Project Gutenberg's The Wars Between England and America, by T. C. Smith
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Title: The Wars Between England and America
Author: T. C. Smith
Release Date: May 2, 2007 [EBook #21276]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WARS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA ***
Produced by Al Haines
THE WARS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA
BY
T. C. SMITH
PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY IN WILLIAMS
COLLEGE, WILLIAMSTOWN MASS., U.S.A.
LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
[Transcriber's note: Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers
enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page
breaks occurred in the original book, in accordance with Project
Gutenberg's FAQ-V-99. For its Index, a page number has been placed
only at the start of that section.]
First printed 1914/15.
{v}
PREFACE
The purpose of this volume is to show how social, economic, and
political causes led to a period of almost continuous antagonism
between England and the American communities from 1763 to the
ratification of the Treaty of Ghent in 1815, and how that antagonism
was ended. The war of American Independence, 1775-1783, and the war of
1812-1815 give their names to the book, not because of their military
or naval importance, but because they mark, in each case, the outcome
of successive years of unavailing efforts on the part of each country
to avoid bloodshed. With this aim in view, no more detailed study of
the internal political history or institutions of either country can be
included than is necessary to account for different political habits;
nor can the events of diplomatic history be developed beyond what is
called for to explain persistent lines of action or the conclusion of a
significant treaty.
{vi}
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE ELEMENTS OF ANTAGONISM, 1763 . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
II THE CONTEST OVER PARLIAMENTARY TAXATION, 1763-1773 . . . 28
III THE DISRUPTION OF THE EMPIRE, 1773-1776 . . . . . . . . . 51
IV THE CIVIL WAR IN THE EMPIRE, 1776-1778 . . . . . . . . . 75
V FRENCH INTERVENTION AND BRITISH FAILURE, 1778-1781 . . . 96
VI BRITISH PARTIES AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, 1778-1783 . . 114
VII THE FORMATION OF THE UNITED STATES, 1781-1793 . . . . . . 129
VIII THE FIRST PERIOD OF COMMERCIAL ANTAGONISM, 1783-1795 . . 149
IX THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1795-1805 169
X THE SECOND PERIOD OF COMMERCIAL ANTAGONISM, 1805-1812 . . 189
XI THE WAR FOR "SAILORS' RIGHTS" AND WESTWARD
EXPANSION, 1812-1815 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
XII END OF THE ANTAGONISM: A CENTURY OF PEACE . . . . . . . . 236
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
{9}
THE WARS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA
CHAPTER I
THE ELEMENTS OF ANTAGONISM, 1763
In 1763, by the Peace of Paris, England won a position of unapproached
supremacy in colonial possessions and in naval strength. The entire
North American continent east of the Mississippi River was now under
the British flag, and four West India sugar islands were added to those
already in English hands. In India, the rivalry of the French was
definitely crushed and the control of the revenues and fortunes of the
native potentates was transferred to the East India Company. Guided by
the genius of Pitt, British armies had beaten French in Germany and
America, and British fleets had conquered French and Spanish with
complete ease. The power of the Empire seemed beyond challenge. Yet
within this Empire itself there lay already the seeds of a discord
which was soon {10} to develop into an irrepressible contest, leading
to civil war; then, for a generation, to drive the separated parts into
renewed antagonism, and finally to cause a second war. Between the
North American colonies and the mother country there existed such
moral, political, and economic divergence that nothing but prudent and
patient statesmanship on both sides of the Atlantic could prevent
disaster.
The fundamental source of antagonism lay in the fact that the thirteen
colonies had developed a wholly different social and political life
from that of the mother country. Originally, the prevailing ideas and
habits of the colonists and of the Englishmen who remained at home had
been substantially the same. In England, as in America, the gentry and
middle classes played a leading part during the years from 1600 to
1660. But by 1763 England, under the Hanoverian kings, had become a
state where all political and social power had been gathered into the
hands of a landed aristocracy which dominated the government, the
Church, and the professions. In parliament, the House of Commons--once
the body which reflected the conscious strength of the gentry and
citizens,--had now fallen under the control of the peers, owing to the
decayed condition of scores of ancient parliamentary boroughs. Nearly
one-third of the seats were actually {11} or substantially owned by
noblemen, and of the remainder a majority were venal, the close
corporations of Mayor and Aldermen selling freely their right to return
two members at each parliamentary election. In addition, the influence
and prestige of the great landowners were so powerful that even in the
counties, and in those boroughs where the number of electors was
considerable, none but members of the ruling class sought election. So
far as the members of the middle class were concerned--the merchants,
master weavers, iron producers, and craftsmen,--they were strong in
wealth and their wishes counted heavily with the aristocracy in all
legislation of a financial or commercial nature; but of actual part in
the government they had none. As for the lower classes,--the
labourers, tenant farmers, and shopkeepers,--they were able as a rule
to influence government only by rioting and uproar. Without the
ballot, they had no other way.
Owing to the personal weakness of successive monarchs since the death
of William III, there had grown up the cabinet system of government
which, in 1763, meant the reduction of the King to the position of an
honorary figurehead and the actual control of officers, perquisites,
patronage, and preferment, as well as the direction of public policy,
by the leaders of parliamentary groups. The King was {12} obliged to
select his ministers from among the members of noble families in the
Lords or Commons, who agreed among themselves after elaborate bargains
and negotiations upon the formation of cabinets and the distribution of
honours. In this way sundry great Whig family "connections," as they
were called, had come to monopolize political power, excluding Tories,
or adherents of the Stuarts, and treating government as solely a matter
of aristocratic concern. Into this limited circle, a poor man could
rise only by making himself useful through his talents or his eloquence
to one of the ruling cliques, and the goal of his career was naturally
a peerage.
The weakness of this system of government by family connection lay in
its thorough dependence upon customs of patronage and perquisite. The
public offices were heavily burdened with lucrative sinecures, which
were used in the factional contests to buy support in Parliament, as
were also peerages, contracts, and money bribes. When George III
ascended the throne, in 1760, he found the most powerful Minister in
the Cabinet to be the Duke of Newcastle, whose sole qualification,
apart from his birth, was his pre-eminent ability to handle patronage
and purchase votes. That such a system did not ruin England was due to
the tenacity and personal courage of this aristocracy and to {13} its
use of parliamentary methods, whereby the orderly conduct of
legislation and taxation and the habit of public attack and defence of
government measures furnished political training for the whole ruling
class. Further, the absence of any sharp caste lines made it possible
for them to turn, in times of crisis, to such strong-fibred and
masterful commoners as Walpole and Pitt, each of whom, in his way,
saved the country from the incompetent hands of titled ministries.
This system, moreover, rested in 1763 on the aquiescence of practically
all Englishmen. It was accepted by middle and lower classes alike as
normal and admirable; and only a small body of radicals felt called
upon to criticize the exclusion of the mass of taxpayers from a share
in the government. Pitt, in Parliament, was ready to proclaim a
national will as something distinct from the voice of the
borough-owners, but he had few followers. Only in London and a few
counties did sundry advocates of parliamentary reform strive in the
years after 1763 to emphasize these views by organizing the freemen to
petition and to "instruct" their representatives in the Commons. Such
desires evoked nothing but contempt and antipathy in the great majority
of Englishmen. Especially when they became audible in the mouths of
rioters did they appear revolutionary and {14} obnoxious to the lovers
of peace, good order, and the undisturbed collection of rents and
taxes. Nothing but a genuine social revolution could bring such ideas
to victory and that, in 1763, lay very far in the future. For the time
conservatism reigned supreme.
In the thirteen colonies, on the other hand, the communities of
middle-class Englishmen who emigrated in the seventeenth century had
developed nothing resembling a real aristocracy. Social distinctions,
modelled on those of the old country, remained between the men of large
wealth--such as the great landed proprietors in New York and the
planters in the South, or the successful merchants in New England and
the Middle colonies--and the small farmers, shopkeepers, and fishermen,
who formed the bulk of the population; while all of these joined in
regarding the outlying frontiersmen as elements of society deserving of
small consideration. Men of property, education, and "position"
exercised a distinct leadership in public and private life. Yet all
this remained purely social; in law no such thing as an aristocracy
could be found, and in government the colonies had grown to be very
nearly republican. Here lay the fundamental distinction between the
England and the America of 1763. In America, a title or peerage
conferred no political rights {15} whatever; these were founded in
every case on law, on a royal charter or a royal commission which
established a frame of government, and were based on moderate property
qualifications which admitted a majority of adult males to the suffrage
and to office.
In every colony the government consisted of a governor, a council, and
an assembly representing the freemen. This body, by charter, or royal
instructions, had the full right to impose taxes and vote laws; and,
although its acts were liable to veto by the governor, or by the Crown
through the Privy Council, it possessed the actual control of political
power. This it derived immediately from its constituents and not from
any patrons, lords, or close corporations. Representation and the
popular will were, in fact, indissolubly united.
The governor in two colonies, Connecticut and Rhode Island, was chosen
by the freemen. Elsewhere, he was appointed by an outside authority:
in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland by the hereditary proprietor to
whom the charter had been granted, in all other colonies by the Crown.
The councillors, who commonly exercised judicial functions in addition
to their duties as the governor's advisers and as the upper house of
the legislature, were appointed in all colonies except the three in New
England; {16} and they were chosen in all cases from among the socially
prominent colonists. The judges, also, were appointed by the governor;
and they, with governor and council, were supposed to represent the
home government in the colonies.
But in reality there was no effective imperial control. The Crown, it
is true, appeared to have large powers. It granted charters,
established provinces by commissions, exercised the right to annul laws
and hear appeals from colonial decisions, exacted reports from
governors, sent instructions, and made appointments and removals at
will. But nearly all the colonial officials, except the few customs
officers, were paid out of colonial appropriations, and this one fact
sufficed to deprive them of any independent position. In nearly every
colony, the assembly, in the course of two-thirds of a century of
incessant petty conflict, of incessant wrangling and bargaining, of
incessant encroachments on the nominal legal powers of the governor,
had made itself master of the administration. The colonists resisted
all attempts to direct their military or civil policy, laid only such
taxes as they chose, raised only such troops as they saw fit, passed
only such laws as seemed to them desirable, and tied the governor's
hands by every sort of device. They usurped the {17} appointment of
the colonial treasurer, they appointed committees to oversee the
expenditure of sums voted, they systematically withheld a salary from
the governor, in order to render him dependent upon annual "presents,"
liable to diminution or termination in case he did not satisfy the
assembly's wishes. The history of the years from 1689 to 1763 is a
chronicle of continual defeat for governors who were obliged to see one
power after another wrenched away from them. Under the circumstances,
the political life of the thirteen colonies was practically republican
in character, and was as marked for its absence of administrative
machinery as the home government was for its aristocracy and
centralization.
Another feature of colonial life tended to accentuate this difference.
Although religion had ceased to be a political question, and the
English Church was no longer regarded, save in New England, as
dangerous to liberty, the fact that the great majority of the colonists
were dissenters--Congregational, Presbyterian, or Reformed, with a
considerable scattering of Baptists and other sects--had an effect on
the attitude of the people toward England. In the home country, the
controlling social classes accepted the established church as part of
the constitution; but in the colonies it had small {18} strength, and
even where it was by law established it remained little more than an
official body, the "Governor's church." This tended to widen the gap
between the political views of the individualistic dissenting and
Puritan sects in the colonies and the people at home.
The American of 1763 was thus a different kind of man from the
Englishman. As a result of the divergent development on the two sides
of the Atlantic from a common ancestry, their political habits had
become mutually incomprehensible. To the Englishman, the rule of the
nobility was normal--the ideal political system. He was content, if a
commoner, with the place assigned to him. To the colonist, on the
other hand, government in which the majority of adult male inhabitants
possessed the chief power was the only valid form,--all others were
vicious. Patriotism meant two contradictory things. The Englishman's
patriotism was sturdy but unenthusiastic, and showed itself almost as
much in a contempt for foreigners as in complacency over English
institutions. The colonist, on the contrary, had a double allegiance:
one conventional and traditional, to the British crown; the other a
new, intensely local and narrow attachment to his province. England
was still the "old home," looked to as the source of political
authority, of manners and literature. It was for many of {19} the
residents their recent abode and, for all except a few of Dutch,
German, or French extraction, their ancestral country. But already
this "loyalty" on the part of the colonists was dwindling into
something more sentimental than real. The genuine local patriotism of
the colonists was shown by their persistent struggle against the
representatives of English authority in the governors' chairs. There
had developed in America a new sort of man, an "American," who wished
to be as independent of government as possible, and who, while
professing and no doubt feeling a general loyalty to England, was in
fact a patriot of his own colony.
The colonists entered very slightly into the thoughts of the English
noblemen and gentry. They were regarded in a highly practical way,
without a trace of any sentiment, as members of the middle and lower
classes, not without a large criminal admixture, who had been helped
and allowed to build up some unruly and not very admirable communities.
Nor did the English middle classes look upon the colonists with much
interest, or regard them as, on the whole, their equals. The
prevailing colonial political habits, as seen from England, suggested
only unwarrantable wrangling indicative of political incompetence and a
spirit of disobedience. Loyalty, to an {20} Englishman, meant
submission to the law. To men trained in such different schools, words
did not mean the same thing. The time had come when the two peoples
were scarcely able to understand each other.
A second cause for antagonism, scarcely less fundamental and destined
to cause equal irritation, is to be found in the conflict between the
economic life of the American communities and the beliefs of the mother
country concerning commercial and naval policy. Great Britain, in
1763, was predominantly a trading country. Its ships carried goods for
all the nations of Europe and brought imports to England from all
lands. Although the manufacturers were not yet in possession of the
new inventions which were to revolutionize the industries of the world,
they were active and prosperous in their domestic production of
hardware and textiles, and they furnished cargoes for the shipowners to
transport to all quarters. To these two great interests of the middle
classes, banking and finance were largely subsidiary. Agriculture, the
mainstay of the nobility and gentry, continued to hold first place in
the interests of the governing classes, but the importance of all
sources of wealth was fully recognized.
In the colonies, on the contrary, manufacture scarcely existed beyond
the domestic {21} production of articles for local use; and the
inhabitants relied on importations for nearly all finished commodities
and for all luxuries. Their products were chiefly things which Great
Britain could not itself raise, such as sugar in the West Indies;
tobacco from the islands and the southern mainland colonies; indigo and
rice from Carolina; furs, skins, masts, pine products; and, from New
England, above all, fish. The natural market for these articles was in
England or in other colonies; and in return British manufactures found
their natural market in the new communities. When the Economic
Revolution transformed industry, and factories, driven by steam, made
England the workshop of the world, the existing tendency for her to
supply America with manufactured products was intensified regardless of
the political separation of the two countries. Not until later
economic changes supervened was this normal relationship altered.
The traditional British policy in 1763 was that of the so-called
Mercantile System, which involved a thoroughgoing application of the
principle of protection to the British shipowner, manufacturer, and
corn-grower against any competition. An elaborate tariff, with a
system of prohibitions and bounties, attempted to prevent the landowner
from being undersold by foreign corn, and the {22} manufacturer from
meeting competition from foreign producers. Navigation Acts shut out
foreign-built, -owned, or -manned ships from the carrying trade between
any region but their home country and England, reserving all other
commerce for British vessels. Into this last restriction there entered
another purely political consideration, namely, the perpetuation of a
supply of mariners for the British navy, whose importance was fully
recognized. So far as the colonies were concerned, they were brought
within the scope of mercantilist ideas by being considered as sources
of supply for England in products not possible to raise at home, as
markets which must be reserved for British manufacturers and traders,
and as places which must not be allowed to develop any rivalry to
British producers. Furthermore, they were so situated that by proper
regulations they might serve to encourage British shipping even if this
involved an economic loss.
The Navigation Acts accordingly, from 1660 to 1763, were designed to
put this theory into operation, and excluded all foreign vessels from
trading with the colonies, prohibited any trade to the colonies except
from British ports and enumerated certain commodities--sugar, cotton,
dye woods, indigo, rice, furs--which could be sent only to England. To
ensure the carrying out of these {23} laws, an elaborate system of
bonds and local duties was devised, and customs officers were
appointed, resident in the colonies, while governors were obliged to
take oath to enforce the Acts. As time revealed defects or unnecessary
stringencies, the restrictions were frequently modified. The
Carolinas, for instance, were allowed to ship rice not only to England,
but to any place in Europe south of Cape Finisterre. Bounties were
established to aid the production of tar and turpentine; but special
Acts prohibited the export of hats from the colonies, or the
manufacture of rolled iron, in order to check a possible source of
competition to British producers. In short, the Board of Trade, the
administrative body charged with the oversight of the plantations,
devoted its energies to suggesting devices which should aid the
colonists, benefit the British consumer and producer, and increase
"navigation."
It does not appear that the Acts of Trade were, in general, a source of
loss to the colonies. Their vessels shared in the privileges reserved
for British-built ships. The compulsory sending of the enumerated
commodities to England may have damaged the tobacco-growers; but in
other respects it did little harm. The articles would have gone to
England in any case. The restriction of importation to goods from
England was no {24} great grievance, since British products would, in
any case, have supplied the American market. Even the effort, by an
Act of 1672, to check intercolonial trade in enumerated commodities was
not oppressive, for, with one exception noted below, there was no great
development of such a trade. By 1763, according to the best evidence,
the thirteen colonies seem to have adjusted their habits to the
Navigation Acts, and to have been carrying on their flourishing
commerce within these restrictions.
To this general condition, however, there were some slight exceptions,
and one serious one. The colonists undoubtedly resented the necessity
of purchasing European products from English middlemen, and were
especially desirous of importing Spanish and Portuguese wines and
French brandies directly. Smuggling in these articles seems to have
been steadily carried on. Much more important--and to the American
ship-owners the kernel of the whole matter--was the problem of the West
India trade. It was proved, as the eighteenth century progressed, that
the North American colonies could balance their heavy indebtedness to
the mother country for excess of imports over exports only by selling
to the French, as well as the British West Indies, barrel staves,
clapboards, fish and food products. In {25} return, they took sugar
and molasses, developing in New England a flourishing rum manufacture,
which in turn was used in the African slave trade. By these means the
people of the New England and Middle colonies built up an active
commerce, using their profits to balance their indebtedness to England.
This "triangular trade" disturbed the British West India planters, who,
being largely non-residents and very influential in London, induced
Parliament, in 1733, to pass an Act imposing prohibitory duties on all
sugar and molasses of foreign growth. This law, if enforced, would
have struck a damaging blow at the prosperity of the Northern colonies,
merely to benefit the West India sugar-growers by giving them a
monopoly; but the evidence goes to show that it was systematically
evaded and that French sugar, together with French and Portuguese
wines, was still habitually smuggled into the colonies. Thus the
Navigation Acts, in the only points where they would have been actually
oppressive, were not enforced. The colonial governors saw the serious
consequences and shrank from arousing discontent. It is significant
that the same colonists who contended with the royal governors did not
hesitate to violate a parliamentary law when it ran counter to their
interests.
The only reason why the radical difference {26} between the colonies
and the home government did not cause open conflict long before 1763 is
to be found in the absorption of the English ministries in
parliamentary manoeuvring at home, diplomacy, and European wars. The
weakness of the imperial control was recognized and frequently
complained of by governors, Boards of Trade, and other officials; but
so long as the colonies continued to supply the sugar, furs, lumber and
masts called for by the Acts, bought largely from English shippers and
manufacturers, and stimulated the growth of British shipping, the Whig
and Tory noblemen were content. The rapidly growing republicanism of
the provincial and proprietary governments was ignored and allowed to
develop unchecked. A half-century of complaints from thwarted
governors, teeming with suggestions that England ought to take the
government of the colonies into its own hands, produced no results
beyond creating in official circles an opinion unfavourable to the
colonists.
In the years of the French war, 1754-1760, the utter incompatibility
between imperial theories on the one hand and colonial political habits
on the other, could no longer be disregarded. In the midst of the
struggle, the legislatures continued to wrangle with governors over
points of privilege; they were slow to vote supplies; they were {27}
dilatory in raising troops; they hung back from a jealous fear that
their neighbour colonies might fail to do their share; they were ready
to let British soldiers do all the hard fighting. Worse still, the
colonial shipowners persisted in their trade with the French and
Spanish West Indies, furnishing their enemies with supplies, and buying
their sugar and molasses as usual. When, in Boston, writs of
assistance were employed by the customs officials, in order that by a
general power of search they might discover such smuggled property, the
merchants protested in the courts, and James Otis, a fiery young
lawyer, boldly declared the writs an infringement of the rights of the
colonists, unconstitutional, and beyond the power of Parliament to
authorize. To Ministers engaged in a tremendous war for the overthrow
of France, the behaviour of the colonies revealed a spirit scarcely
short of disloyalty, and a weakness of government no longer to be
tolerated. The Secretaries, the Board of Trade, the customs officials,
army officers, naval commanders, colonial governors, and judges all
agreed that the time had come for a thorough and drastic reform. They
approached the task purely and simply as members of the English
governing classes, ignorant of the colonists' political ideas and
totally indifferent to their views; and their measures were framed in
the spirit {28} of unquestioning acceptance of the principles of the
Acts of Trade as a fundamental national policy.
CHAPTER II
THE CONTEST OVER PARLIAMENTARY TAXATION, 1763-1773
The Prime Minister responsible for the new colonial policy was George
Grenville, who assumed his position in May, 1763, shortly after the
final treaty of Paris. Every other member of his Cabinet was a
nobleman, Grenville himself was brother of an earl, and most of them
had had places in preceding Ministries. It was a typical
administration of the period, completely aristocratic in membership and
spirit, quite indifferent to colonial views, and incapable of
comprehending colonial ideals even if they had known them. To them the
business in hand was a purely practical one; and with confident energy
Grenville pushed through a series of measures, which had been carefully
worked out, of course, by minor officials unknown to fame, during the
preceding months, {29} but which were destined to produce results
undreamed of by any one in England.
In the first place, there were a number of measures to strengthen and
revivify the Acts of Trade. Colonists were given new privileges in the
whale fishery, hides and skins were "enumerated," and steps were taken
to secure a more rigorous execution of the Acts by the employment of
naval vessels against smuggling. A new Sugar Act reduced the tariff on
foreign sugar to such a point that it would be heavily protective
without being prohibitive, and at the same time imposed special duties
on Portuguese wines, while providing additional machinery for
collecting customs. This was clearly aimed at the weak point in the
existing navigation system; but it introduced a new feature, for the
sugar duties, unlike previous ones, were intended to raise a revenue,
and this, it was provided in the Act, should be used to pay for the
defence of America.
A second new policy was inaugurated in a proclamation of October, 1763,
which made Florida and Canada despotically governed provinces, and set
off all the land west of the head-waters of the rivers running into the
Atlantic as an Indian reservation. No further land grants were to be
made in that region, nor was any trade to be permitted with the Indians
save by royal licence. The {30} Imperial government thus assumed
control of Indian policy, and endeavoured to check any further growth
of the existing communities to the West. Such a scheme necessitated
the creation of a royal standing army in America on a larger scale than
the previous garrisons; and this plan led to the third branch of the
new policy, which contemplated the positive interposition of Parliament
to remedy the shortcomings of colonial assemblies. An Act of 1764
prohibited the future issue of any paper money by any colony, thus
terminating one of the chief grievances of British governors and
merchants. But still more striking was an Act of 1765, which provided
with great elaboration for the collection of a stamp tax in the
colonies upon all legal documents, newspapers, and pamphlets. The
proceeds were to be used to pay about one-third of the cost of the new
standing army, which was to consist of ten thousand men. Taken in
connection with the announced intention of using the revenue from the
Sugar Act for the same purpose, it is obvious that Grenville's measures
were meant to relieve the Imperial government from the necessity of
depending in future upon the erratic and unmanageable colonial
legislatures. They were parts of a general political and financial
programme. There is not the slightest evidence that Grenville or his
associates dreamed {31} that they were in any way affecting the
colonists' rights or restricting their liberties. Grenville did
consult the colonial agents--individuals authorized to represent the
colonial assemblies in England--but simply with a view to meeting
practical objections. The various proclamations or orders were issued
without opposition, and the bills passed Parliament almost unnoticed.
The British governing class was but slightly concerned with colonial
reform: the Board of Trade, the colonial officials, and the responsible
Ministers were the only people interested.
To the astonishment of the Cabinet and of the English public, the new
measures, especially the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act, raised a storm of
opposition in the colonies unlike anything in their history. The
reasons are obvious. If the new Sugar Act was to be enforced, it meant
the end of the flourishing French West India intercourse and the death
of the "triangular" trade. Every distiller, shipowner, and exporter of
fish, timber, or grain, felt himself threatened with ruin. If the
Stamp Act were enforced, it meant the collection of a tax from
communities already in debt from the French wars, which were in future
to be denied the facile escape from heavy taxes hitherto afforded by
bills of credit. But the economic burdens threatened were almost lost
sight of in the political {32} dangers. If England meant to impose
taxes by parliamentary vote for military purposes, instead of calling
upon the colonists to furnish money and men, it meant a deadly blow to
the importance of the assemblies. They could no longer exercise
complete control over their property and their finances. They would
sink to the status of mere municipal bodies. So far as the Americans
of 1765 were concerned, the feeling was universal that such a change
was intolerable, that if they ceased to have the full power to give or
withhold taxes at their discretion they were practically slaves.
In every colony there sprang to the front leaders who voiced these
sentiments in impassioned speeches and pamphlets; for the most part
young men, many of them lawyers accustomed to look for popular approval
in resisting royal governors. Such men as James Otis and Samuel Adams
in Massachusetts, William Livingston in New York, Patrick Henry in
Virginia, Christopher Gadsden in South Carolina denounced the Stamp Act
as tyrannous, unconstitutional, and an infringement of the liberties of
the colonists. Popular anger rose steadily until, in the autumn, when
the stamps arrived, the people of the thirteen colonies had nerved
themselves to the pitch of refusing to obey the Act. Under pressure
from crowds of angry men, {33} every distributor was compelled to
resign, the stamps were in some cases destroyed, and in Boston the
houses of unpopular officials were mobbed and sacked. Before the
excitement, the governors stood utterly helpless. They could do
nothing to carry out the Act.
In October, delegates representing nearly all the colonies met at New
York, and drafted resolutions expressing their firm belief that no tax
could legally be levied upon them but by their own consent, given
through their legislatures. It was the right of Englishmen not to be
taxed without their consent. Petitions in respectful but determined
language were sent to the King and to Parliament, praying for the
repeal of the Stamp Act and the Sugar Act. For the first time in their
history, the colonies stood together in full harmony to denounce and
reject an Act passed by Parliament. As a social and political fact,
this unanimous demonstration of colonial feeling was of profound
significance. The ease and ability with which the lawyers, planters,
farmers, or merchants directed the popular excitement into effective
channels showed the widespread political education of the Americans. A
not dissimilar excitement in London in the same years found no other
means of expressing itself than bloody rioting. It was American {34}
republicanism showing its strongest aspect in political resistance.
The issue thus presented to the British government was one demanding
the most careful consideration and far-seeing wisdom in its treatment.
Grenville's measures, however admirable and reasonable in themselves,
had stirred the bitter opposition of all the colonists, and the
enforcement or modification of them called for steadiness and courage.
Were the English governing noblemen of the day ready to persist in the
new policy? If so, it meant violent controversy and possibly colonial
insurrection; but the exertion of British authority, if coupled with
strong naval pressure, ought to prevail. Angry as the colonists were,
their language indicates that revolution was not in their thoughts;
and, if there was one quality beyond all others in which the British
aristocracy excelled, it was an inflexible tenacity when once a policy
was definitely embraced. Unfortunately for both sides, the clear-cut
issue thus raised was obscured and distorted by the presence on the
throne of an ambitious young prince with a policy which threw British
domestic affairs into unexampled confusion.
George III, obstinate, narrow-minded, and determined to make his own
will felt in the choice of Ministers and the direction of affairs, had
succeeded his grandfather in 1760. Too {35} astute to violate the
fast-bound tradition of the British constitution that he must govern
only through Ministers, he saw that to have his own way he must secure
political servants who, while acting as Cabinet Ministers, should take
their orders from him. He also saw that to destroy the hold of the
Whig family cliques he must enter politics himself and buy, intimidate,
and cajole in order to win a following for his Ministers in parliament.
With this ideal in view, he subordinated all other considerations to
the single one of getting subservient Ministers, and fought or
intrigued against any Cabinet which did not accept his direction,
until, in 1770, he finally triumphed. In the meantime he had kept
England under a fluctuating succession of Ministries which forbade the
maintenance of any coherent or authoritative colonial policy such as
alone could have prevented disaster.
In 1761 George III tried to induce Parliament to accept the leadership
of the Earl of Bute, his former tutor, who had never held public
office; but his rapid rise to the Premiership aroused such jealousy
among the nobility and such unpopularity among the people that the
unfortunate Scot quailed before the storm of ridicule and abuse. He
resigned in 1763, and was succeeded by Grenville, who instantly showed
George III that he would take no dictation. On the contrary, {36} he
drove the King to the point of fury by his masterfulness. In
desperation, George then turned to the Marquis of Rockingham who, if
equally determined to decline royal dictation, was personally less
offensive to him; and there came in a Ministry of the usual type, all
noblemen but two minor members, and all belonging to "connections"
different from those of the Grenville Ministry. Thus it was that, when
the unanimous defiance of the Americans reached England, the Ministers
responsible for the colonial reforms were out of office, and the
Rockingham Whigs had assumed control, feeling no obligation to continue
anything begun by their predecessors. George III's interposition was
responsible for this situation.
When Parliament met in January, 1766, the colonists received powerful
allies, first in the British merchants, who petitioned against the Act
as causing the practical stoppage of American purchases, and second in
William Pitt, who, in a burning speech, embraced in full the colonists'
position, and declared that a parliamentary tax upon the plantations
was absolutely contrary to the rights of Englishmen. He "rejoiced that
America has resisted." This radical position found few followers; but
the Whig Ministry, after some hesitation, decided to grant the colonial
demands while insisting {37} on the imperial rights of Parliament.
This characteristically English action was highly distasteful to the
majority in the House of Lords, who voted to execute the law, and to
George III, who disliked to yield to mutinous subjects; but they were
forced to give way. The Stamp Act was repealed, and the sugar duties
were reduced to a low figure. At the same time a Declaratory Act was
passed, asserting that Parliament had full power to bind the colonies
"in all cases whatsoever." Thus the Americans had their way in part,
while submitting to seeing their arguments rejected.
The consequences of this unfortunate affair were to bring into sharp
contrast the British and the American views of the status of the
colonies. The former considered them as parts of the realm, subject
like any other part to the legislative authority of King, Lords, and
Commons. The contention of the colonists, arising naturally from the
true situation in each colonial government, that the rights of
Englishmen guaranteed their freedom from taxation without
representation, was answered by the perfectly sound legal assertion
that the colonists, like all the people of England, were "virtually"
represented in the House of Commons. The words, in short, meant one
thing in England, another thing in America. English speakers {38} and
writers pointed to the scores of statutes affecting the colonies,
calling attention especially to the export duties of the Navigation Act
of 1672, and the import duties of the Act of 1733, not to mention its
revision of 1764. Further, Parliament had regulated provincial coinage
and money, had set up a postal service, and established rates.
Although Parliament had not imposed any such tax as the Stamp Act, it
had, so far as precedent showed, exercised financial powers on many
occasions.
To meet the British appeal to history, the colonists developed the
theory that commercial regulation, including the imposition of customs
duties, was "external" and hence lay naturally within the scope of
imperial legislation, but that "internal" taxation was necessarily in
the hands of the colonial assemblies. There was sufficient
plausibility in this claim to commend it to Pitt, who adopted it in his
speeches, and to Benjamin Franklin, the agent for Pennsylvania, already
well known as a "philosopher," who expounded it confidently when he was
examined as an expert on American affairs at the bar of the Commons.
It was, however, without any clear legal justification, and, as English
speakers kept pointing out, it was wholly incompatible with the
existence of a genuine imperial government. That it was {39} a
perfectly practical distinction, in keeping with English customs, was
also true; but that was not to be realized until three-quarters of a
century later.
