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MY FATHER’S AMERICA
VOLUME THREE - THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
By WALTER LORENZ
for Dad
I’m only starting to understand
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE - THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE
CHAPTER TWO - THE REVOLUTION WITHIN
CHAPTER THREE - THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR
CHAPTER FOUR - THE CONFEDERATION GOVERNMENT
FOREWORD
It’s with continuing pride that I release Volume Three of My Father’s America.
When I began this undertaking with my dad’s first book, it was done with mixed feelings.
While I was thrilled with being able to put them out, there was also a mix of sadness and
confusion. Sadness in that we never really bonded over what he was accomplishing, and
confusion over what exactly it was that he was doing this for. It seemed
incomprehensible to me that he wouldn’t have attempted to get this published, something
my mom says he never considered.
It wasn’t until most of the way through this book, while checking the spelling of
some town names, that I realized he had been using some portions from other books to
put these together. My heart sank when I first found a few sentences, word for word, in
another book upon an online search. The confusion only mounted as I questioned even
more what these writings were and why he was doing them.
I immediately went back and found almost nothing from Volume One in any other
available books. Volume Two had a little more than I had hoped for but even those
seemed to come from original texts dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries. But
Volume Three seems to have more than I was comfortable with. Although I truly believe
that 95% of what is written is from my dad, I don’t know if I can ever be sure. I also
don’t know if that 5% would be enough to put me into some legal trouble. Fair Use,
Copyright infringement laws and all the other issues can be very confusing. Plus, I can
only search with what is available online. Who knows what other reference books he
might have used as research that aren’t currently available in digital form.
With that knowledge, I pulled all the books from public sale and considered ending
making them available at all. It’s with the encouragement from those of you who have
read the first two books that I continued on and offer this, his third volume of the series.
His intent with writing these has also become much clearer. It was for him…that’s it. He
wanted to learn as much as he could about this country and putting it into words was the
best way he could do it. It was just a hobby and a passion, something that most of us do
by ourselves. He didn’t care about publishing it because that’s not why he was doing it. It
was me that put it out there and expected more from it than even he did.
I hope to continue on with Volume Four, which focuses on the Constitution, but at
this point I’m not sure if I will. I’m considering do some in-depth research to add
footnotes and give credit where credit is due. I’m sure my dad would’ve wanted it that
way.
A special thanks to those of you who have read the other books and encouraged me
to move on to Volume Three. Knowing that these are still being read is worth all the
money in the world.
Enjoy!
CHAPTER ONE
______________________
THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE
T
he Seven Years War had ended in Europe in 1763 with the final peace treaty at
Paris. England had become undisputed master of the eastern half of North America, just
as the English had become supreme in India and on the Seven Seas. France ceded to
England all her Canadian possessions, and all territory to the Mississippi River; only the
year before, by a secret treaty, France had already ceded to Spain her vast Louisiana
province, including all French claims to territories west of the Mississippi. Of her vast
American possessions, so painfully explored and won by men like Champlain, LaSalle,
and hundreds of explorers, traders, and Jesuit priests, France had been able to hold only
two little islands just off the coast of Newfoundland, St. Pierre and Miquelon. On the
North American continent, meanwhile, the Mississippi River had become a boundary
between the English and Spanish empires.
Most of this English America was still thinly settled. The frontier of English
civilization began at the coast in Maine, near today's Bangor, where the Penobscot River
enters the Atlantic. From there it ran inland across New Hampshire and Vermont into
New York, along the Hudson River to Lake George, and to the Mohawk River, perhaps
100 miles west of Albany. From there the frontier crossed southeastern New York and
Pennsylvania, and continued along the Appalachian Mountains into North Carolina,
where it again stayed near the coast. Only a few scattered settlements had been made in
the interior of the Carolinas and in eastern Georgia. By 1763, this entire area included
perhaps 2,500,000 people, of which almost one-third were black slaves, though over the
next 10-12 years the total population increased by another million. Visitors to America
saw only a wilderness, where more than ninety percent of the land was still forested.
Only near the coast, in the Middle Colonies, in sections that had already been cultivated
for more than a century, was there anything resembling the farmlands of Europe, and a
few widely scattered towns. Everywhere else, and especially so in the South, farms and
plantations lay miles apart, separated by the ever-present dense forest. And beyond the
frontier lay only more of the same wilderness, inhabited by wild animals and wilder
savages.
Although much of New France had now become a part of the British Empire, there
were as yet few Englishmen to be found anywhere in Canada, aside from Governor
General James Murray and his redcoats. The civilian population - the white population,
that is - was almost exclusively French and Catholic; neither they nor the English to the
south ever considered themselves as one nation. West Florida, which in 1763 included
Spanish Florida west of Apalachicola, through Mobile, Biloxi, and Natchez, Mississippi,
held only very few European inhabitants. Pensacola was little more than a stockaded
fort, and even Mobile, the largest white settlement, had a total population of only 122
Frenchmen. In East Florida, the only settlements Spain had ever attempted in more than
two centuries were St. Augustine and tiny St. Mary's farther up the coast. But in contrast
to Canada, where the French inhabitants loved their land more than king and country, and
who preferred English rule to exile, the Spaniards at St. Augustine could never accept life
under foreign heretics. Although promised toleration, they chose to leave the province
when the English took over, and the Spanish authorities provided transportation to
Havana for all inhabitants, including several hundred fugitive slaves from Georgia and
South Carolina who had settled near the Spaniards. As a result, a decade later all East
Florida held only 288 known white inhabitants. South of St. Augustine was still Indian
country in 1763, inhabited mostly by the Seminole, and no white man had as yet
penetrated the Everglades.
Yet in this same triumphant year of 1763, when British power seemed at its greatest
all around the world, many knowledgeable observers in Europe already predicted that the
English colonies in America had grown far too independent; that they would soon unite
in revolt against the mother country. During the late 1740s, Peter Kalm, a prominent
Swedish botanist, visited America and later wrote a popular three-volume book on his
“Travels into America.” Among his many remarkable observations on colonial life, Mr.
Kalm declared that in his opinion, French Canada was “the chief power that urged the
(British) colonies to submission.” Many French statesmen and diplomats reconciled
themselves to the loss of Canada with the comforting thought that England “would repent
having removed the only check on her colonies.” With the French threat in the north
removed, these colonies would no longer find it necessary to look to Britain for
protection, and would “shake off dependence the moment Canada was ceded.” Even
some British statesmen had urged their government to keep the West Indian sugar islands
and leave Canada to the French “in order to secure the dependence of the colonies on the
mother country.”
Only the settlers in British America themselves seem to have been without such
ideas about a union or independence from king and the mother country. As far as they
were concerned, they were two million sturdy, mostly prosperous people, scattered under
thirteen different governments. They were Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, or
New Englanders, each with their own problems and conflicts. There was no independent
nation in their future; their only connection was their common allegiance to their king.
On the other hand, they had become a notoriously self-reliant breed in this wild country,
who for the most part had been allowed to go their own way in their New World, and
they had become incurably accustomed to having their way. If the London government
had from time to time imposed rules and regulations over their lives, these rules were
usually so loosely enforced that most of the time they could be simply ignored; if not
ignored, they could always be evaded. The colonies, said one prominent Pennsylvanian
by the name of Benjamin Franklin, “were led by thread.”
Yet as early as the spring of 1760, Franklin had already felt it necessary to write a
pamphlet to reassure the many who feared that the American colonists had caught the
fever of independence. A unity among these colonies, Mr. Franklin felt, was not only
improbable, it was all but impossible. They had never been able to agree on any
combined action, even in self-defense, when the French and their Indian allies were
burning settlements and butchering farmers all along the northern frontier. How could
such independent spirits ever unite against their own countrymen across the sea? To
Benjamin Franklin, at least, that was an inconceivable event.
Benjamin Franklin, of course, had good reason to believe that he knew what he was
talking about. He still remembered vividly the almost violent opposition that had greeted
his Albany Plan only six years earlier, even though the need for some sort of intercolonial
action had been critical at the time. His proposal had been presented to the colonial
governments in 1755, just as gruesome frontier incidents of the French and Indian War
had begun - and every colony turned it down, aghast at the very thought of relinquishing
their identity and giving so much power to one central government.
But even Ben Franklin must have thought it necessary to qualify his statement that a
union against England was impossible, when he added - “I mean without the most
grievous tyranny and oppression.” After all, the American settlers, like their stay-athome kinfolk, had property to protect and privileges and rights to defend; but “while the
government is mild and just, while important civil and religious rights are secure, such
subjects will be dutiful and obedient.” In Franklin's symbolic phrase, “The waves do not
rise but when the winds blow.” All seemed well in this English world of 1760; even
Benjamin Franklin's genius could not have foreseen the gathering hurricane just across
the horizon.
The winds began to blow quietly in that very same year of 1760, when Prime
Minister William Pitt ordered a strict enforcement of the Sugar Act of 1733. This act had
imposed enormous import duties on molasses brought into the colonies from foreign
ports; it was not intended as a revenue-raiser for the royal treasury, however, but merely
tried to force the colonists to buy all their molasses from the British West Indies.
Molasses had become an important article in the colonial economy, especially so in New
England, where it was the vital ingredient in rum - which, in turn, was the basis for that
section's growing export trade. But the British islands never did produce enough
molasses to satisfy colonial demands, and Americans had long ago created an effective
smuggling system, the so-called triangular trade, which brought in huge amounts of
cheap - and illegal - molasses. This system was made even more profitable and effective
by customs officials prepared to look the other way for a share of the loot. All that
William Pitt now wanted was a more efficient administration, but that was precisely what
the colonists hoped to prevent. After all, it was this very inefficiency and corruption in
the enforcement that had made the act acceptable in the first place.
Still more disturbing to the colonies was the news that the customs officers would
now be empowered to apply to the courts for the so-called writs of assistance. Such writs
permitted government officers to enter and search premises and make arrests without the
traditional warrants specifying the place, the person, or the reasons for such searches.
These writs were considered such serious violations of the traditional rights of
Englishmen that they aroused even honest men who otherwise had no interest at all in
molasses, in rum or smuggling. Among those aroused was a prominent young Boston
lawyer named James Otis. Otis publicly argued against the writs in such forceful
language that his colleague John Adams later wrote that “the seeds of patriots and
heroes” of American independence were sewn then and there.
Though only 35 years old, James Otis had already made a reputation for himself as
an attorney willing to accept lost causes and one who, unlike so many of his colleagues,
seemed unconcerned about fees and financial matters. The adjective most often applied
to Otis was “mercurial,” though many who knew him personally were already becoming
concerned that his often unpredictable nature was turning ever more unstable.
But this little Sugar Act controversy was only a small gust, and blew over before it
could become a serious dispute. In that same year of 1760, George II of England died
and was succeeded in October by his grandson, 22-year old George III. This young king
came to the throne of England with a huge chip on his shoulders, determined to become
once again the true ruler of Britain. Power had been draining away from the Crown to
Parliament for many decades, ever since the accession of William of Orange, and the
monarchy was further diluted with the arrival of George's ancestors from Germany to
found the Hanoverian dynasty. When George I had become Britain's king, he spoke no
English at all, so that his own ministers had to communicate with him in simple Latin.
His complete unfamiliarity with, and disregard of all things English had done little to
promote his influence, and had been instrumental in creating the English cabinet system.
And when the king died suddenly of apoplexy, his son, about whom he had cared less
than he had about his subjects, became George II. George II, in turn, proved no more
interested, in either country or his family; he spent much of his time in his native
Hanover, leaving the rule of England to his wife Caroline, and Prime Minister Sir Robert
Walpole.
George II and Caroline did have a son and heir named Frederick, whose wife had in
1738 given birth to a boy so frail that he was baptized at once for fear he would soon
expire. This 3rd George not only survived, but grew into a large man with his
grandfather's bulging eyes and protruding lips. Instead, it was Frederick, who would
have been the heir to the throne of England, who died at an unexpectedly young age, and
one morning in 1760, when George was barely 22 years old, he was summoned to the
palace, where he was informed by Prime Minister William Pitt that his grandfather had
died, and he was now George III.
Once on the throne, young George III struggled persistently to gain the kind of
power his American subjects would soon accuse him of wielding. The problem was, his
subjects at home regarded Prime Minister William Pitt as their true leader, under whose
command England had won the Seven Years' War. Thus, when George assumed the
throne of England, he might well have assured himself a peaceful reign by keeping Pitt as
his prime minister while enjoying his many royal prerogatives. But that was not to be; at
least one member of the House of Commons was convinced early on that the royal
complacency of the previous half century was about to come to an end. “The young
man,” said Charles Townshend of his king “is very obstinate.”
And so he was. If George III was a relatively popular King right from the start - he
was the first of his line to be born and reared in England, the first who had been created
Prince of Wales - he soon revealed several undesirable qualities. He was not only
obstinate, he was downright petty and authoritarian; compromise was a word he barely
knew the meaning of. He opposed the reforms of Parliament, the relaxation of bans on
Roman Catholics, the easing of Irish commercial restrictions, and above all, George
opposed any concessions to the American colonies.
If the new King worked diligently to fulfill the duties of a monarch - at least as he
understood them - he nevertheless was headed for a tragic fate. Though his kingdom
could have provided him with many skillful and qualified ministers and advisers, that was
not what George wanted, and during his entire reign such men were seldom employed in
the services of the state. What George III wanted was subservient yes-men who agreed
with his positions, and inevitably those, too, were in ample supply. William Pitt, on the
other hand, was much too forceful a man for him; only a few months into George III's
reign, Pitt was forced to resign, to be replaced by Lord Bute, a close friend of George III.
And with Pitt's retirement, strict enforcement of the Sugar Act came to an end in
America; the writs of assistance were forgotten, and all seemed to be well again. The
new king appeared to be a decent, sensible, even likeable man, and most colonists, as
most Britons at home, concluded that he was a vast improvement over the first two
Georges.
Another small whirlwind arose over the appointment of judges. The death of George
II had automatically voided all royal commissions to colonial officials, including judges,
and new commissions had to be issued. In England the practice had long been to issue
such appointments with tenure “during good behavior” only, while colonial
appointments continued to be made with tenure “during the King's pleasure.” The
difference, of course, was far more than mere words, since officials appointed to serve
“during the King's pleasure” could only be recalled by royal authority. Many colonial
governors had already adopted the English system, and made judicial appointments
during good behavior, although the Board of Trade had issued repeated instructions to
stop such practices. The death of George II finally brought the issue to a head. When
Governor Colden of New York named a chief justice to serve “during the king's
pleasure,” the colonial assembly responded by refusing such officials salaries. The
governor vetoed the bill and for several months the quarrel continued.
It was not much of a dispute, actually, and in one colony after another the Crown
won out as the assemblies backed down. Only North Carolina proved as stubborn as her
royal master; rather than submit, that colony elected to govern without any courts at all
for several years. But if George III had won his point, it was at a high price; this
insignificant action caused a resentment that lingered long enough to be mentioned as one
of the colonial grievances in the Declaration of Independence.
The atmosphere got noticeably stormier only a few years later, this time over the
issue of Western expansion. With the end of the French and Indian War, England had
suddenly gained a vast territory, not only encircling the original colonies, but more than
double the territory east of the Appalachian Mountains. This enormous expanse of
Canada and the Mississippi Valley, home to perhaps 200,000 Indians, mostly hostile,
would now have to be administered. There also were about 85,000 French Canadians,
who were nominal British subjects, but who could hardly be counted as loyal citizens;
what's more, nearly the entire Indian population of the territory was under their influence.
And the French government, defeated but far from broken, was certain to jump at the first
opportunity for revenge. The British colonies, in turn, had clearly shown themselves
unable to agree on any issue, and no sane government could have turned over the
administration of this immense new domain to these same thirteen colonies to handle
with their own resources.
The need to control this new territory became even more urgent with recent
developments in the colonies. The Seven Years' War had benefited English America
immensely. With the exception of the frontier outposts, which had been devastated by
French and Indian raids, the colonies had not seen any fighting in the settled regions.
But, as always happens in wartime, a great many new fortunes had been created;
privateering had proven exceedingly profitable, and army contracts had lined the pockets
of the contractors who always emerge richer from such troubled times. Businesses of all
sorts had found new prosperity and, for a while at least, the farmers and laborers had also
shared in the wartime economy, as prices and wages had risen sharply and floods of
paper money had worked the usual inflation.
But with the end of the war this bubble burst, and everywhere came the time to pay
the piper. General business fell off sharply, and the price of farm produce crashed, while
taxes rose rapidly to repay the debts contracted by the colonial governments. Many of
the laborers were now forced to abandon homes acquired in the wartime economy; prices
of farmland declined drastically, while foreclosures of mortgages and law suits for debts
wiped out many a farmer's equity. Once again the frontier seemed to offer new hope to
many of the poor and restless who could not survive in such climate.
Prior to 1763, these people would have met with full encouragement and support of
the British government. The necessity of opposing France and Spain on all sides had
made it English policy to extend settlement as rapidly as possible, since every English
colonist was a potential soldier as well as a farmer. It was this attitude that had created
the Georgia and Nova Scotia colonies, and by 1757, Virginia's governors, determined to
protect their sea-to-sea land grant, had already handed out more than two million acres of
land in the upper Ohio River Valley to colonial farmer-soldiers as a barrier against the
French.
But with the peace treaty of Paris, British attitude toward Western settlement
changed drastically. Now that France and Spain had been eliminated from all the
territory east of the Mississippi, there was no longer any need to encourage settlement
there as a defense measure. On the contrary, once these pioneer farmers penetrated the
region west of the Appalachians, they were effectively out of reach of both their
government and the merchants of Britain. And any sizeable migration westward might
well ruin the tobacco industry which depended on an abundant labor supply, thus leaving
the planters unable to meet their obligations to British merchants. Moreover, now that
the fur trade was almost entirely in British hands, increased settlement in the Western
lands would actually be a detriment, for they would almost certainly drive the Indians
away and destroy the fur-bearing animal population. And indeed, speculative companies
had already formed in nearly all the colonies to promote organized settlement in the
West, while many of the leading planter families of Virginia - families like the
Washingtons and the Lees - showed an intense interest in what is now West Virginia,
southern Ohio, and Kentucky, with plans to shift their production from tobacco to wheat.
It was clear to the British government that a new land policy was needed in the West
to protect British commercial interests - a policy that would protect the fur trade, regulate
settlement, and control westward emigration so that existing British investments in the
seaboard area would not be wiped out by sudden population shifts. But there was an
ulterior motive as well: it was obvious that the Trade and Navigation Acts were poorly
enforced, primarily because the colonial officials who were supposed to oversee such
enforcement were paid from colonial legislative appropriations. Unwilling to bite the
hands that fed them, these officials frequently ignored their duty. But if the new territory
in America could now be made to produce revenues through sales and quitrents, a fund
could be created for the support of these officials which would make them independent of
colonial support and presumably more attentive to the demands of their new paymaster,
the Crown. But before the British ministry could decide on the proper regulation of the
new West, the problem was still further dramatized by a new Indian uprising.
General Jeffrey Amherst had done an admirable job during the French and Indian
War, and after the fall of Canada in 1760, he had become the commander-in-chief of all
the British troops in America. But as peace-time commander, Amherst was confronted
by entirely different problems, most of which he knew little about and which he was
unable to handle. One of his new duties was the management of Indian Affairs, and the
British government had already instructed him to handle the native population in a tactful
way to avoid problems from that direction. The French, of course, had always favored
these Indians with gifts of clothing, ammunition, and usually liquor as well, but General
Amherst was not about to continue such pampering. His idea of dealing with the red man
was to contemplate the possibility of distributing germ-infested blankets among the tribes
in the hope that they would all catch the smallpox and die. Lacking such blankets, he
slashed the appropriations for the Indian department, and decided to impress the tribes by
a show of British strength instead. Though it was well known that many of the Western
Indians were already uneasy over the English presence on their lands, Amherst ordered a
new fort built at Sandusky and spread a strong force of British troops throughout the
Western forts in the Great Lakes area and southward into what is now Indiana.
Between Amherst's troops on one hand, and the swarms of white traders and trappers
and pioneers on the other, the Indians must have begun to realize that the old ways were
coming to an end. Soon Frenchmen on the Wabash and Mississippi Rivers mingled
among these Indians, spreading rumors against the English - whom France was still
fighting in Europe at that time - and promising aid if they revolted. Still, the year 1762
passed quietly, though many a British trader in the territory reported increasing rumblings
of discontent among the native population. Amherst, however, dismissed all such reports
and rumors; the Indians would never cause any serious problems, he insisted, because “it
is in their interest to behave peaceably.”
But in January, 1763, the Western Indians heard news that “came like a thunderbolt“
to them: a preliminary treaty across the waters had ceded all of Canada and all the
western lands to the Mississippi River to the British. Never happy with the patronizing
and arrogant English to begin with, the tribes of the West now realized that these white
men would remain on their land forever. They had also found a powerful new leader in
an Ottawa chief named Obwandiyag, though the white men soon called him Pontiac, - “a
shrewd, sensible Indian of few words, who commands more respect among the nations
than any Indian I ever saw,” according to trader George Croghan - and Chief Pontiac was
determined to free his people from these new intruders once and for all. As the son of a
Chippewa mother and an Ottawa father, Pontiac accomplished what few of his people
were ever able to do; he sent out messengers far and wide and gradually gained the
allegiance of tribes as far south as the lower Mississippi, including the Ottawa,
Chippewa, Shawnee, and Delaware. At a great Indian conference near Detroit in April,
1763, he made a long and stirring oration to the assembled people, reviewing the
extensive list of wrongs inflicted on the Indians by the English.
Within days began a general uprising of the Western tribes all along the frontier.
Fort Sandusky fell in mid-May, followed in quick succession by Forts St. Joseph (Niles,
Michigan), Miami (Fort Wayne, Indiana), and Ouiatenon (Lafayette, Indiana).
Michilimackinac put up a bloody fight, but was taken on June 2, and news of its fall led
to the abandonment of Fort Edward Augustus (Green Bay, Wisconsin). Meanwhile the
Delaware struck first at a small settlement in Pennsylvania, and then went on to besiege
Fort Pitt. News of the uprising even stirred up the Seneca, who attacked Fort Venango by
the middle of June, and almost at the same time fell Forts Presque Isle and LeBoeuf. By
the end of the month, only Detroit, Pitt and Niagara throughout the entire West still held
out against the Indians.
Not until early June did General Amherst get news of the uprising, and he
immediately dispatched troops to relieve Fort Pitt and Detroit. Virginia raised 1,000
militiamen, and Pennsylvania another 700, and faced by these combined forces the
Indians soon became more careful. But the uprising was not easily contained; all through
the summer and fall of 1763, war parties attacked the frontier, plundering and killing
wherever they encountered white men. They ambushed reinforcements of troops and
supply trains, inflicting heavy casualties and capturing provisions. Among white settlers,
in turn, animosity against Indians in general reached such a point that they began to
massacre several bands of innocent and peaceful natives.
By the autumn of the year, however, many of Pontiac's allies began to desert him,
and then word arrived that peace had been concluded in Europe. The French now
informed the Indians that they could no longer support them and that they best make their
peace with the British. Still, hostilities continued in sporadic fashion well into 1765,
when a formal peace was reached at Detroit. “The word which my father has sent me to
make peace I have accepted,” said Pontiac; “all my young men have buried their
hatchet.”
British statesmen had long since become convinced that a new Western policy was
imperative. As early as May, 1763, before Pontiac's uprising even began, the Board of
Trade had already devised a plan to keep the western lands outside the colonies, at least
temporarily. British regulars would patrol the frontier, keeping the settlers out of the
territory, and the Indians in it: only licensed traders would be permitted past these
borders. The plan was to be provisional; it was hoped that Britain could obtain
concessions from the Indians from time to time and thus open the country to settlement
gradually without the danger of arousing the Indians all over again.
The news of the Pontiac affair finally made some sort of control over the Western
territory essential, if for no other reason than to pacify the Indians. On October 7, George
III signed the Proclamation of 1763; by this document a line was drawn from Canada to
Florida, along the watershed of the Appalachian Mountains. British America was now
divided into two parts, with the western half reserved for the Indians. All colonial claims
to this Indian territory were annulled, and no private persons could any longer obtain land
there. No one would be allowed to enter the territory without the permission of royal
agents.
Every colonial assembly approved the Proclamation Line, as did the fur traders, the
merchants, and the land companies, all of whom were sure to profit by the exclusion of
the settlers. But the average colonist was furious; they felt that they had done their part in
conquering the territory from the French, only to be told that now they could not even
enter the promised lands. The colonial population was already doubling every 20-25
years, and the post-war depression showed no signs of letting up. And on the frontier
there was plenty of resentment - resentment against the land speculators in New England
and Virginia, the land-grabbing gentry in New York, and against the slave-owning
planters in the southern colonies. The new immigrants mistrusted many of these same
people, who had cheated them and used them at every opportunity, and people like the
Scotch-Irish despised anything and anyone English.
Perhaps the major flaw in this Proclamation Line was that the provisional aspect of
the original proposal had now been discarded; all indications pointed to a permanent
arrangement, a policy that would keep the settlers confined to the coastal areas, where
they could more easily be controlled. And, as if to justify the colonists' worst fears, the
British government followed up with the announcement that a permanent garrison of
10,000 British regulars would now be stationed in the colonies; by past standards a large
number, indeed, especially since General Amherst himself had already declared that
6,500 troops would be more than sufficient to do the job. Still, in the wake of Pontiac's
war, the additional soldiers seemed to make sense - until it was noticed that most of the
troops were stationed at places like Halifax and New York, rather than at Fort Pittsburgh
or Detroit, or the Carolina frontier. The more observant among the colonists were already
beginning to question just exactly who was to be impressed by this show of strength, the
Indians or the settlers?
The next step followed almost naturally. Only a month after the peace of Paris had
been signed, George Grenville, Chancellor of the Exchequer, leader of the House of
Commons, succeeded Lord Bute as prime minister of England. Mr. Grenville was a
thrifty man, and he had been horrified to learn that the cost of the recent Seven Years
War had left his country with a national debt of £100,000,000. As soon as he came to
power, he resolved to rectify this unacceptable situation, and he presented an ambitious
program to reduce this debt. Britons were now loaded with new duties on official
stamps, taxes on every conceivable item, including the windows in their homes, and new
excises on malt and cider; even the King was urged to economize on his household
expenses.
Inevitably, the minister set his eyes on the American colonies, at that time probably
the lowest-taxed people in the Western world. It was hoped that an appeal to the colonial
legislatures would bring in voluntary contributions, but the ministry was well aware that
in the past such appeals had produced few results. Even William Pitt's determined
enforcement of the trade laws had been at best mildly effective. And now there was the
additional question of who was to pay for the 10,000 troops thought necessary to garrison
North America. To Minister Grenville the logical answer was the colonists, who would
most benefit from such a garrison. His logic, however, did not include the fact that none
of the colonies had requested these troops in the first place; nor did it occur to anyone
that New York and Massachusetts had in large part financed General Amherst's decisive
campaign, nor that Pennsylvania, too, had contributed heavily in the cause of the empire none of which, incidentally, had been repaid as promised. The prime minister merely
concluded that Americans would have to be forced to pay some sort of taxes at long last.
As a first step towards raising colonial revenues, Grenville had already set out once
again to reorganize the customs service. The ancient, and largely ignored, Acts of Trade
and Navigation were dug out of the archives and researchers found long lists of items that
ought to produce revenue. A bill was pushed through Parliament that would permit the
British Navy to aid the customs service in enforcing the trade laws, and soon after,
British war ships began patrolling American waters, pulling in smugglers. The hated
writs of assistance came back into use again as the merchants of New England saw ruin
staring them in the face.
These merchants rose in angry turmoil as the new rulings from London threatened to
upset the comfortable routine that had evolved over the years. Massachusetts alone had
imported 15,000 hogsheads - nearly one million gallons - of molasses in the illegal trade
from the West Indies in 1763, and the hundreds of ships from all colonial ports earned by
their illegal foreign trade a large part of the millions which yearly flowed into Great
Britain in exchange for British manufactured goods. Grenville's orders now threatened to
end this happy state of affairs; the gusts had suddenly begun to blow with disturbing
force.
Merely reforming the customs service, however, could never have balanced an
American budget that called for the support of 10,000 troops, and plans for taxing the
colonies were begun in earnest. Parliament had never imposed taxes on the colonies
before, but few British statesmen questioned the government's right to do so; even the
Chief Justice of the Empire had assured the Prime Minister that Parliament had such
right, and the justice's word was good enough for George Grenville. The Treasury Board
had already drafted a preliminary bill for imposing stamp duties on the American
colonies, but in order to avoid further problems with the unruly colonists, the Prime
Minister tried an already familiar method of raising funds; in March of 1764, he asked
Parliament to prepare new customs duties for the colonies.
The resulting Revenue Act of 1764 renewed the earlier duties on molasses, but
familiar with colonial sentiments, Grenville had become convinced there was a way to
prevent opposition. If the tax were reduced from 6d to 3d per gallon, while at the same
time increasing the efficiency of the customs service, the molasses trade could be brought
into legal channels and actually produce revenue to the Treasury. Grenville also believed
that the lower duties on molasses would encourage the rum distillers to import it legally;
at the same time, higher duties on such luxury articles as wine, coffee, silks and such,
would not prevent the wealthier people from buying them.
The Revenue Act of 1764 explicitly stated its purpose as the necessity “that a
revenue be raised in Your Majesty's said dominions in America.” Britain had thus
openly and plainly abandoned the mercantilist purpose of the previous taxes on molasses
and had substituted a tax for revenue, something that had never before been applied to
colonial commerce. But the act went much further than that; it included several new
trade restrictions, and required ship owners to furnish bonds on all colonial shipments,
even if they traveled no farther than from New Jersey across the Hudson River to New
York or across the Delaware to Pennsylvania. And in a final, ominous note, jurisdiction
over cases involving accused smugglers was now turned over to the Admiralty Courts,
which had traditionally heard only cases involving maritime affairs outside the
boundaries of any particular colony.
Though the official rate on molasses had been cut in half, to the colonists this was a
reduction in theory only, since with it came the unwelcome evidence that the Crown
really meant business this time and intended to collect the full amount, in cash. And
since this increased enforcement promised to limit the source of molasses to the British
West Indies only, it would cause additional problems, since these islands could neither
meet colonial demands, nor absorb colonial exports in turn. Inevitably, the price of
molasses would rise, while the abundance of colonial exports would lower their prices,
and whatever cash reserves the colonists had been able to accumulate would soon
disappear.
The cumulative effect of these measures raised storms of protest from everyone
connected, as all the measures now became known collectively as the Sugar Acts, though
the word sugar was barely mentioned at all. Massachusetts claimed that the acts
“violated the right of levying taxes conferred by the Charter” on its legislature alone;
besides, the colonists suspected correctly, the Sugar Acts “may be preparatory to new
taxation upon us.” Rhode Island's merchants calculated that even if they were prepared
to absorb the new duties on molasses, the entire output of the British West Indies would
not supply one-quarter of what the thirty distillers around Narragansett Bay required.
New Yorkers declared that their exemption from Parliamentary taxes was not a privilege
which could be revoked at Parliament's discretion; it was a right without which “there
can be no Liberty, no Happiness, no Security.” And everywhere the private citizens
complained that the new revenues would be used to maintain a British army in America
that had failed to protect their frontiers and that contained no colonial officers at all;
besides, it was a force that no one wanted, but was present merely “to bleed us into
obedience.” The entire student body at Yale University resolved somberly that
henceforth they would boycott all imported “spirituous liquors.” Only the Southern
colonies, whose economy would barely be affected at all, remained silent.
Coincidentally, at almost the same time there was a flood of business failures and
bankruptcies in many of the colonies. Most of these were due to the general postwar
conditions, but the new Revenue Act provided a great opportunity for anyone seeking a
convenient target for blame. Merchants made a half-hearted attempt at a boycott of
British goods; Boston, perhaps harder hit than any other place, urged its citizens to adopt
rigid standards of austerity. New York set up projects to teach manufacturing skills to its
many unemployed. Colonial agents in England appealed to British merchants who were
also feeling the depression since much of their revenue came from America. But if the
English merchants were alarmed, it made little difference, for “they talked much but
there was no bringing them to action.” And despite protests from all sides, the British
government remained unmoved; the new regulations not only stood unchanged, but
worse was yet to come.
Prime Minister Grenville had announced at the time the Revenue Act had passed that
he also planned to extend stamp duties to America, but that he would delay such action
for one year in order to give the colonies time to offer an alternate plan; if they were able
to raise enough funds on their own, the stamp duties would be withdrawn. Colonial
agents in London proposed several such plans, but none could assure Grenville that the
colonies would actually supply troops of their own or the funds to pay for them; the
colonial legislatures, in fact, were never asked at all. Meanwhile, petitions rolled in from
America, complaining about the Revenue Act, but the Prime Minister obviously believed
these were the usual and expected objections for the record; no one seemed much
concerned about these protests. And in the absence of any alternative proposals, the work
of drawing up a Stamp Act for America continued.
Considering the huge deficit in American operations, this Stamp Act would at best
be a modest revenue raiser, expected to bring in perhaps £60-100,000 a year. But the
Prime Minister was eager for Americans to accept this measure, for it established an
important point - the right of Parliament to impose an internal tax on the colonies. The
act required that every legal document must bear a stamp to show that a tax had been
paid. Such transactions included almost everything that was put into writing and was
made a matter of record - commercial contracts and legal documents, everything from
bills of lading to bonds, deeds, wills, indentures and leases, all paid between sixpence and
five shilling for the stamp. Every copy of a newspaper was charged a half pence a sheet,
and every advertisement in these papers two pence each. College diplomas were assessed
a £2 tax; tavern licenses £1-4 in addition to the local licensing fee, and a lawyer's license
a hefty £10. Even playing cards were charged with a shilling per pack, and dice ten
shilling a pair. Every document subject to this duty had to be printed on specially
stamped papers sold by official distributors, or be brought to a stamp office to be properly
embossed. It was a practice long accepted in England and is a practice fairly common in
many countries today, including the United States.
One great advantage of the stamp duty - in the government's eyes - was that it
required no enforcement officers. Leases and wills, or any official document that lacked
their proper stamps were simply not valid and no such document could be properly
registered or be admitted as evidence in court. Violations were easily spotted and
offenders were once again to be tried in the Admiralty Courts - a clause that further
perverted the original purpose of these courts.
Despite the many advance petitions by the colonies protesting the proposed measure,
apparently no one in all England had the slightest inkling how violently that Stamp Act
would be resisted in America. Many times before, the colonies had petitioned against
some proposed act of Parliament, and then either obeyed or, more often, simply
disregarded the entire matter once it was passed. Grenville, in fact, had gone out of his
way to make the Stamp Act more acceptable to the colonies. All stamp agents were to be
Americans, and all revenue derived from these stamps was to remain in America and be
spent there. Benjamin Franklin, in London at that time, had even gone out of his way to
secure collectorships for friends in Philadelphia and Connecticut; Richard Henry Lee of
Virginia - the very same Richard Henry Lee who only a decade later would introduce the
resolution for independence in Congress - applied for a collectorship and later found it
difficult to explain his conduct. Many of the new appointees, like Franklin and Lee, were
no doubt patriotic men; most had opposed the Stamp Act, and had applied for
distributorships only after the inevitable had happened. Most had doubtlessly felt that if
profits were to be made from the sale of these stamps, it might as well be made by good
Patriots. Both Franklin and Lee, however, quickly resigned their posts once it became
apparent just how angry their fellow colonists had become over this issue. Those who
were slower to feel the pulse of their neighbors would soon learn their lesson through
bitter experience.
Few laws in American history have produced such violent opposition as did the
Stamp Act, mainly, perhaps, because this act affected all the very people who were most
able to make their opposition felt and known: lawyers were now taxed every step of the
way in all legal proceedings; newspapermen were taxed on every issue, every copy,
every sheet. The act infuriated clergymen, whose written sermons were now required to
bear a stamp on each apostolic page; and finally, it became just another constant irritant
to the merchants and traders, who lived by deals that had to be written down, and who
now met the tax collector at every step in every transaction. Regardless of logic and
justice, any tax measure which aroused the combined opposition of so many powerful
men in any colony was a political blunder looking for trouble.
Ironically, it was Virginia, the loyal Old Dominion, which had remained quiet all
through the previous protests, which now acted first. A group of young members of the
House of Burgesses there had long been unhappy under the control of the wellestablished, aristocratic Tidewater planters, who ran Virginia's affairs mostly as they
pleased. Among those dissatisfied with the establishment was a newly-elected member,
29-year old Patrick Henry, eager to make a name for himself. Henry was hardly a typical
representative of Virginia's ruling class; while most of his new colleagues owned several
thousand acres of land and dozens of slaves - all of it usually inherited - Henry could
barely show a few hundred poor acres - just enough to qualify him for office. And while
many of the Burgesses had been college-trained lawyers, usually at Virginia's William &
Mary, Henry was a self-taught country boy who had passed the bar exam to everyone's
surprise but his own.
Patrick's boyhood had given little indication of any special talent or intellect; Patrick
was far more familiar with the woods and streams in his beloved Virginia than he was
with the books that teachers intermittently tried to force on him. When he was only 15,
he joined an older brother in operating a country store, but that enterprise failed quickly.
At 18, young Patrick had no money and no prospects, but such facts did not deter him
from asking Sarah Shelton to marry him, or her from accepting the offer. The two sets of
parents came to the rescue of the young couple and set them up on a small farm with a
half dozen slaves to help them work it. Henry loved the pleasures of a farm but not its
responsibilities, and predictably, he never made a go of it. When the farm house burned
down two years later, he sold the land and the slaves to finance yet another store. This
time out, he was to learn the perils of depending on tobacco culture for a living, for his
customers never paid him until the crops came in. Within three more years, this venture,
too, came to an end.
In December of 1759, another young Virginian, 16-year old Thomas Jefferson, had
met Patrick Henry during a Christmas party at the home of a mutual friend, and Jefferson
later recalled that he was not much impressed by Patrick Henry, whose careless
appearance and dress usually made a poor first impression, as did his awkward and
unpolished manners. The teenage Jefferson considered him coarse and far too eager to
please the other guests.
Only a few months later, however, Patrick Henry came to see Thomas Jefferson on
the campus of William and Mary with astonishing news: Henry had been reading law
books at home in between the hours he helped out at his father's tavern. Now he had
come to Williamsburg to ask the legal examiners to license him as a lawyer. One had to
admire his nerve; Virginia's wealthy families had long been sending their sons to William
& Mary, or even to London to study law at the Inns of Court, while young men who
could not afford such expensive training apprenticed themselves for years with an
established lawyer. Now here came this Patrick Henry announcing that he had borrowed
some law books, and after six weeks of glancing through them in his spare time, he
considered himself qualified to become an attorney.
Thomas Jefferson didn't know then that Henry enjoyed playing the rustic who had
spent his boyhood roaming the backwoods, hunting ducks and geese and deer. But there
was an entirely different side to this young Virginian as well. Even in early childhood he
had been tutored at home by his uncle, the Reverend Patrick Henry, who taught him Latin
and Greek and mathematics along with his catechism, and the teenage Henry had read for
hours on end and had soon discovered a natural gift for conversation as well. But Henry
had not let Thomas Jefferson see this serious side as yet, or Jefferson had chosen to
ignore it. He certainly held out little prospect for Henry's success with the legal
examiners.
Yet pass he did, somewhat to the surprise of the examiners themselves, and within a
short time Henry began to build a lucrative law practice in Hanover. Within three years
his books showed that he had handled over 1,100 cases, many of them in behalf of the
poor and dispossessed.
In the fall of 1764 Patrick Henry went to Williamsburg on behalf of a client to
challenge the seat of a member of the House of Burgesses. This representative was being
charged with having used undue influence during the previous election, when he had
gone around the county, knocking on doors and pledging to change certain unpopular
regulations over the tobacco industry. But in Virginia a candidate was expected to behave
like a gentleman; asking for votes and making campaign promises was considered highly
unethical. And this particular House member was even accused of buying drinks for at
least one voter.
The last charge was pure hypocrisy. On election day, Virginians stepped forward
one at a time at the polls and named their choices out loud before their assembled
neighbors. At the election in question, one of these voters had apparently come
staggering across the courthouse green, announcing that he would vote for anyone willing
to supply him with another drink, and the accused House member had simply reached
him first.
Such practices were a long-standing tradition in Virginia politics, and all candidates
provided refreshments of one sort or another on election day. A man running for office
set out near the polls several barrels of rum and whiskey, often applejack and beer as
well. Any candidate who, for reasons ethical or personal, did not offer a few drinks to the
thirsty voters was considered far too stingy or lacking in respect for his neighbors to
deserve their votes. Several years earlier another planter had already learned this lesson
when he refused to supply the customary drink and roast pig to his potential constituency.
George Washington learned from that defeat; the next time he ran he bought copious
quantities of liquor for each of his 361 supporters and won his seat in the House of
Burgesses.
When the members of the Election Committee saw Patrick Henry's coarse clothes
and unpolished appearance, they treated him with a casualness just short of contempt. As
he presented his client's case, however, their mood changed. While Henry's first
impression usually worked against him, once on his feet, there were few men in all
American history that might have equaled him in his command of an audience. Few of
his speeches have been preserved; he never wrote them out, kept few notes, and there are
few detailed first-hand reports. No written record could probably convey the effect of his
speeches in any case, for so much of that depended on his mannerism, his inflections, and
his voice. The Election Committee, too, was overwhelmed, and they agreed that he had
presented his case brilliantly - even if the entire case was frivolous and his client lost.
Only the next year, with agitation over the Stamp Act spreading through the colony,
Patrick Henry decided to run for a seat in the Burgesses himself. He still lived in
Hanover County, but to make himself eligible for a vacant seat, he bought land in nearby
Louisa County. Despite his brilliantly stated case the year before, he also spent £8 to get
himself elected - £7 to buy 28 gallons of rum, the rest for carrying it to the polls.
No sooner had Patrick Henry taken his seat in May, 1765, than he already challenged
the House leadership. John Robinson, Speaker of the House and Virginia's treasurer, had
come up with a plan for a Public Loan Office. It was not generally known then, but
Robinson had been lending public funds to many of his influential friends, and the Loan
Office scheme was simply his way of covering up those illegal dealings. Patrick Henry
felt instinctively that there was more than met the eye, and he listened dubiously to the
argument that the government should extend credit to wealthy men who were
momentarily strapped for cash. Finally he could listen no longer; he rose and asked:
“What, sir? Is it proposed then to reclaim the spendthrift from his dissipation and
extravagance by filling his pockets with money?” The members, thoroughly annoyed by
this presumptuous freshman, ignored his objection and approved the Loan Office.
But only a few days later, Patrick Henry was at it again. All during the previous
months the Burgesses had drafted earnest petitions against the proposed Stamp Act; now,
with the current session about to end, word had reached Williamsburg that the stamp
duties would indeed take effect in November, and all through the final days of this
session Henry waited patiently for his older and more influential colleagues to protest.
Finally he could once again no longer contain himself. He rose and delivered an
emotional speech during which he introduced four resolutions that followed along the
lines of the earlier Virginia protests, though Patrick Henry used much stronger language:
the settlers had brought to Virginia all of the liberties of the people of Great Britain; the
royal charters granted by King James I had conferred on these colonists the same
privileges as if they had been born in England and still lived there; taxes could be levied
on a people only by men they had chosen to represent them; and the right of legislating
their own affairs had always been recognized by Britain's kings and her people. Henry
then added a fifth resolution, which declared that “the General Assembly of the colony . .
. have in their representative capacity the only exclusive right and power to lay taxes and
imposts upon the inhabitants of the colony; and that every attempt to vest such powers in
another person or persons . . . . is illegal, unconstitutional, and unjust, and has a
manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American liberty.”
Thomas Jefferson was in the House lobby the next day to listen while Henry
defended his resolutions, and what he heard made him revise his long-held impressions of
Patrick Henry's provincialism. Jefferson recalled years later that he would sometimes
close his eyes as Henry spoke and, when he opened them again, could not remember a
single thing; he was left with only the impact of the speech, which was dazzling. But
tempers in the Chamber were far less tranquil. For the House leadership, Henry's offense
was not only in his resolutions, but in his presuming, after only nine days in the
Burgesses, to say anything at all. They were particularly incensed by this upstart's claim
that Parliament had no right at all to tax the colonies. But in arguing his case, Henry let
himself be swept ever farther to the extreme. He now declared that “Caesar had Brutus,
Charles the First had Cromwell, and George the Third . . .” At that point he was
interrupted by cries of “Treason! Treason!” but Henry continued “. . . and George III
may profit by their example!” Then he bowed and added that if this was treason they
might make the most of it.
Arrayed against Henry and his resolutions were Speaker Robinson and several of the
most influential men in Virginia. They argued that since the House was still waiting for a
reply from London to the earlier petitions, they shouldn't alienate the king's ministers
with Henry's bluntly presented resolutions. But despite their prestige and seniority
enough House members agreed with Henry that the Stamp Act had already been answer
enough; all the resolutions passed that same afternoon, each by a narrow margin. Patrick
Henry left the capital that same night, his battle won and his reputation made; literally
overnight, he had become the most popular figure in all Virginia.
Patrick Henry's speeches and resolutions, printed and distributed throughout America
as the Virginia Resolves, stirred up a great excitement in all the colonies. A writer in the
New York Gazette went so far as to suggest that the time had come for separation from
the British Empire; the upper class in Boston began to pressure potential stamp officials
to refuse the appointment and that practice, too, spread throughout the colonies. And
everywhere in the seaboard settlements influential men began to form anti-Stamp Act
organizations. Already men were being identified as Patriots - those who opposed any
attempts by the British government to impose its illegal acts on the colonies - or as Tories
- those who showed sympathies with such British actions.
In London, debate on the issue remained heated right to the end. Grenville had
introduced the proposal for American stamp duties in his budget message of February,
1765. At first there had been little debate on the proposal; only one member even
questioned Parliament's right to impose a tax on the colonies, and several others
suggested that perhaps the Americans should be allowed to send their representatives to
Parliament. Not until the colonial petitions began to roll in was there any indication of
potential problems, and Charles Townshend, government official, had asked in the House
of Commons: “. . . and now, will these Americans, Children planted by our care,
nourished up by our indulgence until they are grown to a degree of strength and
opulence and protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve
us from the heavy burdens which we lie under?”
Colonel Isaac Barre was a veteran of the French and Indian War; he had fought
under General Wolfe and had been with him at the time of his death on the Plains of
Abraham. Barre was a fearless and effective spokesman for the colonial cause and he
was one of a select group of men whom George III considered troublemakers. True to
his reputation, he immediately rose to challenge Townshend's description of colonial
sentiments: “They planted by your care?” he asked scornfully; “No, your oppressions
planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and
unhospitable country - where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships of
which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelty of a savage foe . . . “
“They nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of em: as soon as
you began to care about em, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over em .
. . sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them; men
whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil
within them . . .”
“They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defence,
have exerted a valor amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defence of a
country whose frontier was drenched in blood . . . And believe me, remember I this day
told you so, that same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first will
accompany them still . . .”
Yet such outspoken colonial support was rare in Parliament. The Stamp Act was
passed in a half-filled Parliament by the overwhelming vote of 245-49.
If Barre's words had failed to move his colleagues, they thrilled the colonists when
they read them, especially since they had come from a much-respected Englishman who
had already fought alongside colonial troops against the French. The Boston Patriots
promptly called themselves the “Sons of Liberty,” and a small town in Vermont proudly
took the name of Barre. (Only a few years later, a town in Pennsylvania adopted his
name together with that of John Wilkes, another champion of the colonial cause).
The Stamp Act was not to take effect until November 1, 1765, but in the interim the
machinery of enforcement had to be assembled. All during the spring of that year the
calm in the colonies had suggested that the previous appeals had all been exaggerating
the public's antagonism toward the measure. That public silence was so profound that by
April the king and his ministers had become confident that the American colonists would
simply go along quietly.
But with the appointment of the first stamp officials in August, colonial anger finally
boiled over. Men like Franklin and Lee had already resigned their distributorships once
their countrymen's sentiments had become obvious, but other appointees proved less
sensitive to popular feelings, and mobs of Sons of Liberty went into action, determined to
show these men the proper course. By mid-August, there were demonstrations in Boston,
with an effigy of Andrew Oliver hanging from a tree in Boston Common. Oliver was the
brother-in-law of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, and he was also the recently
appointed stamp master for Massachusetts. His effigy was marked with his initials, and
just in case that message wasn't clear enough, a little jingle was pinned to it as well:
“What greater joy did New England see, Than a stampman hanging on a tree.” But
there also was the ominous warning: “He that takes this down is an enemy to his
country.” Ironically, Andrew Oliver had initially argued against the Stamp Act, not
because he felt it was wrong, but because he knew very well that the act would be
unpopular in the colonies. Once the act had passed and he was named as one of the tax
collectors, he had suddenly discovered previously unnoticed benefits in the measure, not
the least of which was the fact that the stamp master would draw a most handsome salary.
The lack of any real protests had also convinced Andrew Oliver that it was safe enough to
accept the post. But his appointment had instantly provoked angry articles in the Boston
Gazette, and now there was this display hanging from the 100-year old tree on High
Street.
As the crowd around that elm tree grew larger, its leaders began a boisterous
charade. Every farmer and shopkeeper who brought his goods to market was now urged
to flop down before the tree and have his wares stamped by the dummy on the tree. Off
to the side stood watching one of Boston's more prominent citizens, Samuel Adams, and
many of the more conservative onlookers suspected that Sam was not all that surprised by
this public outpouring of resentment. Though Sam belonged to one of Massachusetts'
leading families, he had long made it openly known that he held few sympathies with the
royalist views of men like Governor Bernard or Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson. When
asked if he knew what this commotion was all about, Adams merely said he had no idea,
but he would surely look into the matter.
As the morning wore on, Governor Bernard, too, heard about the disturbance and
threatened to take some action to quiet the mob. Most of his councilmen, however,
argued that the governor should simply ignore the whole matter; since it was only a prank
by some of the town's hooligans. But Thomas Hutchinson, who was chief justice of the
colony as well as its lieutenant-governor, decided to show more initiative than had the
governor, and he sent out the sheriff with orders to cut the dummy down. But the sheriff
was soon back to report that he simply could not follow the order; the mob at the tree had
become too large, and his men were afraid. The sheriff had nevertheless been concerned
enough about the safety of Andrew Oliver and his family to persuade them to leave their
house. They had barely fled through their back yard when the crowd came already
storming up the hill. In front of the Oliver home, men with knives beheaded his effigy,
and then burned the figure along with scraps of wood they had brought from Oliver's
newly constructed stamp office which they had already destroyed.
The rioters finally broke open Oliver's stables and were about to drag his expensive
coach to the bonfire when more sober-minded members talked them out of it; the mob
finally satisfied itself by burning the coach door and several cushions, and then raced into
Oliver's garden and began ripping down fences. Once inside the garden, they stripped all
the fruits from the trees, broke off the branches and tore down a gazebo. When the men
began to smash windows at the back of the main house, it was no longer idle vandalism.
Window glass had to be imported from England and was expensive to replace.
Inevitably, too, men were inside the house and heading for the cellars, where they helped
themselves to the stores of liquor, which gave them enough courage to go on breaking
furniture and destroying the Oliver silverplate
At his office, Governor Bernard now demanded that the militia be send out to stop
this vandalism, but his officers informed him that it was impossible - most of the
militiamen were members of the mob. Thomas Hutchinson again tried to take matters
into his own hands; he collared the sheriff, and the two men went together to the Oliver
house to persuade the rioters to disperse. Hutchinson was the sort of man who had been
giving orders all his life, and who expected such orders to be followed to the letter. This
night, however, he had barely begun to speak to the crowd when he and the sheriff were
pelted with stones and forced to retreat. The dismantling of the Oliver house went on for
another hour.
The next morning, all Boston was talking about nothing else but the scandalous
rioting at the Oliver house. Not that such mob actions were a novelty in America.
During the years of bad crops, both Virginia and Maryland had seen tobacco revolts, and
in the midst of a food shortage the people of Massachusetts had risen up to stop the
export of meat and grain. Bostonian gangs had already razed whorehouses and similar
objectionable structures. And each year on November 5, gangs from North and South
Boston paraded through the streets in a ceremony called Pope's Day. It was an American
version of England's Guy Fawkes Day, commemorating the Gunpowder Plot of 1605,
when a band of Catholics had tried to blow up King James I and Parliament with him. In
Boston, however, this occasion had long become an excuse for an annual brawl as rival
gangs collided in an explosion of rocks and fists.
As it was, in the Boston Gazette, anonymously written articles treated the previous
night's festivities rather lightheartedly; but most Bostonians also knew that it was Samuel
Adams and his circle that edited the weekly newspaper, and most took these reports with
a grain of salt. Governor Bernard, on the other hand, saw no hilarity in the mob violence;
he offered a £100 reward for the apprehension of the mob's leaders, and amnesty to any
participants who came forward with information.
But Sam Adams, too, realized that things had gone too far. The demonstrations at
the elm tree and even the bonfire could be excused as legitimate protests by an oppressed
people. But the violence against Oliver's property had been far more serious, and Adams
sensed that the ransacking had created deep misgivings even among his allies; his
political sense also warned him that his opponents must not be allowed to make a martyr
out of Oliver. Boston's leading citizens, on the other hand, had seen a spark of anarchy
and they hadn't liked it one bit; they now called on Oliver and told him that he must
appease the mob by resigning as stamp master. Though Oliver merely replied that he was
disappointed by their lack of support, he would soon get an opportunity to reconsider.
At about nine o'clock that same evening, a crowd of men and women gathered once
again outside the Oliver house and shouted slogans about liberty and property. This time,
Oliver sent out a note; he said later that his message had promised only that he would
delay taking office as stamp master until he had informed London about the public outcry
over the act. But the crowd heard a different promise - that Oliver would send his
resignation to London by the next ship. Since he seemed to be capitulating, they
retreated to the gate, sent up three cheers and hurried along to Thomas Hutchinson's
house. The lieutenant governor had advised London against the Stamp Act, but his
attempts the night before to quell the rioting made it easy to believe that he supported the
tax.
Hutchinson heard the fists beating on his door and the voices demanding that he
come out and swear that he had not endorsed the Stamp Act. But neither courage nor
pride would permit the lieutenant governor from giving in to the will of a mob, and he
refused to answer. Before long, the spirit seemed to go out of the crowd and it gradually
dispersed.
The rest of the week passed quietly, though rumors kept circulating that the Sons of
Liberty were already planning new demonstrations, and daily there were different plots
and targets. And then stories began to circulate in town that Hutchinson had not only
encouraged Parliament to pass the Stamp Act, but that the Lieutenant-Governor had
personally drawn up the detestable law right here in Boston, in his mansion on Garden
Court Street.
Only days later a friend burst in on the Hutchinson family dinner to warn them that
the mob was again headed their way. Luckily, this time Hutchinson took no chances;
only a few minutes after he escaped with his family, the mob fell over the house in a
furious rage. They split the front door with their axes and swarmed all through the
graceful home, breaking windows and tearing off wainscoting. But this time out, the
mob was not satisfied with mere vandalism. Standing at the upper windows, they slit
open mattresses and buried the lawn beneath a summer blizzard of feathers; they
ransacked the house and broke down the interior walls; they climbed the roof and started
hacking away on it. By four o'clock in the morning, one of the finest mansions in all
Massachusetts was little more than a splintered shell, and near dawn, men were still
crouched on the roof, prying up slate and boards. Only daylight stopped them from
razing the outer walls to the ground. Around the battered shell of the house every fruit
tree had been broken to a stump and every shrub had been crushed. Out of the ruins came
a trail of dinner plates and family portraits, books and clothing. A strong box had been
broken open and £900 had disappeared. The manuscript pages of Hutchinson's history of
Massachusetts had been strewn in the mud, along with the rare documents he had spent a
lifetime collecting.
The destruction of Hutchinson's house caused such strong condemnation among the
more affluent citizens of Boston that even Samuel Adams and his cohorts realized that
things had really gone too far this time. At a town meeting where Bostonians
unanimously denounced the latest rioting, Samuel Adams voted with them to restore
order in the city. When Hutchinson was told about the vote, he could not help but note
that the loudest protestations had come from the very same men who had destroyed his
house. The Boston Gazette suddenly professed to be aghast at “Such horrid scenes of
villainy as were perpetrated last Monday night it is certain were never seen before in this
town, and it is hoped never will again.” Surely, the participants were nothing but “rude
fellows” who went about “heating themselves with liquor” before they unleashed their
“hellish fury” on the lieutenant governor's home. But, the paper assured its readers, the
riots of the past two weeks had been perpetrated by “vagabond strangers” interested
only in plunder.
But even the Boston Gazette could not explain the presence at both affairs of one
Ebenezer Mackintosh, a 28-year old shoemaker from the South End, where the town's
gallows stood. Mackintosh's ancestors had come from Scotland as indentured servants
more than a century earlier, but the opportunities of the New World had apparently been
lost on the family. When Ebenezer was only 14, his father had been run out of Boston,
and young Ebenezer was apprenticed to a shoemaker. He grew into an unruly
troublemaker whose quick temper had already put him in the midst of nearly every
disturbance in Boston. It was Ebenezer Mackintosh who organized one of the brawling
gangs on Pope's Day.
Governor Bernard had raised the reward for identifying the mobs' leader to £300,
though the governor and most everyone else in Boston had no doubts that Ebenezer
Mackintosh was it. Hutchinson was certainly not surprised when the reward went
unclaimed; he guessed that the shoemaker was probably threatening to implicate the real
organizers of the demonstrations should he be arrested.
The examples set by the Boston mob provided men with similar ambitions in other
colonies with plenty of inspiration. Newspapers throughout British America praised the
Boston Patriots. In Newport, Rhode Island, local Sons of Liberty quickly built effigies of
their own stamp master; he resigned before any further actions became necessary. New
York, after a slow start, soon outdid Boston in patriotic fever; one crowd laid siege to the
fort at the Battery, while another howling mob forced Governor Colden to take refuge on
a British warship in the harbor and then destroyed his carriage house. While they were at
it, they forced the officer in charge of the stamped paper to burn it. The combined rabble
then stormed up Broadway and wrecked the house of the commandant of the New York
troops.
