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THE AMERICAN NATION A HISTORY
FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES BY ASSOCIATED SCHOLARS EDITED BY
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ADVISED BY VARIOUS HISTORICAL SOCIETIES
IN 27 VOLUMES VOL. 9
THE AMERICAN NATION
A HISTORY
LIST OF AUTHORS AND TITLES
Group I.
Foundations of the Nation
Vol. I European Background of American History, by Edward Potts Chey- ney, A.M., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Pa.
*' 3 Basis of American History, by Livingston Farrand, M.D., Prof. Anthropology Columbia Univ.
** 3 Spain in Ameri ca, by Edward Gay- lord Bourne, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Yale Univ.
" 4 England in America, by Lyon Gar- diner Tyler, LL.D., President William and Mary College.
** 5 Colonial Self - Government, by Charles McLean Andrews, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Johns Hopkins Univ.
Group II.
Transformation into a Nation
Vol. 6 Provincial America, by Evarts Boutell Greene, Ph.D., Prof. Hist, and Dean of College, Univ. of 111. " 7 France in America, by Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D., Sec. Wis- consin State Hist. Soc.
Vol. 8 Preliminaries of the Revolution, by George Elliott Howard, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Nebraska.
" 9 The American Revolution, by- Claude Halstead VanT3me,Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Michigan.
" ID The Confederation and the Consti- tution, by Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin, A.M., Head Prof. Hist. Univ. of Chicago.
Group III,
Development op the Nation
Vol. II The Federalist System, by John Spencer Bassett, Ph.D., Prof. Am. Hist. Smith College.
** 12 The JefEersonian System, by Ed- ward Channing, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Harvard Univ.
*• 13 Rise of American Nationality, by Kendric Charles Babcock, Ph.D., Pres. Univ. of Arizona.
** 14 Rise of the New West, by Freder- ick Jackson Turner, Ph.D., Prof. Am. Hist, Univ. of Wisconsin.
** 15 Jacksonian Democracy, by Will- iam MacDonald, LL.D., Prof. Hist. Brown Univ.
Group IV.
Trial op Nationality
Vol. 16 Slavery and Abolition, by Albert Bushnell Hart, LL.D., Prof. Hist. Harvard Univ.
Vol. 17 Westward Extension, by George Pierce Garrison, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Texas.
" 18 Parties and Slavery, by Theodore Clarke Smith, Ph.D., Prof. Am. Hist. Williams College.
" 19 Causes of the Civil War, by Admiral French Ensor Chad wick, U.S.N. , recent Pres. of Naval War Col.
" 20 The Appeal to Arms, by James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D., recent Librarian Minneapolis Pub, Lib.
" 21 Outcome of the Civil War, by James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D., re- cent Lib. Minneapolis Pub. Lib.
Group V.
National Expansion Vol. 22 Reconstruction, Political and Eco- nomic, by William Archibald Dun- ning, Ph.D., Prof. Hist, and Politi- cal Philosophy Columbia Univ.
23 National Development, by Edwin Erie Sparks, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Univ. of Chicago.
24 National Problems, by Davis R. Dewey, Ph.D., Prof essor of Eco- nomics, Mass. Inst, of Technology.
25 America the World Power, by John H. Latane, Ph.D., Prof. Hist. Washington and Lee Univ.
26 Ideals of American Government, by Albert Bushnell Hart, LL.D., Prof. Hist. Harvard Univ.
27 Index to the Series, by David Mavdole Matteson, A.M.
COMMITTEES APPOINTED TO ADVISE AND CONSULT WITH THE EDITOR
The Massachusetts Historical Society
Charles Francis Adams, LL.D., President Samuel A. Green, M.D., Vice-President James Ford Rhodes, LL.D., 2d Vice-President Edward Channing, Ph.D., Prof. History Harvard
Univ. Worthington C. Ford, Chief of Division of MSS.
Library of Congress
The Wisconsin Historical Society
Reuben G. Thwaites, LL.D., Secretary and Super- intendent
Frederick J. Turner, Ph.D., Prof, of American His- tory Wisconsin University
James D. Butler, LL.D., formerly Prof. Wisconsin University
WiUiam W. Wight, President
Henry E. Legler, Curator
The Virginia Historical Society
William Gordon McCabe, Litt.D., President
Lyon G. Tyler, LL.D., Pres. of William and Mary
College Judge David C. Richardson J. A. C. Chandler, Professor Richmond College Edward Wilson James
The Texas Historical Society
Judge John Henninger Reagan, President George P. Garrison, Ph.D., Prof, of History Uni- versity of Texas Judge C. W. Raines Judge Zachary T. Fullmore
> . ^
GEORGE WASHINGTON
THE AMERICAN NATION : A HISTORY
VOLUME 9
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
1 776-1 783
BY
CLAUDE HALSTEAD VAN TYNE, Ph.D.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OP AMERICAN HISTORY UNITERSITY OF MICHIGAN
WITH MAPS
NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 190S, by Harper & Brothers.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA G-R
TO
MY WIFE
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGB
Editor's Introduction xiii
Author's Preface xvii
I. Fundamental and Immediate Causes (1763-
1775) 3
II. Outbreak op War (1775) 25
III. Organization of an Army (1775-1776) . . 37
IV. Spirit of Independence (1775-1776) ... 50
V. The Campaign for Independence (i 775-1 776) 66
VI. New York Accepts the Revolution (1776) 8S
VII. Contest for New York City (1776) . . . 102
VIII. From the Hudson to the Delaware (1776) 116
IX. Framing New State Governments (1776-
1780) 136
X. Campaigns of Burgoyne and Howe (1777) 157
XI. State Sovereignty and Confederation (1775-
1777) 17s
xii. French Aid and French Alliance (1775-
1778) 203
xiii. The Turn in the Tide in England and
America (1778) 227
XIV. Civil War between Whigs and Tories (1777-
1780) 248
XV. The New West (1763-1780) 269
xi
xii CONTENTS
CHAP.
PAGE
XVI. French Aid and American Reverses (1778-
1780) 289
XVII. European Complications and the End of
THE War (1779-1781) 309
xviii. Critical Essay on Authorities 334
Index 357
MAPS
Seat of War in the Eastern and Middle
States (177 5-1 780) {in colors) .... facing 26
Accessions to the Principle of Indepen- dence before July 2 {in colors) ... ** 68
Division of Europe as to War with Eng- land (1778-1782) " 228
Estimated Degree of Severity of Legis- lation against the Loyalists ... ** 250
The West (1775-1782) " 270
New Settlements and Proposed Communi- ties IN THE West (1775-1782) {in colors) " 278
Seat of War in the Southern States
(iTjS-iy Si) {in colors) " 290
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
NO more difficult task can be found in the twenty -six volumes of The American Nation than to write a fresh and original accoimt of the Revolution. In order to clear the way, the begin- nings of that struggle have been treated in a sepa- rate volume, Howard's Preliminaries of the Revolution (vol. VIII.), and this volume stops practically with the end of the Revolutionary War, leaving the peace negotiations to McLaughlin's Confederation and Con- stitution (vol. X.). By thus taking up the story substantially at the battle of Lexington and Con- cord, and closing with the capture of Cornwallis in 1 781, it becomes physically possible to describe the Revolution in one volume.
In organizing his material the author has rec- ognized the parallel claims of the civil and the military struggle, and has ingeniously interwoven the two things. The first chapter on fundamental and immediate causes is a brief review of the period covered by the previous volume. Then follow two chapters on the outbreak of war and the organization of the army. The next chapters (iv. to vi.) are given up to a study of independence in
xiii
xiv EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
its development and acceptance, in which the author makes clear his convictions as to the historical origin of the sovereignty of the states and its rela- tion to the general revolutionary government of the time.
After independence come two chapters describ- ing the campaign of 1776, from Long Island to the Delaware. Chapter ix. is wholly devoted to the new state governments of this period. Chapter x. is on the campaigns of 1777. Chapter xi. returns to the civil side in describing the creation of the Confederation. Chapters xii. and xiii. are on the French treaty and the campaigns of 1778. This seems to be a convenient place for a chapter (xiv.) on the Tories. In chapter xv. the growth of the West during the Revolution is traced; it fits closely with chapter xiii. of Howard's Preliminaries of the Revolution, and chapters vii. and viii. of Mc- Laughlin's Confederation and Constitution. Chapters xvi. and xvii. resume the military operations and carry them to the end of the hostilities.
No writer in the series has had such a jiiass of literature to explore and select, and the Critical Essay on Authorities will be found a very con- venient simimary of the best of that literature.
The fundamental thought of this volume is that the Revolution was a close struggle, in which the Americans suffered from inexperience and from the difficulty of securing common action, and the British from ineptitude; that to a large degree it
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION xv
was also a civil war, in which the Tories in actual numbers were not far inferior to the patriots; that it was further a remarkable school of political science from which emerged trained statesmen, vigorous state governments, and a weak and ineffectual na- tional government. The point of view of the author as to the relative origins of the states and the nation is his own ; it is no part of the scheme of the series to adjust the conclusions of the individual writers to the editor's frame of mind.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
AT the present time there exists more literature jl\ devoted to the American Revolution than to any other period in our history, and its very extent increases the difficulty of writing upon the subject. While the military side of the struggle has been al- most exhaustively treated, there yet remains, not- withstanding much good work, many political, social, and constitutional questions which have been only superficially studied. The problems of writing this volume have been therefore those of con- densation, of giving proper proportions to the several phases of the Revolution, and of getting a fuller understanding of those questions which have been neglected. I have sought to portray the struggle not as a mere fight between England and America, but, as it really was, a civil war between opposing political factions in the British Empire. That these factions were not divided by the ocean is clearly shown in the bitter internecine war between Whig and Tory in America, and by the stubborn parliamentary struggle in England.
The fundamental reason why America changed the conflict from a strife for political liberty to one for in-
xvii
xviii AUTHOR'S PREFACE
dependence appears when we note the divergence of the poHtical ideals, found in the new state constitu- tions, from the constitutional forms then dominant in England. Independent America here gave tangi- ble form to those radical political ideas from which sprang her discontent with the imperial system of Great Britain. But even in the revolutionary party there was not unity, and while creating the new state governments we find the frontier democracy making demands upon the conservative seaboard which are prophetic of the extremer democracy yet to be developed upon the American continent. This fact, together with the unreadiness of the several states to submit to the control of a new central power, when the British government was no longer recognized, prepares us to understand the great constitutional and political controversies which followed the Revolution. Finally, I have tried to show the relative importance of the diplomatic as compared with the military activities of the revo- lutionary leaders in the attainment of American in- dependence.
My indebtedness to previous writers on the American Revolution is shown in the foot-notes and the bibliographical chapter. Aside from these my obligations are few but deep. To Professor A. C. McLaughlin I am especially indebted for sugges- tions made while talking over with him the con- stitutional problems of the revolutionary period. Professor F. J. Turner, also, has given me im-
AUTHOR'S PREFACE xlx
portant suggestions as to the West in the Revolution, and has kindly sent me valuable material from the Draper manuscripts. Mr. E. S. Corwin permitted me to use materials which he had collected for a work on the relations of France with America in the Revolution. The editor of this series has dealt with my work with such patience and liberal- ity that I owe him my sincerest thanks.
VOL. IX.— 2 Claude Halstead Van Tyne.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
CHAPTER I
FUNDAMENTAL AND IMMEDIATE CAUSES (1763-1775)
NOT a clause in the Declaration of Independence sets forth the real and underlying cause of the American Revolution. The attention of its writer was bent upon recent events, and he dwelt only upon the immediate reasons for throwing off allegiance to the British government. In the dark of the storm already upon them, the men of the time could hardly look with clear vision back to ultimate causes. They could not see that the English kings had planted the seeds of the Revolu- tion when, in their zeal to get America colonized, they had granted such political and religious priv- ileges as tempted the radicals and dissenters of the time to migrate to America. Only historical research could reveal the fact that from the year 1620 the English government had been systemati-
3
4 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1620
cally stocking the colonies with dissenters and re- taining in England the conformers. The tendency of colonization was to leave the conservatives in England, thus relatively increasing the conservative force at home, while the radicals went to America to fortify the radical political philosophy there. Thus England lost part of her potentiality for political development.
Not only were radicals constantly settling in the colonies, because of the privileges granted them there, but the crown neglected to enforce in the colonies the same regulations that it enforced at home. The Act of Uniformity was not extended to the colonies, though rigidly enforced in England; the viceregal officers, the governors, permitted them- selves again and again to be browbeaten and dis- obeyed by the colonial legislatures;^ and even the king himself had allowed Massachusetts (1635) to overreach him by not giving up her charter.*
After a century of great laxity towards the colonies — a century in which the colonists were favored by political privileges shared by no other people of that age; after the environment had established new social conditions, and remoteness and isolation had created a local and individual hatred of restraint; after the absence of traditions had made possible the institution of representation by population, and self-government had taken on a
* Greene, The Provincial Governor, passim. » Barry, Hist, of Mass., I., 288-295.
1760] CAUSES 5,
new meaning in the world; after a great gulf had been fixed between the social, political, and economic institutions of the two parts of the British empire — only then did the British government enter upon a policy intended to make the empire a unity. ^
Independence had long existed in spirit in most of the essential matters of colonial life, and the British government had only to seek to establish its power over the colonies in order to arouse a de- sire for formal independence. The transition in England, therefore, to an imperial ideal, about the middle of the eighteenth century, doubtless caused the rending of the empire. Walpole and Newcastle, whose administrations had just preceded the reign of George III., had let the colonies alone, and thus aided the colonial at the expense of the imperial idea; while their successors, Grenville and Town- shend, ruling not wisely but too well, forced the colonists to realize that they cared more for Amer- ica than for England.
The time had come, though these ministers failed to see it, when the union of Great Britain with her colonies depended on the offspring's disposition towards the mother-country. Good feeling would preserve the union, but dissatisfaction would make even forcible control impossible. Social and polit- ical and economic ties still bound the colonists to the home land, but these were weak ties as compared
* For a detailed study of this subject, see Howard, Prelimi' nartes of the Revolution {American Nation, VIII.).
6 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1760
with an irrepressible desire for self-growth. The expression of their poHtical ideals unrestrained by the conservatism of the parent was a desired end to which they strove, almost unconscious of their object.
To understand the American Revolution, there- fore, several facts must be clearly in mind — first, that Great Britain had for one hundred and fifty years been growing to the dignity of an empire, and that the thirteen colonies were a considerable part of that empire ; second, the colonies had interests of their own which were not favored by the growing size and strength of the empire. They were ad- vancing to new political ideals faster than the mother-country. Their economic interests were becoming differentiated from those of England. They were coming to have wants and ambitions and hopes of their own quite distinct from those of Great Britain.
At the fatal time when the independent spirit of America had grown assertive, the politically active part of the British people began unconsciously to favor an imperial policy, which their ministers sug- gested, and which to them seemed the very essence of sound reasoning and good government. They approved of the proposed creation of executives who should be independent of the dictation of the colonial assemblies. There were also to be new administrative organs having power to enforce the colonial trade regulations ; and the defensive system of the colonies was to be improved by a force of reg-
1764] CAUSES 7
ular troops, which was in part to be supported by colonial taxes.
In order to accomplish these objects, the king's new minister, the assiduous Grenville, who knew the law better than the maxims of statesmanship, induced Parliament, in March, 1764, to resolve upon "certain stamp duties" for the colonies. A year later the "Gentle Shepherd," as Pitt had dubbed him, proved his watchfulness by getting a stamp act passed,* which, though nearly a duplicate of one in force in England, and like one of Massachusetts' own laws, nevertheless aroused every colony to vio- lent wrath.
This sudden flame of colonial passion rose from the embers of discontent with Grenville's policy of enforcing the trade or navigation laws — those re- strictions upon colonial industries and commerce which were the outgrowth of a protective commer- cial policy which England had begun even before the discovery of America.^ As the colonies grew they began to be regarded as a source of wealth to the mother-country; and, at the same time that bounties were given them for raising commodities desired by England, restrictions were placed upon American trade. ^ When the settlers of the northern
* 5 George III., chap, xii., given in Macdonald, Select Charters, 281, ^ Beer, Commercial Policy of England, 10-13.
■ ' For details and exact references to laws, see Channing, The Navigation Laws, in Amer. Antiq. Soc, Proceedings, new series, VI. For discussion, see Andrews, Colonial Self -Government, chap, j.; Greene, Colonial Commonwealths {American Nation, V., VI.).
8 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1733
and middle colonies began manufacturing for them- selves, their industry no sooner interfered with English manufactures than a law was passed to prevent the exportation of the production and to Hmit the industry itself. This system of restric- tions, though it necessarily established a real oppo- sition of interest between America and England, does not seem on the whole to have been to the dis- advantage of the colonies ; ^ nor was the English colo- nial system a whit more severe than that of other European countries.
In 1733, however, the Molasses Act went into ef- fect,^ and, had it been enforced, would have been a serious detriment to American interests. It not only aimed to stop the thriving colonial trade with the Dutch, French, and Spanish West Indies, but was intended to aid English planters in the British West Indies by laying a prohibitive duty on imported foreign sugar and molasses. It was not enforced, however, for the customs officials, by giving fraud- ulent clearances, acted in collusion with the colonial importers in evading the law; but, in 1761, during the war with France, the thrifty colonists carried on an illegal trade with the enemy, and Pitt demanded that the restrictive laws be enforced.
The difficulty of enforcing was great, for it was hard to seize the smuggled goods, and harder still to convict the smuggler in the colonial courts. Search-
* Beer, Commercial Policy of England, chap. vii. ' 6 George II., chap. xiii.
1763] CAUSES 9
warrants were impracticable, because the legal man- ner of using them made the informer*s name public, and the law was unable to protect him from the anger of a community fully in sympathy with the smugglers. The only feasible way to put down this unpatriotic trade with the enemy was to resort to *' writs of assistance," which would give the cus- toms officers a right to search for smuggled goods in any house they pleased.* Such warrants were legal, had been used in America, and were frequently used in England ; ^ yet so highly developed was the Amer- ican love of personal liberty that when James Otis, a Boston lawyer, resisted by an impassioned speech the issue of such writs his arguments met universal approval.^ In perfect good faith he argued, after the manner of the ancient law-writers, that Parlia- ment could not legalize tyranny, ignoring the his- torical fact that since the revolution of 1688 an act of Parliament was the highest guarantee of right, and Parliament the sovereign and supreme power. Nevertheless, the popularity of Otis's argument showed what America believed, and pointed very plainly the path of wise statesmanship.
When, in 1763, the Pontiac Indian rebellion en- dangered the whole West and made necessary a force of soldiers in Canada, Grenville, in spite of the recent warning, determined that the colonies should
' Macdonald, Select Charters, 259.
' Lecky, American Revolution (Woodbum's ed.), 48.
•J. Adams, Works, II., 523-525.
lo AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1763
share the burden which was rapidly increasing in England. He lowered the sugar and molasses duties, * and set out to enforce their collection by every law- ful means. The trouble which resulted developed more quickly in Massachusetts, because its harsh climate and sterile soil drove it to a carrying-trade, and the enforced navigation laws were thought to threaten its ruin. Tt was while American economic affairs were in this condition that Grenville rashly aggravated the discontent by the passage of his Stamp Act.
As the resistance of the colonies to this taxation led straight to open war and final independence, it will be worth while to look rather closely at the stamp tax, and at the subject of representation, which was at once linked with it. The terms of the Stamp Act are not of great importance, because, though it did have at least one bad feature as a law, the whole opposition was on the ground that there should be no taxation whatever without represen- tation. It made no difference to its enemies that the money obtained by the sale of stamps was to stay in America to support the soldiers needed for colonial protection. Nothing would appease them while the taxing body contained no representatives of their own choosing.
To attain this right, they made their fight upon legal and historical grounds — the least favorable they could have chosen. They declared that, under * 4 George III,, chap. xv.
1765] CAUSES II
the British constitution, there could be no taxation except by persons known and voted for by the per- sons taxed. The wisest men seemed not to see the kernel of the dispute. A very real danger threat- ened the colonies — subject as they were to a body unsympathetic with the political and economic con- ditions in which they were living — ^but they had no legal safeguard.^ They must either sever the exist- ing constitutional bond or get Parliament of its own will to limit its power over the colonies. All un- wittingly the opponents of the Stamp Act were struggling with a problem that could be solved only by revolution.
Two great fundamental questions were at issue: Should there be a British empire ruled by Parlia- ment in all its parts, either in England or oversea? or should Parliament govern at home, and the colo- nial assemblies in America, with only a federal bond to unite them? Should the English understanding of representation be imposed upon the colonies ? or should America's institution triumph in its own home? If there was to be a successful imperial system, Parliament must have the power to tax all parts of the empire. It was of no use to plead that Parliament had never taxed the colonies before, for, as Dr. Johnson wrote, "We do not put a calf into the plough: we wait till it is an ox."^ The colonies were strong enough to stand taxation now, and the
* Osgood, in Political Science Quarterly, XIII., 45. ' Lecky, American Revolution (Woodbum's ed.), 64,
12 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [iT^S
reasonable dispute must be as to the manner of it; To understand the widely different points of view of Englishmen and Americans, we must examine their systems of representative government.
