Accordingly on the 12th of June he
started to cross the state of New Jersey with 18,000 men.
Washington's masterly campaign in New Jersey, June,
1777.
But Sir William had reckoned without his host. In a
campaign of eighteen days, Washington, with only 8000 men, completely blocked
the way for him, and made him give up the game. The popular histories do not
have much to say about these eighteen days, because they were not marked by
battles. Washington won by his marvellous skill in choosing positions where Howe
could not attack him with any chance of success. Howe understood this and did
not attack. He could not entice Washington into fighting at a disadvantage, and
he could not march on and leave such an enemy behind without sacrificing his own
communications. Accordingly on June 30 he gave up his plan and retreated to
Staten Island. If there ever was a general who understood the useful art of
wasting his adversary's time, Washington was that general.
Howe now decided to take his army to Philadelphia by
sea. He waited a while till the news from the north seemed to show that Burgoyne
was carrying everything before him; and then he thought it safe to start. He
left Sir Henry Clinton in command at New York, with 7000 men, telling him to
send a small force up the river to help Burgoyne, should there be any need of
it, which did not then seem likely. Then he put to sea with his main force of
18,000 men, and went around to the Delaware river, which he reached at the end
of July, just as Burgoyne was reaching Fort Edward.
Howe's next move was very strange. He afterward said
that he did not go up the Delaware river, because he found that there were
obstructions and forts to be passed. But he might have gone up a little way and
landed his forces on the Delaware coast at a point where a single march would
have brought them to Elkton, at the head of Chesapeake bay, about fifty miles
southwest from Philadelphia. Instead of this, he put out to sea again and sailed
four hundred miles, to the mouth of Chesapeake bay and up that bay to Elkton,
where he landed his men on the 25th of August. Why he took such a roundabout
course cannot be understood, unless he may have attached importance to Lee's
advice that the presence of a British squadron in Chesapeake bay would help to
arouse the Tories in Maryland. The British generals could not seem to make up
their minds that America was a hostile country. Small blame to them, brave
fellows that they were! They could not make war against America in such a fierce
spirit as that in which France would now make war against Germany if she could
see her way clear to do so. They were always counting on American sympathy, and
this was a will-o'-the-wisp that lured them to destruction.
On landing at Elkton, Howe received orders from
London, telling him to ascend the Hudson river and support Burgoyne, in any
event. This order had left London in May. It was well for the Americans that the
telegraph had not then been invented. Now it was the 25th of August; Burgoyne
was in imminent peril; and Howe was three hundred miles away from him!
Battle of the Brandywine, Sept. 11, 1777.
All these movements had been carefully watched by
Washington; and as Howe marched toward Philadelphia he found that general
blocking the way at the fords of the Brandywine creek. A battle ensued on the
11th of September. It was a well-contested battle. With 11,000 men against
18,000, Washington could hardly have been expected to win a victory. He was
driven from the field, but not badly defeated. He kept his army well in hand,
and manœuvred so skilfully that the British were employed for two weeks in
getting over the twenty-six miles to Philadelphia.
Battle of Germantown, Oct. 4,
1777.
Before Howe had reached that city, Congress had
moved away to York in Pennsylvania. When he had taken Philadelphia, he found
that he could not stay there without taking the forts on the Delaware river
which prevented the British ships from coming up; for by land Washington could
cut off his supplies, and he could only be sure of them by water. So Howe
detached part of his army to reduce these forts, leaving the rest of it at
Germantown, six miles from Philadelphia. On the 4th of October, Washington
attacked the force at Germantown in such a position that defeat would have quite
destroyed it. The attempt failed at the critical moment because of a dense fog
in which one American brigade fired into another and caused a brief panic. The
forts on the Delaware were captured after hard fighting, and Washington went
into winter quarters at Valley Forge.
The result of the summer's work was that, because
Howe had made several mistakes and Washington had taken the utmost advantage of
every one of them, the whole British plan was spoiled. Howe had used up the
whole season in getting to Philadelphia, and Washington's activity had also kept
Sir Henry Clinton's attention so much occupied with what was going on about the
Delaware river as to prevent him from sending aid to the northward until it was
too late. Sir Henry was once actually obliged to send reinforcements to Howe.
Thus Burgoyne was left to himself. He supposed that
Howe was coming up the Hudson river to meet him, and so on September 13 he
crossed the river and advanced to attack Gates's army, which was occupying a
strong position at Bemis Heights, between Stillwater and Saratoga. It was a
desperate move. While Burgoyne was making it, Lincoln's men cut his
communications with Ticonderoga, so that his only hope lay in help from below;
and such help never came. In this extremity he was obliged to fight on ground
chosen by the Americans, because he must either fight or starve.
Under these circumstances Burgoyne fought two
battles with consummate gallantry. The first was on September 19, the second on
October 7. In each battle the Americans were led by Arnold and Morgan, and Gates
deserves no credit for either. In both battles Arnold was the leading spirit,
and in the second he was severely wounded at the moment of victory. In the first
battle the British were simply repulsed, in the second they were totally
defeated. This settled the fate of Burgoyne, and on the 17th of October he
surrendered his whole army, now reduced to less than 6000 men, as prisoners of
war. Before the final catastrophe Sir Henry Clinton had sent a small force up
the river to relieve him, but it was too late. The relieving force succeeded in
capturing some of the Highland forts, but turned back on hearing of Burgoyne's
surrender.
This capture of a British army made more ado in
Europe than anything which had happened for many a day. It was compared to
Leuktra and the Caudine Fork. The immediate effect in England was to weaken the
king and cause Lord North to change his policy. The tea-duty and the obnoxious
acts of 1774 were repealed, the principles of colonial independence of
Parliament laid down by Otis and Henry were admitted, and commissioners were
sent over to America to negotiate terms of peace. It was hoped that by such
ample concessions the Americans might be so appeased as to be willing to adopt
some arrangement which would leave their country a part of the British Empire.
As soon as the French government saw the first symptoms of such a change of
policy on the part of Lord North, it decided to enter into an alliance with the
United States. There was much sympathy for the Americans among educated people
of all grades of society in France; but the action of the government was
determined purely by hatred of England. While Great Britain and her colonies
were weakening each other by war, France had up to this moment not cared to
interfere. But if there was the slightest chance of a reconciliation, it was
high time to prevent it; and besides, the American cause was now prosperous, and
something might be made of it. The moment had come for France to seek revenge
for the disasters of the Seven Years' War; and on the 6th of February, 1778, her
treaty of alliance with the United States was signed at Paris.
At the news of this there was an outburst of popular
excitement in England. There was a strong feeling in favour of peace with
America and war with France, and men of all parties united with Lord North
himself in demanding that Lord Chatham, who represented such a policy, should be
made prime minister. It was rightly believed that he, if any one, could both
conciliate America and humiliate France. There was only one way in which Chatham
could have broken the new alliance which Congress had so long been seeking. The
faith of Congress was pledged to France, and the Americans would no longer hear
of any terms that did not begin with the acknowledgment of their full
independence. To break the alliance, it would have been necessary to concede the
independence of the United States. The king felt that if he were now obliged to
call Chatham to the head of affairs and allow him to form a strong ministry, it
would be the end of his cherished schemes for breaking down cabinet government.
There was no man whom George III hated and feared so much as Lord Chatham.