With the repeal of the objectionable law the uproar in America ceased,
and, amid profuse expressions of gratitude to Pitt, the Ministry, and
the King, the colonists returned to their normal activities. The other
parts of the Grenville programme were not altered, and it was now
possible for English Ministers, by a wise and steady policy, to improve
the weak spots in the colonial system without giving undue offence to a
population whose sensitiveness and obstinate devotion to entire
self-government had been so powerfully shown. Unfortunately, the King
again interposed his influence in such wise as to prevent any rational
colonial policy. In the summer of 1766, tiring of the Rockingham
Ministry, he managed to bring together an odd coalition of political
groups under the nominal headship of the Duke of Grafton. Pitt, who
disliked the family cliques, accepted office and the title of Earl of
Chatham, hoping to lead a national Ministry. The other elements were
in part Whig, and in part representatives of the so-called "King's
Friends"--a growing body of more or less venal politicians who clung to
George's support for the sake of the patronage to be {40} gained--and
several genuine Tories who looked to a revived royal power to end the
Whig monopoly. From such a Cabinet no consistent policy was to be
expected, save under leadership of a man like Pitt. Unfortunately the
latter was immediately taken with an illness which kept him out of
public life for two years; and Grafton, the nominal Prime Minister, was
utterly unable to hold his own against the influence and intrigues of
the King. From the start, accordingly, the Ministry proved weak and
unstable, and it allowed a new set of colonial quarrels to develop.
Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, one of the originators
of the new colonial policy under the Bute Ministry, was so ill-advised
as to renew the attempt to raise a colonial revenue by parliamentary
taxation. His manner of proposing the measure gave the impression that
it was a piece of sheer bravado on his part, intended to regain the
prestige which he had lost by failing to carry all of his first budget;
but the nature of the scheme indicates its close connection with the
Grenville ideals. Avoiding the appearance of a direct internal tax, he
caused the imposition of duties on glass, painters' colours, paper, and
tea, without any pretence of regulating commerce, but for the announced
purpose of defraying the expenses {41} of governors and judges in the
colonies. Another measure established an American Board of
Commissioners for customs. Still another punished the province of New
York for failing to comply with an Act of 1765 authorizing quartering
of troops in the colonies. The assembly was forbidden to pass any law
until it should make provision for the soldiers in question.
Ex-governor Pownall of Massachusetts, now in Parliament, did not fail
to warn the House of the danger into which it was running; but his
words were unheeded, and the Bills passed promptly.
The result of these measures was inevitable. Every political leader in
the colonies--nay, every voter--saw that the Townshend duties, while in
form "external," were pure revenue measures, unconnected with the Acts
of Trade, and intended to strike at colonial independence in a vital
point. If Great Britain undertook henceforward to pay the salaries of
royal officials, one of the principal sources of power would be taken
away from the assemblies. Instantly the distinction of "external" and
"internal" taxation was abandoned; and from end to end of the Atlantic
seaboard a cry went up that the duties were an insidious attack on the
liberties of the Americans, an outrageous taking of their property
without their consent, and a wanton interference with their {42}
governments. Not merely agitators such as the shrewd Samuel Adams and
the eloquent Patrick Henry uttered these views, but men of far more
considerable property and station--such as John Jay and New York
landowners and importers, John Dickinson and the Philadelphia
merchants, George Washington and the Virginia planters. While no
general Congress was summoned, the legislatures of the colonies adopted
elaborate resolutions, pamphleteers issued a stream of denunciations,
and, most important of all, a concerted effort was made to break down
the Acts by abstaining from any importations, not only of the taxed
commodities, but, so far as possible, of any British products.
Commercial boycott, it was hoped, would have the same effect as at the
time of the Stamp Act.
By this time the colonial argument had come to assume a much broader
character, for, in order to deny the validity of the New York Assembly
Act and the Townshend duties, it became necessary to assert that
Parliament, according to "natural rights," had no legislative authority
over the internal affairs of a colony. This was vested, by the
constitution of each province or chartered colony, in the Crown and the
colonial legislature. Such a theory reduced the imperial tie to little
more than a personal union through the monarch, coupled with the {43}
admitted power of Parliament to regulate commerce and navigation.
Evidently, as in all such cases, the theory was framed to justify a
particular desire, namely, to keep things where they had been prior to
1763. The sole question at issue was, in reality, one of power, not of
abstract or legal right. Once more it was clear to men of penetrating
vision that the American colonies needed extremely careful handling.
Whether their arguments were sound or fallacious, loyal or seditious,
it was significant that the whole continent spoke with one voice and
felt but one desire--to be allowed to exercise complete financial
discretion and to retain full control over governors and judges.
Unfortunately the condition of things in England was such that a cool
or steady treatment of the question was becoming impossible. In the
first place, the Grafton Ministry was reconstituted in 1768, the
"Pittite" elements withdrawing, and being replaced by more King's
Friends and Tories, while George III's influence grew predominant.
Townshend died in September, 1767, but his place was taken by Lord
North, a Tory and especially subservient to the King. A new
secretaryship for the colonies was given to Lord Hillsborough, who had
been in the Board of Trade in the Grenville Ministry, and represented
his views. Neither of these {44} men was inclined to consider colonial
clamour in any other light than as unpardonable impudence and sedition.
In the second place, the old Whig family groups were fast assuming an
attitude of bitter opposition to the new Tories, and by 1768 were
prepared to use the American question as a convenient weapon to
discredit the Ministry. They were quite as aristocratic in temper as
the ministerial party, but advocated forbearance, conciliation, and
calmness in dealing with the Americans, in speeches as remarkable for
their political good sense as for their ferocity toward North,
Hillsborough, and the rest. While the Ministry drew its views of the
American situation from royal governors and officials, the Whigs
habitually consulted with Franklin and the other colonial agents, who
occupied a quasi-diplomatic position. Thus the American question
became a partisan battleground. The Tories, attacked by the Whigs,
developed a stubborn obstinacy in holding to a "firm" colonial policy,
and exhibited a steady contempt and anger toward their American
adversaries which was in no small degree due to the English party
antagonism.
Still further to confuse the situation, there occurred at this time the
contest of John Wilkes, backed by the London mob, against the Grafton
Ministry. This demagogue, able {45} and profligate, had already come
into conflict with the Grenville Ministry in 1765, and had been driven
into exile. Now, in 1768, he returned and was repeatedly elected to
the Commons, and as often unseated by the vindictive ministerial
majority. Riots and bloodshed accompanied the agitation; and Wilkes
and his supporters, backed by the parliamentary Whigs, habitually
proclaimed the same doctrines of natural rights which were universally
asserted in America. To the King and his Cabinet, Wilkes and the
American leaders appeared indistinguishable. They were all brawling,
disorderly, and dangerous demagogues, deserving of no consideration.
Under these circumstances, the complaints of the colonists, although
supported by the Whigs and by Chatham, received scant courtesy in
England. The Grafton Ministry showed nothing but an irritated
intention to maintain imperial supremacy by insisting on the taxes and
demanding submissiveness on the part of the assemblies. A series of
"firm" instructions was sent out by Hillsborough, typical of which was
an order that the Massachusetts legislature must rescind its circular
letter of protest under threat of dissolution, and that the other
assemblies must repudiate the letter under a similar menace. The sole
result was a series of embittered wrangles, dissolutions, protests,
{46} and quarrels which left the colonists still more inflamed. Then,
at the suggestion of the Commissioners of Customs, two regiments of
troops were sent to Boston to over-awe that particularly defiant
colony. There being no legislature in session, the Massachusetts towns
sent delegates to a voluntary convention which drafted a protest.
Immediately, this action was denounced by Hillsborough as seditious and
was censured by Parliament; while the Duke of Bedford moved that an old
statute of Henry VIII, by which offenders outside the realm could be
brought to England for trial, should be put into operation against the
colonial agitators. When the Virginia legislature protested against
this step, it was dissolved. Hillsborough and North acted as though
they believed that a policy of scolding and nagging, if made
sufficiently disagreeable, would bring the colonists to their senses.
That the Whigs did not cease to pour contempt and ridicule on the folly
of such behaviour was probably one reason why the government persisted
in its course. The American question was coming to be beyond the reach
of reason.
Yet in 1769 the Ministry could not avoid recognizing that as financial
measures the Townshend duties were a hopeless failure, since their net
proceeds were less than 300 pounds and the increased military expenses
were {47} declared by Pownall to be over 170,000 pounds. On May 1,
1769, the Cabinet voted to repeal the taxes on glass, colours, and
paper, but by a majority of one determined to keep the tea duty. This
decision was due to the complaisance of Lord North, who saw the
unwisdom of the step, but yielded to the King's wish to retain one tax
in order to assert the principle of parliamentary supremacy. A year
later, the Grafton Ministry finally broke up; and Lord North assumed
control, with a Cabinet composed wholly of Tories and supported by
George III to the full extent of his power, through patronage, bribes,
social pressure, and political proscription. North himself was
inclined to moderation in colonial matters. He carried the promised
repeal of all the duties but the tea tax, and in 1772 replaced the
arrogant and quarrelsome Hillsborough with the more amiable Lord
Dartmouth. It looked for a while as though the political skies might
clear, for the American merchants, tired of their self-imposed
hardships, began to weaken in opposition. In 1769 the New York
assembly voted to accept the parliamentary terms; and in 1770 the
merchants of that colony voted to abandon general non-importation,
keeping only the boycott on tea. This led to the general collapse of
the non-importation agreements; but the colonial temper continued to be
defiant and {48} suspicious, and wrangling with governors was incessant.
Occasional cases of violence confirmed the English Tories in their low
view of the Americans. In March, 1770, a riot in Boston between town
rowdies and the soldiers brought on a shooting affray in which five
citizens were killed. This created intense indignation throughout the
colonies, regardless of the provocation received by the soldiers, and
led to an annual commemoration of the "Boston Massacre," marked by
inflammatory speeches. The soldiers, however, when tried for murder in
the local courts, were defended by prominent counsel, notably John
Adams, and were acquitted. Two years later, on June 9, 1772, the
_Gaspee_, a naval schooner, which had been very active in chasing
smugglers in Rhode Island waters, was burned by a mob, and its captain
taken prisoner. The utmost efforts of the home government failed to
secure the detection or punishment of any one of the perpetrators.
Finally, in December, 1773, a still more serious explosion occurred.
The North Ministry, desirous of assisting the East India Company, which
was burdened with debt, removed practically all restrictions on the
exportation of tea to America in hopes of increasing the sale by
reducing the price. To the colonial leaders, now in a state of {49}
chronic irritation, this measure seemed an insulting and insidious
attempt to induce the Americans to forget their principles and buy the
tea because it was cheap. It was denounced from end to end of the
country in burning rhetoric; and when the cargoes of tea arrived their
sale was completely prevented by the overwhelming pressure of public
opinion. Consignees, waited on by great crowds, hastened to resign;
and the tea was either seized for nonpayment of duties and allowed to
spoil, or was sent back. In Boston, however, the Governor, Hutchinson,
stiffly refused to let the tea ships depart without landing the tea,
whereat the exasperated citizens watched an organized mob of disguised
men board the ships and throw the tea into the harbour. Once more the
unanimous voice of the colonies defied a parliamentary Act.
Such was the situation in 1773. Thirteen groups of British colonists,
obstinately local in their interests, narrowly insistent on
self-government, habituated to an antagonistic attitude toward royal
governors, but, after all has been said, unquestionably loyal to the
Crown and the home country, had been transformed into communities on
the verge of permanent insubordination. Incapable of changing all
their political habits, they could see in the British policy only a
purpose {50} to deprive them of that self-government which was
inseparable from liberty. The Crown Ministers, on the other hand,
unable to discover anything illegal, oppressive, or unreasonable in any
of their measures, found no explanation of the extravagant
denunciations of the colonial radicals other than a determination to
foment every possible difficulty with a view to throwing off all
obedience. While Adams, Dickinson, Henry, Gadsden and the rest
demanded their "rights," and protested against "incroachments" on their
liberties, Bedford, Hillsborough, North, and Dartmouth insisted on the
"indecency," "insolence," and "disloyalty" shown by the Americans. The
colonial republicans and the British noblemen were unable to speak the
same language. Yet the time had come to face the situation, and it was
the duty of the Ministers to assume the task with something more
serious than reproofs and legal formulae. The contest for power now
begun must lead, unless terminated, straight to a disruption of the
Empire.
{51}
CHAPTER III
THE DISRUPTION OF THE EMPIRE, 1773-1776
When the news reached England that the people of the town of Boston had
thrown the tea of the East India Company into the harbour, the patience
of the North ministry, already severely strained, reached an end. Its
members felt--and most of the English people felt with them--that to
submit to such an act of violence was impossible. Every consideration
of national dignity demanded that Boston and its rioters should be
punished, and that the outrage done to the East India Company should
receive atonement. Hitherto, they said, the contumacious colonists had
been dealt with chiefly by arguments, reproofs, and, as it seemed to
most Englishmen, with concessions and kindnesses which had won only
insult and violence.
It was resolved to make an example of the delinquent community; and the
first step was to humiliate its representative, Benjamin Franklin.
Ever since 1765 he had been residing in England, respected as a
philosopher and admired as a wit, bearing a sort of diplomatic
character through his position as agent for the assemblies of
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. In close {52} association
with the Whig opposition, he was undoubtedly the best-known American,
and among the most influential. Now, in 1774, having to present a
petition from Massachusetts to the Privy Council for the removal of
Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, Franklin found it an awkward feature of
the case that the colony's charges were based on private letters which
he himself had in some way acquired and sent to Boston. The Court
party determined to crush him, and at the hearing put forward
Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General--a typical King's Friend--who passed
over the subject of the petition to brand Franklin in virulent
invective as a thief and scoundrel. Amidst general applause, the
petition was rejected as false and scandalous, and Franklin was
dismissed from his position of colonial Postmaster-General.
When Parliament met, it was instantly made clear that the sole idea
controlling King, Cabinet, and the majority of Members was to bring the
Massachusetts colonists to their senses by severe punitive legislation.
The Whig opposition did not attempt to defend the destruction of the
tea; but it spared no effort to make the Ministers see the folly of
striking at effects and ignoring causes. In a masterly speech of April
19, 1774, Burke showed that the insistence on submission regardless of
the grievances and of the nature {53} of the colonists was a dangerous
and absurd policy, and Pownall and Chatham repeated his arguments, but
without avail. The Ministerial party saw no danger, and felt nothing
but the contempt of an irritated aristocracy. The original ideals of a
general colonial reform were now lost sight of; the men responsible for
them had all passed off the stage; Grenville, Townshend, and Halifax
were dead, and North, careless and subservient to George III,
Hillsborough, Suffolk, Sandwich, and Rochford--all noblemen, and in
many cases inefficient--did not see beyond the problem of coercing
noisy and troublesome rioters, indistinguishable from the followers of
Wilkes. Over and over again they reiterated that the colonists'
resentment was not to be feared, that they would submit to genuine
firmness, that they were all cowardly and dared not resist a few
regular troops. Lord George Germaine earned the thanks of Lord North
by declaring that the colonists were only "a tumultuous and noisy
rabble," men who ought to be "following their mercantile employment and
not attempting to govern." Not a gleam of any other statesmanship
appears in any of the Ministerial speeches than that displayed in the
determination to exact complete submission.
There were passed, accordingly, by the full Ministerial majority, five
measures known as {54} the Coercive Acts, or, in America, as the Five
Intolerable Acts. The first one punished Boston by closing the port to
all trade until the offending town should recompense the East India
Company for the tea destroyed. The next altered the government of
Massachusetts Bay by making the councillors appointive instead of
elective, by placing the appointment and removal of all judicial
officers entirely in the hands of the governor, by placing the
selection of jurors in the hands of the sheriffs and prohibiting
town-meetings--apart from the annual one to elect officers--without the
governor's permission. A third Act authorized the transfer to England
for trial of British officers charged with murder committed while in
discharge of their duties. A fourth Act re-established the system of
quartering troops.
The fifth Act reorganized the province of Quebec, whose government,
under the Proclamation of 1763, had proved defective in several
respects. The legal institutions of the new colony were not well
adapted to the mixed French and British inhabitants, and the religious
situation needed definition. The Quebec Act altered the government of
the province by the creation of an appointive council, authorized the
Catholic Church to collect tithes, and allow the French to substitute
an oath of allegiance for the oath of {55} supremacy. Moreover, French
civil law was permitted to exist. At the same time the boundaries of
the province were extended into the region west of the mountains so as
to include the lands north of the Ohio River.
With the passage of these Acts, the original causes for antagonism were
superseded. The commissioners of customs might have enforced the
Navigation Acts indefinitely; the objectionable Tea Act might have
stood permanently on the statute-book; but, without a more tangible
grievance, it is not easy to conceive of the colonists actually
beginning a revolution. The time had now come when a more serious
issue was raised than the right of Parliament to collect a revenue by a
tariff in the colonies. If Parliament was to be allowed to crush the
prosperity of a colonial seaport, to centralize a hitherto democratic
government created by a royal charter, and to remove royal officers
from the scope of colonial juries, it was clear that the end of all the
powers and privileges wrung from royal or proprietary governors by
generations of struggle was at hand. Yet the striking feature in this
punitive legislation was that the North Ministry expected it to meet no
resistance, although its execution, so far as the government of
Massachusetts was concerned, rested on the consent of the colonists.
There was, under the British {56} system, no administrative body
capable of carrying out these laws, no military force except the few
regiments in Boston, and no naval force beyond a few frigates and
cruisers. The mere passage of the laws, according to North and to Lord
Mansfield, was sufficient to bring submission.
Nothing more clearly shows the profound ignorance of the Tory Ministry
than this expectation, for it was instantly disappointed. At the news
of the Acts, the response from America was unanimous. Already the
colonial Whigs were well organized in committees of correspondence, and
now they acted not merely in Massachusetts but in every colony. The
town of Boston refused to vote compensation, and was immediately closed
under the terms of the Port Act. Expressions of sympathy and gifts of
provisions came pouring into the doomed community; while public
meetings, legislatures, political leaders and clergymen, in chorus
denounced the Acts as unconstitutional, cruel, and tyrannous. The
Quebec Act, extending the Catholic religion and French law into the
interior valley under despotic government, was regarded as scarcely
less sinister than the Regulating Act itself.
Under the efficient organization of the leaders a Continental Congress
met in Philadelphia in October, 1774, to make united {57} protest.
This body, comprising without exception the most influential men in the
colonies, presented a clear contrast to Parliament in that every man
was the representative of a community of freemen, self-governing and
equal before the law. The leaders did not regard themselves in any
sense as revolutionaries. They were simply delegates from the separate
colonies, met to confer on their common dangers. Their action
consisted in the preparation of a petition to the King, addresses to
the people of England, the people of Quebec, and the people of the
colonies, but not to Parliament, since they denied its right to pass
any such laws as those under complaint. The Congress further drew up a
declaration of rights which stated sharply the colonial claims, namely,
that Parliament had no right to legislate for the internal affairs of
the separate colonies. It also adopted a plan for putting commercial
pressure on England by forming an Association whose members pledged
themselves to consume no English products, and organize committees in
every colony to enforce this boycott. The leaders in the body were
destined to long careers of public prominence--such men as George
Washington, Lee, and Patrick Henry of Virginia, Rutledge of South
Carolina, Dickinson of Pennsylvania, Jay of New York, Samuel and John
Adams of {58} Massachusetts. They differed considerably in their
temper, the Massachusetts men being far more ready for drastic words
and deeds than the others; but they held together admirably. If such
protests as theirs could not win a hearing in England, it was hardly
conceivable that any could.
Meanwhile the situation gave signs of being more explosive in reality
than the respectful words of the Congress implied. In Massachusetts,
the town of Boston showed no sign of submitting, and endured distress
and actual starvation, although much cheered by gifts of food from all
parts of the continent. The new government under the Regulating Act
proved impossible to put into operation, for the popular detestation
was visited in such insulting and menacing forms that the new
councillors and judges dared not serve. More radical action followed.
When Gage, having caused the election of a legislature, prorogued it
before it had assembled, the members none the less gathered. Declaring
that the Regulating Act was invalid, they elected a council, appointed
a committee of safety, and named a receiver of taxes. On February 1,
1775, a second Provincial Congress was chosen by the towns, which had
not even a nominal sanction by the governor. The colony was, in fact,
in peaceful revolution, for Gage found himself unable to collect {59}
taxes or to make his authority respected as governor beyond the range
of his bayonets. Equally significant was it that in several other
colonies, where the governors failed to call the legislatures,
provincial congresses or conventions were spontaneously elected to
supervise the situation and choose delegates to the Continental
Congress.
So deep was the popular anger in Massachusetts Bay that the collection
of arms and powder and the organization of militia were rapidly begun.
Clearly, the Massachusetts leaders were preparing to persist to the
verge of civil war. But by this time there began to be felt in the
colonies a countercurrent of protest. As the situation grew darker,
and men talked openly of possible separation unless the intolerable
wrongs were redressed, all those whose interests or whose loyalty
revolted at the idea of civil war became alarmed at the danger. Soon
men of such minds began to print pamphlets, according to the fashion of
the time, and to attempt to prevent the radicals from pushing the
colonies into seditious courses. But the position of these
conservatives was exceedingly difficult, for they were obliged to
apologize for the home country at a time when every act on the part of
that country indicated a complete indifference to colonial prejudices.
Their arguments against {60} revolution or independence left, after
all, no alternative except submission. Denounced as Tories by the
hotter radicals, they found themselves at once more and more alarmed by
the daring actions of the Whigs, and more detested by the excited
people of their communities.
The action of the British government after these events showed no
comprehension of the critical situation into which they were rushing.
George III and North secured in the election of 1774 a triumphant
majority of the Commons, and felt themselves beyond reach of danger at
home. The arguments of the colonists, the protests of the Continental
Congress, fell upon indifferent ears. Although Burke and Chatham
exerted themselves with astonishing eloquence in the session of
Parliament which began in November 1774, the Whig motions for
conciliation were voted down by the full Ministerial majority.
Petitions from merchants, who felt the pressure of the Non-importation
Association, were shelved. So far as the policy of the Ministry may be
described, it consisted of legislation to increase the punishment of
Massachusetts Bay and extend it to other colonies, and to offer a
conditional exemption from Parliamentary taxation. Both houses of
Parliament declared Massachusetts Bay to be in rebellion, and voted to
{61} crush all resistance. An Act was passed on March 30, to restrain
the trade of New England, shutting off all colonial vessels from the
fisheries, and forbidding them to trade with any country but England or
Ireland. By a second Act, in April, this restriction was extended to
all the colonies except New York and Georgia. The only purpose of this
Act was punitive. Every step was fought by the Whig opposition, now
thoroughly committed to the cause of the colonists, but their arguments
had the inherent weakness of offering only a surrender to the
colonists' position which the parliamentary majority was in no mood to
consider. In fact it was only with great difficulty and after a stormy
scene that North induced his party to vote a so-called conciliatory
proposition offering to abstain from taxing any colony which should
make such a fixed provision for civil and judicial officers as would
satisfy Parliament.
It was only a few days after the passage of the restraining Acts by
Parliament that the long-threatened civil war actually broke out in
Massachusetts. General Gage, aware of the steady gathering of powder
and war material by the revolutionary committee of safety, finally came
to the conclusion that his position required him to break up these
threatening bases of supplies. On April 19, 1775, he sent out a force
of 800 men to {62} Lexington and Concord--towns a few miles from
Boston--with orders to seize or destroy provisions and arms. They
accomplished their purpose, after dispersing with musketry a squad of
farmers at Lexington, but were hunted back to Boston by many times
their number of excited "minute men," who from behind fences and at
every crossroad harassed their retreat. A reinforcement of 1500 men
enabled the raiding party to escape, but they lost over 800 men, and
inflicted a total loss of only 90 in their flight.
Thus began the American Revolution, for the news of this day of bloody
skirmishing, as it spread, started into flame the excitement of the
colonial Whigs. From the other New England colonies men sprang to
arms, and companies marched to Boston, where they remained in rude
blockade outside the town, unprovided with artillery or military
organization, but unwilling to return to their homes. From the
hill-towns, a band of men surprised Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain,
taking the cannon for use around Boston. In every other colony militia
were organized, officers chosen and arms collected, and almost
everywhere, except in Quaker Pennsylvania and in proprietary Maryland,
the governors and royal officials fled to the seacoast to take refuge
in royal ships of war, or resigned their positions at the command {63}
of crowds of armed "minute men." Conventions and congresses, summoned
by committees of safety, were elected by the Whigs and assumed control
of the colonies, following the example of Massachusetts. The British
colonial government, in short, crumbled to nothing in the spring of
1775. Only Gage's force of a few regiments, shut up in Boston, and a
few naval vessels, represented the authority of England in America.
Again there met a Continental Congress at Philadelphia, whose duty it
was to unify colonial action and to give the colonial answer to the
late parliamentary acts. Once more the ablest men of the colonies were
present, now gravely perturbed over the situation, and divided into two
camps. On the one hand, most of the New Englanders, led by Samuel
Adams and John Adams, his cousin, felt that the time for parley was at
an end, that nothing was to be hoped for from the North Ministry, and
that the only reasonable step was to declare independence. Others
still hoped that George III would realize the extent of the crisis and
be moved to concessions, while yet others, who hoped little, thought
that one more effort should be made to avoid revolution. But none
dreamed of surrender. Of the growing number of Americans who recoiled
in horror from {64} the possibility of independence, and were beginning
to show their dread in every way, not one was in this body. It
represented only the radicals in the several colonies.
The Congress has been charged with inconsistency, for some of its
measures were impelled by the most radical members, others by the
conservatives. On the one hand, it declined to adopt a form of
federation suggested by Franklin, and authorized Dickinson to draw up a
final, respectful, almost obsequious petition to the King to avoid
war--a document called the "Olive Branch"; but, on the other hand, it
appointed Washington to command the troops near Boston as a Continental
commander, adopted a report censuring the conciliatory proposition in
bold language, and issued an address justifying with extravagant
rhetoric the taking up of arms. Still more daring, it went so far as
to arrange to pay the so-called "Continental army" by means of bills of
credit, redeemable by the united colonies. Later, in 1775, it
appointed a secret committee to correspond with friends abroad, and
undertook extensive measures for raising troops and accumulating
military stores. To the revolted colonies, who found themselves with
no legal authorities, it gave the advice to form such governments as
would secure peace and good order during the continuance {65} of the
existing dispute, a step which was promptly taken by several.
Fighting meanwhile went on. General Gage, on June 17, undertook to
drive from Charlestown, across the harbour from Boston, a body of about
1,500 provincial troops who had intrenched themselves on Breed's Hill.
In all, about 3,000 British were brought to the attack, while gunboats
raked the peninsula between Charlestown and the mainland, hindering the
arrival of reinforcements. With true British contempt for their
adversaries, the lines of red-uniformed troops marched under the hot
sun up the hill, to be met with a merciless fire at short range from
the rifles, muskets, and fowling pieces of the defenders. Two frontal
attacks were thus repelled with murderous slaughter; but a third
attack, delivered over the same ground, was pushed home, and the
defenders were driven from their redoubt. Never was a victory more
handsomely won or more dearly bought. The assailants lost not less
than 1,000 out of 3,000 engaged, including 92 officers. The Americans
lost only 450, but that was almost as large a proportion. It was
obvious to any intelligent officer that the Americans might have been
cut off from behind and compelled to surrender without being attacked;
but Gage and his subordinates were anxious to teach the rebels a
lesson. The {66} result of this action, known in history as "Bunker
Hill," was to render him and nearly all the officers who served against
Americans unwilling ever again to storm intrenchments. They discovered
that, as Putnam, who commanded part of the forces, observed, the
militia would fight well if their legs were covered. They were later
to discover the converse, that with no protection militia were almost
useless.
From this time the British force remained quietly in Boston, fed and
supplied from England at immense cost, and making no effort to attack
the miscellaneous levies which General Washington undertook to form
into an army during the summer and autumn. Nothing but the inaction of
the British made it possible for Washington's command to remain, for
they lacked powder, bayonets, horses and, most serious of all, they
lacked all military conceptions. The elementary idea of obedience was
inconceivable to them. Washington's irritation over the perfectly
unconcerned democracy of the New Englanders was extreme; but he showed
a wonderful patience and tenacity, and by sheer persistence began to
create something like a military organization. Yet, even after months
of drill and work the army remained little more than an armed mob. At
length, in March, 1776, Washington managed to {67} place a force on
Dorchester heights, which commanded the harbour from the south. At
first Gage had some idea of attacking, but storms intervened; and
finally, without another blow, he evacuated the city and sailed with
all his force to Halifax. So ended a siege which ought never to have
lasted a month had the British generals been seriously minded to break
it up.
Other military events consisted of a few skirmishes in Virginia and
North Carolina, where the governors managed to raise small forces of
loyalists, who were thoroughly defeated by the Whig militia, and of a
gallant but hopeless attempt by the rebels to capture Canada. After
some futile efforts on the part of Congress to induce the French to
revolt, two bodies of men, in the autumn of 1775, made their way across
the border. One, entering Canada by way of Lake Champlain, occupied
Montreal, and then advanced against Quebec, where it was joined by the
other, which, with great hardships, had penetrated through the
wilderness of northern Maine. The commanders, Richard Montgomery,
Benedict Arnold, and Daniel Morgan of Virginia, were men of daring, but
their force, numbering not more than 1,000, was inadequate; and, after
the failure of an effort to carry the place by surprise on the night of
December 31--in which Montgomery was {68} killed and Morgan
captured--they were unable to do more than maintain a blockade outside
the fortress.
The action of the North Ministry during these months showed no
deviation from its policy of enforcing submission. The Olive Branch
petition was refused a reception, and a proclamation was issued
declaring the colonies in rebellion and warning all subjects against
traitorous correspondence. When Parliament met in November, 1775, the
opposition, led as usual by Burke, made one more effort to avoid civil
war; but the Ministerial party rejected all proposals for conciliation,
and devoted itself to preparing to crush the rebellion. On December
22, an Act became law which, if enforced, would have been a sentence of
death to all colonial economic life. It superseded the Boston Port Act
and the restraining Acts, absolutely prohibited all commerce with the
revolted colonies, and authorized the impressment into the navy of all
seamen found on vessels captured under the Act.
Military and naval preparations were slow and costly. The Admiralty
and War Office, unprepared for a general war, had insufficient troops
and sailors, and had to collect or create supplies and equipment. The
Earl of Sandwich showed activity but slight capacity as First Lord of
the Admiralty. Viscount {69} Barrington had been Secretary at War
under Pitt during the French war, but he lacked force and influence.
Hence, although Parliament voted 50,000 troops, there was confusion and
delay. To secure a prompt supply of men, the Ministry took the step of
hiring German mercenaries from the lesser Rhine princes--Hesse,
Waldeck, and others,--at a rate per head with a fixed sum for deaths.
This practice was customary in wars when England was obliged to protect
Hanover from the French; but to use the same method against their own
kindred in America was looked upon with aversion by many English, and
aroused ungovernable indignation in all Americans. It seemed to show a
callousness toward all ties of blood and speech which rendered any hope
of reconciliation futile. The war was not, in fact, popular in
England. The task of conquering rebels was not relished by many, and
officers and noblemen of Whig connections in some cases resigned their
commissions rather than serve. The parliamentary opposition denounced
the war with fiery zeal as an iniquity and a scandal. Nevertheless,
the general opinion in England supported the Ministry in its
determination to assert the national strength; for the colonial
behaviour seemed to the average Englishman as nothing more or less than
impudent sedition, to yield to which would be disgrace.
{70}
To the Americans, the British action in 1776 showed that the only
alternatives were submission or fighting; and, if the latter must be
chosen, then it was the feeling of a growing number that independence
was the only outcome. There now went on a contest between
conservatives, including on one side those who opposed all civil war,
those who were willing to fight to defend rights but who were unwilling
to abandon hopes of forcing England to surrender its claims, and those
whose businesses and connections were closely interwoven with the
mother country and all the radicals on the other. Unfortunately for
the conservatives they had only fear, or sentiment, for arguments,
since the North Ministry gave them nothing to urge upon doubtful men.
Still more unfortunately, they were, as a rule, outside the
revolutionary organizations of conventions and committees, and were
themselves without means of co-operating.
In the excitement and tension of the time, the ruder and rougher
classes tended to regard all reluctance to join in the revolution as
equivalent to upholding the North policy, and to attack as Tories all
who did not heartily support the revolutionary cause. Violence and
intimidation rapidly made themselves felt. Loyalists were threatened,
forced by mobs to sign the Association; their houses {71} were defiled,
their movements watched. Then [Transcriber's note: Their?] arms were
taken from them, and if they showed anger or temper they were
occasionally whipped or even tarred and feathered. In this way a
determined minority backed by the poorer and rougher classes, overrode
all opposition and swelled a rising cry for independence.