In Charleston, one of the town's leading citizens, Henry Laurens, was suspected of
hiding stamped paper in his house, and was pulled out of bed in the middle of the night.
By Laurens' own account, he and his family were awakened by “a most violent thumping
& confused noise” at his doors and windows. Laurens raised his window and saw a large
crowd of men, many of them thinly disguised friends, business associates, and even
relatives, demanding to search his “House & Cellars.” He assured them that there were
no stamps in his house. The men refused to be appeased, and when they began an assault
on the doors, Laurens angrily accused them of cruelty to “a poor sick Woman far gone
with Child & produced Mrs. Laurens shrieking & wringing her hands.” Laurens then
challenged any man in the crowd to a duel.
At this boldness, Laurens later wrote, “they replyed in general that they Loved &
respected me - would not hurt me nor my property but that they were sent even by some
of my seemingly best friends to search for Stamp'd Papers which they were certain were
in my custody (and) advised me to open the door to prevent worse consequences.”
Though Laurens still hesitated, the inflamed mood of the crowd and his wife's cries
finally convinced him to open up. While two intruders held cutlasses to his throat, the
rest dashed through the house in a hasty and superficial search for the stamps. When
nothing was found, they then attempted to make Laurens take “a Bible Oath” that he had
no knowledge of any stamps. When he refused profanely, they threatened to carry him
off and beat him. Very well, Laurens said, they had the numbers to do so, but he dared
any single man to do so alone. A “softer oath” was then proposed, but Laurens again
refused; he had given his word of honor voluntarily, and that was to him a trust. At that,
one of the men, throwing his arms around Laurens' shoulders, assured him that they still
loved him.
In New Haven, Connecticut, a town meeting demanded Jared Ingersoll's resignation.
Ingersoll had been appointed stamp master for all Connecticut by Prime Minister
Grenville himself, and even the much-admired Benjamin Franklin had encouraged him to
accept the office. Now he declared that he had no intentions of resigning until he was
instructed to do so by Connecticut's General Assembly. Word of Ingersoll's obstinacy
spread, and several days later a large group of mounted men gathered with the avowed
purpose of seeking out Ingersoll and persuading him to comply. Rumor had it that
Ingersoll was on his way to Hartford to place himself under the protection of the
Assembly, and the posse set out to intercept him.
Ingersoll was a stubborn and independent man; when the riders came upon him near
Wethersfield he still refused their request to resign, but when their threats became
convincing enough, he finally yielded. He was forced to sign a statement on the spot,
read his resignation aloud, and pronounce the words “liberty and property” three times.
The crowd, in turn, replied with three cheers. Jared Ingersoll and the Sons of Liberty
would tangle again; for now, however, everyone went off together to a local tavern in
congenial spirits.
Up and down the country, men who had scrambled for the position of stamp officer
now resigned, hastily and fearfully. The mobs had achieved their goals, though their
actions had hardly improved colonial unity against the Stamp Act. Most Patriot leaders
outside Massachusetts agreed with Sam Adams that further violence would only harm
their cause, while some of the more conservative colonists were already beginning to
question which side in this dispute deserved their loyalty.
Out of all this uproar there emerged at least one positive step when the General Court
of Massachusetts sent out a call for a congress of all the colonies to meet in New York
City to consider some sort of unified action. The response was most encouraging; only
Virginia, Georgia and North Carolina abstained, mainly because their royal governors
had done all they could to prevent their participation. New Hampshire was not
represented, but the colony registered its approval of the meeting. Thus, on October 7,
1765, the delegates of nine British colonies met in New York's Wall Street in what
became known as the Stamp Act Congress. There was Timothy Ruggles, a prominent
lawyer from Plymouth, Massachusetts, and a veteran brigadier general during the French
and Indian War; with him came Oliver Partridge. Henry Ward came from Rhode Island
and Maryland sent Edward Tilghman, magistrate. From South Carolina came two
lawyers, Thomas Lynch, John Rutledge, and one of the colony's most successful
businessmen, English-educated Christopher Gadsden. Ceasar Rodney, heir to vast land
holdings from the days of William Penn, came from Delaware, and New York sent
Robert Livingston, one of that colony's wealthiest landowners, founder of one of New
York's most prominent families.
James Otis was the third representative from Massachusetts, but for months past his
behavior had been so erratic that many of his closest associates were already seriously
concerned. No one was willing to predict what James Otis might or might not do at the
Stamp Act Congress. Otis might well have been elected president of the Congress, but his
many extreme, often bizarre actions put an end to that. Only the previous year he had
published a well-reasoned tract against England's right to tax the colonies; now he had
written another, this time defending the mother country's right to do just that. In another
pamphlet, Otis had raged against slavery, citing the laws of nature by which all men,
black or white, were free; yet Otis was one of the few New England Patriots who kept
slaves himself. When he returned to Boston to report on the congress to the town
meeting, he had once again become the most radical of Patriots; it is said that he attacked
Thomas Hutchinson in such violent language that his audience was sorry Hutchinson no
longer had a house left to destroy. Yet at the same time John Adams had already heard
that Otis had told a customs official that Parliament most certainly had the right to tax the
colonies and only a damned fool would deny it.
It was Timothy Ruggles who was voted as presiding officer of the Congress, perhaps
as a gesture of courtesy to the colony that had sent out the call. The delegates would
have been much less courteous had they known that Ruggles had come with secret
instructions from Governor Bernard to bring about a quick vote of submission to all
Parliamentary acts. But such instructions had little impact, for the assembled delegates
had different plans. If at first they struggled to find common ground, it was soon
presented to them by Christopher Gadsden who declared: “There ought to be no more
New England men, no New Yorkers . . . but all of us Americans.” Within two weeks the
delegates had issued a Declaration of Rights and Grievances, containing twelve
respectful but firmly stated resolutions. They accepted Parliament's right to make laws
for the colonies, but emphatically rejected its right to tax them. Since the colonies were
not represented in Parliament, Parliament had no right to impose a tax on them.
British officials were quick to point out that Americans were being treated no
different from the vast majority of Englishmen who could not vote either, usually because
they did not own sufficient property to qualify. Lord Grenville declared that all
Englishmen, including the colonists, were in fact “virtually” represented in Parliament;
every British interest was represented there since all members voted in the interests of the
entire empire. But Americans had long ago become accustomed to a system of
representation based on geographic districts, abstract concepts like “virtual”
representation was not valid arguments to them. At the same time, they also realized that
even if the colonies were actually represented in Parliament, their few votes would easily
be outnumbered on every issue important to the colonies. The idea was therefore never
actively pursued by colonial leaders, who demanded instead that jurisdiction over internal
taxes be limited to their own assemblies.
But such schemes had few supporters in Parliament. Several members did propose
to admit the North American colonies; the principal benefit would be to smoke out the
colonists and determine whether they were sincere in their cry of “no taxation without
representation.” If they refused representation, Britain could in good conscience proceed
with Parliamentary taxation. But even Edmund Burke, England's most prominent jurist,
rejected such ideas. The colonists, with their own peculiar notions of representation,
might easily spread a dangerous political virus in the mother country. And some
Englishmen went so far as to profess a fear of corruption from the colonists; by resorting
to bribery, they might well attach themselves to the king at the cost of the Commons.
But above all, many Englishmen looked on the colonials as a rough, untutored lot,
not fit for the company of gentlemen. To some Englishmen the Americans were “scum
or off scourings of all the nations,” a “hotch potch medley of foreign enthusiastic
madmen,” “a mongrel breed of Irish, German and Scotch leavened with convicts and
outcasts.” New Englanders, in particular, were “a crabbed race not very unlike their
half-brothers, the Indians, for unsociable principles, and an unrelenting cruelty.” Why
would anyone want to admit such semi-barbaric people into the cultured atmosphere of
Parliamentary debates?
In the end, all the discussions mattered little. On November 1, when the Stamp Act
was to go into effect, there were no stamps available anywhere in America, for nearly
every distributor in the colonies had resigned. By that date, too, merchants all along the
seaboard had agreed to limit their imports from Britain as much as possible. But when
their own export items, in turn, piled up on the wharves all along the coast, they put
pressure on local customs officials to issue clearances on unstamped paper; after all, they
argued, stamped paper was not available anywhere in America. The officials, apparently
far more reasonable men than generally pictured, agreed, and by the end of the year,
cargoes were moving out of all the colonial ports. It seemed that once again the colonies
had managed to evade Britain's attempt to tax them. How Parliament and the ministry
would react remained to be seen.
Only three months after the passage of the Stamp Act, and even before America's
reaction to it had drifted back to England, George III removed Grenville from office. The
minister's attempt to impose strict economics on the royal household had irritated the
King often enough, but the final straw had come with the Regency Bill which the Prime
Minister had allowed to slip through Parliament. That bill was aimed at excluding the
king's mother from the list of regents; George, however, was extremely sensitive on the
subject of his mother, and Grenville's unintended slight ended his career as the king's
chief minister.
George III now turned to Charles Watson-Wentworth, the Marquis of Rockingham, a
liberal Whig statesman, to form a new ministry. The marquis was a pleasant and
charming young man, and had led a faction that had opposed almost everything Grenville
ever introduced, including the Stamp Act. Rockingham, though fully convinced of
Parliament's right to tax the colonies, also believed that the Stamp Act had been a
mistake, and when reports of American reaction poured into London, the minister was
convinced that the act should be repealed. The only problem was how to accomplish this
without giving the impression that Parliament had backed down in the face of American
opposition.
Conditions in England came to the minister's aid, for the country was in the midst of
a depression, and the American boycott of British goods had made things even worse.
English businessmen had already begun appeals to Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act
before they were all ruined by the colonial boycott; encouraged by Rockingham's
ministry they now flooded Parliament with petitions, warning that soon there would be
100,000 unemployed marching on London. To add America's voice to the arguments, the
ministry also brought Benjamin Franklin to the House of Commons in February.
Franklin, answering prearranged questions, stated that Americans objected to internal
taxes if they were not authorized by their own legislatures because they were “forced
upon the people without their consent.” Americans had never objected to such external
taxes as port duties, said Franklin, because “the sea is yours; you maintain, by your
fleets, the safety of navigation in it, and keep it clear of pirates,” which gave Britain the
right to charge duties “toward defraying the expense . . .” Franklin’s distinction between
internal and external taxes was to prove unfortunate, for it led the British government into
a fateful misunderstanding of America's attitude toward Parliamentary taxation.
For now, the ministry urged repeal of the Stamp Act solely on the grounds of
expediency - both army and navy would be needed to enforce the act, while business
interests would suffer heavy losses during the American boycott of goods from the
mother country. Ex-minister Grenville rose to warn the members that if America
succeeded by this show of resistance, the colonies would eventually be lost to the Empire.
Parliament had to take a firm stand now or expect to be badgered by Americans on every
trivial issue thereafter. Grenville was listened to respectfully, for anti-American feelings
in Parliament were higher than ever before, but in the end the argument for expediency
won out. On March 18, 1766, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act.
The act had been on the statute books less than a year and had been enforced in only
a few American towns, yet its repeal was hailed in the colonies by as joyful
demonstrations as might have greeted the deliverance from ages of cruel oppression. The
colonists knew very well that it was their united opposition that had forced Parliament to
retreat. The Sons of Liberty subsided; merchants gave up their non-importation
agreements and trade resumed its course. Peace seemed at hand. The colonists
celebrated with fireworks, with balls, with toasts to King George III. In New York, a
grateful public even erected an impressively expensive statue to their beloved king.
But little attention was paid by anyone to the ominous language of something called
the Declaration Act. Passed at the same time as the repeal of the Stamp Act, it stated that
Parliament possessed the power to enact laws to bind the colonies “in all cases
whatsoever.” The Virginia House of Burgesses halted their celebration long enough to
enter in its journal a statement of colonial rights in flat contradiction to the Declaration
Act, and then allowed matters to “remain status quo.” The question, of course, had not
been settled, it had merely been postponed.
***
But the events of the previous years had already worked their damage. A powerful
wind was now blowing, making waves big enough to be noticed even on the banks of the
Thames. If Parliament and the British ministries had previously been largely ignorant of
American affairs, few statesmen felt the need to be much concerned. The ignorance still
remained, but the earlier indifference had now been transformed into a definite antiAmerican feeling; the crises had convinced many Britons that Americans would not be
satisfied until they had become independent of the mother country. This conviction had
become nearly an obsession with British leaders a full decade before most Americans
ever gave it serious consideration.
But in the colonies, too, a new atmosphere had begun to take hold. As Christopher
Gadsden had urged them, many of the people were beginning tentatively to speak of
themselves as Americans rather than Englishmen or Irishmen, or Germans, and as
Americans they were willing to act. They had already demanded repeal of the Stamp
Act; they had passed a general declaration of rights, insisting that only Americans could
tax Americans; and they had actually achieved a successful boycott of English goods.
What fire and death on the frontier had not been able to do, an act of Parliament had
done; the very thing Benjamin Franklin had said could never happen was happening - the
colonists were beginning to realize that they had a common cause and needed to join
hands.
At the same time, however, the previous years' demonstrations had let loose a
powerful new force that was not to be easily controlled. For the first time a group of
people, commonly called the mechanics - the small traders, clerks, artisans, seamen,
laborers, people known to later Americans as blue-collar workers - had become aware of
their potential power. These same people had until then been denied virtually any
influence in politics; unable to meet the requisite property qualifications, they had been
denied the vote or any chance at public office. But while resisting the British acts, the
spokesmen for the upper classes had necessarily claimed to represent all the colonists,
and spoke in terms of the rights and liberties of all men, of every British subject; they
could hardly have done otherwise. Such appeals inevitably raised a logical argument: if
Parliament had no right to tax the colonists without their consent, why were America's
mechanics denied the vote, while their own assemblies taxed them without their consent?
Once such sentiments of rights and liberties had begun to fill their minds, there was to be
no turning back. If Parliament tried to undo the damages of the previous two years,
neither Parliament nor the American assemblies could ever repeal the new American
spirit.
If the repeal of the Stamp Act had temporarily pacified Americans, it had served only
to complicate Britain's financial problems. Englishmen complained bitterly over their
government's failure to insist on Americans carrying their share of the burden, and when
Rockingham was forced to impose yet more new taxes at home, his already shaky
ministry was doomed. In desperation, George III turned once again to William Pitt to
head a government that might unite the kingdom; as an inducement to the elderly
statesman, the King also elevated him to Earl of Chatham. But William Pitt was getting
on in age, and he was ill, and above all, William Pitt was anxious to avoid the renewed
responsibilities. Several factions finally united to form the so-called Pitt-Grafton
ministry, and shortly after, failing health removed Pitt from the cabinet entirely. Charles
Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, now resumed the direction of British
governmental policy. Unfortunately, Townshend was only one more in a long line of
lightweight politicians allowed to mishandle British policy; his main claim to fame were
his rollicking speeches in Commons - usually after long and festive dinners; that
reputation had long since earned him the nickname Champagne Charley.
Parliament convened in November, 1766, in the midst of “nothing but riots and
insurrections over the whole country, on account of the high priced of provisions . . .”
Commons clearly wanted a tax cut, yet Townshend appeared before the House to ask for
a continuation of all revenues. Not only was the plea rejected, but the subsequent tax cuts
deprived the Crown of some £500,000 in annual revenues. Townshend had no choice but
to look elsewhere to make up the difference, and once again that elsewhere was to be the
American colonies.
Townshend had already considered several plans for the colonies until he settled on
the one scheme he thought Americans would accept. Customs duties - or, in Benjamin
Franklin's unfortunate phrase,” external taxes” - would be added to a variety of items
that Americans imported from Britain, such as tea, glass, silk, lead, paper, and similar
articles. The duties were to be kept small and would therefore be all the less
objectionable to the people, yet by spreading them over a large number of items they
were expected to bring in a respectable amount of revenues.
The plan had only one major flaw - it was based on the misconception of American
feelings as stated by Ben Franklin two years earlier. Even Townshend had told
Parliament that he thought the distinction between internal and external taxes absurd; “if
we have the right to impose one, we have the other.” But if it kept the Americans
satisfied he would indulge them and make this distinction. He had already assured
Parliament that he knew “the mode by which revenue may be drawn from America
without offense.” Few men in Commons, however, knew America and the Americans
well enough to tell him that by the year 1767 such a mode did not exist at all. And, in
any case, these new revenues would not nearly be sufficient, as even Townshend well
knew, but by imposing these taxes he would at least convince Englishmen at home that
Englishmen in America were not escaping their responsibilities to the mother country.
No one in Parliament opposed the measure as unfair to the colonies, though
Grenville once again spoke out against it. In the long run this act would hurt British
merchants more than the Stamp Act, he declared, because it would only encourage
colonial manufacturing. He warned Townshend that the Americans “will laugh at you
for your distinction about regulation of trade,” and once again urged his countrymen to
face the crisis in the American colonies now or be prepared to lose them for good. As
before, the former prime minister was ignored, and the Revenue Act of 1767 became law
on July 2 of that year.
There was a remarkable lack of response in America at first, for colonial leaders
were hard put to find a valid legal argument against the Townshend Acts. Americans
clearly rejected Parliament's power to tax them, yet even they had to acknowledge
Parliament's power to regulate the commerce of the British Empire. Also, Americans
were certainly not prepared to abandon the protective system of the Trade and Navigation
Acts, nor could they deny that many of the regulations were designed primarily to stop
law-breaking by some of their own countrymen. But there was far more to these
Townshend Acts than a mere increase in customs duties. The acts also set up an
American board of customs commissioner, responsible directly to London and London
only; they once again revived the writs of assistance; and they decreed that from now on
all appointed officials and judges would draw their salaries from London - needless to
say, these officials would thereafter pay close attention to the wishes of their new
paymasters rather than those of the colonial assemblies. Several men in the colonies
were determined to make all Americans understand the realities of this situation.
Among those who hoped to clear the air was a Pennsylvanian named John
Dickinson. Mr. Dickinson, however, was neither a politician nor an agitator like Sam
Adams or James Otis; Dickinson was a conservative lawyer, educated at London' Middle
Temple, who had become deeply concerned over the direction of Anglo-American
relations. What John Dickinson hoped to do was to settle the confusing issues and
disputes by stating them clearly and straight forward, hoping to persuade both sides to
take a new look at the troubles. Late in 1767, the Pennsylvania Chronicle began to
publish a series of 12 articles, written by Dickinson under the title of Letters from a
Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies. These letters were
soon copied by other newspapers, and eventually were issued in pamphlet form, to be
distributed throughout the colonies and finally to England as well.
Dickinson presented little that was new, but he skillfully linked the causes of all the
previous unrests and restated them in a respectful and loyal tone that appealed to soberminded Americans and Englishmen alike. Parliament unquestionably had the legal
authority to regulate the trade of the British Empire, but measures such as the Stamp Act
and the Townshend Acts were plainly revenue-raising devices that did nothing to
improve British commerce. If the colonial assemblies were to retain any authority of
their own, they could not possibly concede Parliament the right to levy such taxes for
mere revenue, whether they be designated as internal or external. The Farmer rejected
any notions that Americans were moving toward independence from Great Britain, but he
made it clear that “we cannot be happy without being free; . . . we cannot be free without
being secure in our property; . . . we cannot be secure in our property if, without our
consent, others may, as by right, take it away; . . . (and) taxes imposed on us by
Parliament do thus take it away.”
Dickinson had expressed the thoughts of just one concerned citizen, but there were
others, far more determined and enterprising than was the Farmer. Up the coast, in
Boston, Samuel Adams was working on more ambitious plans; Adams had already come
to the conclusion that Parliament had no right to legislate for the colonies on any subject
at all. Adams was an odd figure in American history; he had not enough voice to be an
effective orator, nor enough muscle to be a fighter. Instead he let men like firebrand
James Otis make the speeches and the Sons of Liberty do the fighting, while he wrote
provocative articles for newspapers and pulled political strings. Adams had been a major
influence in the growth and activities of the Sons of Liberty, and had also been
instrumental in creating the Committee of Correspondence that kept colonial letters and
pamphlets circulating throughout British America. This committee of 21 members, under
the chairmanship of James Otis, was to “state the rights of the colonists and of this
province in particular . . . to communicate and publish the same to the several towns and
to the world.” It was in effect an extra-legal organization that could be called into action
to stir up the population whenever the radical leaders gave the word. One Tory promptly
called the Committee “the foulest, subtlest and most venomous serpent ever issued from
the eggs of sedition.” All in all, Samuel Adams was as dangerous an enemy to British
rule as the North American continent then contained. He was the consummate
revolutionist who knew how to create trouble and how to evoke the desired response to it.
He understood propaganda and the uses of “spontaneous demonstrations” about as well
as any man who ever lived, and he had more than a passing knowledge of tax issues.
Descended from a patrician Boston family, a graduate of Harvard University, Sam
Adams knew how to manage political movements, but he never succeeded in managing
his own affairs or even to support himself unaided. He set up his own business shortly
after graduating from college, but failed after only a few months. He then joined his
father in running the family brewery, but after his father's death he quickly ran through
his share of the estate. Finally, in 1756, this heir to a prominent family name was forced
to take on the job of tax collector for Boston. He remained in that post for the next eight
years, becoming one of Boston's most popular tax collectors, primarily because of his
exceedingly lenient collection methods. This increasing prominence, however, led his
opponents to look harder at his record as a tax collector, and soon they discovered a
deficit of more than £7,000. The audit revealed that he had been particularly lenient
during the fire of 1760, which had destroyed one-tenth of Boston, and again during one
of the frequent smallpox epidemics that had raged through the city. At the next election,
Adams felt embarrassed enough by such revelations that he suggested that someone else
take over the job, but his fellow-townsmen recognized that probably no one else was
likely to be so obligingly slipshod in the collection process, and they insisted on his
reelection for another two-year term.
Some letters and documents indicate that Samuel Adams was advocating open and
active rebellion against Great Britain as early as 1768; by that time he had become an
eloquent and most visible critic of British taxation. In February, 1768, he and James Otis
drafted a remarkably restrained answer to the Townshend Acts; it denounced these acts as
establishing taxation without representation, stated that colonial representation in
England was impossible, and declared that the very idea of making colonial judges and
governors independent of the electoat any ratecourse was utterly intolerable. The letter
was formally adopted by the Massachusetts legislature as a “humble, dutiful and loyal
petition to our most gracious sovereign . . . to obtain redress.” The new taxes were
obviously unconstitutional, but they hoped that “united and dutiful supplications” of
“distressed American subjects” to George III “will meet with his royal and favorable
acceptance.” This Massachusetts Circular Letter was sent to the other twelve colonies
with an urgent request for united action.
Such action was forced on the colonial assemblies even faster than they had
imagined. Across the Atlantic, Charles Townshend had died in September, 1767, and in
his place as Chancellor of the Exchequer came Lord North, while Lord Hillsborough
became Secretary of State for colonial affairs. Hillsborough was not a man to sympathize
with radical sentiments among the citizenry; he had already considered the Farmer's
Letters as “extremely wild.” When he saw the Massachusetts Circular Letter he exploded
with fury. Massachusetts, he raged, had conspired to “promote unwarrantable
combinations, and to excite an unjustifiable opposition to the constitutional authority of
Parliament.” The secretary now sent out a circular letter of his own, ordering all colonial
legislatures to ignore the Massachusetts letter; if they took notice of it, the provincial
governors were instructed to dissolve these assemblies immediately. As for the
Massachusetts General Court, it was dissolved unless and until it officially recorded its
disapproval of the earlier “rash and hasty proceeding.” The Massachusetts General
Court had never been intimidated by orders from England, and the members were not
about to begin now; they refused by an overwhelming vote to rescind the letter and
Governor Bernard dissolved the assembly.
Hillsborough's action had played straight into the hands of men like Samuel Adams.
Up and down the country, one assembly after another refused to obey the secretary's
instructions, and each in turn was dissolved. And everywhere the citizens banded
together and pledged to boycott English wares, while merchants once again resorted to
non-importation agreements - even if it took the Sons of Liberty to convince a few of
their more reluctant colleagues to cooperate.
At least one of these merchants needed no encouragement at all; 31-year old John
Hancock was already the chief financial supporter of Boston's Sons of Liberty; Hancock
had also just recently inherited the largest fortune in all New England, and these
combined factors had led Sam Adams to pronounce him one of the most exceptional
young men of Massachusetts. But at the time of his birth, John's prospects had been far
less promising. Both his father and his grandfather were clergymen, and John himself
seemed destined for the clergy as well, but when he was only seven years old, his father
died, leaving a widow and three small children. John's uncle, a successful merchant
named Thomas Hancock and his wife were childless, and they took their nephew into
their home as a cherished foster son.
Thomas Hancock's imposing granite mansion had been built to the plans of a London
architect, with graceful chimneys, a sloping roof and an unheard-of 54 windows. For his
home, Thomas Hancock imported extravagantly luxurious furnishings, complete with
damasks, exotic plants and English wallpaper, and for his gardens he imported exotic
plant and trees. Most of the alien flowers never bloomed in the unpredictable New
England weather, but the £5,000 that Hancock had reputedly spent on his house and
grounds had produced a Boston showplace.
How Thomas Hancock had become rich so quickly had always puzzled some
Bostonians. Apprenticed to a bookbinder at fourteen, he had opened his own bookstore
seven years later. Within two more years he was investing his profits in a load of goods
bound for Albany, and that led naturally to importing things like cloth, tea, books and
such. But those relatively small profits did not explain how he had gone from apprentice
to prosperous merchant in less than a decade. Lieutenant- Governor Thomas Hutchinson
had heard a story that during those first years in the trade, Hancock had bought a
diamond cheaply and had then sold it at a vast profit. But Hutchinson knew that the truth
was more prosaic. Thomas Hancock was a smuggler.
Thomas Hancock and his wife took great pride in their foster child, who was
educated at the best schools New England had to offer, including the obligatory Harvard
College, and was then sent to Europe for final polishing. John was in London in the fall
of 1760, when George III was installed as king, and the young colonial was dazzled by
the coronation ceremonies. Presented at court, he received from his sovereign - who was
a year younger than Hancock - a snuffbox which he proudly took back to Boston.
Returning home, Hancock set about learning his uncle's business; when Thomas Hancock
died in 1764, his adopted son had become familiar enough with all aspects to be qualified
to take over a merchant empire, including a handsome fortune of some £70,000.
In May 1768, six months after the customs commissioners had arrived from England
to enforce the provisions of the Townshend Acts, one of John Hancock's trading ships,
the Liberty, entered Boston Harbor with a cargo of wine from Madeira. Her captain told
the customs inspector that the wine aboard amounted only to 25 casks, or slightly over
3,000 gallons, though this was well below the ship's cargo capacity. A few weeks later,
this same inspector suddenly came forward to claim that he had been held prisoner in a
cabin by a gang of men, while other workers had removed stores of undeclared wine.
When they were finished, the ship's captain had warned the inspector that his life and
property depended on his silence. Now he had decided to ignore the threat and accused
Boston's wealthiest merchant of violating the Townshend Acts. The captain was unable
to verify or refute the story, since he had apparently died of a heart attack only the day
after the Liberty had been unloaded.
This was precisely the sort of thing the new customs enforcement was supposed to
prevent, and the English officials were determined to crack down forcefully. A royal
warship, the H.M.S. Romney, with fifty guns, had been anchored in Boston Harbor for
several weeks, and under her protection the commissioners made their move. Near
evening, while most workers had already left the docks, the commissioners boarded the
Liberty and seized her as punishment for the false customs declaration.
In no time at all an ugly crowd had begun to gather around the dock. Resentment
against the Romney's British crew had already been running high ever since the ship's
captain had called Boston “a blackguard town ruled by mobs.” Now there were enough
men on the dock to retake Hancock's ship and sail her to safety; aware of the potential
danger, the customs officials signaled the Romney, and under the protection of armed
British troops, the Liberty was towed out and secured under the warship's guns.
That provocation was enough to transform the crowd on the wharf into a mob.
Throwing stones and swinging clubs, they fell over the customs officials. One collector
was beaten badly, while another was dragged through the streets by his hair, and another
escaped with his sword broken and his clothes ripped. John Hancock's Madeira,
including an especially rich vintage he had ordered for his own table, disappeared from
the warehouse at the pier. The mob then dragged the customs boat to the Common and
set it on fire, and all through the night, the throng milled around the houses of the
collectors, howling and breaking windows.
The next morning was quiet, but the commissioners decided they were no longer safe
in Boston, and Governor Bernard authorized the officials and their families to move to
unassailable quarters at Castle William, three miles out into the harbor. Thomas
Hutchinson saw to their comfort there, providing food and a steady stream of Tory dinner
guests.
This apparent show of support for John Hancock did not surprise men like John
Adams. He calculated that at least a thousand Boston families depended for food every
day of the year on Hancock's business. Add to that the new fireman's rig that Hancock
had bought for the town just recently, and the £1,000 he had already contributed to the
cause of liberty, and John Hancock was New England's most popular man.
***
All during the troubles of the past years, Americans who had retained their Royalist
sympathies had always held on to one certain conviction: when London's patience was
finally exhausted, British troops would land in Boston, disband the Sons of Liberty, close
their town meetings and disperse the mobs. Ever since the Stamp Act riots, Governor
Bernard had been torn about calling for such troops. On the one hand, he was sure he had
to have them to save his administration, but on the other hand he was equally sure that as
soon as the town heard that troops were on their way, the mob would take terrible
vengeance on him. Besides, all during that time the governor hoped that General Thomas
Gage, the British commander in New York, would somehow come to the aid of the
Massachusetts Tories on his own initiative. But General Gage was not going to send his
soldiers into the explosive mood of Boston without an official appeal from the governor,
whose own council advised him that he did not need them.
All this time, just as Adams and Otis had suspected, the governor was indeed trying
to influence London against the Patriots. While Adams assured Lord Hillsborough that
the Massachusetts Circular Letter had never been intended to be seditious, Governor
Bernard's letters painted an ominous picture of conditions in the Bay Colony. And in
London, Bernard's dire warnings rang truer than Adams' bland reassurances, and Lord
Hillsborough was sufficiently alarmed at last that he directed General Gage to send at
least one regiment from Halifax to Boston. That order took weeks to reach New York;
meanwhile Bernard's letters were growing more urgent all the time, and Lord
Hillsborough finally meant to let Massachusetts know that there was a law in the land.
Eight warships and two regiments of regulars were dispatched from England at once. And
when early in September an English officer arrived from Halifax to make arrangements
for his troops, all Boston knew overnight what lay ahead.
Samuel Adams had foreseen this response by the British authorities, and he was
prepared. First, Boston Patriots would invite their colleagues from all over
Massachusetts to a convention to make a concerted plan before the English regiments
arrived. Adams also suggested that the citizens of Boston be armed with muskets from
the town's armory. Expecting that at least some of the citizens would reject such open
declaration of disloyalty to Britain, Adams had even prepared an excuse for them. At his
instigation, rumors began to circulate that a new war with France was imminent. The
town's stock of arms had been taken from their storage a few days earlier on the pretext
of cleaning them; now, the Patriots argued, these arms should be distributed so that the
people could protect themselves against the enemy. All around the city, men exchanged
knowing looks.
Sam Adams and his allies now did their best to goad the city and all Massachusetts
into resistance. “We will destroy every soldier that dares put his foot ashore,” he was
quoted as saying. “His Majesty has no right to send troops here to invade the country,
and I look upon them as foreign enemies.” Companies of Boston militia began to march
in drill formation and to practice firing their muskets, but outside the city all remained
quiet. Most of the farmers in the countryside had merely shrugged at the transparent
alarms against the French; they knew full well who the enemy was to be. And on
September 19, Governor Bernard removed all such pretenses by officially announcing
that troops were coming in from Halifax, and more troops and warships were due to
arrive from England.
The Patriot convention called for Boston opened two days later, but only seventy
delegates appeared, and even James Otis stayed away the first few days. As the arrival
date for the warships drew nearer, many Sons of Liberty found their resolve waning, and
by September 29, when British men-of-war were sighted off the coast of Massachusetts,
the remaining delegates voted to adjourn - or, as one Tory described the scene, they
“broke up and rushed out of town like a herd of scalped hogs.” The very next day the
fleet moved into siege formation around Boston, unsure of what to expect, but pointing
its guns at the town.
This was the moment Francis Bernard and the Boston Tories had been anticipating
for three humiliating years, yet at the same time it presented the governor with an entirely
new problem. He had hoped to quarter one of the British regiments in town, with a back-
up regiment on call at Castle William out in Boston Harbor, but his own Council refused
to provide housing in town, insisting that all the troops be restricted to the Castle. The
English commander, on the other hand, declared that his orders from General Gage called
for both regiments to be quartered in town; he assured the Council that his men would
behave. He hoped that he would be among friends and fellow-countrymen in Boston, and
his troops would act accordingly. Privately, of course, Colonel Dalrymple was concerned
that each day's delay in landing his troops would give the Sons of Liberty additional time
to plot their resistance.
But after all the talking and plotting and rumors of resistance, there was no problem
at all. At noon on Saturday, October 1, 1768, nearly a thousand British troops in their
scarlet coats and tri-cornered hats moved into the city. For nearly four hours they
paraded through town, accompanied by fifes and drums, and finally assembled on the
cow pasture that Bostonians called their Common.
Andrew Oliver's young grandson watched the redcoats land and ran home happily;
now, the child announced, the mob wouldn't be able to tear down any more houses. His
grandfather replied that the sight of troops on the Common allowed him to sleep easy in
his bed. Samuel Adams' immediate reaction was to take John Adams' young son John
Quincy to the Common and try to instill in the child a patriotic loathing of the redcoats
parading there. There he also met Paul Revere, the town's popular silversmith, who was
deeply angered and offended by the British soldiers' obvious arrogance. The soldiers
could afford to be arrogant; each man had been issued sixteen rounds of ammunition,
while Boston's arms remained stacked in Faneuil Hall.
The next day the Boston Gazette still promised defiantly that the people of
Massachusetts would not be intimidated into accepting taxation without representation,
but to the Tories and the troops on the Common such threats of defiance now rang
suspiciously hollow. Before the soldiers had landed, General Gage had described the
Patriots as “a people who have ever been very bold in council but never remarkable for
their feats of action,” and Boston's meek acceptance of the two regiments had proven
him right. Even in New York, the Sons of Liberty jeered Boston's submission as
evidence of the “ridiculous puff and bombast for which our Eastern brethren have
always been too famous.” And Englishmen in general were reassured in their long-held
assumption that Americans could not endure the smell of gunpowder nor the sight of
blood.
Boston and other colonial cities had seen royal troops before, usually assembling to
take the field against the French or the Indians, but this was different. These soldiers had
arrived not to fight an alien enemy, but to act as a police force over the citizens, to protect
the royal officials in their efforts to carry out their instructions. Sons of Liberty,
embarrassed by their failure to resist the arrival of these troops and stung by the criticism
all around them, held noisy meetings, clamoring for instant retaliation, but once again
cooler heads prevailed, and a program of passive disobedience was adopted.
Even with the best intentions on both sides, the present situation would have been
awkward; but there was no good will on either side. An old English law, known as the
Quartering Act, required any colony to provide housing and upkeep for British troops
garrisoned there; obviously, it had been taken for granted that such troops would always
be sent to protect British citizens. Bostonians, however, were not about to support a force
that had arrived to intimidate them, and the city leaders announced that no quarters were
available anywhere in town. Since only one of the regiments had tents, Colonel
Dalrymple then forced open Faneuil Hall and quartered his men there, and later moved
some of them into the State House itself. James Otis took this opportunity to warn House
members that the stench from the troops in the House chamber might be infectious, and
urged them to meet elsewhere.
Despite Colonel Dalrymple's solemn assurances, however, there was friction
between the soldiers and Bostonians from the first. A major part of the trouble was rum.
Rum was cheap in Boston, and the soldiers, bored, isolated in their quarters and
homesick, consumed large quantities of it. The very same taverns were also filled with
colonial sailors, many of them thrown out of work by the American merchants' nonimportation agreements; they, too, had come to drown their sorrows in rum, and soon
bloody brawls were fought between soldiers and sailors. Many of the troops, having been
recruited as always from among the least stable members of British society, were not
reluctant to commit petty crimes to support their taste for rum, and Boston's rate of theft
and robbery rose dramatically, and all of it was blamed on the soldiers. So was the
increased prevalence of prostitution. Despite its Puritan morality, Boston, as a seaport,
was already notorious for its prostitutes; the soldiers attracted still more and, emboldened
by the army's patronage, they became a most visible element in town, scandalizing all
decent people.
Yet at the same time there was an ironic development: the British troops had been
sent to establish order among the rabble of Boston, but within an amazingly short time
colonial life proved so attractive to the soldiers that they began to join the ranks of the
very people they had been sent to police. Within two weeks of their arrival, seventy
British soldiers had deserted and taken refuge in the interior of Massachusetts. The
commanders tried to check this unexpected flood of desertions by court martialing and
even publicly executing several of the men, but desertions continued. The army
command was finally forced to post guards around town and at all the principal access
roads; they even went so far as to send soldiers in civilian dress into the countryside,
hoping to capture deserters. But these parties encountered only hostility among the
population, who happily harbored any soldiers who escaped. There were several
instances when enraged citizens managed to free deserters who had been captured by
fellow soldiers.
Bostonians, accustomed to the democratic spirit and lax discipline of their own
militia, were equally appalled by the merciless severity of British army discipline.
Soldiers were often publicly and brutally whipped, frequently for such minor offenses
such as swearing. Serious violations of any regulations invariably brought on whippings
that left the victim all but dead; indeed, a medical officer stood customarily by at all such
punishments to be sure that the culprit would not be actually lashed to death. Such
punishment was often meted out on the Boston Common, with the regiments on parade to
witness the floggings and learn by example. The groans and cries of the tortured men no
doubt set many a Bostonian wondering: if this was how they treated their own, what
would be in store for the Patriots if push came to shove?
But if Bostonians wondered about such eventualities, they were actually the
beneficiary of English traditions, one of the strongest of which was a deep-seated
reluctance to using soldiers against civilian populations; no British official was prepared
to risk such action. When the British government had authorized the stationing of troops
in Boston, it was with the clear qualification that they could never be called out against
the population except on the specific request of civilian officials. A soldier, in other
words, could not fire on a civilian, no matter how severe the provocation, except quite
literally in defense of their own lives.
Bostonians, on the other hand, did nothing to ease tensions, and as they became more
aware of these restrictions on the troops, they became ever bolder. From fearing the
king's troops, they came to pity and even despise them. The rougher elements in town
carried on a kind of guerrilla warfare of verbal and physical abuse that stopped just short
of putting the soldiers' lives in danger. Throwing a rock of appropriate size to bruise and
wound, but not enough to endanger life, soon became a reasonably safe form of
entertainment for some of the less substantial citizens of Boston. And when the poorly
paid, poorly fed troops sometimes hired themselves out for all sorts of unskilled labor at
the barest wages, fights broke out between the soldiers and the resentful laborers of
Boston.
The British garrison, in turn, was much like a chained bulldog, snarling and
growling, yet unable to get at the tormenters. But the soldiers, too, found effective ways
to retaliate; if a citizen spent an evening at the local tavern, he was liable to be challenged
on his way home by unsympathetic sentries and forced to identify or account for himself.
The troops also found they could raise Boston tempers by parading with drum and fifes
outside the churches during meeting time. And when one drunken British captain came
upon a group of slaves one night, he shouted “Go home and cut your masters' throats.”
He was quickly hauled before a justice of the peace, and the town watchmen were
ordered to keep all Negroes off the streets at night.
Before such annoyances could grow into serious incidences General Thomas Gage,
commander of all British forces in North America, finally came to Boston himself; if he
was unable to satisfy the citizens of Boston, he nevertheless managed to bring an uneasy
sort of peace over the town; even the Sons of Liberty remained sensibly quiet, despite the
ominous fact that with the general had arrived two more regiments from Halifax.
Boston remained quieter than London, where economic conditions were reaching the
crisis point. America's non-importation agreements were choking off a previously
lucrative trade and thousands of Britons had already been thrown out of work. Benjamin
Franklin heard of rioting all over the country and personally witnessed hordes of men
storming through the streets of London. Parliament, in turn, was prepared to take action
against the lawless colonials who had started all this, and prompted by a steady stream of
letters from Governor Bernard and other Tories, even George III had pledged himself to
enforce any measures Parliament saw fit to adopt. The Duke of Bedford, determined that
Britain should punish the leaders of the Boston riots, had already exhumed an ancient law
from the reign of Henry VIII that would permit Parliament to bring these colonials to
England, where juries would almost certainly convict them of treason and judges would
order them hanged. Early in 1769, Lord Hillsborough wrote to Governor Bernard to
inform him that George III had requested all evidence of treasonous activities committed
within the Bay Colony.
For nearly a decade, the word “treason” had been flung about often and loosely in
legislatures and courtrooms throughout North America. Now it was up to the Tories to
produce real evidence that such activities had been going on, evidence that would
convince the British attorney general to prosecute. Thomas Hutchinson finally collected
affidavits and statements about the behavior of men like Samuel Adams, James Otis, and
John Hancock, and the Boston Tories hoped fervently that this evidence would be enough
to get them all shipped off to London. Tories even joked that when Samuel Adams
passed a rope maker’s shop these days, he “shuddered at the sight of hemp.”
The attorney general in London reviewed all the evidence; he ruled that while the
Patriot leaders may have been guilty of criminal conspiracies, while they had come
“within a hair's breadth” of treason, there was not enough to prosecute them. This
ruling, combined with the growing pressure from the country's desperate merchants,
began to change the mood in Parliament. Once again, arguments for restoring harmony
with the colonies were being heard, and soon merchants appealed to Parliament to recall
Governor Bernard, who obviously was unable to get along with his people. In March,
1769, Francis Bernard was informed that he, not Samuel Adams, would be boarding the
next London-bound ship. Officially, however, Bernard was being recalled only to report
to the king in person on the conditions in the Bay Colony.
For much of his adult life, Thomas Hutchinson had dreamed of being governor of
Massachusetts. Now that the office had become virtually meaningless, his wish was
finally granted. Hutchinson had already asked to be allowed to stay on as chief justice
only, but the London government ordered him to take over Bernard's duties as well.
Since no official announcement had been made about Bernard's permanent recall,
Hutchinson did not even have the satisfaction of a title, but would be known only as
acting governor. But with the Boston Gazette stepping up its attacks, with tempers rising
everywhere in Boston and around the country, such distinction was to become irrelevant
in a very short time.
***
Nerves had worn thin and frazzled in old Boston over the past months of more or
less serious encounters between the citizens and the redcoats. For some unexplained
reason the British War Office had removed all but two of the regiments from town,
leaving a force just large enough to remain a constant irritant to Bostonians, yet too small
to be an effective peace-keeping force. The local radicals had also begun to publish a
weekly scandal sheet, The Journal of Public Occurrences, which they circulated
throughout the colonies, describing often imaginary scenes of drunkenness and outrage
on the part of the British soldiers. And while the redcoats tried to avoid all serious
encounters with the civilian population, they were nevertheless repeatedly ambushed and
beaten by waterfront hoodlums. And if any of the more restrained townspeople showed
any signs of hospitality toward the soldiers, they were likely to find a portentous example
of tar and feathers on their doorstep, courtesy of the Sons of Liberty.
Tempers were also on edge over the merchants' non-importation agreement. Some
of Boston's merchants, either because of Loyalist leanings or for the sake of potential
profits, had thus far refused to sign this agreement, and angry Patriots had already begun
to place identifying markers against the houses of any uncooperative merchants. Equally
angry sympathizers of the Royalist cause reacted by secretly removing these markers; as
one of them remarked: “I'd rather be a slave under one master than under a hundred or
more. At least, with one, I might be able to please him.” Inevitably, one Ebenezer
Richardson was caught red-handed taking down such a marker, and soon a mob was
gathering to reprimand him by whatever means necessary to show him the proper path.
But Mr. Richardson reacted by grabbing his musket and shooting at random, injuring one
of the Sons of Liberty in the process. The sight of blood really got the Patriots going;
they charged Richardson's house, who continued to fire as rapidly as he could. Before
the fracas was over, eleven-year old Christopher Snider lay dead - the first known
casualty of economic and patriotic passions that were about to produce a revolution.
Over that weekend, Samuel Adams and his colleagues, never missing an opportunity,
organized the largest funeral the American continent had ever seen. Snowdrifts from a
blizzard on Saturday did not stop their procession late Monday afternoon, accompanied
by 500 school children and 2,000 of Boston's most prominent Patriot citizens. Thomas
Hutchinson watched unmoved. “The boy that was killed was the son of a poor German,”
he wrote, disturbed by the way the town and the colony was being manipulated. “A
grand funeral was, however, judged very proper for him.”
Incident piled on incident, and the real showdown came early in March of 1770.
During one of the now almost weekly mob incidents another civilian was killed in the
streets of Boston, and on the evening of March 5, a group of rowdies began pelting a lone
British sentry near the Customs House on King Street with sticks and snowballs. The
duty-guard of about twenty men rushed out to support their beleaguered sentry, and
within minutes were confronted by a screaming and menacing mob of several hundred
boys and men who taunted them and threw rocks at them for another half hour.
Somehow in the confusion a musket flared in the dark, then another and another, and
when the smoke cleared, three men lay dead and two more were mortally wounded. As
the crowd shrank back in shocked silence, the captain of the guard acted with cool
courage and herded his men back into their quarters. But by dawn it had spread
throughout the city and beyond - there had been a Massacre! in Boston; British soldiers
had shot and killed British subjects in the very streets of the city! The pavements were
running red with American blood! Patriots Arise!
The morning after the fatal shootings on King Street, John Adams was sitting in his
law office when he was approached by several of the town's leading Tories, asking him to
join his colleague Josiah Quincy in the defense of the duty guard accused of murder.
John Adams, Sam's more balanced cousin, was 34 years old at the time; like James Otis,
had come from a rural background, and had become a lawyer only reluctantly. Unlike
young Otis, who loved reading the classics, John Adams had found studying Latin so dull
that he went to his father one day and asked to be excused from it.
“Well, John,” his father is supposed to have said, “if Latin grammar does not suit
you, you may try ditching. My meadow yonder needs a ditch.” Exhilarated by his escape
from the drudgery of book learning, the boy threw himself into the digging project, but
within minutes he realized that he might have made a mistake. That first morning was
the longest he had ever endured, and he was grateful when the day finally ended. After
the second morning, he wanted to tell his father that he had changed his mind, but pride
wouldn't let him. By nightfall, John asked to return to Latin. In August, 1751, at age
fifteen, John entered Harvard College.
After graduation, a minister from Worcester hired him as Latin master for his
grammar school. Nothing about the job appealed to the young man except the pay, but at
the age of only twenty, John Adams went off to become a provincial schoolteacher. Not
surprisingly, he soon became bored with the routine and began to read law books in his
spare time. Again, he disliked the dull system, the many hours lost in meaningless writs
and briefs, but at least the law seemed to offer a sure and relatively quick road to
prosperity, and he apprenticed himself to one of the colony's leading lawyers, studying
law at night and teaching school during the day.
Over the next half-dozen years, Adams did indeed become known as a competent
lawyer, though it made him neither rich nor famous. He complained that never had a
man conducted so much business - Yankees were notoriously litigious - for so little profit
- Yankees were also notoriously tight-fisted. But at the same time he also met and
proposed to Abigail Smith, the daughter of a Congregational minister of the Puritan
aristocracy. Though her father's congregation disapproved - they thought him not
distinguished enough or ambitious enough to prosper and deserve a fine-featured beauty
like the preacher's daughter - and though her many friends seemed baffled, Abigail did
accept John Adams' proposal.
Abigail's father had given her and her two sisters the freedom to read and to think
and to express themselves at a time when such learning for women was unfashionable,
when even the daughters of wealthy families were taught little more than reading and
writing, adding and subtracting, and possibly playing a musical instrument. And 19-yearold Abigail had grown into a perceptive and mature young woman. It troubled her that
her friends regarded her fiancée as stiff and formal and that they felt ill at ease with him.
If they found him haughty or ill-tempered and aloof, Abigail knew better; she saw a John
Adams who was friendly and sensitive and anxious to make a success of himself. But
she had also learned to deal with him when he was in one of his pompous moods. Once,
when he complained that she was too free in crossing her legs when she sat in the
presence of gentlemen, Abigail replied sweetly: “A gentleman has no business to concern
himself about the legs of a lady.”
Despite her father's congregation's reservations, John Adams did have ambition. As
the Patriot cause spread, he began to draft briefs against the Stamp Act and published
several well-received essays in the newspapers. And with marriage to the irrepressible
Abigail, he became more assured socially. Yet when Joseph Warren, one of Boston's
leading Patriots, urged him to take an active part in the town meetings, Adams replied
that such participation seemed to be the path to madness; Warren knew he referred to
James Otis, but Adams also had the Boston mobs in mind.
Both John Adams and Josiah Quincy accepted the defense of the accused soldiers in
the Boston shooting, and they did well enough to get an acquittal from a Boston jury.
The whole affair might soon have been buried among all the other local incidents had it
not been for Samuel Adams, master propagandist. Adams played this incident for all it
was worth; he turned the waterfront mob into martyrs, orating and thundering how they
had been shot down in cold blood by British mercenaries; their bodies lay in state in
Faneuil Hall, and their funeral three days after the shooting became the greatest public
event Boston had ever witnessed - perhaps as many as 12,000 people marched in solemn
procession through the town's streets. Adams had the martyr version of the event printed
in a series of articles, and on each successive 5th of March for years to come, the Sons of
Liberty staged anniversary parades commemorating the Boston Massacre. And Paul
Revere engraved a picture of The Bloody Massacre, which shows the soldiers in full
battle line firing a point-blank volley at seventy respectable-looking citizens of Boston.
But Adams was already becoming that most pathetic of figures - a fanatic
revolutionary without a popular issue. Ironically, on the very same day that the British
troops were firing into the Boston mob, Parliament had repealed the Townshend Acts.
The Duke of Grafton had resigned in January 1770, and George III had turned to his
friend Lord North to form a new ministry. Lord North well realized that the Townshend
duties would have to go - the cost of maintaining the forces in Boston was far greater
than the total revenue the acts would ever produce; the non-importation agreements by
the colonial merchants were causing serious problems in England as American trade was
dropping off dangerously; and now there were even rumors that Americans were
beginning to manufacture for themselves much that had previously been purchased in
Britain. Lord North therefore presented to Parliament a bill for repeal, and on May 13, a
subdued Lord Hillsborough informed Americans of the end of the Townshend Acts.
Only the duty on tea was to be maintained; in the words of George III, “as a mark of the
supremacy of Parliament.”
Even Samuel Adams found it difficult to whip up resentment against Britain
thereafter. Sam was now 46 years old, and these days he was looking older still. But on
both sides of the Atlantic the strain of the past few years seems to have told on many of
the chief figures. King George was said to be unstable. Pitt's enemies claimed that his
persistent gout had moved to his brain. James Otis drank too much and ranted and raved
on both sides of every issue. John Hancock, never in robust health to begin with, was
sending to London for a variety of remedies. And Samuel Adams suffered from a
perpetual tremor, sometimes so severe that he could barely write because of the way his
pen careened around the page.
And the colonial populations remained tranquil. In his diary John Adams wrote that
the repeal of the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts had hushed the public uproar into
silence. The Sons of Liberty seemed ready to disband, and one by one, local and colonial
associations broke up in relief and the merchants breathed easier. Most had long ago sold
out their old stocks and could not have continued in business without fresh goods from
England much longer. Within a short time the colonies were enjoying the greatest
prosperity within anyone's memory. Imports into New England alone jumped from
£330,000 to a whopping £1,200,000, in spite of the fact that the Acts of Trade and
Navigation were being enforced by efficient Commissioners of the Customs. Poor
harvests in Europe created a sudden demand for American corn and wheat, and to pay for
it, English specie was sent to America for the first time in history. The annoying
regulations of the customs commissioners had been relaxed so that there was an immense
traffic of sloops and schooners between colonial harbors - almost a thousand entries at
Boston by 1773.
There were plenty of other problems around that took men's mind off the dangers of
British rule. Connecticut settlers in Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley clashed violently
with Pennsylvanians over claims to that land. In the wilderness between New Hampshire
and New York, men from Massachusetts, New York and New Hampshire were
quarreling, sometimes physically, over the possession of lands, and the Regulators in the
Carolinas were just beginning to take matters into their own hands. But in the cities, too,
the opposition to the Crown seemed to subside as many of the more moderate Patriots
had grown both alarmed and disgusted with the unrestrained power of the city mobs.
John Adams planned to retire on his Braintree farm in Massachusetts, saying that “I shall
certainly become more cautious and mind my own business.” John Hancock, remote and
elegant in his Beacon Hill mansion, was suddenly becoming noticeably cool to Samuel
Adams. In Philadelphia, John Dickinson had grown more cautious as well, and no
further Farmer's Letters came from his pen. And in Maryland, Daniel Dulaney,
prominent lawyer-landowner, who had written the famous “Rights of the Inhabitants of
Maryland,” had second thoughts about the events of the past few years, and from that
time on became a supporter of the Royalist cause.
Samuel Adams considered this a very dangerous state of affairs. “It is to be feared
that the people will be so accustomed to bondage as to forget they were ever free,” he
wrote, and on another occasion: “Every day strengthens our opponents and weakens us.”
Adams was troubled over another development as well; for months now he had been
unable to communicate rationally with James Otis, who was daily becoming more
overwrought, and now professed a sudden reverence for England and a newfound respect
for Parliament that was becoming an acute embarrassment for all Patriots. With the
passing months, Otis' behavior became ever more bizarre. At night he broke windows in
the town hall, and by day he stood at his own window, firing a gun into the air. At last
James Otis was bound hand and foot and trundled into a cart. His family drove him to a
farm outside Boston, where they hoped his disordered mind would find peace.
Boston radicals had not been idle in the meanwhile; they had used the relative calm
to harass their newly appointed governor. Thomas Hutchinson was a native-born New
Englander, and his appointment to the governorship had at first been well received with
general approval; most Bay colonists seem to have expected a return to the happier days
when that other native-born governor, William Shirley, had been in command.
Hutchinson was a man of integrity, always an opponent to severe British measures, but he
also had an unfailing talent for making the wrong moves and decisions in important
matters. When he moved the Massachusetts General Court to Cambridge under the
justification that this would free it from pressure by the Boston mob, he not only
antagonized the members of the assembly, but Harvard College officials as well by
commandeering their lecture rooms. Harvard students were delighted; they used the
unexpected free time to flock to hear the oratory of men like James Otis and Joseph
Warren, and in the process were indoctrinated into becoming radicals themselves. And
when that same assembly prepared to vote the governor's salary, Hutchinson replied
imperiously that there was no need; the King had already taken care of that. Samuel
Adams was furious; this “dangerous innovation” was bound to expose “the province to a
despotic administration” which was no longer responsible to the colonial assembly.
Pretty soon the governor provided the radicals with far more effective ammunition.
Benjamin Franklin, in London as a colonial agent, had gotten hold of several letters that
Hutchinson and others had written to English officials. In one of these letters, the
Massachusetts governor had declared that “there must be a diminution of what are called
English liberties” in Massachusetts if the Empire was to survive. Franklin had sent these
letters to friends in the Bay Colony, asking that they be read but not copied. He must
have known that he was asking the impossible; not only were the letters read to the
Massachusetts legislature, but it was agreed that the Committee of Correspondence would
expose the governor's subversive ideas to the entire country.
Despite Franklin's request, the letters were soon published and went on sale to the
public. John Hancock swore that he had received copies of the letters from someone else,
who had passed him this second set right out on Boston Common, without the stipulation
to keep them secret. No one was fooled, least of all Franklin. If the letters revealed
nothing that Hutchinson had not been saying publicly, and repeatedly, for the past few
years, somehow his statements appeared far more sinister in private letters, and
Hutchinson was burned in effigy as far away as Philadelphia. The Massachusetts General
Court was already demanding that Hutchinson and his lieutenant governor, Andrew
Oliver, be removed from their posts, and many Bostonians once more expressed regret
that neither man any longer had a house to be destroyed. Even John Adams denounced
the governor as “a vile serpent.” In arguing for any abridgement of English liberties in
America, Adams wrote, Hutchinson must surely be mad. His colleague, Josiah Quincy,
despite his cooperating in the defense of the British soldiers in the Boston Massacre trial,
now spoke like a true Patriot. He called Governor Hutchinson “the man against whom
the blood of our slaughtered brethren cries from the ground.”
Yet in no time at all, New Englanders found a still more explosive issue than the
foibles of their hapless governor. For several months in early 1772, a British revenue
cutter, the H.M.S. Gaspee, commanded by a British naval officer, had been operating
with varied success around Narragansett Bay, an area particularly favored by smugglers
because it had seldom been bothered by enforcement officials. But even her limited
successes had been enough to make the Gaspee most unpopular with Rhode Islanders.
Then, in June, a colonial ship named the Hannah, loaded with contraband merchandise,
was sighted by the Gaspee. A 25- mile chase ensued, which ended only when the Gaspee
finally ran aground on the coast of Rhode Island. The Hannah continued her interrupted
voyage, certain to deliver her illegal cargo and bring substantial profits to whoever had
invested in the enterprise.
Had common sense prevailed, matters might well have ended at this point. But New
England's seamen had abandoned common sense long ago; all they could now think of
was to strike a blow against the hated ship that had tried to enforce the law of the land,
and which now lay helplessly at their coast. On the evening of June 6, eight longboats
led by Captain Abraham Whipple approached the stranded vessel; as they got within
sixty yards of their target, the sentinel aboard called out “Who goes there?” and Captain
Whipple shouted back, “I am the sheriff of the county of Kent, God damn you! I have got
a warrant to apprehend you, God damn you! So, surrender, God damn you!” Before
Captain Whipple had finished his cursing, one of his men had fired and wounded the
Gaspee's commander, and in less than a minute the challenge was over as the colonists
boarded and captured the British gunboat without a fight. They took the British seamen
to Pawtuxet and turned them loose, but they burned the stranded Gaspee at the water's
edge.