Nevertheless the pressure was so great that, but for Chatham's untimely death,
the king would probably have been obliged to yield. If Chatham had lived a year
longer, the war might have ended with the surrender of Burgoyne instead of
continuing until the surrender of Cornwallis. As it was, Lord North consented,
against his own better judgment, to remain in office and aid the king's policy
as far as he could. The commissioners sent to America accomplished nothing,
because they were not empowered to grant independence; and so the war went on.
There was a great change, however, in the manner in
which the war was conducted. In the years 1776 and 1777 the British had pursued
a definite plan for conquering New York and thus severing the connection between
New England and the southern states. During the remainder of the war their only
definite plan was for conquering the southern states. Their operations at the
north were for the most part confined to burning and plundering expeditions
along the coast in their ships, or on the frontier in connection with Tories and
Indians. The war thus assumed a more cruel character. This was chiefly due to
the influence of Lord George Germaine, the secretary of state for the colonies.
He was a contemptible creature, weak and cruel. He had been dismissed from the
army in 1759 for cowardice at the battle of Minden, and he was so generally
despised that when in 1782 the king was obliged to turn him out of office and
tried to console him by raising him to the peerage as Viscount Sackville, the
House of Lords protested against the admission of such a creature. George III
had made this man his colonial secretary in the autumn of 1775, and he had much
to do with planning the campaigns of the next two years. But now his influence
in the cabinet seems to have increased. He was much more thoroughly in sympathy
with the king than Lord North, who at this time was really to be pitied. Lord
North would have been a fine man but for his weakness of will. He was now
keeping up the war in America unwillingly, and was obliged to sanction many
things of which he did not approve. In later years he bitterly repented this
weakness. Now the truculent policy of Lord George Germaine began to show itself
in the conduct of the war. That minister took no pains to conceal his
willingness to employ Indians, to burn towns and villages, and to inflict upon
the American people as much misery as possible, in the hope of breaking their
spirit and tiring them out.
The Conway Cabal.
In America the first effect of Burgoyne's surrender
was to strengthen a feeling of dissatisfaction with Washington, which had grown
up in some quarters. In reality, as our narrative has shown, Washington had as
much to do with the overthrow of Burgoyne as anybody; for if it had not been for
his skilful campaign in June, 1777, Howe would have taken Philadelphia in that
month, and would then have been free to assist Burgoyne. It is easy enough to
understand such things afterward, but people never can see them at the time when
they are happening. This is an excellent illustration of what was said at the
beginning of this book, that when people are down in the midst of events they
cannot see the wood because of the trees, and it is only when they have climbed
the hill of history and look back over the landscape that they can see what
things really meant. At the end of the year 1777 people could only see that
Burgoyne had surrendered to Gates, while Washington had lost two battles and the
city of Philadelphia. Accordingly there were many who supposed that Gates must
be a better general than Washington, and in the army there were some
discontented spirits that were only too glad to take advantage of this feeling.
One of these malcontents was an Irish adventurer, Thomas Conway, who had long
served in France and came over here in time to take part in the battles of
Brandywine and Germantown. He had a grudge against Washington, as Charles Lee
had. He thought he could get on better if Washington were out of the way. So he
busied himself in organizing a kind of conspiracy against Washington, which came
to be known as the "Conway Cabal." The purpose was to put forward Gates to
supersede Washington, as he had lately superseded the noble Schuyler. Gates, of
course, lent himself heartily to the scheme; such intrigues were what he was
made for. And there were some of our noblest men who were dissatisfied with
Washington, because they were ignorant of the military art, and could not
understand his wonderful skill, as Frederick the Great did. Among these were
John and Samuel Adams, who disapproved of "Fabian strategy." Gates and Conway
tried to work upon such feelings. They hoped by thwarting and insulting
Washington to wound his pride and force him to resign. In this wretched work
they had altogether too much help from Congress, but they failed ignominiously
because Gates's lies were too plainly discovered. The attempts to injure
Washington recoiled upon their authors. Never, perhaps, was Washington so grand
as in that sorrowful winter at Valley Forge.
When the news of the French alliance arrived, in the
spring of 1778, there was a general feeling of elation. People were
over-confident. It seemed as if the British might be driven from the country in
the course of that year. Some changes occurred in both the opposing armies. A
great deal of fault was found in England with Howe and Burgoyne. The latter was
allowed to go home in the spring, and took his seat in Parliament while still a
prisoner on parole. He was henceforth friendly to the Americans, and opposed the
further prosecution of the war. Sir William Howe resigned his command in May and
went home in order to defend his conduct. Shortly before his appointment to the
chief command in America, he had uttered a prophecy somewhat notable as coming
from one who was about to occupy such a position. In a speech at Nottingham he
had expressed the opinion that the Americans could not be subdued by any army
that Great Britain could raise!
Howe was succeeded in the chief command by Sir Henry
Clinton. His brother, Lord Howe, remained in command of the fleet until the
autumn, when he was succeeded by Admiral Byron. During the winter the American
army had received a very important reinforcement in the person of Baron von
Steuben, an able and highly educated officer who had served on the staff of
Frederick the Great. Steuben was appointed inspector-general and taught the
soldiers Prussian discipline and tactics until the efficiency of the army was
more than doubled. About the time of Sir William Howe's departure, Charles Lee
was exchanged, and came back to his old place as senior major-general in the
Continental army. Since his capture there had been a considerable falling off in
his reputation, but nothing was known of his treasonable proceedings with the
Howes. Probably no one in the British army knew anything about that affair
except the Howes and their private secretary Sir Henry Strachey. Lee saw that
the American cause was now in the ascendant, and he was as anxious as ever to
supplant Washington.
The Americans now assumed the offensive. Count
d'Estaing was approaching the coast with a powerful French fleet. Should he be
able to defeat Lord Howe and get control of the Delaware river, the British army
in Philadelphia would be in danger of capture. Accordingly on the 18th of June
that city was evacuated by Sir Henry Clinton and occupied by Washington. As
there were not enough transports to take the British army around to New York by
sea, it was necessary to take the more hazardous course of marching across New
Jersey. Washington pursued the enemy closely, with the view of forcing him to
battle in an unfavourable situation and dealing him a fatal blow. There was some
hope of effecting this, as the two armies were now about equal in size—15,000 in
each—and the Americans were in excellent training. The enemy were overtaken at
Monmouth Court House on the morning of June 28, but the attack was unfortunately
entrusted to Lee, who disobeyed orders and made an unnecessary and shameful
retreat. Washington arrived on the scene in time to turn defeat into victory.
The British were driven from the field, but Lee's misconduct had broken the
force of the blow which Washington had aimed at them. Lee was tried by
court-martial and at first suspended from command, then expelled from the army.
It was the end of his public career. He died in October, 1782.
After the battle of Monmouth the British continued
their march to New York, and Washington moved his army to White Plains. Count
d'Estaing arrived at Sandy Hook in July with a much larger fleet than the
British had in the harbour, and a land force of 4000 men. It now seemed as if
Clinton's army might be cooped up and compelled to surrender, but on examination
it appeared that the largest French ships drew too much water to venture to
cross the bar. All hope of capturing New York was accordingly for the present
abandoned.
Siege of Newport, Aug. 1778.