The Congress was slow, for it felt the need of unanimity; and such
colonies as New York and Pennsylvania were controlled by moderates.
But at length, in June, 1776, spurred on by the Virginia delegates and
by the tireless urgings of the Massachusetts leaders, the body acted.
Already some of the colonies had adopted constitutions whose language
indicated their independence. Now the Continental Congress, after a
final debate, adopted a Declaration of Independence, drafted by
Jefferson of Virginia and supported by the eloquence of John Adams and
the influence of Franklin. Basing their position on the doctrines of
the natural right of men to exercise full self-government and to change
their form of government when it became oppressive, the colonies, in
this famous document, imitated the English Declaration of Rights of
1689 in drawing up a bill of indictment against George III's
government. In this can be discovered every cause of resentment and
every variety of {72} complaint which the thirteen colonies were ready
to put forward. Practically all were political. There were allusions
in plenty to the wrangles between governors and assemblies,
denunciations of the parliamentary taxes and the coercing Acts, but no
reference to the Acts of Trade. To the end, the colonists, even in the
act of declaring independence, found their grievances in the field of
government and not in economic regulation. What they wanted was the
unrestricted power to legislate for themselves and to tax or refrain
from taxing themselves. When these powers were diminished, their whole
political ideal was ruined, and they preferred independence to what
they considered servitude. Such ideas were beyond the comprehension of
most Englishmen, to whom the whole thing was plain disloyalty, however
cloaked in specious words and glittering generalities.
It has been said that the rupture was due to a spirit of independence
in America which, in spite of all disclaimers, was determined to be
entirely free from the mother country. Such was the assertion of the
Tories and officials of the time, and the same idea is not infrequently
repeated at the present day. But the truth is that the colonists would
have been contented to remain indefinitely in union with England,
subjects of the British {73} crown, sharers of the British commercial
empire, provided they could have been sure of complete local
self-government. The independence they demanded was far less than that
now enjoyed by the great colonial unions of Canada, Australia, and
South Africa. It may be assumed, of course, that unless Parliament
exercised complete authority over internal as well as external
matters--to employ the then customary distinction--there was no real
imperial bond. Such was the position unanimously taken by the North
Ministry and the Tories in 1776. But in view of the subsequent history
of the English colonies it seems hardly deniable that some relationship
similar to the existing colonial one might have been perpetuated had
the Whig policy advocated by Burke been adopted, and the right of
Parliament "to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever" been allowed
to drop, in practice. The obstinate localism of the colonies was such
that not until a generation after the Revolution did a genuine American
national sentiment appear. The colonies were driven to act together in
1774-1776, but not to fuse, by a danger not to national but to local
independence. This fact indicates how sharply defined was the field
which the Americans insisted on having free from parliamentary
invasion. Had it been possible for England {74} to recognize this
fact, there would have been no revolution.
It is, of course, obvious that the traditional American view of the
Revolution as caused by tyranny and oppression is symbolical, if not
fictitious. The British government, in all its measures, from 1763 to
1774, was moderate, hesitating, and at worst irritating. Its action
threatened to destroy the practical independence of the colonial
assemblies; but the danger was political. Even the five "intolerable
Acts" inflicted hardship on the town of Boston alone. It was not until
the year 1775, when Parliament imposed severe commercial restrictions,
that anything resembling actual oppression began; but by that time the
colonies were in open revolt.
This fact only emphasizes, as Burke pointed out, the criminal folly of
the North Ministry in allowing the situation to become dangerous. It
was the misfortune of the British people in the eighteenth century
that, in the critical years after 1767, George III and his Ministers
were unable to conceive of any value in colonies which were not in the
full sense dependencies, and were narrowly limited by the economic
ideas of their time and the social conventions of their class. Since
the colonies had developed, unchecked, their own political life under
British government, it was not their duty humbly to {75} surrender all
that had come to be identical with liberty in their eyes. It was the
duty of British statesmen to recognize the situation and deal with it.
This they failed to do, and the result was revolution.
{75}
CHAPTER IV
THE CIVIL WAR IN THE EMPIRE, 1776-1778
In the war which now began, the military situation was such that
neither side could look forward to an easy victory. Great Britain
outweighed the colonies in population by three or four to one, and in
every element of military strength to a much greater degree. There was
a standing army, an ample sufficiency of professional officers, the
most powerful navy in the world, the full machinery of financial
administration, abundant credit, and wealthy manufacturing and
agricultural classes which has already shown their power to carry the
burdens of a world contest without flinching. With a powerful party
Ministry endowed with full discretion in the ordering of military
affairs, there was little danger of divided {76} councils or of
inability to secure responsible direction. North, Sandwich at the
Admiralty, Barrington as Secretary at War, Germaine as Secretary for
the Colonies, could command the active support of the King, the
Parliament, and, it appeared, of the people.
On the other hand, it was necessary to carry on war at 3,000 miles
distance from the base of supplies, and to feed and clothe the armies
entirely from home. The cost was certain to be extremely heavy, and
the practical difficulties of management arising from the distance were
sure to be great, unless a competent commander were to be given
complete authority in the colonies. Then, too, the problem was not one
of conquering cities or single strategic points, or of defeating a
rival state, but of so thoroughly beating down resistance as to lead
the Americans to abandon their revolution and submit to the extinction
of their new-formed confederation. Armies must operate inland from a
seacoast where landing was easy in hundreds of places, but where almost
every step took them into a rough country, ill-provided with roads and
lacking in easily collected supplies. In spite of all advantages of
military power, the problem before the British government was one
calling for the highest forms of military capacity, and this, by an
unexplained ill-fortune, was conspicuously {77} lacking. Not a British
general who commanded in America failed to show fighting ability and
tactical sense, but not one of them possessed the kind of genius which
grasps the true military ends of any campaign and ignores minor points
for the sake of winning decisive advantages. Perhaps it would be
unjust to apply to the British forces in this war the designation won
in 1774--"armies of lions led by asses"; but the analogy is at least
suggested.
Still more serious was the fact that the North Ministry was chosen
mainly on the basis of the willingness of its members to execute the
King's orders and use their influence and parliamentary power and
connections in his behalf. North himself, able as a parliamentarian,
was irresolute in policy, ignorant of war, and careless in
administration; Weymouth and Suffolk, the Secretaries, were of slight
ability; Lord George Germaine, Secretary for the Colonies, was
arrogant, careless, and lacking in military insight; Barrington,
Secretary at War, possessed administrative ability, but was without
personal weight in the cabinet; Sandwich at the Admiralty was grossly
inefficient. There was not a single member of the Cabinet fitted to
carry on war, or able to influence George III. For such a body of men
to undertake to direct the operations in America {78} at the distance
of 3,000 miles was a worse blunder than it would have been to commit
the conduct of the war to any one of the generals in the field, however
commonplace his abilities.
On the side of the colonists, the problem of fighting the full power of
England was apparently a desperate one. The militia, with superior
numbers, had chased the British from Concord, and had made a stubborn
defence at Bunker Hill; but the British were about to move with
overwhelming strength. To raise, equip, clothe, and feed armies was
the task of a strong administration, and there was nothing of the kind
in America. The ex-colonists not only had never known efficient
administration; they had fought against any and all administration for
generations, and their leaders had won their fame as opponents of all
executive power. To thunder against royal oppression won applause, but
indicated no ability at raising money and organizing such things as
commissariat, artillery, or a navy; and it may be said of such men as
Samuel Adams, Robert Morris, Roger Sherman, John Rutledge, Patrick
Henry, and Thomas Jefferson that their administrative training was as
far below that of their enemies in the North Ministry as their
political capacity was, in general, superior.
{79}
The Continental Congress, moreover, which assumed responsibility for
the army, could only recommend measures to the States, and call upon
them to furnish troops and money. In contrast to the States, which
derived their powers unquestionably from the voters within their
boundaries and could command their obedience, the Congress had no legal
or constitutional basis, and was nothing more than the meeting place of
delegates from voluntary allies. Such military authority as it
exercised rested entirely upon the general agreement of the States.
National government, in short, did not exist. Still more serious was
the fact that there were very few trained officers in America. The
American military leaders, such as Washington, Greene, Wayne, Sullivan,
were distinctly inferior in soldiership to their antagonists, although
Washington and Greene developed greater strategic ability after many
blunders. It was only through sundry military adventurers, some
English--such as Montgomery, Gates, Lee, Conway,--others European--such
as De Kalb, Steuben, Pulaski--that something of the military art could
be acquired.
Most serious of all, there were no troops in America who comprehended
the nature of military discipline. The conception of obedience to
orders, of military duty, of the {80} absolute necessity of holding
steady, was beyond the range of most Americans. They regarded war as
something to be carried on in their own neighbourhoods, and resisted
obstinately being drawn outside their own States. They refused to
enlist for longer than a few months, since they felt it imperative to
return to look after their farms. They had little regard for men from
different districts, distrusted commanders from any State but their
own, and had no loyalty of any description to the Continental Congress.
They were, in short, still colonists, such as generations of training
had made them; very angry with Great Britain, infuriated at Tories, and
glad to be independent, but unable to realize the meaning of it all
even under the terrible stress of war.
Under the circumstances, the task of the men to whose lot it fell to
lead the American forces was such as to tax to the utmost not only
their military skill, but their ability to control, inspire, and
persuade the most refractory and unreliable of material. When to this
were added the facts that the colonies were almost wholly lacking in
manufactures except of the most rudimentary sort, that they had little
capital except in the form of land, buildings, vessels, and crops, and
that whatever revenue they had been in the habit of deriving from
commerce was {81} liable to be destroyed by the British naval
supremacy, it is easily seen that the disadvantages of the home country
were actually counterbalanced by the still more crushing disadvantages
of the revolting colonies.
In the summer of 1776, the British advanced from two quarters. In the
north, as soon as navigation opened, men-of-war sailed up the St.
Lawrence and brought reinforcements to Quebec. The relics of the
American force, unable to maintain themselves in Canada, abandoned
their conquests without a blow, and retreated into the Lake Champlain
region, there intending to hold the forts at Crown Point and
Ticonderoga. Col. Guy Carleton, the new commander, was soon able to
move southward with overwhelming numbers; but, after reaching the
northern end of Lake Champlain, he found that body of water commanded
by a small squadron of gunboats under Benedict Arnold, and, deeming it
impossible to advance, delayed all summer in order to construct a rival
fleet. Meanwhile, all operations came to a standstill in that region.
Eleven thousand men, chiefly regular troops, were thus kept inactive
for months.
The principal British force gathered at Halifax, and sailed directly
against New York. It was there joined by the remains of a naval
expedition which had endeavoured in June, {82} 1776, to capture
Charleston, South Carolina, but had suffered severely in an attempt to
bombard Fort Moultrie and been compelled to withdraw. This success,
which raised the spirits of the rebels, was, however, the last they
were to enjoy for many months. The main British expedition was
expected to overpower all colonial resistance, for it comprised a fleet
of men-of-war, and an army of no less than 81,000 men, including German
mercenaries, fully equipped, drilled, and provisioned. The admiral in
command, Lord Howe, a Whig, was authorized to issue pardons in return
for submission, and evidently expected the mere presence of so powerful
an armament to cause the collapse of all resistance. His brother, Sir
William Howe, who commanded the army, was a good officer in actual
fighting, but a man of little energy or activity, and unwilling,
apparently, to cause the revolted colonies any more suffering than was
necessary. He was, moreover, quite without military insight of the
larger kind, failing to recognize the peculiar character of the war
upon which he was entering and acting, when pushing on a campaign,
precisely as though he were operating against a European army in west
Germany.
In spite of all deficiencies, it seemed as though Howe could not fail
to crush the {83} undisciplined collection of 17,000 militia and minute
men with which Washington endeavoured to meet him at New York.
Controlling the harbour and the rivers with his fleet, he could move
anywhere and direct superior numbers against any American position.
The first blow, struck after futile efforts at negotiation, was aimed
at an American force which held Brooklyn Heights on Long Island. About
20,000 British and Hessian troops were landed on August 22; and five
days later they outflanked and crushed a body of Americans placed to
obstruct their advance. There remained the American intrenchments,
which were weak and ill-defended; but Howe refused to attack, probably
with memories of Bunker Hill in his mind. Washington managed, owing to
favourable rainy weather, to remove his beaten force by night on August
29, but only the inaction of Howe enabled them to escape capture.
There followed a delay of two weeks, during which Admiral Howe
tried to secure an interview with American leaders, in hopes of
inducing the rebels to submit; but, finding Franklin, Adams and
Rutledge--commissioners named by Congress--immovably committed to
independence, he was compelled to renew hostilities. There ensued a
slow campaign in which General Howe easily {84} forced Washington to
evacuate New York, to retreat northward, and after various skirmishes
to withdraw over the Hudson River into New Jersey. At no time did
Washington risk a general engagement; at no time did he inflict any
significant loss upon his antagonist or hinder his advance. The
militia were, in fact, almost useless in the open field, and only dared
linger before the oncoming redcoats when intrenched or when behind
walls and fences. Many of them from New England grew discouraged and
homesick, and left the moment their short enlistments expired; so that
without any serious battles Washington's so-called army dwindled week
by week. On November 16, a severe loss was incurred through the effort
of General Greene to hold Fort Washington, which commanded the Hudson
River from the heights at the northern end of Manhattan Island. This
stronghold, besieged by Howe, made a fair defence, but was taken by
storm, and the whole garrison captured. The American army then, in two
detachments under Washington and Lee respectively, was obliged to
retreat across New Jersey, followed by the British under Cornwallis,
until, by December 8, the remnant was at Philadelphia in a state of
great discouragement and demoralization. The Continental Congress,
fearing capture, fled to Baltimore and, moved to {85} desperate
measures, passed a resolution, giving Washington for six months
unlimited authority to raise recruits, appoint and dismiss officers,
impress provisions, and arrest loyalists. Howe felt that the rebellion
was at an end. On November 30 he issued a proclamation offering pardon
to all who would take the oath of allegiance within sixty days; and
farmers in New Jersey took it by hundreds, securing in return a
certificate of loyalty. The rebels' cause seemed lost. But at the
moment when, if ever, it was worth while to push pursuit to the
uttermost, with the prospect of reducing three colonies and breaking up
all show of resistance, Howe, satisfied with his campaign, began to
prepare winter quarters.
To the northward, a similar fatality seemed to prevent full British
success. During the summer, General Guy Carleton waited at the
northern end of Lake Champlain while his carpenters built gunboats.
Month after month went by until, on October 11, the British vessels
engaged Arnold's inferior flotilla. Two days of hot fighting with
musketry and cannon resulted in the destruction of the American
squadron, so that the way seemed clear for Carleton to advance; but the
season was late, the difficulties of getting provisions from Canada
seemed excessive, and on November 2 the British {86} withdrew. Here
again only extreme caution and slowness permitted the colonial army to
hold its ground. Yet it seemed doubtful whether the American cause
might not collapse even without further pressure, for the "armies" were
almost gone by sheer disintegration. General Schuyler had a scanty
3,000 near Lake Champlain; Washington could not muster over 6,000 at
Philadelphia, and these were on the points of going home. The attempt
to carry on the war by voluntary militia fighting was a visible failure.
At this stage, the darkest hour, Washington, who had never dared to
risk a battle, took the bold step of re-crossing the Delaware with part
of his half-starved and shivering troops, and captured nearly all of a
Hessian encampment at Trenton on December 25. Further, he drew on
Cornwallis to advance against him, skirmished successfully on January
2, and then, moving by a night march to the British rear, defeated a
regiment at Princeton. Cornwallis, with 7,000 men, was out-generalled
by Washington in this affair, which was the first really aggressive
blow struck by the Americans. The result was to lead Howe to abandon
the effort to hold all of New Jersey; while Washington was able to post
his men in winter quarters at Morristown, where he could watch every
British move. This masterly {87} little campaign, carried on under
every disadvantage, made Washington's fame secure, and undoubtedly
saved the American revolution from breaking down. It revived the
fighting spirit, encouraged the Congress and the people, and created a
faith in Washington on the part of the soldiers and farmers which was
destined to grow steadily into love and veneration. With no particular
military insight beyond common sense and the comprehension of military
virtues, he was a man of iron will, extreme personal courage, and a
patience and tenacity which had no limit.
Congress now showed that its members realized in part the military
lesson, for it authorized a standing regular army, and gave Washington
power to establish it and appoint lower officers. It was a hard task
to induce any Americans to enlist in such an organization; but little
by little there were collected "Continental troops" who did not rush
back to their family duties at the end of three months, but stayed and
grew in discipline and steadiness. Yet Washington could never count on
more than a few thousand such; Americans in general simply would not
fight except under pressure of invasion and in defence of their homes.
During 1776-7, the revolted communities assumed something of the
appearance of settled governments. The States replaced {88} their
revolutionary conventions with constitutions closely modelled upon
their provincial institutions, but with elective governors, and, to
safeguard liberty, full control over legislation, taxation, and most
offices placed in the hands of the legislatures. Executive power was
confined mainly to military matters. The Continental Congress
continued to act as a grand committee of safety, framing
recommendations and requests to the States, and issuing paper money on
the credit of its constituents. Military administration proved a task
beyond the capacity of the new governments, even for such diminutive
armies as those which guarded the northern frontier and New Jersey, and
the forces suffered from lack of food, covering, and powder. The
country had few sources of supplies and wretched roads.
In 1777, when spring opened, the British armies slowly prepared to push
matters to a definite conclusion. The North Cabinet, especially Lord
George Germaine, had no single coherent plan of operations beyond
continuing the lines laid down in 1776. It was early planned to have
the Canadian force march southward and join Howe, collecting supplies
and gathering recruits as it traversed New York. Howe was told that he
was expected to co-operate, but was not prevented from substituting a
plan of his {89} own which involved capturing Philadelphia, the chief
American town and, as the seat of the Continental Congress, the "rebel
capital." Germaine merely intimated that Howe ought to make such
speedy work as to return in time to meet the Canadian force, but did
not give him any positive order, so Howe considered his plan approved.
In leisurely fashion he tried twice to march across New Jersey in June;
but, although he had 17,000 to Washington's 8,000, he would not risk
leaving the latter in his rear and withdrew. He next determined to
move by water, and began the sea journey on July 5. This process
occupied not less than six weeks, since he first tried to sail up the
Delaware, only to withdraw from before the American forts; and it was
not until August 22 that he finally landed his men at the head of
Chesapeake Bay.
Meanwhile, General Burgoyne, a man of fashion as well as an officer,
had begun his march southward from Lake Champlain with 7,500 men and
some Indian allies, forced the Americans to evacuate Fort Ticonderoga
without a blow, and chased the garrison to the southward and eastward.
Pushing forward in spite of blocked roads and burned bridges, he
reached the Hudson River on August 1 without mishap, and there halted
to collect provisions and await {90} reinforcements from Tories and
from a converging expedition under St. Leger, which was to join him by
way of Lake Ontario and the Mohawk Valley. Up to this time the
American defence had been futile. It seemed as though nothing could
stop Burgoyne's advance. Congress now appointed a new general, Gates,
to whom Washington sent General Morgan with some of his best troops.
While Burgoyne waited, the militia of New England began collecting, and
presently, on August 15 and 16, two detachments of the British sent to
seize stores at Bennington were surrounded and captured. St. Leger,
unable to manage his Indian allies, or force the surrender of the
American Fort Stanwix, was obliged, on August 22, to retreat.
Burgoyne, with diminishing numbers and no hope of reinforcement, found
himself confronted by rapidly growing swarms of enemies. At the moment
when his need of co-operation from Howe became acute, the latter
general was two hundred miles away in Pennsylvania.
Under the circumstances, the two campaigns worked themselves out to
independent conclusions. In Pennsylvania, Washington boldly marched
his summer army with its nucleous of veterans out to meet the British,
and challenged a battle along the banks of the Brandywine creek. On
September 11, Howe, with 18,000 men, methodically attacked {91}
Washington, who had not over 11,000, sent a flanking column around his
right wing, and after a stiff resistance pushed the Americans from the
field. There was no pursuit; and four days later Washington was
prevented only by bad weather from risking another fight. He did not
feel able to prevent Howe from entering Philadelphia on September 27;
but on October 3, taking advantage of a division of the British army,
he assumed the offensive at Germantown and brought his unsteady forces
into action, only to suffer another defeat. With this Washington was
forced to abandon operations in the field and to go into winter
quarters at Valley Forge, not far from the city; while Howe besieged
and on November 2 took the American forts on the Delaware. The British
campaign was successful; Philadelphia was theirs, and they had won
every engagement. But nothing shows more clearly Washington's ability
as a fighter and leader than his stubborn contest against odds in this
summer.
Meanwhile, the Northern campaign came to its conclusion. By September,
Gates, the new commander, found himself at the head of nearly 20,000
men, and Burgoyne's case grew desperate. He made two efforts to break
through to the southward, at Freeman's Farm, and again at Bemis
Heights, but was {92} met by superior numbers and overwhelmed, in spite
of the gallantry of his troops. Forced back to Saratoga on the Hudson
River, he was surrounded and at length compelled to surrender, on
October 17. Sir Henry Clinton, who commanded the British garrison of
New York in Howe's absence, sent a small expedition up the Hudson; but
it did not penetrate nearer than sixty miles from the spot where
Burgoyne stood at bay, and it achieved nothing more than a raid. So
the northern British force, sent to perform an impossible task, was
destroyed solely because neither Howe nor his superiors realized the
necessity of providing for certain co-operation from the southward.
The prisoners, according to the terms of the surrender, were to be
returned to England; but Congress, owing in part to some complaints of
Burgoyne, chose to violate the agreement, and the captive British and
Hessians were retained. Burgoyne himself returned to England, burning
with anger against Howe and the North Ministry.
The winter of 1777-8 found the two British armies comfortably housed in
New York and Philadelphia, and Washington, with his handful of
miserably equipped men, presenting the skeleton of an army at Valley
Forge. Congress, now manned by less able leaders than at first, was
almost won over to {93} displacing the unsuccessful commander by Gates,
the victor of Saratoga; and it did go so far as to commit the
administration of the army to a cabal of Gates's friends, who carried
on a campaign of depreciation and backbiting against Washington. But
the whole unworthy plot broke down under a few vigorous words from the
latter, the would-be rival quailing before the Virginian's personal
authority. He was not a safe man to bait. The military headship
remained securely with the one general capable of holding things
together.
In the winter of 1778, however, a new element entered the game, namely,
the possibility of French intervention. From the outbreak of the
Revolution, very many Americans saw that their former deadly enemy,
France, would be likely to prove an ally against England; and as early
as 1776 American emissaries began to sound the court of Versailles. In
March, 1776, Silas Deane was regularly commissioned by the Continental
Congress, and in the autumn he was followed by no less a person than
Benjamin Franklin. It was the duty of these men to get whatever aid
they could, especially to seek an alliance. The young king, Louis XVI,
was not a man of any independent statecraft; but his ministers, above
all Vergennes, in charge of foreign affairs, were anxious to secure
revenge {94} upon England for the damage done by Pitt, and the tone of
the French court was emphatically warlike. The financial weakness of
the French government, destined shortly to pave the way for the
Revolution, was clearly visible to Turgot, the Minister of Finances,
and he with a few others protested against the expense of a foreign
war; but Vergennes carried the day.
As early as the summer of 1776, French arms and munitions were being
secretly supplied, while the Foreign Minister solemnly assured the
watchful Lord Stormont, the English Ambassador, of his government's
perfect neutrality. Thousands of muskets, hundreds of cannon, and
quantities of clothes were thus shipped, and sums of money were also
turned over to Franklin. Beaumarchais, the playwright and adventurer,
acted with gusto the part of intermediary; and the lords and ladies of
the French court, amusing themselves with "philosophy" and speculative
liberalism, made a pet of the witty and sagacious Franklin. His
popularity actually rivalled that of Voltaire when the latter, in 1778,
returned to see Paris and die. But not until the colonies had proved
that they could meet the English in battle with some prospect of
success would the French commit themselves openly; and during 1776 and
1777 the tide ran too steadily against {95} the insurgents. Finally,
in December, when the anxieties of Franklin and his associates were
almost unendurable, the news of Burgoyne's surrender was brought to
Paris. The turning-point was reached. Vergennes immediately led the
French King to make two treaties, one for commercial reciprocity, the
other a treaty of military alliance, recognizing the independence of
the United States, and pledging the countries to make no separate
peace. In the spring of 1778 the news reached America; and the war now
entered upon a second stage.
There can be little doubt that under abler commanders the British
armies might have crushed out all armed resistance in the middle
colonies. In spite of all drawbacks, the trained British soldiers and
officers were so superior in the field to the American levies on every
occasion where the forces were not overwhelmingly unequal that it is
impossible for any but the most bigoted American partisan to deny this
possibility. Had there been a blockade, so that French and Dutch goods
would have been excluded; had General Howe possessed the faintest spark
of energy in following up his successes; had the North Cabinet not
failed to compel Howe to co-operate with Burgoyne, the condition of
things in 1778 might well have been so serious for the colonists' cause
that {96} Vergennes would have felt a French intervention to be
fruitless. In that case, it is hard to see how the rebellion could
have failed to be crushed in the next year. As it was, the Americans,
by luck and by the tenacity of Washington and a few other leaders, had
won the first victory.
CHAPTER V
FRENCH INTERVENTION AND BRITISH FAILURE, 1778-1781
During the two years of fighting, the party situation in England had
grown increasingly bitter. The Whigs, joined now by young Charles Fox,
unremittingly denounced the war as a crime, sympathized with the
rebels, and execrated the cruelty of the Ministers while deriding their
abilities. Parliament rang with vituperation; personal insults flew
back and forth. From time to time Chatham took part in the attack,
joining Burke and Fox in an opposition never surpassed for oratorical
power. But the Ministerial party, secure in its strength, pushed on
its way. The King now regarded the war as the issue {97} upon which he
had staked his personal honour, and would tolerate no faltering. Yet
in the winter of 1778 the rumours of a French alliance thickened; and,
when the probability seemed to be a certainty, North made a desperate
effort to end the war through a policy of granting everything except
independence. In a speech of incredible assurance, he observed that he
had never favoured trying to tax America, and brought in a Bill by
which every parliamentary measure complained of by the Americans was
repealed, and the right of internal taxation was expressly renounced.
Amid the dejection of the Tories and the sneers of the Whigs, this
measure became law, March 2, 1778; and commissioners, empowered to
grant general amnesty, were sent with it to the United States.
At no other time in English history would it have been possible for a
Ministry thus utterly to reverse its policy and remain in office; but
North's tenure depended on influences outside the House of Commons, and
he continued in his place. So severe was the crisis that an effort was
made to arrange a coalition Ministry, with the aged Chatham at its
head; George III, however, positively refused to permit North to
surrender the first place. He would consent to Whigs entering the
Cabinet only in subordinate positions. This {98} obstinacy and the
sudden death of Chatham blocked all coalition proposals, and left the
war to continue as a party measure, not national in its character--the
"King's war."
In America, the task of the commissioners proved hopeless. The men now
in control of the Continental Congress and the State governments were
pledged to independence from the bottom of their souls; and in the
course of months of appeals, and attempts at negotiations, the
commissioners failed to secure even a hearing. Congress ratified the
French treaties with enthusiasm. That their proposal if made before
the Declaration would have been successful can scarcely be doubted. It
might even have produced an effect after 1776 had it been made by a
Whig Ministry, headed by Chatham. But coming in 1778, after three
years of war, when every vestige of the former sentiment of loyalty was
dead, and offered by the same North Ministry which had brought on the
revolution, it was foredoomed to defeat.
The war now entered upon a second phase, in which England found itself
harder pressed than at any time in its history. It had not an ally in
the world, and could count on no Rhine campaigns to exhaust French
resources. For the first time England engaged France in a purely naval
war; and for the only time France was sufficiently strong in
sail-of-the-line {99} to meet England on equal terms. The French
fleet, rebuilt since 1763, was in excellent condition; the British
navy, on the contrary, under the slack administration of Lord Sandwich,
was worse off in equipment, repairs, number of sailors, and _esprit de
corps_ than at any time in the century. The French were able to send
fleets unhindered wherever they wished; and when Spain entered as an
ally, in 1779, their combined navies swept the Channel, driving the
humiliated British fleet into port. England was called upon to make
defensive war at home, at Gibraltar, in the West Indies, and finally in
India, at a time when the full strength of the country was already
occupied with the rebellion.
This led to an alteration of military methods in America. The policy
of moving heavy armies was abandoned; and the British, forced to
withdraw troops to garrison the West Indies and Florida, began the
practice of wearing down the revolted colonies by raids and destruction
of property. George III especially approved this punitive policy. As
a first step, the army in Philadelphia marched back to New York,
attacked on its retreat by Washington at Monmouth on June 27, 1778.
The American advance was badly handled by General Lee, and fell back
before the British; but Washington in person rallied his men, resumed
the attack, and held his position. {100} Clinton, who succeeded Howe,
continued his march, and the British army now settled down in New York,
not to depart from its safe protection except on raids.
Washington accordingly posted his forces, as in 1777, outside the city,
and awaited events. He could assume the offensive only in case a
French fleet should assist him, and this happened but twice, in 1778,
and not again for three years. The first time, Admiral D'Estaing with
a strong fleet menaced New York and then Newport, the latter in
conjunction with an American land force. But before each port he was
foiled by the superior skill of Admiral Howe; and he finally withdrew
without risking a battle, to the intense disgust of the Americans. For
the rest, the war in the northern States dwindled to raids by the
British along the Connecticut coast and into New Jersey, and outpost
affairs on the Hudson, in some of which Washington's Continental troops
showed real brilliancy in attack. But with the British in command of
the sea little could be done to meet the raids, and southern
Connecticut was ravaged with fire and sword.
At the same time, the States suffered the horrors of Indian war, since
the Tories and British from Canada utilized the Iroquois and the Ohio
Valley Indians as allies. The New York frontier was in continual
distress; {101} and the Pennsylvania and Maryland and Virginia
settlements felt the scalping knife and torch. Hamilton, the British
commander at the post of Detroit, paid a fixed price for scalps, and
was known as "the hair buyer." Against the Iroquois, Sullivan led an
expedition in 1779 which could not bring the savages to a decisive
battle, although he ravaged their lands and crippled their resources.
Against the north-western Indians, a daring Virginian, George Rogers
Clark, led a counter-raid which captured several posts in the territory
north of the Ohio River, and finally took Hamilton himself prisoner at
Vincennes. In every such war the sufferings of the settlers
outnumbered a hundred-fold all that they could inflict in return, and
this consciousness burned into their souls a lasting hatred of England,
the ally of the murdering, torturing devils from the forests.
While the British fleets fought indecisive actions in European waters,
or near the West Indies, the British raiding policy was transferred to
a new region, namely, the southern States, which thus far had known
little of the severities of war. In December, 1778, an expedition
under Prevost easily occupied Savannah, driving the Georgia militia
away. The next year an effort was made by an American force, in
combination with the French fleet under D'Estaing, who returned from
{102} the West Indies, to recapture the place. The siege was formed,
and there appeared some prospects of a successful outcome, but the
French admiral, too restless to wait until the completion of siege
operations, insisted on trying to take the city by storm on October 9.
The result was a complete repulse, after which D'Estaing sailed away,
and the American besiegers were obliged to withdraw. The real
interests of the French were, in fact, in the West Indies, where they
were gradually capturing English islands; their contributions so far to
the American cause consisted in gifts of munitions and loans of money,
together with numerous adventurous officers who aspired to lead the
American armies. The most amiable and attractive of these was the
young Marquis de Lafayette, owing largely to whose influence a force of
French soldiers under de Rochambeau was sent in 1780 to America. But
for months this force was able to do no more than remain in camp at
Newport, Rhode Island, blockaded by the English fleet.
In 1780, the British raiding policy was resumed in the southern States
and achieved a startling success. In January, Clinton sailed from New
York with a force of 8,000 men, and after driving the American levies
into the city of Charleston, South Carolina, besieged and took it on
May 12, with all its {103} defenders. He then returned to New York,
leaving Lord Cornwallis with a few troops to complete the conquest of
the State. Congress now sent General Gates southward to repeat the
triumph of Saratoga. At Camden, on August 16, 1780, the issue was
decided. The American commander, with only 3,000 men, encountered
Cornwallis, who had about 2,200, and, as usual, the militia, when
attacked by British in the open field, fled for their lives at the
first charge of the redcoats, leaving the few continentals to be
outnumbered and crushed.