An attack on a naval vessel has always been a serious offense, and the British
government made serious efforts to arrest the culprits and have them shipped to England
for trial. A Commission of Inquiry sat for 17 days in early 1773, while Samuel Adams
and the Committee of Correspondence made the most of every session. The New
England patriots correctly suspected that if any of these people could be taken to London
and be hanged, they themselves might one day suffer the same fate, and Adams saw to it
that all the colonies were told about this new menace. After all, no principle of English
liberties was more sacred than a man's right to trial by a jury of his peers. But they need
not have feared, in any case, for the commission was unable to find anyone in all Rhode
Island who knew anything at all about the burning of the Gaspee, and they finally gave
up in total frustration. As serious an incident as this was, British sentiment was still
heavy enough in favor of conciliation that even the loss of a gunboat was now allowed to
go unpunished.
But once again, an incident had been allowed to work its damage in America.
Adams' revolutionary machinery received a strong response from Virginia, where the
assembly now named a Committee of Correspondence of its own; they appointed Patrick
Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee to keep in touch with the other
colonies and raise alarm whenever and wherever tyranny showed itself. The idea caught
on, and soon there were similar committees in twelve colonies. This was far more than
even the ambitious Sam Adams could have hoped for, but even this extensive machinery
might yet have broken down for lack of fuel had not the North ministry come to its
rescue. Before long, the colonial Committees of Correspondence were running under full
steam and would never stop again.
***
For more than a year after the Gaspee affair, it appeared as if things had returned to
normal once again. The British government passed no new laws and regulations relating
to America during this time, no mobs roamed the streets of Boston, no effigies were
burned anywhere, no inflammatory pamphlets and newspaper articles came off American
presses.
Patriot leaders in all the colonies knew very well that this was a dangerously
deceptive peace. British policy toward America remained substantially the same, and if
there had been no further action from Parliament, it was simply a matter of temporary
indecision on how to proceed. Colonial leaders knew full well that Britons had not
understood any of the reasons behind the previous colonial opposition to Parliamentary
acts, and they also realized that it was only a matter of time before some new law would
once again stir up trouble. And so it did; in May, 1773, Parliament passed the so-called
Tea Act which gave the British East India Company a monopoly on the sale of tea to the
American colonies.
The giant British East India Company, chartered by Queen Elizabeth in 1600, had
once been one of Great Britain's largest commercial enterprises, second only to the Bank
of England. Its early voyages had resulted in huge profits to the original stockholders; it
entered into commercial treaties with native rulers, kept its own armies, made up largely
of native troops; and it carried the English flag and English prestige throughout the
Orient, gradually eliminating both the Portuguese and the Dutch in celebrated battles,
draining millions upon millions of pounds from the Indian continent alone. Inevitably,
there were serious problems as ruthless officials plundered both the company and its
territories, accumulating huge personal fortunes in the process, until the company was
forced several times into reorganization. Still, so many of the East India Company's
officials spent all their energies in making themselves rich rather than attending to
business, that the company remained constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. By 1773,
the situation had become critical; after nearly 175 years of operation, financial collapse
seemed imminent. There was no cash, the company's credit was nearly exhausted, and
bills went unpaid, while all along 17 million pounds of tea piled up in its warehouses at
the Thames River. Company stock fell from £280 to £160 and then to £60. It was at this
juncture that the British government stepped in to preserve the prestigious East India
Company; one of the solutions was to help it sell that enormous stockpile of tea.
Part of the company's problems were blamed on the American colonies' refusal to
buy British tea after it had been taxed under the Townshend Acts. That was not quite
true, for the colonies had imported several million pounds of tea since 1768, and
continued to do so even after the threepence duty had been retained with the repeal of the
Townshend Acts. John Hancock's company alone had imported well over a million
pounds. Tea had remained so lucrative a business even in Boston, that Thomas
Hutchinson had secretly invested all his ready capital of £4,000 in East India Company
stock. He also estimated that Americans bought 6,500,000 pounds of British tea each
year, though London merchants knew better. The true figure was less than half that
amount - the rest of America's tea was being smuggled in, much of it from Dutch sources.
But now the salvation of the once mighty East India Company seemed to depend on
recapturing the entire colonial market by driving out the smugglers. Company directors
were convinced that if the government were to repeal the threepence duty, smuggling in
the colonies would no longer be profitable, and Americans would happily buy East India
Company tea.
But Lord North refused to consider such requests. At no time was he willing to
relinquish Parliamentary sovereignty over the colonies, and he considered taxation to be
the most important element of that sovereignty. He was convinced that it would be
enough to give Americans cheap tea, and he confidently expected that if the price was
low enough they would buy it regardless of any taxes involved. Thus the prime minister
hoped to handle the entire problem in a manner that would please everyone, and in May
Parliament enacted his Tea Act of 1773. The threepence tax on all tea imported into the
colonies was retained, but the government advanced the East India Company huge loans
and withdrew all import duties into England, while at the same time the company was
given permission to export its tea directly to America, without putting it up for public sale
in England. By thus eliminating the middlemen, the company would be able to sell tea in
the colonies cheaper than in England; in fact, the price was now so low that even the
smugglers could no longer compete. There was every reason to believe, as did Lord
North, that this cheap tea would indeed “overcome all the Patriotism of Americans.”
It was difficult to make much of an argument against the government's efforts to
undercut smugglers, but the American Patriots managed to do just that. They had all
summer to work on it, writing articles against the illegal monopoly “given that great
chartered company,” and to write poems about the “pestilential herb . . . infused with
bane by North's insidious hand.” The East India Company was now pictured as the
merciless exploiter of India, out to seek new worlds to conquer. But, “Thank God,” said
John Dickinson, “we are not sepoys, nor Marattas, but British subjects,” and he urged
the night watchman to call out in their rounds, “Beware of the East India Company!”
But this time, Americans would have been alarmed enough on their own, even without
Patriot rhetoric. Most men realized that if the East India Company were allowed to take
this approach to colonial commerce, other British companies might well adopt similar
methods. Before long, colonial trade would all but disappear and Americans would be
reduced to fur trappers and lumberjacks. John Hancock later declared that if the Tea Act
had been permitted to go into effect, “we soon should have found our trade in the hands
of foreigners,” - significantly, he meant Englishmen - “ . . . nor would it have been
strange if, in a few years, a company in London should have purchased an exclusive right
of trading in America.”
East India Company directors made matters still worse. Rather than sell their tea on
the open market, they chose a group of hand-picked merchants in each port to receive the
tea and sell it to colonial dealers; what's more, they selected safe merchants only,
meaning those who were known to have been on the British side in the past, or at least
those who were untainted by association with the Sons of Liberty. Once again, Thomas
Hutchinson in Massachusetts stumbled badly; while his brother-in-law had already been
one of the Stamp officials, his own two sons were now named official tea merchants for
the East India Company. The governor, moreover, swore publicly - and falsely - that he
had had no hand in this deal. But everywhere along the Atlantic coast, such
appointments were met by the now-familiar reaction - as soon as the appointees became
known, delegations of Sons of Liberty called upon them, persuading them to resign.
Memories of the woes of the Stamp Act officials usually produced eager and immediate
compliance.
By September the East India Company was ready to ship the first 500,000 pounds of
tea to its select group of merchants in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston,
and in each of these ports the Sons of Liberty prepared themselves for the proper
reception. When the first ship reached Boston in late November, an impressive assembly
of Sons appeared at the docks and prevented the captain from unloading his cargo;
meanwhile two more ships arrived, and all three captains finally agreed to leave without
unloading the tea. But Governor Hutchinson, always the righteous servant of the people,
was determined not to let the matter slide. He refused to grant clearance papers to the
ships, whose captains had no choice but to stay where they were, unable to do anything
but wait helplessly for the catastrophe to fall over them.
Hutchinson's stubbornness was an open invitation to the Sons of Liberty, who never
needed to be invited twice. Still smarting from the criticism that “Bostonians were better
at resolving what to do than doing what they resolved,” the Sons set out to prove
otherwise. On the evening of December 16, Samuel Adams summoned a mass meeting
at the Old South Meeting House and then sent a message to Governor Hutchinson,
demanding that he order the ships to take the tea back to England. The governor, of
course, refused, and Adams declared dramatically that “this meeting can do nothing
further to save the country.” Within minutes, a mob, thinly disguised as Mohawk
Indians and black-faced dock workers, rushed down to the waterfront, chanting “Boston
harbor a teapot tonight!” And John Hancock called above the tumult, “Let every man do
what is right in his own eyes!” While hundreds of people cheered from the dockside, the
mob boarded the ships and flung 342 chests of tea into Boston Bay - altogether 45 tons,
valued in excess of £10,000. Franklin's winds had just turned into a full-fledged
hurricane.
The news of Boston's action swept through the colonies like a wildfire, and
everywhere the local Sons of Liberty vowed to stand with their colleagues in
Massachusetts, whatever the consequences, and they backed it up with action. Only a
few days later, on December 25, another ship reached Philadelphia with 697 chests of tea,
but a crowd of several thousand people forced her to turn back. On April 22, 1774, a
New York mob boarded another East India Company ship and followed Boston's
example by destroying her entire cargo; similar incidents occurred at Annapolis,
Maryland and other ports throughout the year. Only Charlestonians took a more peaceful
approach; they allowed the tea to be landed, but then kept it locked up under guard for
more than three years.
Throughout the colonies, Tories outraged, and many of those who had previously
been undecided no longer were. Trying to calm their fears and outrage, the Patriots did
their best to put a light-hearted face on the event; despite the fact that more than £10,000
in private property had been destroyed, Sons of Liberty now called it a party. It was Sam
Adams at his best; first had come the harrowing phrase “the Boston Massacre,” and now
there was the cozy “Boston Tea Party.” No one was fooled, especially not Thomas
Hutchinson; no matter what the label, the governor regarded the entire affair as just one
more riot.
Lord North was astonished when the news from America finally reached London in
late January, 1774. He had given the colonists “a relief instead of an oppression,” and of
all mankind only “New England fanatics” would have rebelled against it. Now the
dispute was no longer over taxation, he said, but over the issue whether Great Britain
held any authority at all over these “haughty American republicans.” George III was
less charitable; he wrote angrily to his Prime Minister: “The dye is now cast. The
colonies must either submit or triumph . . . We must master them or totally leave them to
themselves and treat them as Aliens.” And for once, both Parliament and public opinion
agreed with their king; the Tea Party had silenced almost the last friend of America in
England. George Grenville had died four years earlier, but his dire warnings were now
on everyone's mind. Even Benjamin Franklin termed it an act of violent injustice and
recommended that the town of Boston immediately reimburse the shipowners. Samuel
Adams' reaction was as expected; “Franklin may be a good philosopher,” he said, “but
he is a bungling politician.”
Yet the Boston Tea Party was exactly the kind of destructive, defiant challenge to
authority that no government could afford to ignore. Had Great Britain allowed this
challenge to go unanswered, it would have admitted to the world that it no longer held
any authority over its own colonies. At this point nearly everyone in England was
therefore agreed: This latest incident could not be ignored; something, anything, would
have to be done, though no one seemed to know how to go about it. General Gage, home
in England on leave, reported to the king that a military solution was not the answer.
“While we're lambs,” he told his Sovereign, the colonists, once aroused, “will be lions.”
General Gage recommended four regiments be sent to Boston to preserve order. But
General Gage's advice was ignored; only one man - Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the
Admiralty - rejected the idea of a punitive action 3,000 miles away from home, but the
rest of the cabinet was unanimous. There would be retaliation this time. Boston's harbor
would be closed - “four of five frigates will do the business,” proclaimed Lord North and only when repentant Americans paid for the lost tea (worth £15,000, said Lord
North) would this punishment be eased. It would all be over in a matter of a few weeks,
added the Prime Minister, and, chastised by “this searing example,” all the other colonies
would suppress their contentious members, and the troubles would come to an end.
What none of the previous incidents - not the riots, not the boycotts, not even the
burning of a revenue cutter - had been able to accomplish, the destruction of East Indian
Company tea had done: it goaded the British government into a showdown with her own
colonies - which, of course, was exactly what Sam Adams and the Sons of Liberty
everywhere had been trying to accomplish for several years.
***
All during these times of turmoil and upheavals, a 14-year old apprentice boy sat at
his desk on the island of St. Croix in the West Indies, praying to be delivered from the
prospect of life as a merchant. Alexander Hamilton was a small and slender boy with no
expectations of the glory he so craved. His beautiful mother Rachel had been charged
with adultery and abandoned by her husband at a young age; after a few years, while
Rachel was still in her early twenties, she met James Hamilton, the handsome son of a
Scottish laird, who had come to make his fortune on the island. Hamilton lived with
Rachel long enough to give her two sons and fritter away her small inheritance. He, too,
finally drifted away, but Rachel remained an attractive and popular woman despite her
fatherless children. She opened a small store, and Alexander helped her run it until her
death five year later. Rachel's family did what they could for the boys, and Alexander
was eventually apprenticed to a thriving island merchant.
At school, Alexander had enjoyed a brief exposure to the classics. He spoke French
well and went regularly to a Jewish school mistress who taught him Hebrew. He wanted
to become a great captain of war, but it seemed that he would be stuck forever behind a
desk. In a letter to a friend who had gone to New York to study medicine, the teen-aged
Alexander poured out his frustrations: “. . . I condemn the groveling condition of a clerk,
or the like, to which the future condemns me and would willingly risk my life, though not
my character, to exalt my station.” Almost as an afterthought, he added: “I shall
conclude by saying, I wish there was a war.”
Alexander Hamilton could not have known it, but he would soon get the chance to
fulfill all his dreams. He would even get the chance to risk his life, for within a few
months’ time events in Boston had taken another giant step toward that war for which
young Alexander so fervently wished.
***
Beginning in the spring of 1774, the British government set out to exert its authority
over the colonies once and for all, and Parliament began by enacting a series of measures,
collectively known as the Coercive Acts; indignant Patriots promptly renamed them the
Intolerable Acts.
The first of these measures, the Boston Port Act, virtually blockaded the entire city
and its harbor against all trade and commerce until “satisfactions” were made both for
the tea and for losses sustained by royal officials during the Boston riots. The blockade
would not be lifted until the king decided “that peace and obedience to the laws” of
Great Britain had been restored. George III had demanded that Massachusetts Bay, and
especially Boston, be made an example to the other colonies. The Bay Colony was an
old offender almost from the day it had been chartered; and ever since the British
government had begun to try its revenue raising efforts, Massachusetts, under the
leadership of men like Sam and John Adams, John Hancock, James Otis and Joseph
Warren, had stirred up the other colonies as well. Samuel Adams had published the
Circular Letters and had organized the first Committee of Correspondence. It was Boston
that had initiated the chief resistance to the Stamp Act, and it was Boston that had been
the scene of the Massacre and the Tea Party. To George III, the capital city of the Bay
Colony was the very center of Great Britain's troubles in America; the sooner Boston
could be brought under control, the faster this whole annoying business would be ended.
To enforce the new act, a squadron of the Royal Navy was dispatched along with
two regiments of British regulars -soon increased to five regiments - to occupy the city
and blockade the harbor. All customs officials were removed to Salem, and the port of
Boston was sealed to sea traffic of any kind. Only boats carrying fuel or supplies for the
town would be admitted, and even those would have to stop for inspection farther up the
coast at Marblehead. Boston as a great port and political center would be destroyed. At
the same time General Gage returned to Boston, replacing Thomas Hutchinson, and
assuming control over all Massachusetts as Vice-Admiral, Captain-General and
Governor in Chief of the colony.
The London merchants who traded with Boston remained convinced that Americans
would pay for the ruined tea. A committee even met with Lord North to guarantee the
East India Company £16,000 - far above the tea's value - if Lord North would only give
them six months to negotiate with Boston before he closed the port. North asked whether
they would also answer for Boston's behavior once more tea was shipped there. The
merchants knew better than to agree to that; on March 7, in fact, another load of tea had
already arrived in Boston and once more had been dumped almost casually into the sea.
Lord North advised the merchants to return to their counting houses and leave politics to
him.
News of the Port Act reached Boston by mid-May, and within days the city's
Committee of Correspondence had gone into action. Couriers set out on horseback in all
directions, carrying copies of the act and a new Circular Letter. Messages to the key men
in such vital cities as New York and Philadelphia were carried by Paul Revere. Over a
period of five days he contacted Hartford, New Haven, and towns at the shore of Long
Island Sound into Manhattan Island. All along the way he passed out handbills marked
with skulls and crossbones, with mourning wreaths and with Phrygian liberty caps.
In both New York and Philadelphia, Revere found Sons of Liberty in tense meetings,
for the news had already arrived by ship ahead of him. When he returned to Boston
twelve days later, he was therefore able to report to his colleagues that New York had put
on solemn record it’s “detestation of the execrable Port Bill” and had promised its full
support to Boston. Philadelphia, too, had acted with un-Quakerlike firmness and had
voted to close ranks with Boston to “the last extremity.”
More encouraging news came in as the couriers went farther south. Prompted by
Thomas Jefferson and the local Committee of Correspondence, Virginia's House of
Burgesses resolved on May 24 that the military occupation of Boston constituted a
“hostile invasion,” and designated June 1, when the Port Act would go into effect, as a
“day of fasting, humiliation and prayer,” in order to ask God's help “for averting the
heavy calamity which threatens destruction to our civil rights . . .” Governor Dunmore
promptly dissolved this antagonistic assembly, but the Burgesses simply reconvened at
Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg and further resolved that “an attack made on one of our
sister Colonies, to compel submission to arbitrary taxes, is an attack made on all British
America.” They instructed their Committee of Correspondence to exchange views with
similar committees in other colonies on the possibility of summoning a new congress to
discuss further unified action.
June 1 did indeed become the solemn day the Virginia assembly had predicted.
Throughout British America shops closed, flags were lowered to half-staff, church bells
pealed and parsons delivered moving sermons on the plight of beleaguered Boston. The
same city that had only recently been condemned by some Americans for its mob
violence now became an “innocent, a virtuous, a religious and loyal people, ever
remarkable for their love of order, peace and good government.” But the colonies did
more than record their support for Boston. The Carolinas opened a subscription list and
collected money and provisions worth £2,700 to send to the blockaded city. Virginia sent
8,600 bushels of corn and wheat and several hundred barrels of flour. New York
uncompromisingly pledged a ten-year supply of food if necessary, and from the green
hills of Brooklyn trailed more than a hundred sheep along the Long Island Sound to
Massachusetts Bay. Everywhere the story was the same - Philadelphia, Wilmington,
Hartford and scores of other cities and towns outdid each other in sending money and
supplies of all sorts for the relief of Boston. Even Quebec responded to the crisis by
sending more than a thousand bushels of wheat. Denouncing the demand for £15,000 in
restitution as “ransom,” besieged Bostonians subsisted for more than a year largely on
food and supplies shipped to them by sympathizers from Georgia to Canada. At the very
moment when they were supposedly being blockaded into submission, Bostonians lived
better than ever.
But the ease with which the Port Act had passed had already emboldened the North
ministry to propose still further changes in Massachusetts. In the midst of the uproar over
the first act came news that Parliament had passed a second Coercive measure, the
Administration of Justice Act, which protected soldiers, magistrates and customs officials
who took part in suppressing riots and disturbances, from trial by prejudiced colonial
juries. Whenever a fair trial could not be guaranteed in the colonies, it might now be
transferred to England. In view of the well-demonstrated hostility of the colonial courts
toward Crown officials, this act appeared reasonable enough, but to New Englanders the
verdict of British courts in such cases seemed an equally foregone conclusion. They
considered the act as giving a blank check of violence to officials without any fear of
consequences. “Every villain who ravishes our wives and deflowers our daughters,” one
Patriot remarked with earthy eloquence, “can evade punishment by being tried in Britain,
where no evidence can pursue him.'“
Yet another act arrived in America at the same time, and this one sent a roar of
indignation throughout the colonies. The Massachusetts Government Act was aimed at
“better regulating the Government of Massachusetts Bay and purging their constitution
of all its crudity,” - which actually amounted to a revocation of the Massachusetts
Charter of 1691, taking away all but a token remnant of self-government in the colony.
By its very title, this act again struck only at Massachusetts and, by implication,
seemed to assure the other colonies that they had nothing to worry about - so long, that is,
as they continued to be well-behaved and orderly. In Massachusetts the governor's
council, chosen in part by the elected lower house, was now to be appointed by the
Crown and serve during the King's pleasure. And step by step the act tightened the
screws. The attorney general and all judges were from now on to be appointable and
removable by the governor, acting on royal orders. Even sheriffs and justices of the
peace became virtual Crown appointees, depending on royal pleasure for their tenure of
office. Juries throughout the colony were now to be chosen by the Crown-appointed
sheriffs. And then a final blow: town meetings, that favorite New England device for
debating colonial rights and appointing the Committees of Correspondence, were
virtually abolished, to be convened only if the governor gave written consent. Even in
cases where such meetings were permitted, the agenda had to be approved by the
governor in advance, and no other business could be discussed.
Then, at the end of June, Parliament passed the Quebec Act. Though that piece of
legislation was aimed at an entirely different problem, the colonists simply lumped it in
with the Intolerable Acts. The Quebec Act extended the boundaries of Canada as far
south as the Ohio River, including great stretches of Western lands that had already been
claimed by the British colonies. Worse yet, it guaranteed the French Canadians all their
personal rights and customs, including the protection of the Roman Catholic faith. The
British government should have been commended for realizing that it could never make
Protestant Englishmen out of French Canadians, but Samuel Adams had found yet
another wedge. For years he had been conducting a whispering campaign that George
III, like James II, tended toward “popery” - now the Catholic issue reached a point where
one newspaper had the Pope inviting Lord North to Rome to “reward his good service
done the Catholic faith, by conferring on him some dignified office in the Romish
Church.”
But Great Britain was not yet satisfied. Also in June came the Quartering Act,
revising the earlier statute and easing the lot for the garrisoned redcoats in Boston who
had been forced to sleep on Boston Commons. The new act now permitted the military
to quarter the troops in warehouses and churches, in private homes, if necessary, to make
certain the soldiers were available at the scene of any trouble spot.
The Coercive Acts had become an outright assertion of British power, and they had
placed all the colonies in the same position as that occupied by Britain after the Boston
Tea Party - either the colonies now meekly surrendered, admitting that they possessed no
inherent rights of their own, or they must take an unequivocal stand in self-defense. All
other questions of taxation, of customs duties and the like, now faded into the background
until only one remained: Who would rule in America? Who would have the final say?
Back in May, the Virginia Burgesses had made public a resolution, stating that “A
Congress should be appointed . . . from all the Colonies to concert a general and uniform
plan for the defense and preservation of our common rights . . .” The resolution met with
immediate response by all the colonies except Georgia. Early in September, 1774,
delegates from all British America were converging on Philadelphia to that unity of
action which Franklin had considered impossible only fourteen years earlier. They were
coming to meet in the First Continental Congress.
***
Some forty delegates to the First Continental Congress arrived in Philadelphia during
the first days of September, 1774, nearly all of them men of long experience, who had
been involved in their colonies' political affairs for a decade or more, and many of whom
had already attended the Stamp Act Congress as well. There was Stephen Hopkins of
Rhode Island, a veteran of that first colonial congress in Albany twenty years earlier, and
John Sullivan, a militia officer from New Hampshire. From Massachusetts came John
and Sam Adams, along with Thomas Cushing, a former member of the Massachusetts
General Court, now a member of the Boston Committee of Correspondence, and Robert
Treat Paine, who had been the colony's prosecutor of the soldiers charged with the
Boston Massacre. Connecticut had sent Roger Sherman, a moderate-minded lawyer and
member of the assembly, and from New York came John Jay, attorney-at-law, member of
one of that colony's most prominent families, descended from old Huguenot and patrician
Dutch settlers. From Maryland came radical Matthew Tilghman, experienced opponent
of British rule ever since the Stamp Act and already independence-minded. Virginia's
aristocratic Peyton Randolph and George Washington arrived together with those Old
Dominion firebrands, Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry. The Farmer John
Dickinson and his colleague Joseph Galloway represented the Pennsylvania colony along
with their far more radical fellow Pennsylvanian Charles Thomson, honorary member of
the Delaware Indian tribe, and whom John Adams considered “the Sam Adams of
Philadelphia.” South Carolina had sent the Rutledges, Christopher Gadsden, Thomas
Lynch and Henry Middleton, and Delaware Ceasar Rodney and George Read.
The city of Philadelphia, British America's largest metropolitan center, was an
impressive place of more than 30,000 inhabitants, and a new and startling experience to
many of these delegates, many of whom had never been outside their provinces' borders.
Men from rural Connecticut and the backcountry South wrote home in amazement of the
wonders of this city, where Quakers and Anglicans, Presbyterians and
Congregationalists, Mennonites, Lutherans, Catholics, Dunkards, and who knew what, all
seemed to live together, work together, and follow their callings in peace and prosperity.
The City of Brotherly Love seemed a living and breathing example of what could
become, what might be.
For many of these men it was also the first time they had ever met with the others,
whom they had until then known in name only, and new acquaintances and friendships
were begun during those days that would in many cases last a lifetime. Many of these
men met at Philadelphia's City Tavern, which had opened only a few months earlier, but
had already the reputation of being the best public house in all America, as good as
anything London had to offer, and City Tavern quickly became the unofficial
headquarters of many of the delegates. Many of the representatives were also getting
their first impressions of the Bostonians who had been in everyone's thoughts for the past
few years; some of the wealthier and more experienced members quickly saw through
Samuel Adams' new finery and recognized him as a dangerous man with nothing to lose.
Dr. Rush of Philadelphia shared a coach with John Adams, and like so many in the Bay
Colony, he, too, found him cold and reserved. Joseph Galloway, also from Philadelphia
and a most reluctant dissident, was dubious about the true aims of all the Bostonians, who
tried to appear as moderates but who most certainly were not.
Thomas Lynch of South Carolina invited the entire Massachusetts delegation to dine
with him at his lodgings; at one point during dinner, Lynch seemed overly enthusiastic
over a brief speech that Colonel George Washington had made before the Virginia
convention. When John Adams asked, “Who is Colonel Washington and what was his
speech?” Lynch explained that Washington had become famous in Virginia circles
during the French and Indian War. As for his speech, the Virginians had been arguing
over what to do if the Bostonians actually began to fight the British. As the arguments
raged, Washington was supposed to have declared that “I will raise a thousand men,
subsist them at my own expense and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston.”
Thomas Lynch thought it was the most eloquent speech he had ever heard.
It was this sort of anecdote - embellished or even totally fabricated, as Lynch's story
had been - that had already begun to make celebrities out of certain delegates even before
the first session got under way. While John Adams had been brooding for weeks over the
lack of outstanding leaders in colonial America - “We have not men fit for the times,” he
had complained in his diary, “we are deficient in genius, in education, in travel, in
fortune - in everything.” the assembly in Philadelphia soon proved otherwise. Patrick
Henry's reputation had already preceded him, and Peyton Randolph, Thomas Jefferson's
cousin, was making a most favorable impression on everyone who met him. Christopher
Gadsden and Charles Thomson and a dozen others were all beginning to make names for
themselves far beyond the borders of their own provinces. And if a man had truly made
himself heard, he was now likely to be introduced as the Samuel Adams of his colony.
Joseph Galloway had hoped that this Congress would accept Pennsylvania's offer of
the spacious State House - the same building that was later renamed Independence Hall but the delegates decided on Carpenters' Hall, the seat of the powerful Carpenters' Guild.
It probably seemed wiser not to associate this particular Congress with any one colonial
government; besides, by moving it into a tradesmen's hall it was felt that this would prove
“highly agreeable to the mechanics and citizens in general.”
Peyton Randolph of Virginia, a man of “majestic deportment” who commanded
“respect and esteem by his very aspect,” was chosen chairman, and it was agreed to call
the assembly Congress and the chairman President. Charles Thomson of Pennsylvania
was elected Secretary, a position he would hold for the next fourteen years. There were
countless other preliminaries to settle; instructions from each colonial government were
read, and there was the matter of representation. How many votes should each
government have? Should that decision be based on size, on population, on property
values? In the midst of this heated discussion, Patrick Henry rose and shouted: “Let
freemen be represented by members alone . . . The distinctions between Virginians,
Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but
an American!” At last a measure proposed by 29-year old John Jay of New York was
approved, giving one vote to each colony. The time had arrived to get down to business.
The Continental Congress faced a delicate task. Its very purpose had been
announced as a meeting “to consult on the present state of the colonies . . . and to
deliberate and determine upon wise and proper measure . . . for the recovery and
establishment of their just rights and liberties . . . and the restoration of union and
harmony between Great Britain and the colonies, most ardently desired by all good
men.” Few Americans were as yet thinking of a split from the British Empire; certainly
most of the delegates hoped sincerely to find a way to conciliation with the mother
country. This Congress had assembled mainly to do something about the Coercive Acts,
but above all to find a solution to the present deadlock.
But the delegates had arrived with all shades of opinions and prejudices. There were
the moderates, the conservatives, who hoped to preserve the colonial rights of selfgovernment now threatened by the British acts, but who at the same time hoped to defend
the benefits of the British Empire and the protection afforded by that rule. Conservative
arguments therefore emphasized the traditional and constitutional rights of Englishmen
from Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights of 1689 - rights which neither King nor
Parliament could take away without violating the British constitution. They relied on
their colonies' charters to guarantee them such rights as Englishmen, and they regarded
petitions and public expressions of criticism as the proper way to proceed. Forceful
physical resistance to British rule was no solution to moderates; the upheavals of the past
years were as detestable to them as Britain's denial of their constitutional rights.
The radicals, on the other hand, had come to hate British regulations more than they
valued the benefits of Empire; far more than they feared the dangers of common rule. To
them the events of the past decade had amply demonstrated the many weaknesses in
conservative arguments. For one thing, not much reliance could be placed on colonial
charters if the British government could modify or even revoke such charters whenever it
felt the necessity. As for taxation, there was no longer any real distinction when British
trade laws also imposed taxes on the colonies; and the Boston Port Act had clearly
demonstrated that Parliament's power to regulate trade could become more oppressive
than its power to tax.
But even the radicals were not united. A few - Samuel Adams almost certainly
among them - probably already hoped for complete separation from Britain, but most
were content to remain within the Empire, as long as they could remain on their terms.
To achieve their goal, the radicals had developed a simple theory: the colonists were
British subjects, but they owed their allegiance not to Parliament, where they were not
even represented, but only to the King of England. This theory amounted to a claim of
dominion status for all the colonies, for the King could not rule without the cooperation
of Parliament. On his authority alone he could not regulate colonial commerce or
currency, he could not tax the colonies nor coerce them nor punish them as a means of
enforcement. With Parliament's authority eliminated, the King would have been
powerless and all Parliamentary acts would have been canceled. But if Parliament
insisted on all its assumed authority over the colonists and enforced the laws which
deprived British citizens of their rights, then they must resist - preferably by economic
pressure, but if necessary, by force. Men like John and Samuel Adams, Benjamin
Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Christopher Gadsden, Patrick Henry
and others held exactly such views in 1774. Neither was this a visionary nor impractical
view, for only four years later Lord North's ministry proposed to end the fighting and
restore imperial unity on exactly such terms.
There were innumerable other such splits and disagreements among all the
delegates. Farmers held grievances against merchants, the small landowners opposed the
great plantation men, and regional interests clashed everywhere. Through all these
disputes the members of the Continental Congress tried to walk a middle ground, hoping
to make an effective stand against the British government without encouraging the
radicalism and lawlessness that was already so evident throughout the country. Samuel
Adams began to fear that under such conditions the Congress would produce some
watered-down, meaningless document that would simply be ignored in London; and the
first proposals justified his worst fears. Joseph Galloway introduced a plan for
reorganizing colonial administration. “We must come to terms with Great Britain,”
declared Galloway, and his Plan of Union proposed to settle the problem of jurisdiction
by establishing an American Parliament parallel to the British, each to have a veto over
acts of the other in legislative matters for America. The American Parliament would
have full jurisdiction over such affairs as Indians, Western land grants, and raising money
and manpower for defense. In that way, said Galloway, “the strength of the whole
Empire may be drawn together on any emergency, the interests of both countries
advanced, and the rights and liberties of Americans secured.”
While this Plan of Union was still being discussed, a bombshell, as welcome to
Adams as the Boston Massacre, was brought into Philadelphia in the saddlebags of that
tireless express rider, Paul Revere. There had been a meeting of the towns around
Boston's Suffolk County, and on September 9 that meeting had adopted a series of
resolves drafted by Joseph Warren. The Coercive Acts were declared unconstitutional
and void, and therefore need not be obeyed; the people of Massachusetts were urged to
form a provisional government of their own to collect taxes and withhold them from the
royal authorities until the Coercive Acts had been repealed; the people were advised to
arm themselves and to form their own militia. Heavy economic sanctions against Great
Britain were recommended in terms so harsh that even Samuel Adams did not think he
could have improved on them.
These so-called Suffolk Resolves were read to the assembled Continental Congress
by Peyton Randolph and received “with great applause,” according to a jubilant Samuel
Adams. The moderates were stunned, and Joseph Galloway rose to warn that this action
amounted to a “declaration of war against Great Britain.” But the radicals had finally
gained momentum, and from that moment on Congressional action was predictable.
Galloway's Plan of Union was rejected, and after much discussion the Continental
Congress, on October 8, adopted the Suffolk Resolves without changing so much as a
single word. It then went on to say that if Britain attempted to execute the late acts of
Parliament by force, then “all America ought to support Massachusetts in their
opposition.”
Only a week later, the radicals triumphed once again when the Congress adopted a
Declaration of Rights which stated that the colonists were entitled by the law of nature,
the British constitution, and the colonial charters, to the rights of life, liberty and
property. Since the colonies were not, and could not be represented in Parliament, the
local assemblies alone possessed the right to legislate in such matters. The document
then cited a number of acts of Parliament of the past ten years which had violated that
principle and which were therefore illegal and could not be accepted. At the same time
petitions were drafted to the King, to the British colonies in North America, including the
province of Quebec, and to all the people of Great Britain - petitions in which colonial
rights and grievances were boldly stated and upheld. This Declaration, by rejecting the
authority of Parliament, had in effect placed the Continental Congress in a state of
rebellion against Great Britain.
But the Congress did not stop with mere resolutions. On October 20, it adopted the
Articles of the Continental Association, by which the colonies entered into a nonimportation, non-exportation, and non-consumption agreement. Unless Britain repealed
the Intolerable Acts, the colonies would cut off most imports from Britain by December
1, 1774; after March 1, 1775, no more tea, Madeira or port wine (all English imports)
would be consumed anywhere in America and by September 10, 1775, all exports to
Britain would be halted. In the spirit of sacrifice, deemed necessary for the success of an
effective resistance, the articles of the Association prohibited “every species of
extravagance and dissipation, especially all horse-racing, and all kinds of gaming,
cockfighting, exhibitions of shews, plays and other expensive diversions and
entertainments,” including elaborate funerals, which had already become a welldeveloped American custom. Tea and imported wines, of course, were no longer
acceptable, though the economically important rum remained a patriotic beverage.
Article 11 of the Association provided that the voters of each city, town or county
should select a committee “whose business it shall be to observe the conduct of all
persons touching the Association; and when it shall be made to appear to the satisfaction
of a majority of any such committee that any person has violated the Association, that
such majority do forthwith cause the truth of the case to be published . . . to the end that
all such foes to the rights of British America may be publicly known, and universally
condemned as enemies of American liberty; and henceforth we respectively will break off
all dealings with him or her.” Two other articles authorized the local committees to
inspect customs entries and “to seize all goods imported contrary to the Association.”
This very same Congress, called to protect American liberties, had ended up creating a
machinery for supervising the daily lives of Americans - in effect, giving the official
stamp of approval to groups like the Sons of Liberty. It was these Association articles
that finally made up the minds of many moderates. “If we must be enslaved,” wrote the
Loyalist Samuel Seabury, “let it be by a King at least, not by a parcel of upstart, lawless
committeemen.”
Few men, not even Samuel Adams, could in their wildest imagination have hoped for
such a sweeping action when they first arrived in Philadelphia. In the face of such
unanimous closing of the ranks, even the ultraconservatives were powerless. Joseph
Galloway, shaking with rage and frustration, nevertheless signed the final documents
along with the others. Six months later he refused to attend the Second Continental
Congress, and in 1778 he finally fled to England where, until his death in 1803, he
remained a loyal British subject and a spokesman for all American loyalists.
On October 24, 1774, one week after the adoption of the Articles of the Association,
the First Continental Congress adjourned; it had been agreed that unless all grievances
had been settled, there would be a second Congress, to meet again in Philadelphia on
May 20 of the following year.
Throughout the colonies, in town meetings, in general conventions and county
gatherings, the radicals now sprang into action in support of the Association Articles.
Committees were set up and began house-to-house surveys, persuading the people to join
the Association. Then followed the publication of the names of non-signers and a close
inspection of their activities. Any goods purchased in violation of the articles were
seized and burned, and the violators harassed mercilessly. Several outspoken opponents
of the Association were even tarred and feathered by their liberty-minded neighbors.
Virginia and the Carolinas closed their courts when British merchants tried to sue local
planters for debts. Everywhere it became fashionable to use American-made articles as
home industries grew by leaps and bounds, and criticism and threats pursued all who
indulged in any sort of luxury or expensive amusements. By the end of the year the rigid
enforcement of the non-importation agreement had brought British commerce to a virtual
standstill; imports from Britain to New York alone fell from £435,000 in 1774 to little
more than £1,200 for all of 1775. In time the Association committees would even
demand that merchants' ledgers and invoices be opened for inspection, and their control
of colonial shipping became more effective than that of the royal customs officers from
whose tyranny the merchants had just been liberated.
More and more moderate-minded Americans were now beginning to question their
true allegiance; many decided that the present situation was no better - if not actually far
worse - than British rule had ever been. Soon moderate came to mean anti-American,
Loyalist. One was either a Patriot, unquestioningly for the Association, for the Sons of
Liberty, for the Committees of Correspondence, or one was an anti-American Loyalisttraitor. It was all as simple as that, black or white, pick your side. It was an attitude that
would remain with Americans as a strange paradox to all their protestations of liberty, of
freedom of speech and press and assembly. The American Eagle had risen, and with a
sharp eye he would watch over the land. Again and again, in hundreds of disguises, he
would swoop down from his lofty perch of fanatical idealism to pick off those who failed
to appreciate his benevolent and protective wings. Loyalist Americans encountered him
in the shape of the Test Acts only the next year and for more than a decade thereafter.
But the Committees of Correspondence and all those numerous other committees
appointed to enforce non-importation and other boycotts did not always find easy sailing.
Their authority, after all, rested on very precarious grounds. Government, to be accepted,
must be legitimated, otherwise it is simply a matter of one neighbor trying to tell another
what to do and how to behave - in which case all kinds of awkward personal matters
enter into the picture. Moreover, the members of such committees were, for the most
part, little trained in the art of politics; they were, by and large, the most zealous and, one
fears, often the most intolerant Patriots, men who were not inclined to exercise their
uncertain authority with any tact and discretion. Indeed, it is a plain of political life that
the less legitimate the authority, the more brutal the exercise of it is apt to be. If one is
without the support of courts and magistrates, sheriffs and jailers, one is very apt to resort
to direct force and intimidation to achieve the desired ends. It was only natural, then, that
a peaceful, law-abiding German-American from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for example,
should resent being told what to do by a man named Jonathan McDougall, whom he had
never liked, who drank too much, and who now appeared clothed with the dubious
authority of an illegal body, the Continental Congress.
Many unpleasant incidents took place in all the colonies, actions that were hardly a
credit to the cause of liberty. The Committees of Correspondence and the Committees of
Safety and the Committees of Inspection and a dozen other organizations that sprang up
in every town and county throughout colonial America were all plainly illegal, even if
they derived an uncertain kind of legitimacy from the fact that their members had been
elected by other Patriots. It is thus not surprising that a reaction to amateur and illegal
government by committee set in throughout America. A very substantial number of
otherwise patriotic colonists remained indifferent to the whole business to begin with,
while many of the Tory persuasion were openly and actively opposed to it and did all
they dared to undermine the ubiquitous committees that had appropriated the prerogatives
of the Crown.
The more time that passed without an outbreak of actual warfare, the more inclined
the faint-hearted and the uncertain became to retract the heresies that their more hotheaded neighbors had hurried them into earlier. The Tories, observing this hesitation,
regained their own spirits and grew bolder in denouncing that combination of treason and
tyranny that the Patriots were trying to force on all Americans. If only armed hostility
could be prevented or delayed, the fanatic Patriot faction would sooner or later
disintegrate, its self-assumed authority eroded, its ranks split by quarrels and jealousies.
***
Even at this stage the Crown might have averted the coming disasters, but George III
had no intentions of making any sort of concessions to rebellious subjects. In September
1774, he had written to his prime minister that the “Colonies must either submit or
triumph,” and two months later he declared that since “the New England Governments
are now in a State of Rebellion, blows must decide whether they are subjects to this
country or independent.” Franklin supported a common-sense suggestion to send a royal
commission to find out just what the colonies really wanted, but George III would have
none of it; he told Lord North that sending over a commission would look as if he were
more afraid of the Continental Congress than they of him. In January, 1775, William
Pitt, now the Earl of Chatham, introduced in Parliament a bill that would have given the
colonies just about everything they asked for. The Americans, said Chatham, would
never be reconciled until the troops were withdrawn; he therefore proposed to set Boston
free, to repeal the Coercive Acts, the Quebec Act and the tea duty, and to guarantee the
sanctity of the colonial charters. Had this bill passed, there probably would not have
been a Declaration of Independence nor an American Revolution, but Chatham's proposal
was quickly and irretrievably defeated.
Time was running out quickly. Chatham warned Parliament in February that “Great
Britain and America are already in martial array, waiting for the signals to engage in a
contest in which . . . ruin and destruction must be the inevitable consequence to both.”
The Duke of Richmond had already declared that “You may spread fire, sword and
desolation, but that will not be government . . . No people can ever be made to submit to
a form of government they say they will not receive.” But these were lone voices;
Parliament followed Lord North, who talked about reconciliation but let the Coercive
Acts stand as they were. The only concession the Prime Minister would make was a
declaration that any colony which promised to raise a “proper quota for imperial
defense” would be exempt from the revenue acts. Such vague promises had little
meaning to the American subjects; it still left the ultimate power over colonial taxation to
Parliament and did nothing at all about the Coercive Acts.
Still, Lord North's ministry was looking for a way out, and in February they
attempted a secret negotiation in London with Benjamin Franklin. The ministry had long
ignored Franklin, and had even ousted him from his job as deputy postmaster-general in
America, but they were well aware of his reputation and influence in the colonies.
Through several intermediaries Franklin was approached at various social events, hinting
that if Franklin would act as mediator he “might exact any reward in the power of
government to bestow.” They even offered him several thousand pounds sterling as a
down payment. But Franklin replied only that unless the Coercive Acts were repealed
and the army withdrawn from Boston, even God Almighty could not bring about
reconciliation. At the same time, the ministry's crude approach had thoroughly disgusted
Franklin; until then he had been a moderate, working for peace between England and her
colonies, but now he returned to America and became one of the most radical of Patriots.
And Lord North seems to have decided to push the issue to a showdown; in March,
1775, he introduced yet another coercive bill which, it was hoped, would isolate New
England and make it an example to others. The New England Restraining Act now
prohibited the four colonies of that region to trade with any part of the world except with
Great Britain and Ireland. “As Americans have refused to trade with this kingdom, it is
but just that we should not suffer them to trade with any other nation,” seemed to the
Prime Minister a perfect justification for this act. But at the same time, it also denied
New England's fishermen all access to the fishing banks off Newfoundland and Nova
Scotia. To deprive Yankees of their fisheries was like ordering Virginians not to grow
any more tobacco, and that part of the act alone might well have caused serious problems
in America. But before news of the New England Restraining Act arrived, it no longer
made much difference. As late as the end of February, Joseph Warren had written from
Boston to a friend in London that “It is not yet too late to accommodate the dispute
amicably. But . . . if once General Gage should lead his troops into the country, with
designs to enforce the late Acts of Parliament, Great Britain may take her leave . . . of all
America.” By April 18, General Gage had decided to do precisely that.
***
Boston, the center of colonial resistance and the focal point of British retaliation, had
simmered under the heavy lid that had been clamped over it. All through the spring,
summer and fall of 1774, British troops in increasing numbers had poured ashore, while
the British fleet under Admiral Samuel Graves cluttered the harbor with its masts. But as
the cold weather approached, these troops could no longer camp on the Boston Common,
and officers, under the authority of the new Quartering Act, began to knock on the doors
of shops, warehouses, and even private homes, demanding lodgings for the king's troops.
Such actions, necessary as they might have been, only added to the local tensions, already
strained to the near limit.
General Gage did make an honest effort to solve at least part of this problem by
having quarters erected for many of the units. But in spite of the growing unemployment
in the beleaguered city, the general was unable to find any civilian laborers, skilled or
unskilled. Generous wages were offered, bonuses promised, but the Boston artisans
remained untempted. The Boston Committee of Correspondence permitted no lumber to
be brought into the city, and its merchants refused to sell the soldiers blankets or tools or
materials of any kind. Requests to New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island for
manpower and materials met with little more success, and when the general finally sent
to Nova Scotia, the men who did come were either soon intimidated by their Boston
colleagues or they showed a most annoying sympathy with them.
What little work was finally carried out suffered inexplicable defects and odd
accidents. Barges would sink in deep waters; wagons carrying goods and provisions
began to experience a sudden plague of broken axles or wheels that wobbled off on the
first rough road. A newly built brick wall would crumble after having been exposed to a
little shower. Men would arrive from the back country, supplied with amazing amounts
of money; they bought drinks for off-duty troops and did their best to persuade them to
desert or at least sell their muskets and bayonets.
And all the while the city continued to bulge with the ever-increasing population,
people crammed together without goals or purpose. Hundreds, possibly thousands of
men had been thrown out of work by the Port Act, and many of these now lounged along
Lynn and Ship Streets, glowering sullenly at the empty wharves that had once pumped
life and wealth into their city. Refugees, too, had begun to appear in increasing numbers
- prominent men and their families came alongside mechanics and farmers, all of whom
had decided that the committees of the Association were attempting to impose a regime
under which they were unwilling to live. Families everywhere, rich and poor, had begun
to split apart over the troublesome issues, with the Tories, the Loyalist members, now
flocking to the shelter of the king's troops in Boston.
Throughout these trying days and weeks and months, General Gage had remained a
surprisingly even-tempered and tolerant governor-general, who did his duty as he saw it,
careful to be fair at every turn. Gage, who was married to an American-born woman, had
tried everything in his power to diffuse the difficult situation; he could easily have
imposed martial law on Boston, yet he had done nothing of the sort. Instead, he had
permitted the town's residents almost complete freedom. He had made no moves to
censor or suppress the local press, though almost daily it was full of attacks on the
government he represented or even against his own person. He allowed the Sons of
Liberty and other committees to come and go as they pleased, and men like Dr. Joseph
Warren, William Molineux, and Paul Revere continued to hold their meetings, prepare
their pamphlets, and keep the presses hot. And while the British troops held Boston
itself, Massachusetts outside the city had in effect become a free state, governed by a
provincial Congress ever since the Suffolk Resolves. Though Gage had tried to prevent
this legislature from meeting, they had assembled first at Salem, and later at Cambridge
and Concord. They had appointed a Committee of Safety, begun to collect powder and
military stores, and generally assumed governmental powers outside the Boston city
limits. And on every village green of the outlying towns, provincial militiamen drilled
daily and collected ammunition and supplies in preparation for a war everyone knew
would come.
General Gage had thus become locked into a truly explosive situation; he recognized
that the day of reckoning was not far off, and had already written home repeatedly,
asking for reinforcements and supplies. British policy toward the colonies, he declared,
must be to “lop them off as a rotten limb from the empire, and leave them to themselves,
or take effectual means to reduce them to lawfull authority.” It had to be one or the
other; patience and leniency would not work, as had already been shown on several
occasions. And General Gage was convinced that a showdown with the colonies, if it
actually came to that, would be a desperate affair; his small army of 4,000 was certainly
not enough to put down any determined rebellion, and he had therefore tried to avoid any
open breach until he was better prepared. Meanwhile, like a good diplomat, he had tried
to keep the situation fluid, always leaving room for negotiations, writing home again and
again for reinforcements. “If force is to be used at length, it must be a considerable
one,” he argued, “for to begin with small numbers will encourage resistance, and not
terrify; and will in the end cost more blood and treasure.”
In the midst of this tense situation, Lord Dartmouth, the British Secretary of War,
urged Gage to go out and “arrest and imprison the principal actors and abettors in the
Provincial Congress . . .” - specifically men like John Hancock, Samuel Adams and
Joseph Warren. Dartmouth also made it clear that he did not consider “any efforts of the
people” of Massachusetts “very formidable.” General Gage was not so sure about that,
for informants among the colonial Loyalists, as well as several expeditions into the
interior during the past weeks had given him a far different picture. The Provincial
Congress of Massachusetts had appointed John Hancock to head the Committee of Safety
and had given him the power to call out the entire colonial militia whenever such an
appeal seemed necessary. They had also formed special units within the militia groups the so-called Minutemen, men who could be counted on to answer such calls, armed, on a
minute's notice.
The Sons of Liberty in Massachusetts were convinced that with the first hostile,
offensive act by the British soldiers, the colonies would rise as a man and drive the
intruders into the sea. They assured themselves that the redcoats were more notable for
lechery than bravery; their officers were effeminate fops, interested in balls and parties
rather than in fighting. Altogether they were “more like the frogeaters of France, than
the hale, lusty Englishmen nurtured by beef . . .” Those colonials who had fought beside
British soldiers in the French and Indian War came forward with reassuring tales of
ineptness, cowardice, and stupidity, all adding up to the fact that the English “knew not
how to fight.”
The British, in turn, were, if anything, even more contemptuous of the colonists than
the colonists were of them. Their experience in the French and Indian War was that the
colonists were poorly trained and unreliable. It was common knowledge, they declared,
that the New Englanders would not fight without large quantities of rum. At the first
volley from trained British soldiers, the New Englanders and the Virginians, who
apparently were little better, would run for cover to those “extensive woods which they
are too lazy or feeble to cut down.”
The British attitude was colored by the old class prejudices that held, in effect, that
courage was a consequence of good breeding. The common people, not only of England,
but of all nations, were for the most part cloddish and cowardly - though with firm
discipline and thorough training, and led by their betters, they could usually be counted
on to perform decently. But the lower classes - meaning the colonists - untrained and led
by officers very little better than themselves, were hardly to be taken seriously. “I am
satisfied,” wrote Major Pitcairn, an officer in the Royal Marines stationed in Boston,
“that one active campaign, a smart action, and burning two or three of their towns, will
set everything to rights.” Another British officer, observing the Boston militia at drill,
wrote: “It is a curious Masquerade Scene to see grave sober Citizens, Barbers and
Tailors, who never looked fierce before in their Lives . . . struggling to put on a Martial
Countenance . . .” But, added another observer more cautiously, “the worst figure there
can shoot from behind a bush and kill even a General Wolfe.”
But whenever General Gage, properly concerned with the health and morale of his
command, began sending troops on harmless marches into the interior, they could not fail
to notice the militia units in training wherever they went. Flippant young British officers
might have been amused to see rustics drilling in the fields, but their more sober-minded
senior officers were impressed with the unity and determination of these formations. And
that impression deepened when they noticed the increasingly swift massing of armed
militia which began to follow every subsequent march.
The winter of 1774-1775 was providentially mild for New England, but that proved
to be the only bright spot for the hard-pressed British commander-in-chief. First the
Massachusetts militiamen had managed to recover artillery pieces which were supposed
to have been carefully guarded by British troops. Next, a group of New Hampshire
patriots had overpowered Fort William and Mary at Portsmouth and made off with a
considerable store of ammunition. And now the Committee of Safety voted to purchase
military stores “sufficient for an army of 15,000 men,” and selected the village of
Concord as a suitable depot, far enough to be out of reach of Gage's periodically
marching troops. Still, Gage recommended that there be no coercion until he was fully
prepared. By now his prestige and reputation had been all but destroyed with the King
and his ministers, who were angered by what they considered an overly cautious attitude,
and by his constant pleas for more military forces. On April 14, the commander finally
received a dispatch from London, ordering him to act decisively, to use force if
necessary, and to arrest the principal rebels - even if he risked bringing on hostilities in
the process. The general's hand had been forced; something would have to be done, or
the London authorities would surely reconsider the future of their governor-general.
By April 1775, most of the Patriot leaders had already deserted Boston for places
like Concord, Cambridge, and Watertown. Of the inner circle, only two men remained
behind, both of them physicians - Benjamin Church and Joseph Warren. Dr. Warren's
own medical students were already pleading with him not to make any more night calls,
because they were sure he would be ambushed. But the 34-year old Joseph Warren was
fearless, and Samuel Adams trusted him above all the other young Patriots. After his
wife had died two years earlier, Warren had turned over his four children to their
grandmother and thrown himself headlong into the American cause. He became one of
the original members of the Boston Committee of Correspondence, the Massachusetts
Committee of Safety, and organizer of the provincial militia. It was Joseph Warren who
had first presented the historic Suffolk Resolves, which were later adopted by the
Continental Congress. When he heard British soldiers and their Tory sympathizers
assuring each other that colonials would always back down, Joseph Warren had declared
furiously, “These fellows say we won't fight. By heavens, I hope I shall die up to my knees
in blood.”
Working with Warren was his colleague, Benjamin Church. Like Warren, a
Harvard-educated physician, a member of the Committee of Correspondence, Church
was nevertheless far less trusted. His political writings always supported the colonial
cause; he was a member of the Provincial Congress, and would even attend the Second
Continental Congress in Philadelphia later that year, yet many among the Patriot leaders
strongly suspected him of Tory leanings, and some were almost certain that he supplied
them with information. Sadly, they would prove to be only too correct in their
suspicions.
Another man who had stayed on in Boston was Paul Revere. Revere's family had
come to America in much more recent times than the Adamses or even the Hutchinsons;
like the Faneuils and the Bowdoins, his family had been Protestant Huguenots, driven out
of Catholic France. After several years in Massachusetts, Apollos Rivoire had changed
his name to Paul Revere - “Merely on account that the bumpkins pronounce it easier”and he had passed that name on to his son. The Reveres lived only one block from
Thomas Hutchinson, but the social distance was unbreachable. Young Paul had been
sent to the crowded North Writing School rather than to North Latin, and instead of
studying at Harvard, he learned his father's trade of silversmith. When the demand for
silver goods diminished during less prosperous times, the younger Revere made false
teeth. That was always a reliable business in a town where one European traveler noted
that Boston girls often had lost half their teeth before they were twenty years old.
Paul Revere was a veteran of the French and Indian War, a strong and swarthy man
who was quick to smile with his own fine teeth and who never powdered his hair or wore
a wig. Modeling himself after Samuel Adams, he provided a valuable link between the
wealthier party leaders and the town's craftsmen. Although he was now nearing his 40th
birthday and was raising five children on his own, he was not willing to surrender his
duties to younger men, and now he stayed in Boston to serve as a messenger whenever he
was needed.
On April 15, while Patriot observers in Boston watched and listened, Gage ordered
his troops to prepare for what seemed just another of their regular marching exercises.
But his time the general committed 21 companies of his tallest and best-armed grenadiers
- all in all over 700 men, a suspiciously strong force for a simply maneuver in the
countryside. Gage thought this to be a sufficiently large force to accomplish the task
ordered by London, since he was sure the rebels would not dare take up arms against His
Majesty's troops. Paul Revere and Joseph Warren, too, had watched these preparations,
but they had drawn their own conclusions. A force this strong could easily have the
seizure of the provincial military supplies as an objective, perhaps even the arrests of the
provincial leaders.
By the night of April 18, when Gage was finally ready to strike, Warren set off
signals that aroused the entire countryside. Paul Revere and William Dawes were sent
out to ride through the night to warn the town of Lexington, where Samuel Adams and
John Hancock were staying, and Concord, where the colonial military supplies were
stored. Though Revere was intercepted halfway to Concord by mounted British officers,
word had already spread to every farm and village ahead. The inhabitants of Concord
labored all night and all day, packing up the military stores and shipping them westward
to Worcester. And back in Boston, two lanterns glowed in the spire of the Old North
Church in a prearranged signal, telling everyone that the British were out and would
move across the water to the road to Lexington and Concord.
The British troops had been roused late in the evening of April 18, and had been
ferried across the Charles River, weary and cold, uncertain of what lay ahead. Major
John Pitcairn, in command of the 700 regulars had been ordered to proceed “with the
utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy all the
artillery and ammunition you can find.” But it became evident soon enough that any
hope of a surprise had already been lost; as they pushed on through the dead, dark hours
that followed midnight, they could hear the sounds of distant guns, ringing bells, and
hoof beats on hidden roads. And as they approached Lexington, they caught dim
glimpses of armed men hurrying over the dark fields. Pitcairn saw and heard all this, and
when the mounted advance came galloping back to report a thickening concentration of
militiamen in and around Lexington, the major decided to take no chances. A courier
was sent back to Boston for reinforcements.
Day was just breaking as Pitcairn and his men wound down the hill into the town of
Lexington, and through the early morning mist they could see a grim-looking band of
about fifty militiamen lined up across the village green, with the shadows of many others
moving through the nearby woods and fields. Lexington's militia was hardly a
formidable force. Only 750 people, five of them slaves, lived in the town, along with 400
cows. Since gunpowder was too expensive to be wasted on target practice, the
militiamen had been assembled on the village green only once or twice before. And of
the 75 Minutemen who had answered their commander's first call, at least fifty were more
than 30 years old; with the last war - the French and Indian War - over for eleven years,
all of Lexington's men with any sort of real military experience were far older than the
usual fighting age.