In electing members to the House of Commons in England certain ancient counties and boroughs were entitled to representation, each sending two mem- bers, regardless of the number of people within its territory. For a century and a half before the American Revolution only four new members were added to the fixed number in Parliament. Mean- while, great cities had grown up which had no rep- resentation, though certain boroughs, once very properly represented, had become uninhabited, and the lord who owned the ground elected the members to Parliament, taking them, not from the district represented, but from any part of the kingdom. The franchise was usually possessed either by the owners of the favored pieces of land or in thd boroughs chiefly by persons who inherited certain rights which marked them as freemen. A man had as many votes as there were constituencies in which he possessed the qualifications.
In the colonial assemblies there was a more dis- tinct territorial basis for representation, and changes of population brought changes of representation. New towns sent new members to the provincial assembly, and held the right to be of great value. All adult men — even negroes in New England — owning a certain small amount of property could
1765] CAUSES 13
vote for these members. In the South only the landholders voted, but the supply of land was not limited, as in England, and it was easily acquired. Finally, the voter and the representative voted for must, as a rule, be residents of the same district. From the first the colonial political ideals were affected by new conditions. When they established representative government they had no historic places sanctified by tradition to be the sole breeding- places of members of Parliament.
Backed by such divergent traditions as these, the two parts of the British empire, or, more accurately, the dominant party in each section of the empire, faced each other upon a question of principle. Neither could believe in the honesty of the other, for each argued out of a different past. The oppo- nents of the Stamp Act could not understand the political thinking which held them to be represented in the British Parliament. "No taxation without representation*' meant for the colonist that taxes ought to be levied by a legislative body in which was seated a person known and voted for by the person taxed. An Englishman only asked that there be **no taxation except that voted by the House of Commons." He was not concerned with the mode of election to that house or the interests of the per- sons composing it. The colonist called the Stamp Act tyranny, but the British government certainly intended none, for it acted upon the theory of virtual representation, the only kind of representation en-
14 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1763
joyed by the great mass of Englishmen either at home or in the colonies. On that theory nothing was taxed except by the consent of the virtual rep- resentatives of those taxed. But, replied an Amer- ican, in England the interests of electors and non- electors are the same. Security against any op- pression of non-electors lies in the fact that it would be oppressive to electors also ; but Americans have no such safeguard, for acts oppressive to them might be popular with English electors.^
When the news of the Stamp Act first came over- sea there was apparent apathy. The day of en- forcement was six months away, and there was nothing to oppose but a law. It was the fitting time for an agitator. Patrick Henry, a gay, unprosper- ous, and unknown country lawyer, had been carried into the Virginia House of Burgesses on the public approval of his impassioned denial, in the ** Parson's Cause" (1763), of the king's right to veto a needed law passed by the colonial legislature. He now offered some resolutions agamst the stamp tax, denying the right of Parliament to legislate in the internal affairs of the colony.^ This *' alarum bell to the disaffected," and the fiery speech which secured its adoption by an irresolute assembly, were ap- plauded ever^^where. Jefferson said of Henry, that he "spoke as Homer wrote."
As soon as the names of the appointed stamp-dis-
' Dulany, in Tyler, Lit. Hist, of Am. Rev., I.. 104-105.
' Life, Correspondence, and Speeches of Patrick Henry- 1., 84-8^^
1765] CAUSES 15
tributers were made known (August i, 1765) the masses expressed their displeasure in a way unfortu- nately too common in America. Throughout the land there was rifling of stamp-collectors' houses, threatening their hves, burning their records and documents, and ev^n their houses. Their offices were demolished and their resignations compelled — in one case under a hanging effigy, suggestive of the result of refusal. The more moderate patriots can- celled their orders with British merchants, agreed not to remit their English debts, and dressed in homespun to avoid wearing imported clothes.
On the morning that the act went into effect (No- vember I, 1765) bells tolled the death of the nation. Shops were shut, flags hung at half-mast, and news- papers appeared with a death's-head where the stamp should have been. Mobs burned the stamps, and none were to be had to legalize even the most solemn and important papers. The courts ignored them and the governors sanctioned their omission. None could be used, because none could be obtained. All America endorsed the declaration of rights of the Stamp-Act Congress, which met in New York, Octo- ber, 1765. It asserted that the colonists had the same liberties as British subjects. Circumstances, they de- clared, prevented the colonists from being represented in the House of Commons, therefore no taxes could be levied except by their respective legislatures.*
This great ado was a complete surprise to the
* Hart, Contemporaries, II., 402.
i6 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1765
British government. On the passage of the Stamp Act, Walpole had written/ " There has been nothing of note in Parliament but one slight day on the American taxes." That expressed the common conception of its importance; and when the Gren- ville ministry fell (July, 1765), and was succeeded by that of Rockingham, the American situation had absolutely nothing to do with the change. The new ministry was some months in deciding its pol- icy. The king was one of the first to realize the situation, which he declared ''the most serious that ever came before Parliament" (December 5, 1765). Weak and unwilling to act as the new ministry was, the situation compelled attention. The king at first favored coercion of the rebellious colonies, but the English merchants, suffering from the suspended trade, urged Parliament to repeal the act. Their demand decided the ministry to favor retraction, just as formerly their influence had forced the navi- gation laws and the restrictions on colonial manu- factures. If the king and landed gentry were re- sponsible for the immediate causes of the Revolu- tion, the influence of the English commercial classes on legislation was the more ultimate cause.
After one of the longest and most heated debates in the history of Parliament, under the advice of Benjamin Franklin, given at the bar of the House of Commons,^ and with the powerful aid of Pitt and
* Walpole' s Letters, February 12, 1765.
* Franklin, Works (Sparks's ed.), IV., 161-198.
1766] CAUSES 17
Camden, the Stamp Act was repealed. Another act passed at the same time asserted Parliament's power to legislate for the colonies in all cases whatsoever.^ Thus the firebrand was left smouldering amid the inflammable colonial affairs; and Burke was quick to point out that the right to tax, or any other right insisted upon after it ceased to harmonize with prudence and expediency, would lead to disaster.^
It is plain to-day that the only way to keep up the nominal union between Great Britain and her colo- nies was to let them alone. The colonies felt strongly the ties of blood, interest, and affection which bound them to England.^ They would all have vowed, after the repeal of the Stamp Act, that they loved their parent much more than they loved one another. They felt only the normal adult instinct to act in- dependently. Could the British government have given up the imperial idea to which it so tenaciously clung, a federal union might have been preserved.
The genius of dissolution, however, gained control of the ministry which next came into power. When illness withdrew Pitt from the ''Mosaic Ministry," which he and Grafton had formed, Townshend's brilliant talents gave him the unquestioned lead. This man, who is said to have surpassed Burke in wit and Chatham in solid sense, determined to try again to tax the colonies for imperial purposes.* He
* 6 George III., chap. xii. 2 Morley, Burke, 146. ^Franklin, Works (Sparks's ed.), IV., 169.
* Walpole, Memoirs of George III., II., 275, III., 23-27.
i8 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1767
ridiculed the distinction between external and in- ternal tax; but since the colonists had put stress on the illegality of the latter he laid the new tax on imported articles, and prepared to collect at the custom-houses. The income was to pay the sal- aries of colonial governors and judges, and thus render them independent of the tyrannical and contentious assemblies. Writs of assistance, so effective in enforcing the revenue laws, but so hated by the colonists, were legalized. The collection of the revenue was further aided by admiralty courts, which should try the cases without juries, thus preventing local sympathy from shielding the violators of the law.^
All the indifference into which America had relapsed, and which the agitators so much deplored, at once disappeared. The right of trial by jury was held to be inalienable. The control of the judiciary and executive by the people was necessary to free government, asserted the pamphleteers. ParHament could not legaHze "writs of assistance," they rashly cried. The former stickling at an internal tax was forgotten, and they objected to any tax whatever — a more logical position, which John Dickinson, of Penn- sylvania, supported by the assertion "that any law, in so far as it creates expense, is in reality a tax." Samuel Adams drew up a circular letter, w^hich the Massachusetts assembly despatched to the other
» 7 George III., chaps, xli., xlvi., Ivi. See Macdonald, Select Charters, 320-330.
1768] CAUSES 19
colonial assemblies, urging concerted action against this new attack on colonial liberties/ The British government, through the colonial governors, at- tempted to squelch this letter, but the Massachusetts assembly refused to rescind, and the other colonies were quick to embrace its cause.
Signs were not wanting that the people as well as the political leaders were aroused. When the customs officials, in 1768, seized John Hancock's sloop Liberty, for alleged evasion of the customs duties, there was a riot which so frightened the officers that they fled to the fort and wrote to England for soldiers.
This and other acts of resistance to the govern- ment led Parliament to urge the king to exercise a right given him by an ancient act to cause persons charged with treason to be brought to England for trial. The Virginia assembly protested against this, and sent their protest to the other colonies for approval.^ The governor dissolved the assembly, but it met and voted a non-importation agreement, which also met favor in the other colonies. This economic argument again proved effective, and the Townshend measures were repealed, except the tax on tea ; Parliament thus doing everything but remove the offence — ''fixing a badge of slavery upon the Americans without service to their masters."* Th«
* Samuel Adams, Writings (Cushing's ed.), I., 184. ' Hutchinson, Hist, of Massachusetts Bay, III., 494. •Junius (ed. of 1799), 11., 31.
56 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1768
old trade regulations also remained to vex the colonists.
In order that no disproportionate blame may be attached to the king or his ministry for the bringing on of the Revolution, it must be noted that the English nation, the Parliament, and the king were all agreed when the sugar and stamp acts were passed; and though Parliament mustered a good- sized minority against the Townshend acts, never- theless no unaccustomed influence in its favor was used by the king. Thus the elements of the cloud were all gathered before the king's personality began to intensify the oncoming storm. The later acts of Parliament and the conduct of the king had the sole purpose of overcoming resistance to established government. Most of these coercive acts, though no part of the original policy, were perfectly con- stitutional even in times of peace. They must be considered in their historical setting, however, just as President Lincoln's extraordinary acts i'n a time of like national peril. Henceforth we are dealing with the natural, though perhaps ill-judged, efforts of a government to repress a rebellion.
After the riot which followed the seizure of the Liberty (June, 1768), two regiments of British soldiers were stationed in Boston. The very in- adequacy of the force made its relations with the citizens strained, for they resented without fearing it. After enduring months of jeering and vilifica- tion, the soldiers at last (March 5, 1770) fired
1773] CAUSES 21
upon a threatening mob, and four men were killed. Much was made of the "massacre," as it was called, because it symbolized for the people the substitution of military for civil government. A Boston jury acquitted the soldiers, and, after a town-meeting, the removal of the two regiments was secured.
A period of quiet followed until the assembly and the governor got into a debate over the theoretical rights of the colonists. To spread the results of this debate, Sammel Adams devised the *' committees of correspondence,"^ which kept the towns of Massachusetts informed of the controversy in Boston. This furnished a model for the colonial committees of correspondence, which became the most efficient means for revolutionary organization. They created public opinion, set war itself in motion, and were the embryos of new governments when the old were destroyed.
The first provincial committee that met with gen- eral response from the other colonies was appointed by Virginia, March 12, 1773, to keep its assembly informed of the * * Gas pee Commission . " ^ The Gas pee was a sort of revenue-cutter which, while too zealous- ly enforcing the Navigation Acts, ran aground (Jime 9, 1772) in Narragansett Bay. Some Providence men seized and burned the vessel, and the British government appointed a commission to inquire into
* Collins, Committees of Correspondence (Amer. Hist. Assoc, Report, 1901),*!., 247.
« Va. Cat. of State Pap., VIII., 1-2.
22 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1773
the affair.* The commission met with universal opposition and had to report failure.
From this time on the chain of events that led tcj open rebellion consists of a series of links so plainly joined and so well known that they need only the barest mention in this brief introduction to the actual war. The British government tried to give temporary aid to the East India Company by re- mitting the heavy revenue on tea entering English ports, through which it must pass before being shipped to America, and by licensing the company itself to sell tea in America.* To avoid yielding the principle for which they had been contending, they retained at colonial ports the threepenny duty, which was all that remained of the Townshend revenue scheme. Ships loaded with this cheap tea came into the several American ports and were received with different marks of odiiim at different places. In Boston, after peaceful attempts to pre- vent the landing proved of no avail, an impromp- tu band of Indians threw the tea overboard, so that the next morning saw it lying like sea-weed on Dor- chester beach.
This outrage, as it was viewed in England, caused
a general demand for repressive measures, and the
five "intolerable acts" were passed and sent oversea
to do the last irremediable mischief.' Boston's port
« R. I. Col. Records, VIL, 81, 108.
> Farrand, "Taxation of Tea," in Amer. Hist. Review, III., 269. •Macdonald, Select Charters, 337-3^6; Force, Ant. Archive?, 4tli series, I., ?t6.
1774] CAUSES 23
was closed until the town should pay for the tea. Massachusetts' charter was annulled, its town- meetings irksomely restrained, and its government so changed that its executive officers would all be under the king's control. Two other acts provided for the care and judicial privileges of the soldiers who soon came to enforce the acts. Finally, great offence was given the Protestant colonies by grant- ing religious freedom to the Catholics of Quebec, and the bounds of that colony were extended to the Ohio River,* thus arousing all the colonies claiming Western lands. Except in the case of Virginia, there was no real attack on their territorial integrity, but in the excitement there seemed to be.
Some strong incentive for the colonies to act together had long been the only thing needed to send the flame of rebellion along the whole sea-coast. When the British soldiers began the enforcement of the punishment meted to Boston, sympathy and fear furnished the common bond. After several proposals of an intercolonial congress, the step was actually taken on a call from oppressed Massachu- setts (June 17, 1774).^ Delegates from every colony except Georgia met in Philadelphia in September, 1774. Seven of the twelve delegations were chosen not by the regular assemblies, but by revolutionary conventions called by local committees; while in
* " Quebec Act and the American Revolution," in Yale Review, August, 1895.
* Force, Am, Archives, 4th series, I., 421.
24 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, three of the remaining ^Ye states, the assemblies that sent the delegates were wholly dominated by the revolutionary element. Local committees may, therefore, be said to have created the congress, and they would now stand ready to enforce its will.
The assembled congress adopted a declaration of rights, but their great work was the forming an American association to enforce a non-importation and non-consumption agreement . ^ Local committees were to see that all who traded with England or refused to associate were held up as enemies of their country. The delegates provided for a new congress in the following May, and adjourned.
Meanwhile, General Gage and his **pretorian guard" in Boston were administering the govern- ment of Massachusetts with noteworthy results. A general court of the colony was summoned by Gage, who, repenting, tried to put it off ; but it met, formed a provincial congress, and, settling down at* Cambridge, governed the whole colony outside of Boston. It held the new royal government to be illegal, ordered the taxes paid to its own receiver in- stead of Gage's, and organized a militia. Gage at last determined to disarm the provincials. His raid to de- stroy the stores at Concord (April 19, 1775) resulted in an ignominious retreat and the loss of two hundred and seventy- three men, to say nothing of bringing sixteen thousand patriots swarming about Boston.
* Macdonald, Select Charters, 356, 362.
CHAPTER II
OUTBREAK OF WAR (1775)
THOUGH mainly social and economic forces brought the revolution to the stage of open warfare, a Massachusetts politician had so used these forces that both his friends and enemies thought the blame or the honor to be his. Samuel Adams began to desire independence as early as 1768. From that time it was his unwearying effort to keep alive the opposition to the British ministry. For years he sought to instil in the minds of rising youths the notion of independence. His adroit mind, .always awake and tireless, toiled for but one end; and he was narrow-minded enough to be a perfect politician. Two opposing views could never occupy his mind at the same time. For sharp practices he had no aversion, but he used them for public good, as he saw it, and not for private gain. He was a public servant, great or small, from his earliest manhood — as inspector of chimneys, tax- collector, or moderator of town-meetings. He was ever a failure in business; in politics, shrewd and able. The New England town-meeting was the
25
26 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
theatre of his action;^ he directed the Boston meetings, and the other towns followed. His tools were men. He was intimate with all classes, from the ship-yard roustabouts to the ministers of the gospel. In the canvass and caucus he was supreme. Others were always in the foreground, thinking that theirs was the glory. An enemy said that he had an un- rivalled "talent for artfully and fallaciously in- sinuating" malice into the public mind. A friend dubbed him the "Colossus of debate." He was ready in tact and cool in moments of excitement; his reasoning and eloquence had a nervous sim- plicity, though there was little of fire, and he was sincere rather than rhetorical.
Adams was of medium stature, but in his most intense moments he attained to a dignity of figure and gesture. His views were clear and his good sense abundant, so that he always received profound attention. Prematurely gray, palsied in hand, and trembling in voice, yet he had a mental audacity un- paralleled. He was dauntless himself, and thus roused and fortified the people. Nor were his efforts confined to the town -meeting, for he was also a voluminous newspaper writer. He showed no toler- ance for an opponent, and his attacks were keenly felt. " Damn that Adams. Every dip of his pen stings like a horned snake," cried an enemy. Thus he went on canvassing, caucusing, haranguing, and writing until the maddened Gage attempted to
* Wells, Samuel Adams, I.
Vl ' '^
1^
1775] OUTBREAK 27
seize him and the munitions of war which he and his fellow -poHticians had induced the colony to collect. Concord and Lexington and the pursuit into Boston were the results.
At the close of that long day of fighting (April 19, 1775) it was plain that war had begun, and the ]\Iassachusetts politicians who had pushed matters to that stage may well have had misgivings. A single colony could have no hope of success, and there was little in the past to make one believe that the thirteen colonies would unite even to defend their political liberties. Franklin gave a vivid picture of their different forms of government, different laws, different interests, and, in some in- stances, different religious persuasions and different manners.' Their jealousy of one another was, he declared, "so great that, however necessary a union of the colonies has long been for their common de- fence, . . . yet they have never been able to effect such a union among themselves." They were more jealous of each other than of England, and though plans for union had been proposed by their ablest statesmen, they had refused to consider them.^ There were long-standing disputes between neighboring colonies over boundaries, over relations with the Indians, and over matters of trade.
The greatest danger, however, that confronted 'the American cause was political division on the
^ Franklin, Works (Sparks's ed.), IV., 41.
* Franklin's Plan, in Works (Sparks's ed.), III., 26, 36-55.
28 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
subject of the relations with England. As the quarrel with the mother-country grew more bitter, it was seen that the British government had many- friends in America who, if they did not defend the action of the ministry, at least frowned upon the violent opposition to it. They believed that Amer- ica's best interests lay in the union with Great Britain. The aristocracy of culture, of dignified professions and callings, of official rank and heredi- tary wealth tended to side with the central govern- ment.^ The more prosperous and contented men had no grievances, and conservatism was the char- acter one would expect in them. They denounced the agitators as demagogues and their followers as "the mob."
Through the long ten years of unrest preceding the Revolution, these Tories, as they were called, had suffered at the hands of mobs, and now, when Gage was powerless outside of Boston, an active persecu- tion of them began. ^ Millers refused to grind their corn, labor would not serve them, and they could neither buy nor sell. Men refused to worship in the same church with them. They were denoimced as "infamous betrayers of their country." Committees published their names, "sending them down to posterity with the infamy they deserve." After the siege of Boston had begun, those who were even suspected of Toryism, as their support of the king was called, were regarded as enemies in the camp.
» Van Tyne, Loyalists, 5. ^ Ibid., cjiap. i.
1775] OUTBREAK 29
The Massachusetts committees compelled them to sign recantations or confined them in jails for refusal. If th^y escaped they were pursued with hue and cry.
Some fled to other colonies, but found that,*' like Cain, they had some discouraging mark upon them." In exile they learned that the patriot wrath visited their property: their private coaches were burned or pulled in pieces. A rich importer's goods were destroyed or stolen, and his effigy was hung up in sight of his house during the day and burned at night. Beautiful estates, where was ''every beauty of art or nature, every elegance, which it cost years of care and toil in bringing to perfection," were laid waste. Looking upon this work of ruin, a despairing loyalist cried that the Americans were " as blind and mad as Samson, bent upon pulling the edifice down upon their heads to perish in the ruins."
The violence of the patriots' attack upon the loyalists seemed for a time to eliminate the latter from the struggle. The friends of royal power in America expected too much, and while the king's enemies were organizing they waited for him to crush the rising rebellion. They looked on with wonder as the signal flew from one local committee to another over thirteen colonies, who now needed only a glowing fact like Lexington to fuse them into one defensive whole. The news reached Putnam's Con- necticut farm in a day ; Arnold, at New Haven, had
30 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
it the next day, and in four days it had reached New York/ Unknown messengers carried it through Philadelphia, past the Chesapeake, on to Charleston, and wdthin twenty days the news in many garbled forms was evoking a common spirit of patriotism from Maine to Georgia. It was commonly believed that America must be saved from "abject slavery" by the bands of patriots encompassing Boston.