For a period of several weeks all organized American resistance
disappeared. Only bands of guerillas, or "partisans," as they were
called, kept the field. Clinton had issued a proclamation calling all
loyalists to join the ranks; and Cornwallis made a systematic effort to
compel the enrolment of Tory militia. The plan bore fruit in an
apparent large increase of British numbers, but also in the outbreak of
a murderous civil war. Raiding parties on both sides took to
ambuscades, nocturnal house-burning, hanging of prisoners, and
downright massacres. Pre-eminent for his success was the British
Colonel Tarleton, who with a body of light troops swept tirelessly
around, breaking up rebel bands, riding down militia, and rendering his
command a terror to the {104} State. Marion, Sumter, and other
Americans struggled vainly to equal his exploits.
Occasional American successes could not turn back the tide. On October
18, 1780, a band of Tories under General Ferguson ventured too far to
the westward, and at King's Mountain were surrounded and shot or taken
prisoners by a general uprising of the frontiersmen. General Greene,
who replaced Gates in December, managed to rally a few men, but dared
not meet Cornwallis in the field. His lieutenant, Morgan, when pursued
by Tarleton, turned on him at the Cowpens, and on January 17 managed to
inflict a severe defeat. The forces were diminutive--less than a
thousand on each side--but the battle was skilfully fought. After it,
however, both Morgan and Greene were forced to fly northward, and did
not escape Cornwallis's pursuit until they were driven out of North
Carolina. The State seemed lost, and on February 23, Cornwallis issued
a proclamation calling upon all loyalists to join the royal forces.
Meanwhile, encouraged by the striking successes in the Carolinas,
Clinton sent a force under Arnold to Virginia, which marched unopposed
through the seaboard counties of that State in the winter of 1781. It
seemed as though the new British policy were on the verge of a great
triumph.
{105}
By this time it was becoming a grave question whether the American
revolution was not going to collapse from sheer weakness. The
confederation, as a general government, seemed to be on the verge of
breaking down. The State governments, although badly hampered wherever
British raids took place, were operating regularly and steadily, but
the only common government continued to be the voluntary Continental
Congress, whose powers were entirely undefined, and rested, in fact, on
sufferance. In 1776 a committee, headed by John Dickinson, drafted
Articles of Confederation which, if adopted promptly, would have
provided a regular form of government; but, although these were
submitted in 1777 for ratification, inter-state jealousy sufficed to
block their acceptance. It was discovered that all those States which,
by their original charters, were given no definite western boundaries,
were disposed to claim an extension of their territory to the
Mississippi River. Virginia, through her general, Clark, actually
occupied part of the region claimed by her, and assumed to grant lands
there. The representatives of Maryland in Congress declared such
inequality a danger to the union, and refused to sign the Articles
unless the land claims west of the mountains were surrendered to the
general government. {106} This determination was formally approved by
the Maryland legislature in February, 1779, and matters remained at a
standstill. At last, in 1780, Congress offered to hold any lands which
might be granted to it, with the pledge to form them into States, and,
following this, New York, and Virginia intimated a willingness to make
the required cessions. Then Maryland yielded and ratified the
Articles, so that they came into operation on March 2, 1781.
The self-styled "United States" had now travelled so far on the road to
bankruptcy that the adoption of the "Articles of Perpetual Union"
seemed scarcely more than an empty form. In the first place, the
federal finances were prostrate. The device of issuing paper money had
proved fatal, for, after a brief period, in 1775, the excessive issues
depreciated in spite of every effort to hinder their decline by
proclamations, price conventions, and political pressure. The only way
of sustaining such notes, namely, the furnishing by the States of a
full and sufficient revenue, was never attempted; for the States
themselves preferred to issue notes, rather than to tax, and when
called upon by the Continental Congress for requisitions they turned
over such amounts of paper as they saw fit. By 1780, the "continental
currency" was {107} practically worthless. Congress could rely only
upon such small sums of money as it could raise by foreign loans
through Franklin and by the contributions of a few patriotic people,
notably Robert Morris.
The maintenance of the army exhausted the resources of Congress, and
every winter saw the story of Valley Forge repeated. To secure
supplies, Congress was driven to authorize seizure and impressment of
food and payment in certificates of indebtedness. It was for this
reason, as well as from the unwillingness of the Americans to enlist
for the war, that the Continental forces dwindled to diminutive numbers
in 1781. Nothing but Washington's tireless tenacity and loyalty held
the army together, and kept the officers from resigning in disgust.
Yet it seemed impossible that Washington himself could carry the burden
much longer. The general government appeared to be on the point of
disintegrating, leaving to the separate States the task of defending
themselves. Everywhere lassitude, preoccupation with local matters, a
disposition to leave the war to the French, a willingness to let other
States bear the burdens, replaced the fervour of 1776. In other words,
the old colonial habits were reasserting themselves, and the separate
States, reverting to their former accustomed negative politics, were
{108} behaving toward the Continental Congress precisely as they had
done toward England itself during the French wars. With hundreds of
thousands of men of fighting age in America it was impossible, in 1781,
to collect more than a handful for service away from their homes. The
essentially unmilitary nature of the Americans was not to be changed.
Fortunately for the rebels, the policy of Great Britain was such as to
give them a lease of hope. In spite of the great British naval power
during the first two years of the war, no blockade had been attempted;
and after 1778 the British fleets were thoroughly occupied in following
and foiling the French. The result was that commerce of a sort
continued throughout the war, armed privateers and merchantmen
venturing from the New England and other ports, and trading with
France, Spain and the West Indies. Hundreds were taken by British
cruisers, but hundreds more continued their dangerous trade, and so
America continued to receive imports. The Dutch, especially, supplied
the revolted colonies with some of the commodities which their
exclusion from British ports rendered scarce. So, except for paper
money, there was no economic distress.
In 1781, when if ever the British might hope to reduce the colonies,
the Empire was itself in sore straits for men to fill its ships and
{109} garrison its forts. This made it difficult for England to send
any reinforcements to America, and left Clinton and Cornwallis with
about 27,000 men to complete their raiding campaign. The task proved
excessive. In March, 1781, Greene, having assembled a small force,
gave battle to Cornwallis at Guilford Court House. The little army of
British veterans, only 2,219 in all, drove Greene from the field after
a stiff fight, but were so reduced in numbers that Cornwallis felt
obliged to retreat to Wilmington on the coast, where he was entirely
out of the field of campaign. On April 25 he marched northward into
Virginia to join the force which had been there for several months,
took command, and continued the policy of marching and destroying.
Before his arrival, Washington had tried to use the French force at
Newport against the Virginia raiders; but the French squadron, although
it ventured from port in March, 1781, and had a successful encounter
with a British fleet, declined to push on into the Chesapeake, and the
plan was abandoned. Cornwallis was able to march unhindered by any
French danger during the summer of 1781.
But while the British were terrifying Virginia and chasing militia, the
forces left in the Carolinas were being worn down by {110} Greene and
his "partisan" allies. On April 25, at Hobkirk's Hill, Rawdon, the
British commander defeated Greene, and then, with reduced ranks,
retreated. During the summer, further sieges and raids recaptured
British posts, and on September 8 another battle took place at Eutaw
Springs. This resulted, as usual, in a British success on the
battlefield and a retreat afterwards. By October, the slender British
forces in the southernmost States were cooped up in Charleston and
Savannah, and a war of extermination was stamping out all organized
Tory resistance. The raiding policy had failed through weakness of
numbers. The superior fighting ability and tactical skill of
Cornwallis, Rawdon, Stuart, and Tarleton were as obvious as the courage
and steadiness of their troops; but their means were pitifully
inadequate to the task assigned them.
Further north, a still greater failure took place. Washington was not
deterred by the futile outcome of his previous attempts to use French
co-operation from making a patient and urgent effort to induce De
Grasse, the French admiral in the West Indies, to come north and join
with him and Rochambeau in an attack on Cornwallis in Virginia. He was
at last successful; and on August 28 the wished-for fleet, {111} a
powerful collection of twenty-eight sail-of-the-line, with frigates,
reached Chesapeake Bay. Already the French troops from Newport, and
part of the American army from outside New York, had begun their
southward march, carefully concealing their purposes from Clinton, and
were moving through Pennsylvania. As a third part of the combination,
the French squadron from Newport put to sea, bringing eight more
sail-of-the-line, which, added to De Grasse's, would overmatch any
British fleet on the western side of the Atlantic.
The one disturbing possibility was that the British West India fleet,
which very properly had sailed in pursuit, might defeat the two French
fleets singly. This chance was put to the test on September 5. On
that day Admiral Graves, with nineteen men-of-war, attacked De Grasse,
who brought twenty-four into line outside Chesapeake Bay; and the
decisive action of the Revolution took place. Seldom has a greater
stake been played for by a British fleet, and seldom has a naval battle
been less successfully managed. Graves may have intended to
concentrate upon part of the French line, but his subordinates
certainly failed to understand any such purpose; and the outcome was
that the head of the British column, approaching the French line at
{112} an angle, was severely handled, while the rear took no part in
the battle. The fleets separated without decisive result, and the
British, after cruising a few days irresolutely, gave up and returned
to New York. The other French squadron had meanwhile arrived, and the
allied troops had come down the Chesapeake. Cornwallis, shut up in
Yorktown by overwhelming forces, defended himself until October 17, and
then surrendered with 8,000 men to the man who had beaten him years
before at Trenton and Princeton. Clinton, aware at last of his danger,
sailed with every vessel he could scrape together, and approached the
bay on October 24 with twenty-five sail-of-the-line and 7,000 men; but
it was too late. He could only retreat to New York, where he remained
in the sole British foothold north of Charleston and Savannah.
Washington would have been glad to retain De Grasse and undertake
further combined manoeuvres; but the French admiral was anxious to
return to the West Indies, and so the military operations of the year
ended. More was in reality unnecessary, for the collapse of the
British military policy was manifest, and the surrender of Cornwallis
was a sufficiently striking event to bring the war to a close.
Washington had not won the last fight with his own {113} Continentals.
The co-operation not only of the French fleet but of the French troops
under Rochambeau had played the decisive part. Yet it was his
planning, his tenacity, his personal authority with French and
Americans that determined the combined operation and made it
successful. In the midst of a half-starved, ill-equipped army, a
disintegrating, bankrupt government, and a people whose fighting spirit
was rapidly dwindling, it was he with his officers who had saved the
Revolution at the last gasp.
It was no less the British mismanagement which made this possible, for
had not Howe, by delays, thrown away his chances; had not Howe and
Burgoyne and Clinton and Cornwallis, by their failures to co-operate,
made it possible for their armies to be taken separately; had not the
navy omitted to apply a blockade; had not the Ministry, in prescribing
a raiding policy, failed to strain every nerve to furnish an adequate
supply of men, the outcome would have been different. As it was, the
British defeat could no longer be concealed by the end of 1781. The
attempt to conquer America had failed.
{114}
CHAPTER VI
BRITISH PARTIES AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, 1778-1783
When the news of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown reached
England, it was recognized by Whigs and Tories alike that the time had
come to admit the failure of the war. The loss of 7,000 troops was not
in itself a severe blow, at a time when England had over 200,000 men
under arms in various parts of the world; but it actually marked the
breakdown of the American campaign, and, what was still more
significant, the political bankruptcy of the North Ministry. Ever
since 1778, the tide had been rising against the royal policy. At
first, when the French war began, the nation rallied against the
ancient foe and there was some enthusiasm displayed in recruiting and
furnishing supplies; but, as general after general returned from
America--first Burgoyne, then Howe and his brother, the admiral,--to
rise in Parliament and denounce the administrative incompetence which
had foiled their efforts; as month after month passed and no victory
either in America or Europe came to cheer the public; worst of all,
when, in 1779, and again in 1780, combined French and Spanish fleets
swept the Channel {115} in overpowering numbers, driving the English
fleet into Torbay harbour--the war spirit dwindled, and bitter
criticism took its place.
The Whig Opposition, no longer hampered by having the defence of the
revolted colonists as their sole issue, denounced in unmeasured
language the incompetence, corruption, and despotism of the North
Ministry, singling out Sandwich, at the Admiralty, and Germaine,
Secretary for the Colonies, as objects for especial invective. Party
hatred festered in army and navy, Whig and Tory admirals distrusting
each other and engaging in bitter quarrels, Whig and Tory generals
criticizing one another's plans and motives. On his part, Lord North
felt, as early as 1779, that his task was hopeless, and sought
repeatedly to resign; but in spite of secessions from the Ministry, in
spite of defeats and humiliations such as the control by the allies of
the Channel, nothing could shake George's determination. He would
never consent to abandon the colonies or permit North to surrender to
the detested Whigs.
In 1780, the Opposition, led by Fox and Burke, began to direct its fire
at the King himself; and finally, in March of that year, they had the
satisfaction of carrying in the Commons, by votes of men who once had
been on the administration side, a resolution to the effect that "the
power of the Crown {116} has increased, is increasing, and ought to be
diminished." This was carried, by 283 votes to 215, in a House where
four years before the total Opposition mustered only a hundred.
Measures to cut down sinecures, to limit the secret service fund, to
take away opportunities for royal corruption, were introduced by Burke
and, although defeated, drew large votes.
The tenacious politician who wore the crown was not yet beaten. In the
summer of 1780, the disgraceful Gordon riots broke out in London; and
the King, by his courageous personal bearing and bold direction of
affairs, won momentary prestige. The news from America, moreover, was
brighter than for a long time, and the British defence of Gibraltar was
unshaken. Suddenly dissolving Parliament, the King employed every
resource of influence or pressure, and managed to secure once more a
majority in the House of Commons. During the year 1781, the North
Ministry breathed more freely, and was able to repel Whig attacks by
safe majorities. But the respite was short.
In the winter session of 1782, the news of Yorktown shook the Ministry
to its centre, and on top of that came the reports of the surrender of
Minorca, St. Kitts, and Nevis. Held together only by the inflexible
determination of George III never to yield American {117} independence
or "stoop to opposition," the Ministers fought bitterly though
despairingly against a succession of Whig motions, censuring the
Admiralty, demanding the withdrawal of the troops, and finally
censuring the Ministry. Majorities dwindled as rats began to leave the
sinking ship. On March 8, North escaped censure by ten votes only.
The King made repeated efforts to induce members of the Opposition to
come into some sort of coalition, but the hatred was too fierce, the
divergence of principle too wide. Rockingham would accept only
absolute surrender. On March 15, a resolution of want of confidence
was lost by nine only.
Five days later, in face of a renewed motion of the same kind, North
announced his resignation. The end had come. The system of George III
had broken down, ruined by the weaknesses of the Tory Cabinet in
administration, in war, and in diplomacy, the most disastrous Ministry
in the history of England. There was no possible doubt as to the
significance of the collapse, for Lord Rockingham took office with a
Whig Cabinet, containing Shelburne and Fox, steadfast friends of
America, as Secretaries of State, and with the avowed purpose of
conceding independence to the former colonies, while maintaining the
contest with Spain and France.
{118}
Interest now shifted from the battlefield to the regions of diplomacy,
where the situation was complicated and delicate, owing to the unusual
relations of the parties involved. The United States and France were
in alliance, each pledged not to make a separate peace. Spain was in
alliance with France for the purpose of recovering Gibraltar, Minorca,
and Florida, but was not in any alliance with the United States. The
French government, tied thus to two allies, recognized the possible
contingency of diverging interests between Spain and the United States,
and exerted all the influence it could to keep diplomatic control in
its own hands. This it accomplished through its representatives in
America, especially de la Luzerne, who wielded an immense prestige with
the members of the Continental Congress, not only through his position
as representative of the power whose military, naval, and financial aid
was absolutely indispensable, but also by means of personal intrigues
of a type hitherto more familiar in European courts than in simple
America. Under his direction, Congress authorized its European
representatives, Franklin, Jay, and Adams, accredited to France, Spain,
and the Netherlands respectively, to act as peace commissioners and to
be guided in all things by the advice and consent of the French
Minister, {119} Vergennes. Their instructions designated boundaries,
indemnity for ravages and for the taking of slaves, and a possible
cession of Canada, but all were made subject to French approval. When,
accordingly, in 1781, both Shelburne and Fox of the Rockingham Ministry
sought to open negotiations with the American representatives, while
pushing on vigorously the war against France and Spain, they
interjected an embarrassing element into the situation. Vergennes
could not prohibit American negotiation, but he relied upon the
instructions of the commissioners to enable him to prevent the making
of any separate peace, contrary to the treaty of 1778.
The first steps were taken by Franklin and Shelburne, who opened
unofficial negotiations through Richard Oswald, a friend of America.
It seems to have been Shelburne's plan to avoid the preliminary
concession of independence, hoping to retain some form of connection
between America and England, or at least to use independence as a
make-weight in the negotiations. Hence Oswald, his agent, was not
commissioned to deal with the United States as such. Fox, Secretary
for Foreign Affairs, felt, on the other hand, that the negotiation
belonged to his field, and he sent Thomas Grenville to Paris,
authorized to deal with France {120} and, indirectly, with the United
States. Over this difference in the Cabinet, and over other matters,
an acute personal rivalry developed between Fox and Shelburne, which
culminated when Rockingham died in July, 1782. George III, who much
preferred Shelburne to Fox, asked him to form a Ministry, and upon his
acceptance Fox, absolutely refusing to serve under him, withdrew from
the Cabinet, carrying his friends with him. Thus the triumphant Whig
party was split within a few months after its victory. The whole
responsibility now rested on Shelburne.
Meanwhile, a new situation had developed in Paris, for Jay and Adams,
the other two commissioners, had brought about a change in the American
policy. Franklin, deeply indebted to the French court and on the best
of terms with Vergennes, was willing to credit him with good intentions
and was ready to accept his advice to negotiate with England under the
vague terms of Oswald's commission; but Jay, who had had a mortifying
experience in Spain, suspected treachery and insisted that England
must, in opening negotiations, fully recognize American independence.
He was sure that Spain would gladly see the United States shut in to
the Atlantic coast away from Spanish territory, and he felt certain
{121} that Vergennes was under Spanish influence. Adams, who knew
nothing of Spain, but distrusted the French on general principles,
sided with Jay; and Franklin, submitting to his colleagues, agreed to a
curious diplomatic manoeuvre. Jay sent to Shelburne a secret message,
urging him to deal separately with the United States under a proper
commission and not seek to play into the hands of Spain and France. He
knew that a French emissary had visited Shelburne, and he dreaded
French double-dealing, especially on the question of boundaries and
fishery rights.
The British Prime Minister was in the odd position of being appealed to
by one of the three hostile powers to save it from the other two; but
underlying the situation was the fact that Shelburne, as a Whig since
the beginning of the American quarrel, was committed to a friendly
policy toward America. He knew, moreover, that when Parliament should
meet he must expect trouble from Fox and the dissatisfied Whigs, as
well as the Tories, and he was anxious to secure a treaty as soon as
possible. So yielding, on September 27, he gave Oswald the required
commission, but, suspecting that he was rather too complaisant, sent
Henry Strachey to assist him. During the summer, Franklin and Oswald,
in informal {122} discussions, had already eliminated various matters,
so that when negotiations formally opened it took not over five weeks
to agree upon a draft treaty.
During all this time the Americans violated their instructions by
failing to consult Vergennes. Here Franklin was again overruled by Jay
and Adams, whose antipathy to French and Spanish influence was
insuperable. It does not appear that Vergennes had any definite
intention to work against American boundaries or fishery rights; but
there can be no doubt that Rayneval and Marbois, two of his agents,
committed themselves openly in a sense unfavourable to American claims,
and it is likely that, had the negotiations taken place under his
control, the outcome would have been delayed in every way in order to
allow France to keep its contract with Spain, whose attacks on
Gibraltar were pushed all through the summer. As it was, the
negotiators managed to agree on a treaty of peace which reflected the
Whig principles of Shelburne and the skill and pertinacity of the three
Americans. Little trouble was encountered over boundaries, Shelburne
ceding everything east of the Mississippi and north of Florida, and
designating as a boundary between the United States and Canada in part
the same line as that in the Proclamation of 1763, from the {123} St.
Croix River to the eastward of Maine, to the Great Lakes and thence
westward by a system of waterways to the headwaters of the Mississippi.
At the especial urgence of Adams, whose Massachusetts constituents drew
much of their wealth from the Newfoundland fisheries, the right of
continuing this pursuit was comprised in the treaty, together with the
right to land and dry fish on unoccupied territories in Labrador and
Nova Scotia. As a possible make-weight, the navigation of the
Mississippi was guaranteed to citizens of both the United States and
Great Britain.
The chief difficulty arose over the question of the treatment of
American loyalists and the payment of British debts which had been
confiscated in every colony. Shelburne insisted that there must be
restoration of civil rights, compensation for damages, and a pledge
against any future confiscations or disfranchisements for loyalists,
and also demanded a provision for the payment of all debts due to
British creditors. Here the negotiation hung in a long deadlock, for
Franklin, Adams, and Jay were unanimously determined to concede no
compensation for individuals whom they hated as traitors; while the
British negotiators felt bound in honour not to abandon the men who had
lost all and suffered every indignity and {124} humiliation as a
penalty for their loyalty. At length, progress was made when Adams
suggested that the question of British debts be separated from that of
Tory compensation; so a clause was agreed upon guaranteeing the full
payment of bona fide debts heretofore contracted.
Finally, after Franklin had raised a counter-claim for damages due to
what he called the "inhuman burnings" of the British raids since 1778,
it was agreed to insert a clause against any future confiscations or
prosecutions of loyalists and to add that Congress should "earnestly
recommend" to the States the restoration of loyalists' estates and the
repealing of all laws against them. At the time the commissioners drew
up this article, they must have known that the Congress of the United
States had no power to enforce the treaty, and that any such
recommendations, however "earnest," would carry no weight with the
thirteen communities controlled by embittered rebels, who remembered
every Tory, alive or dead, with execration. Nevertheless, it offered a
way of escape, and the British representative signed, on November 30,
1782. The great contest was at an end.
When Franklin revealed to Vergennes that, unknown to the French court,
the American commissioners had agreed on a {125} draft treaty, the
French minister was somewhat indignant at the trick, and communicated
his displeasure to his agent in America. This induced the easily
worried Congress to instruct Livingston, the Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, to write a letter censuring the commissioners; but, although
Jay and Adams were hotly indignant at such servility, the matter ended
then and there. Vergennes's displeasure was momentary, and the French
policy continued as before. The European war was, in fact, wearing to
its end. Already, in April, 1782, Admiral Rodney had inflicted a sharp
defeat on De Grasse, capturing five of his vessels, including the
flagship with the admiral himself. This, together with the extreme
inefficiency of the Spanish fleet, put an end to the hope of further
French gains in the West Indies. Before Gibraltar, also, the allied
fleet of forty-eight vessels did not dare to risk a general engagement
with a British relieving fleet of thirty, and when in September, 1782,
a final bombardment was attempted, the batteries from the fort proved
too strong for their assailants. The allies felt that they had
accomplished all they could hope to, and agreed to terms of peace on
January 20, 1783. France gained little beyond sundry West India
Islands, but Spain profited to the extent of {126} regaining Minorca
and also Florida. It was at best a defeat for England, and the Whig
Ministry, which carried it through, was unable to prevent such an
outcome.
The American peace was made the pretext for Shelburne's fall, since a
coalition of dissatisfied Whigs and Tories united in March, 1783, to
censure it, thereby turning out the Ministry. But, although Fox
regained control of diplomatic matters and made some slight moves
toward reopening negotiations, he had no serious intention of
disturbing Shelburne's work, and the provisional treaty was made
definitive on September 3, 1783--the day on which the French treaty was
signed. Thus the Americans technically kept to the terms of their
alliance with France in agreeing not to make a separate peace, but as a
matter of fact hostilities had entirely ceased in America since
January, 1783, and practically since the fall of the North Ministry.
The British had remained quietly in New York and Charleston,
withdrawing from all other points, and Washington with his small army
stood at Newburg-on-the-Hudson. In October, 1783, the last British
withdrew, taking with them into exile thousands of Tories who did not
dare to remain to test the value of the clauses in the treaty of peace
intended to protect them. So the last traces of the long contest
disappeared, {127} and the United States entered upon its career.
The treaty, as must have been foreseen by the commissioners themselves,
remained a dead letter so far as the Tories were concerned. Congress
performed its part and gave the promised recommendation, but the States
paid no heed. The loyalists were not restored to civil or property
rights. The plain provision of the treaty prohibiting further
legislation against loyalists was defied in several States, and
additional disqualifications were placed upon those who dared to remain
in the country. The provision regarding the payment of debts remained
unfulfilled, since there was no mechanism provided in the treaty
through which the article could be enforced. Only from the British
government could the Tories receive any recompense for their
sufferings, and there they were in part relieved. Very many received
grants of land in Canada, where they formed a considerable part of the
population in several districts. More went to New Brunswick and Nova
Scotia to receive similar grants. Others spent their days in England
as unhappy pensioners, forgotten victims of a war which all Englishmen
sought to bury in oblivion. Those who remained in the United States
ultimately regained standing and fared better than the exiles, but not
until new {128} domestic issues had arisen to obliterate the memory of
revolutionary antagonisms.
With the Treaty of 1782, the mother country and the former colonies
definitely started on separate paths, recognizing the fundamental
differences which for fifty years had made harmonious co-operation
impossible. England remained as before, aristocratic in social
structure, oligarchic in government, military and naval in temper--a
land of strongly fixed standards of religious and political life, a
country where society looked to a narrow circle for leadership. Its
commercial and economic ideals, unaltered by defeat, persisted to guide
national policy in peace and war for two more generations. The sole
result of the war for England was to render impossible in future any
such perversion of Cabinet government as that which George III, by
intimidation, fraud, and political management, had succeeded for a
decade in establishing. Never again would the country tolerate royal
dictation of policies and leaders. England became what it had been
before 1770, a country where parliamentary groups and leaders bore the
responsibility and gained the glory or discredit, while the outside
public approved or protested without seeking in any other manner to
control the destinies of the State. While the English thus sullenly
fell back into their {129} accustomed habits, the former Colonies, now
relieved from the old-time subordination, were turned adrift to solve
problems of a wholly different sort.
CHAPTER VII
THE FORMATION OF THE UNITED STATES, 1781-1798
The British colonists, who assumed independent legal existence with the
adoption of Articles of Confederation in 1781, had managed to carry
through a revolution and emerge into the light of peace. They were now
required to learn, in the hard school of experience, those necessary
facts of government which they had hitherto ignored, and which, even in
the agonies of civil war, they had refused to recognize.
Probably with three-quarters of the American people, the prevailing
political sentiment was that of aversion to any governmental control,
coupled with a deep-rooted jealousy and distrust of all officials, even
those chosen by and dependent upon themselves. Their political ideals
contemplated {130} the government of each colony chiefly by the elected
representatives of the voters, who should meet annually to legislate
and tax, and then, having defined the duties of the few permanent
officers in such a way as to leave them little or no discretion, should
dissolve, leaving the community to run itself until the next annual
session. Authority of any kind was to them an object of traditional
dread, even when exercised by their own agents. The early State
constitutions concentrated all power in the legislature, leaving the
executive and judicial officials little to do but execute the laws.
The only discretionary powers enjoyed by governors were in connection
with military affairs.
In establishing the Articles of Confederation the statesmen of the
Continental Congress had no intention of creating in any sense a
governing body. All that the Congress could do was to decide upon war
and peace, make treaties, decide upon a common military establishment,
and determine the sums to be contributed to the common treasury. These
matters, moreover, called for an affirmative vote of nine States in
each case. There was no federal executive or judiciary, nor any
provision for enforcing the votes of the Congress. To carry out any
single thing committed by the Articles to the Congress, and duly voted,
required the {131} positive co-operation of the State legislatures, who
were under no other compulsion than their sense of what the situation
called for and of what they could afford to do.
Things were, in short, just where the colonists would have been glad to
have them before the Revolution--with the objectionable provincial
executives removed, all coercive authority in the central government
abolished, and the legislatures left to their own absolute discretion.
In other words, the average American farmer or trader of the day felt
that the Revolution had been fought to get rid of all government but
one directly under the control of the individual voters of the States.
Typical of such were men like Samuel Adams of Massachusetts and Patrick
Henry of Virginia. They had learned their politics in the period
before the Revolution, and clung to the old colonial spirit, which
regarded normal politics as essentially defensive and anti-governmental.
On the other hand, there were a good many individuals in the country
who recognized that the triumph of the colonial ideal was responsible
for undeniable disasters. Such men were found, especially, among the
army officers and among those who had tried to aid the cause in
diplomatic or civil office during the Revolution. Experience made them
realize that the practical abolition of all {132} executive authority
and the absence of any real central government had been responsible for
chronic inefficiency. The financial collapse, the lack of any power on
the part of Congress to enforce its laws or resolutions, the visible
danger that State legislatures might consult their own convenience in
supporting the common enterprises or obligations--all these
shortcomings led men like Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Webster, a
pamphleteer of New England, to urge even before 1781 that a genuine
government should be set up to replace the mere league. Their
supporters were, however, few, and confined mainly to those merchants
or capitalists who realized the necessity of general laws and a general
authority. It is scarcely conceivable that the inherited prejudices of
most Americans in favour of local independence could have been
overborne had not the Revolution been followed by a series of public
distresses, which drove to the side of the strong-government
advocates--temporarily, as it proved--a great number of American voters.
When hostilities ended, the people of the United States entered upon a
period of economic confusion. In the first place, trade was
disorganized, since the old West India markets were lost and the
privileges formerly enjoyed under the Navigation Acts were terminated
by the separation of the {133} countries. American shippers could not
at once discover in French or other ports an equivalent for the former
triangular trade. In the second place, British manufacturers and
exporters rushed to recover their American market, and promptly put out
of competition the American industries which had begun to develop
during the war. Specie, plentiful for a few months, now flowed rapidly
out of the country, since American merchants were no longer able to buy
British goods by drawing on West India credits. At the same time, with
the arrival of peace, the State courts resumed their functions, and
general liquidation began; while the State legislatures, in the effort
to adjust war finances, imposed what were felt to be high taxes. The
result was a general complaint of hard times, poverty, and insufficient
money. Some States made efforts to retaliate against Great Britain by
tariffs and navigation laws, but this only damaged their own ports by
driving British Trade to their neighbours'. Congress could afford no
help, since it had no power of commercial regulation.
The effect upon the working of the Confederation showed that a majority
of Americans had learned nothing from all their experiences, for the
State legislatures declined to furnish to the central government any
{134} more money than they felt to be convenient, regardless of the
fact that without their regular support the United States was certain
to become bankrupt. Robert Morris was appointed Financier in 1871, and
took energetic steps to introduce order into the mass of loan
certificates, foreign loans, certificates of indebtedness, and
mountains of paper currency; but one unescapable fact stood in his way,
that the States felt under no obligation to pay their quotas of
expenses. In spite of his urgent appeals, backed by resolutions of
Congress, the government revenues remained too scanty to pay even the
interest on the debt. Morris resigned in disgust in 1784; and his
successors, a committee of Congress, found themselves able to do
nothing more than confess bankruptcy. The people of the States felt
too poor to support their federal government, and, what was more, felt
no responsibility for its fate.
Without revenue, it naturally followed that the Congress of the
Confederation accomplished practically nothing. As will be shown
later, it could secure no treaties of any importance, since its
impotence to enforce them was patent. It managed to disband the
remaining troops with great difficulty and only under the danger of
mutiny, a danger so great that it took all of {135} Washington's
personal influence to prevent an uprising at Newburg in March, 1783.
For the rest, its leaders, men often of high ability--Hamilton,
Madison, King of Massachusetts, Sherman of Connecticut--found
themselves helpless. Naturally they appealed to the States for
additional powers and submitted no less than three amendments: first,
in 1781, a proposal to permit Congress to levy and collect a five per
cent. duty on imports; then, in 1783, a plan by which certain specific
duties were to be collected by State officers and turned over to the
government; and finally, in 1784, a request that Congress be given
power to exclude vessels of nations which would not make commercial
treaties. No one of these succeeded, although the first plan failed of
unanimous acceptance by one State only. The legislatures recognized
the need, but dreaded to give any outside power whatever authority
within their respective boundaries. While those who advocated these
amendments kept reiterating the positive necessity for some means to
avert national disgrace and bankruptcy, their opponents, reverting to
the language of 1775, declared it incompatible with "liberty" that any
authority other than the State's should be exercised in a State's
territory. By 1787, it was clear that any hope of specific amendments
was vain. Unanimity from {136} thirteen legislatures was not to be
looked for.