The Minutemen of Lexington had been storing gunpowder and musket balls all
winter for a morning just like this. The town had also bought a drum, and the veterans of
the French and Indian War had taught a young boy to beat out battle calls. But now, as
that call was sounded and their commander informed them that Britain's best-trained and
best-equipped forces were on their way to Lexington, few greeted that news with much
enthusiasm. The men had quickly voted to disband, to go to their homes and stay out of
sight; they would certainly do nothing to provoke the British soldiers. Then, sometime
during the early morning hours, that sane and reasonable decision was reversed.
The British officers had been instructed to quietly disarm any militiamen they
encountered, but when they called out “throw down your arms and you shall come to no
harm,” the only answer was an ominous clicking of firelocks. There was little choice;
Pitcairn quickly lined his men up for an advance against the heavily outnumbered
militiamen, but ordering them “on no account to Fire or even attempt it without orders.”
But someone did fire. Just who lost his nerve or patience may never be known, but
almost immediately several British volleys cracked out and smoke filled the air around
the village green as the militiamen scattered in all directions. The British column
reformed and marched on westward toward Concord, leaving behind eight militiamen
dead or dying. What the British troops could not have known was that two of their
targets had been only a few feet away from the fighting; both John Hancock and Samuel
Adams had witnessed the opening shots of a long war ahead. In a matter of only a few
minutes, the many months and years of arguments and disputes had come to a sudden
head. The unthinkable had happened; British soldiers had fired on British subjects in an
open battle and killed eight of their countrymen. There was to be no more turning back.
Six miles to the west, in Concord, men stood waiting, shivering in the April night,
knowing only that a British force was headed out from Boston, with their town its
probable objective. Toward dawn a courier brought the news from Lexington that all had
dreaded to hear - there had been fighting on Lexington Green. Word went out
immediately all through the countryside, and even far-off towns responded: Chelmsford,
Danvers, Lynn, Salem, Framingham, all sent out units to stand by their brothers Patriots
in what might at long last be the expected showdown with Great Britain. The Reverend
William Emerson called for resistance: “Let us stand our ground. If we die, let us die
here.” But others had more respect for the odds, and the Minutemen faded back until
they reached a hill from which they could overlook the town. From there, by about eight
o'clock in the morning, they watched as the British grenadiers enter Concord.
There was no opposition as the British troops entered Concord. Major Pitcairn
occupied the town and set his men searching for the military stores they had come to
destroy. While the militiamen withdrew across the river and passively watched the
proceedings, several British companies were sent out to hold the South and North Bridges
to prevent the colonial troops from reentering the town. It appeared much like a routine
exercise for these troops; within a few hours they would all be back in the safety of
Boston, mission accomplished.
But around nine o'clock in the morning, some of the militiamen noticed smoke rising
from among the trees surrounding their town, and an obvious conclusion was drawn - the
British were going to burn down all of Concord. Actually, the soldiers were destroying
the few armaments they had found. They hacked down the town's Liberty Pole and set it
on fire, and they burned gun carriages and entrenching tools. But from their lookout on
the hill, the militiamen saw smoke from the bonfires and concluded that the British were
burning their houses. All at once the colonial troops started down the hill toward North
Bridge, determined to save their town.
This time there was no question about who fired first. The British infantry lined up,
and with “the shot heard round the world” - actually a succession of volleys - killed two
of the Americans. This time the militia was not intimidated; they fanned out and returned
a deadly fire, and within seconds felled about a dozen of the redcoats. And then, all at
once and utterly inexplicably, the British ranks broke and fled back into town.
The militiamen made no attempts to follow up the rout; instead they pushed on to a
hill overlooking the town and waited in almost stunned surprise - and they wondered.
British troops, perhaps the finest there were in the world of 1775, had been driven off
after only a few minutes of fighting. Yet few of the Americans could have taken much
comfort in that fact; one single, overpowering thought must have occurred to everyone
there - We have fired on the King's troops! This was a far more serious matter than
making inflammatory speeches or writing seditious documents, more momentous than
dumping East India Company tea into Boston Harbor. This was almost certainly the final
straw.
With the sounds of fighting at the North Bridge, the British companies had all raced
back into town; now, as they saw the massing militiamen all around them, and more
coming in all the time, the soldiers grew panicky. Rumors were growing all the time, and
one story, in particular, caused serious anxiety. Not satisfied with their slaughter at the
bridge, the Minutemen were supposed to be scalping their wounded victims. It was a
nightmare vision for veterans of the French and Indian War, and even more so for the
younger men who had long heard of such atrocities. And in this case, there was even a
hint of truth to the story. A feeble-minded young man from the countryside had been
hurrying into town to join the militia and had come upon a wounded British soldier.
Before anyone could stop him, he had split the soldier's head with a tomahawk. But not
until the afternoon did their officers decide that it was time for an orderly retreat. Major
Pitcairn assembled his command and the troops started back eastward again along the
Lexington Road. After some hesitation, the militiamen followed rather cautiously,
keeping a safe distance.
But the British had delayed too long. As they cleared the town they could see the
fields to the north and south already bristling with armed men, with fresh militia
companies still coming in from the more distant towns. For a few moments nothing
happened on either side and nothing more might have happened. But the nervous
redcoats could no longer hold back. Barely out of Concord, the last files of the long
column turned, probably without orders, and fired a farewell volley. And with those
shots began the real fight over Lexington and Concord.
From paths and roads and fields the militia now closed in, firing from behind stone
walls, from behind houses, from inside houses and from behind woodpiles and sheds. To
the hard-pressed regulars it appeared as if the entire country had suddenly turned out to
have a shot at them, and one later recalled that “a grait many lay dead and the Road was
bloddy.” A stand was attempted, trying to make a regular battle out of it, but the
colonials refused to cooperate. And when several of the British officers were wounded,
the retreat became a rout, with redcoated veterans of unquestioned courage and discipline
throwing away their arms and equipment as they ran.
Suddenly Lexington was in front of them, with the same militia who only this
morning had been dispersed now closing in on them. A total defeat seemed imminent.
But at that very moment, with almost miraculous timing, a flood of scarlet and white
appeared over a hill - Lord Hugh Percy had brought out the bulk of the Boston garrison in
answer to the early morning request for reinforcements.
But it was only a breathing spell. The retreat was soon resumed and the British, now
nearly 2,000 strong, were hounded every step of the way by an enemy with whom they
were unable to come to grips. They staggered on through Menotomy and on towards
Cambridge until, exhausted and gasping, they fell to the ground on the little hills above
Charleston, known as Breed's and Bunker Hill, safe at last under the guns of the Royal
Navy in Boston Harbor.
In a letter of April 23, 1775, Captain W.G. Evelyn of the famous King's Own British
regiment described the Battles of Lexington and Concord as “a little fracas that
happened here a few days ago between us and the Yankee scoundrels.” The Patriots who
had fought the British that day, Evelyn wrote, were “the most absolute cowards on the
face of the earth, yet they are just now worked up to such a degree of enthusiasm and
madness that they are easily persuaded the Lord is to assist them in whatever they
undertake.” “The loss of the rebels cannot be ascertained, but we have reason to think
several hundred were killed . . .”
Actually, British casualties had been amazingly light considering the volume of fire
to which the troops had been subjected - only about one bullet in three hundred killed or
wounded a British soldier. Gage's official report listed 72 killed and another 172
wounded; no doubt, the commander was grateful that the colonial militia were mostly
townsmen or professional men and farmers rather than frontiersmen or experienced
hunters. On the average, only one Patriot in fifteen so much as nicked the shoulder of a
redcoat - though weapons were often fired at extremely close range. But from a colonial
point of view that was not what mattered - what did matter was that a call had been sent
out and men by the thousands from all walks of life had answered. And again and again
over the next few years such calls would be answered by colonial militia units on Long
Island, in the Jerseys, below Quebec, in Pennsylvania, in the Carolinas and in Georgia,
and finally between the York and James Rivers of Virginia.
That afternoon of April 19, many of these weary militiamen began tramping home
again. But many more stayed on, guided only by the vaguest of orders, guided more,
perhaps, by an uneasy feeling that their time of service was not yet up. And as night
crept in from the sea, an immense arc of scattered campfires was closing in around
Charlestown and Boston, an arc that thickened as that call set into motion a chain reaction
that spread out all across New England and southward throughout the colonies. Out into
Kentucky the news went, prompting men clearing out a new settlement there to call their
new community Lexington in honor of the event. Most of the Patriots beyond the
Hudson Valley stayed home and readied themselves for a fight they knew was coming;
but the angry, determined men and boys of New England, assembling with a speed that
was nothing short of miraculous, streamed into Massachusetts and laid siege to Boston
with an efficiency and on a scale which neither General Gage nor the Patriot leaders
would have thought possible. The next day it continued, and the next and the next, as
men came in the clothes they had on their backs, with whatever little food they had been
able to stuff into their pockets, bearing weapons which had been closest at hand, all
driven by the same compelling force to meet a common danger. Within a week, Boston
was a city under siege.
***
The British government's reaction could have been predicted, but the response had
already begun to take shape before the news of Lexington and Concord ever reached
London. General Gage's cautious attitude toward the rebellious colonists had finally
done enough damage at home that government officials had begun to demand his recall.
It was ultimately decided to retain Thomas Gage as governor of the Bay Colony, while
General Amherst was to be sent back to America again as commander in chief. Jeffery
Amherst, however, was familiar enough with American conditions to realize that this
would be a no-win situation, and he refused all such appointments. In the end the
government turned to three major generals instead - William Howe, Henry Clinton, and
John Burgoyne, the best military leaders that England had to offer at that time. Though
all three men had in recent years seen more fighting in Parliament than on the battlefield,
it was hoped that with enough reinforcements they would put a quick end to the troubles
in America. Their fleet left England at about the same time as the New England
militiamen were beginning to assemble around Boston; when they arrived off Cape Anne
in the morning of May 25, they brought enough men to raise the Boston garrison to
10,000 troops and a leadership that was determined to force a showdown and end the
American troubles once and for all.
The senior officer among these three new generals was William Howe, reputedly a
distant cousin of the King. The British ministry could hardly have sent a general more
suited to the tastes of the colonies - had his mission not been to subdue them. The name
Howe was a familiar one to Americans, for William had already served in several
colonial wars. He was there at the capture of Louisbourg in 1758, and the following year
in the siege of Quebec; James Wolfe had called him the best officer in the King's service,
and had picked him to lead the detachment that scaled the supposedly impassible Heights
of Abraham. As a member of Parliament after the French and Indian War, Howe had
always placed himself squarely among the friends of American liberty. William's older
brother was Admiral Richard 'Black Dick' Howe, perhaps the most successful, and
certainly the most popular admiral in the British Navy, who would soon join him in
America. Still another brother, George Augustus, had fallen during Abercromby's
hopeless assault on the French at Ticonderoga in 1758. George Howe had won the
greatest affections among the colonists who had fought with him in the French and Indian
War; he had discarded the ornate uniform of a British general for the leather breeches and
buckskin shirt of a frontiersman and had learned from the colonists the Indian tactics of
forest fighting and guerilla warfare, and even accompanied Robert Rogers and his
Rangers on patrols. When he was shot during the battle at Ticonderoga, he died in the
arms of colonial Major Israel Putnam. Now this same Israel Putnam, having learned his
trade from George Howe, waited in Cambridge for the moment he would meet Howe's
younger brother in battle. Perhaps George III, in giving William his appointment, had
hoped that the name of Howe still held some influence in the colonies.
When the general arrived in Boston, he was 46 years old, a large and powerfully
built man with a dark-complexion, though his soldierly appearance had already begun to
show the effects of the high living he enjoyed so thoroughly. He drank too much, he was
a compulsive gambler, and without a doubt had accepted the appointment to America
only because he needed the additional money which active duty would bring him. It is
said that when his appointment first arrived, he had asked if this was an order or a
request; only when he was assured that it was by royal orders did he comply, explaining
that he “could not refuse . . . to serve my country in distress.”
Second in rank, 37-year old Henry Clinton had actually been born in America - in
Newfoundland - and for him this was therefore a homecoming of sorts. Clinton was the
only son of George Clinton, British admiral and former governor of New York, and
before going to England had been a commissioned officer in the New York militia while
still in his teens; by age 34 he was a major general in the British Army after campaigning
on the Continent during the Seven Years War. But if his youth and rank suggested
brilliance, there was little outward evidence of it. Clinton was to prove a colorless leader,
a short and paunchy man whose hyper-sensitivity to criticism was almost a disease.
Although he was an intelligent and reasonably competent soldier who might have gone
far, his tendency to suspect everyone made him look behind every remark and gesture for
an affront. He ended his military career in America by considering himself one of the
most misunderstood men in history, and he left a mass of manuscripts in the hope that
posterity, fully informed of his merits, would do him justice.
Brooks' Club, a fashionable private club for Britain's men of means and leisure, was
long famous for its betting books. Almost any topic of local or national interest could
serve as a magnet, drawing together men of opposing views and who were eager to risk
money on their opinions. April 1775 saw a new betting book opened in Brooks' Club.
Some members felt that the hostilities in distant America would prove long and costly;
others were equally sure that untried and untrained farmers and frontiersmen could never
stand up against an army of His Majesty's professional soldiers.
The first entry recorded in that new book read: “John Burgoyne wagers Charles
James Fox one pony (fifty guineas) that he will be home victorious from America by
Christmas Day, 1777.” To General John Burgoyne, eighteen months seemed more than
enough time to cross the Atlantic, subdue the rebellious colonists in his Majesty's
provinces, and return home again in triumph and in plenty of time to celebrate Christmas
among his friends.
Despite his 53 years of age, John Burgoyne was the junior officer among the three
generals. He had entered the army at the relatively late age of 22, had sold his
commission only three years later, and had not rejoined until 1756. Though he had won
military distinction in Portugal during the Seven Years War, and was commander of the
16th Dragoons - known as Burgoyne's Light Horse - he was more driven by an ambition
to shine in literary circles; had not the American war interfered, he might well have
turned to writing as a vocation.
Burgoyne came from an old and respectable family and was married to the daughter
of one of England's wealthiest peers. A handsome and popular leader, who was known to
his men as Gentlemen Johnny, he was, like Howe, a heavy gambler, prominent in London
High Society as a member of Parliament and a man of fashion and wit.
The reputation of these three men was enough to move Lord North to exclaim, “I do
not know whether our generals will frighten the Americans, but they certainly frighten
me!” But the generals themselves were not all that sure; in fact, they were plagued with
doubts and apprehensions which ought not to have entered the minds of men who crossed
the ocean as conquering heroes. None of them was particularly eager to go to America,
and later all felt obliged to explain and even apologize for accepting the command. None
believed that fighting the American would solve the problems of the British Empire, and
as members of Parliament they recognized that negotiations and compromise would have
been so much more effective than war and bloodshed.
But by the time these generals arrived in America, the situation had probably already
advanced too far for anything but a direct confrontation. With the news of Lexington and
Concord, nearly all the colonies had established provincial congresses, had driven off
royal and proprietary governors, and assumed the legislative and financial function of
government. In New York, a recently arrived Scotsman named Donald McLeod asked
permission to form a company of Highlanders, men already equipped with guns, swords,
and pistols. Far down the coast, in Charleston, South Carolina, the provincial congress
voted to raise two regiments, listing such officers as Christopher Gadsden, Isaac Huger,
and William Moultrie. Then, as if to stress the fact that this was no mere gesture, an
incredible £1,000,000 were appropriated to back up this and other measures.
Colony after colony voted men and money to support the cause of what had become
an American problem, their ears still ringing with the prophetic words of yet another of
Patrick Henry's successful addresses almost a month earlier. On March 23, Henry had
risen in the Virginia Assembly in Richmond and moved that a militia be formed and that
the colony be immediately put into a defensive position. There was no way out anymore
but fight, he declared; “. . . there is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains
are forged . . . . The war is inevitable - and let it come!! I repeat, Sir, let it come!!! It is
in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace; but there is no
peace. The war has actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring
to our ear the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why
stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so
dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it,
Almighty God - I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or
give me death!
Only three weeks later this “clash of resounding arms” had occurred at Lexington
and Concord, and in New England, at least, there was no more pretense; the war had
actually begun. The Massachusetts militiamen around Boston had been considerably
reinforced, and in the process had become something more than a militia. New
Hampshire had sent men south at the first hint of the troubles of April 19 - experienced
men who made a remarkable march under a seasoned Indian fighter, Colonel John Stark.
Israel Putnam, another old Ranger, brought 3,000 men from Connecticut, including the
Governor's Foot Guards, commanded by Benedict Arnold. In early May, a Rhode Island
force, outfitted by Providence and Newport merchants, was on its way, commanded by
Nathanael Greene, and fully equipped with tents, wagons, supplies, and even a train of
artillery. All these forces placed themselves under the command of the Massachusetts
commanders, and the disjointed units of militia that had taken the field through the dark
hours of April 18 and 19, had suddenly became a New England Army. And all the while
General Gage, still in sole command at Boston, sat passively in the city, allowing the
besieging forces to build up without any interference from his troops.
***
On May 10, 1775, while all British America was still buzzing with the news of
Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress met at Philadelphia, its
members elected by the newly formed Provincial Congresses. This time there was to be
no pretext, no vacillating; this time the Congress assembled in the Georgian splendor of
the Pennsylvania State House: the Adamses of Massachusetts were there again along with
John Hancock; Silas Deane and Roger Sherman came from Connecticut; John Jay, Philip
Schuyler and three members of the Livingston family from New York; Delaware sent
Ceasar Rodney, Thomas McKean and Thomas Read; Samuel Chase and Thomas Johnson
came from Maryland; Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, and George
Wythe from Virginia, along with George Washington, who attended the sessions in his
colonel's uniform. Christopher Gadsden and two Rutledges were among the South
Carolina delegation, and Joseph Hewes and William Hooper from North Carolina.
Pennsylvania's delegation included once again John Dickinson, Robert Morris, James
Wilson, and this time Benjamin Franklin as well. For the first time, too, Georgia had sent
a delegation to Philadelphia.
Peyton Randolph had been reelected president of the Congress but was called back to
Virginia to preside over the Burgesses; while Thomas Jefferson had quickly ridden to
Philadelphia to take his place in the Virginia delegation, that still left the president's chair
open. Meanwhile, General Gage from his headquarters in Boston had issued a general
pardon for all Americans who had so far taken part in the rebellion, but had made two
exceptions - Samuel Adams and John Hancock.
This mark of British dislike immediately enhanced the two men's standing among
many of the delegates. Though most found Samuel Adams somewhat coarse and
unrefined, they certainly appreciated Hancock's elegance and cordial style; they were also
well aware that Hancock, like many of the wealthier delegates, had something substantial
to risk by his support of the Patriot cause. They elected John Hancock as president of the
Second Continental Congress in the spirit of defiance. “We will show Britain how much
we value her proscriptions,” declared Benjamin Harrison of Virginia.
Like their predecessors, the members of the Second Continental Congress were faced
with a simple choice - they could submit to the rule of a British Army and to whatever
decisions King and Parliament might make, or they could resist force with force in
defense of the rights that most Americans insisted were theirs. Unlike their predecessors
the American leaders of 1775 no longer doubted the course which lay ahead. Now
leaders of every shade of political opinion, even those who eventually remained loyal to
Great Britain, agreed that inevitably they must fight to maintain their rights. The issue
had become a much narrower one: What should the outcome of this fighting be reconciliation with Britain on their terms, or total independence of the Empire?
Even the conservatives now believed that some fighting would become necessary if
reconciliation with Britain was ever to be achieved. The “butchery of unarmed
Americans” at Lexington and Concord, as John Dickinson called it, could not be
tolerated; for “while we revere and love our Mother Country, her sword is opening our
veins.” All they asked for was reconciliation on constitutional principles. The
conservatives were no doubt totally sincere, but their claims of a willingness to fight for
reconciliation fell on deaf ears on both sides of the Atlantic. Still, until the very end they
insisted that the American Army was created only to achieve such reconciliation, and
they remained a powerful force in both the Congress and their respective colonies right
up to the Declaration of Independence.
The opposition consisted of most of the same men who had achieved fame notoriety, some would have said - as popular leaders during the preceding decade; the
same radicals who had won such a decisive triumph in the First Continental Congress.
These men and their supporters had become convinced that all talk of reconciliation was
hopeless; that independence would be the most likely outcome of any serious fighting.
Not all of them agreed that independence was actually a desirable result, and none of
them had in fact as yet mentioned the word. Outwardly they still proclaimed to work for
reconciliation, even if it was doubtful that it could be achieved on terms acceptable to
Americans. But every action they were about to take was calculated to create an
independent state in fact, if not in name, for within a short time, events beyond their
control forced the delegates to take one reluctant step after another in the direction of an
open declaration of independence.
The Continental Congress had no sooner assembled than it learned that in the early
hours of that same May 10th, a group of New Englanders had captured Crown Point and
Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. The victory had been achieved in a somewhat
unwilling cooperation between two of New England's more colorful characters, Ethan
Allen, a native of Connecticut but lately a resident of Vermont, and Benedict Arnold, a
native and still resident of Connecticut.
Benedict Arnold's lineage in America was long and illustrious. His great-grandfather
had succeeded Roger Williams as the president of the Rhode Island colony, but by the
time Benedict's father had moved to Connecticut in the 1730s, the family's fortunes had
already begun to slip; while Benedict was still a young child, his father was already
drinking heavily, and his son was eventually apprenticed to a local pharmacist. Benedict
found life at the pharmacy dull and boring; only a year later he ran off to join the British
Army in the French and Indian War, where he participated in the battle over Fort
Ticonderoga. But soon he grew bored with military discipline as well, and he deserted
and returned to Connecticut and his job at the drugstore.
His apprenticeship ended at 21, and over the next few years Arnold appears to have
done quite well for himself in a number of enterprises, and eventually acquired a
partnership in some merchant vessels. Like so many of his contemporaries, Arnold made
a quick and tidy little fortune in smuggling, bringing in contraband from the West Indies.
Growing prosperity brought him respect and acceptance to the old families of New
Haven, and he bought a fine white house with elegant landscaping to go with this new
respectability. Powerfully built, well-tanned from his frequent trips to the Caribbean,
Arnold was soon popular with New Haven's young women. At 25, he fell passionately in
love with Margaret Mansfield, the daughter of the town's sheriff; they had their first son
within a year and two more not long afterward. But his shipping business frequently
faltered, London merchants haunted him for bills, while his wife grew estranged and
sometimes would not answer his letters while he was away at sea. Then one winter he
returned to find that Peggy Arnold had been told that her husband had contracted a
venereal disease in the islands; from that time on she would no longer let him touch her.
Arnold's one consolation was his membership in the Governor's Foot Guard, where
he was known as Captain Arnold, resplendent in his scarlet and white uniform. By the
time of the Boston Port Act, Arnold was drilling his men regularly on the New Haven
Green, and when news of the fighting at Lexington and Concord reached New Haven, he
bullied the town selectmen into opening the powder magazine, and marched off at the
head of his company. At Boston, he appeared before Dr. Warren and the Committee of
Safety with a plan. He said that he knew Fort Ticonderoga well - though he never
revealed his desertion there - and he proposed to lead a band of Americans to seize the
fort from the British.
The idea was a daring one, but by that time it was no longer an original one. Months
earlier, New England's Patriot leaders had anticipated British strategy in case of a war,
and they had concluded that Gage would almost certainly try to cut off New England
from the other colonies by sending troops through the corridor of Lake Champlain, Lake
George and the Hudson River. Ticonderoga was a strategic point on this route, and its
seizure would be critical. In fact, the task had already been proposed to a group of New
Hampshire farmers calling themselves the Green Mountain Boys, led by a giant of a man
named Ethan Allen.
If Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had anything in common, it was boldness and
courage. When Ethan was only two years old, his father had moved the family from
Connecticut to a rough frontier farm in the New Hampshire Grants lands. There, by the
age of ten, the boy had already learned to fight off wolves and rattlesnakes and all sorts of
wild beasts, two-legged or four-legged, but his only schoolbook was the family Bible.
When he was about 16, therefore, he was sent to the town of Salisbury, where his family
hoped that tutoring from a local clergyman could make him acceptable to Yale. But
Ethan's father died soon afterward, and he was called home again. Ethan certainly didn't
mind; he knew he was smart, but later he apologized often for his shaky command of
grammar and spelling.
Before he was twenty, he went off to fight the Marquis de Montcalm during the
French and Indian War, and it was during that time that the French constructed the starshaped fortress near the southern end of Lake Champlain, which controlled the southward
passage toward the Hudson River. The French had originally called the place Fort
Vaudreuil, but it was popularly known as Carillon, supposedly after a Spanish fur trader
who had occupied a post nearby during the 1670s. But when Jeffrey Amherst's troops
captured the base for the British in 1759, they renamed it Ticonderoga, after a Mohawk
word meaning “Place Where Two Waters Meet”.
Ever since the end of the French and Indian War, a troublesome border dispute had
been fought between the residents of the New Hampshire Grants and New Yorkers who
claimed to hold deeds to the very lands Ethan Allen and his neighbors had been farming
for several decades already. In order to defend their holdings, Allen had formed a posse
of sorts in the early 1770s, and within a year or so, these Green Mountain Boys were
holding formal drills in the town of Bennington, parading in review much like a
professional army.
Allen and his Boys never expected - and never received - any kind of support from
the British government in their struggle with New York, and the long dispute had left
them with an abiding passion for independence. The fighting at Lexington and Concord
were to these frontiersmen only one more proof of Britain's determination to enslave all
of America. When the New England Patriot leaders proposed their plan for the campaign
against Ticonderoga, the Green Mountain Boys jumped at the chance to get even, and
they unanimously elected Allen as their commander. Allen withdrew to plan his strategy,
while the Boys readied themselves by getting drunk.
It was at this point that Benedict Arnold appeared in Boston with a similar proposal.
Joseph Warren and his committee knew very little about Ethan Allen, but they were
enthusiastic about Benedict Arnold's plan. The ragged army around Boston was less than
two weeks old, and they desperately needed Ticonderoga's cannon, mortars and
howitzers; on May 3, therefore, the committee made Benedict Arnold a colonel in the
New England Army and authorized him to go to western Massachusetts and recruit 400
men for his expedition. But Colonel Arnold had already heard that other men from New
Hampshire were also preparing to take Ticonderoga, and he was not about to let some
ragtag frontier mob deny him his glory. He left his officers behind to recruit the
expedition and hurried off to find the Green Mountain Boys.
Ethan Allen and the Boys were deep in their preparations, each in their own fashion,
when Benedict Arnold appeared in the tavern, resplendent as ever, announcing that he
had come to lead the charge against Ticonderoga. The Boys laughed. Arnold produced
his commission from the Massachusetts Committee of Safety. The Boys laughed some
more, and to show how impressed they were, they showered him with obscenities. But
finally they spelled it out to him: if Ethan Allen was replaced as commander, the Green
Mountain Boys would stay home. Arnold was finally taken to meet Allen, and after a
few hours the Boys learned that now they had two commanders - one of them had an
army of 250 men, the other had a piece of paper signed in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Boys reached the shore at Lake George well before dawn on May 10th, but
neither of their leaders had remembered that the water there was a mile wide, and no one
had any boats. It was nearly daybreak before they had rounded up enough small craft to
row 83 men across the water to the fort's high walls. The Boys crept to the fortress' gate.
It was open and the sentry on duty was asleep. At the prospect of such an easy victory,
the Boys began to whoop and holler, which roused the sentry. He aimed his weapon,
thought better of it and ran away. Ticonderoga had been built as a garrison for 400 men,
but during the past dozen years of peacetime the British had let it deteriorate and kept it
severely undermanned.
The British commander of the fort, who heard the triumphant shouts, jumped from
his bed, but before he was able to react he heard a booming voice demand his surrender.
Allen later swore that he had ordered the fort's commander to surrender in the name of
“the great Jehova and the Continental Congress,” though authorized by neither; but at
the time he was definitely heard to call out, “Come out of there, you damned rat!” Allen
also assured the captain that his Green Mountain Boys had already disarmed the entire
garrison - all 42 of them.
It was then that the battle for Ticonderoga began in earnest. The Boys had
discovered stores of rum, and as they reinforced their high spirits, they ran through the
fort, grabbing what they could from the British soldiers. Since Ethan Allen didn't try to
stop them, Benedict Arnold raised his voice above the din to declare that military law
strictly forbade looting. Several Boys spat at Colonel Arnold's feet.
Four days later, 50 men recruited by Benedict Arnold's officers arrived on the scene,
and Arnold took formal command of the fort, with its 120 cannon, brass cannon, mortars,
musket balls, flints, gunpowder and gun carriages.
Actually, Fort Ticonderoga itself was of little value in its present state of decay.
Royal engineers had already reported that the many years of neglect had transformed the
fort into “an amazing useless Mass of Earth.” But the fort had traditionally controlled
the invasion route to Canada; more important, within its crumbling walls the Americans
had found the wealth of artillery and military supplies which would be invaluable in a
fight with the British.
But the Continental Congress now found itself in an awkward position. A New
England force had taken a British fort in the territory of another colony - New York which thus far had not been involved in any hostilities. To whom did this fort now
belong? To New York or to Massachusetts? Connecticut or Vermont? This question
caused such confusion in the Congress that some earnest souls finally suggested that
Ticonderoga should be returned to the British.
At first the Congress attempted once more to walk the thin line between appeasement
and open hostility, and asked the Committees of New York and Albany to move the
captured military supplies to Lake George. They instructed the committees to make “an
exact inventory” of the stores, “in order that they may be safely returned when the
restoration of the former harmony between Great Britain and these colonies so ardently
wished for” would make it possible to do so. Congress was also concerned enough about
Canadian opinion that it drafted a letter to the “oppressed inhabitants of Canada,”
expressing sympathy for their sad plight under the tyranny of Britain, and assuring them
that the seizure of Ticonderoga was entirely for the purpose of self-defense.
Yet only a few days later, rumors drifted in that a force of British regulars and
Indians were planning to retake Ticonderoga. Congress at once reversed itself and
ordered the supplies to remain at the fort for the time being. The next day the delegates
solemnly reaffirmed that “this Congress has nothing more in view than the defense of the
colonies,” and that no province or force of colonists should make any hostile moves
toward Canada. Yet less than one month later, this same Congress would once again
order an invasion of Canada.
***
One warlike act by Congress now followed another. On June 2, a messenger from
the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, the blandly smiling Dr. Benjamin Church,
delivered a letter asking Congress to adopt the army now before Boston as an American
Army, to take “the regulation and general direction of it, that the operation may more
effectually answer the purposes designed.” The letter also asked Congress to set up a
civil government to administer colonial affairs.
Within a short time, John Adams presented a proposal for a Grand American Army,
made up from all the colonies; no one, after all, could say that what happened at Boston
would not soon happen also in New York or Charleston or right here in Philadelphia.
Congress agreed only too readily; on June 14 it was voted that companies of riflemen
should be raised in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland and be sent to Boston. They
were to enlist in the American Continental Army for one year, their salaries to be paid by
Congress.
But John Adams had not yet finished. There still was the question of a commander
for this Continental Army. Because the forces now besieging Boston were composed
mostly of New Englanders, most delegates were prepared for the nomination of a New
England commander. It was doubtful whether Yankees would fight under a commander
who was not from their region. There certainly was no shortage of qualified candidates Artemas Ward, for example, was already in command of the New England Army around
Boston; there also were such diamonds in the rough as Israel Putnam, the experienced
Indian fighter, not to mention Ethan Allen, to whom full credit was now given for the
capture of Ticonderoga. John Hancock was known to be more than just a little interested,
though no one was entirely sure why. Perhaps Hancock only wanted to be offered the
honor and then would decline it. But what if he accepted? Beyond drilling a few cadets
on Boston Common, Hancock had no military experience at all.
But John Adams and several of the delegates had something entirely different in
mind. It had become clear to them that if the coming war was to succeed, New England
needed the support of the Middle and Southern colonies around Boston, if only to make it
an American war rather than a New England affair. And to John Adams such widespread
support was well worth the command of the Continental Army. On June 15 he rose to
nominate “a gentleman whose skill as an officer, whose independent fortune, great
talents and universal character would command the respect of Americans and unite the
full exertions of the colonies better than any other person alive.” At this introduction,
Adams noted that Hancock looked pleased indeed, but he continued, “. . . A gentleman
from Virginia who is among us here and well known to all of us . . .” At this point the
delegate from Fairfax County, Virginia, slipped out of the hall as inconspicuously as a
man of more than six feet height could, and “darted into the library room,” while John
Adams went on to nominate Colonel George Washington, and Samuel Adams rose to
second the nomination. Both men could not help but notice that John Hancock's
expression had changed to bitter resentment.
The next day, John Hancock, presiding in place of the absent Peyton Randolph,
announced that it was “the order of Congress to inform George Washington, Esq. of the
unanimous vote in choosing him to be General and Commander-in Chief of the forces
raised and to be raised in defence of American liberty. The congress hopes the
gentleman will accept.”
Dressed in the blue and buff uniform of a colonel in the Virginia militia, George
Washington appeared before the members of the Congress the following day and read a
statement: “Mr. President: Tho' I am truly sensible of the high Honour done me in this
appointment, yet I feel great distress from a consciousness that my abilities and military
experience may not be equal to the extensive and important Trust . . .” Congress had also
voted the commander in chief $500 a month for pay and expenses, but Washington
refused any salary, saying that “as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to
have accepted this arduous employment . . . I do not wish to make any profit from it.”
All he asked for were his actual expenses; a smart political move and, as it turned out, a
shrewd economical one as well - his subsequent expenses averaged $20,000 a year during
the seven long years of the approaching Revolutionary War.
If George Washington lacked the necessary military experience to command an
American Army against some of the finest British generals, his personality and bearing
had nevertheless made him the logical choice among all the American officers - none of
whom could boast of any great experience. George Washington was a big man - six feet,
two inches, in a time when six footers were a rarity - with a personality that inspired
respect and confidence. He was no great orator and never bothered with unnecessary
words, but his reserved manner and sober, self-assured competence inspired men to
follow him. There were some who complained that the general was almost too cold and
aloof, but it was just that stubborn determination that succeeded in surmounting the
difficulties ahead.
Washington’s candor to the Congress in his acceptance speech had not been mere
humility. At the age of 43, he was merely being honest with himself. He knew that he
was not a master of military strategy, and though he believed that he could perform better
in this new post than John Hancock, for example, his country was now asking him to take
on men who had spent most of their lives perfecting the art of war.
Washington had been raised for the ambiguous life of a Virginia gentleman with a
limited fortune. He wasn't the eldest son in his family, nor had he been born to his
father's first wife, who had died after giving Augustine Washington two sons and a
daughter. Three years later, the widower married 23-year old Mary Ball, who in 1732
gave birth to a boy, whom they named George. Three more sons and a daughter survived
as well.
Augustine Washington had prospered as a planter. He was no Randolph or Lee or
Byrd, but he had acquired more than 10,000 acres of land and some fifty slaves. He had
also sent his two older sons to his alma mater in England, and might have provided the
same education and social finishing for the sons of his second marriage, but Augustine
died when George was only eleven, making an education in England impossible.
Although Augustine's will favored his first family, George was not ignored. At 21 he
was to inherit the family house, 2,500 acres of not especially fertile land and ten slaves.
Until that time his property would be controlled by his mother. As a widow, however,
Mary Ball Washington seems to have combined her passion for money with a complete
indifference to the way it was managed. At age 35, Mary Washington had already lost
both of her parents and her husband; now she was determined to cling to her oldest son.
Though the terms of the will dictated that she and her other children were to live with
George at Ferry Farm, George soon began to look for an avenue of escape.
The young man's Latin was sketchy and his spelling uncertain, but he had grown into
a remarkably fine horseman and a fair shot. Early in his teens it was clear that he would
have an impressive physique and would stand well over six feet. His face was square,
with a thrusting jaw and that florid fair skin that was often regarded as the English ideal.
But what set George apart from other tall and robust Virginians was his determination to
better himself. He copied rules into a notebook that would guide him in making his way
in the world. When speaking to men of quality, for example, he was not to look them full
in the face. At meals, he should not clean his teeth on the tablecloth. The easiest rule for
George to observe was a warning against frivolous humor; life with Mary Washington
had left him a serious young man. For a short time, he even considered becoming a
lawyer, and he filled pages of his notebook with drafts of legal papers. He also copied
out several verses on true happiness, which was defined as a good estate on healthy soil
and a quiet wife.
At the age of 14, George finally tried to break away from Ferry Farm, hoping to
make his fortune at sea. His half-brother Lawrence, who was twice George's age, had
already sailed to the West Indies on Admiral Vernon's fleet, and had returned to Virginia
with stories of adventure at sea, and had even named his estate for his commander Mount Vernon. But Mary Washington's self-absorption would allow no such thing;
George simply could not go to sea. Not until two years later, when he turned sixteen, did
she even allow her eldest son to spend more of his time at Mount Vernon.
It was there that George met Lawrence's brother-in-law, George William Fairfax,
who was seven years older than he and living at nearby Belvoir, his family’s plantation.
Through the Fairfaxes, George Washington was introduced to a much grander life than
anything he had known at Ferry Farm. At Belvoir he learned to play billiards and whist
and became addicted to dancing. Lawrence Washington had become an easy-going
substitute for George's father and was already living a squire's life at Mount Vernon, on
land that also included 4,000 acres his wife had brought into the marriage. To have a
similar estate George would have to earn it - or marry it - for himself. Like most
Virginians of his background, he ached to buy land, but that took money, and money was
something young George Washington had very little of.
At Belvoir, too, George came to know Lord Fairfax, an Oxford graduate in his midfifties, who had come to Virginia to look after his far-flung properties. Young
Washington made an engaging companion for riding and hunting, and Fairfax asked him
to travel beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains and help survey the Fairfax land there. Thus,
at only sixteen years of age, George Washington took his first job as a land surveyor for
his lordship's estate.
Even for a hardy young man, frontier life was rigorous, and George wrote to a friend
that most nights he bunked on a little hay or on a bearskin, huddled together with a
frontier family like dogs and cats. Happy, said George, was the man who got the berth
nearest the fire. But he considered his pay generous - a doubloon a day, and in time he
earned enough to stake his claim on 450 acres of wild land in Frederick County.
When he returned to the luxuries of home, George found a disturbing surprise. His
friend, George William Fairfax had married a tall and lively 18-year old named Sarah
Carey, whom everyone called Sally. Sally Fairfax was only two years older than George,
but she was already a refined and intelligent lady with an easy sense of humor and a
natural grace. Her teasing overtures stirred George Washington profoundly.
For the next four years, George divided his time between surveying the countryside
and weeks of indulgence at Mount Vernon and Belvoir. There always seemed to be a
host of pretty girls on hand, not the least of which was Sally Fairfax. Washington
acquired more land and was named county surveyor, and then suddenly his prospects
improved abruptly for a most distressing reason.
Lawrence Washington's three children had died, and now he was suffering from a
persistent cough that suggested tuberculosis. Accompanied by George, he sailed to the
West Indies, hoping that the sun would cure him, while his wife stayed behind to tend a
frail and sickly fourth infant. Lawrence, however, did not improve and he came home to
die. Within six months more, the surviving daughter had also died, his widow had
remarried and moved away, and George suddenly found himself heir and master over
Mount Vernon. Lawrence had also been one of four majors in the Virginia militia, and as
his heir George sought that commission, and the Fairfax family helped him get it.
George Washington now began to assume responsibility for his brother's estate; at the age
of twenty he had become a prosperous gentleman farmer, complete with a gentleman's
military rank.
But Washington wanted this rank to be more than a merely honorary one, and over
the next several years he repeatedly volunteered his service as a soldier - first, in 1753, on
the mission to warn the French against trespassing into English territory; the following
year in the disastrous mission at Fort Necessity; and then, in 1755, in the still worse
disaster of Braddock's campaign against Fort Duquesne.
During one of these retreats, Washington's private journal was lost or stolen, and it
turned up in Europe, where the French were using it to portray the British as murderers.
When King George II read that a young American officer had called the whistle of bullets
charming, he remarked, “He would not say so had he heard many.” And among British
military officers, George Washington's name was becoming famous - as a byword for
colonial incompetence.
In 1758, during a trip to Williamsburg, Washington was introduced to Martha
Dandridge Custis, who had been widowed for several months. The young widow, only a
few months older than George, was a tiny woman, barely five feet tall. When she
described herself, she settled for the word healthy, but although she was plump, she
danced nimbly and her smile reflected a sweet disposition. She had also inherited a
sizeable estate from her husband, and of the four children born during that seven year
marriage, two had survived. All in all, the Widow Custis had no lack of eligible suitors.
Martha Custis had known of George Washington long before she was free to
consider him for marriage. By now he had grown into a broad-shouldered man with
regular features and gray eyes. In conversation he was deferential; in silence, he was
dignified; and he was graceful in the way he moved. He also kept his mouth closed as
much as he could, for Martha Custis had beautiful teeth while his own were already going
bad. The couple were engaged within months, but Colonel Washington wanted one last
chance at military glory before he resigned himself to life as a wealthy planter. William
Pitt in London had ordered the British troops to drive the French from Fort Duquesne,
and Washington decided to go along; since he failed to get a commission with the
regulars, he decided to volunteer as a militia colonel.
Before leaving for Ohio, Washington wrote two most revealing letters. Calmly he
reminded Martha Custis of the happy hour when they had made their pledges to each
other and described himself as her faithful and affectionate friend. But to Sally Fairfax
he wrote a letter that made her preserve it, although Washington surely expected her to
burn it: “You have drawn me, my dear Madam, or rather I have drawn myself, into an
honest confession of a simple fact - misconstrue not my meaning - 'tis obvious - doubt it
not, nor expose it - the world has no business to know the object of my love - declared in
this manner to you when I want to conceal it.” And the same man who had so recently
become engaged, concluded: “I dare believe you are as happy as you say. I wish I was
happy also.”
The Duquesne campaign once again ended inconclusively. But before leaving,
Washington had been elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, and on his return he
ignored the pleas of his loyal regiment, resigned his commission and took his seat in the
legislature. On January 6, 1759, he married Martha Custis at her second estate, the White
House on the York River. They spent their honeymoon in Williamsburg, and then
George Washington took his bride to Mount Vernon to begin their plantation life
together.
***
General Washington, the newly appointed commander-in-chief of the newly created
Continental Army started north from Philadelphia on June 23 to assume his command.
He had gone only a short distance, when was he met by galloping couriers bearing the
news that on June 17 a bloody battle had been fought between Americans and British
regulars on Charlestown Peninsula across the river from Boston.
The British generals - Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne - and the reinforcements had
arrived on the HMS Cerberus, eager for action, and had been received with great hopes
and anticipation by the garrison at Boston and Loyalist Americans alike. But Boston was
a far different place from what the generals had expected to find. Thomas Hutchinson,
now in exile in England, who knew so much and yet so little about his fellow New
Englanders, had assured his fellow Old Englanders that the colonists would not long
maintain their siege of the city; “unless fanaticism got the better of self-preservation, they
must soon disperse, as it was the season for sowing their Indian corn, the chief
subsistence of New England.” But by the time the British fleet tied up at the Long
Wharf, the city had become much like a medieval castle under siege. What had remained
of the civilian population in the city cheered the guns in the fresh hope that somehow
they would change everything; rid them of the troubles that had settled like a plague over
the countryside. If General Gage had been far too timid, things would surely change
now.
It could not have taken the generals very long to realize just how serious a situation
the British force had encountered. For more than a month now the Boston garrison had
been licking its wounds from Lexington and Concord; and while it was a good army, well
equipped and officered, its strength and morale had suffered much in those weeks. The
previously frequent marches into the countryside had necessarily been stopped altogether
and the men, restricted to the narrow confines of Boston, poorly housed, inactive, and
with a growing shortage of fresh provisions, suffered from sickness as much as from poor
spirits.
The experience of April 19 had been a baffling one for the British soldiers. Trained
in the traditional open warfare, where two armies faced each other in well-ordered ranks,
they had been humiliated in a confused retreat, while the enemy lurked behind walls and
houses, almost never out in the open, firing on them at will. No wonder so many of them
agreed with one of their captains who branded the rebels “the most absolute cowards on
the face of the earth.” But a few had learned a valuable lesson. “Whoever looks upon
them as an irregular mob will find himself much mistaken,” Lord Percy had written.
“For my part, I never believed, I confess, that they would have attacked the King's
troops, or have had the perseverance I found in them yesterday . . . They have men
amongst them who know very well what they are about.” And General Gage, who had
witnessed this sort of fighting on the western frontier - he and George Washington had
participated in Braddock's disaster during the Seven Years War - was seriously concerned
over the British position. “The situation these wretches have taken in forming the
blockade of this town is judicious and strong,” Gage wrote to Lord North. Not only did
they have more armed men before Boston than there were British soldiers, but “upon the
alarm being given, they come far and near, and the longer the action lasts, the greater
their numbers grow.”
The sight of the New England Army, as John Adams called it, would have made a
professional soldier weep or laugh, depending on his sympathies. The troops were
without proper uniforms - mostly without uniforms of any kind - in every sort of ragtag
attire, without sufficient powder or flints or even guns, and without any shelter. To
supply their needs, they fashioned improvised lean-tos on Cambridge Common, and
frequently made off under the cover of night with pigs and chickens purloined from
indignant farm wives. They cavorted across the Common hour after hour in thoroughly
unmilitary drills, some tall, some short, some thin and others fat and puffing, almost all
awkward, hardly knowing their left feet from their right. The story was that one
ingenious officer, cursed with a particularly dense collection of hayseeds who could not
untangle their feet, order his men to tie hay to the right foot and straw to the left, and then
gave his marching orders - instead of “right, left” - “hay foot, straw foot.”
But far worse than the state of the army was the state of Boston's civilian population.
In the weeks following Lexington and Concord, a strange two-way traffic had begun in
and out of the city. Patriots applied for permission to leave Boston, and Tories began to
arrive from Boston's outlying towns and from the Massachusetts countryside - men,
women and children, whose principal crime against their neighbors had been to openly
recognize the authority of the King and Parliament. They brought with them stories of
persecution, threats, economic and social boycotts, and physical intimidation by mobs.
They had been attacked in the public press, ostracized by former friends, and often
threatened with tarring and feathering if they did not recant and apologize publicly. In
the wake of the British retreat from Concord this stream of refugees had turned into a
flood, a confused mass of frightened people, all trying to pass through the funnel of the
Boston Neck. Rich and poor, they came by wagon, on horseback and on foot, seeking the
safety of the British guns, running the gauntlet of rebel campfires, questioned at every
crossroad by hostile militia officers.
Once they arrived in Boston, the refugees breathed a sigh of relief as they felt the
protection of the king's troops. But in reality, serious problems had just begun. The town
was already crowded with others who had fled there before them, with the British
garrison dumped in the midst of the population. And while many of the Patriots had left
the city, thousands of Bostonians had been too poor, too involved with their business
affairs, or simply too stubborn to go away. Every shade of political opinion was still
represented in the city, and on all sides the refugees were made to feel unwelcome by
Patriots who had not left, or by others already concerned by the overcrowding. Night
after night, mobs roamed the streets, and day after day more displaced persons came in.
The rebels had cut off all supplies from the countryside, and people and horses alike were
growing scrawny and unkempt.
Many of the refugees were now barely recognizable as the officials, the merchants,
the landowners and clergy who had so recently represented most of Massachusetts'
aristocracy. Now they were women in dirty, wrinkled silks, helping servants drag or
carry the family silver and portraits to safety; they were men in dusty clothes who had the
look of frightened animals in their faces. Only a few short months earlier, they had been
the voices of authority in their communities, the people who had helped create Englandin America. Many, perhaps most, were American-born, but they had remained English in
feeling and loyalty, had quite naturally promoted English officialdom, and had also quite
naturally wanted to keep things as they were. They were men like Peter Oliver, the son
of the former Massachusetts chief justice and nephew of the former lieutenant governor.
To his brother in England he wrote from Boston, “Our situation here, without any
exaggeration, is beyond description . . . we are besieged this moment with 10 or 15,000
men, from Roxbury to Cambridge . . . We are every hour expecting an attack by land or
water . . .” The Oliver property in Middleborough had been “exposed to the ravage of a
set of robbers,” and Peter Oliver confessed he did not know if the women and children
were safe or even alive. He had heard that his brother's wife was in Plymouth, “yet we
can't get any intelligence of her, good or bad.”
What little information filtered into Boston through the lines could have been of little
comfort to its people. Among other things, rumors had it that the besieging army was
rolling in provisions and food of all kinds, brought in by farmers in return for some vague
promise of future payment. Another troubled resident of Boston wrote that he expected
that the Continental Congress would make matters still worse by adopting “the most
violent measures.” Certainly those two Massachusetts troublemakers, John Hancock and
Samuel Adams, would “use their best endeavours to throw things into the utmost
confusion.”
The Loyalists protested General Gage's policy of allowing Bostonians to leave.
Once the Patriot families had departed, they argued, the colonists would not hesitate to
attack the city. Patriot families should be forced to remain as hostages and as a means of
keeping the city supplied with food. Yet the exodus continued in such numbers that by
the middle of the summer there were only 6,700 Patriot civilians left from the previous
population of 16,000.
By the end of May, the inactivity and boredom were beginning to tell on both sides.
The besieging colonial rebels around Boston and the besieged British inside the city had
waited uneasily day after day for the other side to take the initiative. The colonists daily
anticipated a massive assault by the British, supported by the guns of the naval vessels in
the harbor. Having underestimated the determination of the colonists and the degree of
their solidarity, Gage, for his part, now overestimated their numbers and their ability to
mount an attack. Henry Clinton, in particular, was deeply disturbed by the commander's
lack of initiative and by the army's morale. He was horrified to learn that no decent maps
were available, but he did not need any to tell him that their first objective should be the
heights of Charlestown and Dorchester. Any attack, he thought, would “shake those
poor wretches” on the mainland.
Idleness was bothering John Burgoyne too, and for want of something better to do,
he began writing to some of his influential friends in England, complaining about the
situation in general and about Gage in particular. Had the general acted earlier, had he
appropriated the rebels' arms or seized their leaders, had he taken the normal precautions
of establishing outposts in the countryside, of erecting proper fortifications around the
city, or of securing his sources of supply - had he done any of these things, none of the
present disgrace would have followed. Then, as if he had already anticipated coming
disasters, Burgoyne added: “It is no reflection to say that he is unequal to his present
situation, for few characters in the world would be fit for it.”
Having done his best to undermine his commander - Howe and Clinton, incidentally,
were doing much the same in their letters - Burgoyne then called on Gage and talked him
into issuing a proclamation of pardon, which did both of them irreparable harm in
England and in the colonies. Perhaps Gage felt it was the natural thing to do, but he
permitted John Burgoyne, that distinguished playwright, to compose a document for his
signature. He still clung to the notion that all the troubles in the colonies were the work
of a few wicked men who had deluded the ignorant multitudes, and in line with this
theory he issued this pardon to all those in a state of rebellion. It was intended, no doubt,
at the same time to frighten the rebels, but when it was published on June 12, its
flamboyant, almost ridiculously verbose language made it the laughing stock on both
sides of the Atlantic. “Whereas the infatuated multitudes,” began the proclamation,
“have long suffered themselves to be conducted by certain well-known incendiaries and
traitors” into a state of rebellion, “it only remains for those who are invested with the
supreme rule . . . to prove they do not bear the sword in vain.” The document went on to
mention the atrocities committed by the rebels and to warn of the coming punishment. It
tried to belittle the leaders of the revolt, “who with a preposterous parade of military
arrangement, affected to hold the Army besieged.” Martial law was declared, and in
order to avoid further bloodshed, a pardon was offered to all who laid down their arms;
all, that is, except John Hancock and Samuel Adams. It was this same proclamation that
convinced the members of the Continental Congress to elect John Hancock as its
president.
Bostonians greeted the proclamation with cheerful derision and an ingenious variety
of obscenities chalked on walls and fences, but when this diatribe arrived in London, it
was greeted with howls of laughter for Gentleman Johnny, whom everyone recognized as
the author. One Parliamentary critic replied cynically, “They ‘affect’ to hold the Army
besieged? . . . they do not affect it, they actually do besiege ye, in spite of your teeth; and
the next time you write to your friends, say in plain English that Americans ‘effected’ the
siege.”
And so they had, and if the British commanders would not admit it in public,
privately they were realistic enough to realize that something better be done. The rebels
were already digging trenches in Roxbury and Cambridge, and before long they would
move onto nearer hills like Bunker's and Breed's Hill, which commanded the approaches
to Charlestown Peninsula. It was becoming a matter of safety as much as a matter of
honor to take some sort of action, and with both Clinton and Burgoyne pressing him,
Thomas Gage finally called a council of war. It was agreed to send out a detachment to
secure Dorchester Heights, throw up two redoubts there, and then attack the rebels at
Roxbury. Once Boston was safe from attack in that direction, Howe would take a large
force to Charlestown Heights and from there move against the rebels in Cambridge. It
was to be an easy operation, and the date was set for June 18.
The Americans learned almost immediately of these British plans by the many
rumors creeping through the lines. A New Hampshire resident had been visiting Boston,
where he had had “frequent opportunity of conversing with the principal officers in
General Gage's Army.” This nameless visitor does not seem to have been overly
impressed by the information he had learned; not until his return to New Hampshire did
he casually mention these plans to someone in authority there. The Committee of Safety
in Exeter, New Hampshire, immediately sent out an express rider to the Massachusetts
Provincial Congress, repeating the information they had received. They knew nothing of
the importance of places called Dorchester and Charlestown, they declared, “but if this
hint should be in any degree useful, it will give us pleasure.”
The Massachusetts Provincial Congress knew precisely how important both of these
objectives were, and the report from New Hampshire was taken very seriously, indeed,
because it had already been confirmed by other rumors. The question was what to do
about it. The men who were so desperately trying to control the affairs of their colony
had their hands as full as they could be. Above all stood the looming problems of an
army - that shapeless mass of 15-20,000 men who had so unexpectedly converged on this
little corner of Massachusetts during and after the days of Lexington and Concord. Not
one of the colonial leaders had ever seen so many men in one place before, and not one of
them had even the vaguest notion of what this army was supposed to do, how it was to be
fed and housed and clothed and supplied, or how it was to be kept under some kind of
discipline and control.
Since the chaotic days following April 19, the task of assembling this mass of
volunteers into a manageable army of soldiers had fallen to the military leaders of
Massachusetts, principally the two men who had first assumed command - Artemas Ward
and John Thomas. When he had heard the alarm of April 19, Artemas Ward had been
sick in bed in Shrewsbury, suffering from a bladder stone which plagued him off and on
for years, but he immediately saddled his horse and rode down to Cambridge to take
command. The rotund, 47-year old man was deeply religious, quiet and thoughtful, and
though he was physically energetic, the slow, heavy thinker unfortunately lacked
precisely the kind of aggressive leadership which the Patriot army would need
desperately in the imminent future. John Thomas, on the other hand, though a doctor by
profession, had already served capably in the French and Indian War; but at age 50 he
was not one of the best officers America had to offer. He and Ward divided the army
command between them - Thomas at Roxbury, separated by the Charles River and
several miles of land from Ward's headquarters at Cambridge.
The very haste with which the militiamen had descended on Boston, had almost
immediately caused new problems, for as soon as the army had assembled it began to
waste away again, first by the handful, then by the hundreds, forced by the very
meagerness of clothing and provisions and untended responsibilities at home. Most of
these men were farmers, and, as Thomas Hutchinson had already predicted in England,
there were fields to be plowed and planted, families and hired hands to be looked after,
all of which took precedence over soldering once the first emergency was over. To keep
as many men as possible in camp to maintain the blockade of Boston, to repel another
British attack, and somehow forge an army out of the confused mass of volunteers, was
the formidable task now facing Ward. Fortunately, the general did not have to do it
alone. Advising and counseling him at every turn were the men of the Committee of
Safety, now acting as a committee of the Provincial Congress, which sat five miles away
at Watertown. The chief figure on this committee, the principal leader of the rebellion,
now that Hancock and Adams had left for the Second Continental Congress in
Philadelphia, was Dr. Joseph Warren.
The question weighing most heavily on the minds of the Provincial Congress and the
Committee of Safety was how they were going to keep control of the military. History
was full of disasters brought on by allowing an army to get out of hands, and they had no
intentions of permitting this newly created monster to be anything but a servant of the
civil government. They also recognized that as yet they had no real army at all - that it
was nothing but a disorganized, undisciplined conglomeration of men which, if nothing
was done to preserve and shape it into an effective force, would rapidly disintegrate.
Artemus Ward had already warned that if the Provincial Congress did not permit him to
enlist men into a more permanent force, “I shall be left all alone.”
In response to Ward's pleas, the Provincial Congress finally set up plans for a
permanent army of 30,000 men, with 13,000 of them from Massachusetts, the balance
from other colonies. Though they were desperate for every man they could enlist, the
Committee of Safety resolved that only freemen should be included in the forces to be
raised. Anything else, they decided, would be “inconsistent with the principles that are
to be supported, and reflect dishonour on this Colony.” Slaves would not be permitted
into this army “upon any consideration whatever.”
The Committee of Safety also set out to appoint field officers for the twenty planned
regiments, but they immediately ran afoul of a tradition dear to the heart of every militia
company. For generations, these companies had been formed locally, with the men
electing their own officers; when they now learned that this system was to be abandoned,
loud complaints arose from all ranks. This spirit of localism was to plague civilian and
military leaders throughout the Revolutionary War, and the Massachusetts Provincial
Congress was powerless to override it. At this point it desperately needed an army, and it
would have to take it on whatever terms it had to make. In the end, they distributed
enlistment papers to eligible captains, and the captains went off to beat the countryside
for the 56 men which composed a company and who were willing to serve with them.