The farmers and mechanics who had hurried from their work to drive the British from Concord into Boston were not an army. They settled dow^n in a great half-circle around the port with a common purpose of compelling Gage to take to his ships, but with no definite plan. Confusion was everywhere. Men were coming and going, and there were no reg- ular enlistments.^ A few natural leaders were doing wonders in holding them together.^ Among them the brave and courteous Joseph Warren, the warm friend of Samuel Adams and zealous comrade in the recent work of agitation, was conquering in- subordination by the manly modesty and gentleness of his character. Others who were old campaigners of the French and Indian wars worked ceaselessly to bring order out of chaos.
Yet not even the fanatic zeal of the siege could banish provincial jealousies. There were as many leaders as there were colonies represented. New
* Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, II., 365-368.
' Hatch, Administration of the Revolutionary Army, 1.
^ Frothingham, Siege of Boston, 100-102.
1775] OUTBREAK 31
Hampshire men were led by John Stark, a hero of the French war; Connecticut men were under Israel Putnam, more picturesque as a wolf -slayer than able as a leader. Nathanael Greene, the philo- sophic and literary blacksmith, commanded the Rhode Island militia/ It was with difficulty that "the grand American army," as the Massachusetts congress called it, finally intrusted the chief com- mand to General Artemas Ward, who, in turn, was controlled by the Massachusetts committee of safety.
Even with some organization and a leader there was little outward semblance of an army. In the irregular dress, brown and green hues were the rule. Uniforms like those of the British regulars, the hunting-shirt of the backwoodsman, and even the blankets of savages were seen side by side in the ranks of the first patriot armies. There was little distinction between officer and private.^ Each com- pany chose its own officers out of the ranks,' and the private could not understand why he should salute his erstwhile friend and neighbor or ask his per- mission to go home. The principle of social de- mocracy was carried into military life to the great detriment of the service. Difference in rank was ignored by the officers themselves, who in some
* Frothingham, Siege of Boston, 99-101.
'Bolton, The Private Soldier Under Washington, 90; Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, III., 2.
' Hatch, Administration of the Revolutionary Army, 13, 14.
VOL. IX. — 4
32 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
cases did menial work about camp to curry favor with their men.
Fortunately, there was in this raw miHtia a good leaven of soldiers seasoned and trained in the war with France. These men led expeditions to the islands of Boston Harbor in the effort to get the stock before it should be seized by the British.* Numerous slight engagements resulted, turning favorably, as a rule, for the patriots, and the new recruits gained courage with experience. Thus near- ly two months passed away, and an elated patriot wrote that "danger and war are become pleasing, and injured virtue is now aroused to avenge herself."
The only way to drive Gage out of Boston was to seize one of the commanding hill-tops either in Dorchester or Charlestown, whence they might open a cannonade on the city. Gage saw this danger, and with the arrival of reinforcements under Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne a plan was made to get con- trol of the dangerous hill-tops. With ten thousand well-equipped soldiers to pit against an ill-trained and poorly commanded multitude of farmers the task seemed easy. After trying to terrify the rebels by threatening with the gallows all who should be taken with arms, and offering to pardon those who would lay them down, Gage prepared to execute this plan. The patriots forestalled him by sending twelve hundred men under the veteran Colonel Prescott to seize Bunker Hill, in Charlestown. * Frothingham, Siege of Boston, 105, 106.
1775] OUTBREAK 33
This force set out in the evening of June 16, 1775, pushed on past Bunker Hill, and began fortifying Breed's Hill, which better commanded Boston, but which gave the enemy a fine opportunity to cut off their retreat, and was exposed to attack in the rear. At dawn the British ships in the harbor opened an active cannonading, but reinforcements had arrived and the work of fortification had so far advanced that an attack by land was necessary. It was perfectly easy to attack in the rear, but the natural contempt of the British regulars for the raw militia prevented so sensible a solution. A direct attack in front was decided upon. The folly of such tactics was realized when two charges up the hill failed because of the Americans' deadly fire, and a third was successful only because the defenders' powder was gone. The patriots retreated with some loss across Charlestown Neck; but all that night the chaises and chariots that went to the water-side to bring home the Brit- ish dead and wounded filed slowly through the streets of Boston.*
The English commanders now began to realize what they were to know well before the end of the war: that there were conditions in America with which Europe had never reckoned. The inhabi- tants of the thirteen colonies were chiefly small and independent freeholders, backwoodsmen, and hunt- ers. The two million and a half of them contained a
^ This paragraph is based upon the account in Foitescue, British *Army, III.; Frothingham, Siege of Boston.
34 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
larger per cent, of men skilled in the use of arms than any equal number in Christendom. Frontier life had toughened their sinews and developed an individual courage, if not a sense of community. The circum- stances of their domestic life encouraged a simple, earnest, and religious character, well suited to carry them through the long struggle now before them.
Added to this individual fitness for the impending war, the people of the colonies were showing a unity of purpose unknown in America before. When the time came to elect delegates to a second Continental Congress, early in 1775,^ the radicals of every colony acted with zest. In this election the organization of the patriots proved most effective. Not only were the colonial adherents to the policy of the British ministry unorganized or subdued by per- secution, but the more influential disdained to enter into a contest with the "noisy, blustering, and bellowing patriots." They did sign loyal ad- dresses and associations countering those of the Whigs, but they did not enter into the campaign with a strong, sympathetic organization.^
The very conservatism and high social position held by the men who were naturally the leaders of the Tory party prevented their success in a cam- paign against the Whig party. Except in Virginia, the typical patriot leaders came for the most part from the middle class, and all the political ideals
* Journals of Congress, October 22, 1774. ' Van Tyne, Loyalists, 87.
1775] OUTBREAK 35
that were rife in the Revolution were democratic in character.
After the Revolution passed the bounds of peace- ful resistance it was distinctly a movement of the lower and middle classes. The men who had been prominent in public affairs were pushed into the background. A new set of leaders came forward, hitherto unknown, less educated, and eager for change. The very public documents became more illiterate. To the aristocratic and cultured class it seemed that the unlettered monster was un- chained, and, while they waited for British power to restore the old order, they withdrew for the most part from what seemed an undignified contest.
It was by this standing aloof that the Tories failed to make their influence felt against the election of delegates to the Continental Congress. Very small proportions of the people — in some localities "not an hundredth part" ^ — turned out to vote, and in some cases only the more violent. ''In one place two men met and one appointed the other delegate to Congress."^ In North Carolina some of the representatives at the convention which appointed the delegates from that colony were chosen by committees of ten or twelve men ; only a few enthusiasts seemed to be interested, and eight of the forty-four districts sent no representatives.*
^ Seabury, The Congress Canvassed, 13, 14 ' Rivington's Gazette, November 6,1776; Still6, John Dickinson, 207. ' Records of North Carolina, IX., 1042.
36 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
In Georgia only five out of the twelve parishes were represented in the provincial congress which ap- pointed its delegates.^ The men thus chosen re- fused to serve, and only the parish of St. John was at first represented.^ In New York the loyalists were so active that in some Long Island districts there were heavy majorities against a convention for appointing delegates to the congress. Small bodies of patriots, however, relying on outside support, sent representatives to the convention,^ who, however, felt the restraints natural to repre- sentatives of a minority.
Although the loyalists were terrorized during the period of this election, they might have voted in many cases where they only showed indifference. Thus they lost their last political opportunity. The radical leaders now had a smaU representative body to act upon, whose resolves and recommenda- tions were apt to be obeyed because the colonies could, for a time, look to no other leader.
* Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, II., 279,
^Journals of Congress, May 13, 1775.
' Onderdonk, Revolutionary Incidents of Long Island, 316,
CHAPTER III
ORGANIZATION OF AN ARMY (1775-1776)
CONSIDERING the uncertain authority of the second Continental Congress, which met at Philadelphia, May 10, 1775, their audacity will ever be a matter of , wonder. Without unity in their instructions, with no power to form a government, without jurisdiction over an acre of territory, with no authority to administer government in an acre, if they had had it, with no money, no laws, and r' no means to execute them, they entered upon the ,task of regulating a society in the state of revolution. The work of the Congress was far from unanimous. "Every important step was opposed, and carried by bare majorities."^ The New England delegates, led by the Adamses, were regarded with suspicion by the delegates from the central and southern States. John Dickinson, the bulwark of the conservatives, boldly stood in the way of efforts to hurry the colonies into a war for independence. In the early stage he had been as fierce as any to resist op- pression. It was he who formulated the "Dec-
^ Adams, Works, II., 503.
37
38 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1765
laration of Rights" for the Stamp-Act Congress in 1765, and his Letters of a Farmer, published in 1768, had great effect in arousing the people to a sense of being wronged; yet, though he at first led and guided the resistance to taxation, he was no revolutionist, as Samuel Adams was.^ His action was always bounded by the legal limits of the situation.
Bom to wealth, with leisure to cultivate his scholarship and refine his tastes, Dickinson loved the repose of a settled order of things. He felt pressed into the service of his country by a sense of his duty to her, he said, and though he loved liberty he also loved peace. There was in him a spirit of moderation and conciliation. Though bom a Quaker, he believed defensive war permissible. His own rights he would not allow to be trodden upon, nor would he invade the rights of others. He was no swaggering hero, but mild and amiable. His whole training fitted him for the part he acted. A private tutor instructed him well in the classics, and later, in London, he studied law in the Temple. There he was trained solely in English statute and common law, and as a result his later arguments in the American cause had little tendency to fall back on philosophical concepts of natural law. Still the great difference between Dickinson and the Adamses was not a difference in political
* Stille, Lijs and Times of John Dickinson; John Dickinson, Writings (Ford's ed.), passini.
1775] ARMY ORGANIZED 39
argument, but a difference in temperament, which made the Quaker lawyer hesitate at bold and rev- olutionary actions.
When the Bostonians destroyed the tea Dickin- son doubted their wisdom. He refused to approve their violent measures. Neither the ''convivial glass," as a "conversational aperient," nor even flattery could bring him to it. Then the New Eng- land men changed their epithet for him. He was no longer the "illustrious farmer," but the "piddling genius," the "timid," the "apathetic," the "defi- cient in energy." They sneered at his faith in the sincerity and intelligence of the British government. He held his opinion, however, in the face of un- popularity ; and so frank and sincere was he, and so plain in his position, that we shall see him restored to influence in the midst of a war which he sought to prevent. For the present, in the new Congress, he fought long and steadily against the radical wishes of the Adamses.
Peyton Randolph, the president of the former congress of 1774, and at first chosen for this one,* was recalled to preside in his own assembly in Vir- ginia. In choosing a new president the Congress showed Great Britain how much they valued her proscriptions, for the outlawed John Hancock was placed in the chair by the influence of Samuel Adams, v/ho saw in the wealthy merchant's silks and velvets and splendid coach a foil for his own
^Journals of Congress, May 10, 1775.
40 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
poverty. Adams's enemies said that he had duped Hancock, whose "brains were shallow and pockets deep," into embracing the revolutionary cause. A man of wealth and social position seemed to give the lie to the Tory sneer that the Whigs were obscure, pettifogging attorneys, smugglers, and bankrupt shopkeepers.
Congress had barely organized before it was called upon to approve an act of offensive warfare.^ Ben- edict Arnold, with a commission from Massachusetts, had started an expedition against Ticonderoga and Crown Point, forts on the approaches from Canada to the Hudson River of great strategic importance, and containing great stores of ammunition, much needed by the patriot army. A like expedition was at the same time planned in Connecticut, and Ethan Allen, the eccentric leader of the "Green Mountain Boys," was placed at its head.^ Arnold overtook this latter band, and when they refused to recog- nize his commission he joined them as a volunteer. Hurrying on, they surprised and took Ticonderoga without a blow (May 10, 1775). ^^ Allen, as he later asserted, demanded its surrender "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress," he had no right to do so, for his commission was from Connecticut, and Congress when it assembled
' "Samuel Ward's Diary," in Magazine of American History, I., 503-
'Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, II., 485, 584, 606; Allen's V Narrative," in De Puy, Ethan Allen, 213.
1775] AkMY ORGANIZED 41
hesitated even to approve of Connecticut placing a garrison in Ticonderoga or in Crown Point, which surrendered at the same time to Seth Warner, an- other famous Vermonter.
Day b}^ day, however, Congress passed some reso- lution tending to the inevitable civil war. In accom- plishing this result the statesman John Adams began to forge ahead of his cousin the politician. Both were viewed with suspicion, but the form.er won ad- herents by the breadth of his understanding and his straight and simple methods. John Adams had consciously made himself ready for his work. His culture was to a large degree home- and self-made. In his own way he had a command of the humanities and of the classic authors. Looked at superficially, he seemed jealous, self-seeking, and vain. This men saw rather than his bold and active mind. Hence his manners were bad, while his judgments and measures were good. He was no strategist, but was courageous, plucky, and tenacious. Men called him a giant in debate. Jefferson speaks of his ''deep conceptions, nervous style, and undaunted firmness,'* qualities shown, as Adams himself says, only when ''animating occasion calls forth all my faculties." His public career had been consistent, because he early saw the destiny of America, and had faith in it. Pie was a provincial with national views. It now fell to him more than any other to lead in a statesman's way to independence and nation- ality.
42 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
Dickinson, with his strong hold on the middle colonies, forced a resolution through the Congress in July, 1775, to prepare a second petition to the king/ He had, however, to accept a compromise by which the threatened colonies were at the same time to be urged to put themselves in a state of defence. The tedious debates had gained another point also, for in the middle of June^ Congress had assumed the Boston army and chosen a commander-in- chief. In this critical moment John Adams saw the wisdom of binding the South to New England's fortunes by choosing a Virginian to lead her army. Local prejudice would have chosen John Hancock, who was bitterly chagrined that he missed the office. At Adams's suggestion the choice fell upon Colonel George Washington, who even then sat in Congress in his uniform. Such a choice it was hoped would cement and secure the union of the colonies. Men remembered, too, that as a young surveyor, on the threshold of manhood, Washington had been sent on a dangerous mission to the Indians and to the French, who were intruding on the border. Heed- less of threats and too wary for treachery, he did his task in a way that brought him renown. By saving the wreck of Braddock's army and by his conduct of the expedition against Fort Du- quesne, he acquired a military repute imri vailed in America.
^Journals of Congress, June 3, 1775, July 8, 1775. ^Ihid., June 15, 1775.
1775] ARMY ORGANIZED 43
The new commander-in-chief was a stalwart man, over six feet in stature, and of well-proportioned weight. His composed and dignified manner and his majestic walk marked him an aristocrat and a masterful man. This character was heightened by a well -shaped, though not large, head set on a superb neck. His blue-gray eyes, though pene- trating, were heavy -browed and widely separated, suggesting a slow and sure mind rather than wit and brilliant imagination. Passion and patience, nicely balanced, appeared in the regular, placid features, with the face muscles under perfect control. A resolutely closed mouth and a firm chin told of the perfect moral and physical courage. His clear and colorless skin never flushed even in the greatest emotion, though the face then became flexible and expressive.
In Washington's mind the directive faculties were the more marked. He had been but half educated, with no culture except that coming of good compan- ionship. From it he had learned rather the tastes of a country gentleman — courtesy, hospitality, and a love of sport. The soundness of his judgment and the solidity of his information were the notable qualities. He had little legal learning and was too shy and diflident for effective speech. Of original statesmanship he had little, but he had ** common- sense lifted to the level of genius." Believing in a course, he followed it, single-minded, just, firm, and patient. No rash action or personal caprice was
44 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
ever charged to him. He was able to bear great responsibility and courageously to meet unpop- ularity and misrepresentation. There was no flaw in his devotion.^ He was " often anxious, but never despondent." "Defeat is only a reason for exer- tion," he wrote. "We shall do better next time." This spirit, and his gift for miHtary adminis- tration, were the winning traits in the years to come.
On June 16, 1775, the day before the Continen- tal army fought at Bunker Hill, Washington ac- cepted the command in his modest way, refusing to accept any pay for his services except his actual expenses. A week later he set out from Philadel- phia, and on July 3, on Cambridge Common, took command of his army. Of the sixteen thousand men about Boston, two-thirds were from Massachu- setts; Connecticut furnished half the rest, while New Hampshire and Rhode Island shared the re- maining fraction.^ During July Congress added three thousand men from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.
Washington found his army an armed mob. They had done creditable things, though in a blundering, unmilitary way. Rude lines of fortifications ex- tended around Boston, but they were executed with crude tools and without competent engineers. A
* Mitchell, " Washington in His Letters," in University of Penn- sylvania Alumni Register, March, 1903. ' Frothingham, Siege of Boston , iQi.
1775] ARMY ORGANIZED 45
few officers were looking after the commissary de- partment, but there was no head. No able execu- tive directed the recruiting and mustering service, or the barracks or hospital, and there was only a haphazard method of paying the soldiers. There was no uniform, and the very differences in costume augmented colonial jealousies and self - conscious- ness. Washington suggested hunting - shirts as a uniform, which would tend * ' to unite the men and abolish those provincial distinctions."
Of the officers commissioned by Congress to serve under Washington few were satisfied. Charles Lee, a self-lauded, English military man, thought he should have had the chief command, and not the mere major-generalship, of which he was unworthy. The adjutant - general. Gates, was another in- triguing English hero who was supposed to be giving up his all for liberty.^ Among the eight brigadier - generals there was much dissatisfaction with their relative rank, and the minor officers were not above this jealousy. Washington re- buked one fault-finder, saying that "every post ought to be deemed honorable in which a man can serve his country." The chief, whose life was "one continuous round of annoyance and fatigue," wished more than once that he were in the ranks.
The governors of New England States urged Washington to detach companies to protect their
^ Hatch, Administration of the Revolutionary Army, 10, 11.
46 AMERICAN REVOLUTION ti77S
shores from British ravages. Little expeditions to Nova Scotia, Canada, and elsewhere were proposed, but Washington wisely refused to act on this advice, and thereupon was accused of inattention to public business.
The wisdom of his refusal to allow his army to be broken up, and to run the danger of defeat in small detachments, was shown in the result of an expedi- tion to Quebec. Richard Montgomery, with about fifteen hundred men, moved down Lake Champ- lain, took St. John after a long siege, ^ and entered Montreal November 12, 1775. Arnold, meanwhile, had made a terrible march through the Maine forests, starting up the Kennebec with eleven him- dred men and coming down the Chaudiere to the St. Lawrence with about five hundred survivors.^ After making an ineffectual attack on Quebec, Arnold awaited Montgomery, who arrived Decem- ber 3 with a small body of men. Taking a desper- ate hazard, they attacked Quebec in a blinding snow-storm, December 31, 1775. Montgomery, lead- ing the main attack, was killed, while Arnold, wounded, was succeeded by Morgan, who was overpowered, and the attack was repulsed.' In failing to^ take Quebec, Canada was virtually lost. It seems hardly possible, however, that the city could have been held, if captured, for the Amer-
* Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, III., 1342, 1392, 1595. ' Codman, Ar7told's Expedition, 55, 133 ; Smith, Arnold's March, 232. 3 Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, IV., 480.
1775] ARMY ORGANIZED 47
icans had no naval power adequate to its de- fence/
At Boston the commander-in-chief continued to push his hnes forward and hope for an engagement, for he had not powder sufficient for a bombard- ment. The enemy refused to be drawn out, and late in September Washington wrote : ' ' My situation is inexpressibly distressing, to see the winter fast approaching upon a naked army, the time of their service within a few weeks of expiring, and no provision yet made for such important events. . . . The military chest is totally exhausted; the pay- master has not a single dollar in hand; the com- missary-general assures me that he has strained his credit, for the subsistence of the army, to the utmost. The quartermaster-general is in precisely the same situation; and the greater part of the troops are in a state not far from mutiny, upon the deduction from their stated allowance." Without immediate remedy, he feared "the army must absolutely break up." ^
Congress finally sent a committee, which, with Washington, laid plans for a new army.^ In the reorganization Washington was driven to madness by the whims and jealousies of the colonial troops. While Charles Lee was courting favor by praising the militia, Washington was writing a friend: *' Such
* Fortescue, British Army, III., 164.
' Washington, Writings (Ford's ed.), III., 146.
•'' Force, Am. Archives, 4-th series, III., 847.
VOL. IX.— 5
48 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
a dearth of public spirit, and want of virtue, such stock - jobbing, and fertiHty in all the low arts to obtain advantages of one kind or another, ... I never saw before, and pray God I may never be a witness to again. . . . Such a dirty, mercenary spirit pervades the whole that I should not be at all surprised at any disaster that may happen."*
Washington's outlook was gloomy, but within the besieged city the enemy, too, had troubles. With nobody going out and little provision coming in the inhabitants were soon living on a Lenten diet. Salt pork, pease, and an occasional fish were the principal food. By December there were no vegetables, flour, or pulse to be spared from the military stores, and the distress was great. ^ So serious was the want of fuel that fences, doors, and even houses furnished the supply, and at last church steeples and the old Liberty Tree. Cold and hunger increased disease, and deaths became so frequent that the bells were not tolled lest the sound discourage the living. The fear of an assault was so great that the Tories or- ganized military companies to aid the defence. To while away the time, there were masquerades and balls and theatres.