On the other hand, where the States chose to act they produced
important results. The cessions of western lands, which had been
exacted by Maryland as her price for ratifying the Articles, were
carried out by New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia until
the title to all territory west of Pennsylvania and north of the Ohio
was with the Confederation. Then, although nothing in the Articles
authorized such action, Congress, in 1787, adopted an Ordinance
establishing a plan for settling the new lands. After a period of
provincial government, substantially identical with that of the
colonies, the region was to be divided into States and admitted into
the union, under the terms of an annexed "compact" which prohibited
slavery and guaranteed civil rights. But where the States did not
co-operate, confusion reigned. Legislatures imposed such tariffs as
they saw fit, which led to actual inter-State commercial
discriminations between New York and its neighbours. Connecticut and
Pennsylvania wrangled over land claims. The inhabitants of the
territory west of New Hampshire set up a State government under the
name of Vermont, and successfully maintained themselves against the
State of New York, {137} which had a legal title to the soil, while the
frontier settlers in North Carolina were prevented only by inferior
numbers from carrying through a similar secession.
Finally, in the years 1785-7, the number of those who found the
unrestrained self-government of the separate States another name for
anarchy was enormously increased by a sudden craze for paper money,
"tender" laws, and "stay" laws which swept the country. The poorer
classes, especially the farmers, denounced the courts as agents of the
rich, clamoured for more money to permit the easy payment of
obligations, and succeeded in compelling more than half of the States
to pass laws hindering the collection of debts and emitting bills of
credit, which promptly depreciated. Worse remained. In New Hampshire,
armed bands tried to intimidate the legislature; and in Massachusetts
the rejection of such laws brought on actual insurrection. Farmers
assembled under arms, courts were broken up, and a sharp little civil
war, known as Shays' Rebellion, was necessary before the State
government could re-establish order.
In these circumstances, a sudden strong reaction against mob rule and
untrammelled democracy ran through the country, swinging all men of
property and law-abiding habits powerfully in favour of the demand
{138} for a new, genuinely authoritative, national government, able to
compel peace and good order. So the leaders of the reform party
struck; and at a meeting of Annapolis in October, 1786, summoned
originally to discuss the problem of navigating the Potomac River, they
issued a call for a convention of delegates from all the States to meet
at Philadelphia in May, 1787, for the purpose of recommending
provisions "intended to render the federal government adequate to the
exigencies of the Union." This movement, reversing the current of
American history, gained impetus in the winter of 1787. Congress
seconded the call; and, after Virginia had shown the way by nominating
its foremost men as delegates, the other States fell into line and sent
representatives--all but Rhode Island, which was the scene of an orgy
of paper-money tyranny, and would take no part in any such meeting.
Of the fifty-five men present at the Philadelphia convention, not more
than half-a-dozen were of the old colonial type, which clung to
individual State independence as the palladium of liberty. All the
others felt that the time had come to lay the most thoroughgoing
limitations upon the States, with the express purpose of preventing any
future repetition of the existing inter-State wrangles, and especially
of the financial {139} abuses of the time; and they were ready to gain
this end by entrusting large powers to the central government. They
divided sharply, however, on one important point, namely, whether the
increased powers were to be exercised by a government similar to the
existing one, or by something wholly new and far more centralized; and
over this question the convention ran grave danger of breaking up.
Discussion began in June, 1787, behind closed doors, with a draft plan
agreed upon by the Virginia members as the working project. This was a
bold scheme, calling for the creation of a single great State, relying
on the people for its authority, superior to the existing States, and
able, if necessary, to coerce them; in reality, a fusion of the United
States into a single commonwealth. In opposition to this, the
representatives of the smaller States--Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland
and Connecticut--aided by the conservative members from New York,
announced that they would never consent to any plan which did not
safeguard the individuality and equality of their States; and, although
the Virginia plan commanded a majority of those present, its supporters
were obliged to permit a compromise in order to prevent an angry
dissolution of the convention. In keeping with a suggestion of the
{140} Connecticut members, it was agreed that one House of the proposed
legislature should contain an equal representation of the States, while
the other should be based on population.
The adoption of this compromise put an end to the danger of disruption,
for all but a few irreconcilables were now ready to co-operate; and in
the course of a laborious session a final draft was hammered out, with
patchings, changes, and additional compromises to safeguard the
interests of the plantation States in the institution of slavery.
When the convention adjourned, it placed before the people of America a
document which was a novelty in the field of government. In part, it
aimed to establish a great State, on the model of the American States,
which in turn derived their features from the colonial governments. It
had a Congress of two Houses, an executive with independent powers, and
a judiciary authorized to enforce the laws of the United States.
Congress was given full and exclusive power over commerce, currency,
war and peace, and a long list of enumerated activities involving
inter-State questions, and was authorized to pass all laws necessary
and proper to the carrying out of any of the powers named in the
constitution. Further, the constitution, the federal laws, and
treaties were declared to be the supreme {141} law of the land,
anything in a State law or constitution notwithstanding. In addition,
the States were expressly forbidden to enter the fields reserved to the
federal government, and were prohibited from infringing the rights of
property. On the other hand, the new government could not exist
without the co-operation of the States in providing for the election of
electors,--to choose a president--of senators, and of congressmen. It
was a new creation, a federal State.
There now followed a sharp and decisive contest to gain the necessary
ratification by nine commonwealths. At first, the advocates of strong
government, by a rapid campaign, secured the favourable votes of
half-a-dozen States in quick succession; but when it came the turn of
New York, Massachusetts, and Virginia, the conservative, localistic
instincts of the farmers and older people were roused to make a
strenuous resistance. The "Federalists," as the advocates of the new
government termed themselves, had to meet charges that the proposed
scheme would crush the liberties of the State, reduce them to ciphers,
and set up an imitation of the British monarchy. But, by the eager
urging of the foremost lawyers and most influential men of the day, the
tide was turned and ratification carried, although with the utmost
difficulty, and usually with {142} the recommendation of amendments to
perfect the constitution. In June, 1788, the contest ended; and,
although Rhode Island and North Carolina remained unreconciled, the
other eleven States proceeded to set up the new government.
In the winter of 1789, in accordance with a vote of the Congress of the
Confederation, the States chose electors and senators, and the people
voted for representatives. But one possible candidate existed for the
presidency, namely, the hero of the Revolutionary War; and accordingly
Washington received the unanimous vote of the whole electoral college.
With him, John Adams was chosen vice-president, by a much smaller
majority. The Congress, which slowly assembled, was finally able to
count and declare the votes, the two officers were inaugurated, and the
new government was ready to assume its functions.
There followed a period of rapid and fundamental legislation. In the
new Congress were a body of able men, by far the greater number of them
zealous to establish a strong authoritative government, and to complete
the victory of the Federalists. The defeated States' Rights men now
stood aside, watching their conquerors carry their plan to its
conclusion. Led for the most part by James Madison of the House, {143}
Congress passed Acts creating executive departments with federal
officials; establishing a full independent federal judiciary, resident
in every State, with a supreme court above all; imposing a tariff for
revenue and for protection to American industries, and appropriating
money to settle the debts of the late confederation. In addition, it
framed and submitted to the States a series of constitutional
amendments whose object was to meet Anti-federalist criticisms by
securing the individual against oppression from the federal government.
When Congress adjourned in September, 1789, after its first session, it
had completed a thoroughgoing political revolution. In place of a
loose league of entirely independent States, there now existed a
genuine national government, able to enforce its will upon individuals
and to perform all the functions of any State.
That the American people, with their political inheritance, should have
consented even by a small majority to abandon their traditional lax
government, remains one of the most remarkable political decisions in
history. It depended upon the concurrence of circumstances which, for
the moment, forced all persons of property and law-abiding instincts to
join together in all the States to remedy an intolerable situation.
{144} The leaders, as might be expected, were a different race of
statesmen, on the whole, from those who had directed events prior to
1776. Washington and Franklin favoured the change; but Richard Henry
Lee and Patrick Henry were eager opponents, Samuel Adams was
unfriendly, and Thomas Jefferson, in Paris, was unenthusiastic. The
main work was done by Hamilton, Madison, John Marshall, Gouverneur
Morris, Fisher Ames--men who were children in the days of the Stamp
Act. The old agitators and revolutionists were superseded by a new
type of politicians, whose interests lay in government, not opposition.
But the fundamental American instincts were not in reality changed;
they had only ebbed for the moment. No sooner did Congress meet in its
second session in January, 1790, and undertake the task of reorganizing
the chaotic finances of the country, than political unanimity vanished,
and new sectional and class antagonisms came rapidly to the front in
which could be traced the return of the old-time colonial habits. The
central figure was no longer Madison, but Hamilton, Secretary of the
Treasury, who aspired to be a second William Pitt, and submitted an
elaborate scheme for refunding the entire American debt. In addition,
he called for an excise tax, and {145} later recommended the chartering
of a National Bank to serve the same function in America that the Bank
of England performed in Great Britain.
Daring, far-sighted, based on the methods of English financiers,
Hamilton's plans bristled with points certain to arouse antagonism. He
proposed to refund and pay the debt at its face value to actual
holders, regardless of the fact that the nearly worthless federal stock
and certificates of indebtedness had fallen into the hands of
speculators; he recommended that the United States should assume, fund,
and pay the war debt of the States, disregarding the fact that, while
some States were heavily burdened, others had discharged their
obligations. He urged an excise tax on liquors, although such an
internal tax was an innovation in America and was certain to stir
intense opposition; he suggested the chartering of a powerful bank, in
spite of the absence of any clause in the constitution authorizing such
action. Hamilton was, in fact, a great admirer of the English
constitution and political system, and he definitely intended to
strengthen the new government by making it the supreme financial power
and enlisting in its support all the moneyed interests of the country.
Property, as in England, must be the basis of government.
{146}
Against his schemes, there immediately developed a rising opposition
which made itself felt in Congress, in State legislatures, in the
newspapers, and finally in Washington's own Cabinet. All the farmer
and debtor elements in the country disliked and dreaded the financial
manipulations of the brilliant secretary; and the Virginian planters,
universally borrowers, who had been the strongest single power in
establishing the new constitution, now swung into opposition to the
administration. Madison led the fight in the House against Hamilton's
measures; and Jefferson, in the Cabinet, laid down, in a memorandum of
protest against the proposed bank, the doctrine of "strict
construction" of the constitution according to which the powers granted
to the federal government ought to be narrowly construed in order to
preserve the State governments, the source of liberty, from
encroachment. He denounced the bank, accordingly, as unwarranted by
the constitution, corrupt, and dangerous to the safety of the country.
In the congressional contest Hamilton was successful, for all his
recommendations were adopted, but at the cost of creating a lasting
antagonism in the southern States and in the western regions.
In 1791, Jefferson and Madison co-operated to establish a newspaper at
Philadelphia whose sole occupation consisted in denouncing {147} the
corrupt and monarchical Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton retorted
by publishing letters charging Jefferson with responsibility for it;
and Washington, who steadily approved Hamilton's policies, found his
Cabinet splitting into two factions. By the year 1792, when the second
presidential election took place, the opposition, styling itself
"Republican," was sufficiently well organized to run George Clinton,
formerly the Anti-federalist leader of New York, for the
Vice-Presidency against the "monarchical" Adams. Washington was not
opposed, but no other one of the Hamiltonian supporters escaped attack.
There was, in short, the beginning of the definite formation of
political parties on lines akin to those which existed in the period
before 1787. Behind Jefferson and Madison were rallying all the
colonial-minded voters, to whom government was at best an evil and to
whom, under any circumstances, strong authority and elaborate finance
were utterly abhorrent. Around Hamilton gathered the men whose
interests lay in building up a genuine, powerful, national
government--the merchants, shipowners, moneyed men and creditors
generally in the northern States--and, of course, all Tories.
Up to 1793, the Federalist administration successfully maintained its
ground; and, when {148} the Virginian group tried in the House to prove
laxity and mismanagement against Hamilton, he was triumphantly
vindicated. Had the United States been allowed to develop in
tranquillity and prosperity for a generation, it is not unlikely that
the Federalist party might have struck its roots so deeply as to be
impervious to attacks. But it needed time, for in contrast to the
Jeffersonian party, whose origin is manifestly in the old-time colonial
political habits of democracy, local independence, and love of lax
finance, the Federalist party was a new creation, with no traditions to
fall back upon. Reflecting in some respects British views, notably in
its distrust of the masses and its respect for property and wealth, it
far surpassed any English party of the period, except the small group
led by William Pitt, in its demand for progressive and vigorous
legislation. In 1793, when matters were in this situation, the state
of European and British politics suddenly brought the United States
into the current of world politics, and subjected the new
administration to difficulties, which were ultimately to cause its
downfall.
{149}
CHAPTER VIII
THE FIRST PERIOD OF COMMERCIAL ANTAGONISM, 1783-1795
While the United States had been undergoing the important changes of
the period, 1783-1793, England had passed through an almost equally
significant political transformation, in course of which the two
countries entered upon a long history of difficult and unfriendly
diplomatic relations. The treaty of peace ended the political union of
the two communities, but it left the nature of their commercial
relations to be settled; and this, for the United States, was a problem
second only in importance to that of federal government. If the
prosperity of the thirteen States was to be restored, the old-time
trade routes of the colonial days must be re-established. The West
India market for fish, grain, and lumber, the British or European
market for plantation products must be replaced on a profitable basis,
and the United States must be prepared to purchase these privileges by
whatever concessions lay in its power to grant. It rested chiefly with
England to decide whether to permit the former colonies to resume their
earlier commercial system or begin a new policy, for it was with
Britain and the British colonies {150} that seven-eighths of American
commerce naturally was carried on.
Unfortunately for the people of the United States, and unfortunately
for the harmony of the two countries, the prevailing beliefs of English
merchants, shipowners, naval authorities, and, in general, the official
classes were such as to render a complete resumption of the former
trade relations almost impossible. According to the political and
economic doctrines underlying the Acts of Trade, the moment that the
two countries became separated their interests automatically became
antagonistic. American shipping, formerly fostered when under the
flag, now assumed the aspect of a formidable rival to the British
merchant marine and, as such, ought to be prevented from taking any
profit which by any device could be turned toward British ships.
The treaty of peace had scarcely been signed when there appeared a
pamphlet by Lord Sheffield, early in 1783, which won instant success,
passing through several editions. This announced that henceforward it
was the duty of the British government to discourage and crush American
navigation to the extent of its power in order to check a dangerous
rival, taking especial care to reserve the West Indies for exclusive
British control. At the possibility of losing the {151} profitable
American market through retaliatory measures, Sheffield laughed in
scorn. "We might as reasonably dread the effect of combinations among
the German as among the American States," he sneered, "and deprecate
the resolves of the Diet as those of Congress." There were elements,
of course, to whom these arguments of Sheffield were unwelcome,
particularly the West India planters themselves, and to a degree the
British manufacturers, who would gladly have resumed the trade of the
years before 1776; but, so far as the great majority of Englishmen was
concerned, it seems impossible to doubt that Lord Sheffield was a true
spokesman of their convictions.
In addition to the economic theories of the time, the temper of the
British people was sullen, hostile, and contemptuous toward the former
colonies. The bulk of the nation had come to condemn the policy of the
North Ministry which had led to the loss of the plantations, but they
did not love the Americans any the more for that. The sharp social
distinctions, which prior to 1776 had rendered the nobility, the
gentry, the clergy, and the professions contemptuous toward the
colonists, still reigned unchecked; and the Tories and most of the
ruling classes, regarding the Americans as a set of ungrateful and
spiteful people, whom it was well {152} to have lost as subjects,
ceased to take any interest in their existence. The United States was
dropped, as an unpleasant subject is banished from conversation; and
the relations of the two countries became a matter of national concern
only when the interests of shipowners, merchants, or naval authorities
were sufficiently strong to compel attention from the governing classes.
The Whig leaders should, of course, be excepted from this general
statement, for they and their followers--both their parliamentary
coterie and their middle-class adherents outside--retained a friendly
attitude, and tried to treat the United States with a consideration
which usually had no place in Tory manners. But Whigs as well as
Tories held the prevailing conceptions of naval and economic
necessities, and only scattered individuals, like William Pitt, were
affected by the new doctrines of Adam Smith. Their commercial policy
tended to differ only in degree from that of the more rigid Tories.
To make it certain that the United States should fail to secure
favourable commercial rights, the ascendancy of the Whigs came to a
sudden end within a year from its beginning. The Shelburne Ministry,
which made the peace, had to meet the opposition not only of the Tories
but of the group led by Fox. In the session of 1783, the Whig party
{153} was thus openly split, and presently all England was scandalized
to see Fox enter into a coalition with no less a person than Lord North
for the purpose of obtaining office. Shelburne resigned on February
24, after the passage of a resolution of censure on the Peace; and
George III, after trying every expedient to avoid what he considered a
personal disgrace, was forced, on April 2, to admit Fox and North as
Ministers under the nominal headship of the Duke of Portland. So
Tories were restored to a share in the government, since nearly half of
the coalition majority depended upon Tory votes. In December, 1783,
the King, by a direct exercise of his influence, caused the Lords to
throw out a Ministerial bill for the government of India and,
dismissing the coalition Ministers, he appealed to William Pitt. That
youthful politician, who had first entered office as Chancellor of the
Exchequer under Shelburne, succeeded, after a sharp parliamentary
contest, in breaking down the opposition majority in the House, and in
a general election in March, 1784, won a great victory. Then, at the
head of a mixed Cabinet, supported by Tories and King's Friends as well
as by his own followers from among the Whigs, Pitt maintained himself,
secure in the support of George III, but in no sense his agent or tool.
In the {154} next few years, he made his hold secure by his skill in
parliamentary leadership and his success in carrying financial and
administrative reforms. This was the first peace Ministry since that
of Pelham, 1746-1754, which won prestige through efficient government.
It was, however, mainly Tory in temper, and as such distinctly cold and
unfriendly toward America. Pitt himself was undoubtedly in favour of
liberal commercial relations; but in that respect, as in the question
of parliamentary reform, he followed the opinions of his supporters and
of the nation.
The British policy toward the United States, under the circumstances,
was dictated by a strict adherence to the principles set forth by Lord
Sheffield. Pitt, while Chancellor of the Exchequer under Shelburne,
introduced a very liberal Bill, which, if enacted, would have secured
full commercial reciprocity, including the West India trade. This
failed to pass, however, and was abandoned when Pitt left office in
April, 1783. The Fox-North Ministry followed a different plan by
causing Parliament to pass a Bill authorizing the Crown to regulate the
trade with the West Indies. They then, by proclamation, allowed the
islands to import certain articles from the United States, not
including fish or lumber, and {155} only in British bottoms. It was
hoped that Canada would take the place of the United States in
supplying the West India colonies, and that British vessels would
monopolize the carrying. In 1787 this action was ratified by
Parliament, and the process of discouraging American shipping was
adopted as a national policy. American vessels henceforward came under
the terms of the Navigation Acts, and could take part only in the
direct trade between their own country and England. When John Adams,
in 1785, arrived at London as Minister, and tried to open the subject
of a commercial treaty, he was unable to secure the slightest attention
to the American requests and felt himself to be in an atmosphere of
hostility and social contempt. The British policy proved in a few
years fairly successful. It reduced American shipping trading with
England, it drove American vessels from the British West Indies, and,
owing to the impossibility of the States retaliating separately, it did
not diminish the British market in America. Up to 1789, when the first
Congress of the United States passed a navigation act and adopted
discriminating duties, America remained commercially helpless. The
profit went to British shipowners and merchants.
The American government naturally {156} turned to the other powers
having American possessions, France and Spain, hoping to secure from
them compensating advantages. So far as France was concerned, the
government of Louis XVI was friendly; but its finances were in such
confusion and its administration so unsteady after 1783 that Jefferson,
Minister to France, could secure no important concessions save one. In
1784, as though to step into the place left vacant by the English, the
French crown, by royal order, permitted direct trade between the United
States and the French West Indies in vessels of less than sixty tons
burden. The result was striking. In a few years the American molasses
trade, driven from the British islands, took refuge at San Domingo,
building up a tremendous sugar export and more than filling the place
of the British trade. In 1790 the commerce of San Domingo surpassed
that of all the British Islands together. Here again, French
friendship shone in contrast to English antagonism. Every American
shipowner felt the difference, and remembered it.
With Spain the United States was less successful. Jay, Secretary for
Foreign Affairs, undertook negotiations through Diego Gardoqui, a
Spaniard who, during the Revolution, had furnished many cargoes of
supplies. He {157} found that country sharply dissatisfied over the
boundary assigned to the United States. The British, in ceding Florida
to Spain, had not turned over all of their province of 1763, but had
handed that part of it north of thirty-two degrees to the United
States, and, further, had granted the latter the free navigation of the
Mississippi, through Spanish territory. Gardoqui offered in substance
to make a commercial treaty provided the United States would surrender
the claim to navigate the Mississippi for twenty years. Jay, to whose
mind the interests of the seaboard shipowners and producers far
outweighed the desires of the few settlers of the interior waters, was
willing to make the agreement. But an angry protest went up from the
southern States, whose land claims stretched to the Mississippi, and he
could secure, in 1787, a vote of only seven States to five in Congress.
Since all treaties required the consent of nine States, this vote
killed the negotiations. Spain remained unfriendly, and continued to
intrigue with the Indian tribes in the south-western United States with
a view to retaining their support.
Further north, the United States found itself mortified and helpless
before British antagonism. After 1783 the country had Canada on its
northern border as a small but actively hostile neighbour, for there
{158} thousands of proscribed and ruined Tories had taken refuge. The
governors of Canada, Carlton and Simcoe, as well as the men commanding
the frontier posts, had served against the Americans and regarded them
as rivals. To secure the western fur trade and to retain a hold over
the western Indians was recognized as the correct and necessary policy
for Canada; and the British government, in response to Canadian
suggestions, decided to retain their military posts along the Great
Lakes within the boundaries of the United States. To justify them in
so doing, they pointed with unanswerable truth to the fact that the
United States had not carried out the provisions of the Treaty of 1783
regarding British debts, and that Tories, contrary to the letter and
spirit of that treaty, were still proscribed by law. The State courts
felt in no way bound to enforce the treaty, nor did State legislatures
choose to carry it out. British debts remained uncollectible, and the
British therefore retained their western posts and through them plied a
lucrative trade with the Indians to the south of the Great Lakes.
In the years after the war, a steady flow of settlers entered the Ohio
valley, resuming the movement begun before the Revolution, and took up
land in Kentucky and the Northwest territory. By 1792 Kentucky {159}
was ready to be admitted as a State, and Tennessee and Ohio were
organized as territories. These settlers naturally found the Indians
opposing their advance, and the years 1783-1794 are a chronicle of
smouldering border warfare, broken by intermittent truces. During all
this time it was the firm belief of the frontiersmen that the Indian
hostility was stimulated by the British posts, and hatred of England
and the English grew into an article of faith on their part.
Ultimately, the new government under Washington undertook a decisive
campaign. At first, in 1791, General St. Clair, invading Ohio with raw
troops, was fearfully defeated, with butchery and mutilation of more
than two-thirds of his force; but in 1794 General Wayne, with a more
carefully drilled body, compelled the Indians to retreat. Yet with the
British posts still there, a full control was impossible.
The new constitution, which gave the United States ample powers of
enforcing treaties and making commercial discriminations, did not at
once produce any alteration in the existing unsatisfactory situation.
Spain remained steadily indifferent and unfriendly. France, undergoing
the earlier stages of her own revolution, was incapable of carrying out
any consistent action. The Pitt Ministry, absorbed in the game of
European politics and in internal {160} legislation, sent a Minister,
Hammond, but was content to let its commercial and frontier policies
continue. But when, in 1792, the French Revolution took a graver
character, with the overthrow of the monarchy, and when in 1793 England
joined the European powers in the war against France, while all Europe
watched with horror and panic the progress of the Reign of Terror in
the French Republic, the situation of the United States was suddenly
changed.
In the spring of 1793 there came the news of the war between England
and France, and, following it by a few days only, an emissary from the
French Republic, One and Indivisible, "Citizen Edmond Genet," arrived
at Charleston, South Carolina, April 15. There now exploded a sudden
overwhelming outburst of sympathy and enthusiasm for the French nation
and the French cause. All the remembered help of the days of Yorktown,
all the tradition of British oppression and ravages, all the recent
irritation at the British trade discrimination and Indian policy
coupled with appreciation of French concessions, swept crowds in every
State and every town into a tempest of welcome to Genet. Shipowners
rushed to apply for privateers' commissions, crowds adopted French
democratic jargon and manners. Democratic clubs were formed on the
model of the Jacobin {161} society, and "Civic Feasts," at which Genet
was present, made the country resound. It looked as though the United
States were certain to enter the European war as an ally of France out
of sheer gratitude, democratic sympathy, and hatred for England. The
French Minister, feeling the people behind him, hastened to send out
privateers and acted as though the United States were already in open
alliance.
It now fell to the Washington administration to decide a momentous
question. Regardless of the past, regardless of the British policy
since the peace, was it worth while to allow the country to become
involved in war at this juncture? Decidedly not. Before Genet had
presented his credentials, Washington and Jefferson had framed and
issued a declaration of neutrality forbidding American citizens to
violate the law of nations by giving aid to either side. It was not
merely caution which led to this step. The Federalist leaders and most
of their followers--men of property, standing, and law-abiding
habits--were distinctly shocked at the horrors of the Reign of Terror,
and felt with Burke, their old friend and defender in Revolutionary
days, that such liberty as the French demanded was something altogether
alien to that known in the United States or in England. And as the
{162} news became more and more ghastly, the Federalists grew rapidly
to regard England, with all its unfriendliness, with all its commercial
selfishness, as the saving power of civilization, and France as the
chief enemy on earth of God and man. The result was to precipitate the
United States into a new contest, a struggle on the part of the
Federalist administration, led by Hamilton and Washington, to hold back
the country from being hurled into alliance with France or into war
with England. In this, they had to meet the attack of the already
organizing Republican party, and of many new adherents who flocked to
it during the years of excitement.
The first contest was a short one. Genet, his head turned by his
reception, resented the strict neutrality enforced by the
administration, tried to compel it to recede, endeavoured to secure the
exit of privateersmen in spite of their prohibition, and ultimately in
fury appealed to the people against their government. This conduct
lost him the support of even the most sanguine democrats, and, when the
administration asked for his recall, he fell from his prominence
unregretted. But his successor, Fauchet, a less extreme man, was
warmly welcomed by the opposition leaders, including Madison and
Randolph, Jefferson's {163} successor as Secretary of State, and was
admitted into the inmost councils of the party.
Hardly was Genet disposed of when a more dangerous crisis arose, caused
by the naval policy of England. When war broke out, the British
cruisers, as was their custom, fell upon French commerce, and
especially upon such neutral commerce as could, under the then
announced principles of international law, be held liable to capture.
Consequently, American vessels, plying their lucrative trade with the
French West Indies, were seized and condemned by British West India
prize courts. It was a British dogma, known as the Rule of 1756, that
if trade by a neutral with enemies' colonies had been prohibited in
peace, it became contraband in time of war, otherwise belligerents, by
simply opening their ports, could employ neutrals to do their trading
for them. In this case, the trade between the French West Indies and
America had not been prohibited in peace, but the seizures were made
none the less, causing a roar of indignation from the entire American
seacoast. Late in 1793, the British Ministry added fresh fuel to the
fire by declaring provisions taken to French territory to be contraband
of war. If an intention to force the United States into alliance with
France had been guiding the {164} Pitt Ministry, no better steps could
have been devised to accomplish the end. As a matter of fact, the Pitt
Ministry thought very little about it in the press of the tremendous
European cataclysm.
When Congress met in December, 1793, the old questions of Hamilton's
measures and the "monarchism" of the administration were forgotten in
the new crisis. Apparently a large majority in the House, led by
Madison, were ready to sequester British debts, declare an embargo,
build a navy, and in general prepare for a bitter contest; but by great
exertions the administration managed to stave off these drastic steps
by promising to send a special diplomatic mission to prevent war.
During the summer the excitement grew, for it was in this year that
Wayne's campaign against the western Indians took place, which was
generally believed to be rendered necessary by the British retention of
the posts; and also in this same summer the inhabitants of western
Pennsylvania broke into insurrection against the hated excise tax.
This lawlessness was attributed by the Federalists, including
Washington himself, to the demoralizing influence of the French
Revolution, and was therefore suppressed by no less than 15,000
militia, an action denounced by the Republicans--as Randolph confided
to the French Minister--as an example of {165} despotic brutality. Men
were fast coming to be incapable of cool thought on party questions.
The special mission to England was undertaken by the Chief Justice,
Jay, the most experienced diplomat in America since the death of
Franklin. Upon arriving in England, he found the country wild with
excitement and horror over the French Revolution, and with all its
interest concentrated upon the effort to carry on war by land and sea.
The Pitt Ministry was now supported by all Tories, representing the
land-holding classes, the clergy, and the professions, and by nearly
all the aristocratic Whigs. Burke, one-time defender of the American
Revolution, was exhausting his energies in eloquent and extravagant
denunciations of the French. Only a handful of radicals, led by Fox,
Sheridan, and Camden, and representing a few constituents, still dared
to proclaim liberal principles. In all other classes of society,
democracy was regarded as synonymous with bestial anarchy and
infidelity. Clearly the United States, from its very nature as a
republic, could hope for no favour, in spite of the noticeably English
prepossessions of Hamilton's party.
Jay dealt directly and informally with William Grenville, the Secretary
for Foreign Affairs, and seems rapidly to have come to {166} the
conclusion that it was for the interest of the United States to get
whatever it could, rather than to endeavour to haggle over details with
an immovable and indifferent Ministry, thereby hazarding all success.
On his part, Grenville clearly did his best to establish a practicable
working arrangement, agreeing with Jay in so framing the treaty as to
waive "principles" and "claims" and to include precise provisions. The
up-shot was that when Jay finished his negotiations he had secured a
treaty which for the first time established a definite basis for
commercial dealings and removed most of the dangerous outstanding
difficulties. British debts were to be adjusted by a mixed commission,
and American claims for unjust seizures in the West Indies were to be
dealt with in similar fashion. The British were to evacuate the
north-western military posts, and, while they did not withdraw or
modify the so-called "rule of 1756," they agreed to a clear definition
of contraband of war. They were also ready to admit American vessels
of less than seventy tons to the British West Indies, provided the
United States agreed not to export West India products for ten years.
Here Jay, as in his dealings with Gardoqui, showed a willingness to
make a considerable sacrifice in order to gain a definite small point.
On the whole, the treaty {167} comprised all that the Pitt Ministry,
engaged in a desperate war with the French Republic, was likely to
concede.
The treaty left England in the winter of 1795 and reached America after
the adjournment of Congress. Although it fell far short of what was
hoped for, it still seemed to Washington wholly advisable to accept it
under the circumstances as an alternative to further wrangling and
probable war. Sent under seal of secrecy to the Senate, in special
session, its contents were none the less revealed by an opposition
senator, and a tempest of disappointment and anger swept the country.
In every seaport Jay was execrated as a fool and traitor and burned in
effigy. Washington watched unmoved. The Senate voted ratification by
a bare two-thirds, but struck out the West India article, preferring to
retain the power of re-exporting French West India produce rather than
to acquire the direct trade with the English islands. Washington added
his signature, the British government accepted the amendment, and the
treaty came into effect. The West India privilege was, in fact,
granted by the Pitt Ministry, as in the treaty, owing to the demands of
the West India planters. In America the storm blew itself out in a few
weeks of noise and anger, and the country settled down to make the best
of the privileges {168} gained, which, however incomplete, were well
worth the effort.
So the Federalist administration kept the United States neutral, and
gave it at last a definite commercial status with England. It did
more, for in August, 1795, the north-western Indians, beaten in battle
and deprived of the presence of their protectors, made a treaty
abandoning all claims to the region south of Lake Erie. The Spanish
government, on hearing of the Jay treaty, came to terms in October,
1795, agreeing to the boundaries of 1783, granting a "right of deposit"
to American trades down the Mississippi at or near New Orleans, and
promising to abandon Indian intrigues. The diplomatic campaign of the
Federalists seemed to be crowned with general success.