The enemy, however, had another considerable force
near at hand, besides Clinton's. Since December, 1776, they had occupied the
island which gives its name to the state of Rhode Island. Its position was safe
and convenient. It enabled them, if they should see fit, to threaten Boston on
the one hand and the coast of Connecticut on the other, and thus to make
diversions in aid of Sir Henry Clinton. The force on Rhode Island had been
increased to 6000 men, under command of Sir Robert Pigott. The Americans
believed that the capture of so large a force, could it be effected, would so
discourage the British as to bring the war to an end; and in this belief they
were very likely right. The French fleet accordingly proceeded to Newport; to
the 4000 French infantry Washington added 1500 of the best of his Continentals;
levies of New England yeomanry raised the total strength to 13,000; and the
general command of the American troops was given to Sullivan.
The expedition was poorly managed, and failed
completely. There was some delay in starting. During the first week of August
the Americans landed upon the island and occupied Butts Hill. The French had
begun to land on Conanicut when they learned that Lord Howe was approaching with
a powerful fleet. The count then reëmbarked his men and stood out to sea,
manœuvring for a favourable position for battle. Before the fight had begun, a
terrible storm scattered both fleets and damaged them severely. When D'Estaing
had got his ships together again, which was not till the 20th of August, he
insisted upon going to Boston for repairs, and took his infantry with him. This
vexed Sullivan and disgusted the yeomanry, who forthwith dispersed and went home
to look after their crops. General Pigott then tried the offensive, and attacked
Sullivan in his strong position on Butts Hill, on the 29th of August. The
British were defeated, but the next day Sullivan learned that Clinton was coming
with heavy reinforcements, and so he was obliged to abandon the enterprise and
lose no time in getting his own troops into a safe position on the mainland. In
November the French fleet sailed for the West Indies, and Clinton was obliged to
send 5000 men from New York to the same quarter of the world.
Wyoming and Cherry Valley, July-Nov.,
1778.
In the years 1778 and 1779 the warfare on the border
assumed formidable proportions. The Tories of central New York, under the
Johnsons and Butlers, together with Brant and his Mohawks, made their
headquarters at Fort Niagara, from which they struck frequent and terrible blows
at the exposed settlements on the frontier. Early in July, 1778, a force of 1200
men, under John Butler, spread death and desolation through the beautiful valley
of Wyoming in Pennsylvania. On the 10th of November, Brant and Walter Butler
destroyed the village of Cherry Valley in New York, and massacred the
inhabitants. Many other dreadful things were done in the course of this year;
but the affairs of Wyoming and Cherry Valley made a deeper impression than all
the rest. During the following spring Washington organized an expedition of 5000
men, and sent it, under Sullivan, to lay waste the Iroquois country and capture
the nest of Tory malefactors at Fort Niagara. While they were slowly advancing
through the wilderness, Brant sacked the town of Minisink and destroyed a force
of militia sent against him. But on the 29th of August a battle was fought on
the site of the present town of Elmira, in which the Tories and Indians were
defeated with great slaughter. The American army then marched through the
country of the Cayugas and Senecas, and laid it waste. More than forty Indian
villages were burned and all the corn was destroyed, so that the approach of
winter brought famine and pestilence. Sullivan was not able to get beyond the
Genesee river for want of supplies, and so Fort Niagara escaped. The Iroquois
league had received a blow from which it never recovered, though for two years
more their tomahawks were busy on the frontier.
Conquest of the northwestern territory,
1778-79.
At intervals during the Revolution there was more or
less Indian warfare all along the border. Settlers were making their way into
Kentucky and Tennessee. Feuds with these encroaching immigrants led the powerful
tribe of Cherokees to take part with the British, and they made trouble enough
until they were crushed by John Sevier, the "lion of the border." In 1778
Colonel Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, attempted to stir up all the
western tribes to a concerted attack upon the frontier. When the news of this
reached Virginia, an expedition was sent out under George Rogers Clark, a youth
of twenty-four years, to carry the war into the enemy's country. In an extremely
interesting and romantic series of movements, Clark took the posts of Kaskaskia
and Cahokia, on the Mississippi river, defeated and captured Colonel Hamilton at
Vincennes, on the Wabash, and ended by conquering the whole northwestern
territory for the state of Virginia.
The year 1779 saw very little fighting in the
northern states between the regular armies. The British confined themselves
chiefly to marauding expeditions along the coast, from Martha's Vineyard down to
the James river. These incursions were marked by cruelties unknown in the
earlier part of the war. Their chief purpose would seem to have been to carry
out Lord George Germaine's idea of harassing the Americans as vexatiously as
possible. But in Connecticut, which perhaps suffered the worst, there was a
military purpose. In July, 1779, an attack was made upon New Haven, and the
towns of Fairfield and Norwalk were burned. The object was to induce Washington
to weaken his force on the Hudson river by sending away troops to protect the
Connecticut towns. Clinton now held the river as far up as Stony Point, and he
hoped by this diversion to prepare for an attack upon Washington which, if
successful, might end in the fall of West Point. If the British could get
possession of West Point, it would go far toward retrieving the disaster which
had befallen them at Saratoga. Washington's retort was characteristic of him. He
did, as always, what the enemy did not expect. He called Anthony Wayne and asked
him if he thought he could carry Stony Point by storm. Wayne replied that he
could storm a very much hotter place than any known in terrestrial geography, if
Washington would plan the attack. Plan and performance were equally good. At
midnight of July 15 the fort was surprised and carried in a superb assault with
bayonets, without the firing of a gun on the American side. It was one of the
most brilliant assaults in all military history. It instantly relieved
Connecticut, but Washington did not think it prudent to retain the fortress. The
works were all destroyed, and the garrison, with the cannon and stores,
withdrawn. The American army was as much as possible concentrated about West
Point. In the general situation of affairs on the Hudson there was but little
change for the next two years.
It may seem strange that so little was done in all
this time. But, in fact, both England and the United States were getting
exhausted, so far as the ability to carry on war was concerned.
As regards England, the action of France had
seriously complicated the situation. England had now to protect her colonies and
dependencies on the Mediterranean, in Africa, in Hindustan, and in the West
Indies. In 1779 Spain declared war against her, in the hope of regaining
Gibraltar and the Floridas. For three years Gibraltar was besieged by the allied
French and Spanish forces. A Spanish fleet laid siege to Pensacola. France
strove to regain the places which England had formerly won from her in
Senegambia. War broke out in India with the Mahrattas, and with Hyder Ali of
Mysore, and it required all the genius of Warren Hastings to save England's
empire in Asia. We have already seen how Clinton, in the autumn of 1778, was
obliged to weaken his force in New York by sending 5,000 men to the West Indies.
Before the end of 1779 there were 314,000 British troops on duty in various
parts of the world, but not enough could be spared for service in New York to
defeat Washington's little army of 15,000. We thus begin to realize what a great
event was the surrender of Burgoyne. The loss of 6,000 men by England was not in
itself irreparable; but in leading to the intervention of France it was like the
touching of a spring or the drawing of a bolt which sets in motion a vast system
of machinery.
Under these circumstances George III tried to form
an alliance with Russia, and offered the island of Minorca as an inducement.
Russia declined the offer, and such action as she took was hostile to England.