Still the army before Boston was shrinking steadily. In Roxbury, John Thomas saw
his forces dwindle from 6,000 to 2,500 men, and of these nearly one-third were from
Connecticut. When he requested reinforcements from Ward, the commander reported his
own ranks so thin that he could not possible spare any men; the resourceful Thomas
therefore began marching his men round and round Roxbury Hill, creating an illusion of
numbers that thoroughly deceived the watchful British. Fortunately, just a few days
before the British reinforcements had arrived with the three new generals, Thomas was
also strengthened by the arrival of 1,400 Rhode Islanders, who arrived with their
brigadier general, Nathanael Greene. Greene's appointment had come as somewhat of a
surprise, for his only knowledge of war seems to have come from what he had read in
books; but the Rhode Island assembly had somehow spotted in him those abilities which
became very apparent later on, and the immediate result was a Rhode Island corps which
was the best disciplined outfit in the American Army. Greene was a lot tougher on his
men than most commanders, and although he was a long way from being satisfied with
the results just yet, even he had to admit that “they are under much better government
than any troops around Boston.”
The assembled forces around Boston were thus a long way from the hoped-for total
of 30,000; all in all, there were perhaps 10,000-12,000 enlisted men, plus a scattering of
militia companies, most of whom were unwilling to serve under this or that colonel. The
Provincial Congress, weighed down by the burden of its many problems and
responsibilities, finally began to appeal to a higher power. After all, four New England
colonies were carrying the entire American cause, and it was becoming clear that unless
other means of support were found - and found soon - the rebellion would come to an end
as rapidly as it had begun. During the last week of May a letter was drafted to the
delegates assembled in the Second Continental Congress - the same letter delivered by
Benjamin Church in Philadelphia on July 2 - revealing their fears at having an army, even
one commanded and composed of their own countrymen, without a strong civil power to
maintain and control it. The Massachusetts leaders appealed to the Continental Congress
not only for advice, but since the army was for the defense of all America, they asked
them to take over the assembled troops. Congress, of course, responded by creating the
Continental Army and by appointing George Washington as commander in chief.
But whatever support the Continental Congress might have been prepared to offer
during these early weeks of June, 1775, that was as illusory as the 30,000 men who were
supposed to be in camp, and the Massachusetts Provincial Congress would still have to
handle matters as best they could. And again and again, what concerned them most was
the army. Thus far, at least, food had not been a serious problem. There had been
temporary shortages of certain items, but what was really lacking was a commissary
system capable of supplying the right amounts of certain kinds of food to an enormous
number of men. Housing the troops was also becoming a critical need. At the outbreak
of hostilities, a good many residents had moved out of the houses in the area, and the
troops had been quartered in these homes, in those of Loyalists who had already departed
for England, and in the vacated buildings of Harvard College in Cambridge, which had
suspended all classes. Yet there were not nearly enough facilities for the masses of men.
A few of the better equipped outfits, such as the Rhode Islanders, had arrived with tents
of their own, and more had been made from the sails of vessels in various harbors, but
there still was an urgent need to get more of the men under covers of some sort.
There were not enough arms or camp utensils, clothing or blankets, and gunpowder
was the most critical shortage of all. Already the Committee of Safety had requisitioned
all that could be spared by individual towns, but occasional skirmishes had seriously
diminished that small stock. And for an army which was besieging a fair-sized town, the
number of cannon available to this one was laughable. By mid-May, there were only 24
guns of assorted size, but without any real quantity of powder and balls they were
virtually useless.
Still, when General Gage issued his bombastic proclamation of June 12, the
Americans were able to greet it with roaring laughter, and they did so with a growing
feeling of strength. They had on several occasions taken on the best the redcoats had to
offer, and had given a little better than they had received. They did have Gage and his
generals and his army corked up in Boston, and if he wanted out, it would have to be on
their terms, not his. Suddenly it had become clear that the game was not going to be
played with words any longer - on June 13, the news arrived before the Provincial
Congress, confirming rumors of late that within a few days' time - on June 18 - the
British were planning an attack on Charlestown and Dorchester Heights.
The Committee of Safety began immediate deliberations on the proper course of
action, and decided to keep all meetings “a profound secret.” What the committee did
not know was that for once its deliberations would actually remain secret only because
one of its members was absent on a mission to Philadelphia. That respected member, Dr.
Benjamin Church, who had sat in on the most important meetings and who had always
seemed a most enthusiastic Patriot himself, had for the past two years actually been a
double agent, serving as General Gage's principal informant. Not for another half year
would his treachery be discovered, but in a stroke of sheer luck, Church had this time
been entrusted with the mission to Philadelphia, and was thus absent when the Committee
decided that “it appears of importance to the Safety of the Colony, that possession of . . .
Bunker's Hill . . . be securely kept and defended.”
On June 16, Colonel William Prescott received his orders from General Ward to
proceed to Bunker Hill and erect a fortification, and that same evening, a detail of men
out of Cambridge headed for the Charlestown Peninsula to begin digging. Most of the
details of this operation had been handled by General Ward himself; but overworked as
he was, without a staff to take care of such matters, and with only a few hours to finalize
plans, the general had omitted important details in his plan. When Colonel Prescott
moved out, it was therefore with not enough men, without proper equipment, without
plans for a relief force, without adequate weapons or ammunition, or even food and
water. But Prescott and his troops compounded these shortcomings; once on the
peninsula, the Americans, for some unexplainable reason, moved past Bunker Hill, the
original objective, and began to fortify the lower Breed's Hill, closer to Boston, but also
closer to the water and the guns of the Royal Navy in Boston Harbor.
Throughout the night, the troops labored over the earthworks with pick and shovel,
each aware that below them lay the ships of the British Navy, whose guns could put a
quick end to their work if they were discovered. By about 3:30 in the morning, they had
done as much as they could. By now the men had not slept for almost 24 hours; they had
not eaten since the previous afternoon, and now they were running short of water as well.
Now and then they would look down the road, hoping to see the expected relief forces
before daylight appeared and all hell would break loose. But only Colonel Prescott knew
of the shock that lay in store for them: there was to be no relief force, no reinforcements;
this was to be their battle all the way.
Shortly after four in the morning, a lookout on one of the British warships spotted
the rebel works on the hill, and within a short time the ship swung around and opened
fire. The first blast shattered the dawn stillness and echoed across the water to Boston,
rousing the British garrison and the townspeople from their sleep. Soon the troops
poured out of their quarters and drummers beat their tattoo; another cannon blast rang
out, and another and another, and everyone in earshot knew that trouble had finally
begun.
To the green provincial soldiers in the earthworks, totally unused to battle, the roar
of the artillery was terrifying, and although it had almost no effect at first, the incessant
thunder of the cannon took its toll on the exhausted men's nerves. Then suddenly one of
them was down, and there was a moment of shocked silence and horror; no one knew
how many more would be lost before this day was out, but they all had begun to realize
there was going to be hell to pay.
Prescott knew he had to keep his men busy or they would panic and disappear in no
time. In order to reassure them, he mounted the parapet and walked back and forth,
ignoring the British shots and calling encouragements to his men. By now the sun was
up in a cloudless sky, and the men in the trenches were beginning to feel the heat. Few
had brought any food at all; a cannon shot had destroyed the last of their water reserves;
and there still was no sign of any relief or reinforcements. “If it had not been for Col.
Prescott,” one veteran of the battle wrote years later, “there would have been no fight.”
Across the water in Boston, Thomas Gage and his generals debated this new
surprise. Clinton argued for an immediate attack against the rebels' front and rear, before
their works could be extended or reinforcements arrived. But “my advice was not
attended to,” Clinton wrote unhappily. Gage, Howe and Burgoyne decided that they
could swallow up the rebels with one determined attack. No roundabout encirclement, no
complicated strategy would be necessary, decided General Howe; they would have a
frontal assault in the best tradition of European battlegrounds. Behind this decision
undoubtedly lay the same conviction that would influence the British officer corps until
the very end of the Revolutionary War - that American troops would not and could not
stand and fight. Howe did not even deign to call it fighting - the rebels were to be
“removed” from the hill, he said contemptuously. As late as 1781, Lord Rawdon would
complain that he wanted to fight a “more reputable enemy” than these “scoundrels, for
one only dirties one's fingers by meddling with them.” It was exactly that kind of attitude
that persuaded three of the four generals in Boston to adopt a quick bold plan and to
discard Clinton's plan, which accorded the rebels far too much respect.
Howe did agree with Clinton in one respect - there should be no delay. Just as soon
as the troops and the boats could be ready they would shove off. But any amphibious
assault was a complicated maneuver, and Howe's conception of immediate was a rather
leisurely one. This was to be a full-scale expedition: the troops would be ferried to
Morton's Point, and from there would march up Breed's Hill to meet the enemy, each
soldier carrying a full kit, with blankets and provisions. Therefore bread must be baked
and meat cooked before the men could set off. Every hour that slipped away was an hour
gained for Prescott's men, and they used it to extend their line toward the Mystic River,
precisely where Howe had planned his attack.
In terms of the times, Howe's force was as nearly ideal as a commander could expect,
but if ever an army went into action under difficult circumstances, it was the 18th-century
British soldiers. Uniforms, modeled after the much admired German style, were as
ornamental as could be, and totally impractical. The brilliant scarlet coats, which made
such perfectly visible targets, had colored linings, facings, piping, lace, and brass or
pewter buttons; waistcoats were either red or white. All men wore knee breeches, so
tight they seemed designed to cut off circulation. The wide white belt, from which the
bayonet hung, was also as tight as possible; a stiff collar and high leather stock restricted
the movement of the head; and none of the awkward hats had either visors or brims to
shield the eyes from sun or rain. When fully dressed and equipped, the British foot
soldier carried a weight of approximately 125 pounds, and thus encumbered and
restricted was expected to march into action and fight efficiently.
Yet British troops, hampered as they were, had at least two priceless advantages over
the Americans - discipline and training. While their ranks consisted largely of seasoned
veterans, the men behind the rebel lines were virtually untrained, almost without
discipline, totally unused to the sounds and sights of battle, and for the most part led by
officers who were little more than enthusiastic amateurs. If General Gage and his
commanders were confident, they had every reason to be so.
It was not until well after noon of the day that the British finally began to move.
Across the water that separated Charleston and Boston came barge after barge, loaded
with scarlet-coated soldiers, while in town and on surrounding hills the housetops were
jammed with civilian onlookers, spellbound by the drama about to unfold before them.
The fire from the British batteries had intensified, and clouds of dust and smoke now
hung motionless across Breed's Hill in the midday heat. The British generals appeared to
have been right in their low opinion of the American's courage - desertions were
beginning to leave big gaps in the rebel ranks.
At about three o'clock the long lines of British infantry stepped off - nearly 2,000
red-coated troops in an 18th-century-fashion battle line, three deep and stretching nearly
halfway across the peninsula. But it was a slow advance. The day was fiercely hot, and
the soldiers, steaming in their woolen uniforms, were loaded down with equipment and
provisions. There were stone walls and fences to climb over, swamps and rocks and
potholes, hidden by the deep grass - Howe complained that these obstructions broke the
perfection of his line - and again and again the advance was halted to let the field pieces
advance.
Behind their earthworks and flimsy fences the rebels watched with almost
unbearable suspense. Men fainted with hunger and thirst and fatigue; farmers fingered
their muskets nervously, anxiety and disbelief welling up inside them as the finest
infantry in the world moved closer and closer. Just behind these militiamen, their officers
moved quickly back and forth, passing the word to shoot low, to wait for the order to fire,
to pick out the officers, to wait until they could see the whites of their eyes. There was a
strange silence now - the big guns had stopped for fear of hitting their own men - broken
only by the steady thump of marching feet as two thousand men approached.
By logic and precedent, the Americans should have fired a ragged volley or two and
then fled, but as the British approached, there was a total silence behind the rebel
barricades, no sign of any movements. Someone there, inexplicably, was keeping them
steady - men like Colonel Prescott and John Stark were there, calmly inspiring the men,
and Dr. Joseph Warren had come, unable to stay away in that decisive hour. 70-year old
Seth Pomeroy, a veteran of the Indian Wars, had come from Northampton, bringing the
same homemade musket he had carried thirty years earlier at the siege of Louisbourg, this
time awaiting a British attack. They and the entire rebel line waited, incredibly patient,
fighting back the terror as the redcoats came within 200 feet, then 100, then 50 feet, close
enough that faces could be distinguished and details on the British uniforms seen.
No one knows who gave the order to fire, but the first volley was fired when the
British bayonet points were less than fifteen paces from the lines. The blast of that first
fire tore apart the leading ranks and shattered the rows behind. Officers fell and bright
uniforms were strewn all over the trampled grass, and as succeeding columns clambered
over the dead, they too were met with that same withering fire from behind the wall.
Their powder-blackened eyes peered out all along the line incredulously through the thick
smoke as the disordered wreck of the British line ran back, terror-stricken, to the safety of
the beaches and the waiting boats.
All along the entire British line the attack had failed, and behind their bulwark the
ragged defenders jumped with joy when they realized that they had repulsed a frontal
attack by the world-famous British regulars. Only Prescott and a few others knew,
however, that the battle was far from won; they walked back and forth all along the lines,
reminding the men that there was more work to be done. General Howe reformed his
broken ranks within fifteen minutes, and soon the scarlet line stepped off again. And
miraculously, for the second time, another orange flash like “a continual sheet of
lightning” emptied all along the line of fortifications, and the scarlet line was struck and
crumbled again. It was unbelievable; the vaunted British infantry could not get close
enough for a bayonet charge, but were mowed down until the decimated ranks turned and
ran for a second time.
In the rebel ranks there had been another scene of jubilation when the redcoats fled
once again, and the Americans began to doubt if there would be another attack. Dozens
of British officers had been killed or injured, and the hillside was now covered with dead
and wounded. General Howe was left almost entirely without aides or a staff, so many
had fallen in the two charges, but he was preparing for yet another assault, waiting only
for reinforcements from Boston. And as the afternoon sun was beginning to lower in the
west, the long British columns moved up the hillside for yet a third time.
With the renewed signs of British activity, the defenders of Breed's Hill checked
their ammunition and suddenly realized they were virtually out of powder. Some men
had used all theirs, others had only a few shots left, and as the British loomed ever closer
again, the men shared whatever they had. But everyone knew there was not enough for
what had to be done. As the British came on through the smoky dusk, one last American
volley sputtered out “like an old candle,” and that was it. With a great roar the redcoats
now surged forward and over the dirt walls of the redoubt for a final bayonet charge.
All resistance on the hill collapsed at last. Almost none of the Americans had
bayonets - nothing but clubbed muskets or fists or rocks. The narrow confines of the
redoubt now became a nightmare of confusion and chaos as a wildly shouting, moving
mass of men surged back and forth, and Colonel Prescott ordered his men to retreat, to
get out as best as they could.
Fortunately for the Americans, the British had very nearly reached the end of their
rope. They had climbed Breed's Hill three times this afternoon and the grisly slopes were
littered with their dead; twice victory had eluded them, and when it came at last, it was
because discipline and courage had overcome fear and exhaustion. By all rights these
men had been beaten; now they were utterly worn out. Their losses were staggering,
their morale nearly gone, and if they paused to draw breath and failed to pursue the
retreating Americans, it was no wonder. They had lost some of their best men; Colonel
James Abercromby was dying; so was Major Pitcairn, who had led the forces to
Lexington and Concord. Not one of General Howe's aides survived, and the pride of the
army, the flank companies, had been cut to ribbons. When Henry Clinton arrived at the
scene, he saw William Howe as being far from a victorious general; he was exhausted,
his uniform streaked with blood, and he had the look of a man who had stared death and
disaster in the face. “A dear bought victory,” wrote Clinton that evening, “another such
would have ruined us.
A dear bought victory it was, indeed. The British casualty list showed 1,054 dead
and wounded out of the 2,200 who had gone through the smoke and flying lead of the
three attacks, an unheard-of fifty percent of the forces. American losses were reported as
140 killed and 271 wounded. But something more intangible had happened on that June
afternoon on Breed's Hill. For the second time in two months the Americans had faced
British regulars and fought them to a standstill; the belief in the invincibility of the
British line, already badly shaken at Lexington and Concord, was all but destroyed at
Breed's Hill. As for the British, none of the officers who had witnessed the slaughter of
that June 17 could ever get the memory out of his mind. Wherever drive and initiative
were displayed by the British high command thereafter, they usually came from someone
who had neither climbed the slopes of Breed's Hill nor watched from the safety of
Boston. “We have indeed learned one melancholy truth,” wrote a British officer in
Boston, “which is, that the Americans, if they were equally commanded, are full as good
soldiers as ours; and as it is, are very little inferior to us, even in discipline and
steadiness of countenance.” And in distant Philadelphia, the Second Continental
Congress had just assured Americans precisely such leadership - on July 2, 1775, George
Washington arrived in Cambridge to assume his post as commander in chief of the
Continental Army and begin the difficult task of whipping the hordes of undisciplined
militiamen into an effective army.
***
James Otis, in and out of asylums since 1771, had been passing his days lethargically
at his sister's home in Watertown. When he heard rumors of war that morning, Otis
roused himself, borrowed a musket from a nearby farmer and set off to join the
excitement. His brain was still disordered, but he escaped the British guns and returned
home late that evening. He had apparently spent the day with American snipers near
Charlestown.
By now, any threats James Otis might have made fifteen years ago were irrelevant.
In the shadow of Breed's Hill, Otis had seen the province in flames, but the best part of
him had perished long before the fire.
***
The Congress in Philadelphia had begun discussions on various actions. Fearful that
Britain would use Indians against the colonies, Congress created three Indian departments
to keep peace with the natives. It amended the previous trade regulations to allow
importers of military stores to export produce of any kind in payment for them. It
recommended that all men in America between the ages of 16 and 50 be enrolled in
regular militia companies, and urged the colonies to provide for the safety of their
harbors and coasts. And Congress elected Benjamin Franklin postmaster general for the
“United Colonies.” But all the while divisions of opinion were growing sharper and
sharper. The road ahead lay steeply uphill with no markers or guideposts of precedence
to direct them, and not even the most opinionated man among them could be quite sure of
the proper direction. But every discussion boiled down to America's relationship to the
mother country, and it was on this point that the differences were becoming acute.
Two documents approved within two days of each other clearly show this pull of
opposites at this critical time. On July 6, 1775, the Continental Congress adopted the socalled Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms, to be read by George
Washington to the troops at Cambridge. “Our cause is just,” declared the document,
“Our Union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign
assistance is undoubtedly obtainable . . . The arms we have been compelled by our
enemies to assume, we will . . . employ for the preservation of our liberties, being with
one mind resolved to die free men rather than live slaves. In our own native land . . .
against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when
hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors and all danger of their being renewed
shall be removed, and not before.” Then came the ominous, if oblique threat: “We
meant not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us.
Necessity has not yet driven us into that desperate measure . . . We have not raised
armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great Britain, and establishing
independent States . . .” While denying any such intentions, the document at the same
time was filled with all kinds of warning signals. The average Englishman at home did
not have to read between the lines to get a true picture of American feelings - not when
Great Britain was referred to as the enemy, the aggressor, who had offered violence and
hostilities to a presumably peaceful people who were now merely defending themselves
against the danger of slavery. And few English diplomats could have overlooked the
American protestation that they had not yet been driven toward that desperate measure of
declaring themselves independent.
As if to soften the impact of this declaration, Congress on July 8 adopted another
document, largely the work of John Dickinson of Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania
Farmer increasingly began to stand out as the voice of conservatives who felt that
although the Crown was unquestionably wrong and should be resisted, the true aim of
this resistance should be the resumption of friendly relations with England - as soon as
the American grievances had been settled. It was due largely to Dickinson's influence
that Congress adopted the so-called Olive Branch Petition, a final attempt at conciliation
with the mother country. In it the colonies blamed all the current problems on the royal
ministers who had badly advised the King; they assured George III that they were
“attached to Your Majesty's person, family and government with all the devotion that
principle and affection can inspire, connected with Great Britain by the strongest ties
that can unite societies, and deploring every event that tends to weaken them . . .” They
solemnly continued that they “most ardently desire the former harmony between her and
these colonies may be restored . . .” Congress therefore begged the King to interpose his
authority to stop the fighting, repeal the Coercive Acts, and to bring about “a happy and
permanent reconciliation.”
This gesture was indeed a final one; though no one could have realized it at the time,
from that moment on events moved relentlessly towards a complete break. The Olive
Branch Petition was carried to England by William Penn's grandson Richard, but though
colonial agents repeatedly tried to present it to the King, they were informed that His
Majesty would receive no petitions from any rebel body. Subjects who shot more than a
thousand of his soldiers in order to possess a hill from which they could drive his ships
out of one of his own harbors did not strike him as loyal. On the contrary, on August 23,
the King of England issued a proclamation saying that his American subjects were now in
“open and avowed rebellion” against his authority, and that “utmost endeavours” should
be made “to suppress such rebellion, and to bring the traitors to justice.” If the colonies
were still talking about reconciliation, apparently no one else was; Englishmen had begun
to assume with logical clarity that men who behaved as the Americans were behaving had
cut their old ties. Whatever the colonies may have thought they were doing, they had
already committed themselves.
Still, as late as the autumn of 1775, the legislatures of North Carolina, Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, New York and Maryland went on record as being against independence.
Many colonists still believed in the popular theory that they were not fighting King or
Mother Country, but a ministerial army, the “unprincipled Hirelings of a venal
Ministry,” and hoped for a political crisis in England that would bring the friends of
America back to power. As late as January, 1776, the king's health was toasted nightly in
the officers' mess presided over by George Washington. And when Lieutenant John Paul
Jones raised the first American flag on the ship Alfred of the new Continental Navy in
December 1775, it carried thirteen stripes to mark the colonial union, but still displayed
the Union Jack in the corner.
But month by month, the break between the colonies and mother country had begun
to widen, until the facts of the situation mocked the still official doctrine of colonial
allegiance to King. In September, George III hired 20,000 German mercenaries from the
princes of Hesse, Anhalt and Brunswick, to reduce the colonies into submission. Late in
October, word reached the Continental Congress that a British naval force had burned the
town of Falmouth (Portland, Maine), rendering a thousand people homeless on the eve of
a severe New England winter. In January, 1776, Virginia Patriots burned the town of
Norfolk before it fell prey to Lord Dunmore who - driven from Williamsburg to a
warship - had used naval vessels to ravage the countryside along the Virginia rivers.
Also in January, the Continental Congress received several more bits of disturbing news.
It learned that Parliament had closed the door to conciliation by prohibiting all trade with
the American colonies. At the same time Parliament declared all colonial ships lawful
prizes, with the crews subject to impressment in the Royal Navy.
Congress at this time also learned that a long planned invasion of Canada had failed.
For Benedict Arnold, the weeks since his victory at Ticonderoga had been filled with
humiliation and pain. In vain, he had pleaded with the Continental Congress to let him
invade Canada, and to make things worse, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety turned
over the command at Ticonderoga to another Connecticut colonel. Early in 1775, he
learned that his wife Peggy had died, and though she had been less than affectionate and
loving to him during the last years of her life, her death sent Arnold into a depression that
was complicated by a siege of the gout.
Arnold's one consolation was a meeting in Cambridge at which he was able to
propose to General Washington his latest plan: he would lead an expedition through the
wilderness and mountains of Maine, take Quebec by surprise and capture it for America.
But once again other men had anticipated him. George Washington, though he was
hampered by a lack of supplies and manpower, had already explored the idea of a
diversion in Canada and had picked General Schuyler to lead it. Very well, said Arnold,
he would take his men north to support Schuyler.
The expedition was a belated attempt to enlist Canadians in America's revolution.
The Quebec Act had alarmed American settlers who had already cast an eye on the Ohio
wilderness, and it had outraged New England Protestants with its leniency toward the
Roman Catholic Church. Patriots like Samuel Adams traded on the anti-Catholic
sentiments as a tactic, but they also genuinely feared Rome's power. Patriot speakers told
their audiences that the Quebec Act would lead to a new Inquisition and the burning of
heretics in Massachusetts and New York. And though the Continental Congress had
denounced the Quebec Act, its members now assumed that the Canadians would fight
with them against British tyranny, even though George III was granting them more
liberties than France's kings had ever done. With the invasion force Washington also sent
a message to the people of Canada: “The Great American Congress has sent an army
into your province under the command of General Schuyler, not to plunder but to protect
you.”
The invasion of Canada was an ambitious enterprise, indeed. General Schuyler had
ordered Brigadier General Richard Montgomery to leave Ticonderoga and march north,
where Schuyler would join him at Crown Point. Together they would have 1,700 men.
Washington now also authorized Benedict Arnold to lead another 1,100 soldiers along
the Atlantic coast to the Kennebec River. According to the best information, the British
had only one company at Quebec, and could draw no more than perhaps a thousand men,
including Indians, from Montreal and other forts.
General Montgomery, who had served under James Wolfe during the successful
assault on Quebec in 1759, was indignant at the low quality of his American troops. He
said that the brazen Yankees were all generals and not one a soldier. New Yorkers were
worse. Their lax morals shocked Montgomery, and he considered them “the sweepings
of the streets.” Yet he forged ahead, and his troops were good enough to capture two
small British outposts north of Lake Champlain.
Meanwhile, Benedict Arnold was paying the price for choosing the more rugged
route. His men were slogging through rain and snow over half-frozen swamps and were
fording rivers so swollen and fast running that they whipped the army's supplies out of
their canoes. Arnold's only guide was his memory of a trip he had once made to Quebec
as a trader and the old journal of a British engineer. Among Arnold's troops was a 20year old New Jersey native, Aaron Burr. Burr had been commissioned a captain and had
joined Arnold's expedition, despite letters from his family, filled with such
encouragements as “You will die, I know you will die.” When a rider caught up with the
marching column to say that Burr's uncle had ordered him home, Burr threatened to have
the messenger hanged if he bothered him again. But when the weather turned foul in
October, it seemed likely Burr's family would be proved right.
The daily rations for Arnold’s advance soon fell to half an inch of raw pork and half
a biscuit, which was expected to last them from the Kennebec River to the walls of
Quebec - only no one was too sure just how far that was. The brambles and the small firs
had become so thick that the men were scrambling along on all fours like dogs. They
were eating dogs, too. A captain surrendered his great black Newfoundland, which had
been a company favorite, and the men ate every bit of him. Some men tried to make soup
from their deerskin moccasins, but no matter how long they boiled them they were still
leather. Starved men sat down on the ground and were dead within minutes.
Sickness had soon cut the original 1,100 men to 950. The few women marching with
their husbands expected no favors. As the army moved across one frozen pond, the ice
broke and the men had to wade through the freezing water with their rifles raised above
their heads. When her turn came, Mrs. Greer, a large and respectable sergeant’s wife,
hitched up her skirts to the waist, and even the profane New Yorkers didn’t make a joke
about it.
By the end of October, Arnold at last received some heartening news - two Indians
brought him a letter saying that the people of Quebec rejoiced at his approach and would
join the Americans in subduing the British forces. But when they approached the city,
they were facing a new problem. Arnold had now only 650 men left, most of them
shivering in their shirts from the winter winds, while the French settlers told them that the
British had burned all the boats on the St. Lawrence to prevent his troops from getting
across. In the past eight weeks, Arnold and his men had marched nearly 600 miles,
through swamplands one third of the way and carrying boats and baggage on their
shoulders for forty miles. Now the men straggling to Arnold’s side looked across the St.
Lawrence to a disheartening sight.
In the harbor below the walled heights of Quebec was a British frigate with 26 guns
and a warship with another 16. The ships had arrived the day before, bringing another
500 men to reinforce the town. His informants continued to assure Arnold that all of the
Canadians, except for about a hundred staunch Tories, would greet his arrival by
throwing down their weapons. Arnold was pleased to hear that encouraging news, but on
the same day he also learned that all three companies of his rear detachment had decided
they did not have enough provisions to continue and had returned to Cambridge. For
more than a week Arnold sent his men in all directions, buying birchbark and canvas
while every day the British went on improving their defenses. Not until November 13
did the invaders assemble enough canoes to slip past the British ships in the river and
land at Wolfe’s Cove. At daybreak, Arnold led his men up a steep path to the Plains of
Abraham, just as General Wolfe had done sixteen years earlier, when he had taken
Quebec from the French. But Arnold’s ragged little force of a few hundred compared
with Wolfe’s legion only in their courage. Wolfe had stood here at the head of thousands
of well-equipped British troops and with 22 ships to control the river, yet Arnold planned
to use the same tactic that had succeeded before. But while Wolfe had provoked a
skirmish and had drawn out Montcalm to a full-scale battle, Arnold hoped to draw the
British out from behind the walls so that the Canadian citizens and their militia could
seize the town and turn it over to Arnold. That was his plan.
Arnold thus marched his band to the walls of Quebec and ordered them to give a
loud cheer. The noise seemed to provoke some curiosity inside the town, but nothing
more. The British commander, Sir Guy Carleton, had served as an officer under Wolfe
and was not about to be tricked by a strategy the British had invented. Carleton had
1,800 men inside the fortress, but he too doubted the loyalty of the Canadian population,
and he kept his troops behind the walls. When Arnold sent out a messenger to demand
surrender, the British fired at the courier, who turned and ran back. Arnold had heard
that still more British reinforcements were on the way; since his men had ammunition for
only five rounds, neither pride nor valor could overcome such odds. Arnold therefore
decided to take his men to an encampment about twenty miles above Quebec and wait
there for the arrival of General Montgomery. In the meantime, Aaron Burr spent his days
drilling a unit of fifty men to climb ladders he intended to prop up against the fortress
walls.
At 37, Richard Montgomery was three years older than Arnold and just as tough. He
had swept over Montreal and brought his column within a day’s march of Quebec,
determined to join soon with Arnold and add that town to his conquests. His troops’
enlistments expired at the end of the year, and they were already becoming homesick and
mutinous. But since he had left behind 800 men to hold Montreal, he arrived at Quebec
with only 300 soldiers. General Carleton had strengthened his forces after Arnold’s futile
challenge at the walls, equally determined that the Americans would not take the town.
As Arnold had already done, Montgomery’s first action was to send a flag
demanding Guy Carleton’s surrender. When that was ignored, he sent a threatening
letter, but Carleton still refused to negotiate; he would not parley with rebels, he said.
With that, Montgomery told his men: “To the storming we must come at last.” He would
attack the lower town while Arnold would lead an assault to the side. They would then
join forces and attack the upper citadel. Montgomery also rejected Aaron Burr’s idea of
scaling the walls by ladder.
At two o’clock in the morning of the last day of 1775, the troops assembled in a
raging blizzard and were issued bands of white paper to stick into their caps so that they
would recognize each other through the darkness and the snow. Many of the men printed
fighting slogans on the cards, and those who had heard about Patrick Henry in Virginia
wrote “Liberty or Death.”
After a two-mile march, Montgomery approached Quebec’s outer defenses and
immediately ran into a musket and cannon fire so fierce that in the first rank only Aaron
Burr and a French guide were left standing. General Montgomery, too, was struck down,
and the rest of the men ran for cover. With his last words, the general tried to persuade
his men to come back, and to Burr he was supposed to have said, “We shall be in the fort
in two minutes.” Burr tried to drag his commander away, but the general was a big, burly
man, and with the snow drifts in the way he couldn’t move him more than a few yards.
The British found Montgomery’s dead body at daybreak.
With Montgomery’s charge repelled, the entire British garrison was free to ward off
Arnold’s attack, and by time the Americans reached the city gate, the storm was blowing
more fiercely than ever. All of Quebec’s bells were ringing, and on both sides of the
walls drums were beating. The Americans ran alongside the wall in single file, ducking
their heads against the snow and cradling their muskets under their coats to keep the
powder dry. The British soldiers began firing down at them, and Arnold was struck by a
bullet that broke his leg. Pulling himself up, he tried to lead the charge on one leg. Men
wanted to carry him from the field, but he would not leave until the main body was inside
the fortress. But they were too few. Some retreated, others were forced to surrender, and
before long the survivors were in full retreat toward Ticonderoga.
Ethan Allen, too, had discovered that not every British fort was as vulnerable as
Ticonderoga had been. Although he still held no commission from the Continental
Congress, he had volunteered to go north and recruit Canadians for General Montgomery.
But by the time he got to Montreal, he had already decided to take the city himself. On
September 25, he led a small band of men toward the city to demand its surrender. But as
the troops got close to the city’s walls, they were suddenly struck by the lunacy of their
challenge, and all but forty of them drifted away. And when the British garrison of
Montreal opened fire on those who had continued, Allen and his men ran for nearly a
mile before they were caught.
As Allen turned his sword over to a British officer, a painted Indian tried to shoot
him, but the officer was able to prevent that. His narrow escape left Allen considerably
more content to be in British custody, and he and his captors even joked together as they
escorted him to their barracks. But those amiable feelings didn’t last very long. A
British officer demanded to know whether he was the same Colonel Allen who had taken
Ticonderoga. When Allen proudly admitted to the deed, the officer shook his cane at him
and called him a rebel; Allen, in turn raised a fist and told the officer to put his cane
aside. At that the British officer ordered his men to step forward with their bayonets
drawn and stab to death the thirteen Canadians who had joined Allen in the raid. The
prisoners had already begun to say their prayers when Allen bared his chest and offered
that, since he was to blame for their mutiny, he should be the one to die. But instead,
Ethan Allen was bound hand and foot, put on board a British ship and was sent to
England for trial.
***
Back in Philadelphia, Congress had finally received some encouraging news when
General Washington reported that the reorganization of the army before Boston had gone
better than expected. Washington had faced an enormous problem with his new
command; so confusing had the situation around Boston been, that the commander in
chief had confessed privately that had he foreseen these difficulties, nothing on Earth
could have persuaded him to accept the top command. This was not the first time he had
been put in charge of undisciplined men, but these troops were far worse than anything he
had ever encountered. In his private correspondence, the new commander described
them as “exceedingly dirty and nasty people.” Samuel Adams wouldn’t have disagreed;
he had already heard that some of his colony’s officers and men were disgracing the
name of Massachusetts, and he was anxious to improve the army’s public reputation. He
suggested that whenever a man of real merit was found, that all reports about him be
emphasized and widely circulated - as far as decency permitted.
There were supposed to be about 15,000 in this Continental Army, but there was so
much coming and going that it was hard to keep an exact account. Men were deserting,
simply disappearing from camp and heading home, tired, disgusted, or simply unable to
remain away from their families and occupations any longer. With such dwindling and
ever-shifting forces, Washington was supposed to maintain a circle around Boston of
perhaps eight or nine miles, a barrier which the British could test and possibly penetrate
at any of its many weak points. And sooner or later, the British would have to make the
attempt. From agents and informants Washington had already learned that the British
were running out of food and were even slaughtering their milk cows for beef. Fresh
fruits and vegetables were virtually unobtainable, and it was not long before the soldiers
were suffering from scurvy. Even fish, that staple of Boston diets, was at a premium,
since there were so few boats or fishermen left to bring it in. There was no fodder for the
horses, and fresh meat, the scarcest item of all, had to be reserved for the wounded.
Sickness, the long casualty list, the humiliation of the army’s position, and the growing
improbability of doing anything about it, all were seriously undermining the morale of
the troops. Desertions increased daily, and there was a thriving black market in passes
from the city.
The Continental Army’s most pressing problem, on the other hand, was the shortage
of supplies. There were few weapons and almost no ammunition, and someone had
seriously miscalculated the army’s reserve of gunpowder. Washington had been told
there were 430 barrels when there were actually only 38. Each of his men had fewer than
nine rounds of ammunition to keep the British blockaded in Boston. Groups of soldiers
went from town to town, from house to house, asking for blankets and clothing. Many of
these men were nearly naked, having lost or left their clothing and possessions during the
hasty retreat from Breed’s Hill. And by the end of the year even this rag-tag army would
be no more, since the original eight month enlistment would have run out. And through
all this time lingered the question of what the British might do next; if they were to be
prevented from breaking through the thin American lines at will, Washington would have
to find a way to recruit an entirely new army.
The money he could offer was certainly not much of an inducement. Privates and
drummers were given tents or barracks, their daily meals and a monthly pay of slightly
more than six of a new currency called the American dollar. Any civilian bachelor living
simply would spend nine times that amount and not face British guns every day. All
thirteen colonies had pledged to raise men for his army, yet with a total population of
2,500,000 people, recruiting even 15,000 men of fighting age would be nearly
impossible.
For months, Washington labored over these problems. How could a new army be
recruited in the face of a British force right here in Boston? How would it be armed,
when virtually all of its muskets were the personal property of the men who would so
soon go home? Yet, miraculously, the change was accomplished. When men could not
be persuaded to reenlist, militiamen were called up temporarily to fill the lines, while
recruiting officers searched distant towns and hamlets for new volunteers. A surprising
number did stay, due in no small part to the growing influence of the commander-inchief. George Washington was not the kind of leader after whom the troops ran, cheering
and tossing their hats. Many considered him almost too distant and abrupt; but when he
passed through their camp, men were apt to stand just a little straighter and tried to
appear just a little neater, and many a soldier wrote stilted letters home, explaining
awkwardly just why it seemed fitting that they should stay on after all. By mid-January
1776, the Continental Army before Boston contained 8,000 men, sworn to serve the
Continental Congress rather than any separate colonies. Their orders would come from
that Congress, and so would their food, clothing, ammunition and - if they ever got any their pay.
Working to improve discipline, Washington’s aides had told him that most of the
potential soldiers wanted the long-accustomed right to decide under which officers they
would serve, and they were insisting that these officers come from their own colonies.
The Continental Congress had been sensitive to these regional loyalties and had been
guided by political considerations in picking Washington’s subordinate commanders.
Still, the appointments of the lower-ranking officers began long arguments in Congress as
each of the colonies demanded commissions for their favorite sons, and as friends lobbied
for friends. As a result, many of the subsequent appointments had little to do with either
military experience or ability, and arguments over rank and precedence between the
appointees continued throughout the Revolutionary War. Sometimes such disputes were
as bitterly fought as the war against the British.
The Continental Congress finally decided on four major generals: Charles Lee, a
former British officer now living in Virginia, had become a favorite of both John and
Samuel Adams, mainly because he had become so passionate about America’s cause.
Lee also delivered mesmerizing accounts of his past exploits, and had the annoying habit
of behaving rudely with civilians. James Warren expressed his reservations and
misgivings about Lee, but John Adams reassured him that such oddities were those of
many a great man, and that one must forgive him such whims. One of Lee’s major
whims, however, was that he knew far more than any man alive about waging war certainly far more than George Washington did, and he never let an opportunity pass to
remind someone of this fact.
Philip Schuyler, a delegate to the Congress from New York, was a wealthy man with
at least some military experience, all of which was considered sufficient reason to make
him a major general; Artemas Ward of Massachusetts was kept on primarily to pacify and
reassure New England; and Israel Putnam of Connecticut, whose “fame as a warrior”
was already so widespread that he was elected unanimously, the only general aside from
Washington so honored. Eight brigadier generals were also chosen, among them
Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island, who at war’s end would stand second only to
Washington in military reputation, and Horatio Gates, another former British officer from
Virginia, whose ability proved very modest indeed.
The British generals and the British Army had remained curiously passive in Boston.
Every day, Washington expected the twenty British regiments in Boston to overrun his
sparse defenses, but every day his luck held. One of the reasons was that the bloody
victory at Breed’s Hill had claimed yet another victim; late in September, Thomas Gage
learned that he had been relieved of his command. When the general sailed from Boston
two weeks later, there were few who regretted his departure; the Tories in the city were
convinced that his replacement, General Howe, would soon strike where Gage had
hesitated.
But there was something about Boston that seemed to sap the spirit of British
generals, and Howe proved no more enterprising than Gage had been. The fact was,
William Howe never wanted to fight Americans at all; he was convinced that moderate
Americans were in the majority, and that eventually they would drop all resistance to
Britain. There may also have been some hope on the part of the British commanders that
the rebel army would soon fall to pieces, just as Thomas Hutchinson had predicted. Still,
this powerful force of some 10,000 British regulars limited itself to half-hearted
bombardments of the American lines, and a few futile little raids. Penned up like so
many cattle, the beleaguered army suffered immensely as the siege continued; one man
who left the city during this time reported that there were between ten and thirty funerals
each day - so many, that General Howe finally ordered a stop to the mournful tolling of
the church bells.
But General Howe had more private and self-serving reasons for lingering in Boston.
He had a mistress there, a woman named Elizabeth Loring, whose husband was a
Loyalist and who cared little about such matters as long as he was well paid. Joshua
Loring was assured a tidy income when Howe named him head of Boston’s prisons. And
when General Howe was informed that London was sending him enough food and
supplies to conduct a proper campaign in the spring, he decided to spend a comfortably
warm winter in this one-time capital that now provided him everything he needed.
One of the Americans’ more urgent considerations remained. If the Continental
Army was to defend its position around Boston, it desperately needed a few heavy guns
to mount on Dorchester Heights. General Washington regarded the need for such guns as
so great that “no Trouble or Expense must be spared to obtain them.” Late in November,
1775, he finally assigned Henry Knox to the task of bringing in the cannon captured at
Fort Ticonderoga the previous year.
Knox, whose military experience before Bunker Hill had been limited to the study of
writings on military engineering, proved to be an amazingly skilled and enterprising
commander. Virtually alone he set out for Ticonderoga and in the dead of winter began
the stupendous feat of moving 43 cannon and 16 mortars toward Boston. Somehow he
managed to raise the manpower and equipment, and despite heavy snow and a virtual
absence of roads of any kind, the mass of artillery was moved through the wilderness
from Lake Champlain to Lake George, then to Albany and across the Hudson River, over
the Berkshire Mountains on to Springfield and Framingham, from where Knox was
finally able to report to his commander in chief that “a noble train of artillery” was ready
to be turned over to the Continental Army. With the arrival of these cannon, the fate of
Boston and its British garrison was sealed.
***
The news of the burning of the town of Falmouth in Maine, and the king’s contract
for those German mercenaries reached Congress on the same day, and indignation among
many of the members ran high. “I am ready now, brother rebel,” said a Southern
delegate to Ward of Rhode Island, “to declare ourselves independent; we have had
sufficient answer to our petition.” But even at this late date, the very idea of
independence from Great Britain was inconceivable to many members of Congress, and
to a large part of the American population. No European colony anywhere had ever
thrown off its dependence on the mother country, nor had any ever wished to do so.
Would the many American provinces not begin to fight among themselves and probably
drift into becoming satellites to France or Spain? America was not like Ireland or Poland
or other nations which had romantic pasts or an independent history that appealed to
popular emotions. All of America’s national pride, all the memories which make a
people a nation, in 1775 still responded to English names and events - Magna Carta, Sir
Francis Drake, Queen Elizabeth, the Glorious Revolution, the Bill of Rights - English
memories and English glories in which the colonists or their ancestors had shared. How
did one to break with all this?
Having for so long accepted the theory that the colonies were bound to Britain not
through Parliament but through the King, even those Patriot leaders who were now
considering independence as inevitable, found themselves in a dilemma. If Parliament
possessed no authority over the colonies, the colonies could not pretend to rebel against
this authority; rather independence must now be justified by the misdeeds of the King.
But if this king could not be accused of having acted unjustly, they could not properly
renounce his authority. Suddenly the Patriot leaders found little difficulty in preparing a
case against George III as well. The underprivileged classes had long held a smoldering
hatred of aristocracy and royalty, and this resentment might easily be fanned into an allconsuming blaze. And not only had George already refused the colonists humble Olive
Branch Petition, but at the same time he had stigmatized them all as rebels. Worse still,
had he not also hired foreign mercenaries to fight against his own subjects? While the
members of Congress were still trying to sort out their own feelings about all this, any
doubters among them received a final push.
On January 10, 1776, there came from a press in Philadelphia a 50-page pamphlet
entitled Common Sense. Its author was a 39-year old Englishman of Quaker parentage
named Thomas Paine. Paine had become acquainted with Benjamin Franklin in London,
and had come to the colonies in 1774, driven by an “aversion to monarchy, as
debauching to the dignity of man,” and had immediately thrown himself into the midst of
the colonial disputes with the British government. His Common Sense was to become
one of the turning points in colonial American history. In a flamboyant and forceful style
he presented to Americans the natural rights philosophy that was to become the
cornerstone of the Declaration of Independence only six months later. Sweeping aside all
legal questions and arguments, Paine hammered home the necessity of independence.
“Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a
necessary evil; in its worst, an intolerable one. Government, like dress, is the badge of
lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of Paradise.”
With a ruthless disregard for British traditions and sentiment, Paine attacked the
monarchy and the British constitution. Monarchy, he argued, was an absurd form of
government; one honest man was worth “all the crowned ruffians that ever lived,” and
he called George III “the royal Brute of Great Britain.” The Crown was the great enemy
of the people; the King could only make war and give away places - “a pretty business,
indeed, for a man to be allowed 800,000 sterling a year for, and worshipped into the
bargain.” It was nonsense to assume that England was the mother of the colonies;
“Europe and not England is the parent country of America. This new world hath been
the Asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of
Europe. Hither they have fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother but from the
cruelty of the monster.”
“O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant,
stand forth. Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been
hunted round the Globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her as
a stranger and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive and
prepare in time an asylum for mankind!”
To say that Common Sense was the most successful political pamphlet in history is to
give it insufficient credit. While conservative members of the Continental Congress were
still arguing against severing the ties with England, Thomas Paine’s call resounded above
all of them: “The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ‘Tis time to part.”
Within a month’s time, this amazing document sold more than 100,000 copies all through
the colonies from Charleston, South Carolina to Salem, Massachusetts, and had been read
by or to almost a million Americans. It crossed the ocean and was translated into
German, French and Dutch, and it was even published in London, with most of the
treasonable strictures against the Crown omitted. It rallied the undecided and the
wavering, and further encouraged the radicals. “Every Post and every Day rolls in upon
us Independence like a Torrent,” exulted John Adams. George Washington spoke
enthusiastically of the “sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning” of the pamphlets.
And Edmund Randolph, who later was to become the first attorney general of the United
States, said that the Declaration of Independence of America was due as much to Thomas
Paine as it was to George III.
But Paine had taken one more step to bring independence nearer, one that he did not
announce. He had signed over the copyright of Common Sense to the Congress. At two
shillings each, it went through edition after edition, until half a million copies had been
sold. Penniless when he arrived from England, Thomas Paine had donated a fortune to
the American cause.
***
But it would take far more than pamphlets and newspaper essays to lead the colonies
to the brink of independence. During the early months of 1776, the Second Continental
Congress had already moved forward by sending Silas Deane to Europe to secure
military assistance, by ordering that all Loyalists be disarmed, and by authorizing armed
privateers to prey upon British vessels. American ports were now opened to all foreign
ships, and in May all the colonies were advised to reject British authority and to form
new governments according to the people's will.
But those members of the Continental Congress who were now preparing for
independence faced practical problems in attempting to turn popular feelings into a
political reality. Many, if not most of the colonies had instructed their delegates to vote
against independence, or at least steer clear of such issues. Nothing could be done until
such instructions were reversed.
The Massachusetts delegates had begun to work in favor of independence late in
March, when Elbridge Gerry asked his legislature to “originate instructions in favor of
independency.” He was certain that this would turn many doubters and “produce a
reversal of the contrary instructions adopted by some assemblies.” But the
Massachusetts legislature never acted on the request; in fact, they never even approved
the idea until after independence had already been declared. Much as they might have
liked to do so, Massachusetts leaders like Joseph Warren did nothing to secure such
instructions. Even at this late stage, there still was strong opposition to independence
within the colony, but more important, most of the colonial leaders were so involved in
internal power struggles that few took the time to consider outside events.
It was South Carolina that took the first tentative steps toward independence.
Christopher Gadsden had returned from Philadelphia with the first copy of Common
Sense to be seen in South Carolina, and boldly declared himself “for the absolute
independence of America.” His declaration came down “like the explosion of thunder
upon the members” of the Provincial Congress; few had at that point “any thoughts of
aspiring at independence.” Even those few who were ready for such action thought
Gadsden had been imprudent in so suddenly confronting the unprepared House with a
matter of such grave importance. Yet only two days later, the South Carolina Provincial
Congress authorized its delegates to the Continental Congress to join with the majority in
every measure deemed “necessary for the defense, security, interest, or welfare of this
colony in particular, and of America in general.”
The Georgia Congress acted next. On April 5, it informed its delegates to the
Continental Congress that it was so remote “from the seat of power and arms” that it was
ignorant of the ultimate designs of the Congress. Therefore it would not give its
delegates “any particular instructions” except to remind them that “the great and
righteous cause in which we are engaged is not provincial but Continental.” When the
two Georgia delegates arrived on May 20, their instructions were generally regarded as
allowing them to support independence. And in the end they did.
North Carolina became the first colony to approve a vote for independence by name.
In September 1775, the colonial government had actually ordered its delegates not to
agree to any confederation without further instructions. But in February, 1776, North
Carolina Patriots defended a force of Loyalists in the battle at Moore's Creek, and within
days thereafter, 10,000 Patriots assembled to repel an expected British invasion. In the
midst of such war fever, the North Carolina Congress, on April 12, unanimously
empowered its delegates “to concur with the delegates of other colonies in declaring
independency, and forming foreign alliances . . .”
Rhode Island, as usual, went its own and independent course. Although its leading
pro-independence delegate, Samuel Ward, had died two months earlier, Rhode Island, in
May 1776 went ahead and declared what amounted to a virtual declaration of
independence of their own. George III, it said, had broken the compact between him and
the colonies, and “entirely departing from the duties and character of a good King,
instead of protecting, is endeavoring to destroy the good people of this colony, and all the
united colonies by sending fleets and armies to America . . .”
The act requiring an oath to the King was now replaced in Rhode Island, the king's
name was dropped from all commissions and writs and was replaced by “the name and
authority of the governor and company of this colony . . .” Courts of law would no longer
be considered King's Courts, nor would any piece of public or private writing mention the
year of the King's reign. And on the same day, Rhode Island gave its delegates in the
Continental Congress sweeping authority to unite with the other colonies in any measure
necessary “to annoy the common enemy,” and to secure American rights and liberties.
But so far no colony had actually ordered its delegates to move for American
independence. With the exception of North Carolina, none had actually used the word. It
was left to Virginia to take that initial step - on May 15, the Virginia Convention met to
pass a resolution, instructing its delegates to the Continental Congress “to propose to that
respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent States, absolved
from all allegiances to, or dependence upon the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain.”
The Continental Congress began the morning of June 7 as usual with the myriad
items of business it now faced. It voted to pay damages to one Charles Walker of New
Providence, whose ship had been seized by the Continental Navy; it considered a
complaint about defective powder manufactured by a Mr. Oswald. Then rose the
delegate from Virginia, Richard Henry Lee, and offered three resolutions:
1) That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent
States, that they are absolved from all allegiances to the British Crown, and that all
political connections between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be,
totally dissolved.
2) That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming
foreign alliances.
3) That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective
Colonies for their consideration and approbation.
It seemed entirely fitting and appropriate that John Adams seconded the resolutions
offered by his friend and co-worker. Congress resolved to adjourn and to consider the
resolutions beginning at ten o'clock the following day.
The great debate on independence began on Saturday morning, June 8, and by the
end of that day it was agreed to resume again the following Monday. That same night,
Edward Rutledge of South Carolina wrote to a friend that “the sensible part of the
house” opposed the very idea of independence; the only reason for such foolishness was
the “reason of every madman, a show of our spirit.” John Adams, on the other hand,
wrote that the “colonies are in the very midst of revolution, the most complete,
unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations.”
By Monday morning no minds had been changed. Many who opposed independence
conceded that such a move might become necessary - eventually. But many of the
colonies were not ready for so drastic an action, and others had actually forbidden their
delegates to consider such a vote. Several of the independence opponents warned that “if
such a declaration should now be agreed to, these delegates must now retire” and
possibly their colonies might secede from the fragile union.
The threat was real, but men like Lee and Adams persisted. It was the
representatives of the people, rather than the people themselves, who resisted
independence. The “voice of the representatives is not always consonant with the voice
of the people.” The only question in their minds was whether or not Congress was
prepared to “declare a fact which already exists.”
The outcome was a compromise. Thomas Jefferson wrote that when it appeared “in
the course of these debates that the colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, Maryland and South Carolina were not yet matured for falling off from the
parent stem, but that they were fast advancing to that state, it was thought most prudent
to wait awhile for them . . .” Rather than defeat the resolutions, or force a showdown as
some were prepared to do, it was agreed to take up the matter again on July 1. In order to
avoid further delays, however, a committee consisting of John Adams, Benjamin
Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston was appointed
“to prepare a declaration of independence.” Congress resumed with its problems of
day-to-day operations, while several of the delegates proclaimed that within weeks “the
last finishing strokes will be given to the politics of this revolution. Nothing after that
will remain but war!”
***
On July 1, 1776, John Dickinson began the final debate with an eloquent speech
against any declaration of independence at this time. He did not expect that any foreign
aid would be offered during the coming war, and he foresaw a dark and uncertain future
without such aid. There was no point in such a declaration until after many of their
problems had been solved. Besides finding foreign aid and support, the colonies needed
to settle many bitter rivalries between themselves over land claims. They had to establish
settled governments and, above all, they had to agree on a constitution uniting the
colonies. The committee drafting articles of confederation, of which he was chairman,
was in dispute over each and every article; so much so, that “some of us totally despair of
any reasonable terms of Confederation.” Dickinson feared that unless these problems
were to be solved first, there would be a civil war and the breakup of “this
Commonwealth of Colonies” within a generation.
But events had already progressed too far for any serious reconsideration.
Connecticut had joined Virginia and instructed its delegates to propose that Congress
“declare the United American Colonies free and independent States . . .” New
Hampshire had followed, as had Delaware and New Jersey. When the final vote was
called for the next day, there was little doubt about its outcome. On July 3, the
Pennsylvania Gazette announced that “yesterday the Continental Congress declared the
United Colonies Free and Independent States.” Only New York had abstained, because
their instructions had forbidden them to consider anything but reconciliation with Great
Britain. But on July 15, that colony was to approve the resolution as well.
What was to become one of America's most treasured documents, the Declaration of
Independence, was for the most part the work of Thomas Jefferson, to whom the
committee had delegated that task. It is said that Jefferson was reluctant to accept the
responsibility and tried to get John Adams to write the draft. But Adams refused,
explaining that “Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the
head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular. You
are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can.”
Thomas Jefferson's background was one of the leading families in the South. His
father had married into one of the most prosperous and prominent of all Virginia families,
the Randolphs. Peter Jefferson, however, came from far less prosperous circumstances,
and no doubt Jane Randolph's family felt that marrying Peter had brought her down in the
world, but when Jefferson died, he left behind eight children, of which Thomas was the
oldest son. Jane Randolph Jefferson inherited the Jefferson house and its farmlands, most
of the slaves and all of the horses. When Thomas reached 21, he was to have his choice
of lands, along with a share of livestock and half the slaves. In the meantime, the child
was left a personal servant along with books, mathematical instruments and a cherrywood
desk.
In later life, Thomas congratulated himself for having turned out as well as he had.
He was only fourteen when he lost his father, and his mother never became much of a
source of guidance. His younger brother Randolph was slow-witted, and there was no
strong bond between Thomas and his older sisters. Life in Virginia abounded with
temptations for drinking and gambling, and if the colony's clergy couldn't resist them,
why should a lusty young man? With his father gone, Thomas escaped the gentility at
home by seeking out the neighborhood's rougher men and boys, although he knew very
well that most were gamblers and carousers for whom a fox hunt was life's highest
aspiration. Even while they fed his rebellious side, he was being carried through
adolescence by an inherent fastidiousness and a passionate love of books. He said later
that if forced to choose between his father's estate and his classical education, he would
always pick the education.
Thomas learned to ride and to swim well, but it was through his mind that he
intended to lift himself above the friends sunk in sport and pleasure. He had begun to
judge his contemporaries and his elders harshly. If Patrick Henry had struck him as
somewhat coarse and shallow, when Thomas reached the College of William and Mary at
the age of 17, he found his classmates even more disappointing. Low standards of
admission had “filled the colleges with children,” he complained, which made classes
disagreeable, even degrading, to a properly prepared student like himself.
Instead of mixing with boys his own age, Thomas moved gratefully into a circle of
older cultured men - men like George Wythe, a distinguished lawyer, who tutored him
when he decided to study law. Thomas was already measuring him intellectually against
every man he met, and although he considered his teacher a little slow in grasping an
issue, Wythe always reached a sound conclusion.
Soon Jefferson was studying fifteen hours a day. He gave up riding and let his study
of the violin lapse, though he had shown some talent. Rising at dawn, he stopped his
studies only at twilight for a one-mile run out of Williamsburg and back.
Thomas did occasionally visit the Raleigh Tavern at Williamsburg and the
surrounding plantations. Young women caught his eye regularly, and he traded gossip
with his male friends, but he seems to have failed in most of his timid attempts at
courtship. As the years passed, Jefferson would grow into his large hands and feet, and
his ungainly height would come to seem imposing, but in his youth he approached
women with a diffidence that made him easy to refuse. Rebecca Burwell, the orphaned
daughter of a past governor, was one of his favorites, as was the wife of an old boyhood
friend, John Walker. Like George Washington's fascination with Sally Fairfax, Jefferson
was deeply stirred by these women, though he received far less encouragement from
them than Washington had from Sally.
By age 25, Jefferson was still not seriously involved with a woman, but he had
already begun to settle down into domesticity. On a slope across the Rivanna River from
the Jefferson homestead, he started grafting an orchard of cherry trees. He called the site
by its Italian name - Monticello, little mountain. He was determined to put a mansion on
top of this mountain, which meant setting himself dozens of technical problems. Simply
getting water to the summit was a challenge. But from the crest the view of rolling
woods across the lower hills would justify everything.
It was at this time, too, that Jefferson provided rum and cakes for the voters and was
elected to the Burgesses. A year later, he met a young and wealthy widow, Martha
Wayles Skelton, and they were married on Christmas Eve 1771. Jefferson devoted the
first two year of his marriage to his family and his law practice. But by 1774 events were
racing toward a break with England, and soon Jefferson was recruited into Patrick
Henry's circle of patriots. He was 31 when he was elected to go to the Continental
Congress in Philadelphia, and never again would he be able to escape politics.