This life was ended suddenly, as if by "the last trump." On the night of March 4, 1776, Dor- chester Heights were fortified by Washington. "Redoubts were raised," wrote a British officer,
* Washington, Writings (Ford's ed.), HL, 246, 247. ' Frothingham, Siege of Boston, 280-282.
1776]
ARMY ORGANIZED
49
"as if by the genii belonging to Aladdin's wonderful lamp." Boston was now untenable. Howe hur- riedly embarked his army and over nine hundred refugee loyalists, abandoning quantities of stores, and sailing March 17, for Nova Scotia.
CHAPTER TV
SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE (1775-1776)
DURING the weary months of the siege of Bos- ton, from the spring of 1775 to the following midwinter, the work of overthrowing old opinions, weakening traditions, and destroying American faith in Great Britain went on. Vigorous persecu- tion cowed the Tory opposition in America, the Whig party was strengthened by organization, and the advanced faction of that party gave up urging re- form of the British colonial policy and set a new goal, a demand for independence of England. The misunderstanding between the two parts of the em- pire increased, and the efforts of Parliament to over- come the rebellious colonies only stiffened the re- sistance and deepened the hate. The mistaken zeal or impolitic action of the colonial governors in- creased the area of rebellion, and lent powerful argu- ments to the public agitators, both speakers and pamphleteers.
One of the first signs of the increased ill feeling after Concord and Lexington was the strife between the Whigs and the Tories in America, As the cer-
50
1775] SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE 51
tainty of declared war with the mother-country in- creased the louder grew the protests of those who opposed it. Men who held office under the crown, the Anglican clergy, and many of the friends and relatives of such men had, as a rule, opposed the agitation from the first. Now they were joined by the conservative citizens, men of wealth, of social position, those who ''feared God and honored the king," and men of certain factions in the colonial politics whose old ties drew them to the loyal side. Many of the latter had been hot for reform in the British colonial policy, but balked at a Continental Congress and a war that seemed to lead logically to independence. They refused to act with the pa- triots, and in a few instances tried to organize bands of loyal militia, but they did little else except to protest against the work of the agitators and to send loyal addresses to the king or his representa- tives.
These protests and addresses, however, were very hateful to the intolerant masses who in the early days formed an active part of the Whig party. It required little agitation to bring out a mob ready to hoist a Tory on a liberty pole and jeer at him for his Royalty. In the spirit of the ancient Inquisition the Whigs tried to convert their political opponents by terrorizing them. They fired musket-balls into Tory windows. They burned loyal pamphlets at the stake, tarred and feathered them, or nailed them to a whipping-post, with a threat of treating
52 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
the author in a like manner.* The pulpits of the loyal clergy were found nailed up, and Tory mer- chants saw the word "tea" painted out of their signs. Loyal farmers found their cattle painted fantastic colors or the tail and mane of a horse close cropped. One noted Tory was hoisted upon a land- lord's sign and exposed in company with a dead catamount. Another was "smoked to a Whig" by being shut up in a house with the chimney closed. All this persecution increased in violence as the ac- tion of Congress and the British government made undisguised war ever more inevitable.
It might seem that society was getting ready for such revolutionary excesses as were witnessed in France some fifteen years later. In America, how- ever, firmly established local governments saved the people from anarchy after the central govern- ment lost its control ; and long-established represent- ative assemblies stood ready to organize and direct the activities of the people.
Where the assemblies were too conservative to launch the revolution, the Whig leaders resorted at first to committees of correspondence, which had no place in the legally organized government. The loyalists, with some reason, declared^ that the country was "cantoned out into new districts and subjected to the jurisdiction of these committees, who, not only without any known law, but directly
* Van Tyne, Loyalists, chap. iii.
' Boucher, A View of the Revolution, 319-321.
I77S] SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE 53
in the teeth of all law whatever, issue citations, sit in judgment, and inflict pains and penalties on all whom they are pleased to consider as delinquents."
It was these committees, or, in some cases, mere volimtary meetings of private citizens, that suggested the calling of conventions to elect delegates to the Continental Congress, to sanction associations for non-importation, and to provide for armed opposi- tion to the British measures. When the royal governors prorogued or refused to stmimon the reg- ular assemblies, these elective conventions, fresh from the people, made and executed the necessary laws, appointing committees or councils of safety to act during their adjournment.^
Because of a natural selection of radicals to do this revolutionary work, and a greater extension of the franchise, which Congress early advised,^ new men appeared in these provincial conventions — more democratic men than had ordinarily attended the regular colonial assemblies. As a result the resolu- tions of these conventions were often drawn up, wrote a Tory, "by some zealous partisan, perhaps by some fiery spirit ambitiously soHcitous of forcing himself into public notice." . . . "The orator mounts the rostrimi, and in some preconceived speech, heighten- ed no doubt with all the aggravations which the
* Agnes Hunt, Provincial Committees of Safety, chap. iv.
' Journals of Congress, November 3 and 4, 1775. (See the in- structions to the S. C. convention.) Ijincoln^ Revolutionary Move- ment in Pennsylvania, 234.
54 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
fertility of his genius can suggest, exerts all the power of elocution to heat his audience with that blaze of patriotism with which he conceives him- self inspired.^ . . . The threat of tyranny and the terror of slavery are artfully set before them." These were revolutionary methods as they appeared to a loyal citizen. The whole revolutionary system looked like anarchy. The patriot excused it all on the new political theory that the people were the basis of all legitimate political authority. The regular and constitutional forms of government having been taken away, the right to establish new forms reverted to the people.
For many months all the powers of government were in the hands of these temporary assemblies, conventions, and committees, which ''composed a scene of much confusion and injustice," ^ causing men like John Adams to fear that the system would "injure the morals of the people, and destroy their habits of order and attachment to regular govern- ment." Congress resolved, therefore (June 9, 1775), in reply to a letter from the Massachtisetts conven- tion,^ that no obedience being due to Parliament, the governor and his lieutenants were to be considered as absent, and as the suspension of government was intolerable, the provincial convention was recom- mended to write letters to the places entitled to
^ Rivington's Gazette, July 28, 1774.
'John Adams, Works, III., 34.
* Journqls of Congress, June 9, 1775.
1775] SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE 55
representation in the assembly and request them to choose members. The assembly was to choose a council, which with the assembly was to exercise the powers of government until a governor appointed by his majesty should govern the colony according to its charter. By the month of July this advice was obeyed, and the proclamation urging obedience to the new government closed with, *'God save the people" — instead of the "king."
In October, 1775, ^^^ delegates from New Hamp- shire asked Congress for advice as to the method of regulating their civil affairs. John Rutledge at once sought like counsel for South Carolina; and Con- gress, early in November, urged them both to es- tablish temporary governments of the character commended to Massachusetts;* and, realizing the necessity of enlisting the support of the democracy by showing it political favor. Congress also advised "a full and free representation of the people." ^ A month later Virginia was counselled likewise.
The advice thus wrung from Congress was far short of the wishes of John Adams and the indepen- dence party, which was growing slowly with the march of events. Adams wanted the people of every colony to call conventions immediately and set up permanent governments on their own au- thority. He wished to invite ''the people to erect the whole building with their own hands, upon
* Journals of Congress, November 3 and 4, 1775. ' Frie4enwald, Declaration of Independence, 3^.
56 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
the broadest foundation."^ The delegates in Con- gress could not be brought so far on the road to independence, but Adams found consolation while he waited. "America is a great, unwieldy body," he wrote. "Its progress must be slow. It is Hke a large fleet sailing under convoy. The fleetest sailers must wait for the dullest and slowest. Like a coach-and-six, the swiftest horses must be slack- ened, and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even pace." ^
Day by day events spurred on the hesitating members and strengthened the convictions of the radicals. The petition to the king which Dickinson had persuaded the unwilling Congress to send was refused even a hearing (August, 1775). The king's minister explained to a critical ParHament that '* the softness of the language was purposely adapted to conceal the most traitorous designs." ^ This re- peated insinuation that the colonies desired in- dependence became an incentive. Like the witches' prophetic words to Macbeth, the suggestion grew to a desire.
Furthermore, the perfectly natural acts of the British government to quell a rebellion which any one could see existed exasperated the colonists to further revolutionary action. After the news of Bunker Hill reached England, the king, of course, issued a proclamation (August 23, 1775) urging his
^ John Adams, Works, III., 13-16. ^ Ibid., I,, 176.
3 Hansard Debates, XVIII., 920.
1775] SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE 57
lo^^al subjects to aid in quelling the rebellion, yet when Congress learned of the fact (November i) the members were horrified. At the same time came the news of the burning of Falmouth, in Maine, by a British naval expedition/ It was a cruel and un- necessary act, which was disowned by the British government, but not until, Hnked with the burning of Charlestown during the battle of Bunker Hill, it became a symbol to Americans of British barbarity. Thus misunderstanding on both sides of the sea was rapidly breaking the unity of feeling which alone could hold the parts of the empire together.
Though the impending war could not be said to be popular in England, yet addresses were pouring in upon the king expressing British ''abhorrence of the rebellious spirit" of the "deluded subjects in America." Some of the more loyal addresses are said to have been elicited by the efforts of the ministry.^ The compliant addressers regretted that "daring and open rebellion had broken out," la- mented "the infatuation of those deluded men," and assured the king of their hearty support in as- serting his authority.^ From Robert Burns's county in Scotland the noblemen, justices, and freeholders sent their approval of the king's measures. The chancellor and masters and scholars of the Uni- versity of Oxford, in full convocation, viewed "with
* Journals of Congress, November i, December 6, 1775.
' Trevelyan, American Revolution, pt. ii., I., 11-15.
' FoTce, Am. Archives, 4th series, III., index under "Addresses."
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deep concern, the pernicious tendency of that profligate licentiousness" which had deluded their "fellow-subjects in America," ''by these seducing arts betrayed ; plunged, as they are, in all the hor- rours of a civil war, uifhaturally commenced against the state which gave them birth and protection."*
All was not harmonious, however, in the British islands, and the Americans had not only economic but political S5mipathy among their fellow-subjects oversea. From sundry places where the commercial losses pressed most heavily came other and perhaps more genuine voices urging upon the king " the deadly wounds which the commerce of this country must feel from these unfortunate measures." The manu- facturers of Nottingham, Worcester, and Newcastle were alarmed by the "melancholy decline" of their trade and manufacture.^ The freeholders of the county of Berks took the most sympathetic stand. They themselves valued the "inestimable right of granting " their own property, and could not con- sider groundless the complaint of America "on being taxed without any voice."
In Parliament, however, this opposition had little strength, and, before the close of 1775, acts were passed closing all American ports and ordering the seizure and confiscation of all ships trading with the colonies.^ Unfortunately for their own record
* Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, III., 11 88.
* Ibid., III., loio, 1113, 1201, 1383, 1519.
* Commons' Journal, XXXV., December 22, 1775.
1775] SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE 59
they added a clause which offended mortally the new ideas of personal liberty. British commanders were permitted to impress the crews of American vessels seized under the law and compel them, like mutineers, to serve on the British vessel^ until the return to an English port/
While the news of this legislation was making its way oversea, the southern colonies were being brought to more lively sympathy with New Eng- land. The governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, had been unpopular from his first arrival four years before. He early resolved to crush the spirit of rebellion which he saw about him. When in 1774 the assembly sympathized with Boston, Lord Dunmore summoned, rebuked, and dissolved them. Though the worthy burgesses went to the governor's ball that night, they first assembled at the Raleigh tavern, and, after resolving against the use of tea, proposed an annual congress of the colonies.^
Later, a convention was called without a royal war- rant. It met August 1,1774, just before an assembly legally summoned by the governor, and appointed members to the Continental Congress. Besides this action, the people, as Dunmore informed his govern- ment, were everywhere arming and swearing in men to execute the orders of their illegal committees. The convention met again, March 20, 1775, and its chief act was crowned, if not caused, by Patrick
^Statutes at Large, 31; 16 George III., chap, v., § 4. 'Henry, Life, Correspondence, and Speeches, I., 176-182.
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Henry's famous burst of oratory, a rash but inspir- ing call to arms. The alarmed governor caused the stores of powder to be removed from the old magazine at Williamsburg. In their wrath the people held councils, discussed the matter hotly, and threatened to attack the palace. A messenger to the governor found rows of muskets lying on the floor ready to arm the household, but the removal of the gunpowder was lamely explained.^
Then for a season Lord and Lady Dunmore with their daughters remained shut up in their palace at Williamsburg, while the governor wrote his king offering to reduce the colony with Indians, negroes, and loyal citizens. Meanwhile, Patrick Henry and a company of men marched on the capitol to rescue the powder. Lady Dunmore and her daughters thereupon hurried off to Yorktown and got aboard a man-of-war. The governor remained and agreed to pay for the powder, though at the same time he issued a proclamation against the company that had ''unlawfully taken up arms."^ In May, 1775, he issued writs for a new assembly, which duly met, accoutred with hunting - shirts and rifles instead of the accustomed ruffles and powder. A plan of con- ciliation was offered, but while they pondered the people were enraged by the discovery of a trap laid at the old magazine to kill any who should try to
* Henry, Life, Correspondence, and Speeches, L, 265-266; Force, Am. Archives, 4tli series, II., 371, 387. UUd., II., 516. III., 1385,
1776] SPIRIT OP INDEPENDENCE 6i
get the powder, and with threats and curses they gathered about the palace.
The governor thereupon fled to a man-of-war — as other American governors had been or soon were compelled to do. He summoned the loyal to come to his standard, and allured some to come on board his vessels, where by means of liberal bounties and threats he induced a few to enlist. He then pro- claimed the province in a state of war,* and offered freedom to the slaves, though he might as well have offered to liberate the oxen from their yokes. With armed vessels he ravaged the banks of the rivers, until a considerable force was defeated at Great Bridge, when in his rage he caused Norfolk to be burned on January i, 1776. The painful scene of women and children running from burning houses amid the cannonading from the governor's fleet aroused not only Virginians but all America to a great heat of passion.
When this news reached Washington at Boston,^ there came with it a pamphlet, just issued at Philadelphia, called ''Common Sense," a firebrand which set aflame the ready political material in America. It said what many men were thinking, but had no words to express. The writer, Thomas Paine, had been but thirteen months in America. He had been reared in England, a Quaker and a dis- senter, living where he had seen the corrupting in-
^ Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, III., 1385. 2 Washington, Writings (Ford's ed.), III., 396.
62 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [17/6
fluence of aristocracy, of which he himself had been a victim. His school life ceased at the age of thir- teen. He became a stay-maker, excise officer, grocer, usher, enjoying for a time in London some philo- sophical lectures and the friendship of an astrono- mer who was a member of the Royal Society.* Rest- lessly he turned from teaching and writing poetry to entertain a social club, to further study, and then to preaching, without, how^ever, taking orders. He chanced to make the acquaintance of Franklin, and with his letter of introduction he came at last to America, hoping to find employment as a teacher.
He found the people of America, as he said, ready to be "led by a thread and governed by a reed," just the crisis to appeal to one of his character. Always an enthusiast, with a generous and almost unrea- soning zeal for liberty, he entered eagerly into the controversy. The poetry of his early years was transmuted into glowing visions of an ideal society. His whole character and training made him the man for the occasion. This zealot in charity, lover and maker of music, shallow in scholarship but deep in sympathy, was more fit than many wiser men to arouse America to the final act of independence. He wrote in living phrases, with a rapid movement and clear statement that secures readers where a worthier thinker fails. Though "Common Sense" helped John Adams's cause, he was compelled, never-
* Conway, Thomas Paine, I., 15.
I7Y6] SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE 63
theless, to admit that "Sensible men think there are some whims, some sophisms, some artful addresses to superstitious notions, some keen attempts upon the passions, in this pamphlet." ^ It contained, it is true, many shallow arguments, but they were as deep as the thought of those who would read them. There was scurrility, but it had great effect with cer- tain classes. Deeper than all the superficial defects was a strong, keen analysis of the real state of affairs between England and her colonies.
With a fine perception of the greatest obstacle to independence, Paine attacked the sacred person of the king. In the public papers and petitions much stress had been laid on the assertions of personal loyalty ; it was Parliament whose dominion they de- nied, not the king's. Paine, however, ridiculed the divine right of kings. They were chosen, he de- clared, because of a "ruffianly pre-eminence." "The heathen introduced government by kings, which the will of the Almighty . . . expressly disap- proved. As to their hereditary descent, how absurd ! We do not think of attempting to establish an hered- itary wise man, or an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary poet. Of more worth is one honest man to society . . . than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived." Of what use are they? he asked. "In England a king has little more to do than make war and give away places." The king is a "breathing automaton," a "sceptred savage," a "royal brute."
* John Adams, Familiar Letters, 146.
VOL. IX. — 6
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Government, indeed, was a necessary evil, Paine granted, but why have it in its worst form — a royal government ?
Nor had Paine any praise for the British constitu- tion. The security and happiness of the English people, he urged, were not due to constitutional forms, but to the character of the people. The gov- ernment might be as despotic as that of Turkey, except that the people would not endure it; the lauded checks and balances were worthless. Amer- icans need not hope to mend the old constitution; they must rid themselves of that and set up a new form of government. At present, said Paine, we are ** suffering like the wretched Briton under the oppression of the conqueror."
Having thus artfully sneered at colonial traditions and long-established opinions, Paine appealed to colonial vanity. ''There is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island; in no instance hath nature made the satelHte larger than the primary planet. Even the distance at which the Almighty hath placed Eng- land and America is a strong and natural proof that the authority of the one over the other was never the design of Heaven." This, at the time, was a strong argument in favor of independence. John Adams declared in one of his letters home: ''There is something very unnatural and odious in a govern- ment a thousand leagues off. A whole government of our own choice, managed by persons whom we
1776] SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE 65
love, revere, and can confide in, has charms in it for which men will fight." ^
The arguments of the imperialists were set aside by Paine with scorn. ''Much has been said of the united strength of Britain and the colonies, that in conjunction they might bid defiance to the world. What have we to do with setting the world at defi- ance? Our plan is commerce . . . and friendship with the world."
All these arguments were w^hat America wanted to hear. It was hard to find a printer bold enough to print them; but once out, the pamphlet sold by the hundred thousand copies. Paine himself got none of the proceeds of the sale, and, though he was glorified for the time, he lived to be hooted years later by an American mob as he drove past placards showing the devil flying away with him.^ The rea- son for this change of popularity was his late deis- tical book. The Age of Reason, differing in no wise from the religious views of Franklin and Jefferson. There were unlovable things about Paine, vain and egotistic as he was at times, but "the man who had genius in his eyes," and who was ever busy trying to soften the lot of the oppressed, is not unworthy of respect.
* John Adams, Familiar Letters, 174. 2 Qonway, Thomas Paine, II., 327.
CHAPTER V
THE CAMPAIGN FOR INDEPENDENCE (1775-1776)
A FTER the people had been trained to look with /v composure upon the idea of independence, there still remained the task of getting each colony to give its approval of a formal declaration. Paine had pointed out that the colonies had now ^'trav- elled to the summit of inconsistency." They were in full rebellion, had an army and navy of their own, and governments that ignored Parliament or the king, but still they asserted their aversion to in- dependence. They had, Paine warned them, ac- quired an "autumnal ripeness" — "now your rotting time comes on'' * More careful men, however, thought matters not so ripe, insisting that Con- gress, a mere advisory body, should take no such radical step as independence without first receiving explicit instructions from each of the colonies. The five middle colonies, however, had instructed their delegates against independence ; and the month of March, 1776, was gone before any state gave its approval. To North Carolina, impelled by the trend * Conway, Thomas Paine, I., 75.
66
x77i] CAMPAIGN FOR INDEPENDENCE 67
of local events, belongs the honor of first instructing her delegates for independence.
Governor Martin, of that province, was a plain, honest, but impolitic man, inclined to be jealous of his predecessor, Governor Tryon. The latter, in 1 77 1, had overthrown a rebellion, in the western part of the state, of frontiersmen known as " Regu- lators." Governor Martin, taking up the adminis- tration a few months later, curried favor with the late rebels, while by his criticism of Tryon he lost the esteem of the lawyers and prominent public men in the coast towns. ^ He quarrelled with the colonial assembly over the state's western boundary, and over the taxes to pay for the expense of quelling the late rebellion. Another serious dispute closed the courts and threw the lawyers out of business. All the forces thus antagonized turned against him, and his personality not only prevented his stem- ming the tide of revohition but tended alarmingly to increase that movement.