It had formerly been held that the merchant ships of neutral nations, employed
in trade with nations at war, might lawfully be overhauled and searched by war
ships of either of the belligerent nations, and their goods confiscated. England
still held this doctrine and acted upon it. But during the eighteenth century
her maritime power had increased to such an extent that she could damage other
nations in this way much more than they could damage her. Other nations
accordingly began to maintain that goods carried in neutral ships ought to be
free from seizure. Early in 1780 Denmark, Sweden, and Russia entered into an
agreement known as the Armed Neutrality, by which they pledged themselves to
unite in retaliating upon England whenever any of her cruisers should molest any
of their ships. This league was a new source of danger to England, because it
entailed the risk of war with Russia.
Paul Jones, 1779.
During these years several bold American cruisers
had made the stars and stripes a familiar sight in European waters. The most
famous of these cruisers, Paul Jones, made his name a terror upon the coasts of
England, burned the ships in a port of Cumberland, sailed into the Frith of
Forth and threatened Edinburgh, and finally captured two British war vessels off
Flamborough Head, in one of the most desperate sea-fights on record.
Paul Jones was a regularly commissioned captain in
the American navy, but because the British did not recognize Congress as a legal
body they called him a pirate. When he took his prizes into a port in Holland,
they requested the Dutch government to surrender him into their hands, as if he
were a mere criminal to be tried at the Old Bailey. But the Dutch let him stay
in port ten weeks and then depart in peace. This caused much irritation, and as
there was also perpetual quarrelling over the plunder of Dutch ships by British
cruisers, the two nations went to war in December, 1780. One of England's
reasons for entering into this war was the desire to capture the little Dutch
island of St. Eustatius in the West Indies. An immense trade was carried on
there between Holland and the United States, and it was believed that the
stoppage of this trade would be a staggering blow to the Americans. It was
captured in February, 1781, by Admiral Rodney, private property was seized to
the amount of more than twenty million dollars, and the inhabitants were treated
with shameful brutality.
As England was thus fighting single-handed against
France, Spain, Holland, and the United States, while the attitude of all the
neutral powers was unfriendly, we can find no difficulty in understanding the
weakness of her military operations in some quarters. The United States, on the
other hand, found it hard to carry on the war for very different reasons. In the
first place the country was really weak. The military strength of the American
Union in 1780 was inferior to that of Holland, and about on a level with that of
Denmark or Portugal. But furthermore the want of union made it hard to bring out
such strength as there was. In the autumn of 1777 the Articles of Confederation
were submitted to the several states for adoption; but the spring of 1781 had
arrived before all the thirteen states had ratified them. These articles left
the Continental Congress just what it was before, a mere advisory body, without
power to enlist soldiers or levy taxes, without federal courts or federal
officials, and with no executive head to the government. As we have already
seen, the only way in which Congress could get money from the people was by
requisitions upon the states, by asking the state-governments for it.
This was always a very slow way to get money, and now the states were unusually
poor. There was very little accumulated capital. Farming, fishing,
ship-building, and foreign trade were the chief occupations. Farms and
plantations suffered considerably from the absence of their owners in the army,
and many were kept from enlisting, because it was out of the question to go and
leave their families to starve. As for ship-building, fishing, and foreign
trade, these occupations were almost annihilated by British cruisers. No doubt
the heaviest blows that we received were thus dealt us on the water.
The people were so poor that the states found it
hard to collect enough revenue for their own purposes, and most of them had a
way of issuing paper money of their own, which made things still worse. Under
such circumstances they had very little money to give to Congress. It was
necessary to borrow of France, or Spain, or Holland, and by the time these
nations were all at war, that became very difficult. From the beginning of the
war Congress had issued paper notes, and in 1778 the depreciation in their value
was already alarming. But as soon as the exultation over Burgoyne's surrender
had subsided, as soon as the hope of speedily driving out the British had been
disappointed, people soon lost all confidence in the power of Congress to pay
its notes, and in 1779 their value began falling with frightful rapidity. In
1780 they became worthless. It took $150 in Continental currency to buy a bushel
of corn, and an ordinary suit of clothes cost $2000. Then people refused to take
it, and resorted to barter, taking their pay in sheep or ploughs, in jugs of rum
or kegs of salt pork, or whatever they could get. It thus became almost
impossible either to pay soldiers, or to clothe and feed them properly and
supply them with powder and ball. We thus see why the Americans, as well as the
British conducted the war so languidly that for two years after the storming of
Stony Point their main armies sat and faced each other by the Hudson river,
without any movements of importance.
The British conquer Georgia, 1779.
In one quarter, however, the British began to make
rapid progress. They possessed the Floridas, having got them from Spain by the
treaty of 1763. Next them lay Georgia, the weakest of the thirteen states, and
then came the Carolinas, with a strong Tory element in the population. For such
reasons, after the great invasion of New York had failed, the British tried the
plan of starting at the southern extremity of the Union and lopping off one
state after another. In the autumn of 1778 General Prevost advanced from East
Florida, and in a brief campaign succeeded in capturing Savannah, Sunbury, and
Augusta. General Lincoln, who had won distinction in the Saratoga campaign, was
appointed to command the American forces in the South. He sent General Ashe,
with 1500 men, to threaten Augusta. At Ashe's approach, the British abandoned
the town and retreated toward Savannah. Ashe pursued too closely and at Briar
Creek, March 3, 1779, the enemy turned upon him and routed him. The Americans
lost nearly 1000 men killed, wounded, and captured, besides their cannon and
small arms; and this victory cost the British only 16 men killed and wounded.
Augusta was reoccupied, the royal governor, Sir James Wright, was reinstated in
office, and the machinery of government which had been in operation previous to
1776 was restored. Lincoln now advanced upon Augusta, but Prevost foiled him by
returning the offensive and marching upon Charleston. In order to protect that
city, Lincoln was obliged to retrace his steps. It was now the middle of May,
and little more was done till September, when D'Estaing returned from the West
Indies. On the 23d Savannah was invested by the combined forces of Lincoln and
D'Estaing, and the siege was vigorously carried on for a fortnight. Then the
French admiral grew impatient. On the 9th of October a fierce assault was made,
in which the allies were defeated with the loss of 1000 men, including the
gallant Pulaski. The French fleet then departed, and the British could look upon
Georgia as recovered.
It was South Carolina's turn next. Washington was
obliged to weaken his own force by sending most of the southern troops to
Lincoln's assistance. Sir Henry Clinton then withdrew the garrisons from his
advanced posts on the Hudson, and also from Rhode Island, and was thus able to
leave an adequate force in New York, while he himself set sail for Savannah,
December 26, 1779, with a considerable army. After the British forces were
united in Georgia, they amounted to more than 13,000 men, against whom Lincoln
could bring but 7000. The fate of the American army shows us what would probably
have happened in New York in 1776 if an ordinary general instead of Washington
had been in command. Lincoln allowed himself to be cooped up in Charleston, and
after a siege of two months was obliged to surrender the city and his whole army
on the 12th of May, 1780. This was the most serious disaster the Americans had
suffered since the loss of Fort Washington. The dashing cavalry leader,
Tarleton, soon cut to pieces whatever remnants of their army were left in South
Carolina. Sir Henry Clinton returned in June to New York, leaving Lord
Cornwallis with 5000 men to carry on the work. The Tories, thus supported, got
the upperhand in the interior of the state, which suffered from all the horrors
of civil war. The American cause was sustained only by partisan leaders, of whom
the most famous were Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter.
Battle of Camden, Aug. 16, 1780.