In the resulting Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “When in
the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bonds . . . a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare
the causes which impel them to the separation.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness . . .” Americans, the Declaration of Independence
states, have received these rights not from the British monarch, but from “the laws of
nature and of Nature's God.” Their ancestors had entered into a contract with the King
for the establishment of a just government, deriving its power from the consent of the
governed and reserving to the people the right to change that government. Whenever
“any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,” wrote Jefferson, “it is the
Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government . . .” By his
long history of abuses, the King had made it clear that he was determined to rule the
American colonies “under an absolute despotism.” It therefore became Americans' right
and even duty “to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future
security.”
The Declaration of Independence then continued with a long list of grievances - all
of which were attributed to the tyranny of George III. The author, of course, was not
writing factual history; the document was supposed to change it. Despite the fact that for
the last decade or so the entire dispute had been between Parliament and the colonies,
Parliament was never even mentioned in the entire Declaration of Independence. The
local legislatures were not about to cast any ill feelings on another legislative body - ill
feelings which might easily backfire in the future. So much easier to place all blame on
one King, while at the same time to undermine the traditional, and still considerable
loyalty of English America to the British Crown.
Since his declaration had begun by proclaiming all men equal, Jefferson opened
himself to charges of hypocrisy by raising the question of slavery. Now his last
accusation against the king was also the strangest: “He has waged cruel war against
human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a
distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery, or to
incur miserable death in their transportation thither.” He contrasted King George's
professed Christianity with his protection of a market where men could be bought and
sold.
Jefferson himself was wholly the product of a slave society, and until he was nine
years old blacks around him outnumbered whites by at least ten to one. As he drafted his
statement, one-third of Virginia's population of 400,000 were slaves. His father's will
had bequeathed him slaves, and when his wife's father died some eighteen months after
their wedding, Jefferson had inherited another 135 blacks.
Jefferson's first legislation when he entered the Burgesses had been aimed at making
it easier to free individual slaves. A slaveholder in North Carolina and Georgia could
simply release a slave, but Virginia law required that slaves be set free only for
“meritorious service.” Jefferson asked a relative, Richard Bland, to introduce a motion
to give Virginians an unrestricted right to release their slaves, and Jefferson seconded the
motion. But outrage swept through the House, Bland was denounced as an enemy of his
country, and the bill was defeated.
Over the years, Jefferson had gone on deploring slavery and profiting from his
slaves. He did not permit them to be whipped, but he advertised for a runaway he
considered drunken and insolent and, after he got him back, sold him for a £100. Six
years before he began drafting the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson had argued as
a lawyer for the freedom of a slave who claimed to have had a white grandmother. In
Virginia, color counted less than the status of the mother; if she was free, her children
were also free. Jefferson had argued then that under the law of nature all men were born
free and that everyone came into the world with a right to his own person. But the judge
had interrupted his arguments and held for the slave owner.
Nothing had weighed heavier on Jefferson's conscience than being an accessory to
the slave trade, and he hoped that Congress would endorse his view of slavery. His years
of conflict now broke out across the page as Jefferson tried to blame Britain's king for
what he considered an infamous practice among Americans. George III had
“prostituted” his authority to keep alive the “execrable commerce” of slavery. Now the
king was compounding this “assemblage of horrors” by inciting America's slaves “to
purchase that liberty of which he deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he
also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of the
people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”
The Declaration of Independence closes with the affirmation “that these United
Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are
absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection
between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that
as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy war, conclude Peace,
contract alliances, establish Commerce, and do all the other Acts and Things which
Independent States may of right do.”
Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration was presented to the Congress on June
28, when it was read and ordered to “lie on the table.” After the vote for independence,
the document was debated for two days, as Jefferson watched indignantly. The
“pusillanimous idea” that America still had friends in England led Congress to strike out
any censure of the English people; struck out, too, was an attack on slavery in
“complaisance” to South Carolina and Georgia, which were determined to continue
importing slaves, and also because the “northern bretheren . . . felt a little tender” since
they, too, were involved in the slave trade.
On the evening of July 4, the delegates were finally satisfied with the revised
document, and it was ordered that the declaration be authenticated and printed
immediately. Not until two weeks later, however, did the busy Congress finally get
around to giving the document an official title. On July 19 it ordered “the Declaration
passed on the 4th be fairly engrossed on parchment, with the title and style of ‘The
unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America’ and that the same, when
engrossed be signed by every member of Congress.”
The American people did not have to wait to read the Declaration until it had
actually been engrossed and signed, a process which was to take months. As soon as the
final draft had been approved and released, it was distributed throughout the newly
formed states. The Pennsylvania Evening Post published the Declaration on July 6th,
and public celebrations began of what most Americans at once called the Declaration of
Independence. On July 8, “the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed at the State
House in this city, in the presence of many thousand spectators who testified their
approbation by repeated acclamations,” reported John Adams, who watched the
celebration in Philadelphia. That same day, at Trenton, New Jersey, the Declaration of
Independence was proclaimed together with the new constitution of the state. On the
afternoon of July 10, the Declaration of Independence was read at the head of each
brigade of the Continental Army posted at and in the vicinity of New York. It was
received everywhere with loud huzzahs, and the utmost demonstrations of joy . . .” That
same night, the same equestrian statue of George III, so cheerfully paid for and erected
by the citizens of New York only a few years earlier, was now “laid prostrate in the dirt”
by the Sons of Freedom - “the just desert of an ungrateful tyrant. The lead wherewith the
monument was made is to be run into bullets to assimilate the brains of our infuriated
adversaries, who to gain a peppercorn, have lost an Empire.” And the new State of New
York celebrated further by releasing all its debtors from prison.
And in London, a newspaper described the reading of the Declaration in Charleston,
South Carolina, on an extremely hot July day. As a clergyman rose to speak, a black
slave opened an umbrella and held it over his master's head. With his other hand the
slave fanned the sweating Patriot as he extolled the virtues of the Declaration of
Independence.
But the Declaration of Independence served a purpose far beyond that of a public
notice of separation; its tone and content stirred mass fervor for the American cause like
no other document since “Common Sense.” Ordinary people, many of whom had so
recently escaped oppression in other countries, now suddenly found themselves in a
cause for personal freedom, self-government, and a sense of their own importance which
few could resist.
And, perhaps more important, by simplifying all the issues of the conflict, the
Declaration of Independence made the coming struggle a personal contest. No longer
was this a mere protest against abstract ideas and statutes which might or might not have
affected a majority of the colonists - it was now a life-or-death struggle against a real-life
enemy of flesh and blood, an enemy who was the very embodiment of the European
despotism from which so many of the colonists had fled. Few of the relatively simple
peasants of 1776 America could have understood all the issues which led to the
Revolution, but even the simplest mind was able to focus on the idea of a tyrant King.
By giving the common man a personal cause and a real life focus, the Declaration of
Independence brought the Revolution to the home fires of every cabin on the frontier. It
was a lesson future Americans were to remember with great effectiveness or to re-learn
with bitter disappointment.
But already legends were beginning to gather around the signing of the Declaration.
One story was that John Hancock signed his name in a bold hand, rose from his chair and
exclaimed: “There! John Bull can read my name without spectacles and may now double
his reward of five hundred pounds for my head.” Another account had him turn to
Charles Carroll of Maryland, the one delegate with a fortune greater than his, and asking
whether he would sign. “Most willingly,” Carroll was supposed to have said, while
someone nearby remarked, “There goes a few millions!”
Still another anecdote was accurate at least in conveying Benjamin Franklin's wit.
Hancock had cautioned the delegates, “We must be unanimous. There must be no pulling
different ways. We must all hang together.” To which Mr. Franklin replied, “Yes, we
must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
***
There must have been many in the colonies, Loyalist and Patriots alike, who looked
ahead with fear and trepidation to the coming events. And yet, despite all the signs of a
dark road ahead, beset by danger and calamities, there was this unshakable faith of a
people who looked beyond, to a bright future as an independent and prosperous nation. It
was that faith that finally enabled enough of the colonists to carry on through years of
defeat and despair until at last the world recognized a new nation with the confident name
of The United States of America.
No one better summed up this faith in the future than did John Adams, the man who
did so much to bring about independence. The day after Congress voted for
independence he concluded a letter to his wife: “The second day of July, 1776 will be the
most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be
celebrated, by successive generations, as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be
commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It
ought to be solemnized with pomp and parades, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells,
bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time
forward forevermore.
You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the
toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration and support
and defend these states. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light
and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that prosperity
will triumph in that day's transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in
God we shall not.”
By that same date, the war between Great Britain and her rebellious colonies had
already begun in earnest.
***
CHAPTER TWO
________________
THE REVOLUTION WITHIN
To many later Americans, the events of the two decades of conflict between the
colonies and the English mother country never seemed much like a real revolution at all.
Real revolutions were something perpetrated by foreigners - temperamental Latins,
Slavic terrorists throwing bombs, ranting demagogues, bent on destruction and violence.
By contrast, the American events had not been accompanied by the excesses generally
associated with revolutions. The American colonists were, for the most part, small
farmers, God-fearing Protestants - in short, folks who had long been accustomed to live
in a free land, under self-imposed governments, folks who had now been forced to resist
a venal ministry some 3,000 miles away, which seemed determined to end their ancient
privileges as Englishmen. And it was an orderly resistance, carried out mostly by sober
middle-class farmers, townspeople, and country gentlemen, none of whom ever lost their
respect for law and order. This fight for independence was so orderly and restrained, so
heroic, that their descendants could later organize patriotic societies to remember them
and to pride themselves as the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution.
At the time of the actual events, however, there was little doubt in anyone’s mind,
either in America or in Europe, that what the English colonies were staging was a fullfledged revolution. They had, almost from the very beginning of their existence,
systematically attempted to take the law in their own hands. They had frequently ignored
both parliamentary laws and royal decrees, and from the early 1770s on they had acted in
complete and open defiance of all authority – and they had done so without even the
shadow of legality.
As for the much-vaunted moderation with which the Patriots were supposed to
have acted, that depended mostly on who was describing the events. It is certainly true
that America's founders did not resort to such grim final solutions as the firing squad or
the guillotine, but men like Andrew Oliver or Thomas Hutchinson and scores of other
families could well have disputed such claims of a peaceful revolution. Revolutionary
America confiscated as much private property and drove off nearly as many Loyalists as
revolutionary France managed to do some fifteen years later. What may have prevented
serious purges in the United States was the fact that so many openly avowed American
Loyalists left the colony – and stayed away even after the struggle had ended. Those
relatively few who did return were not enough to fan new antagonism between the
revolutionists and the old rule.
Still, there were remarkable differences in this American Revolution: while many a
nation’s people have attempted similar independence from a government they perceived
as oppressive, too many have lost it again by collapsing into total anarchy or by
submitting to a dictatorship. Once they had declared their independence from the mother
country, the people of English America, too, were faced with the immediate and crucial
question: What now? Having removed king and Parliament, who was to replace them?
Who was to lead the rebellious former colonies in the fight that was sure to come?
Even those colonists who fully supported American independence – and a substantial
portion of them most certainly did not – but even those who did, found themselves
divided in their visions for a future America. All agreed that a declaration of
independence would release powerful forces in the former colonies, and create serious
social problems everywhere. Men of more conservative temperament therefore hoped to
postpone the inevitable, while first trying to find solutions to the more critical issues
facing their provinces without destroying the existing society. On the other hand, those
who pressed for an immediate separation from Great Britain had exactly that in mind –
they were determined to reconstruct all American society, erasing the detrimental aspects
of British influence on the existing class structure and the political power of the colonial
aristocracy. Such differences on so many basic issues and ideas could not be resolved
simply by issuing the Declaration of Independence. These differences persisted for
generations to come, affecting politics and daily life in the infant United States and
dividing the former fellow-Patriots into opposing groups which at times became as
hostile to each other as they had been toward the British government before
independence.
Although there were at that time not yet any organized political parties, one side of
the opposing force soon became known as the democratic faction, the radicals. They
were the small farmers and frontiersmen, represented by men like Israel Putnam of
Connecticut and Ethan Allen of Vermont; they were the artisans and laborers of the
towns – the so-called mechanics - who looked for leadership to Samuel Adams, in
particular. They also were the euphemistically called free traders, whose most prominent
representative, no doubt, was John Hancock of Boston, Massachusetts. They even were
Southern planters like George Mason and, for a while, at least, Patrick Henry and Richard
Henry Lee. But above all, they were powerful democratic leaders like Samuel Adams of
Massachusetts and Benjamin Franklin, that New Englander-turned Pennsylvanian, and
that most democratic of democrats, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia.
The 1776 version of democracy was based on the simple principle that all men were
dignified beings, capable of making their own decisions and of governing themselves in a
rational, orderly manner. The democratic leaders viewed all government with deep
suspicion, aware that in the past, governments had invariably been used to oppress the
people. And since governments could therefore be rarely trusted, the powers of
government must be reduced to the absolute minimum, permitting them to exercise only
those powers that would serve the interests of all the people. The people should therefore
formulate constitutions – both to grant the government the powers it might exercise, and
to restrict it enough to prevent it from depriving the people of their fundamental rights.
And the farther a governmental agency was removed from the people, the less power it
should possess. Therefore, a local or a state government should always be more
important than any national government that might eventually be created.
The democratic leaders placed great importance on land as the source of people's
wealth and power. As Benjamin Franklin had observed, prosperity is the basis of virtue;
democrats believed that each individual should be a property owner, thereby always
assuring him an independent means of livelihood. It logically followed then that they
rejected proprietary claims, including the British king's, to unoccupied lands, and they
favored the division of the great estates into small holdings, to be made available and
accessible to everyone. But ownership alone was not enough. The farmer must also be
able to enjoy the fruits of his labor: an adequate currency needed to be made available,
which in turn would keep up the price of the products offered for sale, which, in turn,
would provide the farmer with enough cash income that he might be able to pay his debts
and avoid losing his land by the threat of foreclosure.
In almost violent opposition to such democratic ideals stood the conservatives - for
the most part men of considerable capital, whose incomes were created mostly through
the labor of dependent workers. To this group belonged English America's wealthiest
landowners, men like Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Randolph, and even George
Washington of Virginia; there was the Rutledge family and the Pinckneys of South
Carolina; the Carrolls of Maryland, the Livingstons, Morrises and Schuylers of New
York. There were wealthy merchants, north and south: James Bowdoin of
Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Henry Laurens and the Manigaults of
South Carolina. And there were such future leaders of the early United States as lawyers
John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay of New York.
Conservatives, in general, regarded the common people ignorant and incompetent.
Most were weak and lazy individuals who lacked any ambition in life, but who became
greedy and violent in masses. In the natural order of things in a conservative world,
therefore, a select few well-bred, well-educated men would be the custodians of public
order and decorum. The natural greed of the masses should be curbed at all times, or
they would most assuredly destroy cultured society. Gouverneur Morris, prominent
lawyer in New York and Pennsylvania, member of the Continental Congress, and a future
United States Senator, wrote in 1774 what amounted to the conservative credo of the day:
“The mob begins to think and reason. Poor reptiles! It is with them a vernal morning;
they are struggling to cast off their winter's slough, they bask in the sunshine, and ere
noon they will bite.”
The most conservative among the upper classes had always believed that popular
dissent of any sort was dangerous to the established order. In the society about to be
created, therefore, proper education of the common folk would be essential to instill in
them the habits of industry and attitudes of obedience; an established church would teach
them respect for authority and property; and effective government would uphold the
existing order by protecting the interests of men of wealth. Since in every province –
state - the poor far outnumbered the rich, it was unwise to rely too much on state
governments, which could easily fall under the control of the common man. A strong
central government was essential, and it should be empowered to curb such dangerous
democratic notions as a redistribution of wealth and land holdings. And if the offices of
this government were to be controlled by the aristocracy, it was essential that high
property qualifications were required for voting and for office holders. For the benefit of
creditors, a sound and limited currency should be maintained and managed in order to
avoid inflation and the scaling down of debts. Similarly, the courts should not be overly
sympathetic toward debtors, servants, tenants, employees, or anyone inclined to disturb
the natural order of things.
In the end, neither faction could claim a victory, for the American Republic became
not the product of any one political faction or ideology. All during the years of the
revolutionary war, many of the democratic features were incorporated into the new state
governments and in the national authority, yet despite conservative fears, the dreaded
social anarchy was all but avoided. And when conservatives later came to power in the
early United States government, these democratic ideas were already so deeply embedded
that no hint of a dictatorship was ever able to rear its head. What did emerge was a
United States, the combined results of the labors and hopes of individuals, of groups, and
of classes that fought each other bitterly for a share of the dream.
***
The Declaration of Independence had erased, along with the royal and parliamentary
authority, the colonial charters as well, and the self-proclaimed states’ first duty now
became the creation of state governments. In true British fashion, all decided to do so by
means of written constitutions, but their creation immediately involved every one of the
states in bitter struggles between the democratic and conservative factions. Radicals
everywhere pushed for liberal voting rights and a balanced government of limited powers
in which the executive, judicial and legislative branches would keep each other in check.
The most radical among them, men like Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, and Thomas
Paine would have preferred to see the lower house of the legislatures – the elected branch
– rule over all the other branches of government, though conservatives complained that in
such cases the government would be run by “a set of men without reading, experience, or
principles to govern them.”
Conservatives believed, as did John Jay of New York, that “those who own the
country ought to govern it.” Poor people should not be allowed to vote. The upper
house of a legislature – the appointed members – along with a strong executive should
serve as a break on the lower house’s ambitions.
In the end, states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina produced overwhelmingly
democratic constitutions, where every adult freeman received the right to vote, where
property qualifications for voters and candidates were reasonably low. North Carolina, in
particular, so limited the executive power of its governor that conservatives
contemptuously remarked that the only power granted to the governor was the right to
sign “a receipt for his salary.” South Carolina, on the other hand, along with Virginia,
New York, and Massachusetts, produced constitutions under which the governments
were designed almost exclusively for the benefit of the well-born and the wealthy. High
property qualifications remained in effect, sometimes even taxes for the support of the
Established Church, and the executive department remained relatively strong in order to
check any overly democratic sentiments.
But none of these governments proved very efficient, either during the revolutionary
years or afterwards, and step by step all the states gradually modified their constitutions,
distributing legislative authority between the houses and governmental authority among
the branches of the government. Besides, all the original state constitutions, democratic
or conservative, contained a bill of rights which, along with the Declaration of
Independence, became the very basis for democracy in America. The Virginia
Declaration of Rights is perhaps the most famous of these, and it served as a model for
others to follow. It called the magistrates “the servants of the people” in whom all power
was vested. The charter contained guarantees which became standard for all: Freedom of
the press, freedom of religion; no cruel or unusual punishments; the right of an accused to
be confronted by his accusers; a speedy trial and moderate bail. Other states added to
their constitutions freedom of speech and of assembly; the writ of habeas corpus, so that
an accused person could not be held in prison without a trial. Vermont was unique in
granting the suffrage to all adult males without any property qualifications at all.
These original state constitutions were never truly democratic in the modern sense.
Most made property qualifications for office holders higher than those for voters, and
most states also required religious tests for office holding which were acceptable only to
Protestant Christians. But the tendency was unmistakably in the direction of democratic
government, more so than anywhere in the world, and future generations of Americans
were able to build on them.
***
Although the thirteen former colonies had jointly proclaimed their independence and
were about to cooperate in the long revolutionary war, these newly created states were
only precariously united against Britain. They regarded themselves as merely thirteen
sovereign states, “temporarily acting together in the business of acquiring their
individual independence” from the mother country. While their struggle against Great
Britain was waged by a Continental Army, every state, every section, struggled
continuously for power, for influence, and over land claims against others, over issues
that were often as important to the people, if not more so, than was the war itself. There
were bitter differences in the South between the Tidewater aristocrats and the frontier
folk, between planters and merchants, and everywhere there were more or less serious
clashes between Loyalists and Patriots, creating, in effect, a revolution within a
revolution.
To begin with, there were long-standing border conflicts that threatened to erupt into
serious fighting. There was a dispute over the possession of Fort Pitt between
Pennsylvania and Virginia, which had already lasted for a quarter of a century and which
showed no signs of coming to a resolution. Connecticut claimed parts of the Wyoming
Valley along the Susquehanna River and was threatening to settle the matter with armed
force if Pennsylvanians could not see the truth. New York and New Hampshire were still
quibbling over the possession of the Green Mountains, made still more complicated with
the rivalry between Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold over Fort Ticonderoga. Maryland
struggled against the sea-to-sea claims of Virginia, which threatened to eliminate much of
her territory. There were so many disputes that some colonial leaders were convinced
that only British authority had thus far prevented the outbreak of several wars between
the colonies.
More alarming, perhaps, were social tensions inside several of the colonies. In New
York, in particular, local politics had increasingly become enmeshed in the disputes with
Great Britain. In 1766, the British ministry had sent two regiments of regulars to New
York and, as would happen in Boston two years later, trouble had arisen immediately
over the Quartering Act when the colonial assembly refused to vote the necessary funds.
An exasperated Lord Hillsborough finally ordered the assembly suspended, and that
seemed to be the end of it. But the next election brought in a more conservative faction,
and that new assembly adopted a much more favorable view of the Quartering Act and
voted everything the British troops required. But the Sons of Liberty, led by Alexander
McDougall, immediately denounced this action as a “contemptible betrayal” of the
citizens of New York, until Governor Colden put an end to all such demonstrations by
throwing McDougall into prison. He was released only a few weeks later, but by January
1770, the hostility between the Sons of Liberty and the redcoats had got so ugly that
mobs anticipated their Bostonian fellow-Patriots by attacking the soldiers with rocks and
clubs. No shots were fired, no one was killed, but New Yorkers later claimed that this
Battle of Golden Hill had shed the first blood of the American Revolution. New York,
however, had no Sam Adams who might have parlayed this little skirmish into a New
York Massacre, and the city’s Sons of Liberty missed a big opportunity. As it was, the
entire affair was soon eclipsed by the far more dramatic events in Boston.
In all the colonies, the western frontier had expanded so fast over the previous half
century that even with the best of intentions no colonial assembly could have kept up
with it, and governmental services were often sadly lacking in the newer sections. All
too frequently, too, good intentions were not present at all, and everywhere along the
frontier from New Hampshire to South Carolina there were complaints that the back
country was under-represented or not represented at all; that settlers had to travel
hundreds of miles to attend court; that the fees required for legal business were often so
excessive that a poor man could not defend his claims before the law.
Pennsylvania's back country, in particular, had settled so rapidly that by the mid1760s, Lancaster County in the interior was as densely populated as the original counties
of Chester and Bucks, while the colonial government agencies had become unable to
keep up with the population. The frontiersmen, now mostly Scotch-Irish Presbyterians,
were convinced that the colonial assembly was simply far more concerned with the
commercial interests of Philadelphia and the fortunes of the ruling Quakers, and thus paid
little attention to the problems of the western counties. By this time, too, the Scotch-Irish
had developed an intense dislike for the Quakers, on whose pacifism and humanitarian
concerns for the native population they blamed the constant Indian raids and the colony's
lack of military support.
Resentment among the backwoods settlers finally erupted in December of 1763,
when “a Company of People from the Frontiers . . . killed and scalped most of the
Indians” who had lived peacefully in Lancaster County for many years. The Scotch-Irish
settlers, however, claimed that the Indian village had served as a base for hostile war
parties. The offenders were soon identified as the Paxton Boys - named after a frontier
community where the ringleaders supposedly lived – and Governor Penn immediately
pledged their arrest and prosecution. But not only did frontier justice ignore the entire
situation, the Paxton Boys even threatened to march on Philadelphia and kill refugee
Christianized Indians who had sought shelter there. Early in February 1764, about 200
armed and mounted frontiersmen did indeed appear near Philadelphia, demanding a voice
in the Pennsylvania assembly. Serious problems were avoided at the last moment when
Benjamin Franklin led a delegation to meet with the Paxton Boys and managed to pacify
them by promising that the assembly would take up their grievances at the very next
meeting.
The same sort of problems faced the Carolinas as well, particularly South Carolina,
where nearly four-fifths of the white population lived in the backcountry, and where the
all-powerful planter-merchant class controlled all governmental affairs. What’s more,
South Carolina’s government was almost entirely concentrated at Charleston; the back
country had as yet not even been organized into counties and except for some local
justices of the peace with limited powers, there were no government officials at all. Utter
chaos ruled many parts of the back country, as groups of marauders carried on organized
campaigns of robbery and arson and murder, and the ever-present danger of Indian raids
added to the people’s terror and insecurity. Thus, on Christmas Eve of 1763, a band of
Creek murdered all fourteen inhabitants of a frontier settlement at Long Canes, with no
one to protect them or even try to bring the guilty to justice.
In desperation, some of the more substantial frontiersmen finally took matters into
their own hands. In order to make up for this total absence of government and law
enforcement, they organized vigilante groups, called the Regulators, which eventually
counted a membership of several hundred men. In October 1767, the South Carolina
Gazette reported that “the peacable inhabitants . . . in a kind of desperation . . . have
formed associations to expel the villains from wherever they can get at them, and to do
justice themselves in a summary way.”
The South Carolina authorities were finally forced to take notice, especially when
news arrived that 4,000 men were about to march on Charleston to present their
grievances. A delegation did indeed arrive, though not nearly 4,000 strong, and they
brought with them a lengthy petition that was handed in peaceably. The people wanted
government, pure and simple; they appealed to the assembly for “Coercive laws fram'd
for the Punishment of Idleness and Vice, and for Lessening the Number of Indolent and
Vagrant Persons, who now pray on the Industrious.” Until then, they would refuse to
pay taxes – especially after they heard that the South Carolina assembly had already
lavished thousands of pounds on such items as a statue of William Pitt.
To their credit, the South Carolina assembly did act quickly on many of the items in
their petitions, though not until the next year were ranger companies sent out to pursue
the outlaw gangs. By that time, Regulators had once again taken matters into their own
hands and begun to institute their own “social controls” over “all idle persons, all that
have not a visible way of getting an honest living, all that are suspected of malpractices.”
By that time, too, many of the more influential backcountry men had begun to question
the true purpose of a vigilante movement that so blatantly put itself above the law, and
whose members sometimes used their self-assumed powers to pay off personal grudges.
It was this growing arrogance and extremism that finally did the Regulators of South
Carolina in – especially after some of these vigilantes began to flog several prominent
local men.
North Carolina experienced similar problems, though there the complaint was not so
much over the lack of government, but over what was conceived as bad government.
North Carolina had actually managed to meet the needs of its frontier communities with
some foresight; nearly a dozen new counties had been organized, each with sheriffs, local
courts, and local officials. Before long it was this very efficiency of local government in
collecting taxes and surveying lands, and the dislike for official fees that caused
problems. As in South Carolina, there was a great resentment in the back country of what
was considered excessive spending on such projects as the governor's new residence and
the new public buildings in the provincial capital of New Bern.
Things went from bad to worse in April 1768, when a local sheriff tried to sell off
the property of several men who had refused to pay taxes. Several of the communities
banded themselves together and, borrowing the name of Regulators from the South
Carolina vigilantes, attacked the sheriff and put an end to the legal proceedings. For the
next three years, the Regulators continued as a disruptive force throughout the North
Carolina backcountry.
The entire matter came to a climax early in 1771, when Governor Tryon ordered the
ringleaders prosecuted; several bands of Regulators then marched on Hillsborough,
where they tore down the county courthouse. While they were at it, some of the more
unpopular lawyers and officials were flogged, and some had their houses wrecked as
well. But this time they had gone too far. In May, Governor Tryon gathered about 1,300
militiamen with artillery and marched them out against the Regulators on the banks of the
Alamance River. This so-called Battle of the Alamance was actually a minor affair, since
most of the poorly armed Regulators ran off after the first artillery volley. But fifteen of
them were eventually tried for treason, and six were actually hanged. The next assembly
tried to restore some harmony by passing some remedial legislation, but the damage had
been done. Many of the restless frontier folk moved on again, this time into the
Tennessee country, and with them went a legacy of bitterness against the seaboard ruling
class.
It was this sort of attitude against their provincial government that affected every
action during the revolutionary years. As early as October 1769, the inhabitants of Anson
County petitioned the Continental Congress to appoint “Doctor Benjamin Franklin or
some other known patriot . . . to represent the unhappy state of this Province to his
Majesty in England.” Not once did they mention such popular Patriot issues as the
British Proclamation Line or any royal wickedness. They wanted justice, good order;
their enemies were the attorneys and bureaucrats of the Tidewater, doing the very same
harm to them that British agents were said to be doing at the port towns. And when these
enemies of 1760s became revolutionaries in 1776, many of the backcountry folk
remained Loyalists and continued long and ugly guerrilla warfare in behalf of the Crown
for another five years.
But such backcountry brawls received little attention from the British government,
which thereby missed a great opportunity to win support from the tough frontiersmen
against the silk-stockinged Sons of Liberty in the Tidewater; on the contrary, the British
commanders – and the American commanders as well – usually regarded them as poor
quality fighter and of little use militarily.
The Patriot press was not about to make the same mistake. With the field all to itself
- Sons of Liberty allowed no difference of opinion there - and often afflicted with an
amazing disregard for the facts, the Patriot press bombarded hinterlands with bloodchilling warnings of what might be. If a tax on merchandise went unchallenged, who was
to say a land tax would not come next. If Parliament could seize even the esteemed John
Hancock's ships and warehouses on the Boston wharves, imagine what it might do to
some helpless farmer's fields and livestock, or even their very homes, should they run
into trouble! If much of such predictions was mere rabble-rousing, 18th-century
colonists could identify with just such actions, many from countless personal experiences
in some Old World homeland. English and German peasants still remembered their
governments' attempts at collecting taxes on windows and hearths, not to mention on land
and on livestock and crops. No settler who had fled Ireland for America during those
years would ever forget his homeland being bled dry by taxes, by rents which often
exceeded the annual income from his meager harvest, or by the strangling commercial
restrictions so ruthlessly enforced by London. Not one of these people felt secure enough
in America to declare that ‘it can't happen here!’ - not as long as England insisted on her
rights to tax the colonies.
***
One of the immediate results of the Revolution was a transformation of the system of
land ownership, as huge estates were confiscated everywhere. The greatest gains came
when the states seized the ungranted lands formerly in possession of the king. New
Hampshire, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, all took possession of this
vast royal acreage within their borders and handed their disposal over to their states'
legislatures. Gradually, the former colonies assumed title to territory as far west as the
Mississippi, and north to the Great Lakes, sweeping away the obstacles to settlement
imposed by such British laws as the Quebec Act and the royal Proclamation Line of
1763.
But the proprietors’ estates also fell victim to the democratic spirit. Pennsylvania
took over all the ungranted lands still held by the Penn family - a domain valued at more
than £1,000,000, for the loss of which the state legislature finally granted the Penns
£130,000 “in remembrance of the spirit of the founder . . .” Maryland proved even more
frugal-minded. When that state confiscated the lands of its proprietor in 1780, the
compensation it provided - £10,000 - was considered so demeaning that the British
government later felt obliged to pay him an additional £90,000. Virginia took possession
of Lord Fairfax's immense domain of more than five million acres between the
Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers, and Lord Granville’s estate, almost one-third of the
State of North Carolina, passed quietly into the hands of the state’s legislature.
Having done away with such aristocratic privileges in the existing states, the
democratic leaders set out to prevent such evils in the newer regions to the west. In the
early 1770s, a group of North Carolina merchants and landowners had already begun to
establish a great proprietary province beyond the mountains. Their leader was Richard
Henderson, a conservative judge of Granville County. As an outspoken critic of the
North Carolina Regulators, Henderson had become the victim of Regulator wrath, and in
the process, most of his estate and his possessions had been reduced to ashes. Henderson
had long been interested in the West, and had already hired a scout by the name of Daniel
Boone to explore the wilderness of western Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. In 1775,
Henderson and a group of wealthy North Carolinians, all of whom had already been
victimized by the Regulators, formed an association called the Transylvania Company,
which negotiated a deal with the Cherokee Indians to purchase some 20,000,000 acres of
land for £10,000 in goods and money. The resulting deal, the so-called Treaty of
Sycamore Shoals, included large parts of western Virginia and Tennessee and most of
what was to become Kentucky. Under Henderson's leadership, a band of some 300
frontiersmen then set out into the wilderness and erected a settlement called
Boonesborough, where the promoters intended to locate their capital. Theirs was to be a
true proprietorship. They planned to retain title to all the lands and collect quitrents from
the settlers. If they agreed to an elected assembly in their territory, all its decisions were
to be subject to a proprietary veto, for they “clearly realized that if they resigned that
power, the delegates . . . would have it in their power to annul the claims and rights of
the proprietors.”
Having acted in direct defiance of what was still British western land policy, the
Transylvania Company immediately drew the wrath of Lord Dunmore in Virginia and
Governor Martin of North Carolina, who branded them as an infamous band of “land
pirates.” Before these governors could act, however, the Revolutionary War made them
outcasts as well, and the Transylvanians immediately turned to the Continental Congress
to have their claims validated. Not unexpectedly, their claims fell on unsympathetic ears,
and when the proprietors turned in desperation to Virginia, that state responded by
confiscating the entire territory. Only the next year, Kentucky was officially organized as
a county of Virginia.
The confiscation of these royal and proprietary lands put many of the state
governments into the real estate business on a large scale, and they realized millions of
pounds from their sale. But the disposal of these lands never did accomplish the expected
equality among the inhabitants, even if the state legislatures tried their best to accomplish
that goal. New York actively discouraged the sale of tracts larger than 500 acres. North
Carolina sold its lands at fifty shilling an acre, hoping to attract even the poorest of
farmers. Nearly all the states offered land bounties to enlisting soldiers, and everywhere
squatters were given preemption rights. Still, those in the best position to buy these lands
were obviously those who already possessed some wealth to begin with, and shrewd
operators were able to amass huge speculative holdings through dummy purchases which
they subsequently consolidated into large properties. They purchased at huge discount the
bounties of soldiers who were unable or unwilling to migrate, and then sent out servants
to secure the preemption rights. Also, many of the land grants made before the war
survived. In 1783, George Washington's holdings beyond the mountains amounted to
58,000 acres; Richard Henderson and his partners in the Transylvania Company later
received 200,000 acres from Virginia, and 200,000 acres more from North Carolina in
today’s Indiana. It was such large acquisitions – used as speculative acquisitions - which
prevented many potential settlers from acquiring land at affordable prices, and as early as
1779, pioneers had already begun to drift into land held by Spain in order to avoid the
speculators' exorbitant prices.
***
The Continental Congress in Philadelphia, meanwhile, was wrestling with
overwhelming problems on all fronts, the most urgent of which was to provide the
manpower, the money, and equipment to conduct the war about to begin. The Congress
had already assumed the responsibility for conducting this war, for raising and equipping
and paying the Continental Army, and for the appointment of an officer staff. Though
Congress was authorized to assess each state for its share of these costs, such procedures
would take time, but Congress needed the money now. The problem was, this Congress
could not levy taxes and could not obtain loans from outside sources. Many of the richest
men in the colonies had remained loyal to the Crown, and would certainly not lend any
money to this outlaw Congress; even when their properties were later confiscated, it was
not the Continental Congress, but the individual states which benefited from them. And
once the war began to affect American commerce, even wealthy Patriots could no longer
raise the cash to lend to their new government. Cautious capitalists everywhere were
hesitant to lend any money to this United States government, at least while the outcome
of the war was still in serious doubt. They were convinced that, in the likely event of a
British victory, all such loans would be repudiated. And the new United States, of
course, had as yet no common currency, either paper or metal; there were no banks which
could extend credit to the government, and the supply of foreign coins and precious
metals, thanks to long-standing British imperial policy, was not nearly adequate for
financing anything like an extended war.
Under such circumstances, the Congress resorted to issuing promissory notes, bills of
credit, printed in the form of general currency so that they would circulate without
individual endorsements. Eventually, between 1775 and 1779, the Continental Congress
issued such bills of credit in enormous amounts, made all the more necessary when every
one of the states failed to collect the tax money which was supposed to have helped
finance the war. When the tax money was not paid by the states to the Congress,
moreover, the old bills remained in use, while more and more notes were printed to cover
the ever-increasing expenses. By 1779, the Congress had thus printed and circulated bills
of credit in the incredible amount of $190 million. Worse yet, the states themselves had
begun to issue notes of their own - nearly $250,000,000 by 1779. This flood of paper
currency was never covered by an equivalent supply of gold or silver or any kind of
commodity; the only security behind the notes was the promise of each state legislature to
levy taxes for their redemption – a promise, incidentally, which none of the states had
kept by that time. Inevitably, the paper currency depreciated to a point where it was
literally not worth the paper on which it was printed, and gave rise to a popular
expression of the day, “not worth a Continental.”
Such dangerous amounts of Continental bills in circulation finally forced the
Congress to act. After 1779, when the American government was finally able to borrow
money from private sources, it was decided to retire as many of the bills from circulation
as was possible. The following year, the states were instructed to redeem their bills at the
rate of one silver dollar to forty paper dollars. Thus, if a taxpayer were assessed a tax of
one silver dollar, he might instead chose to pay forty dollars in Continental bills, which
would then be sent to Congress to be destroyed. After the redemption period had
expired, any bills still outstanding were to have no further value.
Few people benefited by this depreciation of the paper currency - not even the
debtors, who generally gain an advantage during such periods. The depreciation caused a
rapid rise in the price of nearly everything, and in many cases so much paper money was
required for the purchase of new supplies that there usually was little left for debt
payments. Also, creditors quickly took advantage of the natural inclination of debtors to
defer payment, and they obligingly extended loans until they could be collected in a
stabler currency. In many cases, too, the poorly paid military service forced many a man
to borrow money to operate his farm while he was away in the army. And if a debtor did
succeed in clearing himself of all obligations, the rising costs of everything he bought
often forced him to go out and borrow again.
Those who did profit from this paper currency mess were the men skilled in money
transactions and familiar with price fluctuations and currency values. Merchants who
had the foresight to anticipate depreciation simply raised the prices of the goods they
sold, and prices did in fact rise faster than wages or the income from farm products.
Realizing that the currency bubble would one day burst, the shrewdest of the investors
converted their paper profits into some more durable form - into land, commodities,
mortgage loans, and eventually into the securities of the state and federal governments,
thereby acquiring claims to future incomes to be realized in a better currency.
***
While the Declaration of Independence became a rallying point to great masses of
the American colonists, it made at the same time despised criminals out of a substantial
portion of the population. A way of life which had been so natural for Englishmen as far
back as they could remember, had now suddenly become a heinous crime. Literally
overnight, all the colonial population became divided into two camps - the Patriots or
Whigs, who were prepared to fight for their vision of a future America, and the Loyalists
or Tories, who simply could not bring themselves to rebel against everything their fathers
and grandfathers and generations of ancestors had so cherished.
It is nearly impossible today to estimate the total number of colonists who chose to
remain loyal to king and country. The greater part of the Loyalist population, no doubt,
took the required oath of allegiance to the new United States, paid their taxes, and
secretly prayed for the defeat of the American cause. To most of them, America was,
after all, their home. And most had no place else to go.
Certain is that there were Loyalists in every colony and in every walk of life. In
New York, New Jersey and Georgia, in fact, they probably were in the majority, and they
were very strong in Pennsylvania and the Carolinas. Only the oldest settled colonies Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut and, of course, Massachusetts - could claim a majority
of Patriot sentiments. But everywhere, loyalty to the king was strongest in the upper
classes. Royal officials quite naturally hoped to hold on to their positions and status in
colonial life, as did the Anglican clergy, whose church required loyalty to the lawful
sovereign. Many of the great landowners, except the majority of those in Virginia,
remained loyal, although most also kept their opinions to themselves in order to save
their estates. Many of the merchants could find no advantage in the Patriot cause, except
ruin and hard times, as did the lawyers, many of whom remained on the Loyalist side. In
general, the older, well-established, and well-to-do families opposed the revolution, either
openly or secretly, but families such as the Randolphs of Virginia, the Morrises of New
York, and the Otises of Massachusetts became tragically divided. Though many of the
earliest and most prominent of the Revolutionary leaders also came from the upper class,
many more could simply not get involved in a cause which not only separated them from
what they considered their homeland, but which was certain to destroy the stability of the
society as they knew it.
As is true in all passionate causes everywhere, most of the Tories in the American
colonies had good reason not to reveal their true sentiments. Tories came to be more
bitterly hated by the Patriots than were the British themselves. Loyalist citizens and
neighbors became the objects of every rumor of misdeeds: it was they who had persuaded
the British government to begin the war, and who encouraged the British to conduct this
war “in a manner before unknown to civilized nations, and shocking even to
barbarians.” They incited the Indians to the warpath, and assisted the savages in
scalping “the aged matron, the blooming fair maiden, the helpless infant, and the dying
hero.” They burned American cities, ravaged the countryside, and violated Patriot
women. A Tory, declared Governor Livingston, “is an incorrigible Animal: And nothing
but the Extinction of Life will extinguish his Malvolence against Liberty.”
As the war progressed, the intensity of feelings drove Patriot leaders to wholesale
confiscations of Loyalist properties. In November 1777, the Continental Congress
recommended that the states seize and sell the property of all men who supported the
king, and that they invest the proceeds in Continental notes. Needless to add, the states
needed little encouragement. New Hampshire eventually confiscated the estates of thirty
of her citizens; Pennsylvania prepared a 'black list' of some 490 Loyalists, most of whom
had already left the state after the withdrawal of the British forces from Philadelphia.
New York seized the properties of 55 Loyalists, including such prominent men as James
Delaney and Roger Morris. And on and on. Sir William Pepperell lost his estate in
Maine, Sir John Johnston in New York, and Sir James Wright in Georgia. After the war,
nearly 5,000 Loyalists appealed to the British government for compensation for their lost
property, which was then estimated at a total of more than £10,000,000.
Even moderate supporters of the British cause – or moderate critics of American
excesses - were harassed at every opportunity, by fines for evading military duty, for
harboring suspected Tory members of their own families, and for every other misdeed of
which anyone at all felt the urge to accuse them. In order to force Tories to reveal
themselves, the Patriots rigorously imposed oaths of loyalty to the new order on all; those
who refused were fined or imprisoned, or worse. New York and South Carolina held
Tories financially responsible for robberies committed in their neighborhoods; they were
forced to pay double taxes or more; they were compelled to receive all moneys due them
– in rents or sold merchandise, and such - in the depreciated paper currency, and then to
meet their own obligations in hard currency. They lost all offices they had held, and all
professional practices. They were boycotted, robbed, cheated, tarred and feathered and
publicly flogged and beaten. If they resisted such treatment, they exposed themselves to
the charge of treason and the confiscation of all their property. Gradually, even moderate
Loyalists were thus driven to open resistance, often joining the king’s forces or giving
them aid.
Probably no group in the colonies was suspected more than the Quakers. For the
most part prosperous merchants and farmers, the Quakers were inclined to be more
conservative. Besides, their religious principles made them opposed to any cause which
employed armed force to achieve its end. Though some Quakers overcame their
conscientious objections to war and joined in the Patriot cause - such as General
Nathanael Greene, who was read out of meeting for his backsliding - on the whole,
Quakers were regarded as Tories of a particular dangerous type.
Under such circumstances, it was remarkable that any Tories asserted themselves at
all. But many did so; they never had any doubts about the outcome of this dispute once
the mother country overcame her weak and vacillating policy towards the colonies and
acted with resolution. Then the Tories would be vindicated, their fortunes restored, and
their tormentors punished. Like the British ministry, the Tories constantly assured each
other – and themselves - that this resistance to Great Britain had been stirred up by a
mere handful of ambitious intriguers. The mass of the people were docile and loyal,
devoted to His Majesty, King George III; besides, most were completely ignorant of, or
indifferent to the fine points of constitutional theory.
The Tories were as confident as the British that even if worst came to worst and war
broke out, the mere sight of battle-seasoned British regulars would be enough to frighten
the colonists into peaceful behavior. Perhaps a short war might not even be such a bad
thing, after all. Once the Patriots were thoroughly beaten and humiliated, they would
hardly dare to trouble their betters again. Then there would be an end to the mobbings, to
the tarring and feathering, to non-importation agreements and insolent inquisitions.
Not all Loyalists were easily or openly recognized. In October, 1775, James Warren
of Massachusetts sent a hasty and agitated letter to his colleague John Adams. Writing
from Watertown, near Boston, he explained that “an event has lately taken place here
which makes much noise, and gives me much uneasiness. Dr. Church has been detected
in a correspondence with the enemy, at least so far that a letter wrote by him in a curious
cypher and directed to Major Cane (who is an officer in the Royal army and one of
Gage's family) has been intercepted.” This correspondence, said Warren, was forwarded
by means of “an infamous hussy” with whom “the Doctor has formed an infamous
connection.”
Benjamin Church, a Massachusetts deacon's son, had studied in London and had
built up a handsome medical practice in Boston before tensions between Britain and her
American colonies reached the crisis point. In fact, it was Church who had provided free
inoculations to the poor during a recent smallpox epidemic. On the outbreak of
hostilities, Church had immediately offered his services to the Patriot cause and had been
placed in charge of medical affairs for the Continental Army outside Boston. Though he
never had the title, for practical purposes Dr. Church was the first American Surgeon
General. Now in his early 40s, Church and Warren had been among Adams' favorite
protégés, and it was Dr. Church who was usually asked to speak at the anniversaries of
the infamous Boston Massacre.
Informed about the accusations, Washington sent for the “infamous hussy” that very
same night. Although he coaxed her and threatened her, she would say nothing until
Washington ordered her jailed, when she broke down and told her story. She was being
kept by Dr. Church, and now she was pregnant by him. And, yes, Dr. Church had written
that coded letter and had asked her to forward it to Major Cane.
Washington now summoned Church and at the same time he sent men to seize the
doctor's papers. Church had given a decade of service to the Patriots and he truly
believed that his explanation would be accepted. He admitted writing the letter, but said
it was meant for his brother; yet when the letter was finally deciphered it was shown to be
filled with valuable military data.
Commander-in-chief Washington himself presided over the court martial of
Benjamin Church. Suddenly Patriots began to recall that Church had built a lavish
country house, and no one knew how he could afford it, and his frequent affairs had been
well known even before he took up with this latest expensive mistress. Paul Revere had
long watched disapprovingly as Church often dined with a British captain and a customs
official, but he felt that it was not his place to question the eminent doctor. And Church
had told other Patriots who were less concerned with such social etiquette that he was
learning military intelligence from the hints these men let unwittingly drop. And a
Boston clergy suddenly remembered seeing Dr. Church one day leaving General Gage's
house, and it had seemed to him that the doctor and the general had parted like dear old
friends.
The evidence presented was ambiguous enough that it probably would not stand up
in any modern courtroom, but in the feverish climate of patriotic sentiments, Church was
convicted and imprisoned for a time. After he was paroled, he sailed for the West Indies,
and on his way there was apparently lost at sea. Many Americans on both sides of the
issue were convinced of his innocence and lauded him as a martyr to the Patriot cause, a
man given an unjust sentence. But 150 years later, the private papers of General Thomas
Gage revealed numerous traitorous letters from Dr. Church which make it clear that he
had provided the British leader with substantial and detailed information on Patriot
actions. Whether he was driven by debts to cover his high living or by doubts that the
Patriots could or would win, Church had apparently begun his spying in 1771. As a
trusted member of the Provincial Congress and its Committee of Safety, Church had
reported regularly to General Gage on the Patriots' supply of powder and arms. And
when he had brought messages to the Continental Congress the previous spring, he had
lingered in Philadelphia long enough to pick up information and to inform Gage about the
debates on financing the new army.
***
Having got the habit of reforming their provinces, the Revolutionary leaders tried to
ease the lot of their more unfortunate fellow-citizens as well – and few were more
unfortunate than the prison population. If there were many who had committed more or
less serious crimes for which they were now incarcerated, there were even more whose
only violation was having fallen into debt. But the accounts of the treatment of law
breakers, regardless of the severity of their crimes, are difficult to comprehend today.
The violence with which they were punished, the jails into which they were thrown, and
the daily conditions under which they had to survive, all have about them an almost
nightmarish quality.
The list of offenses for which a person could be punished was long, and the penalties
invariably brutal. Death was the common punishment for robbery, forgery,
housebreaking, and counterfeiting. Even pacifist Quaker Pennsylvania, as late as 1783
put five men to death for a single robbery. Two years later, a man in Massachusetts who
had made fifty counterfeit dollars, might well have wished for the death penalty: he was
set in the pillory, taken to the gallows where he stood with a rope around his neck for
some time, whipped twenty lashes, had his left arm cut off, and was finally sentenced to
three years' hard labor.
Inevitably, there were loud demands for reform of so inhuman a system, and one of
the first states to act was Virginia, where Thomas Jefferson and James Madison led the
way. They proposed to amend the existing codes by ending the death penalty for all
crimes but murder and treason, and by humanizing the punishment for lesser crimes.
Such liberal-mindedness was far ahead of its time, however, and the proposed revision
failed again and again. Not until 1796, some twenty years after Jefferson had begun this
work, was he able to get some of his revisions adopted by the State of Virginia.
William Penn had actually drawn up a remarkably humane criminal code for his
colony, but that, too, had been vetoed by the British government. Still, for a time, at
least, the colonial legislature had stuck to Penn's ideas, though eventually it was forced to
abide by the English codes. By the time of the Revolution, however, men like Dr.
Benjamin Rush and William Bradford continued to push for more humane criminal laws;
year in and year out, they wrote and spoke against capital punishment with such force,
that in 1794 Pennsylvania finally made sweeping revisions of the entire penal code,
retaining the death penalty only for willful murder.
If the penal codes were harsh, the jails to which convicted persons were sentenced
were horrendous. Few states had actual prisons; instead they used any available building,
regardless of condition, to house prisoners. No condition in any 20th-century American
prison, however bad, could ever equal the horrors of an 18th-century prison. All varieties
of criminals, all ages, and both sexes were crowded together in filthy, mostly unheated
prisons. Food, if any was provided at all, was poor at its best, and at its worst was rotten.
The jailers’ character was usually little better than that of the convicts, and they often
made their money by robbing the inmates of their clothing and other possessions, or by
selling liquor to those who had the means to buy it. So bad was the jail in Philadelphia,
said a grand jury in 1787, that it had become “a desirable place for the more wicked and
polluted of both sexes.” Investigations during the 1780s revealed abominable conditions.
The most infamous prison of all, Newgate at Salisbury, Connecticut, was established by
thrifty Connecticut legislators - an old abandoned copper mine in which men and women
lived in conditions that today are unimaginable.
Conditions in Philadelphia were considered so bad that they finally led to the
formation of the Philadelphia Society for Assisting Distressed Prisoners in 1776. The
Society bought covered wheelbarrows which it sent through the streets of the city daily
carrying signs “Victuals for The Prisoners.” British occupation once again put an end to
such subversive activity, but ten years later The Society for Alleviating the Miseries of
Public Prisons was organized. In it were men such as Dr. Benjamin Rush, Tench Coxe,
and Bishop William White of the Episcopal Church, who was its president for forty
years. This society investigated the prisons and made suggestions for their improvement.
It proposed that the sale of liquor be stopped, that men and women be separated, that the
cells be washed with lime.
The jailers naturally opposed any such interference with their prerogatives. They
objected to any kind of inspection because, as they claimed, the criminals were too
desperate and dangerous. To prove their point, whenever such inspections were made,
the jailers lined the men up in front of a loaded cannon - just in case.
Prison reform took a different turn in New York. There it was concerned with those
imprisoned for debts. Perhaps no people in 18th-century society, whether in Europe or in
America, were more unfortunate than those imprisoned for debts, and they generally
constituted a considerable part of any jail population. The idea of imprisonment for debts
seems completely irrational in this age, but it seemed logical enough then. People were
put in jail for small sums - in Boston, for instance, a woman was jailed for four months
for failing to pay a fine of sixpence. No one ever explained how a debtor in jail was
better able to pay his debts than a debtor out of jail and at work. But more and more
people were beginning to see the light and were questioning the sense of all this,
particularly for people whose debts were small, and they began to demand legislation to
free debtors from jail sentences. In New York, the Society for the Relief of Distressed
Debtors was organized. Its members went out to see that jailed debtors got food, fuel,
and clothing to lighten the burdens of their stay. Despite such activity and newspaper
comments on the idiocy of such practices, dominant opinion for some years to come was
that of the creditor who could see no fallacy in jailing a man who failed to pay his debts.
At least some of the colonial leaders also attempted to tackle what was already
becoming a controversial issue - slavery. By the 1770s, black slavery had become well
established in many of the American colonies, but it was also being opposed by at least
some of the population. If the English were particularly fond of pointing out that the
existence of slavery contradicted all the liberal aspirations of the American Revolution, it
had been the British government that had begun the practice; what’s more, it was the
British government that had also put obstacles in the way of American efforts to check
the practice. Laws enacted by colonial legislatures against the slave trade had usually
been disallowed by the Privy Council because they would have destroyed the business of
the British-owned Royal African Company. Sentiment against this traffic was especially
strong in Virginia, and the most conspicuous Patriot leaders there - including George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry - openly deplored the institution, even
though their own way of life was in large part founded on it. But everywhere, the
radicals met their toughest opposition whenever they attacked this labor system which
seemed to others an essential ingredient in maintaining production on the large
plantations.
The first criticisms were made against the most vicious aspect of this commerce in
human beings, the slave trade with Africa. The Continental Congress banned this traffic
in the course of its economic warfare against Great Britain, but when the Congress threw
open American ports to world trade, Yankee shippers immediately seized the opportunity
to gather in the profits of the slave trade as just one more blessing of the new order.
Many of the Southern planters, especially in South Carolina and Georgia, were eager
enough to purchase fresh supplies of laborers, and it was this combination of shipping
and planting interests that prevented an official national condemnation of the trade in the
Declaration of Independence, as Jefferson had hoped to do. Thereafter the reformers
directed their efforts to the states.
The concern with slavery had already led to the creation of several organizations
which became the forerunners of the later abolitionist societies. Pennsylvania was one of
the leaders, with the first organization of its kind founded there in 1774; as with most
Philadelphia societies during his lifetime, Benjamin Franklin was its president. Six years
later, the Pennsylvania assembly passed a law which provided for gradual emancipation
by stating that children born to slaves would be free, even though they might be
considered as servants until their 28th year. This law was basically an extension of
Quaker customs which already decreed that all Quakers must release their slave property
if they hoped to remain in the good graces of their church. But such early activities were
frustrated by the coming of the Revolutionary War and the temporary occupation of
Philadelphia. Not until 1784 did the organization reemerge as the Pennsylvania Society
for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the Relief of Free Negroes, Unlawfully Held
in Bondage, and for Improving the Condition of the African Race. This society was
instrumental in having the law revised, and for years to come was an active force in the
abolitionist movement. By 1800, Pennsylvania had less than 2,000 slaves left, largely the
result of the watchful vigilance of the Society.
In New York, the fear of slave uprisings prevented formal action until after the
United States Constitution was in effect, but the state did witness the establishment of the
country’s second emancipation society. In 1785, the Society for the Promotion of the
Manumission of Slaves and Protecting such of them that have been or may be Liberated
was organized with John Jay, a slave holder himself, as president, and Alexander
Hamilton as secretary. There were strong anti-black feelings in New York, where large
numbers of slaves had always been held, and the Society was never able to secure the
passage of a bill for gradual abolition. It kept up its agitation, however, and in 1788 its
members agreed to boycott all auction masters who sold slaves and to do business only
with those who “shall uniformly refrain from a practice so disgraceful and so shocking
to humanity.” It also established a school for freed slaves and their children, and finally
pushed through the assembly a measure ending the requirement for a master to post bond
when he freed a slave. Such bonds had previously been required to ensure that the freed
man or woman would not become a public charge. But despite such efforts by John Jay
and the Society, New York in 1790 still held more than 20,000 slaves, far more than any
other Northern state.
The well-publicized activities of the Philadelphia and New York societies led to the
formation of others, usually with equally cumbersome names. Vermont, not even a state
as yet, had already abolished slavery outright in its 1777 state constitution; Delaware
organized an abolitionist society in 1788, and before 1794 others were organized in
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia. Maryland, in particular,
had a very active movement for gradual abolition, and declared that slavery was
inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution and pointed to the many horror reports
of slavery from the South.
In the Massachusetts Bill of Rights of 1780 there was a clause which stated that all
men were born free, and the state's Supreme Court lost no time in declaring that this
required all slaves to be freed. This decision, together with the voluntary freeing of
slaves by their owners and their failure to round up runaway slaves, contributed to the
fact that in the census of 1790, Massachusetts was the only state in the new union to
report no slaves at all among its residents. There was no unanimity, however, even in
New England. A writer calling himself ‘Not Adams,’ declared that ever since “that class
of people called Negroes” began to absorb the idea that they were not slaves, they have
been coming into Boston. This made it harder for the poor inhabitants of the town to
make a living. No Negroes should be allowed in Boston, wrote ‘Not Adams’, except
those that had been born there.
There was significant opposition to slavery even in the South, both during and after
the Revolution, and again, it was Virginians who made the greatest effort. Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, and Henry all hoped that slavery could be ended in some fashion.
They searched for new crops, hoping that Southern agriculture could be developed with a
diversified crop and the family-farm economy of the North, as indeed it showed some
signs of doing in this period. George Washington willed that all his slaves be freed after
his wife's death, and many other slave holders made similar provisions. More would
have done so but for the fact that, under existing laws and customs, the status of freedmen
was uncertain at best and usually a most unhappy affair. Yet in 1782 a law passed the
Virginia legislature which provided freedom “by will or deed,” and three years later
another measure required that all slaves brought into the state should be freed after one
year.
Farther south, however, there was bitter opposition to the very idea of abolition and
to any restriction of the slave trade. Reluctance to face the inevitable heavy financial
losses and the certain disruption of the entire labor system made it very unlikely that the
Deep South would ever voluntarily abandon a profitable economy. And there was
already the question of the impact on future social and race relations. Under heavy
Southern pressure, the initial tolerance soon disappeared from Virginia as well, and laws
pertaining to emancipation were repealed and petitions for abolition were ignored.
Economics and idealism met head on, and as usual, economics won an easy victory. By
1790, there were an estimated 680,000 slaves in the United States. The problem had once
again been shoved aside, and would eventually be confronted in a far less peaceful
manner.