But in the process the passions of the American people had become
deeply stirred, and by the end of 1795 the Federalist party could no
longer, as at the outset, count on the support of all the mercantile
elements and all the townspeople, for, by their policy toward France
and England, Washington, Hamilton, and their associates had set
themselves against the underlying prejudices and beliefs of the voters.
The years of the strong government reaction were at an end. The time
had come to fight for party existence.
{169}
CHAPTER IX
THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1795-1805
With the temporary shelving of British antagonism, the Federalist
administration passed its second great crisis; but it was immediately
called upon to face new and equally serious differences with France
which were ultimately to prove the cause of its downfall. The
fundamental difficulty in the political situation in America was that
the two parties were now so bitterly opposed as to render every
governmental act a test of party strength. The Republicans, who
accepted the leadership of Jefferson or of Clinton of New York,
comprised all who favoured democracy in any sense--whether that of
human equality, or local self-government, or freedom from taxes, or
sympathy with France--and all who had any grievance against the
administration, from frontiersmen whose cabins had not been protected
against Indians or who had been forced to pay a whisky tax, to seamen
whose ships had not been protected by the Jay treaty. In short, all in
whom still persisted the deep-rooted colonial traditions of opposition
to strong government and dislike of any but local authorities were
{170} summoned to oppose an administration on the familiar ground that
it was working against their liberties by corruption, usurpation,
financial burdens, and gross partisanship for England and against
France.
On the other side, the Federalists were rapidly acquiring a state of
mind substantially Tory in character. They were coming to dread and
detest "democracy" as dangerous to the family and to society as well as
to government, and to identify it with the guillotine and the
blasphemies of the Worship of Reason. In the furious attacks which,
after the fashion of the day, the opposition papers hurled against
every act of the Federalist leaders, and which aimed as much to defile
their characters as to discredit their policies, they saw a pit of
anarchy yawning. Between parties so constituted, no alternative
remained but a fight to a finish; and, from the moment the Federalists
became genuinely anti-democratic, they were doomed. Only accident or
conspicuous success on the part of their leaders could delay their
destruction. A single false step on their part meant ruin.
With the ratification of the Jay treaty, a long period of peaceful
relations began between England and the United States. The American
shipowners quickly adapted themselves to the situation, and were soon
{171} prosperously occupied in neutral commerce. In England, American
affairs dropped wholly out of public notice during the exciting and
anxious years of the war of the second coalition. The Pitt Ministry
ended, leaving the country under the grip of a rigid repression of all
liberal thought or utterance, and was followed by the commonplace
Toryism of Addington and his colleagues. Then came the Treaty of
Amiens with France, the year of peace, the renewed war in 1803, and,
after an interval of confused parliamentary wranglings, the return to
power of Pitt in 1804, called by the voice of the nation to meet the
crisis of the threatened French invasion. The United States was
forgotten, diplomatic relations sank to mere routine. Such were the
unquestionable benefits of the execrated treaty made by Jay and
Grenville.
With France, however, American relations became suddenly strained, as a
result of the same treaty. The French Republic, in the year 1795, was
finally reorganized under a definite constitution as a Directorate--a
republic with a plural executive of five. This government, ceasing to
be merely a revolutionary body, undertook to play the game of grand
politics and compelled all the neighbouring smaller States to submit to
democratic revolutions, accept a constitution on the French model, and
become {172} dependent allies of the French Republic. The local
democratic faction, large or small, was in each case utilized to carry
through this programme, which was always accompanied with corruption
and plunder to swell the revenues of France and fill the pockets of the
directors and their agents. Such a policy the Directorate now
endeavoured, as a matter of course, to carry out with the United
States, expecting to ally themselves with the Jeffersonian party and to
bribe or bully the American Republic into a lucrative alliance. The
way was prepared by the infatuation with which Randolph, Jefferson,
Madison, and other Republican leaders had unbosomed themselves to
Fauchet, and also by an unfortunate blunder which had led Washington to
send James Monroe as Minister to France in 1794. This man was known to
be an active sympathizer with France, and it was hoped that his
influence would assist in keeping friendly relations; but his conduct
was calculated to do nothing but harm. When the news of the Jay treaty
came to France, the Directorate chose to regard it as an unfriendly
act, and Monroe, sharing their feelings, exerted himself rather to
mollify their resentment than to justify his country.
In 1796 a new Minister, Adet, was sent to the United States to remain
only in case {173} the government should adopt a just policy toward
France. This precipitated a party contest squarely on the issue of
French relations. In the first place Congress, after a bitter struggle
and by a bare majority, voted to appropriate the money to carry the Jay
treaty into effect. This was a defeat for the French party. In the
second place, in spite of a manifesto issued by Adet, threatening
French displeasure, the presidential electors gave a majority of three
votes for Adams over Jefferson to succeed Washington. The election had
been a sharp party struggle, the whole theory of a deliberate choice by
electors vanishing in the stress of partisan excitement. After this
second defeat, the French Minister withdrew, severing diplomatic
relations; and French vessels began to capture American merchantmen, to
impress the country with the serious results of French irritation. The
Washington administration now recalled Monroe and sent C. C. Pinckney
to replace him, but the Directory, while showering compliments upon
Monroe, refused to receive Pinckney at all and virtually expelled him
from the country. In the midst of these annoying events, Washington's
term closed, and the sorely tried man, disgusted with party abuse and
what he felt to be national ingratitude, retired to his Virginia
estates, no longer {174} the president of the whole country, but the
leader of a faction. His Farewell Address showed, under its stately
phrases, his detestation of party controversy and his fears for the
future.
Washington's successor, Adams, was a man of less calmness and
steadiness of soul; independent, but with a somewhat petulant habit of
mind, and nervously afraid of ceasing to be independent; a man of sound
sense, yet of a too great personal vanity. His treatment of the French
situation showed national pride and dignity as well as an adherence to
the traditional Federalist policy of avoiding war. Unfortunately, his
handling of the party leaders was so deficient in tact as to assist in
bringing quick and final defeat upon himself and upon them.
The relations with France rapidly developed into an international
scandal. Adams, supported by his party, determined to send a mission
of three, including Pinckney, in order to restore friendly relations,
as well as to protest against depredations and seizures which the few
French cruisers at sea were now beginning to make. In the spring of
1798, however, the commission reported that its efforts had failed, and
Adams was obliged to lay its correspondence before Congress. This
showed that the great obstacle in the way of carrying on {175}
negotiations with the French had been the persistent demands on the
part of Talleyrand--the French Minister of Foreign Affairs--for a
preliminary money payment, either under the form of a so-called "loan"
or as a bribe outright. Such a revelation of venality struck dumb the
Republican leaders who had kept asserting their distrust of Adams's
sincerity and accusing the administration of injustice toward France.
It took all heart out of the opposition members of Congress, and
encouraged the Federalists to commit the government to actual
hostilities with the hated Democrats and Jacobins. Declaring the
treaties of 1778 to be abrogated, Congress authorized naval reprisals,
voted money and a loan, and so began what was called a "quasi-war,"
since neither side made a formal declaration. Adams, riding on the
crest of a brief wave of popularity, declared in a message to Congress
that he would never send another Minister to France without receiving
assurances that he would be received as "befitted the representative of
a great, free, powerful, and independent nation." "Millions for
defence, but not a cent for tribute!" became the Federalist watch-word;
and, when the little navy of a few frigates and sloops began to bring
in French men-of-war and privateers as prizes, the country actually
felt a thrill of pride and {176} manhood. For the moment, the United
States stood side by side with England in fighting the dangerous enemy
of civilization. American Federalist and British Tory were at one;
Adams and Pitt were carrying on the same war.
Unfortunately for the Federalists, they failed to appreciate the
fundamental differences between the situation in England and in the
United States, for they went on to imitate the mother country not
merely in fighting the French, but in seeking to suppress what they
felt to be dangerous "Jacobinical" features of American politics. In
the summer of 1798, three laws were enacted which have become
synonymous with party folly. Two--the Alien Acts--authorized the
President at his discretion to imprison or deport any alien, friend or
enemy; the third--the Sedition Act--punished by fine and imprisonment
any utterance or publication tending to cause opposition to a federal
law or to bring into contempt the federal government or any of its
officers. Such statutes had stood in England since 1793 and were used
to suppress democratic assailants of the monarchy; but such a law in
the United States could mean nothing more than the suppression by
Federalist courts of criticisms upon the administration made by
Republican newspapers. {177} It furnished every opposition agitator
with a deadly weapon for use against the administration; and when the
Sedition Law was actually enforced, and a half-dozen Republican editors
were subjected to fine or imprisonment for scurrilous but scarcely
dangerous utterances, the demonstration of the inherently tyrannical
nature of the Federalists seemed to be complete. It was an
unpardonable political blunder.
Equally damaging to the prosperity of the Federalist party was the fact
that the French Republic, instead of accepting the issue, showed a
complete unwillingness to fight, and protested in public that it was
having a war forced upon it. Talleyrand showered upon the United
States, through every channel, official or unofficial, assurances of
kindly feelings, and, so soon as he learned of Adams's demand for a
suitable reception for an American Minister, gave the required
assurance in his exact words. Under the circumstances, the war
preparations of the Federalists became visibly superfluous, especially
a provisional army which Congress had authorized under Hamilton as
active commander. The opposition press and speakers denounced this as
a Federalist army destined to act against the liberties of the people;
and the administration could point to no real danger to justify its
existence.
{178}
So high ran party spirit that the Virginian leaders thought or affected
to think it necessary to prepare for armed resistance to Federalist
oppression; and Madison and Jefferson, acting through the State
legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky respectively, caused the adoption
of two striking series of resolutions stating the crisis in Republican
phraseology. In each case, after denouncing the Alien and Sedition
laws as unconstitutional, the legislatures declared that the
constitution was nothing more than a compact between sovereign States;
that the Federal government, the creature of the compact, was not the
final judge of its powers, and that in case of a palpable usurpation of
powers by the Federal government it was the duty of the States to
"interpose," in the words of Madison, or to "nullify" the Federal law,
as Jefferson phrased it. Such language seemed to Washington, Adams,
and their party to signify that the time was coming when they must
fight for national existence; but to the opposition it seemed no more
than a restatement of time-hallowed American principles of government,
necessary to save liberty from a reactionary faction. Party hatred now
rivalled that between revolutionary Whigs and Tories.
Under these circumstances the election of 1800 took place. The
Federalist party {179} leaders, feeling the ground quaking under them,
clung the more desperately to the continuance of the French "quasi-war"
as their sole means for rallying popular support. But at this stage
President Adams, seeing the folly of perpetuating a sham war for mere
party advantage, determined to reopen negotiations. This precipitated
a bitter quarrel, for the members of his Cabinet and the leading
congressmen still regarded Hamilton, now a private citizen in New York,
as the real leader, and followed him in urging the continuance of
hostilities. Adams, unable to manage his party opponents openly, took
refuge in sudden, secret, and, as they felt, treacherous conduct and
sent nominations for a new French mission without consulting his
advisers. The Federalist Senate, raging at Adams's stupidity, could
not refuse to ratify the appointments, and so in 1799 the new mission
sailed, was respectfully received by Bonaparte, and was promptly
admitted to negotiations.
The Federalist party now ran straight toward defeat; for, while the
leaders could not avoid supporting Adams for a second term, they hated
him as a blunderer and marplot. On his part, his patience exhausted,
Adams dismissed two of his secretaries, in a passion, in 1800. Later,
through the wiles of Aaron Burr, Republican leader in New {180} York, a
pamphlet, written by Hamilton to prove Adams's utter unfitness for the
Presidency, was brought to light and circulated. Against this
discredited and disorganized party, the Republicans, supporting
Jefferson again for the Presidency and thundering against the Sedition
Law, triumphantly carried a clear majority of electoral votes in the
autumn; but by a sheer oversight they gave an equal number for
Jefferson and for Burr, who was only intended for Vice-president.
Hence under the terms of the constitution it became necessary for the
House of Representatives to make the final selection, voting by States.
It fell thus to the lot of the Federalist House of 1800-1801 to choose
the next President, and for a while the members showed an inclination
to support Burr, as at least a Northerner, rather than Jefferson. But
better judgments ruled, and finally Jefferson was awarded the place
which he had in fairness won. The last weeks of Federalist rule was
filled with a discreditable effort to save what was possible from the
wreck. New offices were established, including a whole system of
circuit judgeships; and Adams spent his time up to the last hour of his
term in signing commissions, stealing away in the early morning in
order not to see the inauguration of his rival.
{181}
So fell the Federalist party from power. It had a brilliant record in
legislation and administration; it had created a new United States; it
had shown a statesmanship never equalled before or since on the
American continent; but it ruined itself by endeavouring openly to
establish a system of government founded on distrust of the people, and
modelled after British precedents. For a few years, England and the
United States approached nearer in government and policy than at any
other time. But, while in England a large part of society--the
nobility, gentry, middle classes, the professions, the church, and all
strong political elements--supported Pitt in suppressing free speech
and individual liberty, the Federalists represented only a minority,
and their social principles were abhorrent to the vast majority of the
inhabitants of the United States.
The Republican party, which conquered by what Jefferson considered to
be a revolution no less important than that of 1776, represented a
reaction to the old ideals of government traditional in colonial
times,--namely as little taxation as possible, as much local
independence as could exist, and the minimum of Federal authority.
Jefferson professed to believe that the conduct of foreign relations
was the only important function of the central government, {182} all
else properly belonging to the States. So complete was the Republican
victory that the party had full power to put its principles into
effect. It controlled both Houses of Congress, and was blessed with
four years of peace and prosperity. Thomas Jefferson, for all his
radicalism in language, was a shrewd party leader, whose actions were
uniformly cautious and whose entire habit of mind favoured avoidance of
any violent change. "Scientific" with the general interests of a
French eighteenth-century "philosopher," he was limited in his views of
public policy by his education as a Virginia planter, wholly out of
sympathy with finance, commerce, or business. Under his guidance,
accordingly, the United States government was subjected to what he
called "a chaste reformation," rather than to a general overturning.
All expenses were cut down, chiefly at the cost of the army and navy;
all appropriations were rigorously diminished, and all internal taxes
were swept away. Since commerce continued active, there still remained
a surplus revenue, and this Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury,
applied to extinguishing the debt. A few of the more important Federal
offices were taken from embittered Federalists and given to
Republicans, but there was no general {183} proscription of
office-holders. The only action at all radical in character was the
repeal of the law establishing new circuit judgeships, a step which
legislated a number of Federalists out of office. The repeal was
denounced by fervid Federalist orators as a violation of the
constitution and a death-blow to the Union; but the appointments under
the law itself had been so grossly partisan that the country was
unalarmed. With these steps the Republican reaction ended. Jefferson
and his party carried through no alteration of the central departments;
they abandoned no Federal power except that of imposing an excise; they
did not even repeal the charter of the National Bank. The real change
lay in the more strictly economical finances and in the general spirit
of government. The Federalist opposition, criticizing every act with
bitterness and continually predicting ruin, found that under the
"Jacobins" the country remained contented and prosperous and was in no
more danger of atheism or the guillotine than it had been under Adams.
So matters went on, year after year, the Federal government playing its
part quietly and the American people carrying on their vocations in
peace and prosperity.
Jefferson's general theory of foreign affairs was based on the idea
that diplomacy was {184} mainly a matter of bargain and sale, with
national commerce as the deciding factor. He believed so firmly that
national self-interest would lead all European powers to make suitable
treaties with the United States that he considered the navy as wholly
superfluous, and would have been glad to sell it. But when
circumstances arose calling for a different sort of diplomacy, he was
ready to modify his methods; and he so far recognized the unsuitability
of peaceful measures in dealing with the Barbary corsairs as to permit
the small American navy to carry on extensive operations during 1801-3,
which ended in the submission of Tripoli and Algiers.
Simultaneously, Jefferson was brought face to face with a diplomatic
crisis, arising from the peculiar actions of his old ally, France. At
the outset of his administration, he found the treaty made by Adams's
commissioners in 1800 ready for ratification, and thus began his career
with all questions settled, thanks to his predecessor. But he had been
in office only a few months when the behaviour of the Spanish officials
at New Orleans gave cause for alarm; for they suddenly terminated the
right of deposit, granted in 1795. It was quickly rumoured that the
reason was to be found in the fact that France, now under the First
Consul, Napoleon, {185} had regained Louisiana. It was, in fact, true.
Bonaparte overthrew the Directory in 1799 and established himself,
under the thin disguise of "First Consul," as practical military despot
in France. He had immediately embraced the idea of establishing a
western colonial empire, which should be based on San Domingo, now
controlled by insurgent negroes, and which should include Louisiana.
By a treaty of October 1, 1800, he compelled Spain to retrocede the
former French province in return for a promise to establish a kingdom
of "Etruria" for a Spanish prince. During 1802 large armaments sailed
to San Domingo and began the process of reconquest. It needed only the
completion of that task for Napoleon to be ready to take over
Louisiana, and thereby to gain absolute control over the one outlet
from the interior territories of the United States.
Jefferson at once recognized the extreme gravity of the situation.
During the years after the English, Spanish, and Indian treaties,
emigrants had steadily worked their way into the inner river valleys.
Western New York and Pennsylvania were rapidly filling, Ohio was
settled up to the Indian treaty line, Kentucky and Tennessee were
doubling in population, and fringes of pioneer communities stretched
along the Ohio and {186} Mississippi rivers. In 1796 Tennessee was
admitted as a State, and Ohio was now, in 1801, on the point of asking
admission. For France to shut the only possible outlet for these
communities would be a sentence of economic death; and Jefferson was so
deeply moved as to write to Livingston, his Minister to France, that if
the rumour of the cession were true, "We must marry ourselves to the
British fleet and nation." The United States must fight rather than
submit. He sent Monroe to France, instructed to buy an outlet, but the
latter only arrived in time to join with Livingston in signing a treaty
for the purchase of the whole of Louisiana.
This startling event was the result of the failure of Napoleon's forces
to reconquer San Domingo. Foreseeing the loss of Louisiana in case of
the probable renewal of war with England, and desirous of money for
immediate use, the Corsican adventurer suddenly threw Louisiana into
the astonished hands of Livingston and Monroe. He had never, it is
true, given Spain the promised compensation; he had never taken
possession, and he had promised not to sell it; but such trifles never
impeded Napoleon, nor, in this case, did they hinder Jefferson. When
the treaty came to America, Congress was quickly convened, the Senate
voted to ratify, the money was appropriated, and the whole {187} vast
region was bought for the sum of sixty million francs. Jefferson
himself, the apostle of a strict construction of the constitution,
could not discover any clause authorizing such a purchase; but his
party was undisturbed, and the great annexation was carried through,
Jefferson acquiescing in the inconsistency.
The chagrin of the Federalists at this enormous south-westward
extension of the country was exceeded only by their alarm when an
attempt was made to eject certain extremely partisan judges from their
offices in Pennsylvania and on the Federal bench by the process of
impeachment. In the first two cases the effort was successful, one
Pennsylvania judge and one Federal district judge being ejected; but
when, in 1805, the attack was aimed at the Pennsylvania supreme
justices and at Justice Chase of the United States Supreme Court, the
process broke down. The defence of the accused judges was legally too
strong to be overcome, and each impeachment failed. With this the last
echo of the party contest seemed to end, for by this time the
Federalists were too discredited and too weak to make a political
struggle. Their membership in Congress had shrunk to small figures,
they had lost State after State, and in 1804 they practically let
Jefferson's re-election go by default. He received all but fourteen
{188} electoral votes, out of 176. Some of the New England leaders
plotted secession, but they were not strong enough for that. The party
seemed dead. In 1804 its ablest mind, Hamilton, was killed in a duel
with Burr, the Vice-president, and nobody remained capable of national
leadership.
So the year 1805 opened in humdrum prosperity and national
self-satisfaction. Jefferson could look upon a country in which he
held a position rivalled only by that of a European monarch or an
English prime minister. The principles of Republican equality, of
States' rights, of economy and retrenchment, of peace and local
self-government seemed triumphant beyond reach of attack. While Europe
resounded with battles and marches, America lived in contented
isolation, free from the cares of unhappy nations living under the
ancient ideals.
{189}
CHAPTER X
THE SECOND PERIOD OF COMMERCIAL ANTAGONISM, 1805-1812
In the year 1805, the happy era of Republican prosperity and complacency
came suddenly and violently to an end, for by this time forces were in
operation which drew the United States, in utter disregard of Jefferson's
theories, into the sweep of the tremendous political cyclone raging in
Europe. In 1803, Napoleon forced England into renewed war, and for two
years endeavoured by elaborate naval manoeuvres to secure control of the
Channel for a sufficient time to permit him to transport his "Grand Army"
to the British shore. In 1805, however, these plans broke down; and the
crushing defeat of the allied French and Spanish navies at Trafalgar
marked the end of any attempt to challenge British maritime supremacy.
The great military machine of the French army was then turned eastward
against the armies of the coalition which England, under Pitt, was
forming; and in a series of astonishing campaigns it was used to beat
down the Austrians in 1805 at Austerlitz; to overwhelm the Prussians in
1806 at Jena and Auerstadt; and to force the Russians, after {190} a
severe winter campaign in East Prussia, to come to terms in 1807.
Napoleon and the Tsar, Alexander, meeting on the bridge at Tilsit, July
7, divided Europe between them by agreeing upon a policy of spheres of
interest, which left Turkey and the Orient for Russian expansion and all
the beaten western monarchies for French domination. The Corsican
captain, trampling on the ruins both of the French monarchy and the
French Republic, stood as the most terrible and astounding figure in the
world, invincible by land, the master of Europe.
But the withdrawal of the French from any attempt to contest the sea left
England the equally undisputed master of all oceans, and rendered the
French wholly dependent upon neutral nations for commerce. As French
conquests led to annexations of territory in Italy and in Germany, these
regions also found themselves unable to import with their own vessels,
and so neutral commerce found ever-increasing markets dependent upon its
activity. Now the most energetic maritime neutral power was the United
States, whose merchantmen hastened to occupy the field left vacant by the
practical extinction of the French carrying trade. Until 1807 they
shared this with the Scandinavian countries; but after that year
Napoleon, by threats and the terror {191} of his name, forced an
unwelcome alliance upon all the States of Europe, and the United States
became the sole important neutral.
In these circumstances, the merchant shipping of the United States
flourished enormously, the more especially since, by importing and
immediately re-exporting West India products from the French islands,
Yankee skippers were able to avoid the dangerous "Rule of 1756," and to
send sugar and cocoa from French colonies to Europe and England under the
guise of American produce. By 1805, the whole supply of European sugar
was carried in American bottoms, to the enormous profit of the United
States. American ships also shared largely in the coasting trade of
Europe, carrying goods between ports where British ships were naturally
excluded. In fact, the great prosperity and high customs receipts to
which the financial success of the Jeffersonians was due depended to a
great extent on the fortunate neutral situation of the United States.
By 1805, the British shipowners felt that flesh and blood could not
endure the situation. Here were France and her allies easily escaping
the hardships of British naval pressure by employing neutrals to carry on
their trade. Worse still, the Americans, by the device of entering and
clearing {192} French sugar at an American port, were now able calmly to
take it to England and undersell the West Indian planters in their own
home markets. Pamphleteers began to criticize the government for
permitting such unfair competition, Lord Sheffield, as in 1783, leading
the way. In October, 1805, James Stephen, a far abler writer, summed up
the anger of the British ship-owners and naval officers in a pamphlet
entitled, "War in disguise, or the Frauds of the Neutral Trade." He
asserted that the whole American neutral commerce was nothing more or
less than an evasion of the Rule of 1756 for the joint benefit of France
and the United States, and he called upon the government to put a stop to
this practical alliance of America with Napoleon. This utterance seems
to have made a profound impression; for a time Stephen's views became the
fixed beliefs of influential public men as well as of the naval and
shipowning interests.
The first steps indicating British restlessness were taken by the Pitt
Ministry, which began, in 1804, a policy of rigid naval search for
contraband cargoes, largely carried on off American ports. Whatever
friendly views Pitt may once have entertained toward the Americans, his
Ministry now had for its sole object the contest with {193} France and
the protection of British interests. In July, 1805, a severe blow was
suddenly struck by Sir William Scott, who as chief Admiralty judge
rendered a decision to the effect that French sugar, entered at an
American custom-house and re-exported with a rebate of the duty, was good
prize under the Rule of 1756. This placed all American re-exportation of
French West Indian produce at the mercy of British cruisers; and the
summer of 1805 saw a sudden descent of naval officers upon their prey,
causing an outcry of anger from every seaport between Maine and Maryland.
The day of reckoning had come, and Jefferson and Madison, his Secretary
of State, were compelled to meet the crisis. Fortunately, as it
appeared, for the United States, the Pitt Ministry ended with the death
of its leader on January 23, 1806, and was succeeded by a coalition in
which Lord Grenville, author of the Jay treaty, was prime Minister, and
Fox, an avowed friend of America, was Foreign Secretary. While it was
not reasonably to be expected that any British Ministry would throw over
the traditional naval policy of impressments or venture to run directly
counter to shipping interests, it was open to anticipation that some such
compromise as the Jay treaty might be agreed upon, which would relieve
the United {194} States from arbitrary exactions during the European war.
The Grenville Ministry showed its good intentions by abandoning the
policy of captures authorized by Scott, and substituting, on May 16,
1806, a blockade of the French coast from Ostend to the Seine. This
answered the purpose of hindering trade with France without raising
troublesome questions, and actually allowed American vessels to take
sugar to Northern Europe.
Between 1804 and 1806, Jefferson had brought the United States to the
verge of war with Spain through insisting that Napoleon's cession of
Louisiana had included West Florida. At the moment when British seizures
began, he was attempting at once to frighten Spain by warlike words and,
by a payment of two million dollars, to induce France to compel Spain to
acknowledge the American title to the disputed territory. For a number
of years, therefore, and until the scheme fell through, Jefferson
cultivated especially friendly relations with the government of Napoleon,
not from any of the former Republican enthusiasm, but solely on
diplomatic grounds. Hence, although nominally neutral in the great war,
he bore the appearance of a French partisan.
Jefferson felt that he had in his possession a thoroughly adequate means
to secure {195} favourable treatment from England, by simply threatening
commercial retaliation. The American trade, he believed, was so
necessary to the prosperity of England that for the sake of retaining it
that country would make any reasonable concession. That there was a
basis of truth in this belief it would be impossible to deny; for England
consumed American cotton and exported largely to American markets. With
this trade cut off, manufacturers and exporters would suffer, as they had
suffered in the revolutionary period. But Jefferson ignored what every
American merchant knew, that military and naval considerations weighed
fully as heavily with England as mercantile needs, and that a country
which had neither a ship-of-the-line, nor a single army corps in
existence, commanded, in an age of world warfare, very slight respect.
Jefferson's prejudice against professional armed forces and his ideal of
war as a purely voluntary matter, carried on as in colonial times, was
sufficiently proclaimed by him to be well understood across the Atlantic.
Openly disbelieving in war, avowedly determined not to fight, he
approached a nation struggling for life with the greatest military power
on earth, and called upon it to come to terms for business reasons.
His first effort was made by causing {196} Congress to pass a
Non-importation Act, excluding certain British goods, which was not to go
into effect until the end of 1806. With this as his sole weapon, he sent
Monroe to make a new treaty, demanding free commerce and the cessation of
the impressment of seamen from American vessels in return for the
continued non-enforcement of the Non-importation Act. Such a task was
more difficult than that laid upon Jay twelve years before; and Monroe,
in spite of the fact that he was dealing with the same Minister, failed
to accomplish even so much as his predecessor. From August to December
he negotiated, first with Lord Holland, then, after Fox's death, with
Lord Howick; but the treaty which he signed on December 1, 1806,
contained not one of the points named in his instructions. Monroe found
the British willing to make only an agreement like the Jay treaty which,
while containing special provisions to render the situation tolerable,
should refuse to yield any British contentions. That was the Whig policy
as much in 1806 as it had been in 1766. The concessions were slight; and
the chief one, regarding the re-exportation of French West Indian
produce, permitted it only on condition that the goods were bona fide of
American ownership, and had paid in the United States a duty of at least
two per cent. Jefferson {197} did not even submit the treaty to the
Senate.
After this failure, the situation grew graver. Napoleon, in December,
1806, issued from Berlin a decree declaring that, in retaliation for the
aggressions of England upon neutral commerce, the British Isles were in
blockade and all trade with them was forbidden. British goods were to be
absolutely excluded from the continent. The reply of the Grenville
Ministry to this was an Order in Council, January, 1807, prohibiting
neutral vessels from trading between the ports of France or her allies;
but this was denounced as utterly weak by Perceval and Canning in
opposition. In April, 1807, the Grenville Ministry, turned out of office
by the half insane George III, was replaced by a thoroughly Tory cabinet,
under the Duke of Portland, whose chief members in the Commons were
George Canning and Spencer Perceval, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of
the Exchequer respectively. The United States was now to undergo
treatment of a new kind at the hands of Tories who despised its
institutions, felt only contempt for the courage of its government, and
were guided as regards American commerce by the doctrines of Lord
Sheffield and James Stephen.
An Order in Council of November 11, {198} 1807, drafted by Perceval and
endorsed by all the rest of the Cabinet, declared that no commerce with
France or her allies was henceforward to be permitted unless it had
passed through English ports. To this Napoleon retorted by the Milan
Decree of December, 1807, proclaiming that all vessels which had been
searched by British, or which came by way of England, were good prize.
Henceforth, then, neutral commerce was positively prohibited. The
merchantmen of the United States could continue to trade at all only by
definitely siding with one power or the other. The object of the British
order was declared to be retaliation on Napoleon. Its actual effect was
to place American trade once more under the rule of the Navigation Acts.
As in the days before 1776, American vessels must make England their
"staple" or "entrepôt," and could go only where permitted to by British
orders under penalty of forfeiture. This measure was sharply attacked in
Parliament by the Whigs, especially by Grenville and Howick, of the late
Ministry, but was triumphantly sustained by the Tories.
At this time the chronic grievance of the impressment of seamen from
American vessels grew suddenly acute. In the years of the great war, the
American merchant marine, {199} with its safe voyages and good pay,
offered a highly attractive prospect for English sailors, who dreaded the
danger, the monotony, and the severe discipline of British men-of-war.
They swarmed by thousands into American service, securing as rapidly as
possible, not infrequently by fraudulent means, the naturalization papers
by which they hoped to escape the press-gang. Ever since 1793 British
naval officers, recognizing no right of expatriation, had systematically
impressed British seamen found on American ships and, owing to the
difficulty in distinguishing the two peoples, numerous natives of New
England and the middle States found themselves imprisoned on the
"floating hell" of a British ship-of-the-line in an epoch when brutality
characterized naval discipline. In August, 1807, the United States was
stirred to fury over the forcible seizure by the British _Leopard_ of
three Englishmen from the U.S.S. _Chesapeake_, which, unprepared for
defence, had to suffer unresisting. So hot was the general anger that
Jefferson could easily have led Congress into hostile measures, if not an
actual declaration of war, over the multiplied seizures and this last
insult.
But Jefferson clung to peace, and satisfied himself by ordering British
men-of-war out of American ports and sending a {200} demand for
reparation, with which he linked a renunciation of the right of
impressment. When Congress met in December, he induced it to pass a
general embargo, positively prohibiting the departure of American vessels
to foreign ports. Since at the same time the Non-importation Act came
into effect, all imports and exports were practically suspended. His
idea was that the total cessation of American commerce would inflict such
discomfort upon British and French consumers that each country would be
forced to abandon its oppressive measures.
Rarely has a country, at the instance of one man, inflicted a severer
strain upon its citizens. The ravages of French and English together,
since the outbreak of war in 1793, did not do so much damage as the
embargo did in one year, for it threatened ruin to every shipowner,
importer, and exporter in the United States. Undoubtedly Jefferson and
his party had in mind the success of the non-importation agreements
against the Stamp Act and the Townshend duties, but what was then the
voluntary action of a great majority was now a burden imposed by one part
of the country upon another. The people of New York and New England
simply would not obey the Act. To enforce it against Canada became an
impossibility, and to prevent vessels from escaping a {201} matter of
great difficulty. Jefferson persisted doggedly, and induced Congress to
pass laws giving revenue collectors extraordinary powers of search and
seizure, but without results.