When the news of Lincoln's surrender reached the
North, the emergency was felt to be desperate. A fresh army was raised,
consisting of about 2000 superbly trained veterans of the Maryland and Delaware
lines, under the Baron de Kalb, and such militia as could be raised in Virginia
and North Carolina. The chief command was given to Gates, whose conduct from the
start was a series of blunders. The most important strategic point in South
Carolina was Camden, at the intersection of the principal roads from the coast
to the mountains and from north to south. In marching upon this point Gates was
met by Lord Cornwallis on the 16th of August and utterly routed. Kalb was
mortally wounded at the head of the Maryland troops, who held their ground nobly
till overwhelmed by numbers; the Delaware men were cut to pieces; the militia
were swept away in flight, and Gates with them. His northern laurels, as it was
said, had changed into southern willows; and for the second time within three
months an American army at the South had been annihilated.
This was, on the whole, the darkest moment of the
war. For a moment in July there had been a glimmer of hopefulness when the Count
de Rochambeau arrived with 6000 men who were landed on Rhode Island. The British
fleet, however, soon came and blockaded them there, and again the hearts of the
people were sickened with hope deferred. It seemed as if Lord George Germaine's
policy of "tiring the Americans out" might be going to succeed after all. When
the value of the Continental paper money now fell to zero, it was a fair
indication that the people had pretty much lost all faith in Congress. In the
army the cases of desertion to the British lines averaged about a hundred per
month.
This was a time when a man of bold and impulsive
temperament, prone to cherish romantic schemes, smarting under an accumulation
of injuries, and weak in moral principle, might easily take it into his head
that the American cause was lost, and that he had better carve out a new career
for himself, while wreaking vengeance on his enemies. Such seems to have been
the case with Benedict Arnold. He had a great and well-earned reputation for
skill and bravery. His military services up to the time of Burgoyne's surrender
had been of priceless value, and he had always stood high in Washington's
favour. But he had a genius for getting into quarrels, and there seem always to
have been people who doubted his moral soundness. At the same time he had good
reason to complain of the treatment which he received from Congress. The party
hostile to Washington sometimes liked to strike at him in the persons of his
favourite generals, and such admirable men as Greene and Morgan had to bear the
brunt of this ill feeling. Early in 1777 five brigadier generals junior to
Arnold in rank and vastly inferior to him in ability and reputation had been
promoted over him to the grade of major-general. On this occasion he had shown
an excellent spirit, and when sent by Washington to the aid of Schuyler, he had
signified his willingness to serve under St. Clair and Lincoln, two of the
juniors who had been raised above him. Arnold was a warm friend to Schuyler, and
perhaps did not take enough pains to conceal his poor opinion of Gates. Other
officers in the northern army let it plainly be seen that they placed more
confidence in Arnold than in Gates, and the result was a bitter quarrel between
the two generals, echoes of which were probably afterwards heard in Congress.
If Arnold's wound on the field of Saratoga had been
a mortal wound, he would have been ranked, among the military heroes of the
Revolution, next to Washington and Greene. Perhaps, however, in a far worse
sense than is commonly conveyed by the term, it proved to be his death-wound,
for it led to his being placed in command of Philadelphia. He was assigned to
that position because his wounded leg made him unfit for active service.
Congress had restored him to his relative rank, but now he soon got into trouble
with the state government of Pennsylvania. It is not easy to determine how much
ground there may have been for the charges brought against him early in 1779 by
the state government. One of them concerned his personal honesty, the others
were so trivial in character as to make the whole affair look somewhat like a
case of persecution. They were twice investigated, once by a committee of
Congress and once by a court-martial. On the serious charge, which affected his
pecuniary integrity, he was acquitted; on two of the trivial charges, of
imprudence in the use of some public wagons, and of carelessness in granting a
pass for a ship, he was convicted and sentenced to be reprimanded. The language
in which Washington couched the reprimand showed his feeling that Arnold was too
harshly dealt with.
If the matter had stopped here, posterity would
probably have shared Washington's feeling. But the government of Pennsylvania
must have had stronger grounds for distrust of Arnold than it was able to put
into the form of definite charges. Soon after his arrival in Philadelphia he
fell in love with a beautiful Tory lady, to whom he was presently married. He
was thus thrown much into the society of Tories and was no doubt influenced by
their views. He had for some time considered himself ill-treated, and at first
thought of leaving the service and settling upon a grant of land in western New
York. Then, as the charges against him were pressed and his anger increased, he
seems to have dallied with the notion of going over to the British. At length in
the early summer of 1780, after the reprimand, his treasonable purpose seems to
have taken definite shape. As General Monk in 1660 decided that the only way to
restore peace in England was to desert the cause of the Commonwealth and bring
back Charles II, so Arnold seems now to have thought that the cause of American
independence was ruined, and that the best prospect for a career for himself lay
in deserting it and helping to bring back the rule of George III. In this period
of general depression, when even the unconquerable Washington said "I have
almost ceased to hope," one staggering blow would be very likely to end the
struggle. There could be no heavier blow than the loss of the Hudson river, and
with baseness almost incredible Arnold asked for the command of West Point, with
the intention of betraying it into the hands of Sir Henry Clinton. The depth of
his villainy on this occasion makes it probable that there were good grounds for
the suspicions with which some people had for a long time regarded him, although
Washington, by putting him in command of the most important position in the
country, showed that his own confidence in him was unabated. The successful
execution of the plot seemed to call for a personal interview between Arnold and
Clinton's adjutant-general, Major John André, who was entrusted with the
negotiation. Such a secret interview was extremely difficult to bring about, but
it was effected on the 21st of September, 1780. After a marvellous chapter of
accidents, André was captured just before reaching the British lines. But for
his hasty and quite unnecessary confession that he was a British officer, which
led to his being searched, the plot would in all probability have been
successful. The papers found on his person, which left no room for doubt as to
the nature of the black scheme, were sent to Washington; the principal traitor,
forewarned just in the nick of time, escaped to the British at New York; and
Major André was condemned as a spy and hanged on the 2d of October.
Battle of King's Mountain, Oct. 7, 1780
Only five days after the execution of André an event
occurred at the South which greatly relieved the prevailing gloom of the
situation. It was the first of a series of victories which were soon to show
that the darkness of 1780 was the darkness that comes before dawn. After his
victory at Camden, Lord Cornwallis found it necessary to give his army some rest
from the intense August heat. In September he advanced into North Carolina,
boasting that he would soon conquer all the states south of the Susquehanna
river. But his line of march now lay far inland, and the British armies were
never able to accomplish much except in the neighbourhood of their ships, where
they could be reasonably sure of supplies. In traversing Mecklenburg county
Cornwallis soon found himself in a very hostile and dangerous region, where
there were no Tories to befriend him. One of his best partisan commanders, Major
Ferguson, penetrated too far into the mountains. The backwoodsmen of Tennessee
and Kentucky, the Carolinas, and western Virginia were aroused; and under their
superb partisan leaders—Shelby, Sevier, Cleaveland, McDowell, Campbell, and
Williams—gave chase to Ferguson, who took refuge upon what he deemed an
impregnable position on the top of King's Mountain. On the 7th of October the
backwoodsmen stormed the mountain, Ferguson was shot through the heart, 400 of
his men were killed and wounded, and all the rest, 700 in number, surrendered at
discretion. The Americans lost 28 killed and 60 wounded. There were some points
in this battle, which remind one of the British defeat at Majuba Hill in
southern Africa in 1881.