When Boston appealed to the other colonies in 1774, the speaker of the North Carolina assembly called a Provincial Congress in spite of the threats of the governor. Many of the members of that con- gress proved to be members also of a regular assem- bly called by the governor. The governor protested in vain against the irregular body, dissolved the regular assembly, and fortified his palace; but the
* Sikes, Transition of North Carolina from Colony to Common^ wealth (Johns Hopkins University Studies, XVI., Nos. 10, 11).
68 AMERICAN REVOLUTION ti77<^
local revolutionary committee seized his cannon, and he was obliged to flee to Fort Johnson, near Wil- mington. The wrath of the people soon drove him on board a British man-of-war, whence, in August of 1775, he issued what was called ''the Fiery Proc- lamation," which was promptly ordered to be burned b}?' the common hangman/
Relying on the loyalty of the central and western counties, which had in the spring sent Governor Martin a loyal address signed by one thousand five hundred men, he had already urged that the British troops be sent to co-operate with the loyal citizens in overthrowing the rebellion. Accordingly, Sir Henry Clinton left Boston in December, 1775, planning to meet Sir Peter Parker with two thousand men and eight frigates at Cape Fear.^ Meanwhile, Donald McDonald, who had once been punished for rebellion on the field of Culloden, was commissioned by the governor, and collected an army of one thousand six himdred men from the loyal counties. He marched towards the coast to meet the British forces, but was met (February 27, 1776) by a patriot force at Moore's Creek and signally defeated, the patriots taking quantities of gold and arms and nine hundred prisoners.^
Within a fortnight ten thousand militia were ready to repel Clinton, who was delayed until the
* AT. C. Col. Records, IX., 1125, 1145, 1178, X., 141-150.
* Fortescue, British Army, III., 173, 180, 181.
* N. C. Col. Records, X., 41-50, 482.
1776] CAMPAIGN FOR INDEPENDENCE 69
middle of April awaiting Parker, and then after hovering about Cape Fear for six weeks sailed away southward to Charleston. This episode so aroused the people that when the next Provincial Congress met the members were "all up for independence," and on April 12, eight days after convening, they voted to instruct their delegates to concur with dele- gates from the other colonies in declaring indepen- dence and forming foreign alliances/
The news of the great loyal uprising in North Carolina and the threatening conditions elsewhere led the Continental Congress to another revolution- ary step. March 14, 1776, it advised the disarm- ing of the loyalists, "to frustrate the mischievous machinations and restrain the wicked practices of these men." ^ A few days later, upon hearing of the British measures for closing American ports, Con- gress permitted Americans to fit out private armed vessels to prey on British commerce.^ Within two weeks it opened the ports of America to all countries "not subject to the king of Great Brit- ain." John Adams was jubilant. "As to declara- tions of independency," he wrote, "be patient. Read our privateering laws and our commercial laws. What signifies a word?" *
Daily the Continental Congress heard of new tem-
* N. C. Col. Records, X., 512. ^Journals of Congress, January 2, 1776. ^ Ibid., March 23, 1776. *John Adams, Familiar Letters, 155.
70 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [17^6
porary colonial governments and of instructions which, when the proper time came, might be in- terpreted as authorizing the delegates to vote for independence. Georgia, or rather a small mmiber of revolutionists in Savannah, had instructed her new delegates, February 2, to "concur in all such measures as you shall think calculated for the com- mon good." * Late in March, vSouth Carolina gave her delegates a like ambiguous liberty, though the will of the province seems to have been against in- dependence.^ May 4, Rhode Island omitted the king's name from the public documents, and con- curred *with any action of the Congress for holding the colonies together and annoying the common enemy; but her delegate in Congress was disappoint- ed not to have plain instructions on the matter of independence.^ The June meetings in the towns of Massachusetts voted to uphold a declaration of independence.*
In Congress the power of the radicals increased daily, and they extended it by correspondence, by resolutions intended to fire the patriot mind, by personal visits of the members to lagging assemblies, or by using the army to bolster weak revolutionary committees, who were fearful of being overwhelmed by local loyal majorities.
To aid the radicals in hesitating colonies, Con-
* Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, VI., 1674.
' McCrady, South Carolina in the Revolution (1775-1780), 125. »/?. /. Col. Records, VII., 526, 527.
* Force, Am. Archives^ 4th series, VI., 698-707.
I776J CAMPAIGN FOR INDEPENDENCE 71
gress adopted a resolution, May 10, 1776, which, as John Adams declared, ''cut the Gordian knot." Colonies having "no government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs " were urged to adopt such a government. The meaning of this was made plain by a preamble adopted five days later which declared that it was imreasonable for the people to take oaths to support a British government, and that every species of that authority ought to be totally suppressed and government carried on under the authority of the people of the colonies.^ Adams was delighted at this ''last step," though his opponent, Duane, denounced it as a " piece of mech- anism to work out independence." Only a formal declaration was now needed, and the day for that was at hand.
In Virginia, where the revolutionary spirit had grown rapidly since the burning of Norfolk, a con- vention had already been called which was to give its constituents a new government.^ May 15, a resolution was adopted directing the Virginia dele- gates in Congress to propose that the united colo- nies be declared free and independent states. In obedience to these instructions, Richard Henry Lee rose in Congress, Jtme 7, to move "That these united colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free and independent states," and their connection with Great Britain dissolved. He proposed also that a
^Journals of Congress, May 15, 1776. ' Hening, Statutes, May 6, 1776.
72 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
plan of confederation be submitted to the several colonies and that foreign alliances be formed. So treasonable were these resolutions that the prudent Congress did not then enter them even on its secret journals, and nothing but a slip of paper now pre- serves the original form.
Nevertheless, John Adams, now dubbed "The Atlas of Independence," seconded the motion promptly, though Dickinson and Wilson, of Penn- sylvania, resisted desperately, for they knew that public opinion in the middle colonies was not ripe for such a measure — in fact, their delegates were instructed against it. Moreover, even Connecticut and New Hampshire had not instructed on that question, and with Georgia and South Carolina dubious, there were but four state delegations that could rightfully favor such a motion. As the con- servatives argued, if the delegates of a colony had no power to declare it independent, others could not so declare it, "for the colonies were as yet per- fectly independent of each other." ^ For the sake of harmony the eager independence faction agreed to wait three weeks for the judgment of the hesitat- ing provinces, but meanwhile a committee was to draw up a formal declaration.
While they waited, Connecticut, whose charter
rights had already made her nearly independent of
Great Britain, simply omitted the king's name from
her public papers, and instructed her willing dele-
* Jefferson, Works (Washington ed.), I., 113.
1776] CAMPAIGN FOR INDEPENDENCE 73
gates to support Lee's motion. In her case and that of New Hampshire, who quickly followed her ex- ample (June 15), the act was purely formal, for they had long been with the advance party. The re- luctant middle colonies were still to be converted, but the radicals in Congress were equal to the task, and they were aided by news from England. Public opinion had recently received another great im- petus to independence by the arrival of authentic news that the king had succeeded in making a treaty with certain German princes for twenty thousand troops to be used in subduing the re- bellious colonies.* In America all the odium of this transaction was put upon the king instead of upon the mercenary German princes who sold their subjects into bondage. Samuel Adams urged the colonists to note that their petitions were to be answered by myrmidons hired from abroad. Washington hoped that it would convert those who were " still feeding themselves upon the dainty food of reconciliation." ^ It did, in fact, go as far as any single cause in deciding the wavering states to uphold independence.
The wish of the radical party v/as now gained through the support given by Congress to the radicals in the backward colonies.^ New Jersey, held back by a strong loyal party led by the gov-
^ Journals of Congress, May 21, 1776.
'Washington, Writings (Sparks's ed.), III., 403.
' Friedenwald, Declaration of Independence, chap. iii.
74 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
ernor, William Franklin, at first commanded her delegates to vote against independence. They had even resolved on a petition of their own to the king, but abandoned the idea upon the earn- est protest of a committee sent to them by Con- gress/ June 10, the Provincial Congress, act- ing upon the recommendation of May 10 and on petitions from the people, met to devise a new gov- ernment. The governor tried to defeat them by calling together the old, regular assembly, but the revolutionary body denounced his act, stopped his salary, and sent him imder arrest to a Connecticut prison.^ June 22 they authorized their new dele- gates to agree to independence.
Pennsylvania and her powerful representatives had held back the independence flood more than any colony except New York. A keen observer thought that the Quakers and Germans, a large element of Pennsylvania population, had too great regard for ease and property to sacrifice either upon the altar of the imknown goddess. Liberty.' Both elements also disliked the military service, while the Quakers denounced the putting down of kings and governments, asserting that such action was God's prerogative, not men's; and they annotmced their abhorrence of measures tending to indepen- dence. The proprietary interests, too, were ably
* Mulford, History of New Jersey, 415,416; Force, Am. Ar chive Sy 4th series, III., 1871-1874.
* N, J. Archives, X., 720. * Curwen's Journal, 26.
1776] CAMPAIGN FOR INDEPENDENCE 75
defended, though side by side with the constitution- al government had arisen conventions representing the radical Whigs, who had lost control of the regular assembly. A system of local committees, legally responsible to no one, but elected by the people and guided by Whig leaders, assumed the right to choose delegates to these conventions. The regular assembly resisted the transfer of power to these conventions, by legislating as the radicals desired, but doing nothing. The day came when something more than words was demanded. A new election in April, 1776, turned against the radicals, and convinced the people that they could not have their will under the existing regime, for the conservative majority had been secured by a jealous though legal restriction of the suffrage.'
The Pennsylvania democracy, turning now for aid to Congress, was answered by the resolution of May 10, which advised the creation of new govern- ments. An opponent had objected that the people would thus be thrown into a state of nature. Acting as if this were true, a meeting of some four thousand people in the state-house yard at Philadelphia re- buked the legal assembly for refusing to instruct for independence. The loyalists were then cowed by a reign of terror, and a Whig convention agreed, June 24, to concur in a vote of Congress declaring the colonies free and independent.^ Delaware had
* Lincoln, Revolutionary Movement in Pennsylvania ^ 234. 'Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, VI., 963.
76 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
meanwhile acted upon the suggestion of Congress as to forming a new government, but she gave her dele- gates no definite instructions as to independence.^
Maryland, with few grievances of her own and blessed with a governor who was loved and respect- ed, was pleased with her proprietary government, and saw no reason why she should risk her charter in a vain chase of some abstract rights.^ The im- portance of the charters in restraining the revolu- tionary movement is not to be ignored. Massachu- setts could afiiord to be extreme and revolutionary because her charter was gone, but Pennsylvania and Maryland and the southern colonies had something to lose, and naturally held back. Maryland had shown a sympathetic interest in the plight of Boston, and a convention representing the people of the colony organized commercial and armed opposition to the British measures. At first the governor's influence was little diminished; but the people's power gradually rose, until (May 24, 1776) the pro- visional government signified to Governor Eden that public safety and quiet required his departure. A complimentary address was sent him, and he alone of all the royal governors was allowed to depart in peace, with the wish that he might return to his people after they should become reconciled with England.
Maryland's delegates in Congress were still in-
* Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, VI., 884.
' TPie Provisional Government of Maryland (Johns Hopkins University Studies, XIII., No. 10),
1776] CAMPAIGN FOR INDEPENDENCE 77
structed against independence, and the Maryland Council of Safety, unwilling to take upon themselves the responsibility of changing the instructions, sug- gested that the local committees ''collect the sense of the people" and report to a convention called for June 21/ The delegates in Congress, Matthew Tilghman, Thomas Johnson, and Samuel Chase, hurried home from Philadelphia, and, with Charles Carroll, urged the people, while electing their deputies to the convention, to instruct them for in- dependence. The result was that within a week after the convention met they directed their dele- gates in Congress to join in declaring ''the tmited colonies free and independent states."
On the very day that Maryland was showing her honorable sympathy with the other colonies South Carolina was being won from probable opposition to real support of independence. When Sir Henry Clinton and Sir Peter Parker turned away from Cape Fear they sailed for Charleston, the chief city of South Carolina, where they hoped to succeed in arousing the loyal merchants of the coast towns and the German settlers of the interior. The latter, with no commerce and little use for tea, had no appreciation of the theoretical questions, and, in fact, were better treated by the British than by the state government, which was in the hands of the
* The Provisional Government of Maryland {Johns Hopkins University Studies, XIII., No. 10), 518; Md. Archives, Journal of Council of Safety, 478, 490, 492.
78 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
people of the coast region, and which had denied them local law courts, as well as representation in the Commons House of Assembly/ From Charleston CHnton hoped to summon these loyal people to his standard.
Edward Rutledge, the chief of the provisional government, prepared with some six thousand militia to defend the city; and Colonel Moultrie, commanding a fortress of palmetto logs and banks of sand on Sullivan's Island, was sure that he could prevent the enemy entering the harbor. He was ridiculed by Charles Lee, who had been sent south to direct this defence. Rutledge, however, sup- ported Moultrie, who, easy and careless and un- soldierly as he was, could fight. The British fleet attacked the fort, and all day (June 28, 1776) poured cannon-balls into the loose sand or yielding palmetto, but did little harm,^ while the slow, careful fire of the defenders swept the British decks with frightful carnage. Parker withdrew his vessels at last, only to learn that Clinton, who had landed with two thousand men on a sand-bank, hoping to wade a shallow inlet and thus attack Sullivan's Island, had found seven feet of water and myriads of mosquitoes. Charleston was saved, and in the flush of victory all moderate counsels were brushed aside, and South Carolina was in a mood to h#ar with favor should Congress declare independence.
* McCrady, South Carolina in the Revolution (17 7 5-1 7 80), 33. 34. ' Ibid., 137-162.
1776] CAMPAIGN FOR INDEPENDENCE 79
July I, when Lee's motion was again taken up in Congress, favorable though not positive instructions had been received from every colony except New York. As a commercial state with but one port, the effect of war with England would be the ruin of her prosperity, while the importance of that port from a military point of view would make it the centre of the conflict. Its spacious and unprotected harbor exposed the city of New York to the British fleets, while the failure of the Canadian expedition left the state now open to invasion from the north. The Indians, too, were a menace on the frontier. Every material consideration, in fact, seemed to warn New York to avoid the struggle. These reasons and certain party animosities due to political conditions antedating the Revolution had developed a strong loyal party in the state, which prevented the patriot party from getting New York's delegates instructed for independence in time to vote for it with the other colonies.
When Congress took up Lee's motion, the New Jersey delegates wanted to hear it discussed. After a silence, during which all eyes were turned on John Adams, the great advocate rose. He began with a "flourish" about the great "orators of Athens and Rome," but upon closing his "not very bright exordium" continued in simple phrase to set forth the justice, the necessity, and the advan- tages of a separation from Great Britain.^ He spoke * Bancroft, United States, VIII., 452.
VOL. IX. — 7
8o AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
of America's petitions neglected and insulted, of the mercenary German troops, of the king's vindictive spirit, and finally of the prospects of glory and happiness which opened beyond the war to a free and independent people.^ As he spoke "he was not graceful, nor elegant, nor remarkably fluent, but he came out occasionally with a power of thought and expression " that moved men from their seats.^
To this speech John Dickinson replied. He showed his doubting, imselfish, yet anxious frame of mind in his exordium, for he invoked the Governor of the Universe so to influence the minds of the members that if the proposed measure was for the benefit of America nothing which he should say against it might make the least impression.^ His chief objection was to the haste and the lack of caution. Let the military campaign deci'de the controversy. The resolution that the colonies are independent will not strengthen the patriot cause by a man, but it will expose the soldiers to additional cruelty and outrage. Try America's strength before putting her where to recede is infamy and to persist may be destruction.
A strong reason for independence had been the necessity of showing that foreign nations might venture to ally themselves with the new sovereignty. Nations would not wish to establish the precedent of
* Ramsay, American Revolution, I., 339.
' Jefferson, in Curtis, Life of Webster, I,, 589.
'Ramsay, American Revolution, I., 339.
1776] CAMPAIGN FOR INDEPENDENCE 8i
aiding even an enemy's revolting subjects. To this argument Dickinson could only reply that success in the field, not a resolution of independence, would gain foreign aid ; that success was the only evidence of union and vigor. Let us form oiu: government, said he, and agree to terms of a confederation be- fore assuming sovereignty. Settle the existing dis- putes between colonies, and make firm our union — then let America " advance with majestic steps, and assume her station among the sovereigns of the world." ^
When th-e debate was closed the New York members were excused from voting. A tie lost the Delaware vote, while Pennsylvania and South Carolina opposed the motion. The resolution was agreed to by the nine remaining states, but on a promise of unanimity the final question was post- poned a day. Meanwhile, Rodney, of Delaware, had been sent for post-haste, and on July 2 his vote placed Delaware in the affirmative. Dickinson and Robert Morris absented themselves, thus changing Pennsylvania's vote.^ The South Carolina delegates, though they had no news of the change wrought by the victory at Charleston, risked the disavowal of their constituents and gave their approval.
* This in general is what the debaters said. We know only by tradition what Adams said, .and Dickinson's speech is partly tradition and partly extracts from his Vindication, written in 1 783 . See Stille, Life and Writings of John Dickinson, I., App. V., 373.
'Chamberlain, "Authentication of the Declaration of Inde- pendence," in J. Adams, 99,
82 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
New York's delegates dared not take the risks which at least four other delegations had taken. A great question had been decided, declared John Adams, "a greater, perhaps, never was nor will be decided among men."
The rest of that day and the two following were spent by Congress in wrangling over the form in which this declaration was to go out to the world. Since June 11, it had been in preparation by a committee, which had intrusted the draughting to Thomas Jefferson, one of the three youngest men in Congress. From the Virginia House of Burgesses and one of its revolutionary conventions he had come up to Philadelphia with a literary reputation due to a rather clever statement of the colonial arguments in a pamphlet called a " Summary View " ^ — full of rebellious spirit, generalization, and dec- lamation— which got him an honorable position on a British list of American traitors. In person he was the "lean and grinning Cassius," whom the Tories believed typical of the members of the Continental Congress. His nearly six feet and a quarter of sinew and bone, his unhandsome but pleasant and intelligent face, and his sandy hair seemed to mark him a born democrat.
Yet he was born in the outer circle of Virginia
aristocracy, and though admitted to patrician
rights by the social position of his mother, he had
only a democratic sneer for his pedigree. His early
» Jefferson, Works (Ford's ed.), I., 429,
1776] CAMPAIGN FOR INDEPENDENCE 83
home in the democratic back country had made him the life enemy of the tide-water aristocracy. Rid- ing and shooting and a dangerous fondness for the fiddle did not prevent him satisfying, with the zeal of a fanatic, an evident thirst for knowledge. Natural philosophy, mathematics, and law, mingled with the classics, pleased him most. Thus equipped, he thought and talked sensibly enough, as a rule, but at times his mind juggled with ideas and theories, and his enemies called him a . dreamer, "visionary" and "unsound in principles." As his pet theories showed, he was a doctrinaire rather than a statesman. The theory attracted him more than the practical statesmanship. As a common man he would have been a crank, but he raised idiosyncrasy to the dignity of genius.
No more suitable man could have been chosen to draught the great announcement of independence. It would bring upon America a fierce war, but Jefferson believed that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants ! " He liked * * a little rebellion now and then . ' * Again, though no strong system of government was yet provided to replace that to be destroyed, Jef- ferson was never a friend to a very energetic govern- ment; he liked to see the reins hanging loosely. He considered that the only safe depositaries of government were the people themselves — that is, the democrats, for aristocracy he held to be " an aban- doned confederacy against the happiness of the
^4 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
mass of the people." If these ideas were not yet clear in Jefferson's mind they were none the less his directing intuitions.
In respect to all the great principles that were formulated in the declaration, Jefferson felt as the people felt for whom he was to write this democratic manifesto. He used their language and their ideas. The production was not original, for originality would have been fatal. ^ It must express the thoughts familiar to all or it would not be accepted by all. As a contemporary said, " Into the monumental act of independence" Jefferson ''poured the soul of the continent." ^ The expression of the political ideas must be familiar, that it might more easily flow into the worn channels of English thought and find no hindrance. To get the approval of all, it must have all the opinions and passions, all the beliefs and prejudices, the sentiments and misconceptions which had driven the American people to the act of separation.
Of course Jefferson did not state the other side of the controversy. Had he presented moderate and judicial statements of the opposing theories he would not have attained his purpose. The startling array of charges against the king could not be modified by acknowledging that the king's tyranny for the most part consisted in trying to subdue his rebellious colonists. Neither could attention be
^ Tyler, Literary History of the American Revolution, I., 506, 507. 2 Stiles, Conn. Election Sermon (1783), 46.
1776] CAMPAIGN FOR INDEPENDENCE 85
called to the fact that most of these charges con- cerned acts incident to the suppression of rebellion, while the remainder had to do with the establish- ment of the imperial policy, which was not neces- sarily an undesirable end.*
Finally, if there was in the enumeration of self- evident truths some indefensible political philosophy, it was at least the prevailing thought of the age. Taken in their right sense, the ideas are not un- worthy of any age, insisting as they do upon the dignity of hum.an nature, man's sacred person and indestructible rights — life, liberty, and happiness. If governments were not instituted for that end in a golden age that is past, it is well that such shall be their object in the future.