The other institution that had long been the source of both labor supply and
immigration to America was the system of indentured servitude. Tens of thousands had
come to the New World in this way, and though it might have offered them opportunity
to escape from poverty in Europe, their lot as servants was seldom a happy one. The
beginning of the Revolution reduced the arrival of such servants to a trickle, but with the
return of peace all available ships from England, Ireland, Scotland, and the Rhineland
could hardly carry the masses who once again sought to sell their services. The need for
such workers in the fast-growing United States offset all efforts of the proponents of free
labor, and very few people, except some German societies perhaps, seem to have shown
much concern over these people or the improvement of their lot. In New York, an effort
was made to get groups of citizens to liberate an entire shipload of white servants by
paying their passage, taking in return a small deduction from their future wages. It was
argued that although white immigration was necessary, the traffic in white people was
contrary to the idea of liberty and to the feelings of many citizens. But the only laws
passed during the 1780s were simply meant to improve the status and treatment of
indentured servants, rather than to change it, and the system itself continued for many
decades.
Though not exactly in bondage, the female half of the white population was also very
much on the political sideline. The relative scarcity of women in colonial America had
enabled them to improve their legal status, especially in the matter of inheritance, and
several competent females had done very well indeed managing farms and other
businesses. But only a few voices had as yet begun to protest women's inferior status the most notable was the charming, irrepressible Abigail Adams, John's wife, whose
perception and caustic wit were fully on par with her husband's. Mrs. Adams had boldly
informed him that women would not wait forever to claim their rightful share of the
Declaration's promise. But as yet, the movement for equality of the sexes was little more
than an insignificant cloud on the horizon.
***
CHAPTER THREE
___________________
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR
Had Americans been really as united and as determined as the stirring phrases of
the Declaration of Independence had suggested, their revolution against King George
would have quickly ended. After all, they already controlled 99 percent of the country;
the English people supported this war only half-heartedly; and the difficulties of
conquering a rebellious and determined people 3,000 miles away proved to be an
enormous task even for the British Empire. But more than six years of fighting were to
follow before Great Britain gave up on her American possessions, and by that time both
sides were thoroughly worn out and exhausted.
On the face of it, Great Britain held all the advantages. By 1775, that nation had
achieved supremacy not only on the seas and around the globe, but in world commerce as
well. Its financial strength was able to support armies of more than 30,000 men in
garrisons throughout the empire, not counting the 9,000 or so stationed in the rebellious
colonies. British naval power gave superior mobility to her army, enabling British troops
to occupy almost any American seaport at will. Lord Barristan, the British war secretary,
had already proposed to end the rising rebellion quickly and simply by merely
withdrawing all land forces and smothering all resistance by a strict naval blockade of the
Atlantic coast. And indeed, had the British concentrated on holding three or four of the
larger sea ports as fortified naval bases for just such a blockade, they might have saved
far more besides honor - without ever having to send a single regiment inland. But since
an army was already on land and already under siege, the North ministry decided that it
could no longer withdraw without a serious loss of prestige. Great Britain was thus
committed to a land war; let the mighty British Army defeat and disperse the rebels and
occupy the country. If one looked at the neatly colored maps of North America, and
ignored the wilderness and the ocean between the countries, it was all so simple and
clean.
While still in Boston, General Gage had already estimated that 20,000 men would be
needed to subdue New England alone, a figure that would require an enormous military
expansion by Great Britain under the most difficult conditions. The iron discipline and
low pay of the army had never appealed to the anti-militaristic English people, and calls
for volunteers produced only a trickle of new recruits; even with the impressment of
vagabonds and convicts, the numbers fell far short of the goal. In addition, many British
officers resigned their commissions rather than fight their own countrymen overseas,
whom they saw fighting for the traditional English freedoms as much as for American
independence. As John Wilkes declared in the House of Commons in 1775, the war
“was unjust, felonious and murderous;” the greatest part of America was already lost and
could never be reconquered. Besides, Mr. Wilkes felt necessary to point out, Americans
were “a pious and religious people. With much ardour and success they follow the first
great command of Heaven, ‘Be Fruitful and Multiply.’” Americans, he thought,
propagated children much faster than British troops would be able to kill their Patriot
soldiers.
The British government was finally forced to seek mercenaries abroad, and in 1775
contracted with the Duke of Brunswick, a small German state, for 18,000 men. The
Duke was to receive £7 for every soldier he supplied to Great Britain, another like
amount for each of his subjects killed in the war, and half that amount for each wounded
man. In addition, the Duke received an annual subsidy of more than £11,000 for the
duration of the war, and another £23,000 for two years after the war. Encouraged by
such generosity, and overburdened with hapless peasants, the Duke eventually supplied
Great Britain with almost 20,000 soldiers.
Another boost to the British forces came from American Loyalists and occasional
Indians. Loyalists who had fled to England initially whipped up public opinion there
with their stories of persecution - for the most part true - and they were forever telling
anyone who was willing to listen that “if my Lord would only dispatch a few regiments to
my section of the country, the countryside would rise as one man and flock to the king's
colors.” This policy was tried on several occasions with varying success, for the
Loyalists in America learned very early in the war that if they openly supported British
troops, sooner or later these troops would march off again and leave them at the mercy of
the Patriot committeemen.
Still, Loyalist forces on occasion played decisive roles in the war. They reached
their peak at the end of 1780, when about 8,000 of them were attached to the British
Army in New York. Loyalist units such as Ferguson's American Riflemen, Lincoln's
Queen's Rangers, Tarleton's Legion, and Butler's Tory Rangers did effective work. Loyal
forces quartered in New York City frequently harassed the shores of Long Island by
marauding expeditions, and did other dirty work with which the regulars would not soil
their hands. It was Tory Rangers and Loyal Greens who, together with Mohawk Indians,
perpetrated the Wyoming massacre of civilians in northern Pennsylvania.
The Indians had their own reasons for siding with the British. British traders
monopolized the fur trade, upon which the Indians had become utterly dependent. And
while American settlers had already begun to invade the Indians' hunting grounds, the
British still promised to preserve them and to protect them against white settlement. But
though Indians were frequently used to harass frontier settlement, their outrages usually
embittered both Americans and Englishmen at home. Moreover, the Indians could be
relied on to flee into the woods whenever a battle went against their British allies.
While Great Britain could rely heavily on her trained veterans, enlisted for the
duration of the war, the American Army depended for the most part on an improvised
force of uncertain composition and commitment. Most of the early American soldiers
were simply farmers who had left families and homes with little preparation or planning.
Most could not remain away from these homes for very long; they had families to support
and farms to keep in shape. For the American forces this generally meant short-term
enlistments, large turnovers in personnel, and the subsequent frequent replacements of
seasoned veterans with raw recruits, all of which seriously weakened the Continental
Army. Even seasoned American volunteers were at a disadvantage, since most were
totally inexperienced in fighting an organized force in open warfare. The first exposure
to the murderous fire of a British line must have been a terrible experience to these men,
and it took several such engagements to harden most of them against their natural
feelings of panic. Established armies cope with such fears by means of strict discipline
and intimidation, but the American leaders were even denied that advantage - the
American soldier of 1775 was intensely an individual, unaccustomed to obeying orders
from officers they regarded as equals, and whose commands they freely questioned if it
looked like their own life might be in jeopardy.
Not that this American Army possessed any seasoned leaders whose commands
anyone might have followed unquestioningly. George Washington, the supreme
commander of the Continental Army, towered above all others, but he had earned his
reputation in frontier Indian fighting - mostly unsuccessful at that - and had not been
involved in any military affairs for more than a decade. And nearly all his early
commanders possessed literally no military experience whatsoever.
Sustaining the war sentiment at a level which would encourage recruitment proved to
be another difficult task, especially when a colony was not directly threatened by any
British forces. Relying chiefly on volunteers, the states were soon forced to offer
financial rewards to prospective soldiers. Even George Washington admitted that “a
great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle (of patriotism) alone. It
must be aided by a prospect of interest and some reward.” Cash bounties were
increased; slaves who enlisted were promised their freedom; and even deserters from the
British Army were taken into American ranks. New England compelled their towns to
raise quotas of soldiers, and when voluntary recruitment did not provide a satisfactory
response, the colonies instituted a draft and allowed the hiring of substitutes. Connecticut
permitted every two of its citizens to escape service as long as they kept one soldier in the
field - a practice which brought many black freemen into the army. Virginia eventually
offered 300 acres of land and a prime Negro slave to all volunteers. But despite such
practices, constant and heroic efforts were needed to keep a Continental Army of at least
5,000 men intact, and desertions remained a serious problem throughout the war.
The militias, an important part of the Continental Army, were much the same sort of
men as the volunteers, and they lacked proper training and leadership even more than the
regular army. As late as 1781, during the Southern campaigns, General Greene used to
beg his militia forces to fire just two volleys before running away, but they often did not
stay long enough to do so. Perhaps the only true fighting force was the light infantry, an
elite corps much like today's Marines, composed of young and skilled men who had
proven themselves good fighters. Every ambitious officer hoped to command such a
light infantry unit; Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette were among those
who did. Stony Point on the Hudson, for example, was captured in 1779 in a brilliant
night assault by Anthony Wayne's light infantry corps, with little more than fixed
bayonets.
It was British attacks on the colonial import trade that frequently caused the most
hardships. In the first two years of the war, British vessels seized 900 American ships
and practically ruined what was left of the New England fisheries. Throughout the war
there was an acute shortage of clothing, blankets, tents, shoes, muskets, cannon powder
and shot. The entire American stock of gunpowder at the outset of the war consisted of
stores seized from British government garrisons. By December 1775, that supply had
already been exhausted, and for two months George Washington's army besieging Boston
had practically no powder at all. There was no Red Cross or hospital services of any
kind, no relief organizations. As General Wayne described it, there was “No medicine or
regimen suitable for the sick, no beds of straw to lie on, no covering to keep them warm
other than their own wretched clothing. Our hospital, or rather our house of carnage,
beggars all description and shocks all humanity to visit.” The next year, George
Washington lamented the difficulty of operating an army “without any money in our
treasury, powder in our magazines, arms in our stores . . . and by and by, when we shall
be called upon to take the field, shall not have a tent to lie in.” And the year after that,
General Schuyler testified that “our Army . . . is weak in numbers, dispirited, naked, in a
manner, destitute of provisions, without camp equipage, with little ammunition, and not a
single piece of cannon.” Throughout this Revolutionary War conditions rarely improved.
But the Americans did possess some advantages over the British. Although they
were inexperienced in the formal warfare of the day, the colonial population of three
million or so had approximately 250,000 men of military age. Most colonists were a
tough breed, long ago inured to hardship and privation, and if they were unwilling to
enlist for long and remote campaigns, they were definitely willing and able to fight if
their homes were threatened. Adept in the use of firearms, they were masters of guerilla
warfare, accustomed to the climate, and intimately familiar with the country they were
defending. And in the long run they proved that their courage, hardiness and cunning
counted for far more than the unquestioning obedience and discipline of hired troops.
Their women, too, were a factor in all this; they plied their spinning wheels and knitting
needles, nursed the stricken and wounded, tended the farms, worked in the fields, carried
on occupations, all the while raising their own substantial families while the men were
away at war.
There was another crucial factor in this war which no one in the British command
appears to have foreseen. The English America of 1775 stretched for more than a
thousand miles along the coast and over 300 miles into the interior. There were literally
thousands of settlements without any centralized control; most of these communities eked
out their existence in virtual isolation with little or no contact or interference from the
outside. Thus British control of a single seaport or some strategic river gave them
command over little more than the actual territory they occupied with their troops. Their
influence seldom extended past their own lines, and they were constantly exposed to
attack. And when the troops moved on, they left behind not a conquered territory, but a
defiant and rebellious people in arms.
Had the British Army been able to strike at selected communities at a moment’s
notice and then hold it, a permanent conquest might actually have taken place. But the
conditions of roads and transportation made that an impossibility. Roads that at times
resembled mudholes, poorly marked forest trails, creeks and rivers without bridges, the
lack of central supply centers, and a serious shortage of wagons, horses and oxen made
troop movements cumbersome in the extreme. The heavy equipment of the British Army
delayed its advances and enabled the American forces, usually lightly burdened, to elude
their pursuers easily.
The unpredictability of overseas transport from a center 3,000 miles away made it
nearly impossible to plan ahead and to calculate time elements. Wagons, horses,
provisions, gunpowder, artillery, all had to be sent in from Great Britain. Since the
British ministry directed the entire war effort from Westminster, weeks and months
elapsed before orders reached officers in the field; serious mistakes were usually not
rectified until many months later.
Such remoteness of the central command magnified the responsibilities of the field
officers. Unfortunately for Britain, her generals seldom rose to the occasion. Sir William
Howe, commander in chief from 1775-1778 was a most reluctant warrior who let many
opportunities for decisive victories slip by. Some of his critics attributed such laxity to
his love for the easy life of luxury; others blamed his love for the Americans and their
cause. And since he publicly opposed the Coercive Acts and had more than once
declared that he would not serve against the colonies, his appointment to the chief
command was somewhat puzzling to begin with. His successor, Sir Henry Clinton,
appeared entirely unqualified, and Lord Cornwallis, in command of the Southern
campaigns, finally distinguished himself by surrendering the entire affair at Yorktown.
Britain's most obvious strength, it’s all powerful navy, was expected to do serious
damage to American commerce, but all through the war it never managed to do so. The
colonies almost immediately commissioned a number of privateers, which by 1778 had
captured 600 British vessels worth approximately £3,000,000. The sale of these captures
in American ports went a long way to sustain the import trade. What's more, during the
first four years of the war, the Southern states, free from British invasions, continued with
business as usual; American blockade runners and European vessels carried their tobacco
to northern Europe and rice to the Mediterranean region. Many of the merchants of the
British West Indies, dependent on American provisions, simply continued their nowillegal trading with the colonies, while foreign islands like Dutch St. Thomas and French
Martinique served as depots for goods to and from Europe. The success of American
merchants and privateers - frequently the same people - are evident in Benjamin
Franklin's remark in 1779: “The extravagant luxury of our country in the midst of all its
distress is to me amazing.”
But the huge profits to be made from privateering only diverted more capital from
the manufacturing industries, despite the critical needs of the Continental Army, and
despite the sudden removal of British restraints on such industries. Despite bounties
offered by all the colonial governments, the production of gunpowder yielded only about
ten percent of the army's needs for the first two years of the war. Philadelphia finally
produced some brass and iron cannon, and limited amounts of linen and cotton cloth.
The New England states, which escaped most of the ravages of war, and which had lost
most of their fisheries, eventually established gun productions and powder mills at
Sutton, Andover, Waterbury, and a few other locations, and Congress opened a
government munitions works at Springfield, Massachusetts. But shortages of laborers
and high wages, together with the enemy's threat to industry deterred cautious American
capitalists from investing in such enterprises, and serious shortages of essentials remained
the rule throughout the war.
One of the unanticipated issues of the war was the realization that Americans needed
to do something about slavery. Of all American institutions, slavery was most obviously
contrary to the doctrines of liberty and equality, and opposition to slavery increased
markedly during the Revolutionary War years. In his original draft of the Declaration of
Independence, Thomas Jefferson had condemned George III for supporting the slave
trade and for violating the “most sacred rights of life and liberty of a distant people, who
never offended him, captivating them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur
miserable death in their transportation thither.” That paragraph was struck out in
deference to the sensibilities of the planters of the Carolinas and Georgia and the slave
traders of the North, but it nevertheless gave an indication of the attitudes among many
prominent men in every part of the new nation.
Pressure to enact anti-slavery legislation increased as the war continued. Patrick
Henry stigmatized the trade in human beings as an “abominable practice,” and a
“species of violence and tyranny repugnant to humanity, inconsistent with religion, and
destructive of liberty.” Even south of Virginia, where there were few anti-slavery
sentiments, some protests were heard. Henry Laurens, a wealthy and influential South
Carolinian, wrote in 1776 “I abhor slavery . . . The day, I hope, is approaching when
from principles of gratitude as well as justice every man will strive to be foremost in
showing his readyness to comply with the golden rule . . .” In Pennsylvania, the
Quakers, Mennonites, and other sects carried on an energetic campaign against slavery.
The Methodists resolved that “slave-keeping was hurtful to society and contrary to the
laws of God and nature.” It was during the war years and for three decades thereafter
that most of the northern states began to abolish slavery, and abolition societies pressed
for all Americans to be free. But plagued by problems from all sides, unwilling or unable
to confront so basic an issue while offending a large part of the new nation, Americans
turned the other way for now. The issue remained, and would return again and again
until it exacted a horrible price for such delay.
***
All during 1776, the war had begun to spread out slowly but steadily. The royal
governor of North Carolina had managed to enlist a Loyalist force of 1,600 Scots
Highlanders, but they were thoroughly routed by Patriot militia at Moore's Creek Bridge
near Wilmington in February. The affair might have turned out differently had a British
expeditionary force under Lord Cornwallis come to their aid as the governor requested,
but Cornwallis chose to take a crack at Charleston instead. But before he arrived there,
the local Patriots had begun to erect Fort Moultrie, whose guns were to drive off the
British fleet as they tried to enter Charleston Harbor in June. A fleet of privateers, which
was essentially what the Continental Navy was, had also sailed to the Bahamas under the
command of Esek Hopkins. In March, they captured undefended Nassau and brought
back an enormous quantity of munitions.
General Charles Lee had come south to block an expected British assault in Virginia
or the Carolinas. He set up headquarters in the Governor's Palace at Williamsburg even
though he was not sure which target the British would strike. At last the British fleet was
sighted off Cape Fear, and Lee took 2,000 men from Virginia and North Carolina to the
broad harbor at Charleston, South Carolina.
Lee had arrived in the South with his full complement of dogs; he said that dogs
were faithful and men were not. But his passion for dogs was the least of Lee's oddities.
A tall and skinny man of 44, he was strikingly ugly, with a bony nose so large that men
made jokes about it. His nature was a jumble of contradictory quirks. He was vain
enough to design his own uniform and have it expensively tailored but then wore it
wrinkled and often filthy. He could quote from Plutarch and Shakespeare, but just as
easily lapsed into coarseness and profanities remarkable even in the army. He was an
Irishman but had been born in England, sixteen days before George Washington in 1732.
Lee's father had been a colonel, and by the age of twelve the boy was studying in
Switzerland and was already commissioned as an ensign in the British Army. Apart from
a deep affection for his sister, Lee was as disillusioned with women as with men and
seemed to prefer the casual relations with the hussies who followed army camps. During
the French and Indian War, Lee had served under Braddock in America and had passed
through Mohawk territory, where he had married the daughter of an Indian chief in a
ceremony Lee did not consider binding. The Mohawks observed the way he swaggered
through their camp, always talking, and they named him Boiling Water.
Lee fought during the British siege of Montreal. When peace came in 1763, he went
to Poland to become an aide to King Stanislaw II, rising to the rank of a Polish major
general and watching and learning from the rebel brigades that were terrorizing Poland.
He carried a message from Stansilaw to George III in England and was granted an
interview with the king. Lee expected to be rewarded for his services to a British ally,
but instead, George merely apologized for not having a military position to offer him.
But by that time, Lee was already allied with the British Whigs who opposed the
king, and when he decided to settle in America, he soon took up the Patriot cause.
Although he was not related directly to the Lees of Virginia, his political opinions
endeared him to Richard Henry Lee, and during a trip to New York he charmed the
Northerners as well. John Adams decided that Lee was the only man he had met who had
read more military history than he had. And he began to caution friends that they must
overlook his violent temper and his peculiarities because of his attachment to liberty.
When war with Britain looked inevitable, Lee had traveled to Mount Vernon in
December 1774 and spent five days as George Washington's house guest. Since they
were comrades-in-arms from Braddock's campaign, Lee was not embarrassed to borrow
fifteen pounds from Washington as his stay was ending.
The next year, when Lee's name was put forward for commission as a major general,
John Hancock and other Massachusetts delegates strongly challenged his appointment.
But both Adamses backed Lee, and Washington personally requested the appointment.
General Lee quickly justified the endorsements when he was sent to Charleston to
confront Sir Henry Clinton. There he found a town panicked by the sight of the British
armada on its horizon. Lee laughed at their fears, even as local militiamen were
desperately digging lead out of the church windows to cast as musket balls. His officers
soon came to accept Lee's rude manners as a fair trade for his apparent skill as a soldier.
He inspected half-finished Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island fronting the Charleston
harbor and found the same fault that had marred the redoubt on Breed's Hill - there was
not enough space for a retreat. “A slaughter pen,” Lee called it, far too flimsy to
withstand the guns of a British man-of-war.
As Sir Henry Clinton waited in the bay and weighed his next move, he also had
reason to recall the day on the hills above Boston. Clinton was thought moody and
suspicious, and his experiences in America had not improved his disposition. He had
urged the British to pursue the Americans retreating from Breed's Hill, and when he had
recommended fortifying Dorchester Heights, he had been ignored again. And yet Howe,
not he, had been given the supreme command in Boston, and Howe had sent Clinton on
this expedition, far away from the British headquarters.
For eight days in mid-June 1776, Clinton landed his troops at an undefended point
near Charleston called Long Island. He took another twelve days to get his ships in place
so that they could begin battering the fort on Sullivan's Island. But everything went
wrong from the beginning. Three of his ships ran aground, and when Clinton tried to
launch a ground attack on Sullivan's Island from Long Island, he found, contrary to all
reports, that the water between the two islands was far too deep for his men to wade
across. Without troops, Clinton had only his ships to pound Charleston into submission;
despite Lee's disparaging remarks, however, the fort had been designed around a deep
gorge, and most of the British shells fell there and did little damage. And now the British
ships had to face the fort's 26 big guns as well.
But those guns were not always firing. The Americans had begun the siege with 28
rounds for each gun, and although they were receiving more throughout the day, they
often held their fire to conserve ammunition. As a boiling sun beat down on the fort, the
men along the firing platform drank steadily from grog passed along to them in fire
buckets. General Lee made only a brief appearance. The Americans were winning the
battle and embarrassing the man who had urged that the fort be abandoned; in fact, Lee
had already clashed with its commander, Colonel William Moultrie, and had even tried to
have him removed from his post.
Firing continued until 9:30 p.m., when silence fell across the harbor. General Clinton
had ordered his commodore, Sir Peter Parker, to return the British frigates to anchor three
miles away. For the next several days Clinton's troops were stranded on Long Island,
short of supplies and surrounded by clouds of mosquitoes. General Lee, however, upheld
the civilities of war by sending General Clinton fresh supplies at his ship. At last the
British sailed north to rejoin General Howe.
Charleston was an undeniable American victory, though there had been nearly forty
casualties; and to anyone who had not heard Lee's bad advice to Colonel Moultrie, the
victory at Charleston was just another reason to forgive the general his peculiarities.
***
In New England, General Washington, who had been besieging Boston for eight
months now, was anxious for action as well - any action that would break that stalemate
would now be welcome. After Bunker Hill, both sides in Boston had begun to dig in.
The city was easily fortified, and the British had made their lines nearly impregnable with
entrenchments, redoubts and artillery. For their part, the Americans had thrown up a wide
arc of fortifications, eight to nine miles in length, and designed to prevent the British
from breaking out. But these entrenchments were far too extensive to be adequately
manned by the shifting and dwindling colonial forces, and General Washington lived in
constant fear that the British would discover the weaknesses in his lines and launch an
all-out attack. His fear became well justified as he watched his supply of powder and
arms diminish steadily, until thousands of men in the besieging force were armed with
little more than lances and pikes. Yet Washington's fears proved needless; the British
had no intentions to assume any offensive. Grown overly cautious since the Bunker Hill
fiasco, the generals in Boston suspected that the quite apparent shortages of arms and
ammunition in the American camp were nothing but a deception, designed to draw the
British out and into yet another disastrous confrontation. Thus the war had become a
stalemate. “We cannot get at them,” lamented General Greene, “and they are
determined not to come to us.”
Unable to come to a decisive move, both sides confined themselves to little
skirmishes over hay, over livestock or whatever was to be found in and around the islands
of Boston Harbor. Every so often one or both sides fired up their artillery, but Americans
were severely hampered in that department. As everywhere, there was a shortage of
powder or balls, or even experienced gunners, and their fire was usually far too
inaccurate to do any harm. A large number of American gunners were killed or wounded
when their old and poorly maintained guns burst; it was said that the American artillery
killed almost as many Patriots as British. It was not until September 1775, five months
after the siege of Boston had begun, that American artillery finally succeeded in
wounding a British soldier.
But by March 1776, the situation around Boston had become intolerable. The
continued siege had imposed severe hardships on everyone inside Boston, both the
British Army and the overcrowded civilian population. The Continental Army had been
able to cut off most supplies from the outside, and all during the winter had been busy to
strengthen its own positions. It now appeared to the British generals that any victory
could be won only at a cost far in excess of any possible advantages, and William Howe
decided it was time to regroup. An informal understanding was reached between the
American and British commanders: unless the British troops were allowed to leave
Boston peaceably and without interference, they would destroy the city. In exchange for
the safety of the city, the Americans therefore agreed to hold all fire. On March 17 - St.
Patrick's Day - 1776, the British Army and fleet evacuated Boston and moved out to sea,
accompanied by about 900 Loyalists. The next day, General Washington and some of his
troops moved into the city so quietly that few of the residents even realized he was there.
There still was great apprehension among the Americans - the British fleet had remained
anchored in the outer harbor, and many suspected that the evacuation had merely been a
deception. Not until ten days later was the American command informed that the enemy
was setting sail, and from a headland overlooking the harbor, George Washington
watched as the last of the ships disappeared over the horizon.
With the evacuation of Boston, the British had lost their only real foothold in the
thirteen rebellious colonies. Except for one small post in Florida, only Halifax in Nova
Scotia remained to them as a base of operations. One year after Lexington, the British
could not claim possession of a single acre of ground in any of the provinces that had
joined the revolt. A plan of action was now needed which allowed them to establish a
bridgehead and conquer a hostile continent.
***
While still being besieged in Boston, General Howe had had ample time to make
plans for coming campaigns, and New York became the focus of these plans. New York
City, with its 22,000 inhabitants was second only to Philadelphia in importance as an
American town and port of entry. If the British could hold it and the Hudson River, they
could cut off New England from the rest of the colonies. Had Howe lifted his army from
Boston directly to New York City, he could doubtlessly have held both the city and the
colony for his king without ever having to fire a single shot. But once again the general
missed a golden opportunity. After evacuating Boston on March 17, his army was
escorted by the fleet of his brother, Richard Howe, to Halifax to await reinforcements.
General Washington, on the other hand, had predicted that New York City would become
the next British objective; immediately after the siege of Boston, he shifted most of his
troops to that city, half expecting to hear that the enemy had arrived there before him.
When Washington arrived in New York City on April 13, nothing had as yet been
seen of the British fleet, and his initial explorations confirmed what he had suspected.
The city he now hoped to hold and defend was confined to the very tip of the long, thin
island of Manhattan, surrounded on three sides by waterways easily navigable by British
warships. To the south lay New York Bay; to the east, the East River, which led into
Long Island Sound; and to the west, the great waterway known as the Hudson or North
River. Across the East River lay the southern tip of Long Island and across the Hudson
was New Jersey, the American mainland.
The Americans immediately set out to erect fortifications in and around the city, and
nearly ten thousand men labored all through the spring and early summer of 1776. The
soldiers were kept so busy digging trenches and redoubts and constructing artillery
emplacements that they had little time or energy to devote to practice even basic military
fundamentals. It seemed to be the goal of every Patriot soldier to get a sizeable pile of
earth between himself and the redcoats; the British, when they reached New York, could
barely see them for dirt. If the British were successful in landing, they would find a New
York City that had been turned into a fortified camp. Every street leading from the water
was barricaded, and the coastline was fortified at every accessible point. Almost every
noticeable elevation on the island was crowned by a battery, and one fortification on
Bayards Hill had wishfully been christened Bunker Hill. Obstructions had been sunk in
the East River where the entrance was guarded by batteries opposing Brooklyn Heights,
on Governor's Island, and on the southern tip of Manhattan. If fortifications were to
insure victory, the American forces at New York had nothing to fear.
There was no hope of keeping the British fleet out of the Bay, which meant that
Staten Island, in the harbor some six miles below New York City, presented them with a
large and convenient land base. If the Americans hoped to control the rivers around New
York City, both shores would have to be held, and Washington was forced to cut his
strength by keeping troops not only in the city, but on Long Island and on the New Jersey
side as well. The upper part of Manhattan Island had also to be occupied, since it offered
the only reasonable escape route should the British succeed - as few doubted they would in operating on either of the two rivers.
If military expediency alone had been considered, the obvious course for a small
army without any naval support would have been to abandon New York City and make a
stand further upriver, where hills and existing forts could have offered protection, and
where Lord Howe's navy could not reach them. But civilian and political considerations
governed all thinking over military necessity. Giving up a major city for the enemy's use
as a base of operations without making a stand would have had so disastrous an effect on
Patriot morale that neither Washington nor Congress seem to have seriously considered
that option.
For the moment, Washington's major problem was what he called “the treachery” of
the Loyalist inhabitants of New York City. This was still nearly two months before the
Declaration of Independence and the farmers of Staten Island were eagerly waiting for
the British to arrive; they were, so it was said, even offering to take up arms for the king.
All along the coasts around New York the “disaffected” were reportedly getting ready to
welcome the British. There were rumors that Tories had infiltrated George Washington's
own guard and that they were plotting to assassinate him. Down at Bowling Green in
New York City, a gilded lead statue of George III still taunted the Patriot soldiers, and off
the coast, several British warships were actually being supplied by the inhabitants within
sight of the American Army. Not until Washington wrote a carefully worded letter to the
New York Committee of Safety, informing them that it was his duty to put “an
immediate stop” to all transactions with the British vessels, did the warships withdraw.
Tryon, still the official governor of New York, remained on board one of these warships
and conducted his business from the outer harbor. But as long as the leaden king still
surveyed Bowling Green from his leaden horse, the New York leaders hesitated to bother
any loyal subjects; as for independence, wrote one of the American officers, “the people
seem to quiver at the word.”
Finally all the waiting and speculations came to an end. An American Patriot
looking out a window of a waterfront house at sunrise on June 29, shivered as he
observed “. . . something resembling of wood of pine trees trimmed . . . the whole Bay
was full of shipping as it ever could. I . . . thought all London was afloat.” More than a
hundred enemy vessels had arrived and were now anchoring in the Lower Bay.
***
The arrival of the fleet had long been expected by the American command, and few
were concerned at this point. After all, had American soldiers not smashed British
attacks on Bunker Hill and just recently again at Charleston? What's more, the British
made no attempts at Manhattan or Long Island, but limited themselves to Staten Island
and occasional forays along the New Jersey shore.
On July 9, General Washington received from Philadelphia a resolution by the
Congress, stating that the “United States of America” were “free and independent . . .
absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown.” The Declaration of Independence
sliced through innumerable tangles and problems that had previously hampered the
American commanders. Royal officials were no longer men in office, but rather the
foreign representatives of an enemy nation, subject to legal arrest. Tories were no longer
“Loyalists.” The hated statue of George III at Bowling Green came tumbling down and a
newly proclaimed nation was irrevocably committed to independence.
Toward the end of July more clumps of masts appeared over the horizon, and
transports and warships joined in with the original fleet which had come down from
Halifax. Lord Howe had brought heavy reinforcement from England to bolster his
brother's efforts, and with him a new element entered the war. Many of the transports'
decks were crowded with blue instead of the familiar scarlet. The troops hired by George
III's agents from the German states had arrived. And still another flotilla loomed up from
the south in early August as the forces under Clinton and Cornwallis returned from
Charleston, eager to wipe out the disgrace of Sullivan's Island. “The whole world seems
leagued against us,” exclaimed one discouraged Patriot, “enemies on every side, and no
new friends arrive.”
Yet the British commanders still hesitated. All through July and August they
remained inactive while the best part of the season slipped away. General Washington
was not about to complain if the British command chose to waste away the weeks. Every
day his army was growing stronger, and his fortifications more formidable. During the
final weeks of this unexpected respite, almost 10,000 more men joined his forces, the
largest army he would command throughout the entire war. But every one of these men
were needed because William Howe had now nearly 25,000 men under his command,
fully equipped with supplies and provisions, and more reinforcements still coming in.
General Howe had several important objectives he hoped to accomplish. First, he
was eager to find winter quarters for his troops. If they were to have a safe shelter, New
York City must be captured intact, but this also prevented any direct attack on the city.
Howe was certain that in the event of an attack, the Americans would burn the town
before escaping to the mainland. Moreover, even if they should succeed in capturing
New York City intact, the American artillery on Brooklyn Heights would make British
occupation of the city untenable. Brooklyn Heights was to New York what Bunker Hill
was to Boston: they commanded the city, and in the hands of an enemy would prove
disastrous. Yet Howe was not willing to attack the rebels while they enjoyed the
advantage of strong entrenchments on a hill. The lesson of Bunker Hill was not easily
forgotten.
All these considerations required that the British eliminate the Americans on Long
Island before moving against the city. This decision was reinforced by reports that Long
Island was swarming with Loyalists who were eager to support the king's troops, and that
the island itself was fertile enough to support the British Army in comfort.
The Americans, on the other hand, gave every indication that they intended to defend
Long Island. In Washington's opinion, the island was the most important strategic point
in this area; without Brooklyn Heights he could not possibly hope to hold New York
City. But if they controlled Long Island, George Washington believed that they could
starve the British out of the country.
At dawn on August 22, American lookouts watched as barge after barge shoved off
from Staten Island, filled with scarlet and blue uniforms, heading toward Long Island.
American commanders had no intentions of opposing the British landing in the face of
their naval guns; there was little, if any, opposition and by the end of the day nearly
15,000 men had been landed. At first the American command on Manhattan had watched
this amphibious move carefully, suspecting that it might merely be a diversion to cover
the real attack on New York itself; but soon it became clear that an attack on Brooklyn
Heights was imminent, and Washington ordered as many men as he dared to spare from
the city to be ferried over to Long Island. Both sides now stood poised for action. For
the American rebels it must have been a terrifying sight as they watched 15,000 of
Europe's finest troops preparing to attack. They must have realized that their only chance
lay in another Bunker Hill.
But there was to be no Bunker Hill on Long Island. With the memory of precisely
that disaster still in his mind, the bulk of the British column curved away from the
heavily fortified heights, and during the night of August 26, they wound through
unguarded Jamaica Pass at the far north. As the sun rose on August 27, the British forces
smashed into the left and rear of the American defenses.
The fate of Long Island was settled quickly as the poorly manned rear gave way.
Riflemen, on whose deadly fire so many hopes had been built, found that their clumsy
weapons took far too long to reload. Lacking bayonets, or even the knowledge how to
use them properly, they were quickly engulfed by yelling, stabbing swarms of German
and British soldiers. American gunners abandoned their pieces in the face of the scarlet
and blue lines that poured toward them. There were many exceptions, to be sure:
William Smallwood's Maryland Continentals and John Haslet's Continental Regiment
from Delaware, for example, among the very best in the American Army, even managed
to repel Hessians and Highlanders for a time, but nothing could save the American left
from collapse. General Washington rushed more reinforcements over from New York,
patched his broken forces together and grimly held on to the Heights. But if Howe had
pressed the attack during the afternoon, he might have destroyed much of Washington's
army, and the Congress in Philadelphia would have found it nearly impossible to raise
another.
Instead, the entire action was broken off about noon, as the last of the American
survivors staggered shaken into the fortifications of Brooklyn Heights. Though there had
been nearly a thousand casualties, the main American Army was still intact, if badly
shaken, and it now lay exactly where Howe did not want it - behind good earthworks,
protected on both sides by water and immune to any attack by the fleet which had not
been able to enter the blockaded East River. With recollections of Bunker Hill too fresh
for comfort, the British commander did not care to make a frontal assault on the
American fortifications. New York would fall sooner or later, and it was far less
dangerous to pin the enemy down and let a siege take its course.
Within the American lines there was chaos and bitter disillusionment. It was clear
now that Americans had no chance in the field unless their firepower could smash
bayonet charges before the enemy could close in. There was nothing with which to
counter that terrifying weapon. There were few bayonets in the American lines and
fewer men who knew how to use them. Those who had received them generally used
them as spits to broil steaks - when they had steaks to broil - and then threw them away.
Yet the bayonet was a decisive weapon in 18th-century warfare, and it frightened the
daylights out of raw Americans who had never seen a bayonet charge before. To see a
British battle line come in close, fire one simultaneous volley, raise a battle cheer, and
then advance on the run in an ordered mass four ranks deep, bayonets tilted precisely
forward - that, according to men who had faced it, was one of the most terrifying
experiences war could offer. This was a machine, and if you got in the way it would kill
you.
General Washington still clung to his belief that Brooklyn could be held, must be
held, and in a risky decision shifted still more units from Manhattan. Yet despite howling
storms and rain, the British advanced slowly, building entrenchments as they closed in,
and by the afternoon of August 28, the American command decided that the Heights were
not worth another battle. The danger now lay in the evacuation; if the British received
even the slightest hint of a retreat, slaughter and mass captures would most certainly
follow.
William Howe knew the Americans were doomed. He would now bring up his
cannon, his scaling ladders and the other tools his artillery would use to launch a
methodical siege. His careful approach had saved perhaps 1,500 British lives, and that
was reason enough to forego a premature rushing of an entrenched position. His brother's
fleet was nearby to guarantee that Washington and his men would stay bottled up.
Throughout two rainy days, the British repaired the damage from the fighting on
August 27. Then, on the morning of the 30th, Howe sent out a patrol. American sniping
had continued throughout the night, and Howe wanted to know why there was now a lull
in the fire. The British scouts came back with an incredible answer. During the night,
George Washington had disappeared with all of the American Army.
Two factors had tilted the scales somewhat in the Americans' favor. The prevailing
northerly winds, which had kept the British warships out of the East River thus far, still
continued to do so, and among the regiments shifted by chance to Long Island had been
the blue-coated Marbleheaders, mostly fishermen from Massachusetts, led by John
Glover. Near dusk, through blinding rain, these men had prepared to evacuate the entire
American Army to the Manhattan side. And all through the night, line after line moved
out of the Brooklyn works, were quietly herded into the boats, and rowed to the New
York landings. Occasionally order broke down at the beaches as men panicked and
fought to get aboard the boats; cattle had to be abandoned, and some of the heaviest guns
sank deep in the mud. But all through the night and the pouring rain, the oarsmen had
kept doggedly to their two-mile round trip. And as day broke over the horizon, the entire
force of nearly 12,000 and much of their equipment had been evacuated.
***
Henry Clinton had another bold plan and he expected William Howe to embrace it.
Clinton wanted the British to surround Washington again, this time on Manhattan. He
wasn't satisfied with simply making the American Army run; he wanted to exterminate it.
But Howe continued to have different ideas. For two weeks after the Americans crossed
the river, he did nothing. Once more, Washington was waiting from night to night for an
attack that didn't come, and Israel Putnam summed up the American response to Howe's
inaction: “General Howe is either our friend or no general.”
Washington's immediate concern now was to make New York City a defensible post,
a move that could scarcely be justified. Militarily, the obvious move would have been to
abandon the city and withdraw to the rocky heights along the Hudson River, known as
Harlem Heights. Possession of Brooklyn Heights had already enabled the British to open
the East River and had given them control over all Long Island, from where they could
ferry troops to any point above New York City and trap all the American forces there.
However, many circumstances, including the failure of the British to bombard from
Brooklyn Heights, persuaded Washington that the enemy hoped to capture the city intact
as a permanent military base. New York could comfortably house the entire army and
could be supplied indefinitely by ships. And the surrounding rivers would permit naval
power alone to hold the city with only a small land garrison, leaving most of the British
Army free to move anywhere.
Nathanael Greene, recovering from malaria, had been reading military history and
suggested a precedent that might be useful for the Americans. When France under
Francis I had been invaded by the Germans, Francis had laid waste to vast territories,
starving his enemies and defeating them without a battle. Why not burn down all of New
York? Tories owned two-thirds of the town, and their hostility to the cause of freedom
should cost them their property. George Washington had already asked Congress for
permission to prevent a British take-over by burning New York City, but the Congress
had refused to consider such action, and even advised him not to remain in the city a
moment longer than he deemed safe.
Many of Washington's officers had already urged him to abandon the city anyway,
but Washington could not bring himself to do so. Handing over a city as a free gift to the
enemy, especially after so much labor had gone into its fortifications would, he feared,
“dispirit the troops and enfeeble our cause.” Dispatches from Congress seemed to
indicate that the city should be held if at all possible. And despite his recent experiences,
Washington was still convinced that if his men acted rapidly and without panic, they
could repel any British attack on Manhattan Island before the enemy had a chance to
bring full power ashore.
Washington and his officers finally decided to “pursue a middle course.” 9,000
troops were to withdraw to the relative safety of Harlem Heights, where they were to
erect further fortifications, including Fort Lee and Fort Washington. 5,000 troops were to
remain in the city under Israel Putnam and Henry Knox, guarding priceless armaments
and supplies. What was left of the American Army - perhaps another 5,000 men - were
to occupy the lowlands along Manhattan Island's shore. They were to man a defensive
line along the East River and hold off any invaders until larger forces could be brought in
from Harlem Heights or from the city.
The British, however, remained poised for the attack, while the Howe brothers made
a final effort to see if the rebels might be scared into submission. General John Sullivan,
who had previously been captured on Brooklyn Heights, was released to tell Congress
that the Howes had been granted wide powers to negotiate and to bring the conflict to an
end.
Washington was convinced that Howe's proposals would come to nothing, but after
the humbling defeat on Long Island he was in no position to object to the mission. Three
days later in Philadelphia, John Sullivan told the Congress about Howe's generous terms.
But like Washington, John Adams distrusted the British overtures. Sullivan explained
that the admiral proposed a meeting but could not deal with the Congress as an official
body, but he would be pleased to receive several members as private citizens for an hour
or two of conversation. Adams spoke vigorously against any agreement with Howe and
made no attempt to spare Sullivan's feelings. “A decoy duck,” Adams called him,
“whom Lord Howe has sent among us to seduce us into a renunciation of our
independence.”
But some delegates believed that spurning Howe's offer might suggest to people, at
home and abroad, who were uncommitted to American independence that the British
legitimately sought peace and that the Americans were protracting the war. After a few
days of debate, Congress finally sent a commission, headed by Benjamin Franklin, to
meet the British commanders and to evaluate the peace offering. As it developed,
Washington wrote, “Lord Howe had nothing more to propose than that, if we should
submit, his Majesty would consider whether we should be hung or not.” The
congressional commissioners returned to Philadelphia, and the final chance at peace had
been lost forever.
***
September 15 dawned clear and hot. The day had hardly begun when the Americans
heard cannon roar from the Hudson River, and a messenger reported to General
Washington that three British warships were now anchored in the river out of range of the
American guns. No preparations were being made for a landing, but the ships were in a
position to block any withdrawals from the city by water.
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning when the American commander's ears
were assailed by “a most severe and heavy cannonade.” Down at the south end of the
East River, he saw clouds of black-powder smoke billowing high into the sunlight.
Clearly the British were trying to batter out a beachhead, probably at a spot guarded only
by rudimentary entrenchments and occupied by his rawest recruits. And eventually there
appeared from a Long Island creek 84 barges, each filled with red and blue-clad British
and Hessian troops. Spreading out, they made the surface of the river look, a militiaman
wrote, like “a large clover field in full bloom.” Facing this were some 450 farmboys
who had never fired at another human being. To protect them, they had only shallow
trenches, with the earth that had been dug up thrown ahead as a parapet. They watched in
trepidation.
After the barges had come to a stop, bright flashes came from the batteries on the
British warships. “I thought my head would go with the sound,” wrote a militiaman. “I
made a frog's leap from the ditch and lay as still as I possibly could, and began to
consider which part of my carcass was to go first.” Finally the cannonade eased, and the
militiamen raised their heads to see hundreds of enemy soldiers, steel blades extended in
front of them, marching toward the American line in rows through the shallows.
Outnumbered by this horrible-looking force with bayonets and unmatchable firepower,
the militiamen, some of whom were armed with little more than scythe blades hammered
into poles, took “merrily to their heels.” Soon Americans by the hundreds were fleeing
in utter disorder to the northwest and the shelter of Harlem Heights. The attackers formed
unhurriedly, pushed inland without any opposition, and about the site where today is
located New York City's 42nd Street, they halted. Howe could see no need for hurry; all
the American forces were now expected to be well to the north. He could rest his men,
regroup, and then swing on up the island.
In New York, Tory civilians had come out of hiding to cheer loudly and carry British
officers through the streets on their shoulders. The women were said to have been as
wild with joy as the men, and some guided the British soldiers from door to door as they
placed a large 'R' for 'Rebel' on every Patriot house.
The American Army had drawn itself in, like a wounded spider, on Harlem Heights.
George Washington, who always expected the enemy to act as rapidly as he would have
done in their situation, prepared as best he could for an immediate attack. Certain that the
enemy would take advantage of the confusion around him, he sent out horsemen to the
plains below the Heights, but they returned and reported no enemy advances.
Before daylight on the 16th, Washington sent out 120 New Englanders who had
volunteered as rangers to discover what was happening in the enemy's camp. This small
force encountered about 300 British light infantry men on the slopes along the Hudson
River and engaged them in an open battle. More American troops poured down from
Harlem Heights, and suddenly the British ranks broke and they began to flee. And as
messengers appeared from the woods to ask General Washington for reinforcements, the
commander in chief, in a magnificent gesture, committed the very militiamen who had
fled so ingloriously just the day before from the assault at the East River. And the news
that came back was so good it was almost unbelievable - yesterday's scared farmboys had
“charged the enemy with great intrepidity.”
Washington had soon committed 1,800 men, and the British, despite some
reinforcements, continued to fall back. After more than an hour of this, Washington
finally dispatched orders that his troops should disengage and come back. Come back,
they did, dragging some wounded, but in high spirits and in good order. Thus ended
what has gone down in history as the Battle of Harlem Heights. “This little advantage,”
wrote General Washington, “has inspired our troops prodigiously; they find that it only
requires resolution and good officers to make an enemy . . . give way.”
Washington himself was not much encouraged. The American commander in chief
had begun to think of resigning and returning to his home at Mount Vernon. In its first
three weeks of actual fighting his army had revealed what seemed to him mortal
weaknesses. That his troops had fought bravely when in the woods and not convinced
they were outmatched, seemed hardly any compensation for their unwillingness to stand
when they felt themselves in real danger. The truth was that his army had already twice
been shoved aside effortlessly by the enemy. And now the British held New York, a fact
that Washington and the American troops were to rue for the rest of the war.
George Washington was now frequently “much indisposed.” His mind, as he put it,
was “too much on the stretch,” and his feelings wounded “by a thousand things.” But “I
am resolved not to be forced from this ground while I have life,” though he felt it
necessary to add, “If the men will stand by me, which, bye and bye, I despair of.”
The American Army had already begun to dwindle away as enlistments expired or
desertions were beginning to take serious tolls. Among those who remained at Harlem
Heights, discipline had apparently broken down entirely. General Washington's
headquarters was constantly filled with civilians who presented “the most distressing
complaints of the ravages of our own troops who are becoming infinitely more
formidable to the poor farmers and inhabitants than the common enemy.” Despite the
general's commands, the troops ruled anything worth stealing fair game as Tory property.
When one officer tried to stop one of these looting parties, the looters drew up in battle
formation and offered to kill the major.
George Washington complained to Congress that he needed a greater variety of
punishments, since for most offenses the military code prescribed 39 lashes, which
“many hardened fellows” said they would gladly suffer for a bottle of rum. Congress
responded, authorizing 100 lashes, as well as the death penalty for a large group of
offenses. But in his heart, Washington doubted the effect of punishment as an influence
on men. Troops were improved, he was convinced, not by punishment but by training.
Being prevented from keeping men long enough to train them properly continued as his
major complaint. He again faced the dissolution of the entire army with the end of the
year, and it was now mid-September. And to rely entirely on militiamen to fill temporary
voids would lead to “certain and inevitable ruin.” “Just dragged from the tender scenes
of domestic life,” the militiamen were “ready to fly from their own shadows.”
“Accustomed to unbounded freedom and no control,” they resisted all discipline, in the
process corrupting whatever regular troops Washington had been able to gather. And in
battle, as they had already tragically demonstrated, they started stampedes that unnerved
even the better trained regulars. “Certain I am that it would be cheaper to keep 50 or
100,000 men in constant pay than to depend upon half the number and supply the other
half occasionally by militia.” Not only did each set of militiamen have to be equipped
anew, not only did they have to be paid for time lost in coming and going, but high
bounties had to be given to them for each enlistment. And such bounties, which could
repeatedly be collected for short service, actually hindered enlistment in the regular army,
since it was more profitable to come and go.
But the concept of a people's army, of virtuous yeomen dropping their plows to repel
a tyrant's forces, was still dear to the hearts of new leaders of democracy in Philadelphia.
They refused to believe that their faith in so noble an idea was altogether visionary,
though they had to admit that it was not working under the command of George
Washington. Since Washington was still indispensable to the cause, they agreed that for
now it was necessary to give him some additional weapons. But how far could they
safely go?
If General Washington commanded an army which over the years could be welded
into a unit under his command, would he not, with peace, do what so many Roman
generals had done: make himself king or dictator and oppress the civilians? The
conservatives were less haunted than the radicals by this fear; but all the members of
Congress were appointed by their states, and most cherished the autonomy of the states
which gave them their power. They all recognized that the Continental Army, if allowed
to become a unit apart from state control, might well open the way to a Continental
government. Although necessity now forced them to create 88 regiments for the duration
of the war, Congress added the provision that the states were to keep control of the
regiments they raised, not only by supplying them, but by appointing their officers.
Washington's officers, like their men, had been enlisted only until the end of 1776; if
they hoped to be reappointed, they would have to call themselves to the attention of their
state governments. Some, wishing to leave nothing to chance, took off for home without
consulting their commander in chief, while those who stayed and tended to their duties
were actually placing their military careers in jeopardy. Washington passionately begged
both Congress and the states to expedite all appointments, but he realized it would all
take time. He also knew from the experiences of the previous year that many or most of
the men would not reenlist until the officers under whom they were to serve had been
determined. There would be a serious gap between his old and new army, a gap which
would once again have to be filled by the militiamen.
One bright spot in all this for General Washington was the arrival of General Charles
Lee. Fresh from his triumphs at Charleston, Charles Lee was finding it impossible not to
contrast his own success with his commander in chief's blunders and retreats. On his way
to rejoin Washington's headquarters, Lee had ignored the dire events of the war and had
stopped at Philadelphia instead. Before he had accepted his commission, Lee had
informed the Congress that it must make good the large sum of money he was still owed
in England; now, riding high on his victory in Charleston, Lee insisted that sum was
£11,000. But he had since then privately expressed his opinion that congressmen were all
useless cattle, and that General Washington was foolish for obeying their orders. He also
believed that Congress had lost faith in their commander in chief, and that they had
ordered him to hurry to New York because they desperately wanted a new savior. For his
part, Washington was delighted to have gained the assistance of an experienced military
man and friend. He gratefully renamed the newly constructed fort on the Jersey side of
the Hudson River, Fort Lee.
***
Near midnight on September 20, 1776, General Washington was called from his
quarters to watch the smoke from a fire as it spread over the southern tip of the island
below him. Patriots who had hidden in New York after the British invasion had set three
fires along the waterfront. From there they could trust the wind to spread the flames on
flakes of burning shingle. The British could not ring the customary alarm, because the
Americans had carted off the church bells to melt down for ammunition. Or so they had
claimed. New York's fire engines were also out of commission, which led the British to
conclude that the fires had been planned before the evacuation. William Howe suspected
that the blaze meant a night attack and refused to let most of his men fight the fire until
daylight. But a few British soldiers did patrol the streets, and when they found men in
one house with firebrands the soldiers killed them and threw their bodies into the fire.
The old and the sick, women and children, ran from house to house, thinking they were
safe, and running out again, shrieking, as the fire spread. The tower of Trinity Church
made a pyramid of flame until the whole spire came crashing down. By 2 a.m. the wind
shifted and fires slowed down and finally ran out of fuel, but by then 500 houses had
been destroyed. Washington would neither take credit for the blaze nor deplore it.
“Providence,” he said, “or some good honest fellow, has done more for us than we were
disposed to do for ourselves.”
***
The next night the town was still in shock when British soldiers marched into
General Howe's headquarters with a young man wearing the round broad-brimmed hat of
a Dutch schoolmaster. His only identification was a Yale diploma, but the papers he was
carrying proved what his mission had been. Nathan Hale had almost finished his
drawings of British troop positions when a relative recognized him at a tavern. Samuel
Hale, a Tory, reported that Nathan was probably a spy, and the British soldiers made the
arrest.
In the morning, Nathan Hale confessed openly that he had been spying for General
Washington. William Howe ordered him to be hanged without a trial that very same day.
A British officer who led Hale to his own tent to wait found the young American calm
and behaving with dignity. Asking for a pen and paper, he wrote to his mother and to a
fellow officer. Hale also asked to see a clergyman, but that request was denied.
When the hour came, Hale was taken to the gallows and the noose thrust around his
neck. He addressed the spectators with great composure. It was the duty of every good
soldier, he said, to obey any order from his commander in chief. He urged the British
soldiers gathered around him to be ready to meet death in whatever shape it might appear.
Afterward, those who had heard him praised the way Nathan Hale had met his own
death.
***
On December 11, 1776, the Congress in Philadelphia recommended that each of the
United States set a day of solemn fasting and humiliation. They were instructed to
implore the Almighty God to assist in the war against Britain. But for George
Washington and his men, the three months since the loss of New York had already
provided humiliation enough.
William Howe had allowed the Continental Army to remain undisturbed on Harlem
Heights for almost another month, giving them opportunity to dig in further. But by midOctober, the Howes decided to put an end to these annoying American rebels. During the
night of October 12, British warships sailed up the East River through the rapids of Hell
Gate, and followed the river eastward from Manhattan Island, passing through where now
stands the Triborough Bridge. They continued along the Long Island shore, between
what are now the boroughs of Queens and the Bronx to a point still known as Throg's
Neck. There the British made their landing; they would have only a nine miles' march
westward to cut off the American army's escape route from Manhattan Island. But the
British did not advance. Either because of faulty information or some mistake, Howe had
landed 11,000 men on a point isolated from the shore by marshes. Americans had
quickly dismantled an existing causeway, and now fired at British engineers who tried to
replace it.
But the fact remained that Howe's move had made Harlem Heights a potential trap,
and the American officers jointly agreed to withdraw. Since Congress had ordered them
to hold the Hudson River, it was decided to leave a garrison at Fort Washington, which,
in cooperation with Fort Lee, was to block any navigation on the Hudson. And the theory
was that, in case of an irresistible attack, the garrison under the command of General
Greene, could escape across the river to New Jersey.
Five days after their initial landing at Throg's Neck, Howe's forces were reinforced
through Hell Gate and finally broke free from Throg's Neck. The British then advanced
north along the Hutchinson River. The American forces, hoping to prevent being trapped
at Harlem Heights, moved parallel with the enemy along the Bronx River toward the
village of White Plains, where supplies had been taken. At White Plains, Washington set
his men to digging entrenchments in front of the village, in the direction of the British
advance coming out from New Rochelle.
When the British arrived at White Plains, the Americans had positioned themselves
on three hills, the highest of which, Chatterton's Hill, was the most weakly held, due
probably to a mixture of oversight and military inexperience. And it was towards this
exposed position that Howe threw his main attack. The Royal Artillery bombarded the
positions, and then heavy lines of blue and scarlet came plunging across the Bronx River,
battling their way up the slopes. There was a long and confused struggle, with the green
American militiamen showing surprising stamina and cohesiveness. Yet in the end they
had to abandon their positions and withdraw to the high ground of nearby North Castle.
Thus ended what is now called the Battle of White Plains.
Howe had won Chatterton's Hill, but he had completely missed his main objective,
the destruction of the American Army. Worse yet, he made no attempt to interfere with
the withdrawal of the enemy forces, nor did he try to block the supply roads from New
England, over which the Americans received “good flour, beef and pork in plenty, with
grog to wash it down.” And to complete the puzzle, in early November the British forces
suddenly broke camp and marched off in the direction of New York City.
George Washington suspected that the enemy would now invade New Jersey with
the intention of crossing the state and capturing Philadelphia. But their apparent
withdrawal from White Plains might also be a trick to make him leave his strong position
at New Castle, opening their way for a countermarch into New England. The worst
aspect of the situation was that these alternatives were separated by the Hudson River, an
obstacle which, under the best of circumstances, could not be crossed quickly.
Washington concluded that he would have to station a force on each bank of the Hudson,
so that whichever way the British pushed, they would not get away unopposed.
In a council of war, the American generals now worked out a four-way division of
the army. The garrisons under General Greene already at Forts Washington and Lee
would try to continue to hold the lower Hudson. As a second line of defense for this
essential waterway, 3,000-4,000 men under General William Heath were to be stationed
at the Highlands forts, thirty miles upriver at Peekskill. Some 7,000 troops from the
New England and New York regiments would guard New England by staying at New
Castle, commanded by General Lee. Washington himself would cross the Hudson with
the regiments which had come from the Jersey side. There were only about 2,000 of
them fit for duty, but the commander hoped for reinforcements from the 5,000 soldiers
whom Greene might not need for the defense of Fort Lee.
From this decision on, everything went downhill. On abandoning his pursuit of
Washington at White Plains, Howe had marched down the east shore of the Hudson to
Manhattan, and within a short time had surrounded the American position at Fort
Washington, except at the west where high cliffs fell to the river. It was an extensive
post, with the fort itself commanding a ridge almost four miles long and three-quarter
mile wide. Patriot possession of this ridge was like a cancer in the middle of the British
flank, and an assault would only be a matter of time.