In the series of events which led to the surrender
of Cornwallis, the battle of King's Mountain played a part similar to that
played by the battle of Bennington in the series of events which led to the
surrender of Burgoyne. It was the enemy's first serious disaster, and its
immediate result was to check his progress until the Americans could muster
strength enough to overthrow him. The events, however, were much more
complicated in Cornwallis's case, and took much longer to unfold themselves.
Burgoyne surrendered within nine anxious weeks after Bennington; Cornwallis
maintained himself, sometimes with fair hopes of final victory, for a whole year
after King's Mountain.
As soon as he heard the news of the disaster he fell
back to Winnsborough, in South Carolina, and called for reinforcements. While
they were arriving, the American army, recruited and reorganized since its
crushing defeat at Camden, advanced into Mecklenburg county. Gates was
superseded by Greene, who arrived upon the scene on the 2d of December. Under
Greene were three Virginians of remarkable ability,—Daniel Morgan; William
Washington, who was a distant cousin of the commander-in-chief; and Henry Lee,
familiarly known as "Light-horse Harry," father of the great general, Robert
Edward Lee. The little army numbered only 2000 men, but a considerable part of
them were disciplined veterans fully a match for the British infantry.
In order to raise troops in Virginia to increase
this little force, Steuben was sent down to that state. In order to interfere
with such recruiting, and to make diversions in aid of Cornwallis, detachments
from the British army were also sent by sea from New York to Virginia. The first
of these detachments, under General Leslie, had been obliged to keep on to South
Carolina, to make good the loss inflicted upon Cornwallis at King's Mountain. To
replace Leslie in Virginia, the traitor Arnold was sent down from New York. The
presence of these subsidiary forces in Virginia was soon to influence in a
decisive way the course of events.
Battle of the Cowpens, Jan. 17, 1781
Greene, on reaching South Carolina, acted with
boldness and originality. He divided his little army into two bodies, one of
which cooperated with Marion's partisans in the northeastern part of the state,
and threatened Cornwallis's communications with the coast. The other body he
sent under Morgan to the southwestward, to threaten the inland posts and their
garrisons. Thus worried on both flanks, Cornwallis presently divided his own
force, sending Tarleton with 1100 men, to dispose of Morgan. Tarleton came up
with Morgan on the 17th of January, 1781, at a grazing-ground known as the
Cowpens, not far from King's Mountain. The battle which ensued was well fought,
and on Morgan's part it was a wonderful piece of tactics. With only 900 men in
open field he surrounded and nearly annihilated a superior force. The British
lost 230 in killed and wounded, 600 prisoners, and all their guns. Tarleton
escaped with 270 men. The Americans lost 12 killed and 61 wounded.
The two battles, King's Mountain and the Cowpens,
deprived Cornwallis of nearly all his light-armed troops, and he was just
entering upon a game where swiftness was especially required. It was his object
to intercept Morgan and defeat him before he could effect a junction with the
other part of the American army. It was Greene's object to march the two parts
of his army in converging directions northward across North Carolina and unite
them in spite of Cornwallis. By moving in this direction Greene was always
getting nearer to his reinforcements from Virginia, while Cornwallis was always
getting further from his supports in South Carolina. It was brilliant strategy
on Greene's part, and entirely successful. Cornwallis had to throw away a great
deal of his baggage and otherwise weaken himself, but in spite of all he could
do, he was outmarched. The two wings of the American army came together and were
joined by the reinforcements; so that at Guilford Court House, on the 15th of
March, Cornwallis found himself obliged to fight against heavy odds, two hundred
miles from the coast and almost as far from the nearest point in South Carolina
at which he could get support.
The battle of Guilford was admirably managed by both
commanders and stubbornly fought by the troops. At nightfall the British held
the field, with the loss of nearly one third of their number, and the Americans
were repulsed. But Cornwallis could not stay in such a place, and could not
afford to risk another battle. There was nothing for him to do but retreat to
Wilmington, the nearest point on the coast. There he stopped and pondered.
His own force was sadly depleted, but he knew that
Arnold in Virginia was being heavily reinforced from New York. The only safe
course seemed to march northward and join in the operations in Virginia; then
afterwards to return southward. This course Cornwallis pursued, arriving at
Petersburg and taking command of the troops there on the 20th of May.
Battle of Eutaw Springs, Sept. 8,
1781.
Meanwhile Greene, after pursuing Cornwallis for
about fifty miles from Guilford, faced about and marched with all speed upon
Camden, a hundred and sixty miles distant. Whatever his adversary might do, he
was now going to seize the great prize of the campaign, and break the enemy's
hold upon South Carolina. Lord Rawdon held Camden. Greene stopped at Hobkirk's
Hill, two miles to the north, and sent Marion and Lee to take Fort Watson, and
thus cut the enemy's communications with the coast. On April 23 Fort Watson
surrendered; on the 25th Rawdon defeated Greene at Hobkirk's Hill, but as his
communications were cut, the victory did him no good. He was obliged to retreat
toward the coast, and Greene took Camden on the 10th of May. Having thus
obtained the commanding point, Greene went on until he had reduced every one of
the inland posts. At last on the 8th of September he fought an obstinate battle
at Eutaw Springs, in which both sides claimed the victory. The facts were that
he drove the British from their first position, but they rallied upon a second
position from which he failed to drive them. Here, however, as always after one
of Greene's battles, it was the enemy who retreated and he who pursued. His
strategy never failed. After Eutaw Springs the British remained shut up in
Charleston under cover of their ships, and the American government was
reëstablished over South Carolina. Among all the campaigns in history that have
been conducted with small armies, there have been few, if any, more brilliant
than Greene's.
There was something especially piquant in the way in
which after Guilford he left Cornwallis to himself. It reminds one of a
chess-player who first gets the queen off the board, where she can do no harm,
and then wins the game against the smaller pieces. As for Cornwallis, when he
reached Petersburg, May 20, he found himself at the head of 5000 men. Arnold had
just been recalled to New York, and Lafayette, who had been sent down to oppose
him, was at Richmond with 3000 men. A campaign of nine weeks ensued, in the
first part of which Cornwallis tried to catch Lafayette and bring him to battle.
The general movement was from Richmond up to Fredericksburg, then over toward
Charlottesville, then back to the James river, then down the north bank of the
river. But during the last part the tables were turned, and it was Lafayette,
reinforced by Wayne and Steuben, that pursued Cornwallis on his retreat to the
coast. At the end of July the British general reached Yorktown, where he was
reinforced and waited with 7000 men.
We may now change our simile, and liken Cornwallis
to a ball between two bats. The first bat, which had knocked him up into
Virginia, was Greene; the second, which sent him quite out of the game, was
Washington. The remarkable movement which the latter general now proceeded to
execute would have been impossible without French cooperation. A French fleet of
overwhelming power, under the Count de Grasse, was approaching Chesapeake bay.