On the evening of July 4, after much ''acrimoni- ous criticism," under which the author writhed in silence, the declaration, trimmed to briefer, more dispassionate, and more exact form, was adopted by twelve states. On the following day copies signed only by the president, John Hancock, and the secretary, Charles Thomson, were sent to several state assemblies. The declaration appeared July 6, in the Pennsylvania Evening Post, but Congress did not order it engrossed until July 19, and it was not signed by the members until August 2. For more than six months Congress withheld the names of the signers. It was only common
\ ^ See facts cited by Friedenwald, "The Declaration of Inde- pendence," in International Monthly, July, 1901,
86 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
prudence, for this overt act of treason, if not made good, might bring the signers to the gallows. Con- gress was always aware of its danger, and, besides sit- ting with closed doors, withheld even from its secret journals some of its most important proceedings/
Among certain classes the news of the declara- tion was received with wild and unreasoning joy. All over the land rude pageantry of various kinds celebrated the event. With mock solemnity an effigy of the king was buried before the court- house; a more barbarous delight was the burn- ing the king's portrait in the presence of a great concourse of people. Others, intolerant of the em- blems of royalty, burned the peace officers' staves adorned with the king's coat of arms. Everywhere the signs with lion and crown, heart and crown, or pestle and mortar and crown were torn down.^ In New York, after the declaration was formally adopted on July 9, the soldiers pulled down the leaden statue of George III., melting it into bullets.
Not every one greeted independence with such joy. Even good Whigs "trembled at the thought of separation from Great Britain." "We were," they sadly reflected, "formed by England's laws and religion. We were clothed with her manu- factures and protected by her fleets and armies. Her kings are the umpire of our disputes and the
* Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, III., 19 16; Journals of Con- gress, June 7, 1776, also June 10.
* Force, Am. Archives, 5th series, I., Index, " Independence."
1776] CAMPAIGN FOR LNDEPENDENCE 87
centre of our union." The Tories thought not only of these things, but they were aghast that men could w, be so mad as to cast away all these blessed fruits of ^^ union. Many conservative men who had approved ^Bof the resistance to the British measures now went ^Bover to the loyal party. One asserted that if ^America made good her declaration, ''that un- fortunate land would be a scene of bloody discord and desolation for ages." There would be in- ternecine war until a few provinces would conquer all the rest. England was as necessary to America's safety as a parent to his infant children. Some loyalists were convinced that the country did not wish independence, but that the baleful act was due to the irresponsibility of Congress, which con- sisted of " obscure, pettifogging attorneys, bankrupt shopkeepers, and outlawed smugglers" — political adventurers of the worst type.*
The last step had now been taken by the Whigs. No man who was loyal to the king could remain a friend to the king's declared enemies. A Tory was no longer a political opponent of the Whigs; he Hf was now an enemy in their camp to be denounced and treated as a spy and a traitor. He was accused of enjoying the protection of the new state without giving his support in return. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed not only war with Eng- land, but a civil war between the Whigs and Tories in America.
* Van Tyne, Loyalists, 91, 104-106,
CHAPTER VI
NEW YORK ACCEPTS THE REVOLUTION (1776)
WHEN the Declaration of Independence was adopted, July 4, 1776, New York's delegates failed to approve. This royal stronghold, which in the terrible years that followed drove out over half the exiled loyalists of whom we have any record, was only brought to the patriot side by heroic meas- ures. In order to understand the even balance of rival forces in that community, we must take ac- count of events that happened a decade earlier. The Stamp Act caused in New Y^ork, as elsewhere, "a universal tumult," and party lines were for the moment wiped out. The royal governor w^as sup- ported only by a small coterie of personal friends, royal officers, and Anglican clergy. But as the radical opposition grew more reckless the conser- vatives went over to the governor's party, and two rival families, the De Lanceys and the Livingstons, long rivals in New York politics, again headed the Tory and Whig parties/
When, however, the tea controversy arose, the
* Becker, in Am. Hist. Rev., VII., 59, 65. 88
1774] CONVERSION OF NEW YORK 89
moderate Tories again broke away from the ultras and showed that they felt the colonial grievances as keenly as the Whigs. They asked only that the contest should be carried on by constitutional means. Though these liberal Tories were in control of the government, they united with the Whigs, in 1773, in appointing a committee of correspondence which would keep New York in sympathetic con- tact with the other colonies. Again, however, they were outrun by their restive political mates, though they still kept control; and after the Boston Port Bill, in order to keep prudent men at the helm, they appointed a majority of a "committee of fifty-one,'* formed in the city of New York, to handle the prob- lems of the moment,^
Even in the election of delegates to the First Con- tinental Congress these moderate Tories kept the reins in hand, approving of the Congress^ because they hoped it would take the dispute out of the hands of the rabble. Its ''dangerous and extravagant measures," however, did not meet their approval, and they doubted whether the state was held by ''laws made at Philadelphia." Once more the ma- jority of the liberal Tories were obliged to join the ultra faction. Scattered counties showed great Tory strength by either ignoring or repudiating the
1 .V. y. Docs. Rel. to Col Hist., VIII., 433; N. Y. Hist. Soc, Collections (1877), 342.
2 Cooper, A Friendly Address, 30; Chandler, What Think Ye of Congress Nowf 6,
go AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
action of the Continental Congress,* while loyalist protests and addresses were signed in profusion. The liberal Tories had control of the provincial as- sembly, voting down all radical measures and re- fusing to elect delegates to the Second Continental Congress.
The Whigs and the liberal Tories who remained with them, when thus defeated in the legal assembly, resorted to extra -legal devices, and the committee of sixty, which succeeded the committee of fifty- one,^ called a mass-meeting which authorized a con- vention for the purpose of choosing delegates to the new Continental Congress. The Tories in Dutchess County protested against this action, and the people of Staten Island refused to obey the call. Other counties were indifferent, but by hook or crook delegates were elected from nine counties, and when they met in a provincial convention they ig- nored the action of the regular assembty by ap- proving the measures of the First Continental Con- gress.
Here was the real downfall of the liberal Tories.^ Confidence came to the convention with the news of Lexington, and New York was " converted almost instantly, as St. Paul was of old," wrote a Whig; " a Tory dares not open his mouth." They were forced to recant or flee. Even the committee which had
^ Dawson, Westchester County, 36-40; Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, I., 702, 703, 1063. ^ Ibid., I., 328.
' Becker, in Am. Hist. Rev., IX., 85.
1775] CONVERSION OF NEW YORK 91
been appointed by the liberal Tories now turned against them, censuring, arresting, and imprisoning them, and finally yielding up its power to the Tories' mortal enemy, the provincial convention. Nor was this the end, for in New York City there was organ- ized a committee of one hundred,^ which in May of 1775 issued a call for a Provincial Congress, which was expected to usurp all the power of the lawful assembly and to direct **the measures for the com- mon safety." Like the frogs in the fable, as a Tory declared, the people had rejected the government of one king. Log, and were now obliged to submit to the tyranny of an hundred king storks.
The new Provincial Congress whipped the back- ward counties and even New York City into sub- mission to its will; but its members were still loyal enough, and not at all sure, as the ultra- Whigs pro- claimed, that the "bleeding country" beckoned them " to shut up the Temple of Janus." They took measures to prevent the Tories aiding the British army, and talked much of the ''immutable laws of self-defence," but they had no thought of indepen- dence. As an old patriot expressed it, they fought the red-coats because "we always had governed ourselves and we always meant to. They didn't mean we should." ^ Accordingly, for the time at least, the invader was to be repulsed by every means to the end. The Provincial Congress resolved, in
» N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., VIII., 600, « CbamberUin, J. Adams ^ 249.
93 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1775
August of 1775, that any person giving information to the enemy should be punished at the discretion of the local committee having the matter in hand. Those guilty of supplying the enemy were to forfeit double the value of the goods and be disarmed and imprisoned. If any denied the authority of the pa- triot congresses or committees, their weapons should be seized, and upon a second offence they should be confined at their own expense. All persons "in arms against the liberties of America" were to be seized and their property put in the hands "of some discreet person," who should pay the profits into the provincial treasury.^ All trials were to be held be- fore committeemen. A month later it was deter- mined to seize the arms of all who had not sworn allegiance to America's cause. ^ The committees worked with great zeal for a month. With the aid of the militia they pursued suspected Tories through swamp and woodland — the "nests of these obnox- ious vermin" — and if they found a man with more guns than he ought to have, or in possession of powder, or who slandered Washington or denied the authority of Congress, they hurried him away to a trial where the doors of mercy were too often shut. The bitterest animosity of all conservative men was soon aroused against the revolutionary'- govern- ment.
A reaction began even within the Provincial Con-
^ Minutes of Provincial Congress of I\[. Y,, H., 314-319. ^Ibid., III., 73-76.
1776] CONVERSION OF NEW YORK 93
gress, and during the winter the loyaHsts enjoyed a respite, but in the middle of March, 1776, the Con- tinental Congress ordered the seizure of the arms of all disaffected persons,^ and the work was begun again — whole neighborhoods being thus disarmed and their weapons put in the hands of the Whig militiamen. In May the Provincial Congress began a crusade against Queens County, the stronghold of the loyalists.^ A special committee directed the work, and until midsummer the loyalists were harried by the Whig militia, seized and sent to neighboring states on parole, or imprisoned at home. A British attack was feared and intestine enemies must be removed or chained.
In anticipation of such an attack upon New York, Washington, after taking possession of Boston, started the chief part of his troops towards the new seat of war. April 4, he left Cambridge, passing through Providence and New Haven, ^ and reaching New Y'ork, April 13, in company with General Gates. His troops came straggling in, delayed by bad roads and the lack of teams for the transportation of baggage.
The condition of the government in the city of New York greatly alarmed W^ashington. He feared he should " have a difficult card to play." In spite of the severe treatment of the Tories and loyalists,
* Journals of Congress, March 14, 1776.
2 Cal. of N. Y. Hist. MSS., I., 338.
' Baker, Itinerary of General Washington, 36.
94 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
their confidence ^vas unabated, and the Tory governor, Tryon, who had fled on board the British ship Asia, encouraged them not to yield their arms — promising that a British army would soon come to their rescue. There was almost constant com- munication between the British ships and the Tories ashore. Washington at once urged the New York committee to prevent it by every means in their power. ^ *' Even the enemy themselves must despise us for suffering it to be continued." He had long urged the seizure of Tory leaders. "Why," he asked, "should persons who are preying upon the vitals of the country be suffered to stalk at large, whilst we know that they will do us every mischief in their power?" As a result of military necessity the few months between the arrival of Washington and the coming of the British were months of terror for the loyalists. They inevitably suffered at the rough hands of the soldiers, though the intent was to treat them humanely.
Late in June, 1776, the Tory lot was rendered more wretched because of the discovery of a plot against the life of V/ashington. He was to be assassinated if necessary, but if possible he was to be seized and taken on a British ship to be tried for treason. Governor Tryon and the mayor of New York were apparently implicated, but the scape-goat was one of Washington's own guard, who was speedily hanged. The discovery of the plot
* Washington, Writings (Sparks's ed.), III., 357.
1776] CONVERSION OF NEW YORK 95
horrified everybody and threw great discredit upon the Tory party; though they had previously been gaining adherents among men who wished to learn what might be the famous "conciliatory policy" which Lord Howe was said to be bringing along with his invading army. Now their cause was hard hit, and day by day the patriots gained in power until, July 9 — just a week late — the New York Provincial Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, and the last link was welded in the chain of colonies that were fighting for a place among the nations.
During the rest of the summer and autumn the chain was to be tested to its utmost. Battle after battle went against the new league, until only a few brave and patriotic men kept the weakened links from breaking. New York became the centre of the contest, and all of England's strength was bent on cutting the league along the line of the Hudson. New England seemed to be the head of the rebellion — sever that, they thought, and the rest of the serpent of rebellion would soon die. If they could seize and hold the line of the Hudson River they might take their time, they reasoned, in reducing isolated New England, which would soon be starved out for want of supplies drawn ordinarily in large part from the more fertile south.
This plan prevailed, though some of England's greatest military men were against it. They saw clearly that from a military point of view America
VOL. IX. — 8
96 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
had natural strength. The colonies were three thousand miles from England. They had a thou- sand miles of sea-coast and a territory boundless in extent and resources. It would be hard to get armies to them, and harder still to subdue a people, nearly three millions in number, scattered along such an extended coast. The roads were bad, thus obstructing the movement of army trains; and much of the territory w^as only a wilderness, in which European soldiers would fight at a disadvan- tage. To attempt to conquer America internally, declared the military chief of the kingdom, "is as wild an idea as ever controverted common-sense." America, he wrote, was "an ugly job," and the British army would be destroyed by "damned driblets." To hold the Hudson and conquer New England would require thirty to fifty thousand men — all to be carried in sailing ships three thousand miles. Military men thought such a scheme hope- less from the start. ^ The secretary of war and others thought the war should be entirely naval. Occupy forts, shut off trade, and make predatory excursions inland, they urged. But the ministry were blind to the real conditions, and set about executing their own plan.
An unpromising state of affairs was revealed when they came to survey their resources. The navy had been allowed to decline, and in December,
^Commander-in-chief's letter-books, quoted in Fortescue, British Army, III., 167.
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1774, in the face of impending war, the number of men was reduced from twenty to sixteen thou- sand. The army was left at its old number, and even in the spring of 1775 was only increased a paltry four thousand/ The king plead in vain for troops, and in desperation sent his own Han- overian battalion to Gibraltar that its garrison might be released for American service. Only in August was an increase of twenty thousand men authorized by Parliament. Few recruits were avail- able in England, however. "We are given up to profusion, extravagance, and pleasure," declared Horace Walpole ; " heroism is not at all in the fashion. Cincinnatus will be found at the hazard table, and Camillus at a ball."^ There was, too, a division of sympathy within the empire. Pitt withdrew his eldest son from the army to prevent his serving against America, and there was throughout England much feeling adverse to service against the colonists. In their hour of need the ministry tried to hire soldiers from Russia, and, failing there, turned to the petty German princes who had long sold their subjects to pay their debts. Like Sancho Panza, Lord Irnham declared, they wished that all their subjects were blackamoors who might be sold and turned into ready money. The greatest of these half-dozen petty princes was the somewhat dignified
* Commander-in-chief's letter - books, quoted in Fortescue, British Army, III., 170.
' Letter? of Horace Walpole, VI., 194.
98 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who kept the cast-off mistress of a French duke, welcomed French ad- venturers, and maintained a French theatre and corps de ballet} He agreed to furnish twelve thou- sand men, and it is to be said for him that he took a real interest in his men, insisted that they be kept together, and reduced the taxes of his remaining subjects.
The least of these petty despots was the Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, monarch of twenty thousand subjects, with whose affairs he refused to be troubled. His army was chiefly on paper, and of the six hun- dred men he agreed to send to America the majority were recruited outside of his own dominions. He was extremely sensitive to the troubles of his own ilk, and died with melancholy a few years later over the death of Louis XVI. — dying as he had lived, a "caricature of a royal martyr."
Of the nearly thirty thousand soldiers furnished by these princes during the war over a third never returned to Germany. Some lost their lives, but many remained among the people against whom they were sent. The character of the so-called Hessians is therefore of special interest. It is well illustrated by the autobiography of one of them, a wandering theological student, on his way to Paris. ^ He was seized by the recruiting officers of the landgrave of Cassel — that " great broker of men."
* Lowell, Hessians in the Revolution, 5,6. ' Johan Gottfried Seume, Autobiography.
1776] CONVERSION OF NEW YORK 99
" No one was safe from the grip of the seller of souls." Recruits came in from the plough, the highways, and from the neighboring states. Persuasion, cunning, deception, force — all served, and the net caught political malcontents, spendthrifts, loose livers, dninkards, restless people — *'an indescribable lot of human beings." Strangers of all kinds were arrest- ed. There was ''a runaway son of the muses from Jena, a bankrupt tradesman from Vienna, a fringe- maker from Hanover, ... a monk from Wiirzburg," and a ''Prussian sergeant of hussars." How will- ingly they all went, Schiller has pictured for us in his " Kabale und Liebe " : "A few saucy fellows stepped out of the ranks and asked the colonels at how much a yoke the prince sold men; but our most gracious master ordered all the regiments to march onto the parade-ground, and had the jackanapes shot down. We heard the crack of the rifles, saw their brains spatter the pavement, and the whole army shouted, * Hurrah ! to America !' "
A defence was not wanting for this selling of men "to be dragged," as Frederick the Great wrote Vol- taire, ** like cattle to the shambles." Had not men in all ages slaughtered each other for hire? The Swiss had long been wont to fight as mercenaries; Xenophon's ten thousand Greeks did the same. It was a natural instinct of mankind. To Mirabeau's charge that it was '* the greatest of crimes," ** an of- fence against the freedom of nations," to send them to fight the freedom-seeking Americans, it was asserted
100 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
that America's boasted liberty was "a deceitful siren." Some of the princes had made a pretence of offering their aid to George III. without com- pensation, presaging the " Holy Alliance," the band- ing together of kings to suppress one another's re- bellious subjects. As for the "dirty selfishness" of the princes, as Frederick called it, they intended to use the money to pay their princely debts. For- eign money would flow into their poor realms, and the troops would thus be fighting their ruler's worst enemies — his debts. The soldier would be paid, and would return with his savings, "proud to have worked for his country's and his own advantage."
In the English Parliament the treaties with the princes were violently attacked. They were de- noimced as ' ' downright mercenary bargains for the taking into pa}^ of a certain number of hirelings, who were bought and sold like so many beasts for slaughter." "Let not the historian," plead Alder- man Bull, "be obliged to say that the Russian and German slave was hired to subdue the sons of Eng- lishmen and of freemen."
Though there was a natural human sentiment against this hiring of soldiers, yet the opponents of the treaties had precedent against them. Merce- naries had been used to suppress the Highland re- bellion, and a regiment containing many "hirelings" had been used in the American colonies — indeed, the colonies had not been loath to accept the aid of such troops themselves. The strongest argument brought
1776] CONVERSION OF NEW YORK loi
against the treaties was that, if Great Britain formed alliances and hired foreign troops, the colonies would feel justified in seeking like aid, and France, Spain, or Prussia might conceive that it had as good a right as the petty German princes to interfere in a domes- tic quarrel/ But all the Whig opposition — the elo- quence of Fox and Barre and Burke — was in vain against this method of recruiting men, as it was against the bill for raising the strength of the army. The German soldiers were hired and shipped for America.
^Parliamentary Register, ist series, V., 174-216.
CHAPTER VII
CONTEST FOR NEW YORK CITY (1776)
FOLLOWING the ministerial plan of a cam- paign for the possession of the Hudson, Howe, who after his evacuation of Boston had waited help- lessly three months at Halifax for his provision ships, left, June 7, for New York. Within three weeks he and his transports were off Sandy Hook.^ His brother, Lord Howe, whose naval preparation in England had been delayed by a severe winter, arrived a few da^^s later, convoying his transports loaded with German soldiers and a British regiment.^ Howe decided to land at Staten Island, where he could watch the American attempts to blockade North and East rivers.
Howe's ships, therefore, came up the Narrows between Staten and Long islands (July 2) with a fair wind and rapid tide, a spectacle very alarming to the Whig inhabitants of New York. The city was in an uproar — the alarm-guns firing, the troops repairing to their posts, and everything "in the
* Kemble, Papers, I., 76, 79, 383.
* Fortescue, British Army, 181, 182.
;02
1776] NEW YORK CAMPAIGN 103
height of bustle." ^ The next day the ships came up before the town, then only a small city of some twenty thousand souls at the southern end of Man- hattan Island. A loud cannonade greeted the ves- sels, which consequently kept well on the Jersey side to avoid it. Day after day Lord Howe's strag- gling transports dropped in, and, August i, Clin- ton, returning from the ill-starred and mistaken expedition to Cape Fear and Charleston,^ arrived at Staten Island, swelling Howe's army to nearly thirty thousand men. Still there were delays, and it was not until late in August that the campaign could really be begun.
Before attacking the patriot army Lord Howe tried the conciliatory powers which the ministry, with the king's half-hearted sanction, had prevailed upon him to accept.^ If peace could be made Lord Howe could make it, for the Howe family was be- loved by Americans. One of the brothers had died in America's cause at Ticonderoga, and Lord Howe himself had spoken in Parliament in their behalf. Though he was the king's cousin, he had hitherto refused a military command in America, and George III. had touched his present commission when sign- ing it as he would have touched pitch. On Lord Howe's voyage to America he was sure of ''peace within ten days of his arrival."
Indeed, the radical leaders in Congress had feared
^ Brooks, Henry Knox, 56. ^ Kemble, Papers, I., 83.
' Ford, in Atlantic Monthly, June, 1896.