Under this intolerable grievance, the people of the oppressed regions
rapidly lost their enthusiasm for the Democratic administration. Turning
once more to the Federalist party, which had seemed practically extinct,
they threw State after State into its hands, and actually threatened the
Republican control in the Presidential election of 1808. Had a coalition
been arranged between the disgusted Republican factions of New York and
Pennsylvania and the Federalists of New England, Delaware, and Maryland,
James Madison might well have been beaten for successor to Jefferson.
But worse remained behind. The outraged New Englanders, led by Timothy
Pickering and others, began to use again, in town-meetings and
legislatures, the old-time language of 1774, once employed against the
Five Intolerable Acts, and to threaten secession. As Jefferson said
later, "I felt the foundations of the government shaken under my feet by
the New England townships."
By this time, it was definitely proved that as a means of coercion the
embargo was worthless. English manufacturers and their {202} workmen
complained, but English ship-owners profited, and crowds of British
seamen returned perforce to their home, even at times into the royal
navy. Canning, for the Portland Ministry, sarcastically declined to be
moved, observing that the embargo, whatever its motives, was practically
the same as Napoleon's system, and England could not submit to being
driven to surrender to France even to regain the American market or
relieve the Americans from their self-inflicted sufferings. Napoleon now
gave an interesting taste of his peculiar methods, for on April 17, 1808,
he issued the Bayonne Decree, ordering the confiscation of all American
vessels found in French ports, on the ground that, since the embargo
prohibited the exit of American ships, these must, in reality, be
English! Thus he gathered in about eight million dollars' worth. The
policy had to be abandoned, and in the utmost ill-humour Congress
repealed the embargo, on March 1, 1809, substituting non-intercourse with
England and France. Thus Jefferson left office under the shadow of a
monumental failure. His theory of commercial coercion had completely
broken down; and he had damaged his own and his party's prestige to such
an extent that the moribund Federalist organization had sprung to life
and threatened the existence of the Union.
{203}
From this time onward, the New Englanders assumed the character of
ultra-admirers of Great Britain. True, their vessels suffered from
British seizures; but no British confiscations had done them such harm as
the embargo, or taken such discreditable advantage of a transparent
pretext as the Bayonne Decree. Belonging to the wealthy classes, they
admired and respected England as defender of the world's civilization
against Napoleon, and they detested Jefferson and Madison as tools of the
enemy of mankind. They justified impressments, spoke respectfully of the
British doctrines of trade, and corresponded freely with British public
men. They stood, in short, exactly where the Republicans had stood in
1793, supporters of a foreign power with which the Federal administration
was in controversy. In Congress and outside, they made steady, bitter
menacing attacks on the integrity and honesty of the Republicans.
Under Jefferson's successor, the policy of commercial pressure was
carried to its impotent conclusion. At first the action of the British
government seemed to crown Madison with triumph. In the winter of 1809,
the majority in Congress had talked freely of substituting war for the
embargo; and at the same time the Whigs in Parliament, led by Grenville,
had attacked Canning for his {204} insolence toward the United States as
likely to cause war. Whitbread called attention to the similarity
between the conditions in 1809 and 1774, when "the same infatuation
seemed to prevail," the same certainty existed that the Americans would
not fight, and the same confident assertions were made that they could
not do without England. The comparison possessed much truth, for the
Tories of 1809 were as indifferent to American feelings as those of 1774,
and pushed their commercial policy just as North had done his political
system, in the same contemptuous certainty that the Americans would never
fight. Yet Canning showed sufficient deference to his assailants to
instruct Erskine, British Minister at Washington, to notify Madison that
the Orders would be withdrawn in case the United States kept its
non-intercourse with France, recognized the Rule of 1756, and authorized
British men-of-war to enforce the Non-intercourse Act.
The immediate result was surprising, for Erskine, eager to restore
harmony, did not disclose or carry out his instructions, but accepted the
continuance by the United States of non-intercourse against France as a
sufficient concession. He announced that the Orders in Council would be
withdrawn on June 10; Madison in turn promptly issued a proclamation
reopening trade, and {205} swarms of American vessels rushed across the
Atlantic. But Canning, in harsh language, repudiated the arrangement of
his over-sanguine agent, and Madison was forced to the mortifying step of
reimposing non-intercourse by a second proclamation. Still worse
remained, for when F. J. Jackson, the next British Minister, arrived, the
President had to undergo the insult of being told that he had connived
with Erskine in violating his instructions. The refusal to hold further
relations with the blunt emissary was a poor satisfaction. All this
time, moreover, reparation for the _Chesapeake_ affair was blocked, since
it had been coupled with a demand for the renunciation of impressments,
something that no British Ministry would have dared to yield.
On the part of Napoleon, the Non-intercourse Act offered another
opportunity for plunder. When he first heard of Erskine's concessions,
he was on the point of meeting them, but on learning of their failure he
changed about, commanded the sequestration of all American vessels
entering European ports, and in May, 1810, by the Rambouillet Decree, he
ordered their confiscation and sale. The ground assigned was that the
Non-intercourse Act forbade any French or English vessel to enter
American ports under penalty of confiscation. {206} None had been
confiscated, but they might be. Hence he acted. Incidentally he helped
to fill his treasury, and seized about ten millions of American property.
By this time it was clear to most Americans that, however unfriendly the
British policy, it was honesty itself compared to that of the Emperor,
whose sole aim seemed to be to ensnare American vessels for the purpose
of seizing them. The Federalists in Congress expatiated on his perfidy
and bare-faced plunder, but nothing could shake the intention of Madison
to stick to commercial bargaining. Congress now passed another Act,
destined to be the last effort at peaceful coercion. Trade was opened,
but the President was authorized to reimpose non-intercourse with either
nation if the other would withdraw its decrees. This Act, known always
as the Macon Bill No. 2, became law in May, 1810, and Napoleon
immediately seized the occasion for further sharp practice. He caused an
unofficial, unsigned letter to be shown to the American Minister at Paris
stating that the French decrees would be withdrawn on November 2, 1810,
"it being understood that the English should withdraw theirs by that time
or the United States should cause its rights to be respected by England."
Madison accordingly reimposed non-intercourse with {207} England on the
date named, and considered the French decrees withdrawn. The situation
was regarded by him as though he had entered into a contract with
Napoleon, which compelled him to assert that the decrees were at an end,
although he had no other evidence than the existence of the situation
arising from the Macon Bill.
There followed a period during which the American Minister at London,
William Pinkney, endeavoured without success to convince the British
government that the decrees actually were withdrawn. The Portland
Ministry had fallen in 1809, and the sharp-tongued Canning was replaced
in the Foreign Office by the courteous Marquess Wellesley; but Spencer
Perceval, author of the Orders in Council, was Prime Minister and stiffly
determined to adhere to his policy. James Stephen and George Rose, in
Parliament, stood ready to defend them, and the Tory party as a whole
accepted their necessity. When, therefore, Pinkney presented his request
to Wellesley, the latter naturally demanded something official from
Napoleon, which neither Pinkney nor Madison could supply. Finally, in
February, 1811, Pinkney broke off diplomatic relations and returned home,
having played his difficult part with dignity. To aggravate the
situation Napoleon's cruisers continued, {208} whenever they had a
chance, to seize and burn American vessels bound for England, and his
port authorities to sequester vessels arriving from England. The decrees
were not in fact repealed.
Madison had committed himself, however, to upholding the honour of
Napoleon--a task from which any other man would have recoiled--and the
United States continued to insist on a fiction. Madison's conduct in
this affair was that of a shrewd lawyer-like man who tried to carry on
diplomacy between two nations fighting to the death as though it were a
matter of contracts, words and phrases of legal meaning. To Napoleon,
legality was an incomprehensible idea. To the Tory ministries,
struggling to maintain their country against severe economic pressure,
facts, not words, counted, and facts based on naval force. Upon the
Jeffersonian and Madisonian attempts at peaceful coercion they looked
with mingled annoyance and contempt, believing, as they did, that the
whole American policy was that of a weak and cowardly nation trying by
pettifogging means to secure favourable trade conditions. The situation
had reached a point where the United States had nothing to hope from
either contestant, by continuing this policy.
At this juncture a new political force {209} appeared. By 1811 the
old-time Republican leaders, trained in the school of Jeffersonian
ideals, were practically bankrupt. Faction paralyzed government, and
Congress seemed, by its timid attitude, to justify the taunt of Quincy of
Massachusetts that the Republican party could not be kicked into a war.
But there appeared on the stage a new sort of Republican. In the western
counties of the older States and in the new territories beyond the
mountains, the frontier element, once of small account in the country and
wholly disregarded under the Federalists, was multiplying, forming
communities and governments, where the pioneer habits had created a
democracy that was distinctly pugnacious. Years of danger from Indians,
of rivalry with white neighbours over land titles, of struggle with the
wilderness, had produced a half-lawless and wholly self-assertive type of
man, as democratic as Jefferson himself, but with a perfect willingness
to fight and with a great respect for fighters. To these men, the
tameness with which the United States had submitted to insults and
plundering was growing to be unendurable. Plain masculine anger began to
obscure other considerations.
These Western men, moreover, had a special cause for indignation with
England, {210} which was ignored by the sea-coast communities, in the
close connection which they firmly believed to exist between the British
administration of upper Canada and the north-western Indians. In the
years after 1809, the Indian question again began to assume a dangerous
form. Settlers were coming close to the treaty lines, and, to satisfy
their demands for the bottom lands along the Wabash River, Governor
Harrison of Indiana Territory made an extensive series of land purchases
from the small tribes on the coveted territory.
But there now appeared two remarkable Indians, Tecumseh and his brother,
the Prophet, of the Shawnee tribe, who saw in the occupation of the red
men's hunting lands and the inroads of frontier corn whiskey the death of
all their race. These leaders began to hold their own tribe together
against the purchase of whiskey or the sale of lands; then, with wider
vision, they tried to organize an alliance of all the north-western
Indians to prevent further white advance. They even went so far as to
visit the south-western Indians, Creeks and Cherokees, to induce them to
join in the grand league. The very statesmanship involved in this vast
scheme rendered it dangerous in the eyes of all Westerners, who were
firmly convinced that the backing of {211} this plan came from the
British posts in Canada. There was, in reality, a good understanding
between the Canadian officers and the Shawnee chiefs. In 1811
hostilities broke out at Tippecanoe, where Governor Harrison had a sharp
battle with the Shawnees; but Tecumseh exerted himself to restore
peaceful relations, although the frontier was in great excitement.
From the States of Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, and from the inner
counties of the southern States there came to the first session of the
Eleventh Congress, in December, 1811, a group of young politicians--Henry
Clay, John Calhoun, Langdon Cheves, Felix Grundy--who felt that the time
for talk was at an end. Unless England immediately revoked its decrees,
ceased impressing seamen, and refrained from instigating Indian plots
there must be war. Assuming control of the House, with Clay in the
Speaker's chair, they transformed the Republican party and the policy of
the country. They pushed through measures for raising troops, arming
ships, and borrowing money. Congress rang with fiery speeches, as month
after month went by and the Perceval Ministry obstinately refused to stir
from its commercial policy.
Yet the feeling of the English public was already undergoing a change.
By 1812 the {212} pretence that the Orders in Council were maintained for
the purpose of starving out France was growing transparent when thousands
of licences, granted freely to British vessels, permitted a vast fleet to
carry on the supposedly forbidden trade. Although Perceval and Canning
still insisted in Parliament that the Orders were retaliatory, the fact
was patent that their only serious effect was to cause the loss of the
American trade and the American market. At the threat of war, the
exporters of England, suffering severely from glutted markets, began a
vigorous agitation against Perceval's policy and bombarded the Ministry,
through Henry Brougham, with petitions, memorials, and motions which put
the Tories on the defensive. Speakers like Alexander Baring held up the
system of Orders in Council as riddled with corruption, and only the
personal authority of Perceval and Castlereagh kept the majority firm.
At the height of this contest, Perceval was assassinated, on May 11,
1812; and it was not until June 8 that hope of a new coalition was
abandoned, and the Tory Cabinet was definitely reorganized under Lord
Liverpool. Almost the first act of that Ministry was to bow before the
storm of petitions, criticisms, and complaints, and to announce on June
16 that they had decided to suspend the Orders. {213} Thus the very
contingency upon which Jefferson and Madison had counted came to pass.
The British government, at the instance of the importing and
manufacturing classes, yielded to the pressure of American commercial
restrictions. It was true that the danger of war weighed far more,
apparently, than the Non-intercourse Act; but had there been an Atlantic
cable, or even a steam transit, at that time, or had the Liverpool
Ministry been formed a little earlier, the years 1807-1812 might have
passed into history as a triumphant vindication of Jefferson's theories.
But it was too late. Madison, seeing, apparently, that his plans were a
failure, fell in with the new majority, and after deliberate preparation
sent a message to Congress in June, 1812, which was practically an
invitation to declare war. In spite of the bitter opposition of all
Federalists and many eastern Republicans, Congress, by the votes of the
southern and western members, adopted a declaration of war on June 18,
committing the United States to a contest with the greatest naval power
in the world on the grounds of the Orders in Council, the impressment of
seamen, and the intrigues with the north-western Indians. At the moment
when Napoleon, invading Russia, began his last stroke for universal
empire, the United {214} States entered the game as his virtual ally.
This was something the Federalists could not forgive. They returned to
their homes, execrating the war as waged in behalf of the arch-enemy of
God and man, as the result of a pettifogging bit of trickery on the part
of Napoleon. They denounced the ambitions of Clay and the Westerners,
who predicted an easy conquest of Canada, as merely an expression of a
pirate's desire to plunder England of its colonies, and they announced
their purpose to do nothing to assist the unrighteous conflict. In their
anger at Madison, they were even willing to vote for De Witt Clinton of
New York, who ran for President in 1812 as an Independent Republican; and
the coalition carried the electoral vote of every State north of Maryland
except Pennsylvania and Vermont.
When the news of the repeal of the Orders in Council crossed the
Atlantic, some efforts were made by the governor-general of Canada to
arrange an armistice, hoping to prevent hostilities. But Madison does
not seem to have seriously considered abandoning the war, even though the
original cause had been removed. Feeling the irresistible pressure of
the southern and western Democrats behind him, he announced that the
contest must go on until England should {215} abandon the practice of
impressment. So the last hope of peace disappeared.
The war thus begun need never have taken place, had the Tory Ministries
of Portland or Perceval cared to avert it. The United States only lashed
itself into a war-like mood after repeated efforts to secure concessions,
and after years of submission to British rough handling. During all this
time, either Madison or Jefferson would gladly have accepted any sort of
compromise which did not shut American vessels wholly out from some form
of independent trade. But the enmity of the British shipowners and naval
leaders and the traditional British commercial policy joined with
contempt for the spiritless nation to prevent any such action until the
fitting time had gone by.
CHAPTER XI
THE WAR FOR "SAILORS' RIGHTS" AND WESTWARD EXPANSION, 1812-1815
The second war between the United States and the mother country, unlike
the first, was scarcely more than a minor {216} annoyance to the
stronger party. In the years 1812-1814, England was engaged in
maintaining an army in Spain, in preying on French commerce by blockade
and cruising, and was spending immense sums to subsidize the European
nations in their final struggle against Napoleon. The whole military
and financial strength of the country, the whole political and
diplomatic interest were absorbed in the tremendous European contest.
Whig and Tory, landowner, manufacturer, and labourer were united in
unbending determination to destroy the power of the Corsican. The
Liverpool Ministry contained little of talent, and no genius, but the
members possessed certain traits which sufficed to render others
unnecessary, namely, an unshakable tenacity and steady hatred of the
French. The whole country stood behind them on that score.
In these circumstances, the English, when obliged to fight the United
States, were at liberty to send an overwhelming naval force to blockade
or destroy American commerce, but were in great straits to provide men
to defend Canada. It was not until a full year after the declaration
of war that any considerable force of regular troops could be collected
and sent there, and not for two years that anything approaching a
genuine army could be directed against America. {217} The defence of
Canada had to be left to the efforts of some few officers and men and
such local levies as could be assembled.
On the side of the United States, the war was bound to take the form of
an effort to capture all or part of Canada, for that was the only
vulnerable British possession. On the sea the United States could hope
at most to damage British commerce by means of the few national
cruisers and such privateers as the shipowners of the country could
send out. Without a single ship-of-the-line and with only five
frigates, there existed no possibility of actually fighting the British
navy. But on land it seemed as though a country with a population of
over seven millions ought to be able to raise armies of such size as to
overrun, by mere numbers, the slender resources of Canada; and it was
the confident expectation of most of the western leaders that within a
short time the whole region would be in American hands. "The
acquisition of Canada this year," wrote Jefferson, "as far as the
neighbourhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will
give us experience for the attack on Halifax, the next and the final
expulsion of England from the American continent."
Unfortunately for the success of these dreams, the policy of the
Republican administrations had been such as to set up {218} insuperable
difficulties. The regular army, reduced under Jefferson's "passion for
peace" to a bare minimum, was scattered in a few posts; the War
Department was without means for equipping, feeding, and transporting
bodies of troops; the whole mechanism of war administration had to be
created. Further, the Secretary of the Army and nearly all the
generals were elderly men, veterans of the Revolutionary Army, who had
lost whatever energy they once possessed. The problem of war finances
was rendered serious by the fact that revenue from the tariff, the sole
important source of income, was sure to be cut off by the British naval
power. The National Bank had been refused a new charter in 1811, and
the government, democratic in its finances as in other matters, relied
upon a hundred odd State banks of every degree of solvency for aid in
carrying on financial operations.
The temper of the American people was exactly what it had been in
colonial days. They regarded war as a matter to be carried on at the
convenience of farmers and others, who were willing to serve in defence
of their homes, but strongly objected to enlisting for any length of
time. On the more pugnacious frontier, the prevailing military ideal
was that of the armed mob or crowd--a body of fighters following a
chosen leader against Indians. {219} Everywhere the elementary
conceptions of obedience and duty were unknown. The very men who
wished for war were unwilling to fight except on their own terms.
Still more fatal to military efficiency was the fact that the
Federalists, and many of the northern Republicans, inhabiting the
regions abutting on Canada, were violently opposed to the war, wished
to see it fail, and were firmly resolved to do nothing to aid the
administration. The utmost the Federalists would do was to defend
themselves if attacked, but they would do that on their own
responsibility and not under federal orders.
The only exception to this prevailing unmilitary condition was to be
found in the navy, where, through cruising and through actual service
against the Barbary corsairs, a genuinely trained body of officers and
men had been created. Unable to do more than give a good account of
themselves on the ocean in single combats, these officers found a
chance on the northern lakes to display a fighting power and skill
which is one of the few redeeming features of the war on the American
side.
In 1812 hostilities began with a feeble attempt on the part of the
United States to invade Canada, an effort whose details are of interest
only in showing how impossible {220} it is for an essentially
unmilitary people to improvise warfare. Congress had authorized a
loan, the construction of vessels, and the enlistment of an army of
36,000 men; but the officers appointed to assemble a military force
found themselves unable, after months of recruiting and working, to
gather more than half that number of raw troops, with a fluctuating
body of State militia. With these rudiments of a military force,
attempts to "invade" Canada were made in three directions--from
Detroit, from the Niagara River, and from the northern end of Lake
Champlain.
To meet these movements, there were actually less than 2,800 British
soldiers west of Montreal; but fortunately they were commanded by Isaac
Brock, an officer of daring and an aggressive temper. He at once
entered into alliance with Tecumseh and the western Indians, and thus
brought to the British assistance a force of hundreds of warriors along
the Ohio and Kentucky frontier. While General Hull, with about 2,000
troops, mainly volunteers from the West, marched under orders to
Detroit and then, in July, invaded upper Canada, the outlying American
posts at Chicago and Mackinac were either captured or destroyed by the
Indians. Brock, gathering a handful of men, marched against Hull,
terrified him for the safety of {221} his communications with the
United States, forced the old man to retreat to Detroit, and finally,
by advancing boldly against the slight fortifications of the post,
frightened him into surrender. Hull had been set an impossible task,
to conquer upper Canada with no sure means of getting reinforcements or
supplies through a region swarming with Indians; but his conduct
indicated no spark of pugnacity, and his surrender caused the loss of
the entire north-west. Tecumseh and his warriors now advanced against
the Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio frontiers; and the nameless horrors of
Indian massacre and torture surged along the line of settlements. The
frontiersmen flew to arms. General Harrison, with a commission from
Kentucky, headed a large expedition to regain lost ground; but he only
succeeded in building forts in north-western Ohio and waging a
defensive war against the raids of Tecumseh and the British general,
Proctor, Brock's successor.
At Niagara, no move was made until the late autumn, when two American
generals in succession--Van Rensselaer and Smyth--tried to lead a
motley array of militia and regulars across the river. Brock met the
first detachment and was killed in a skirmish, but his men were able to
annihilate the main attack, on the brink of the river, while several
thousand American militia, {222} refusing, on constitutional grounds,
to serve outside the jurisdiction of their state, watched safely from
the eastern bank. The second effort in November, under General Smyth,
proved an even worse fiasco. Meanwhile General Dearborn, the supreme
commander, tried to invade near Lake Champlain; but, after he had
marched his troops to the Canadian border, the militia refused to leave
the soil of the United States, and so the campaign had to be abandoned.
The military efforts of the United States were, as the Canadian
historian phrases it, "beneath criticism."
The only redeeming feature of the year was the record of the little
American navy and the success of the privateers, who rushed to prey
upon British commerce. Upwards of two hundred British vessels were
captured, while all but about seventy American ships reached home
safely. The British sent squadrons of cruisers, but were unable to
begin a blockade. Their aim was to capture American men-of-war as
rapidly as possible, to prevent their doing damage, so they
unhesitatingly attacked American vessels whenever they met them,
regardless of slight differences in size or gun-power. The British
sea-captain of the day had a hearty contempt for Americans, and never
dreamed that their navy could be any more dangerous than the {223}
French. To the unlimited delight of the American public, and the
stupefaction of England, five American cruisers in succession captured
or sank five British in the autumn of 1812, utilizing superior weight
of broadside and more accurate gunnery with merciless severity. These
blows did no actual damage to a navy which comprised several hundred
frigates and sloops, but the moral effect was great. It had been
proved that Americans, after all, could fight.
In 1813 there was a change in administrative officers. Doctor Eustis
was replaced in the War Department by John Armstrong, who had served in
the Revolution, and William Jones of Philadelphia succeeded Paul
Hamilton as Secretary of the Navy. Congress authorized more men, to
the number of 58,000, and more ships, and voted more loans. Finally,
in the summer it was actually driven to impose internal taxes like
those which, when imposed by Federalists, had savoured of tyranny.
On the northern frontier, renewed efforts were made to collect a real
army, and, with late comprehension of the necessities of the case,
naval officers were sent to build flotillas to control Erie, Ontario,
and Champlain. On their part, the British Ministry sent out a few
troops and officers to Canada, but {224} relied this year chiefly upon
a strict blockade, which was proclaimed first in December, 1812, and
was extended, before the end of the year, to cover the entire coast,
except New England. Ships-of-the-line, frigates, and sloops patrolled
the entrances to all the seaports, terminating not only foreign but
coastwise commerce.
Things went little if any better for the United States. The army was
on paper 58,000 men; but the people of the north and west would not
enlist. The utmost efforts at recruiting did not succeed in bringing
one-half the nominal force into the field. The people would not take
the war seriously, and the administration was helpless. To make
matters worse, not only did the north-western frontier agonize under
Indian warfare, but the south-west became involved, when, in August,
1813, the Creek Indians, affected by Tecumseh's influence, rose and
began a war in Tennessee and Georgia. For months Andrew Jackson,
General of Tennessee militia, with other local commanders, carried on
an exhausting and murderous conflict in the swamps and woods of the
south-west. The war was now assuming the character of the last stand
of the Indians before the oncoming whites.
In the north-west, decisive blows were struck in this year by General
Harrison and {225} Commander Perry. The latter built a small fleet of
boats, carrying in all fifty-four guns, and sailed out to contest the
control of Lake Erie. Captain Barclay, the British commander, with
scantier resources, constructed a weaker fleet, with sixty-three
lighter guns, and gallantly awaited the Americans on September 9. In a
desperately fought battle, Perry's sloop, the _Lawrence_, was
practically destroyed by the concentrated fire of the British; but the
greater gun-power of the Americans told, and the entire British
flotilla was compelled to surrender. This enabled Harrison, who had
been waiting for months in his fortifications, to advance and pursue
Proctor into upper Canada. On October 5 he brought him to action near
the river Thames, winning a complete victory and killing Tecumseh. The
Americans then returned to Detroit, and the Indian war gradually
simmered down, until in August, 1814, the leading tribes made peace.
To the eastward no such decisive action took place. Sir James Yeo and
Commodore Chauncey, commanding the British and American vessels
respectively on Lake Ontario, were each unwilling to risk a battle
without a decisive superiority; and the result was that no serious
engagement occurred. This rendered it impossible for either side to
attain any military success in that region; and so the year 1813 {226}
shows only a succession of raids, a species of activity in which the
British proved much the more daring and efficient. During one of these
affairs, General Dearborn occupied the Canadian town of York, now
Toronto, and burned the public buildings--an act of needless
destruction for which the United States was destined to pay heavily.
Further eastward, General Wilkinson and General Hampton began a joint
invasion of lower Canada, Wilkinson leading a force of over 6,000 men
down the St. Lawrence, Hampton advancing with 4,000 from Lake Champlain
toward the same goal, Montreal. But at Chrystler's Farm, on November
11, the rearguard of Wilkinson's army suffered a thorough defeat at the
hands of a small pursuing force; and Hampton underwent a similar
repulse from an inferior body of French-Canadians under Colonel de
Salaberry, at Chateauguy, on October 25. Finally, Hampton, suspecting
that Armstrong and Wilkinson intended in case of any failure to throw
the blame on him, decided to withdraw, November 11, and Wilkinson
followed. The whole invasion came to an inglorious conclusion.
At sea the uniform success of American cruisers came to a stop, for,
out of four naval duels, two were British victories, notably the taking
of the unlucky _Chesapeake_ by the {227} _Shannon_. Only where
privateers and sloops swept West Indian waters and hung about British
convoys was there much to satisfy American feelings; and all the while
the blockading squadrons cruised at their ease in Chesapeake and
Delaware bays and Long Island Sound. The country was now subjected to
increasing distress from the stoppage of all commerce; not only was the
Federal government sorely pinched from loss of tariff revenue, but the
New England towns suffered from starvation prices for food products,
while in the middle and southern States grain was used to feed the
cattle or allowed to rot.
For the season of 1814, it was necessary again to try to build up
armies; and now the time was growing short during which the United
States could hope to draw advantage from the preoccupation of England
in the European struggle. During the winter of 1814, the final
crushing of Napoleon took place, ending with his abdication and the
restoration of the Bourbons. Simultaneously, the British campaign in
Spain was carried to its triumphant conclusion, and after April British
armies had no further European occupation. Unless peace were made, or
unless the United States gained such advantages in Canada as to render
the British ready to treat, it was practically certain that the {228}
summer would find the full power of the British army, as well as the
navy, in a position to be directed against the American frontier and
the American sea-coast.
Congress, however, did nothing new. It authorized a loan, raised the
bounty for enlistments, voted a further increase of the army, and
adjourned. Armstrong, the Secretary of War, succeeded in replacing the
worn-out veterans who had mismanaged the campaigns of 1812-1813 with
fighting generals, younger men, such as Jacob Brown, Scott, Ripley, and
Jackson, the Indian fighter; but he could not induce men to enlist any
more freely, nor did he show any ability in planning operations. So
events dragged on much as before.
On Lake Ontario, Chauncey and Yeo continued their cautious policy,
building vessels continually and never venturing out of port unless for
the moment in overwhelming force. The result was that first one then
the other controlled the lake; but they never met. The only serious
fighting took place near Niagara, where General Brown, with a little
force of 2,600 men, tried to invade Canada, and was met first by
General Riall, and later by General Drummond, with practically equal
forces. Here the Americans actually fought, and fought hard, winning a
slight success at Chippawa on July 5, and engaging {229} in a drawn
battle at Lundy's Lane on July 25. Later forced to take refuge in Fort
Erie, Brown made a successful defence against Drummond, and obliged him
to abandon an effort at siege. Here, as in the naval combats, the
military showing of the Americans was at last creditable; but the
campaign was on too trivial a scale to produce any results. In the
south-west this year, Jackson pushed through his attack on the Creeks
to a triumphant conclusion, and in spite of mutinous militia and
difficult forests compelled the Indians on August 9, 1814, to purchase
peace by large cessions of land.
By the middle of the summer, however, the British were ready to lay a
heavy hand on the United States and punish the insolent country for its
annoying attack in the rear. New England was now subjected to the
blockade, and troops from Wellington's irresistible army were sent
across, some to the squadron in the Chesapeake, others to Canada, and
later still others in a well-equipped expedition to New Orleans to
conquer the mouth of the Mississippi.
The Chesapeake squadron, after raiding and provisioning itself at the
expense of the Virginia and Maryland farmers, made a dash at
Washington, sending boats up the Patuxent and Potomac rivers, and
landing a body of about 2,000 men. On August 24, with absurd {230}
ease, this force scattered in swift panic a hasty collection of
militia, and entered Washington, sending the President and Cabinet
flying into the country. In retaliation for the damage done at York,
the British officers set fire to the capital and other public
buildings, before retreating swiftly to their ships. A similar attack
on Baltimore, September 11, was better met, and, although the British
routed a force of militia, the attempt to take the city was abandoned.
The humiliation of the capture of Washington led to the downfall of
Armstrong as Secretary of State, although not until after he had almost
ruined another campaign.
While the British were threatening Washington, another force was
gathering north of Lake Champlain, and a large frigate was being built
to secure command of that lake. By the end of August, nearly 16,000
men, most of them from Wellington's regiments, were assembled to invade
New York, probably with the intention of securing the permanent
occupation of the northern part. In the face of this, Armstrong sent
most of the American troops at Plattsburg on a useless march across New
York State, leaving a bare handful under General McComb to meet the
invasion. When Sir George Prevost, Governor-General of Canada,
advanced to Plattsburg on September 6, he found nothing {231} but
militia and volunteers before him. Fortunately for the United States,
Prevost was no fighter, and he declined to advance or attack unless he
had a naval control of the lake. On September 11 the decisive contest
took place. McDonough, the American commander, with a small squadron,
entirely defeated and captured the British flotilla under Downie. It
was Lake Erie over again, with the difference that in this battle the
American fleet was not superior to the British. It was a victory due
to better planning and better gunnery, and it led to the immediate
retreat of Prevost, who tamely abandoned the whole campaign, to the
intense mortification of his officers and men. The remaining
expedition, under General Pakenham, comprising 16,000 Peninsular
veterans, under convoy of a strong fleet, sailed to the Gulf of Mexico
and advanced to capture New Orleans. General Andrew Jackson was at
hand, and with him a mass of militia and frontiersmen. Driven by the
furious energy of the Indian fighter, the Americans showed
aggressiveness and courage in skirmishes and night attacks, and finally
won an astounding victory on January 8, 1815. On that day the British
force tried to storm, by frontal attack, a line of intrenchments armed
with cannon and packed with riflemen. In twenty-five minutes their
columns were so badly cut up by {232} grapeshot and musketry that the
whole attack was abandoned, after Pakenham himself had been killed.
The expedition withdrew, and sailing to Mobile, a town in Spanish
territory, occupied by the Americans, retook it on February 11; but the
main purpose of their invasion was foiled.
In this year, while American land forces struggled to escape
destruction, the naval vessels were for the most part shut in by the
blockade. Occasional captures were still made in single combat; but
British frigates were now under orders to refuse battle with the larger
American vessels, and the captures by sloops were counterbalanced by
the British capture of the frigate _Essex_ by two antagonists in March,
1814. Practically the only extensive operations carried on were by
American privateers, who now haunted the British Channel and captured
merchantmen within sight of the English coasts. The irritation caused
by these privateers was excessive, and made British shipowners and
merchants anxious for peace; but it had no effect on the military
situation. England was not to be subdued by mere annoyance.