Washington, in readiness for it, had first moved Rochambeau's army from Rhode
Island across Connecticut to the Hudson river. Then, as soon as all the elements
of the situation were disclosed, he left part of his force in position on the
Hudson, and in a superb march led the rest down to Virginia. Sir Henry Clinton
at New York was completely hoodwinked. He feared that the real aim of the French
fleet was New York, in which case it would be natural that an American
land-force should meet it at Staten island. Now a glance at the map of New
Jersey will show that Washington's army, starting from West Point, could march
more than half the way toward Philadelphia and still be supposed to be aiming at
Staten island. Washington was a master hand for secrecy. When his movement was
first disclosed, his own generals, as well as Sir Henry Clinton, took it for
granted that Staten island was the point aimed at. It was not until he had
passed Philadelphia that Clinton began to surmise that he might be going down to
Virginia.
When this fact at length dawned upon the British
commander, he made a futile attempt at a diversion by sending Benedict Arnold to
attack New London. It was as weak as the act of a drowning man who catches at a
straw. Arnold's expedition, cruel and useless as it was, crowned his infamy. A
sad plight for a man of his power! If he had only had more strength of
character, he might now have been marching with his old friend Washington to
victory. With this wretched affair at New London, the brilliant and wicked
Benedict Arnold disappears from American history. He died in London, in 1801, a
broken-hearted and penitent man, as his grandchildren tell us, praying God with
his last breath to forgive his awful crime.
Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Oct. 19,
1781.
Washington's march was so swift and so cunningly
planned that nothing could check it. On the 26th of September the situation was
complete. Washington had added his force to that of Lafayette, so that 16,000
men blockaded Cornwallis upon the Yorktown peninsula. The great French fleet,
commanding the waters about Chesapeake bay, closed in behind and prevented
escape. It was a very unusual thing for the French thus to get control of the
water and defy the British on their own element. It was Washington's unwearied
vigilance that, after waiting long for such a chance, had seized it without a
moment's delay. As soon as Cornwallis was thus caught between a hostile army and
a hostile fleet, the problem was solved. On the 19th of October the British army
surrendered. Washington presently marched his army back to the Hudson and made
his headquarters at Newburgh.
When Lord North at his office in London heard the
dismal news, he walked up and down the room, wringing his hands and crying, "O
God, it is all over!" Yorktown was indeed decisive. In the course of the winter
the British lost Georgia. The embers of Indian warfare still smouldered on the
border, but the great War for Independence was really at an end. The king's
friends had for some time been losing strength in England, and Yorktown
completed their defeat. In March, 1782, Lord North's ministry resigned. A
succession of short-lived ministries followed; first, Lord Rockingham's, until
July, 1782; then Lord Shelburne's, until February, 1783; then, after five weeks
without a government, there came into power the strange Coalition between Fox
and North, from April to December. During these two years the king was trying to
intrigue with one interest against another so as to maintain his own personal
government. With this end in view he tried the bold experiment of dismissing the
Coalition and making the young William Pitt prime minister, without a majority
in Parliament. After a fierce constitutional struggle, which lasted all winter,
Pitt dissolved Parliament, and in the new election in May, 1784, obtained the
greatest majority ever given to an English minister. But the victory was Pitt's
and the people's, not the king's. This election of 1784 overthrew all the
cherished plans of George III. in pursuance of which he had driven the American
colonies into rebellion. It established cabinet government more firmly than
ever, so that for the next seventeen years the real ruler of Great Britain was
William Pitt.
The year 1782 was marked by great victories for the
British in the West Indies and at Gibraltar. But they did not alter the
situation in America. The treaty of peace by which Great Britain acknowledged
the independence of the United States was made under Lord Shelburne's ministry
in the autumn of 1782, and adopted and signed by the Coalition on the 3d of
September, 1783. The negotiations were carried on at Paris by Franklin, Jay, and
John Adams, on the part of the Americans; and they won a diplomatic victory in
securing for the United States the country between the Alleghany mountains and
the Mississippi river. This was done against the wishes of the French
government, which did not wish to see the United States become too powerful. At
the same time Spain recovered Minorca and the Floridas. France got very little
except the satisfaction of having helped in diminishing the British empire.
The return of peace did not bring contentment to the
Americans. Because Congress had no means of raising a revenue or enforcing its
decrees, it was unable to make itself respected either at home or abroad. For
want of pay the army became very troublesome. In January, 1781, there had been a
mutiny of Pennsylvania and New Jersey troops which at one moment looked very
serious. In the spring of 1782 some of the officers, disgusted with the want of
efficiency in the government, seem to have entertained a scheme for making
Washington king; but Washington met the suggestion with a stern rebuke. In
March, 1783, inflammatory appeals were made to the officers at the headquarters
of the army at Newburgh. It seems to have been intended that the army should
overawe Congress and seize upon the government until the delinquent states
should contribute the money needed for satisfying the soldiers and other public
creditors. Gates either originated this scheme or willingly lent himself to it,
but an eloquent speech from Washington prevailed upon the officers to reject and
condemn it.
On the 19th of April, 1783, the eighth anniversary
of Lexington, the cessation of hostilities was formally proclaimed, and the
soldiers were allowed to go home on furloughs. The army was virtually disbanded.
There were some who thought that this ought not to be done while the British
forces still remained in New York; but Congress was afraid of the army and quite
ready to see it scattered. On the 21st of June Congress was driven from
Philadelphia by a small band of drunken soldiers clamorous for pay. It was
impossible for Congress to get money. Of the Continental taxes assessed in 1783,
only one fifth part had been paid by the middle of 1785. After peace was made,
France had no longer any end to gain by lending us money, and European bankers,
as well as European governments, regarded American credit as dead.
There was a double provision of the treaty which
could not be carried out because of the weakness of Congress. It had been agreed
that Congress should request the state governments to repeal various laws which
they had made from time to time confiscating the property of Tories and
hindering the collection of private debts due from American to British
merchants. Congress did make such a request, but it was not heeded. The laws
hindering the payment of debts were not repealed; and as for the Tories, they
were so badly treated that between 1783 and 1785 more than 100,000 left the
country. Those from the southern states went mostly to Florida and the Bahamas;
those from the north made the beginnings of the Canadian states of Ontario and
New Brunswick. A good many of them were reimbursed for their losses by
Parliament.
When the British government saw that these
provisions of the treaty were not fulfilled, it retaliated by refusing to
withdraw its troops from the northern and western frontier posts. The British
army sailed from Charleston on the 14th of December, 1782, and from New York on
the 25th of November, 1783, but in contravention of the treaty small garrisons
remained at Ogdensburgh, Oswego, Niagara, Erie, Sandusky, Detroit, and Mackinaw
until the 1st of June, 1796. Besides this, laws were passed which bore very
severely upon American commerce, and the Americans found it impossible to
retaliate because the different states would not agree upon any commercial
policy in common. On the other hand, the states began making commercial war upon
each other, with navigation laws and high tariffs. Such laws were passed by New
York to interfere with the trade of Connecticut, and the merchants of the latter
state began to hold meetings and pass resolutions forbidding all trade whatever
with New York.
The old quarrels about territory were kept up, and
in 1784 the troubles in Wyoming and in the Green Mountains came to the very
verge of civil war. People in Europe, hearing of such things, believed that the
Union would soon fall to pieces and become the prey of foreign powers. It was
disorder and calamity of this sort that such men as Hutchinson had feared, in
case the control of Great Britain over the colonies should cease. George III.
looked upon it all with satisfaction, and believed that before long the states
would one after another become repentant and beg to be taken back into the
British empire.