104 AMERICAN REVOLUTION . [1776
as much. John Adams tried to frown the peace embassy down as an ''arrant illusion" — '*a messiah that will never come." ''I have laughed at it, scolded at it, grieved at it," he wrote. To prevent its success, he hurried and fairly drove Congress to declare independence. As Howe's flag-ship neared the American coast he heard the salvos of guns fired as a salute to the new nation. Yet he did not give up hope, and he opened correspondence with prominent Americans, since his instructions forbade his recognizing or dealing with the Continental Con- gress as a body. He could only offer to individuals the full and free pardon of their king if they should desist from rebellion and lend their "aid in re- storing tranquillity."
A letter with this offer was sent to "George Washington, Esq.," in the hope of avoiding the recognition of his title.* Neither the effusive polite- ness of the messenger, nor his "ma3/ it please your excellency," nor his assurance of Howe's benevolent disposition, could induce Washington to receive the letter. The Americans had not offended, he said simply, and they needed no pardon. All that the envoy could secure was Washington's "particular compliments" to Lord Howe and General Howe. Henry Knox thought the messenger awe -struck;^ and well he might be, the young admirer added, for "he was before a very great man indeed." Failing with Washington, Howe sent circular letters to the
1 Kemble, Papers, I., 81. 2 Brooks, Henry Knox, 59.
1776] NEW YORK CAMPAIGN 105
royal governors, who now, however, were in jail or on British ships, and quite impotent to publish procla- mations of pardon. But Congress secured a copy and published it, to be jeered at by the impenitent Whigs.
General Howe now proceeded to execute his part of the military plan. He was to seize New York, while General Carleton was to come down from Canada, retake Ticonderoga, and get control of the headwaters of the Hudson, together with its great feeder, the Mohawk Valley. Howe's task was com- paratively easy. Of British and Hessian soldiers he could muster some twenty -five thousand, well equipped and trained,^ while Washington, with some eighteen thousand ill-disciplined and badly armed men, was without the key to the situation, the control c^f the waters about the city. He must distribute his scanty forces about New York^in the forts outside, and on Long Island. Brooklyn Heights commanded New York just as Bunker Hill commanded Boston ; and to retain New York, Wash- ington must, he thought, hold the heights.^ The summer had been devoted to the hopeless task of strengthening the intrenchments there, and General Putnam, with some nine thousand men, was in com- mand.
Against this force on Long Island Howe deter-
^ Fortescue, British Army, III., 182.
^ C. F. Adams, " Battle of Long Island " {American Historical Review, I., 650).
io6 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
mined to move first. August 22, he effected a landing near the Narrows with some fifteen thou- sand men/ Four days of reconnoitring convinced him that the American advance Hnes, some five thousand men under General Sullivan and General Stirling, could easily be driven from the position which they had taken along some wooded heights, between the British army and Brooklyn. Through these hills there were three roads, two of which, the westernmost and the centre, were covered by Stir- ling and SulHvan, but the one far to the east being unguarded, might be used as an approach to the rear of the defenders.^ Undertaking the flank move- ment himself, he sent two detachments straight to the attack upon Stirling and Sullivan. Howe's army was so overwhelmingly greater than his op- ponent's that there could be but one outcome. Both American divisions were half defeated in the face-to-face encounter, and then utterly routed by the attack in the rear which Howe successfully man- aged. Both of the American commanders were captured as well as some one thousand one hundred officers and men, and each army lost between four and five himdred killed and wounded.^ The battle of Long Island was for the Americans a complete defeat, a foregone result, due to several causes, but chiefly to the overwhelming numbers of the British.
* Kemble, Papers, I., 85.
' Washington, Writings (Sparks's ed,), IV., 6^, map.
» Kemble, Papers, I., 85,, 86.
1776] NEW YORK CAMPAIGN 107
In the hope of still holding Brooklyn Heights, and thus saving New York, Washington reinforced his position until he had about nine thousand men to meet the attack by storm which he hoped Howe would undertake. For the time an unfavorable wind prevented the British ships coming up into East River, and thus cutting off a retreat, should that become necessary. But Howe seemed to be settling down for a regular siege which could have but one end, and the northeast wind must change ere long. The danger was too great, and in the night of Au- gust 29 Washington crossed to the island and per- sonally directed a retreat across the river to New York.^ Boats were gathered from all the water- front of Manhattan Island, and there were chosen to man the transfers the fishermen of Marblehead and Gloucester, who were serving with the Massa- chusetts troops. A heavy fog favored secrecy, but it is strange that the enemy, who were plainly heard working with their pickaxes, should not have heard the bustle and unavoidable noise attendant upon moving ten thousand men with baggage, pro- vision stores, horses, and munitions of war. Howe was early apprised of the movement, but his pickets only aiTived in time to fire a few shots at the rear- guard. The British general, sneered a critic, calcu- lated ''with the greatest accuracy the exact time necessary for his enemy to make his escape."
Unwise and unskilful as Washington had been on * Washington, Writings (Sparks's ed.), IV., 69-71.
io8 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
this occasion, he was not the man to make the same error twice. Never again did Howe have so golden an opportunity to end the war with a single stroke. As military critics have pointed out, Washington's army was the real stay of the rebellion, and the capt- ure or destruction of it should have been the object of every campaign, instead of the seizure of a city like Philadelphia or New York, or even the control of a line like the Hudson, which, would only sever the colonies, but by no means subdue them.
Lord Howe, the peace-maker, seemed quite sat- isfied with the British victory on Long Island. Hoping to find the Americans in a more penitent state of mind, he sent the captured General Sullivan — a sort of "decoy duck," as John Adams said, with a sneer — to urge Congress to send some of its members, in their private capacity, to confer with the king's peace commissioner. There was acrimonious de- bate, and dark hints of treachery were uttered ; but Adams and Rutledge and Franklin were finally sent as a committee from Congress. Upon their arrival at Staten Island they were met by Lord Howe, who thanked them for their confidence, and after a social hour at dinner began his efforts to cement the broken fragments of the British Empire.*
He apologized for bearing both the sword and the olive-branch, saying that his desire had been for a purely civil commission, with which he might go
* See the report of Howe's secretary, Strachey, in Atlantic Monthly, LXXVII., 759.
1776] NEW YORK CAMPAIGN 109
straight to Philadelphia. He had, however, hoped to find Congress in the same frame of mind as when it sent its petition to the king. He feared that the Declaration of Independence would prevent peace- making, for he had no power to consider America except as part of the empire. He had no power even to confer with the gentlemen present except as men of great ability — influential men of the coun- try— and he hoped no implication of theirs w^ould commit him on that point. Franklin here blandly assured him, "You may depend upon our taking care of that, my lord." He might consider the gentlemen in any view he thought proper, Franklin said, with humorous diplomacy, adding that they were also at liberty to consider themselves in their real character. Adams did not object to being con- sidered as a private gentleman — " or anything but a British subject."
Howe then urged the necessity of treading back the step of independency if they were to get any concessions from the king. He declared that the king desired America's happiness, would reform whatever affected the freedom of their legislation, and would concur with Parliament in the redress of grievances. The dispute, Howe thought, seemed to concern only the method of getting aid from Amer- ica for the defence of the empire. ''That we have never refused upon requisition," Frankhn interposed ; but Howe said that the money did not matter. Eng- land wanted America's strength, her commerce, and
no AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
her men. *'Ay, my lord," said Franklin, "we have a pretty considerable manufactory of men."
To Howe's anxious inquiry whether the act of independence could be recalled, Franklin replied that America could not now expect happiness under the domination of Great Britain — the former attach- ment was obliterated. Congress had been instruct- ed by the colonies, Adams added, to declare inde- pendence, and it could not rescind if it wished. Rutledge thought it worth the consideration of Great Britain whether she would not receive greater advantages by an alliance with the now independent states than she had hitherto enjoyed from her colo- nies. The American people were now settled and happy, and it was useless for England to hope for their political allegiance again. Howe replied that he had no power to treat on this basis, and could not hope to receive such power, adding, testily, that he was sorry the gentlemen had had the trouble of coming so far for so little purpose. When Franklin started to say something about "total submission," Howe interrupted with a denial that the king had any wish for "unconditional submission." Ex- pressing his disappointment again, he ended the conference. One last effort he made, September 19, with a declaration, circulated far and wide by the loyalists. The British government was ready, he declared, to reconsider the aggravating acts and instructions. All fair - minded people were asked, to decide for themselves whether it was not wiser
1776] NEW YORK CAMPAIGN iii
to rely on this solemn promise than commit them- selves to dangerous and unrighteous war. After this last flourish of the olive-branch the British commanders turned again to the task of seizing New York.*
After some delays and futile attempts to hold the city, Washington determined to withdraw.^ He and General Greene wished to burn the city, but Congress and the council of war were against such action.^ The main army retired to Haerlem Heights none too soon, for the united action of the British ships-of-war enabled Howe to make a landing at Kip's Bay, and quickly to throw a line across Man- hattan Island, several miles north of the city. The British troops thus nearly penned up and captured three or four thousand American soldiers who had been left in the city. Howe now took possession of New York, and the Americans strongly intrenched themselves just above Haerlem."*
When New York and Long Island passed into the control of the British army, the Whig power was there wholly overthrown. The Tories expressed their exultation in loyal addresses to Lord Howe, joyful that they had been "restored to the king's most gracious protection." From the day that the British soldiers entered New York until the last one
* On the whole negotiation, Force, Am. Archives, 5th series, II., 398, 1329-
'Washington, Writings (Sparks's ed.), IV., 91. ' Force, Am. Archives, sth series, II., 182, 135.
♦ Washington, Writings (Sparks's ed.), IV., 101-105, 94, 95.
VOL. IX. — 0
112 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
left in 1783, the persecuted Tories had a sanctuary. From every colony they came by boat, on foot, in carriage, or on horse, thanking God when they passed within the British Hnes and left behind them the din of persecution/
The Whigs of Long Island were at once disarmed and compelled to take an oath of allegiance. There was in general, however, a loyal spirit, and not hy- pocrisy, in the welcome extended to the British sol- diers. The few real Whigs now received measure for measure from the lately persecuted Tories". Their cattle were stolen, their orchards cut down for firewood, and their Presbyterian churches de- filed and ruined. The British cavalry used the sanctuaries for stables, and mischief -loving Tories sawed off the steeples.^
This exhibition of rage against the Presbyterian sect was due to the belief that "Whig" and ''Pres- byterian" were synonymous. In New York and New England there was a plain party division along religious lines. ^ Just before the Revolution the Brit- ish ministry had been thought to have the design of sending an Anglican bishop .to America, holding a state church to be an essential part of a body politic. Though the ministry had no such purpose,* the Pres- byterians and Congregationalists opposed the fan-
* Van Tyne, Loyalists, 128.
^ Onderdonk, Revolutionary Incidents of Long I standi 132. ^ Col, Soc. of Mass., Transactions, III., 42.
* Cross, The Anglican Episcopate, 199.
1776] NEW YORK CAMPAIGN 113
cied intention and talked much of the danger that Parhament might next collect tithes and crush heresy. In New England this dispute pitted the Episcopal and Congregational churches against each other, and, because the former received British sup- port, that sect came to be regarded as leagued with the Tories.
In New York the De Lancey, or Tory, party was of Anglican faith, while men of the Livingston, or Whig, party were, as a rule, Presbyterians. Through- out America the judges, lawyers, collectors of ports, and all crown officers were natural supporters of the king and Parliament, and, as they were generally members of the Anglican church, the Whigs v/ere quick to regard them and their religion as opposed to the revolutionary movement. They accused the Anglican clergy of writing home ''amazing false- hoods," and they made much of one Samuel Peters's letter, prophesying the sacrifice of the Episcopal church ''to the rage of the Puritan Mobility, if the old serpent" were not bound. Later, when war was impending, he wrote of the Puritans, "spiritual iniquity rides in high places." Their preachers on their "pious sabbath day" left their pulpits for gun and drum, "cursing the king, Lord North, General Gage . . . and the church of Eng- land." ^
Evidence of this double political and sectarian antipathy was everywhere visible. The Whig mob
^ Journals of Each Prov. Cong, of Mass., 21.
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cried, *'Down with the church" and the "rags of popery." In New York the Sons of Liberty were denounced as a ** Presbyterian junto." Though there were AngHcans among them, their leaders were declared to be *' turbulent, anti - monarchical Pres- byterians." The men in Presbyterian pulpits were accused of " spiriting their godly hearers to the most violent opposition to government." As the war advanced, altar was arrayed against altar. If, as we have seen, the Tories insulted Presbyterian churches, Whigs were ready for any vandalism against Anglican sanctuaries. While the British used a Presbyterian church as a guard-house and the pulpit pillar as a hitching-post, a troop of American cavalry was quartered in an Episcopal rectory, using the church as a hospital and the pews as firewood.* Tories were branded with the sign of the cross. The Puritans were denoimced as "surly, hum- drum sons of liberty" — "those hypocritical fa- natics who brought the best of princes to the block." ^
So prominent was this religious phase of the struggle that men of limited understanding asserted that the Revolution was a religious war, but they saw only that phase in which they were interested. At no period of the war were there greater signs of antipathy between the rival religious sects than in the weeks that immediately followed the capture
* Narrative of Walter Bates, 5.
•Mass. Higt. Soc, Proceedings ^ ? 4 series, XIJ., 141,
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of New York, yet the political strife was even then by far the most prominent. Except at a later time, in South Carolina, partisan wrath and persecution never were hotter than in the Whig regime that preceded the capture of New York and in the hour of Tory triumph that followed it.
CHAPTER VIII
FROM THE HUDSON TO THE DELAWARE (1776)
BY the capture of New York City Howe had gained part of the object of his campaign, but he hoped daily, and in vain, that Carle ton would report the seizure of Ticonderoga, thus placing in British control the two ends of the coveted line of the Hudson. Carle ton was delayed by the stub- born and desperate Benedict Arnold, who, after the stormy night of December 31, 1775, when his little army was repulsed before Quebec, grimly fought, step by step, all the dreary way out of Canada.
After the first repulse Arnold received reinforce- ments enough to keep Quebec in a state of blockade ; but small-pox, and desertion because of the terrors of a winter camp,^ depleted his force, until Carleton drove the little army from the Plains of Abraham, with the aid of British vessels arriving when navi- gation opened. Carleton, reinforced by Hessians until his army numbered thirteen thousand men, pushed Arnold back and back until he reached
^ Journals of Congress, July 30, 1776. 116
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Sorel and was reinforced. General John Thomas, assigned to the command in Canada, reached the army late in April, but died soon, so that Arnold was in actual control of the whole retreat. Montreal was now retaken by Carleton, and then the pursuit of Arnold was resumed, until the Americans, after a loss of five thousand men, were driven wholly out of Canada, and in June, 1776, stood at bay, determined to prevent the British gaining control of Lake Champlain.^
All of Arnold's fierce energy and courage were aroused. While Carleton was gathering a fleet of overpowering strength Arnold constructed, out of the standing timber of the forest, a flotilla of some sixteen vessels, with which he meant to harass and delay Carleton until it should be too late in the season to capture Ticonderoga.^ He took his stand at Valcour's Island early in October, and when Carleton with an overwhelming fleet bore down upon him, Arnold gave the British seven hours of desperate fighting. The American fleet was almost destroyed, but in the mists of the night Arnold slipped away towards Crown Point. Mending leaks, saving sinking crews, and sailing or rowing as he could, he neared the fort before the enemy over- hauled him. Another four hours of furious combat saved the remnant of Arnold's force, and after land-
^ Force, Am. Archives, 4th series, VI., 1102-1108,587-596. 2 See A. T. Mahan, "Naval Campaign on Lake Champlain," in Scribner's Magazine, February, 1898.
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ing at Crown Point he led his men safely through the woods to Ticonderoga.^
Carleton came up before that fortress, but thought it too strong to be taken, and led his army back into Canada, to the surprise of his foes and the chagrin of his friends. This strange conduct de- layed the campaign of the following year, and thus Arnold's skill and wonderful energy were rewarded. But for this delay Burgoyne would have succeeded, there would have been no surrender at Saratoga, and there probably would have been no French alliance. This seemingly petty conflict set going vast forces which soon involved in war half the civilized nations of the world.
While this struggle was at its worst in the north, Howe, on the lower Hudson, was meeting a new problem of his own. The British army held New York City, but the Americans were strongly in- trenched beyond the Haerlem. They were a con- stant menace ; and, besides, Howe felt that he could hardly close the campaign for the year without mak- ing an attempt to capture them. Had he known the condition of Washington's forces he would have been justified in leaving it to resolve into its natural elements without the aid of an annihilating attack.^
Washington's army, even before its defeat on Long Island, was but an ill-organized collection of militia companies. Washington had pleaded with
^Gentleman's Magazine, XLVII. (1777), 42, 'Washington, Writings (Sparks's e4.). IV., 131, i6j,
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Congress for an adequate regular army, but the fears of military despotism and the financial straits of Congress prevented such action. The militia was quite unfit for the task. As Henry Knox wrote, they *'get sick, or think themselves so, and run home; and wherever they go they spread a panic."* After the retreat from Long Island Washington wrote letter after letter to Congress telling how poor was his faith in militia. The defeat "has dispirited too great a proportion of our troops," he lamented. '*The militia . . . are discouraged, in- tractable, and impatient to return." Great num- bers had gone off, ** almost by whole regiments, by half ones, and by companies at a time." Their example, of course, infected the rest of the army. "To place any dependence upon militia is assuredly resting on a broken staff," Washington declared, and he added that he would subscribe on oath that they had been hurtful rather than serviceable. No dependence could be put on them or other troops, he assured Congress, than those enlisted and embodied for a longer period than the regulation then allowed. A permanent standing army was needed.^
Discipline was quite impossible under the existing system. There is " an entire disregard of that order and subordination necessary to the well - being of an army," Washington asserted. Men who have
* Brooks, Henry Knox, 64.
'Washington, Writings (Ford's ed.), III., 16, IV., 379, 380, 429, 443, 456 etseq., 473'
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been free and subject to no control cannot be re- duced to order in an instant. The example of their insubordination was contagious, he declared. Good officers might remedy this condition, but there were no other possible means to obtain them, Washington told Congress, but by establishing the army upon a permanent footing and giving the officers good pay. This will induce gentlemen and men of character to engage, he added, bitterly. While the men regard an officer as an equal, or "regard him no more than a broomstick," no discipline can prevail. But Congress was not yet ready to put the blind faith in its military leader that it learned at a later time. He was left to struggle as best he could against superior numbers and superior organization.^
To capture this ''receptacle for ragamuffins," as one of Washington's staff described the American army, Howe devised the only feasible plan.^ Back of Washington's position the land lying between the Hudson and Long Island Sound constantly widened, yet the British fleet might push past forts Lee and Washingon, which guarded the Hudson near the Haerlem, and land a force back of Washington's army, while troops might also be landed on the shore of Long Island Soimd in the rear of his left.
After Howe had assured himself that the forts might be passed, he determined to cut Washington's
^ V/ashington, Writings (Ford's ed.), IV., 40Q, 440, 443. 2 Fortescue, British Army, III., 187 et seq.
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communications with Connecticut, and get behind him if possible. With the main division of his army Howe landed (October 12) some nine miles up the East River, and, finding himself thwarted there, he pushed on to Pells' Point. Washington was too wary to be hemmed in. After reinforcing Fort Washington he intrenched his army along a line of eighteen miles, from Haerlem to White Plains, hoping to check the British advance. On October '28, one of his outposts was stormed at a considerable loss to the British, and the affair became known as the battle of White Plains. In- stead of pushing this advantage, Howe delayed several days, and Washington retired to North Castle, a position too strong to be safely attacked.^ Howe then moved towards the Hudson, threatening a move on Philadelphia, but really hoping to draw Wash- ington out of his stronghold.
To meet this feint of Howe's, Putnam was sent across the Hudson to Hackensack. The Highlands were then guarded by a force placed at Peekskill, while Charles Lee, who had just returned from South Carolina, was left with seven thousand men on the east side of the Hudson until he should be ordered to join W'ashington. The large force still detained as the garrison of forts Lee and Washington should now have been withdrawn, for British ships had easily passed them and proven them useless. Wash-
^ Washington, Writings (Sparks's ed.), IV., 151; Kemble, Papers, I., 93, 96.
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ington ordered them abandoned, conditionally,* and went himself to seek a site for a surer defence of the Hudson at West Point. He had hardly left the scene when Greene, who had been given dis- cretionary powers, reinforced it, and Howe, on No- vember 16, turned upon it with an overwhelming force and compelled its surrender with some two thousand six hundred of the best American troops.' This was one of the severest blows suffered by the American army during the war.
Washington now had but six thousand troops on the Jersey side of the Hudson, and Lee was ordered to bring over his seven thousand reserves at once. The command was ignored, however, and when Howe crossed the Hudson with five thousand men and descended upon Fort Lee there was nothing for the garrison to do but to abandon its stores and flee to the main division, which lay between the Passaic and the Hackensack rivers. The whole army was in danger there, and Washington marched it southwestward to Newark, while he daily urged Lee to come to his aid.'