By the end of 1814, the time seemed to be at hand when the United
States must submit to peace on such terms as England chose to dictate,
or risk disruption and ruin. The administrative weaknesses of the
country {233} culminated in actual financial bankruptcy, which was due
in no small part to the fact that Federalist financiers and bankers,
determining to do all the damage possible, steadily refused to
subscribe to the loans or to give any assistance. The powerful New
England capital was entirely withheld. The result was that the strain
on the rest of the banks became too great; and after the capture of
Washington they all suspended specie payment, leaving the Government
only the notes of suspended banks, or its own depreciated treasury
notes for currency. All the coin in the country steadily flowed into
the vaults of New England banks, while the Federal Treasury was
compelled, on November 9, 1814, to admit its inability to pay interest
on its loans. Congress met in the autumn and endeavoured to remedy the
situation by chartering a bank; but under the general suspension of
specie payments it was impossible to start one solvent from the
beginning. When Congress authorized one without power to suspend
specie payments, Madison vetoed it as useless. All that could be done
was to issue more treasury notes. As for the army, a Bill for
compulsory service was brought in, showing the enormous change in
Republican ideals; but it failed to pass. Congress seemed helpless.
The American people would neither enlist for the war nor {234}
authorize their representatives to pass genuine war measures.
The Federalists, controlling most of the New England States, now felt
that the time had come to insist on a termination of their grievances.
Their governors had refused to allow militia to assist, their
legislatures had done nothing to aid the war; their capitalists had
declined to subscribe, and their farmers habitually sold provisions to
the British over the Canadian boundary, actually supplying Sir George
Prevost's army by contract. There met, at Hartford, on December 14,
1814, a convention of leading men, officially or unofficially
representing the five New England States, who agreed upon a document
which was intended to secure the special rights of their region. They
demanded amendments to the Constitution abolishing the reckoning of
slaves as basis for congressional representation, providing for the
partial distribution of government revenues among the States,
prohibiting embargoes or commercial warfare, or the election of
successive Presidents from the same State, and requiring a two-thirds
vote of Congress to admit new States or declare war. This was meant
for an ultimatum; and it was generally understood that, if the Federal
government did not submit to these terms, the New England States would
secede to {235} rid themselves of what they considered the intolerable
oppression of Virginian misgovernment.
Such was the state of things in the winter of 1815. The administration
of Madison had utterly failed to secure any of the ends of the war, to
inflict punishment on Great Britain, or to conquer Canada. It had also
utterly failed to maintain financial solvency, to enlist an army, to
create a navy capable of keeping the sea, or to prevent a movement in
New England which seemed to be on the verge of breaking the country
into pieces. But to lay this miserable failure--for such only can it
be called--to the personal discredit of Jefferson and Madison is
unfair, for it was only the repetition under new governmental
conditions of the old traditional colonial method of carrying on war as
a local matter. The French and Indian War, the Revolution, and the War
of 1812, repeated in different generations the same tale of amateur
warfare, of the occasional success and usual worthlessness of the
militia, the same administrative inefficiency, and the same financial
breakdown. Without authority and obedience, there can be carried on no
real war; and authority and obedience were no more known and no better
appreciated in 1812 than they had been in the days of Washington.
Jefferson, Madison, {236} and their party had gone with the current of
American tradition; that was their only fault.
CHAPTER XII
END OF THE ANTAGONISM: A CENTURY OF PEACE
When the American war began, the English showed a tendency to blame the
Tory administration for permitting it to take place; but the chief
feeling, after all, was one of annoyance at Madison and his party for
having decided to give their assistance to Napoleon at the crisis of
his career. The intercourse between Englishmen and New England
Federalists had given British society its understanding of American
politics and coloured its natural irritation toward the Republican
administration with something of the deeper venom of the outraged New
Englanders, who saw in Jefferson and his successors a race of
half-Jacobins. During 1812 and 1813, accordingly, newspapers and
ministerial speakers, when they referred to the contest, generally
spoke of the necessity of {237} chastising an impudent and presumptuous
antagonist. A friendly party such as had defended the colonists during
the Revolution no longer existed, for the Whigs, however antagonistic
to the Liverpool Ministry, were fully as firmly committed to
maintaining British naval and commercial supremacy.
England's chief continental ally, however, the Tsar Alexander,
considered the American war an unfortunate blunder; and, as early as
September, 1812, he offered his mediation through young John Quincy
Adams, Minister at St. Petersburg. The news reached America in March,
1813, and Madison revealed his willingness to withdraw from a contest
already shown to be unprofitable by immediately accepting and
nominating Adams, with Bayard and Gallatin, to serve as peace
commissioners. Without waiting to hear from England, these envoys
started for Russia, but reached there only to meet an official refusal
on the part of England, dated July 5, 1813. The Liverpool Ministry did
not wish to have the American war brought within the range of European
consideration, since its settlement under such circumstances might
raise questions of neutral rights which would be safer out of the hands
of a Tsar whose predecessors had framed armed neutralities in 1780 and
1801. Accordingly, the British government intimated politely that
{238} it would be willing to deal directly with the United States, and
thus waved the unwelcome Russian mediation aside. Madison accepted
this offer in March, 1814; but, although the American commissioners
endeavoured through Alexander Baring, their friend and defender in
Parliament, to get the British government to appoint a time and place
for meeting, they encountered continued delays.
A considerable element in the Tory party felt that the time had come to
inflict a severe punishment upon the United States, and newspapers and
speakers of that connection announced freely that only by large
concessions of territory could the contemptible republic purchase
peace. When the Ministry finally sent commissioners to Ghent, on
August 8, 1814, it was not with any expectation of coming to a prompt
agreement, but merely to engage the Americans while the various
expeditions then under way took Washington and Baltimore, occupied
northern New York, and captured New Orleans. It was generally expected
that a few months would find large portions of the United States in
British possession, as was in fact the sea-coast of Maine, east of
Penobscot Bay, after September first.
The instructions to the British peace commissioners were based on the
_uti possedetis_, {239} as the British government intended it to be by
the end of the year, when they expected to hold half of Maine, the
northern parts of New York, New Hampshire and Vermont, the
north-western post of Mackinnac, and possibly New Orleans and Mobile.
In addition, there was to be an Indian territory established under
British guarantee west of the old treaty line of 1795, and all American
fishing rights were to be terminated. On the other side, the American
instructions, while hinting that England would do well to cede Canada,
made the abandonment of the alleged right of impressments by England a
_sine quâ non_. Clearly no agreement between such points of view was
possible; and the outcome of the negotiation was bound to depend on the
course of events in the United States. The first interviews resulted
in revealing that part of the British instructions related to the
Indian territory with intimations of coming demands for territorial
cessions. This the Americans instantly rejected on August 25, and the
negotiation came to a standstill for several weeks.
The three British negotiators, Admiral Gambier, Henry Goulburn, and
Doctor Adams were men of slight political or personal authority, and
their part consisted chiefly in repeating their instructions and
referring American replies back to Lord Castlereagh, {240} the Foreign
Secretary, or to Lord Bathurst, who acted as his substitute while he
attended the Congress of Vienna. The American commissioners, including
the three original ones, Adams, Bayard, and Gallatin, to whom Clay and
Russell of Massachusetts were now added, clearly understood the
situation, and had already warned Madison that an insistence on the
abandonment of impressments would result in the failure to secure any
treaty. In October, 1814, a despatch yielded this point and left the
negotiators to make the best fight they could, unhampered by positive
instructions. Undoubtedly they would have been compelled to submit to
hard terms, in spite of their personal ability, which stood exceedingly
high, had not news of the repulse at Baltimore, of the treaty of July,
1814, by which the north-western Indians agreed to fight the English,
and, on October 17, of the retreat of Sir George Prevost after the
defeat of Plattsburg, come in to change the situation.
Between August and October little had been accomplished, during a slow
interchange of notes, beyond a withdrawal by the British of their
demand for an Indian territory, and an acceptance in its place of an
agreement to include the Indians in a general peace. Then the Cabinet,
seeing that after Prevost's retreat they could no longer claim the
{241} territory outlined in the first instructions, authorized the
negotiators to demand only Mackinac and Niagara, with a right of way
across Maine. The Americans, encouraged by the news from Plattsburg,
replied on October 23, refusing to treat on the _uti possedetis_, or on
any terms but the _status quo ante_. This brought the Tory government
face to face with the question whether the war was to be continued for
another year for the purpose of conquering a frontier for Canada; and,
before the prospect of continued war taxation, annoyance from
privateers, and a doubtful outcome, they hesitated. Turning to
Wellington for a decision, they asked him whether he would accept the
command in America for the purpose of conquering a peace. His reply
showed little interest or desire to go, although he seemed confident of
success; but he observed that, on the basis of the military situation,
they had no right to demand any territorial cession.
The Ministry then, on November 18, definitely abandoned the claim for
compensation, and accepted as a basis for discussion a plan submitted
by the American commissioners. In the preparation of this a sharp
quarrel had broken out between Clay, who insisted on terminating the
British right to navigate the Mississippi, and Adams, who {242}
demanded the retention of the American right to fish in Canadian
waters. Gallatin pointed out that the two privileges stood together,
and with great difficulty he induced the two men to agree to the
omission of both matters from the treaty, although Clay refused until
the last to sign. So the commission presented a united front in
offering to renew both rights or postpone them for discussion; and the
British commissioners finally accepted the latter alternative. The
treaty was then signed in the old Carthusian Convent at Ghent, on
December 24, 1814, as a simple cessation of hostilities and return to
the _status quo ante_ as regards conquests. Not a word related to any
of the numerous causes of the war. Impressments, blockades, Orders in
Council, the Indian relations, the West Indian trade rights,--all were
abandoned. So far as the United States was concerned the treaty was an
acknowledgment of defeat, a recognition that the war was a failure.
In view of the hopes of Canadian gains, the treaty was denounced in
England by the Opposition journals and many of those most antagonistic
to America as a cowardly surrender. But it was none the less heartily
accepted by both peoples and both governments. It reached the United
States on February 11, was sent to the Senate on February 15, and
ratified unanimously the next day. There {243} still remained various
vessels at sea, and so the winter of 1815 saw not only the amazing
victory of Jackson at New Orleans, but also several naval actions, in
which the United States frigate _President_ was taken by a squadron of
British blockades, two American sloops in duels took two British
smaller vessels, and the American _Constitution_, in a night action,
captured, together, two British sloops. Then the news spread, and
peace finally arrived in fact.
In England, the whole affair was quickly forgotten in the tremendous
excitement caused by the return of Napoleon from Elba, the uprising of
Europe, and the dramatic meeting of the two great captains, Wellington
and Napoleon, in the Waterloo campaign. By the time the Napoleonic
Empire had finally collapsed, the story of the American war, with its
maritime losses and scanty land triumphs, was an old one, and the
British exporters, rushing to regain their former markets, were happy
in the prospect of the reopening of American ports. By October, trade
relations were re-established and the solid intercourse of the two
countries was under way.
In America all disgraces and defeats were forgotten in the memories of
New Orleans, Plattsburg, and Chippawa, and the people at large, willing
to forgive all its failures to the {244} Republican administration,
resumed with entire contentment the occupations of peace. The war
fabric melted like a cloud; armies were disbanded, vessels were called
home, credit rose, prices sprang upward, importations swelled,
exportation began.
In truth, the time of antagonism was at an end, for, with the European
peace of 1814, the immediate cause for irritation was removed, never to
return. The whole structure of blockades, Orders in Council, seizures,
and restrictions upon neutrals vanished; the necessity for British
impressments ceased to exist; and, since France never again came into
hostility with England, none of these grievances were revived. But in
a broader way the year 1815 and the decades following marked the end of
national hostility, for the fundamental antagonisms which, since 1763,
had repeatedly brought about irritation and conflict, began after this
time to die out.
In the first place, the defeat of the Indians in the war allowed the
people of the United States to advance unchecked into the north-west
and south-west, filling the old Indian lands, and rendering any
continuation of the restrictive diplomacy on the part of England for
the benefit of Canadian fur traders patently futile. The war was no
sooner ended than roads, trails, and rivers swarmed {245} with
westward-moving emigrants; and within a year the territory of Indiana,
which the British commissioners at Ghent had wished to establish as an
Indian reserve, was framing a State constitution. In 1819 Illinois
followed.
The revulsion of temper was illustrated in the commencement at this
time of the organized movement for settled international peace, which
may be dated from the establishment of the New York and Massachusetts
Peace Societies in 1815, and the London Peace Society in the following
year. But its most signal expression came in the remarkable agreement
by which the Canadian-American frontier has been, for nearly a century,
unfortified, and yet completely peaceful. On November 16, 1815, State
Secretary Monroe instructed Adams to propose to the British Government
that--as, "if each party augments its force there with a view to
obtaining the ascendancy over the other, vast expense will be incurred
and the danger of collision augmented in like degree"--such military
preparations should be suspended on both sides. The smaller the number
of the armed forces agreed upon, he said, the better; "or to abstain
altogether from an armed force beyond that used for the revenue."
After some suspicious hesitation, Lord Castlereagh accepted this novel
proposal; and it was {246} given effect to by an exchange of notes,
signed by Mr. Bagot, British Minister at Washington, and Mr. Rush
(Monroe's successor) on April 28 and 29, 1817, approved by the Senate a
year later, and proclaimed by the President on April 28, 1818. By
Rush-Bagot Agreement, the naval force of each Government was limited to
one small gun-boat of each power on Champlain and Ontario, and two on
the upper lakes, an arrangement of immense value to both Canada and the
United States.
The old-time commercial antagonism was also destined to disappear in a
few years after the close of the war. At first England clung to the
time-honoured West Indian policy, and, when in 1815 the two countries
adjusted their commercial relations, American vessels were still
excluded, although given the right to trade directly with the East
Indies. But already the new economic thought, which regarded
competition and reciprocal trade as the ideal, instead of legal
discriminations and universal protectionism, was gaining ground, as
England became more and more the manufacturing centre of the world.
Under Huskisson, in 1825, reciprocity was definitely substituted for
exclusion; and a few years later, under Peel and Russell, and within
the lifetime of men who had maintained the Orders in Council, the whole
{247} elaborate system of laws backed by the logic of Lord Sheffield
and James Stephen was cast away and fell into disrepute and oblivion.
In America, it should be added, the rush of settlers into the West and
the starting of manufactures served, within a few years from the end of
the War of 1812, to alter largely the former dependence of the United
States upon foreign commerce. By the time that England was ready to
abandon its restrictive policy, the United States was beginning to be a
manufacturing nation with its chief wealth in its great internal trade,
and the ancient interest in the West Indies was fast falling into
insignificance. The same men who raged against the Jay treaty and the
Orders in Council lived to forget that they had ever considered the
West India trade important. So, on both sides, the end of commercial
antagonism was soon to follow on the Treaty of Ghent.
Finally, and more slowly, the original political and social antagonism
ceased to be active, and ultimately died out. So far as the United
States was concerned, the change was scarcely visible until
three-quarters of a century after the Treaty of Ghent. The temper of
the American people, formed by Revolutionary traditions and nourished
on memories of battle and injuries, remained {248} steadily
antagonistic toward England; and the triumph of western social ideals
served to emphasize the distinction between the American democrat and
the British aristocrat, until dislike became a tradition and a
political and literary convention. But the emptiness of this normal
national hatred of John Bull was shown in 1898, when, at the first
distinct sign of friendliness on the part of the British government and
people, the whole American anglophobia vanished, and the people of the
continent realized that the time had come for a recognition of the
essential and normal harmony of the ancient enemies.
In England, the change began somewhat earlier, for within less than a
generation after the Treaty of Ghent the exclusive Tory control
collapsed, and the Revolution of 1832 gave the middle classes a share
of political power. A few years later the Radicals, representing the
working-men, became a distinct force in Parliament, and to middle class
and Radicals there was nothing abhorrent in the American Republic.
Aristocratic society continued, of course, as in the eighteenth
century, to regard the United States with scant respect, and those
members of the upper middle classes who took their social tone from the
aristocracy commonly reflected their prejudices. But the masses of
{249} the British people--whose relatives emigrated steadily to the
western land of promise--felt a genuine sympathy and interest in the
success of the great democratic experiment, a sympathy which was far
deeper and more effective than had been that of the eighteenth-century
Whigs. From the moment that these classes made their weight felt in
government, the time was at hand when the old social antagonism was to
die out, and with it the deep political antipathy which, since the days
of 1793, had tinged the official British opinion of a democratic state.
The last evidence of the Tory point of view came when, in 1861, the
American Civil War brought out the unconcealed aversion of the British
nobility and aristocracy for the northern democracy; but on the
occasion the equally unconcealed sense of political and social sympathy
manifested by the British middle and working classes served to prevent
any danger to the United States, and to keep England from aiding in the
disruption of the Union.
Thus the Treaty of Ghent, marking the removal of immediate causes of
irritation, was the beginning of a period in which the under-lying
elements of antagonism between England and the United States were
definitely to cease. When every discount is made, the celebration,
heartily supported by the national leaders on {250} both sides, of a
century of peace between the British, Canadian, and American peoples,
does exhibit, in Sir Wilfred Laurier's words, "a spectacle to astound
the world by its novelty and grandeur."
{251}
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The references to the epoch covered in this volume may be rather
sharply divided into those which deal with the years before 1783, and
those which relate to the subsequent period. In the first group, there
are both British and American works of high excellence, but in the
second there are practically none but American authorities, owing to
the preoccupation of British writers with the more dramatic and
important French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, of the events of
parliamentary politics.
For the years 1763-1783 the best American history is E. CHANNING,
_History of the United States_, vol. iii (1912), distinctly
independent, thorough, and impartial. S. G. FISHER, _The Struggle for
American Independence_, 2 vols. (1908), is cynically critical and
unconventional. Three volumes of the _American Nation_ series,--G. E.
HOWARD, _Preliminaries of the Revolution_; C. H. VAN TYNE, _The
American Revolution_; and A. C. McLAUGHLIN, _The Confederation and the
Constitution_ (1905), are equally scholarly and less detailed. The
older American works, exhibiting the traditional "patriotic" view, are
best represented by J. FISKE, _American Revolution_, 2 vols. (1891);
and G. BANCROFT, _History of the United States_, 6 vols. (ed.
1883-1885).
On the English side the most valuable study is in W. E. H. LECKY,
_England in the Eighteenth Century_, vols. iii, iv (1878), a
penetrating and impartial analysis. The Whig view appears in SIR G. O.
TREVELYAN, _The American Revolution_, 3 vols. (1899-1907); LORD MAHON,
_England in the Eighteenth Century_, vols. v-vii (1853-1854); and M.
MARKS, _England and America_, 2 vols. (1907), while W. HUNT, _Political
History_, 1760-1801 (1905), alone of recent writers, presents a Tory
version of events.
Special works of value are C. STEDMAN, _The American War_, 2 vols.
(1794), the authoritative English contemporary account of military
events, and, among recent studies, J. W. FORTESCUE, _History of the
British Army_, vol. iii (1902), which should be compared with H. B.
CARRINGTON, _Battles of the Revolution_ (1876); E. MCCRADY, _South
Carolina in the Revolution_, 2 vols. (1901-2); E. J. LOWELL, _The
Hessians in the {252} Revolution_ (1884); J. B. PERKINS, _France in the
American Revolution_ (1911); C. H. VAN TYNE, _The Loyalists_ (1902),
and W. HERTZ, _The Old Colonial System_ (1905). Of especial value are
the destructive criticisms in C. F. ADAMS, _Studies Military and
Diplomatic_ (1911). The authoritative treatment of naval history is
found in A. T. MAHAN, _Influence of Sea Power_ (1890), and in the
chapter by the same writer in W. L. CLOWES, _History of the Royal
Navy_, vols. iii, iv (1898-1899).
Among leading biographies are those of Washington by H. C. LODGE (2
vols. 1890), by W. C. FORD (2 vols. 1900), and by GEN. B. T. JOHNSON
(1894); of Franklin by J. PARTON (2 vols. 1864), by J. BIGELOW (3 vols.
1874), and by J. T. MORSE (1889); of Henry by M. C. TYLER (1887); of
Samuel Adams by J. K. HOSMER (1885); of Robert Morris by E. P.
OBERHOLZER (1903), and of Steuben by F. KAPP (1869). On the English
side the _Memoirs of Horace Walpole_ (1848); the _Correspondence of
George III with Lord North_, ed. by W. B. DONNE (1867), are valuable
and interesting, and some material may be found in the lives of Burke
by T. McNIGHT (2 vols. 1858); of Shelburne by E. G. FITZMAURICE (2
vols. 1875); of Chatham by F. HARRISON (1905) and A. VON RUVILLE (3
vols. 1907); and of Fox by LORD JOHN RUSSELL (3 vols. 1859). The
biographies of two governors of Massachusetts, C. A. POWNALL, _Thomas
Pownall_ (1908), and J. K. HOSMER, _Thomas Hutchinson_ (1896), are of
value as presenting the colonial Tory point of view.
For the period after 1783, the best reference book and the only one
which attempts to trace in detail the motives of British as well as
American statesmen is HENRY ADAMS, _History of the United States_, 9
vols. (1891). It is impartially critical, in a style of sustained and
caustic vivacity. Almost equally valuable is A. T. MAHAN, _Sea Power
in Relation to the War of 1812_, 2 vols. (1905), which contains the
only sympathetic analysis of British naval and commercial policy,
1783-1812, beside being the authoritative work on naval events. The
standard American works are J. SCHOULER, _History of the United
States_, vols. i, ii (1882); J. B. MCMASTER, _History of the People of
the United States_, vols. i-iv (1883-1895); R. HILDRETH, _History of
the United States_, vols. ii-vi (1849-1862), and three volumes of the
_American Nation Series_, J. S. BASSETT, _The Federalist System_; E.
CHANNING, _The Jeffersonian System_, and K. C. BABCOCK, _Rise of
American Nationality_ (1906). On the English side there is little in
the general histories beyond a chapter on American relations in A.
ALISON, _Modern Europe_, vol. iv (1848), which accurately represents
the extreme Tory contempt for the United States, but has no other
merit. Works on Canadian history fill this {253} gap to a certain
extent, such as W. KINGSFORD, _History of Canada_, vol. viii (1895).
Beside the work of Mahan (as above) the War of 1812 is dealt with by W.
JAMES, _Naval History of Great Britain_, vols. v-vi (1823), a work of
accuracy as to British facts, but of violent anti-American temper; and
on the other side by J. F. COOPER, _Naval History_ (1856), and T.
ROOSEVELT, _Naval War of 1812_ (1883). Sundry special works dealing
with economic and social questions involved in international relations
are T. ROOSEVELT, _Winning of the West_, 4 vols. (1899-1902); W.
CUNNINGHAM, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, vol. iii (1893),
and W. SMART, _Economic Annals of the Nineteenth Century_ (1910).
Biographical material is to be found, in the lives of Washington (as
above); of Jefferson by J. SCHOULER, (1897), and by J. T. MORSE (1883);
of Hamilton by J. T. MORSE (1882), and F. S. OLIVER (1907); of Gallatin
by H. ADAMS (1879); of Madison by G. HUNT (1903); of Josiah Quincy by
E. QUINCY (1869). There is some biographical material to be found in
BROUGHAM'S _Life and Times of Lord Brougham_, vol. iii (1872), and in
S. WALPOLE, _Life of Spencer Perceval_, 2 vols. (1874), but for the
most part the British version of relations with America after 1783 is
still to be discovered only in the contemporary sources such as the
_Parliamentary History_ and _Debates_, the _Annual Register_, and the
partly published papers of such leaders as Pitt, Fox, Grenville,
Canning, Castlereagh and Perceval.
A useful sketch, giving prominence to the Treaty of Ghent and the
Rush-Bagot Agreement, and summarizing earlier and later events, is _A
Short History of Anglo-American Relations and of the Hundred Years'
Peace_, by H. S. PERRIS.
Documents and other contemporary material for the whole period may be
conveniently found in W. MACDONALD, _Select Charters_ (1904) and
_Select Documents_ (1898); in G. CALLENDER, _Economic History of the
United States_ (1909), and A. B. HART, _American History told by
Contemporaries_, vols. ii, iii (1898, 1901).
{254}
INDEX
Adams, John, in Revolution, 48, 57, 63, 71, 118-125;
after 1783, 142, 147, 155, 173-180
Adams, John Quincy, 237-241
Adams, Samuel, 32, 42, 50, 57, 63, 78, 131, 144
Adet, P. A., 172, 173
Alexander I, 190, 237
Alien and Sedition Acts, 176-180
Anti-Federalists, 143, 147
Armstrong, John, 223-230
Arnold, Benedict, 67, 81, 85, 104
Baltimore, 84, 230, 238, 240
Bank of the United States, 145, 146, 183, 218
Banks, State, 218, 233
Baring, Alexander, 212, 238
Bayard, James A., 237, 240
Beaumarchais, Caron de, 94
Bedford, Duke of, 40
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 179, 184-186, 189-198, 202-208, 213-216,
227, 236, 243
Brock, General Isaac, 220, 221
Brougham, Henry, 212
Brown, General Jacob, 228, 229
Bunker Hill, Battle of, 65, 66, 78, 83
Burgoyne, General John, 89-95, 113, 114
Burke, Edmund, 52, 60, 68, 73, 74, 96, 115, 116, 161, 165
Burr, Aaron, 179, 180
Camden, Battle of, 103
Canada, British policy in, 29, 54, 67, 73, 81, 85, 100,
119, 122, 127, 155, 158, 200, 210, 211;
defence of, 214-229, 239, 241, 244, 245
Canning, George, 197, 202, 204, 205, 207, 212
Carleton, General Guy, 81, 85, 158
Chauncey, Commodore Isaac, 225, 228
Clark, George Rogers, 101, 105
Clay, Henry, 211, 214, 240, 241
Clinton, De Witt, 214
Clinton, George, 147, 169
Clinton, Sir Henry, 82, 100-103, 109-113
Concord, Battle of, 62, 78
Confederation, Articles of, 105, 129-136
Congress, Continental, 56, 57, 60, 63, 64, 71, 79, 80, 84,
88-93, 98, 105, 118, 130
Congress of the Confederation,
107, 124, 125, 127, 130-138, 142, 157
Congress, United States, under Federalists, 140-146, 155, 164,
173, 175, 177; under Republicans, 182, 186, 187, 195,
199-209, 211, 213, 220, 223, 228, 233, 234
Constitution, United States, 139-141, 159, 180, 183, 234
Cornwallis, Lord, 86, 103-114
Dartmouth, Earl of, 47, 50
Declaration of Independence, 71, 98
De Grasse, Admiral, 110-112, 125
D'Estaing, Admiral, 100-102
Dickinson, John, 42, 50, 57, 64, 105
Elections, Presidential, 142, 147, 178, 178-180, 187, 201, 214
Erie, Lake, Battle of, 225
Erskine, David M., 204, 205
Fauchet, J. A., 163, 172
Finances, of Revolution, 16, 64, 106, 123, 124, 133-135,
144-146, 182, 191, 218-220, 228, 233
Fox, Charles James, 96, 115-121, 152, 153, 165, 193
Franklin, Benjamin, in England, 38, 44, 51, 52, 64;
in France, 71, 83, 93-95, 107, 118-124
Cage, General Thomas, 58, 61, 65
Gallatin, Albert, 182, 237, 240, 242
Gates, General Horatio, 79, 90, 91, 93, 103
Genet, Edmond C., 161-163
Germaine, Lord George, 53, 76, 77, 88, 115
Governors, Colonial, 15-17, 26, 27, 44, 62, 72
Grafton, Duke of, 39, 40, 47
Greene, General Nathaniel, 79, 84, 104, 109
Grenville, George, 28, 30, 31, 35, 45, 53
Grenville, William, Lord, 165, 166, 171, 193, 194, 198, 203
Hamilton, Alexander, 132, 135, 144-148, 162, 164, 168, 177,
179, 180, 188
Harrison, General W. H., 210, 211, 221-225
Hartford Convention, 234
Henry, Patrick, 32, 42, 50, 57, 78, 131, 144
Hillsborough, Lord, 43-53
Howe, Admiral, 82, 83, 100, 114
Howe, General Sir William, 82-92, 95, 113, 114
Hull, General William, 220
Hutchinson, Governor Thomas, 49, 52
Indians, of Northwest, 29, 100, 157-159, 164, 168, 209-213,
218-225, 239, 244, 245
Indians, Southwestern, 157, 210, 224, 229
Jackson, Andrew, 224, 228, 229, 231, 243
Jay, John, 42, 57, 118, 120-125, 156, 157, 165-167, 171
Jefferson, Thomas, 71, 78, 144, 146, 147, 156, 161, 169,
172, 178, 180, 181-188, 193-196, 199-203, 209, 213, 215,
217, 235, 236
King's Mountain, Battle of, 104
Lafayette, Marquis de, 102
Lee, General Charles, 79, 84, 99
Lee, Richard Henry, 57, 144
Livingston, Robert R., 125, 186
Long Island, Battle of, 83
Louis XVI, 93, 95, 156
Madison, James, 132, 135, 142, 144, 146, 147, 163, 164, 172,
178, 193, 201-208, 213-215, 230, 233-238, 240
Ministries, British, Bute, 35, 40;
Grenville, 28, 35, 43;
First Rockingham, 36, 39;
Grafton, 39-45,
North, 47-56, 60, 68-77, 88, 95-98, 114-117, 151;
Second Rockingham, 117, 120;
Shelburne, 120-123, 126, 152-154;
Coalition, 126, 153, 154;
Pitt, 152-154, 159, 162-167, 171;
Addington, 171;
Second Pitt, 171, 192, 193;
Lord Grenville, 193, 196, 197;
Portland, 197, 202, 207;
Perceval, 207, 211-215;
Liverpool, 212, 213, 237-241
Monroe, James, 172, 173, 186, 196
Montgomery, General Richard, 67, 79
Morgan, Daniel, 67, 68, 90, 104
Morris, Robert, 78, 107, 134
Navigation Acts, 22-25, 29, 38, 55, 72, 132, 150, 155
Non-importation Act, 196-200
Non-intercourse Act, 202, 206, 213
North, Lord, Tory leader, 43-56, 60, 61, 73-76;
in Revolutionary war, 77, 97, 115-117, 153
Oswald, Richard, 119-121
Otis, James, 27, 32
Perceval, Spencer, 197, 207, 212
Perry, Commander O. H., 225
Pinckney, C. C., 173, 174
Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, 9, 36, 38-40, 53, 60, 96-98
Pitt, William, 144, 148, 152-154, 171, 176, 189, 192
Pownall, Thomas, 41, 47, 53
Prevost, Sir George, 230, 231, 234
Proclamation of 1763, 29, 122
Proctor, Colonel Henry, 221, 225
Quebec Act, 54, 56
Randolph, Edmund, 163, 164, 172
Representatives, House of, 164, 180, 211
Rochambeau, Comte de, 102, 110, 113
Rockingham, Marquis of, 117, 120
Rutledge, John, 57, 78, 83
St. Clair, General Arthur, 159
St. Leger, Colonel B., 90
Sandwich, Earl of, 53, 68, 76, 77, 99, 115
Saratoga, Surrender at, 92
Scott, Sir William, 193
Secession, 188, 201, 234, 235
Sedition Act, 176-178, 180
Shays' Rebellion, 137
Sheffield, Lord, 150, 151, 154, 192, 197, 247
Shelburne, Earl of, 117, 119-123, 152-154
Sherman, Roger, 78, 135
Stamp Act, 30-33, 200
States Rights, 146, 178, 234
Stephen, James, 192, 197, 207, 247
Sugar Act, 25, 29, 31
Talleyrand, 175, 177
Tarleton, Colonel B., 103, 110
Tecumseh, 210, 211, 220, 221, 224, 225
Townshend, Charles, 40-43
Townshend Duties, 40-47, 210
Treaties, 1763, 9, 28;
1778, 95, 98;
1783, 117-127, 149-152, 158;
1794, 165-172, 193, 196;
1795, 168, 184; 1803, 186;
1814, 242;
1818, 244
Trenton, Battle of, 86, 112
Vergennes, Comte de, 93-96, 119-125
Washington, George, Commander,
42, 57, 64, 66, 79, 83-93, 99, 100, 107-112, 126;
in retirement, 132, 134;
President, 142, 144, 146, 147, 159, 162, 164, 167,
172-174, 178
Wayne, General Anthony, 79, 159, 164
Wellington, Duke of, 241, 243
West Indies, British, before 1783, 9, 21-27, 99, 102, 108,
110, 112, 125;
after 1783, 132, 149-151, 166, 167, 246, 247
West Indies, French, trade with, 25, 27, 31, 156, 163,
167, 191-193, 196
Wilkes, John, 44, 45
Wilkinson, General James, 226
X. Y. Z. affair, 174, 175
Yorktown, Surrender at, 112, 160, 160
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