The troubles reached their climax in 1786. Because
there seemed to be no other way of getting money, the different states began to
issue their promissory notes, and then tried to compel people by law to receive
such notes as money. There was a strong "paper money" party in all the states
except Connecticut and Delaware. The most serious trouble was in Rhode Island
and Massachusetts. In both states the farmers had been much impoverished by the
war. Many farms were mortgaged, and now and then one was sold to satisfy
creditors. The farmers accordingly clamoured for paper money, but the merchants
in towns like Boston or Providence, understanding more about commerce, were
opposed to any such miserable makeshifts. In Rhode Island the farmers prevailed.
Paper money was issued, and harsh laws were passed against all who should refuse
to take it at its face value. The merchants refused, and in the towns nearly all
business was stopped during the summer of 1786.
In the Massachusetts legislature the paper money
party was defeated. There was a great outcry among the farmers against merchants
and lawyers, and some were heard to maintain that the time had come for wiping
out all debts. In August, 1786, the malcontents rose in rebellion, headed by one
Daniel Shays, who had been a captain in the Continental army. They began by
trying to prevent the courts from sitting, and went on to burn barns, plunder
houses, and attack the arsenal at Springfield. The state troops were called out,
under General Lincoln, two or three skirmishes were fought, in which a few lives
were lost, and at length in February, 1787, the insurrection was suppressed.
The Mississippi question, 1786.
At that time the mouth of the Mississippi river and
the country on its western bank belonged to Spain. Kentucky and Tennessee were
rapidly becoming settled by people from Virginia and North Carolina, and these
settlers wished to trade with New Orleans. The Spanish government was unfriendly
and wished to prevent such traffic. The people of New England felt little
interest in the southwestern country or the Mississippi river, but were very
anxious to make a commercial treaty with Spain. The government of Spain refused
to make such a treaty except on condition that American vessels should not be
allowed to descend the Mississippi river below the mouth of the Yazoo. When
Congress seemed on the point of yielding to this demand, the southern states
were very angry. The New England states were equally angry at what they called
the obstinacy of the South, and threats of secession were heard on both sides.
Perhaps the only thing that kept the Union from
falling to pieces in 1786 was the Northwestern Territory, which George Rogers
Clark had conquered in 1779, and which skilful diplomacy had enabled us to keep
when the treaty was drawn up in 1782. Virginia claimed this territory and
actually held it, but New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut also had claims
upon it. It was the idea of Maryland that such a vast region ought not to be
added to any one state, or divided between two or three of the states, but ought
to be the common property of the Union. Maryland had refused to ratify the
Articles of Confederation until the four states that claimed the northwestern
territory should yield their claims to the United States. This was done between
1780 and 1785, and thus for the first time the United States government was put
in possession of valuable property which could be made to yield an income and
pay debts. This piece of property was about the first thing in which all the
American people were alike interested, after they had won their independence. It
could be opened to immigration and made to pay the whole cost of the war and
much more. During these troubled years Congress was busy with plans for
organizing this territory, which at length resulted in the famous Ordinance of
1787 laying down fundamental laws for the government of what has since developed
into the five great states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
While other questions tended to break up the Union, the questions that arose in
connection with this work tended to hold it together.
The convention at Annapolis, Sept. 11, 1786
The need for easy means of communication between the
old Atlantic states and this new country behind the mountains led to schemes
which ripened in course of time into the construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio
and the Erie canals. In discussing such schemes, Maryland and Virginia found it
necessary to agree upon some kind of commercial policy to be pursued by both
states. Then it was thought best to seize the occasion for calling a general
convention of the states to decide upon a uniform system of regulations for
commerce. This convention was held at Annapolis in September, 1786, but only
five states had sent delegates, and so the convention adjourned after adopting
an address written by Alexander Hamilton, calling for another convention to meet
at Philadelphia on the second Monday of the following May, "to devise such
further provisions as shall appear necessary to render the constitution of the
federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union."
The Shays rebellion and the quarrel about the
Mississippi river had by this time alarmed people so that it began to be
generally admitted that the federal government must be in some way strengthened.
If there were any doubt as to this, it was removed by the action of New York. An
amendment to the Articles of Confederation had been proposed, giving Congress
the power of levying customs-duties and appointing the collectors. By the summer
of 1786 all the states except New York had consented to this. But in order to
amend the articles, unanimous consent was necessary, and in February, 1787, New
York's refusal defeated the amendment. Congress was thus left without any
immediate means of raising a revenue, and it became quite clear that something
must be done without delay.
The Federal Convention at Philadelphia, May-Sept.,
1787.
The famous Federal Convention met at Philadelphia in
May, 1787, and remained in session four months, with Washington presiding. Its
work was the framing of the government under which we are now living, and in
which the evils of the old confederation have been avoided. The trouble had all
the while been how to get the whole American people represented in some
body that could thus rightfully tax the whole American people. This was
the question which the Albany Congress had tried to settle in 1754, and which
the Federal Convention did settle in 1787.
In the old confederation, starting with the
Continental Congress in 1774, the government was all vested in a single body
which represented states, but did not represent individual persons. It was for
that reason that it was called a congress rather than a parliament. It was more
like a congress of European states than the legislative body of a nation, such
as the English parliament was. It had no executive and no judiciary. It could
not tax, and it could not enforce its decrees.
The new constitution changed all this by creating
the House of Representatives which stood in the same relation to the whole
American people as the legislative assembly of each single state to the people
of that state. In this body the people were represented, and could therefore tax
themselves. At the same time in the Senate the old equality between the states
was preserved. All control over commerce, currency, and finance was lodged in
this new Congress, and absolute free trade was established between the states.
In the office of President a strong executive was created. And besides all this
there was a system of federal courts for deciding questions arising under
federal laws. Most remarkable of all, in some respects, was the power given to
the federal Supreme Court, of deciding, in special cases, whether laws passed by
the several states, or by Congress itself, were conformable to the Federal
Constitution.
Many men of great and various powers played
important parts in effecting this change of government which at length
established the American Union in such a form that it could endure; but the
three who stood foremost in the work were George Washington, James Madison, and
Alexander Hamilton. Two other men, whose most important work came somewhat
later, must be mentioned along with these, for the sake of completeness. It was
John Marshall, chief justice of the United States from 1801 to 1835, whose
profound decisions did more than those of any later judge could ever do toward
establishing the sense in which the Constitution must be understood. It was
Thomas Jefferson, president of the United States from 1801 to 1809, whose sound
democratic instincts and robust political philosophy prevented the federal
government from becoming too closely allied with the interests of particular
classes, and helped to make it what it should be,—a "government of the people,
by the people, and for the people." In the making of the government under
which we live, these five names—Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, and
Marshall—stand before all others. I mention them here chronologically, in the
order of the times at which their influence was felt at its maximum.
When the work of the Federal Convention was
sanctioned by the Continental Congress and laid before the people of the several
states, to be ratified by special conventions in each state, there was earnest
and sometimes bitter discussion. Many people feared that the new government
would soon degenerate into a tyranny. But the century and a half of American
history that had already elapsed had afforded such noble political training for
the people that the discussion was, on the whole, more reasonable and more
fruitful than any that had ever before been undertaken by so many men. The
result was the adoption of the Federal Constitution, followed by the
inauguration of George Washington, on the 30th of April, 1789, as President of
the United States. And with this event our brief story may fitly end.
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