Charles Lee was vainglorious and wilful to the point of treason. He saw in Washington's present straits a chance to improve his own fortunes, for if the commander-in-chief should be overwhelmed, Lee, who was next in rank, would doubtless succeed
^ * Washington, Writings (Sparks's ed.), IV., 164, 183.
' Kemble, Papers, I., 100; Washington, Writings (Sparks's ed.), IV., 183. ' Moore, Treason of Chas. Lee,4'j ,48, 187-193.
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him. The simple-minded Americans of that day were greatly impressed by this showy, eccentric soldier, who had been an aide-de-camp to the Polish king, commander of the Cossacks, and a warrior since his eleventh year. Had he not smoked with the Mohawks in their councils, chatted with Fred- erick the Great, and fought the Turks ? There were prominent men in Congress who thought him a military genius, and while they contrasted Lee, the supposed hero of Charleston, with Washington, the defeated commander-in-chief, their folly was fed by insidious letters suggesting a change in the command. Lee insinuated that if any of the members of Congress had studied Roman history they might see the wisdom of making him dictator for a week.*
While Lee paltered and delayed, Washington was helplessly retreating before the overpowering force of the enemy. Repeated disaster took away the heart of the soldiers, the terms of their enlistment were expiring, and the longing for home drove them to madness. They deserted or refused to enlist again, and the army dwindled until only three thousand stood with their devoted chief on the bank of the Delaware, near Trenton. Though Howe might have overtaken them there, he again calculated the exact time for his enemy to escape. Washington caused every boat for miles up and down the Delaware to be seized, and he had the last * MQore, TrQQ,$Qn of CIms. Lee, 43,
)
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boatful of his troops on the opposite bank as Howe's advance-guard reached Trenton on December 8. Pursuit had to be abandoned, because no boat could be found along the Jersey shore.
Five days later Charles Lee, who had finally crossed the Hudson with his fast dwindling army, and who idly waited for a chance to make the brilliant stroke which would give him the chief command, was surprised in his tavern quarters at Basking Ridge. Bareheaded, uncloaked, unarmed, and in his usual eccentric ill-dress, he was hurried off on horseback a prisoner, ranting and railing at his faithless guard. This was thought another terrible loss by the simple folk of that day, who believed him "a most consummate general."* The patriot cause seemed all but lost. Lord Howe and his brother assured the British ministry that New- Jersey was in their hands. General Howe, sure that the colonies were severed at the Hudson, and their main army worn out, detached a force under Lord Percy to seize Newport as a convenient base for the work of reducing New England.^ The British general was looked upon as another Caesar, w^ho came and saw and conquered. It was reported that Franklin, who had sailed for France, had fled thither for safety. Europe looked upon the American cause as lost, and Voltaire wrote in sorrow that "reason and liberty are ill received in this world."
* Force, Aw. Archives, 5th series, III., 1204, 1232, 1247, 1411, ^ ibid., 926.
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America was in despair, and Philadelphia, threat- ened by the British army, was panic - stricken. Congress fled to Baltimore, in spite of vigorous opposition to so craven an act.^ Samuel Adams, in his religious fervor, declared that Providence would even work miracles "to save the city and to establish America's feet upon a rock." With the flight of Congress fled the little credit that it had. Its paper money was openly refused, or, if taken, brought but half of its face value.^ The frightened citizens tried to save their property. The whole city seemed to be on wheels, Robert Morris wrote. Beds, furniture, and baggage filled the streets. Few but Quakers and sick soldiers remained with Morris, who courageously stuck to his post, borrowing from house to house the money needed to uphold the patriot cause. ^ Amid this "scene of greatest distress," this financier of the Revolution worked with prodigious energy, urging to completion the embryo navy which was yet on the stays in the ship-yards, and striving with a handful of troops to put the city in a state of defence.
Not only was the British army feared, but the Tories of the city grew bolder as the invading army drew nearer. Indeed, toryism had greatly increased both there and in New Jersey. The wavering,
I
* Journals of Congress, December 20, 1776.
' Force, Am. Archives, 5th series, III., 1334.
* Oberholtzer, Robert Morris, 24.
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neutral masses of American society lay between the two extremes of political thought, the Whigs and the Tories, and when success came to either cause the flood set irresistibly that way, moving towards the point of least resistance. The fear of this adverse tide was always before Washington. " One unhappy stroke will throw a powerful weight into the scale against us," he wTote,^ "enabling General Howe to recruit his army as fast as we shall ours." Early in the struggle the royal governors had asserted that the loyalists were in the majority, which was amply true if the indifferent masses were counted with the active supporters of the king. Yet this was no avail- able source for swelling the British ranks, since the masses were no more ready to fight with Eng- land than against her. Except the radical and active Tories, men were not willing to go further than to sell their commodities to the highest bidder.
During Howe's march through New Jersey every facility of the country was at the beck of British gold. Farmers eagerly sought the camp with their produce.^ Millers smuggled flour to the British when they had none for Washington's retreating "starvelings." Horses were sent in droves to the British lines. Yet this eagerness to aid the invader measured the difference between British gold and
* Washington, Writings (Ford's ed.), IV., 470. ' Stevens, Facsimiles, No. 2068; Conn. Public Records, I., 528; R. I. Records, VII., 388; Del. Session Laws, May 20, 1778.
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American paper money rather than the love for either cause. This lack of devotion to the cause deeply grieved the patriot leaders. "The spirit of venality," wrote John Adams, "is the most dread- ful and alarming enemy America has to oppose. . . . [It] will ruin America, if she is ever ruined. If God Almighty does not interfere by his grace to control this universal idolatry to the mammon of unrighteousness, we shall be given up to the chas- tisement of his judgments. I am ashamed of the age I live in."*
Besides these men who supported the British for gain, there were those whose loyalism was real and whose activity began to be severely felt in the con- test. The thousands of refugees to New York, after it passed into British hands, found a hundred ways to aid their protectors. They knew the American people as the English did not, and they preyed upon them until there was no hate like the hate of a Whig for a Tory. They went as spies among the patriots, stole their powder from their magazines, and robbed their stores of salt.^ They sowed sedition and intimidated the people by false news. Credulous men were told that the king had hired fifty thousand Russians — terrible Cossacks, who would not spare man, woman, or child. In the guise of peddlers the Tories went among the people discouraging enlistment, until Washington's
* John Adams Familiar Letters, 23a. 'Van Tyne, Loyalists, 1 48-1 51.
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wrath was great against ''their diabolical and In- sidious Arts." ^
Tory emissaries were they who, early in December, 1776, carried Lord Howe's broadsides among the people of New Jersey and the near provinces. To half-hearted patriots pardon was offered on the condition of their taking an oath of allegiance to the king. Nearly three thousand people took the oath, and only the outrages committed by the British and Hessians on their march through New Jersey prevented the people of the province from settling down as contented British subjects.^ Washington had found very few of them willing to join his re- treating army, and if none entered the enemy's ranks it was because the British officers rather scorned these loyal recruits, and employed them only as hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Able loyalist writers of that day asserted that the British lost America because of their unwillingness to enlist and use the loyal citizens who were eager to aid in overthrowing the rebellion.^ For the moment, however, the British seemed in no need of loyal aid. Washington's army had dwindled to a few thousand wretchedly equipped and dispirited men. His only hope was in the enlistment of a new army. If this fails, he wrote, "I think the game
^Washington, Writings (Ford's ed.), IV., 90.
^ " Pliindering by the British Army," in Pa. Magazine, XXV., 114; N. y. Archives, 2d series, I., index under "British" and "Jerseys."
* Galloways Examination; Jones, American Revolution, passim.
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is pretty nearly up." " No man/' he believed, " ever had a greater choice of difficulties, and less means to extricate himself from them." He did not think the cause would finally sink, " though it may remain for some time under a cloud." ^
While the commander-in-chief was desperately planning to retrieve his fallen fortunes, *'Tom" Paine, who had marched all the terrible way from Fort Lee to the Delaware, finished "The Crisis," a pamphlet written by night, at the winter camp- fires, while the fugitive army was sleeping.^ It was printed on December 19, and within a week copies were passing about the camp, inspiring the soldiers and bracing them for the desperate work that had been laid out for them. "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot " Paine expected to shrink from the service, but the faithful deserve "the love of man and woman." "The harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph." "Heaven," he wrote, "knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange, indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated." The last three wretched weeks were raised from the depths of ignominy. To Paine the retreat was "glorious," and the names of Washington and Fabius would "run parallel to eternity." ^
Washington had just been reinforced by the men
* Washington, Writings (Sparks's ed.), IV., 231. ^ Conway, Thomas Paine, I., 85. ^ Almon's Remembrancer, 1777, p. 29.
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that Lee had so long withheld. He knew that Howe* s army had been unwisely stretched in a long line, and he resolved to break its centre at Trenton. The American army, now six thousand strong, was to cross the Delaware in three divisions, two of which were to converge at Trenton, where the Hessians, under Colonel Rail, were encamped, and the third to attack Coimt Donop's forces at Burlington. So stormy and terrible was the night that two divisions failed to cross, and, though Washington knew it, he desperately determined to make the attack with some two thousand five hundred men under his own command. "Necessity, dire necessity," he wrote, must justify him. Ten hours of the stormy Christ- mas night were spent ferrying the army through the floating ice to the Jersey side. Nine miles through storm and hail brought the devoted soldiers to Trenton, which was entered "pell-mell," as Henry Knox wrote.* "The hurry, fright, and confusion of the enemy," he continues, "was not imlike that which it will be when the last trump shall sotmd. They endeavored to form in the streets," but the American cannon cleared them "in the twinkling of an eye," ^ They fled back of the houses for shel- ter, but the musketry dislodged them. They were driven through the town to an open plain beyond, where they quickly formed, but were surrounded, and in despair surrendered. Over a thousand were
* Stryker, Battles of Trenton and Princeton, 371. ' Prooks, Hi^nry Knox;, 80.
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taken, and the patriots recrossed the Delaware to put them in safe-keeping.^
The brilHant exploit had its immediate reward. The army, which but yesterday had been eager to disband as soon as its term of enlistment expired, now, in a great part, re-enlisted for six weeks. ^ The soldiers did demand an outrageous bounty, it is true, but Washington thought it no time to stand on trifles, when trained soldiers were so much need- ed. A large force of Pennsylvania militia also joined his army,^ and he again crossed the Delaware (December 29) and occupied Trenton.
Meanwhile, Comwallis hurried from New York, and, taking eight thousand men from the camp at Princeton, advanced upon Washington, hoping to "bag the old fox," but, by a manoeuvre which justi- fied the British epithet, the American commander evaded this overw^helming force, and made a mid- night march to Princeton, where (January 3, 1777) he defeated three British regiments and then retired to the heights of Morristown.^ Cornwallis then re- treated to New Brunswick, and the greater part of New Jersey was soon recovered from the invader.
The rapid and brilliant manoeuvre of the Ameri- can army had thus in ten days robbed the British of the fruits of a whole stimmer's work, except the
i
* Washington, Writings (Sparks's ed.), IV., 246-248. 'Bancroft, United States (ed. of 1866), IX., 240. ^Washington, Writings (Ford's ed.), V., 136, 137, 141.
* Washington, Writings (Sparks's ed.), IV., 258
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possession of New York City. Washington had taken a broken-spirited army, ready and eager to disband, and had led it to a victory which changed its despair to confidence and the British scorn to a wholesome fear. America was fired with enthusiasm, and new recruits filled the depleted ranks. Hessian soldiers, lured by offers of bounty-lands and dis- gusted with British failures, deserted to Washing- ton's anny. America's friends in England were encouraged, while the hopes of the king were blasted. In Europe the efforts of American emissaries to get aid, and especially to make an alliance with France, were furthered by the cheering news.
One of the most important results of the expul- sion of the British from New Jersey was the death- blow to the loyalist hopes. In the expectation of British protection, they had taken oaths of allegiance to the crown, and now they were left to the mercy of the American army. Already their uprisings in Maryland, Delaware, and North Carolina had been overthrown because they were tmsupported by the British anny.^ The abandonment of New Jersey was the final lesson. Loyalty was discouraged, for its efforts seemed only to involve it in ruin.
Washington now proclaimed that all who had accepted protection from Lord Howe must take an oath of allegiance to the United States or retire to the British lines. ^ Many who had given aid to the
* Van Tyne, Loyalists, 219 et seq.
^Washington, Writings (Ford's ed.), V., 201 et seq.
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invading army were obliged to abandon families and homes and flee to New York. Others re- mained to endure persecution or ignominiously retract their oaths to Lord Howe and swear alle- giance to the patriot cause. Many, indeed, kept about their persons certificates of loyalty to both causes, using either as emergency might re- quire.
Not the least of the advantages gained by the victories was the time given Washington, in his winter camp at Morristown, to recruit and reorgan- ize his army on the basis of measures recently adopt- ed by Congress. They saw at last that Washington could not perform miracles with little bands of militia enlisted for from three to six months, and work- ing together like a group of little allied armies, which came and went with capricious irregularity. The states had been asked in September to enlist for the war sixty-six thousand men. Each state was assigned certain proportions — which were never heeded — and Congress promised to pay and support the men after they were once clothed and armed. The states w^ere to select and Congress to commission the officers. Congress thus put aside the general prejudice against standing armies w^hich Washing- ton had labored for months to dispel. After the Christmas victory Washington was ordered, in addi- tion to the state militia, to enlist, in the name of the United States, sixteen battalions of infantry, three thousand light-horse, three artillery regiments, and
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a corps of engineers.* In the enthusiasm of the moment they made their commander-in-chief the dictator that Lee had aspired to be. Washington was authorized to appoint and displace all officers under the rank of brigadier-general, to seize, when people refused to sell, whatever was needed for the support of the army, after paying a fair price, and to arrest and confine, awaiting civil trial, all per- sons opposed to the American cause or refusing the Continental paper money. ^
Using these powers, which were vested in him for six months, Washington made every effort with the aid of liberal bounties to raise the number of men voted by Congress, but he found the states to be vexatious rivals.^ They passed laws draughting men ittto the service of the state, and by fines and imprisonment drove the draughted men into their armies. This means was closed to Washington, who derived his power from Congress, which, since the Declaration of Independence, might seem to govern the whole country, but whose authority, having no legal foundation, rested on common consent and plain necessity. The members were in some cases merely the choice of conventions which represented small numbers of the people and which acted with obvious irregularity. Not even the state assemblies could be said to be represented
* Journals of Congress, September 16, 1776, December 27, 1776.
^ Ibid., December 27, 1776.
* Washington, Writings (Sparks 's ed.), IV., 353.
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by the delegates in Congress. For these reasons it behooved both Washington and Congress to use their powers with great discretion. As a result of the most strenuous appeals to the states to raise their quotas, Washington's army was increased from some one thousand five hundred men in Jan- uary, 1777, to about four thousand in March, but from that time imtil summer desertions and enlist- ments were about equal.*
* Washington, Writings (Sparks's ed.), IV., 447.
t
CHAPTER IX
FRAMING NEW STATE GOVERNMENTS (1776-1780)
DURING the long and disheartening campaign of 1776, while Washington was being driven out of New York, up and across the Hudson to New Jersey, and across that state into Pennsylvania, the several states were courageously adopting new gov- ernments— ^preparing to govern themselves in their own way. The political union with Great Britain was severed if they could make good the Declara- tion of Independence, but America had yet to free herself from the old European forms of govern- ment. To break from Great Britain was mere re- bellion; but to set up new political institutions which might better the lot of mankind would be a real revolution — an achievement the most im- portant in the political history of the world. Men felt the gravity of their work, and, as John Adams said, the "manufacture of governments" became for a time "as much talked of as that of saltpetre was before."
The problem before the leaders of that day was a serious one. John Adams had seen with delight ' ' an
136
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end to royal style, titles, and authority," but neither he nor Washington, nor Franklin nor Jefferson nor Jay, had ever, until very recently, expressed a prefer- ence for a republic. George III. was renounced, not because he was a king, but because he was a tyrant. The thirteen colonies which had cast off their alle- giance to him could not for the moment find a sub- stitute for his unifying royal office, but each for it- self set about forming separate republics * modelled upon the old charter governments, yet altered to meet certain political ideals which for the time held fast hold upon American minds. Side by side with the struggle for American liberty and the growth of the idea of independence was seen a rise of demo- cratic power in America.
In the making of the new frames of government the American leaders were realizing the teachings of political philosophy. Following certain theories, they were making new political experiments — sub- stituting for monarchy and nobility democratic forms, some of which had been suggested by the political thinkers of a century before, but which could get no trial in the English system of that day. New ideas there were also which were the product of the present revolution; and, again, there were old ideas which, in new environment, had come to have a different meaning for Americans than for English- men. For the moment there seemed nothing to
^ The local governments were not interfered with, the town, parish, and county remaining undisturbed.
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prevent the trial of every theory, old or new, except the conflicting ideas of the men taking part in the work. The social-compact idea could now be tried ; the objects and limitations of government could be stated in every form; the long-nurtured prejudice against the executive could be vented; the growth of a privileged class in America could be stopped, and the rights of the individual could be forever preserved in a bill of rights. Finally, the colonists' right of rebellion might be defended and condoned. Many of their ideals were to fail of attainment, but we must measure from the depths out of which they ascended rather than from the heights which they failed to reach.
The method by which these new governments were to be created was suggested by the dominant idea of the time. It was assumed by the construc- tive political leaders of that time that all men are created free to rule themselves, equal so far as any jurisdiction or authority to rule themselves is con- cerned. No man is bom ruler and governor of others ; hence the Fathers did not look about for a bom ruler, but rather sought some fitter repository for sovereignty. Primitive men, their philosophers told them, tired of protecting and defending them- selves against every danger, entered into a social compact, giving up certain rights in order to insure the protection of others. History had no account of this transaction, but there was no need to bother with proof; the present problem of supplying new
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governments could be met with the simple axiom that *' governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." That alone demon- strated to the patriot mind that the people should be the basis of all legitimate political authority. To form a new government, therefore, it was neces- sary that there be a social compact between all the citizens and each citizen, that certain laws for com- mon good should govern all. It was obviously im- possible for all the people of a province to come to- gether for the purpose of forming this compact; wherefore, after leaving the work to their assem- blies for a time, they gradually evolved the scheme of special constitutional conventions in which the rep- resentatives of the sovereign people could draught a compact which the people could then accept or refuse at their will.
Up to the day when independence was declared, three states — Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and South Carolina — had formed temporary govern- ments, and Virginia had framed a constitution for a permanent one. On the very day that Lee's mo- tion was adopted (July 2, 1776) New Jersey's pro- vincial congress issued a constitution which was to be "firm and inviolable" if there should be no rec- onciliation with Great Britain, but ''temporary and provisional" in case of such an event. ^ Thus far haste and confusion and unfavorable conditions had
* Texts of all the operative Revolutionary constitutions are in Poore, Charters and CQt^stifutions,
140 AMERICAN REVOLUTION [1776
prevented any state framing a government in the ideal way. The bodies which did the work were revolutionary and not specifically empowered to make a constitution. They not only made laws while framing the government, but they executed those laws, and their committees sat in judgment like a court.
It remained for the little state of Delaware to do the work in a more regular way. In July, 1776, the old assembly recommended that the people choose deputies who should meet at Newcastle, in August, to form a government "on the authority of the people." ^ In September the " representatives being chosen by the freemen of the said state for that ex- press purpose" published the results of their work as binding on the people.^
Though all the remaining original states adopted constitutions during the progress of the war, none did so in the way now considered normal except Massachusetts. Her first draught (1779) was re- jected by the people in their town-meetings,^ partly because it was *'a high-toned government" and did not secure equality of representation or contain a declaration of rights; partly because the work had been done by an assembly sitting as a convention. It is dangerous to have a government overthrown, or made, at the caprice of a small body of temporary
* Poore, Charters and Constitutions, I., 273.
'J. A. Jameson, Constitutional Conventions, 127.
' Bradford, Hist, of Mass., II., 158 and App., 349.
1779] STATE GOVERNMENTS 141
representatives not elected for the purpose, and the people very sensibly refused to approve of such a precedent, though it had been permitted in the other states. Besides, as one town-meeting declared/ "it is no time when foes are in the midst of us and an army at our doors to consider how the country shall be governed, but rather to provide for its defence." As a result of this failure the next attempt was made with the utmost care. The legislature of Massachusetts directed the selectmen of the several towns to learn from the qualified voters whether they desired that a constitution be made. Would they instruct their next year's representatives to vote for the calling of a convention for that pur- pose? The people assented to both propositions, and the next legislature provided for the election of delegates to a constitutional convention. The delegates were elected, and, when they met, John Adams, James Bowdoin, and Samuel Adams were designated to draught a constitution. After fully discussing the draught it was adopted with few changes and sent out to the people to consider in their town-meetings. They spent days discussing the new instrument, sentence by sentence, adjourn- ing from day to day ; assigning parts to select com- mittees; showing