Another ominous note was added when three British ships sailed up the Hudson
River, past the defenses over which Fort Washington presided, and received literally no
damage at all. General Washington wrote Greene, asking “what valuable purpose can it
answer to attempt to hold a post from which the expected benefit cannot be had?” He
instructed his general to prepare for an eventual evacuation of both Forts Washington and
Lee, and to begin an immediate removal of valuable stores and supplies “which you do
not deem necessary for your defense.” Greene replied that the garrison at Fort
Washington pinned down twice its number of British troops, and kept the enemy from
communicating between Manhattan and the New York mainland. “I cannot conceive the
garrison to be in any great danger. The men can be brought off at any time.”
Washington, who expected soon to be on the scene himself, let matters rest there.
Some good news was arriving from the north, where a British Army under Sir Guy
Carleton had been coming down from Canada, hoping to link up with Howe, and isolate
all of New England. However, on Lake Champlain they had encountered an improvised
fleet under Benedict Arnold, who had inspired his floating soldiers to fight against an
infinitely superior British naval force. Hour after hour against hopeless odds they fought
with such heroic ferocity that the British seem to have become discouraged and returned
to Canada. Deeply troubled by his own men's unwillingness to stand up to the enemy,
Washington filed away in his mind that he had a valuable officer in the person of
Brigadier General Benedict Arnold.
On November 12, Washington led his part of the army across the Hudson and
marched down the west shore to Greene's headquarters at Fort Lee. He was met there by
nothing but discouraging news. Instead of the 5,000 men he had hoped to find there, the
fort contained less than half that number, and these “showed no disposition to afford the
least aid.” Greene had completely ignored his orders to remove extra stores from the
forts, and, far from preparing a withdrawal from Fort Washington, had actually sent in
more men and supplies. Though his staff officers urged him to override Greene with
immediate orders to bring back the troops across the river, Washington hesitated. He had
a high opinion of Greene, who surely was more familiar with the immediate situation
than he was. Besides, the major point of danger seemed to him not so much Fort
Washington, as the route through New Jersey, which lay completely open to a British
march. Surely, Howe had designs on the American capital; he almost certainly would
mount an attack in that direction. Washington assumed that the British commander
would leave behind a detachment that would in typical leisurely manner besiege Fort
Washington. Against such an attack, the fort could hold out long enough to permit an
orderly evacuation. And so, Washington finally acquiesced in Greene's policy, although
it was “repugnant to my own judgment.”
On November 15, George Washington rode on to prepare for the defense of the
Jersey crossing to Philadelphia. He had hardly reached Hackensack, when a messenger
galloped in with the news that action had started at Fort Washington. Within a day, a
combined British and Hessian force overpowered the Manhattan fort. Only four days
later, a force of 5,000 British under Lord Cornwallis, and under the protection of the
Royal Navy, crossed the Hudson, fell upon Fort Lee, and in short order overpowered it,
nearly seizing Nathanael Greene himself in the process. Not only was all Manhattan now
British, with another strong fort on the Jersey side, but the material losses were
overwhelming: hundreds of cannon had been captured, muskets by the thousands, plus
huge stores of ammunition, along with tents, blankets, tools, and clothing. Worst of all,
thousands of irreplaceable trained troops were now lost for good - Maryland and Virginia
riflemen, Connecticut rangers, and on and on. Now Lord Cornwallis set out to pursue
Washington and his small force across New Jersey.
Back in the village of Hackensack, with his army collapsing all around him,
Washington sat down to write General Lee at North Castle: “This country is almost dead
flat, and we have not an entrenching tool, and not above 3,000 men, and they very much
broken and dispirited. . . .” The enemy was apparently making New Jersey the new seat
of war. If the Continental Army made no effort to protect the people of New Jersey, then
the state would “cease to depend upon or support” such an army. And such
dissatisfaction would undoubtedly spread into Pennsylvania as well. General
Washington therefore wrote Lee that “public interest requires your coming over to this
side” of the Hudson. Even if he was unable to bring many troops, rumors could be
encouraged to exaggerate their numbers.
General Lee had other ideas. There were British detachments near his post at White
Plains, and he was determined to overwhelm them in a way that would make his own
military superiority to Washington clear to everyone. And for this purpose he would
need all the men he had. In fact, he had already sent a letter to the Massachusetts
Committee of Safety, stating that “indecision bids fair for tumbling down the goodly
fabric of American freedom and, with it, the rights of mankind . . . There are times when
we must commit treason against the law of the state for the salvation of the state. The
present crisis demands this brave, virtuous kind of treason.” Lee therefore proposed that
Massachusetts send all future troops not to Washington, but directly to his own
encampment.
General Washington had withdrawn before Cornwallis' force and turned inland. By
December 1, as they crossed the Raritan River into Brunswick, reports came in that a
British force of between 6,000-7,000 was only ten miles away. December 1 was also the
day when so many of Washington's troops would be legally free. The general hoped that
the crisis would persuade the New Jersey militia to stay, but they all departed, and several
thousand more, including many Pennsylvanians who should by rights have stayed another
month, were preparing to go home. Washington was finally left with scarcely 3,400
effective soldiers.
At this juncture, Howe's objective should have been to destroy Washington's divided
army. It was the time of times for the British commander to go all out, but Howe chose
instead to send a large part of his force, including seventy transports and eleven warships,
to Newport, Rhode Island. Not until December 7 did Howe himself enter New Jersey
and take personal command of Cornwallis' force in the hope of bringing Washington to
decisive action.
New Jersey became a big problem for the American commander. Much of the
population apparently waited to see who would win before they committed themselves.
When the British entered the state, they encountered no countryside in arms; rather, a
countryside that seemed to have taken to the cellar. Howe offered British protection
papers to all who would take an oath of allegiance; so many did so that the British ran out
of blank forms. Continental paper money was rarely accepted anywhere in the state
because the people expected that the British Army would soon make it worthless. “The
conduct of the Jerseys has been most infamous,” wrote Washington to his brother.
“Instead of turning out to defend their country, they are making their submission as fast
as they can. If they had given us any support, we might have made a stand at
Hackensack and after that at Brunswick . . .” Instead, General Washington's tiny army,
with no help from Lee's division, plodded wearily across wintry New Jersey, keeping one
jump ahead of Howe. On December 7-8, they crossed the Delaware River. There were
no bridges across that river above Philadelphia, and it was a difficult stream for an army
to cross, which made it an excellent defensive position. Foreseeing this event,
Washington had sent men and officers ahead from as far back as New Brunswick, to
collect every boat within twenty miles of Trenton. As they now crossed the river with the
last of these boats, the first Hessian brigades were already beginning to arrive.
For the moment, Washington had saved his troops, although their number had
dwindled considerably. At any moment he expected another attack by twice as many
British soldiers. The militia had either disbanded officially or simply slunk away, leaving
Washington no choice but flight. And now Howe would certainly move against
Philadelphia.
Members of the Congress were aghast that they might be forced to move their
deliberations. Indignantly they called upon Washington to guarantee that they would be
able to stay in Philadelphia. Until that moment, the Congress had tried not to admit how
badly the war was going, but Washington could no longer encourage their optimism. He
declined to predict the future, but said that Congress might have to leave. After issuing
their proclamation for a day of humiliation, the members of Congress adjourned in
Philadelphia and agreed to convene again eight days later in Baltimore, Maryland.
But Howe had already decided to call off the campaign for that year. The Jerseys
were cold and wet, he had a charming mistress at New York City, and besides, gentlemen
did not wage war in winter. Flattering staff members had already convinced him that in
chasing Washington from New York and New Jersey, he had all but delivered a death
blow to the revolution. Washington's ragged army might well melt away before spring,
and they only had to wait until a penitent Congress would come begging for the pardons
George III had authorized him to grant. With that, Howe distributed his army in houses
and posts from Amboy and New Brunswick to Princeton and Trenton. And as winter
closed down on the Delaware, Lord Cornwallis began packing for a home leave.
George Washington had meanwhile sent dispatch after dispatch to Lee, ordering him
to cross the Hudson and join what was left of the main army. Lee at long last gave in and
began a slow march toward the Delaware through upper New Jersey, north of where
Howe's army was now stationed. Not only Lee's force, but Heath's from the Hudson
Valley and Gates' from Ticonderoga were now approaching, on separate routes, through
the hills of northern New Jersey. Since they all were on the British right flank, it would
waste time and opportunity to have them continue across the Delaware to Washington's
camp.
Washington thus sent out a messenger to the separate forces, ordering them to
rendezvous at Pittstown, some 25 miles north of Trenton. Charles Lee, as senior officer
would be in command. The generals were to work out “what probable mode of attack
can be attempted . . .” “I do not mean to tie you down to any rule,” Washington
continued, “but leave you free to exercise your own judgments of which . . . I only want
timely advice.”
For what he considered to be the good of the cause, George Washington had placed
dangerous powers into his rival's hands. Although he probably did not realize the extent
to which Lee was intriguing against him, he must have known that powerful men were
beginning to hold up the Englishman as the new savior of the cause. But Washington had
by now serious doubts about his own activities in this war, and criticism among his own
staff was becoming apparent. They, in turn, considered Lee “a most consummate
general,” and no one doubted that he was more experienced than Washington. Perhaps
the American commander in chief concluded that it would indeed be better for the future
of the United States if this desperate effort were entrusted to Lee, whatever the ultimate
effect on his own reputation.
It was not the last time that Washington was to put too much confidence in an officer
from whom a more suspicious mind might have shied away, but this was one of his most
dangerous decisions. Not because Lee might have been defeated, but because he might
have won. Supposing he had succeeded and received credit for turning the tide, which
was about to be turned at Trenton and Princeton? With many influential Patriots already
doubting Washington's military skill, Lee might well have been elevated to the
commander in chief post. The American Revolution would then have been pulled into
directions made only too familiar by other subsequent revolutions. Lee was a European
radical, close in temper to men like Robespierre and Napoleon. Scornful of civil
authority, already deeply critical of Washington for obeying congressional orders, he
would undoubtedly sooner or later have sent a recalcitrant legislature packing. He
believed not in the conciliation but in the punishment of his enemies, political or
otherwise. He saw no reason why the army should not live by looting Tories (which by
that time meant anyone who was disliked by someone in power). Had this man become
the commander in chief of the American Army, the foreign conflict with England would
quickly have turned into an American civil war. The results could only have been a
British victory or an American dictatorship.
But providence intervened even as George Washington was undertaking his selfless
and dangerous step. Lee had a propensity for sleeping in strange places - and with
strange women. He had spent the night of December 12 some distance from his army in
an inn kept by a widow. The next morning, as he was lounging in his shirtsleeves, an
aide came rushing into his room and told him he'd better look out the window.
Banastre Tarleton, aged 22, a colonel of the British 16th Regiment of Light
Dragoons, had come to the war with one purpose. Since Charles Lee had once been a
British officer, Tarleton considered his treason all the more damnable, and the dragoon
felt doubly betrayed because Lee had once commanded their regiment in Portugal.
Earlier in the year, while passing through London on his way to America, Tarleton had
announced to the members of his club on St. James Street that “With this sword, I will cut
off General Lee's head.”
During the night Lee spent at Mrs. White's tavern, Tarleton and his dragoons had
been following up on rumors that Lee was in the area, and before dawn the British had
surrounded the tavern and Lee was arrested there by the British cavalrymen. The British
were delighted with their coup, convinced that they had struck a major blow to the
American cause by carrying off the only competent general in the rebel service. Back in
Pennsylvania, Washington ordered the assembled forces in New York to join him. Some
other way was to be found to strike a blow at the enemy.
***
So far as General Howe was concerned, the campaign of 1776 was over. His troops
were scattered all over New Jersey in snug winter quarters, buttoned up for cold weather
in little towns where there were good taverns and weather proof stone houses. For the
Continental Army there was little more than the bleak countryside and despair, with cold
winds whipping around the camp fires. Nothing could happen until spring. Though
Washington might have had as many as 6,000 troops all told, he would have less than
half that number when the terms of enlistment expired shortly after New Year. In the
meantime, his forces were separated from the British by the turbulent, impassible
Delaware River. Howe could well afford to wait until spring; all he would have to do
then was to round up the debris and enforce the King's peace.
Except that General Washington had different ideas. With his army dwindling and
few reinforcements in prospect, he had to do something, and soon, if he was to have any
chance at all. A Hessian brigade was quartered across the river in the tiny village of
Trenton; if it were allowed to take the offensive, it might break through and march all the
way to Philadelphia. After dark on Christmas Day, 1776, George Washington personally
led 2,400 men on the frozen road to the river at a place nine miles upstream, where most
of the boats were assembled. “It will be a terrible night for the soldiers,” wrote an
officer, “but I have not heard a man complain,” despite the fact that the road was “tinged
here and there with blood from the feet of men who wore broken shoes” - or no shoes at
all.
The flood-stage Delaware River was booming and groaning with grinding ice floes,
but at the river John Glover's priceless Marbleheaders were once again waiting with a
fleet of Durham boats, 30-40 feet long, whose peacetime purpose had been to carry
freight up the Delaware. Into these boats filed the chilled soldiers, along with Henry
Knox's artillery, Generals Knox, Greene, and Sullivan, and General Washington himself
in full regimentals. The boats moved out on the river in midnight darkness, ice slabs
crashing into the sides, depositing troops and guns on the Jersey shore, returning for
another load, shuttling back and forth steadily until the whole army was across.
By four o'clock in the morning there were still nine long miles to cover before the
wintry dawn if their surprise was to work. Through a biting wind and snow, the men
advanced, pulling their artillery. Sunrise found them a mile from Trenton, a town of
perhaps a hundred houses, which now held three regiments of Hessian soldiers under the
command of Colonel Johann Rall.
These men were tough professionals, the same troops which had already chased
Greene out of Forts Washington and Lee on the Hudson River. But Colonel Rall's troops
had just celebrated Christmas in robust German style, with plenty of rum and wine for the
enlisted men. Besides, like most European soldiers, they held the colonials in hearty
contempt, perfectly safe in the knowledge that they had nothing to worry about. When
daylight came, hardly anyone was awake, and when Henry Knox's guns began their
sudden crash, sleep-drugged, hung-over bodies came stumbling out into the streets, only
to be met by the fire of angry Continentals, who had waited a long time for this moment.
Colonel Rall tried to rally his men and went down, mortally wounded; a half-hearted
counterattack failed completely, and suddenly the Americans even produced a
respectable bayonet charge.
In less than an hour it was all over. The Americans had taken over 900 prisoners and
had shot down or bayoneted another hundred or so. All of the Hessian supplies and
munitions had been taken, and the town itself was in Continental hands. And all this at
the cost of two dead - frozen to death, actually, in the stormy winter morning march - and
four wounded. The victorious army hustled its captives and booty upstream, crossed to
Pennsylvania with the help of Glover's men, and bedded down in its cold camp - while
General Washington set out to see whether this army would even be in existence a few
days later.
News of the Trenton victory ran through the country like a bolt of electricity. It had
been a real offensive strike, not merely a counterattack, as so many times before, and it
had been won with the help of the bayonet, which everyone had assumed the Americans
neither possessed nor understood. American enlistments increased at once; Pennsylvania
militia swarmed into camp, anxious for the opportunity to invade New Jersey, and three
New England regiments, whose enlistment had already expired, were persuaded by a
personal appeal from General Washington to remain at least six weeks longer.
With this much unexpected force at his hands, Washington decided to strike another
blow at the enemy, hoping to drive them from New Jersey entirely. Congress responded
by granting him, for a period of six months, the personal authority to raise a new army,
and to appoint all officers under the rank of brigadier general. By New Year's Day 1777,
the American Army once again numbered 5,000, partly new recruits, but with many nowseasoned veterans. With this force Washington again crossed the Delaware toward
Trenton, just in time to discover the approach of Cornwallis, who was coming with 8,000
men to avenge the outrageous defeat inflicted on the Hessians. Washington managed to
evade the main enemy body, moved forward past them, and fell upon a British contingent
at Princeton. The small British force was routed and chased into the college town, where
they barricaded themselves in Nassau Hall; but after the American artillery fired a few
cannon balls into the building they surrendered. Once more the Americans managed to
evade the pursuing Cornwallis and then marched, not as expected, to Pennsylvania, but
northward toward Morristown, New Jersey. Finally Cornwallis gave up the pursuit and
went into winter quarters. No gentleman could be expected to campaign in January and
February in this unkempt colony of heavy snowfalls and bad roads, against an equally
unkempt and undisciplined enemy. The Americans, too, went into winter quarters, and
this time with a whole lot more confidence and a brighter outlook for the future.
The victories at Trenton and Princeton had been events of huge importance. On
paper they did not add up to much, but they were a turning point. Patriot hopes, which
had been on the point of vanishing, were suddenly reborn. It was possible, after all, for
this homespun army with inadequate supplies and training to take the offensive against
British and German regulars and win respectable victories. New Jersey, which had been
all but lost, had now been regained. And the entire area, which so recently was supposed
to have been populated by Tories, was suddenly hot for independence. Part of this, no
doubt, was due to the conduct of the Hessian regiments occupying the colony; about half
of Howe's forces in New Jersey were German mercenaries, and the Germans had been
notorious looters from the days of Tacitus. Protection papers issued to loyal Jerseyites
did no good since most of the German soldiers could not read English, or could not read
at all; which did not stop them from stealing most of the books out of Princeton's library.
Shops and houses were ransacked indiscriminately, and so many trains of army wagons
moved into New York laden with plates, furniture and clothing that at times it looked as
if all New Jersey was moving to New York City. The officers were generous in letting
their men have a piece of every load; those less fortunate stole horses and loaded the
saddle bags with as many valuables as they could find.
In the main, however, the change came because the American Army had begun to
look like winners. In a campaign lasting only three weeks, at a time of year when
gentlemen were not supposed to fight, the American commander and his 5,000
indomitable troops had undone everything Howe had accomplished, had recovered New
Jersey, and had saved the American cause. And on January 19, 1777, Thomas Paine once
again issued a pamphlet, this one called Crisis:
“These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine
patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it
now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily
conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more
glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness
only that gives everything its value. Heaven 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.”
***
George Washington, who had never been to Morristown before this, had planned to
use the town only as a temporary stop to refresh his march-weary troops before moving
on to a better position. But he soon became convinced that he could not hope for a better
position. Twenty-five miles west of New York City, Morristown was roughly the same
distance from the other main British posts in New Jersey - Brunswick, Newark and
Amboy. The hills near the village provided a natural rampart, while in the rear the farm
country abounded in provisions. Washington decided to make Morristown his
headquarters for the rest of the winter.
The most immediate problem was what to do about the inhabitants of New Jersey
who had, during the British occupation, sworn allegiance to the Crown. There was no
shortage of fire-eaters who were anxious to punish the Tories in various ways, but
Washington considered that “'tis bad policy” to make “martyrs.” He issued a
proclamation that all who had taken the British oath could come to the nearest military
headquarters and swear “allegiance to the United States.” Those who refused, and who
had not been caught in unfriendly acts for which they deserved punishment, were to be
politely escorted to the British lines at New York City. To minimize the suffering, he
ruled that wives and children of these exiles could stay in their homes “if their behavior
warrants,” and that the refugees could take with them personal possessions that would be
of no assistance to the enemy.
What had been ordered out of compassion could not have been more effective if it
had been part of a planned strategy. Tories imprisoned or perhaps exiled to the frontier
would only have been strengthened in their hatred of the Patriot cause. But the Tories
Washington sent to New York City were now subjected to British military rule, which
felt itself vastly superior to anything colonial. Prominent and previously influential
Tories who had given up everything for their king were now virtually ignored in the city
and were given only a little stipend on which to subsist. It was considered natural that the
daughters of lesser Tories should be available for the entertainment of British soldiers.
And when shortages developed that might reduce the choices at British officers' messes,
ordinary refugees were hardly allowed to eat at all. Since everything that the most radical
Patriot orators had been saying about British tyranny was proven right here, New York
City became the most effective reformer of Tories in all America.
To the intermittent shortages that were to plague New York City, Washington had
cheerfully begun to contribute. Confident that a pacified New Jersey would serve as a
supply base during the winter, Howe had not amassed any great quantities of supplies
within New York. Though he still had access to whatever Long Island offered, the
Americans were determined that this was all he would get without a fight. Orders went
out that in Westchester County above Manhattan Island and in eastern New Jersey all
supplies close to the British lines should be removed or destroyed; the deeper the British
foraging parties would have to penetrate into Patriot territory, the more enemy soldiers
would have to make the march, and wherever these parties penetrated, militiamen were to
surround them, harass them, stopping them, if possible. Such continued activity would, as
Washington noted, “in a manner harass their troops to death.”
Washington had finally found the ideal way to use the militia. Since they were
usually the inhabitants of the very same terrain they guarded, they were intimately
familiar with the local geography. Engaged in a service where their usual lack of
discipline and subordination were of secondary importance, they nevertheless had, as
Washington admitted, “superior skill in firearms,” which enabled them to make the
enemy “always sustain the greatest loss” - all of which combined to make American
militiamen perfectly suited for what came to be known, thirty years later during the
Napoleonic Wars, as guerrilla warfare. And finally, since these militiamen were spread
all across the countryside, they were being kept away from the Continental Troops,
whom they could no longer influence with their lawless examples.
But such utilization of the militia did not reduce the need for a powerful Continental
Army to oppose British power. The militia could only be counted on to make the going
uncomfortable for enemy parties; unless a strong Continental Army were enlisted for
long enough to become disciplined and better trained, the British could move at will
anywhere, in forces large enough to capture any object they seriously desired.
Once the troops who had after Trenton agreed to stay six more weeks had gone
home, Washington was left with very few regulars, and his troops were distributed so
thinly through the various hamlets around Morristown that even the inhabitants believed
there were far more than the mere 3,000 men. But even Howe could not be fooled
forever. Eventually, the true shape of the American Army would be revealed and the
British would attack; Washington's army might then be so completely crushed as to
prevent any meaningful action in the future. Philadelphia would no doubt fall to the
enemy. Such thoughts filled George Washington with such anguish that he wrote: “I
think we are now in one of the most critical periods which America ever saw.”
But as the weeks passed, life in and around Morristown began to improve.
Washington used the special powers granted him by Congress to commandeer supplies,
and his men ate better. New troops came in, and older formations decided to stay on.
Martha Washington, always cheerful, arrived in town, and began to entertain modestly
for the wives of the other officers. And March brought the news that more than thirty
ships had cleared French ports for America, laden with clothing, arms, and powder. By
the spring of 1777, the main American Army was taking shape and size to a degree that
was miraculous to those who could look back on the starved, ragged 4,000 who had
struggled south to the Delaware only half a year earlier.
All through this time, General Howe had no fewer than 27,000 men in and near New
York City, sitting idly, supported by a sizeable fleet under Admiral Howe. But the
British ministry had already approved a plan that would have brought final victory if
properly executed. Basically, the plan was sound. A strong Anglo-German force, led by
Major General John Burgoyne, was to sweep out from Canada up Lake Champlain,
capture weakly held Fort Ticonderoga, drive southward to the Hudson River and push on
victoriously to Albany. At Albany, his command was to be joined by a mixed body of
British, Hessians, Tories, and Indians, all under the command of Lieutenant Colonel
Barry St. Leger, coming down the Mohawk River from the base at Oswego on Lake
Ontario. These united forces would then stand ready for the final sledge-hammer blow
that Sir William Howe was to launch northward up the Hudson from New York City.
It was hoped that the main American Army under George Washington would thus be
forced to come out of New Jersey to counter the blow. In that case it would surely be
crushed along with lesser American commands, and armed resistance to the Crown
would come to an end. If Mr. Washington refused to move, the British could simply seal
off New England from the rest of the country. The tons of supplies and the thousands of
men that flowed out of these four states would dry to a trickle and the spine of the
rebellion would be snapped.
Accomplishment of this sweeping design, however, depended on its three elements Burgoyne, St. Leger, and above all, William Howe - all moving in perfect accord and
harmony. From the start a liaison would have to be flawless, but that was complicated by
the fact that London, from where all formal orders were issued, treated New York and
Canada as separate areas of command.
This aspect does not seem to have concerned Burgoyne in the least. He himself
would bring ample authority from London to set his own and St. Leger's expeditions into
motion. And Lord George Germain, the British Colonial Secretary at Westminster, had
already assured him that Howe would receive the proper instructions in ample time.
Once again, General Burgoyne set out for the New World, apparently unconcerned that
Sir William Howe might or might not receive specific orders, or whether the general
might be in any position to follow such instructions when and if he did receive them.
Sir William had indeed made other plans. Hoping to retrieve his poor performance in
New Jersey, he was now determined to smash Washington's army, while at the same time
taking Philadelphia. Philadelphia was, after all, the capital of the rebellious colonies, and
in European terms once the capital had fallen, so did the country.
***
On the night of June 17, the British at New York City finally made their first major
move of the year. A large force crossed the narrow channel from Staten Island to New
Jersey and started along the road to Philadelphia. In the previous year, Washington
would probably have rushed his troops through New Jersey in an effort to get across the
Delaware before the British could get there, but he now realized that the enemy, with
their need for sophisticated supply lines, would not advance while a potentially powerful
force could attack their rear. He now ordered Benedict Arnold, who happened to be in
Philadelphia, to lead the Pennsylvania militia to guard the Delaware crossing. This small
force had no chance in stopping the British, but it could delay them if they tried to cross
until Washington's highly mobile army could catch them half on one side of the river and
half on the other.
As it turned out, Howe made no effort to cross the Delaware or to assault
Washington's forces. About nine miles beyond Brunswick, the enemy line came to a halt
and then withdrew. Washington assumed that they had been frightened by the immense
outpouring of militia in a state where they had seemed to be so welcome only the year
before. But Howe had no such fears; having ruled Washington's camp too strong to risk a
frontal attack, he had hoped that this feint at Philadelphia would lure the Americans out
into a battle on the plain, where British techniques would prove a great advantage. When
Washington would not be decoyed, Howe had seen no reason to continue that maneuver.
However, he tried another. Embarking all of his army except the garrison at Amboy,
he carried the troops across the Arthur Kill to Staten Island. This withdrawal lured the
American forces to a relatively exposed position near the kill, and on the night of June
25-26, Howe crossed secretly back from Staten Island and marched to get behind the
American positions. But again, the quick moving Americans got away.
Having failed again, Howe abandoned even the Amboy garrison and retired to Staten
Island, and not a single British soldier was now left in New Jersey. This complete
recapture of a state the British had almost completely overrun seemed to John Hancock
“the most explicit declaration to the whole world that the conquest of America is not only
a very distant but an unobtainable object.” Other New England leaders, however, were
outraged that Washington had not attacked Howe. “I long,” wrote Joseph Warren to
John Adams, “to hear of enterprises, of battles fought and victories gained on our side.”
But Washington had long realized that among his countrymen there were those politicians and generals alike - “who wish to make themselves popular at the expense of
others, or who think the cause is not to be advanced otherwise than by fighting.”
***
By the beginning of July, Washington received reports that British transports in New
York City were being fitted for movement, indicating that the ultimate goal was to be
Philadelphia. At the same time, reports from the north stated that General Burgoyne had
started down from Canada with a large army. The American officers finally concluded
that the Canadian movement was a feint to pull the Continental Army northward so Howe
could march unimpeded across New Jersey while his supplies went around by water.
Washington responded no further to Burgoyne's threat than to advance a few regiments
from Morristown northward. He counted on Fort Ticonderoga to block Burgoyne's
advance should the British actually come down Lake Champlain.
But soon all indications increased that Burgoyne's threat was a serious invasion, and
then Washington received the dreadful news that the garrison at Ticonderoga under
General Schuyler had, without firing a single shot, abandoned the fort at Burgoyne's
approach and had disappeared into the forest. All of the headwaters of the Hudson and
western New England now lay open to the British.
Although his own forces were barely strong enough for the defense of Philadelphia,
Washington now rushed four regiments up the Hudson to reinforce Schuyler, and then
turned again to the problem of Howe. Although intelligence reports still indicated a
British move toward Philadelphia, Washington could hardly believe that Howe would fail
to go up the Hudson and meet up with Burgoyne. For ten more days reports remained
puzzling and confusing; one day the ships were preparing to sail up the Hudson, the next
day they were going up the sound toward New England, and the next day they were
sailing out into the Atlantic. But on July 24, “170 topsail vessels and about 50 or 60
smaller ones” actually sailed from New York Harbor into the ocean. Leaving behind one
strong garrison, Washington now committed the rest of his army to a rapid march across
New Jersey to protect Philadelphia. But he kept “casting my eyes continuously behind
me,” since “General Howe's in a manner abandoning General Burgoyne is so
unaccountable.” Perhaps Howe, having tricked the Continental Army into moving away,
would turn back and sail up the Hudson after all.
Howe had intended to advance on Philadelphia via the Delaware River, but when his
fleet had paused off the capes, reconnaissance had revealed Patriot defenses on the river
so formidable that the British decided to proceed to Chesapeake Bay, the longest possible
sea route. Howe later pointed out that the boats could never have gotten up the Delaware
past Wilmington - and to march from Wilmington to Philadelphia was not much shorter
than from the head of Chesapeake Bay. He could not, of course, foresee that contrary
winds would make the trip to the Chesapeake take three weeks. Still, he felt even this
might have been preferable in the face of the well-known European idea of the
unhealthiness of the American climate; the troops were less likely to be ill on the ocean
than on the continent during the sickly hot months of July and August. And while his
army, miserable and seasick as the transports rolled in heavy groundswells off the New
Jersey coast, was held captive on the ocean, Washington cautiously halted his own troops
on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River.
***
Early in May 1777, the ships bearing Major General John Burgoyne had arrived in
the St. Lawrence River near Quebec, and the general was anxious to proceed. The troops
were in excellent shape after an unusually mild Canadian winter; the British and German
commanders all capable men, raring to go. Burgoyne also learned that Fort Ticonderoga
was now commanded by a former British officer, Major General Arthur St. Clair, whose
2,000 American troops were known to be substandard in morale, health, and equipment.
But not all the news was good. Attempts to recruit a strong Tory corps had failed
utterly; only a hundred or so had joined up instead of the thousands which had been
expected. Canadian enlistments had been no better. About 400 Indians, a disappointing
total, would participate, and it was already reported that the use of these Indians against
English colonists was swinging thousands of waverers away from the Crown. An
additional handicap was provided by Burgoyne himself: he insisted on weighing down
his forces with 138 pieces of artillery, ranging from the lightest calibers to lumbering 24pounders. Many of these were to be mounted on ships or in captured forts, but nearly
fifty of them were to accompany the infantry through the northern wilderness, a number
far in excess of their needs. Bunker Hill was strong on Burgoyne's mind, and he was
determined that if he met entrenched Americans, he would smother them with artillery
fire before a single British or German infantryman attacked. Actually, once Ticonderoga
was passed, there were no American forts worthy of the name; no prepared positions at
all. But by dragging this mass of guns and munitions overland, Burgoyne was giving the
enemy time to build earthworks where none had existed before.
There was one final issue which should have concerned the British commander.
Howe had written him, mentioning casually that the year 1777 would find the main
British force busy in Pennsylvania, although a token raid or two might be made north up
the Hudson. Burgoyne apparently ignored this disturbing remark, or he reasoned that the
letter was written before Howe had received his new instructions from London. The ever
smiling and cheerful general set out on the first day of July 1777 from Crown Point on
Lake Champlain's west shore, poised for the opening blow of the campaign.
Burgoyne's forces now numbered about 8,000 in total - 4,000 British regulars, 3,000
Germans, and about a thousand Canadians and Indians. These Indians, Burgoyne
expected, would put the fear of God and King George into any frontier settlements they
might encounter. Yet as he watched his fearful looking, hideously painted allies in their
war canoes, the general must have had his doubts. True, the red men were born warriors,
requiring little in the way of supplies and munitions, but could an English gentleman
really make war with the support of such savages? Especially when those savages were
to be used against transplanted Englishmen? Burgoyne must have had such concerns,
because he had already made a speech to the red men, telling them that they must make
war in a civilized fashion. The wounded and the prisoners were not to be scalped or
tortured, and noncombatants, especially women and children were to be left in peace.
Many British officers and men had served in the past with these Indians; some knew a
little of their language and some understood their mentality. Yet for some unknown
reason, most of the Indians were assigned to a German regiment under Baron von
Riedesel. The baron had never seen an Indian before this, nor had any of his officers, and
there was no chance that any of these soldiers would ever control or direct them in any
fashion. But while Burgoyne's talk might have amused his Indian allies, to the south
there lay waiting a force of Vermont's Green Mountain Boys, grimly determined that
neither Gentleman Johnny nor his German or Indian allies would get much of a chance to
practice their warrior skills.
About three miles above Fort Ticonderoga, the British plunged ashore on the west
bank and struggled through the primeval forest, preparing to lay siege to the enemy
entrenchments. But there was to be no siege. Warned by the noise of the advancing
columns, Arthur St. Clair had decided to abandon his poorly fortified post. During the
night of July 5 he had managed to slip his mostly raw and inexperienced troops through
the darkness to Fort Edward on the Hudson, where they reinforced the American
Northern Army under General Philip Schuyler. When the British arrived at Ticonderoga,
there was no opposition at all. General Burgoyne delivered a champagne toast to his
troops and his mistress - and then there was little left to do but advance the twenty miles
toward Fort Edward, and then a leisurely trip to Albany to meet up with Howe and St.
Leger.
But it was those twenty miles which hung heavily on the minds of a few of
Burgoyne's officers. They knew that the original plan had been a water route of Lake
Champlain-Lake George-Hudson River to Albany; yet here was their commander,
confidently scrapping the Lake George part, which would have floated the heavy guns
and supplies, while the troops kept to a known road on the left bank of the lake. Instead,
they were now to crawl overland through twenty miles of wilderness, where hardly a trail
existed.
It took Burgoyne's army, encumbered by officers' wives, mistresses, and even
children, and an enormous quantity of baggage, nearly a month to reach Fort Edward,
which Schuyler had already abandoned. Inch by inch they hacked a road out of the
mosquito-infested virgin forest, and not even the legendary skills of the Canadian axemen
could speed progress. General Schuyler had sent out American woodsmen of his own,
who, ahead of the crawling British advance, felled even more trees across the trails that
did exist, adding to the already dense deadfall. Trunks dammed brooks and formed
pools, and ravines became choked with logs which had to be laboriously cut up and
hauled aside by the British advance.
By July 29, the advance finally broke out of the forest into the green rolling
meadows around Fort Edward. Many of the officers now expected that a light, mobile
force would cross the Hudson for a swift dash to Albany and the meeting with Howe and
St. Leger. Instead, the entire force was ordered into camp on the meadows, while a
maddeningly slow procession of heavy guns came rumbling over the wretched road from
Lake George, and until additional supplies could be brought in from Canada. 180
Canadian bateaux, hauled by relays of oxen and horses over the portages between the two
lakes and the Hudson, carried a single month's supplies to the army at Fort Edward. Trip
after trip was made while the summer days dropped one by one from the calendar.
Gentleman Johnny's good humor must have been dimmed somewhat when early in
August a courier arrived at Fort Edward with a letter from Sir William Howe.
Congratulating his colleague on the easy victory at Ticonderoga, Howe went on, almost
casually: “My intention is for Pennsylvania, where I expect to meet Washington, but if he
goes to the northward . . . and you can keep him at bay, be assured I shall soon be after
him to relieve you.” Howe had no plans at all to meet him at Albany unless Washington
moved there, and even then Burgoyne was on his own until Howe, never noted for speed,
decided to come and help out!
But Burgoyne, ever the optimist, was not to be deterred. His own orders were to
proceed to Albany, and that was where he would go. So far the rebels had given him
very little trouble; there were reports that a few of the remaining colonials were massing
at a place called Stillwater, twenty miles down the west bank of the Hudson, but nothing
indicated that they were a serious obstacle. For now, Burgoyne decided to keep Howe's
bad news to himself, and he set about to gather supplies for the final push southward.
After all, St. Leger was on his way down the Mohawk, and the combined forces could
spend a comfortable winter at Albany. When spring came again, things would surely
look different.
St. Leger, a cool and experienced soldier, had indeed left Oswego with about 500
British and German troops, an equal number of well-trained Tory units under leaders
such as Sir John Johnson and Colonel John Butler. With them, too, were swarms of
Canadian axemen to clear the road ahead and, most important, about a thousand Mohawk
Indians. They were now closing in around old Fort Stanwix on the upper reaches of the
Mohawk River, about 100 miles west of Burgoyne's position.
Stanwix proved unexpectedly stubborn. The commanders had kept the neglected
fort in good repair and its garrison of about 750 in fine combat readiness. They managed
to beat back all enemy blows and even took rapid countermeasures against the besieging
fort. And now came news that about 800 militiamen had assembled out of the little
settlements of Tryon County, and were rushing to reinforce Fort Stanwix under the
command of Brigadier Nicholas Herkimer, a veteran of the old wars. Every man there
knew what would happen if they did not come to the aid of Fort Stanwix and if the
Mohawks were turned loose on their farms and villages. Even more they feared the
return of men like Johnson and Butler, whose Old World notions of life they had battled
for years.
Alerted by scouts, St. Leger sent out a heavy force of Tories and Indians to head off
Herkimer's men. On August 6, these militiamen stumbled into a carefully laid ambush at
Oriskany, and in a nearly day-long battle against their former countrymen and neighbors
were driven off down the Mohawk. With them they carried their commander, Nicholas
Herkimer, out of action with a wound that was to prove fatal.
The Tories and their Indian allies were in little better shape, and when they returned
to the lines around Fort Stanwix, they found that in their absence the American defenders
had come rushing out from the fort, driven off the few guards in the camp, and had taken
off with everything they could carry from the tents and Indian lodges. This loss cost the
Indians every bit of equipment and their scanty but vital reserve rations. Adding this to
their heavy casualties at Oriskany, their enthusiasm for the white man's squabbles
diminished rapidly, and soon they began to disappear in ever growing numbers. And
within two more weeks there were rumors that Major General Benedict Arnold was
storming up the Mohawk with 3,500 Continentals. The rumors were true, except for the
numbers; Arnold had actually only about 1,000 Continentals and militia, but through
false rumors he had managed to convince the enemy of a much larger force.
Tories and Indians, already unhappy about the turn of events, had heard the rumors
too and now began to panic. On August 23, St. Leger abruptly gave up the siege of Fort
Stanwix; he broke camp and started a hasty retreat for Oswego, abandoning all his
artillery, ammunition, and supplies. And all the way back, he was now constantly
harassed by his former Indian allies. General Burgoyne had just lost the second of his
expected partners in the conquest of the American colonies.
A triumphant but furious Benedict Arnold led his force eastward to join the newly
appointed commander of the American Northern Army, Horatio Gates. At this juncture,
the appointment had become a critical issue about the respective merits of Generals
Schuyler, Arnold, and Gates. In the promoting of general officers by Congress in the
spring of 1777, Benedict Arnold, as senior Brigadier, should by all rights have received
the top honors for his performance in the Canadian campaign. But political
considerations interfered; New England's allowance of Major Generals was already filled,
keeping Arnold from the command of the Northern Army. The command should then
have gone to Philip Schuyler of Albany, who had done very well under Arnold, except
that New England troops refused to serve under him. An aristocrat like George
Washington, he was unable to become an effective leader of men, and had already made
himself unpopular by insisting on military punctilio. Moreover, he was one of the New
York patroons who had opposed the settlement of Vermont by New Englanders, and who
even now were trying to eject them. The leaders of the Green Mountain Boys had
therefore threatened to do nothing to stop Burgoyne if General Schuyler remained as
commander. Congress, on August 4, responded by giving the command of the Northern
Army to General Gates.
Gates had been a volunteer in the British forces under Braddock in the French and
Indian War but had been badly wounded on his first day in battle. When the war ended,
Gates found that his lack of money and connections kept him from advancing in the
British Army. He had retired and seemed destined to spend his days drinking and
gambling. But his exposure to America had kindled sympathy with the Patriots' cause,
and with the beginning of the Revolution he saw a chance to revive his military career.
Stooped and gray, approaching fifty and looking older, he had become a valuable
administrative aide to Washington in Cambridge during the first days of organizing the
army. Gates was by nature a cautious man, and as his soldiers watched him move
through camp with his spectacles perched low on his nose, they called him “Granny
Gates.”
Horatio Gates, as a man and a soldier, is something of an enigma. He seems to have
been pushed by circumstances and an ambitious wife into positions he neither wanted nor
deserved. He had served in the British Army in America during the French and Indian
Wars, after which he had bought a plantation in Virginia. Washington made him adjutant
general of the Continental Army, a post similar to that of a modern chief of staff. His
brother officers never liked him, and the soldiers observed that, unlike General
Washington, he was careful never to expose himself to enemy fire. But he had enough
political savvy to charm political leaders, especially those of New England, who, when
disappointed in Charles Lee, made him their favorite son. The ambitious General Arnold
filed the snub to a long list of insults, real or imagined.
***
Burgoyne had spent idle weeks in the pleasant summer days along the upper Hudson,
waiting for adequate supplies to be brought in. Now, however, there were reports that to
the east, in the Hampshire Grants - today's Vermont - the rebels had collected huge stores
of corn and flour and cattle, and uncounted horses. Best of all, so rumors had it, these
stores were guarded only by a few militia and could be had for the taking. As always,
there were also masses of innumerable Loyalists, simply begging to be allowed to join
the Royal colors wherever they appeared.
Burgoyne planned a swift coup to the east that would yield provisions, stores of
arms, and horses for the artillery and wagon trains. He seems to have imagined that his
raiders could march across Vermont to Bellows Falls, down the Connecticut River to
Brattleboro and back to Albany, all in two weeks’ time, collecting horses, cattle and
wagonloads of grain. Ironically, for this lightning quick strike into enemy country, the
general selected a force of 375 dismounted German dragoons under Colonel Baum; these
lumbering, over-equipped soldiers, with their heavy boots, sabers, and carbines were
accompanied by another 300 Canadians and Indians. In a pathetically hopeful gesture,
each dragoon carried a halter to secure the prized mount that would be his once the
objective was reached.
It did not matter much. The raiding party had barely reached the Vermont line at
Bennington, when they were met by a force of Green Mountain Boys under General John
Stark, the hero of the rail fences at Bunker Hill. In two decisive battles on August 15 and
16, the entire British party of 800 men was either captured or killed.
Nothing succeeds like success, and the Battle of Bennington brought out hundreds of
militiamen to the headquarters of General Gates, eager to deliver another blow against the
British. And Burgoyne's long halt at Fort Edward had given Washington time to send
additional reinforcements from New Jersey in the shape of Morgan's Rifles. When early
in September the British Army began to move southward toward Albany again, their
cause had already been all but lost. Waiting for them downriver was an American army
of 15,000 - nearly three times the men under Burgoyne's command.
On September 15, the whole British command was across the Hudson on its west
bank, preparing to march toward Albany. The flimsy bridge of boats that had spanned the
river was broken up, cutting the last link with Canada and the Ticonderoga base. The
objective was now a simple one: Get to Albany!
Enemy resistance had been light so far, but outposts were ambushed silently by
night, and advance details met with unexpected bursts of fire from dense woods. Once
on the west bank, matters worsened. Entire foraging parties disappeared, never to be
seen again, and sniper fire met them day and night. Countless bridges had been wrecked,
trees had been felled across the trails once more, and again and again the army was
forced to halt while new structures had to be built or paths had to be cleared to allow
passage for Burgoyne's heavy guns, wagons, and thirty cartloads that enabled the
commander to take the field as a gentleman should.
By September 19, they had advanced barely a few miles, when it became obvious
that the enemy had assembled ahead. By noon of that day, the British advance entered
the clearings of an abandoned farm, the holdings of one Freeman, whose unharvested
wheat rippled in the wind. Suddenly there was movement ahead in the silent woods at
the south edge of the farm, made by half-glimpsed men with fur caps and long rifles.
Somewhere out there were waiting Morgan's riflemen, who could kill a soldier a half a
mile away. They lurked unseen, shooting at men who had no place to hide, and they had
an uncanny way of signaling their presence to one another - a repeated incomprehensible
turkey gobble, which British soldiers found as unnerving as anything they had ever run
into. Somewhere this turkey gobble broke out, and with the crack of rifles, every British
officer in the advance was shot down, and noncoms and privates began to topple. It was
a bad situation for troops trained in formal warfare; there was nothing to strike against, no
way of estimating the enemy's strength. The British rushed for the shelter of the north
woods, followed closely by the American riflemen. For three hours or more the two
forces swayed back and forth across the clearing while British losses swelled to
frightening figures, until suddenly the Hessian rear appeared with heavy guns. Yankee
drums and turkey gobble faded away to the south. Once again a British force had been
saved by the arrival of their German allies.
The halted invasion force now dug itself in solidly as rebel pressure steadily
increased. There was constant sniping and the British lines were raided nightly. Rations
dwindled and the remaining horses had to be fed on leaves. Desertions increased,
especially among the Germans. And as the late September weather grew colder, all ranks
began to suffer. Meanwhile, rebel formations had captured several hundred prisoners
around Ticonderoga; John Stark had swooped out of Vermont again and pressed
downriver far enough to harass Burgoyne's priceless supply barges. As October came on,
it was obvious that the invasion force would have to do something. Pleas for
reinforcements from New York had gone unanswered, and now Burgoyne consulted with
his generals. On October 7, 1777, the British commander launched the weirdest, most
inexplicable coup of the entire campaign.
In what became known as the Second Battle of Freeman's Farm, 1,500 British and
German soldiers lined up in a wheatfield, apparently hoping to lure the shadowy enemy
into the open. In a short and pitched battle, the entire line was driven back in shattering
fire. Sometime during this battle, Benedict Arnold appeared on the scene and took
command of the New England regiments. In a furious smash against the British line, he
routed the enemy once and for all, but he himself was wounded seriously enough to be
out of action for a long time.
The disaster at Freeman's Farm rendered all thoughts of Albany purely academic.
The invasion force was finished as a combat entity, and on the night of October 8 the
remains of the army formed in a pouring rain and began a slow, perilous march north
along the Hudson with Ticonderoga as the objective. Supply wagons bogged down axledeep and had to be abandoned. Roaming detachments of rebel militia captured fully
loaded supply barges and bateaux. Luckily for the beaten force, Horatio Gates was as lax
in following up as Burgoyne or Howe had ever been, and by October 9, the British
remnants managed to cross the Fishkill and began to dig in on the heights of Saratoga.
From there it was only a matter of time. Up and down the Fishkill, the British could
see Continentals crossing over, while masses of Massachusetts militia were closing in
from the east. Soldiers and officers alike looked longingly northward, where the road to
Ticonderoga still lay open if only Burgoyne would give the orders to move. But a few
days later, this last hope was gone as well; on October 13, John Stark's Green Mountain
Boys filled the northern road as they slammed the final exit door for a defeated British
army.
There followed a few days of elaborate negotiations, for Horatio Gates could be as
pompous and gesturing as the best of his opponents. On October 17, in accordance with
the Convention - not the Capitulation - to which Gates had agreed, British and German
troops filed out of their works and formally laid down their arms. Burgoyne surrendered
six generals and 300 other officers, and about 5,500 men. General Gates, as the
commander of the enlisted Northern Army, received all the credit for a triumph that
better soldiers had won for him. Among them was Benedict Arnold who, already having
been deeply offended, considered this the final straw. His wounds kept him out of action
for a long time, and when he took the field again, it was to be against his own
countrymen.
As to the prisoners, Gates had made promises far beyond his legal powers, without
the slightest reference to Congress or to Commander-in-Chief Washington. The
unfortunate troops were sent to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they languished
miserably for a while; then they were ordered on another killing march that took them
down to Virginia and later into Pennsylvania, where most of them stayed until the end of
the war. And back at elegant Brooks' Club in London, Charles Fox collected from
Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne that wager of fifty guineas made so long ago in those more
confident days of 1775.
***
For months now, all during the winter of 1776-1777, George Washington had been
complaining to Congress about “swarms” of volunteers, officers who claimed to have
served in the French Army and were now arriving at his headquarters from Europe and
the Indies. For days at a time he was forced “to hear their pretensions and explain to
them the reasons why it is impossible for me to gratify them in their wishes.” They
would march ceremoniously into his camp and insist that they were entitled, because of
their glorious record on European battlefields, to one of the very highest commands in the
American Army. Washington suspected that most were “hungry adventurers,” but he
never could be sure; besides, there always was the possibility of finding that one
individual who could really be useful in the technical departments where the American
lack of formal training hurt most. Among those he did recommend was Colonel Thomas
Conway, an Irishman who had been driven into international military service by English
oppression. “From what I can discover,” Washington wrote, “he appears to be a man of
candor and, if he has been in service as long as he says he has, I should suppose him
infinitely better qualified to serve us than many who have been promoted.” Congress
made Conway a brigadier; General Washington, in turn, was to regret his trust.
At a dinner given him at Philadelphia's City Tavern, Washington met yet another of
the French volunteers, but this one was most certainly not a hungry adventurer. Marie
Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, was so well connected
at Louis XIV's court that his coming to America had provoked strong English protests to
France. Congress, in turn, had encouraged the international quarrel by making the 20year old aristocrat, who had no military experience whatever, a major general.
Washington was told that this title was an honorary one, but he had long ago learned that
these volunteers, “. . . however modest they may seem at first . . . they soon extend their
views, and become importunate for offices they have no right to look for.”
Yet Lafayette appeared to be different. He was struggling to become proficient in
English, something less aristocratic volunteers had rarely found necessary. Although he
made no secret of his convictions that the greatness of his family, and the fact that the
eyes of all Europe - as he believed - were upon him, required of him the accomplishment
of great deeds, he was surprisingly modest in admitting his total lack of military
knowledge. Not only did he not expect to receive an actual command, but he would
serve without pay. All he asked was to be “near the person of General Washington till
such time as he may think proper to entrust me with a division of the army.”
Washington invited Lafayette to join him as an honorary aide, and the Marquis
accepted enthusiastically. He joined the army camp in Bucks County, Pennsylvania,
where they had moved from Morristown Heights, and soon became a trusted companion
to George Washington. Ambitious, self-confident, intelligent, without any conventional
military knowledge to unlearn, Lafayette became, with amazing speed, one of
Washington's most successful military pupils. Above all, Lafayette quickly recognized
what most of the other French volunteers never saw: However unorthodox the military
methods of the American Army and its commander in chief, they were highly effective in
the kind of warfare now being conducted in America. And unlike other young men, like
Alexander Hamilton or Reed, Lafayette never turned on his mentor. The childless
general and the French aristocrat who had been orphaned at the age of three came to fill
the roles of father and son and remained lifelong friends.
The army which the Marquis had joined was a desperately ragged force, “ill armed
and still worse clothed,” uneasily poised, ready to move to the coast should the
mysterious fleet of the Howe brothers materialize out of the summer mists, while at the
same time looking north toward the far Champlain country, where Burgoyne had just
captured Fort Ticonderoga and was pushing southward toward Albany. Finally, on
August 22, after a flood of rumors, there was authentic news of the British. John Adams
wrote to his wife Abigail: “It is now no longer a secret where Mr. Howe's fleet is . . . it is
arrived at the head of Chesapeake Bay . . .” No doubt any longer; the British were
coming for Philadelphia.
***
The Continental Army was not a parading force. It had never before marched
through the streets of any city, and Washington, having seen the British regulars' pomp
and dress, now authorized a parade with deep misgivings. All Philadelphia turned out
along Front and Chestnut Streets to see General Washington lead his troops to the other
side of the city to meet the enemy. Washington had reasoned that it could encourage the
Patriots and awe the Tories if this crossing could be made a display of power; on the
other hand, the army's lack of uniforms, its unconventional style of marching might not
seem powerful but pitiful. The result probably depended on the watcher's point of view;
one lady was pleased to note that the men carried their firearms in a way that seemed to
indicate some training. John Adams, ever critical, complained that the troops did not
“turn out their toes so exactly as they ought.” But one retired army officer concluded
that “though indifferently dressed,” they carried their arms like soldiers and looked “. . .
as if they might have faced an equal number with a reasonable prospect of success.”
Whatever these prospects might be, the American Army was on its way to meet them.
Howe had landed his troops - weakened, sick, their numbers depleted by the long
weeks below decks on a broiling summer sea - at Elkton, Delaware. He had to rest and
refit his men and scour the country for transport and for horses, most of his having died
during the long weeks of sea voyage. Not until September 7 was he ready to gather his
British, German, and Tory forces and begin moving northward.
By September 10, Washington had decided to make his stand behind the Brandywine
River, which Howe would have to cross in order to reach Philadelphia, but which could
be crossed only at a series of fords. Washington decided to place his main force behind
Chad's Ford, which faced the main road along which the British were expected to
advance. The downriver fords were protected by Pennsylvania militia, and upriver,
General Sullivan was to command the American right. Local inhabitants had assured
Washington that further upstream there would only be extremely rough and dangerous
fords; weaker brigades and local militia, familiar with the terrain could therefore cover
these approaches.
Soon reports came flowing in that British troops “in great numbers” were
approaching the heavily manned center. Apparently, the enemy would try to cross
precisely where Washington had expected them to do so. Except, they were not in great
numbers at all, but merely a Tory advance. Unfortunately, the American commanders
misread both the enemy's numbers and his intentions; while the British front came in
view, horses dragging up cannon and setting up artillery fire, the British troops fanned
out over the country until it was impossible to tell what part of their army was actually
facing the American center. All the while this advance was a mere diversion; while
American troops began to engage the enemy, Howe's main strength under Cornwallis was
curving far upstream toward unguarded Brandywine fords, ready to pounce back
downstream on the American right rear - another version of the maneuver which had
caught them by surprise on Long Island.
By late afternoon the reports made it clear that the American Army was in deep
trouble once again. Though the Americans had put up a sharp fight, Sullivan's forces
were being drive downriver by the British. The general might still have been able to hold
out, but the Continentals were still incapable of the swift battlefield maneuvering that was
needed; despite the general's best efforts, despite near-heroic fighting by the divisions
under Anthony Wayne and Nathanael Greene, it quickly became evident that the
Americans, despite heavy reinforcements, could not stand against the stronger and better
organized British force. In a rapid retreat, led by Washington himself, the Americans fell
back toward Chester. In the meanwhile, the 5,000 British who had been facing Chad's
Ford streamed across the Brandywine, forcing the troops left there under General
Benjamin Lincoln to withdraw as well, abandoning their artillery.
The Americans were now in full retreat, but the British did not follow far. Their
cavalry still lacked the horses, most of which had died during the ocean passage. The
flanking party - some 8,000 men under Cornwallis - had already marched, in order to
cross the Brandywine far above the American positions, seventeen miles on a blistering
hot day. The tactics of destructive pursuit had, in the 1770s, not been effectively
developed yet.
Washington himself rode into Chester about midnight. He read a report about the
day's events, prepared for Congress by one of his aides, and at the end of the
disheartening document he added: “Notwithstanding the misfortune of the day, I am
happy to find the troops in good spirits and I hope another time we shall compensate for
the losses now sustained.” In view of the disastrous defeat along the Brandywine, this
was an optimistic conclusion indeed. More than a thousand men had been lost, and
though all efforts were made to make these losses seem smaller than the enemy's, it
remained clear that the Continental Army had failed dismally in its main objective - to
effectively interpose themselves between the British and Philadelphia. Blame was widely
distributed; one French brigadier was suspended, and General Sullivan might have
suffered the same fate had Washington not intervened. General Maxwell was said to
have been drunk, and a Maryland colonel, William Smallwood, was said to have been
drunk or mad. As yet, however, no one said so out loud, but the responsibility had
clearly been General Washington's.
And yet, in reviewing the events in his mind, Washington could find some
encouraging bright spots in an otherwise somber picture. The collapse of Sullivan's line
had not come about because of any lack of bravery; unlike the Battle of Long Island, the
men did not run when confronted by a superior force. The collapse had been due to
inexperience, due to the fact that the troops had not learned to maneuver promptly
enough to meet an unexpected situation. Regimental and brigade commanders had
shown initiative and resourcefulness, and even the young Lafayette had rushed in to shore
up the breaking troops until a British bullet caught him in the thigh and put him out of
action. And a final bright spot was reflected in the fact that Nathanael Greene, a Rhode
Island officer, had been able to command a Virginia division in action, while Anthony
Wayne, a Pennsylvania general, had been followed by men from New Jersey as well as
his own state. The army had come a long, long way from 1775, when men absolutely
refused to be commanded by a man from another town.
***
The Philadelphia of 1777 occupied the point of land at the confluence of the
Delaware River and the Schuylkill. Once the British had overrun the Brandywine, the
last obstacle between them and the American capital was the Schuylkill, an impressive
stream which nevertheless could easily be crossed at any one of a long series of fords.
Washington now used this river as a temporary barrier and a respite for his troops.
Though not shattered by the recent defeat, the Continental Army was once again in dire
shape. Congress tried to raise morale by voting the army thirty hogsheads of rum in
consideration of their “gallant behavior” at Brandywine, and Washington spent two days
“refreshing” his men at Schuylkill Falls. But even the rum could not mask some real
problems. Most of the men had left their blankets and camp equipment during the battle
and in the long marches of the previous six weeks, most had worn out their shoes.
Philadelphia was full of goods, but little was for sale. The merchants well realized that if
they only waited a few days or weeks, the city would probably be captured, and they
would be paid in British gold rather than the almost worthless Continental paper money.
In his predicament, Washington sent his aide, Alexander Hamilton, to the city with orders
to requisition what the army needed, by force, if necessary. In return he was to issue
certificates promising future payment. The Philadelphia merchants, however, managed
to hide most of their goods, and Hamilton got little. The defenders of the City of
Brotherly Love remained unshod and half naked.
In the eyes of most Americans, George Washington's task was to save Philadelphia,
but he knew that the British probably had another, and probably more important
objective: the capture of the Continental Army was the ultimate goal. If he now
interposed in front of the enemy, they would simply march around his right, driving him
east or southeast, across the Schuylkill or down along it, in either case pinning him
against the unfordable Delaware. The best he could then hope for was to flee into the
Southern states, away from the theater of war. To avoid catastrophe he needed, whatever
else happened, always to keep above the enemy. If they pursued, he must retreat north or
west. Speed was now so essential that Washington ordered all his soldiers to leave all
personal belongings behind. Expecting to “share every hardship to which his army is
exposed,” the Commander-in-Chief announced that he would abandon all his own
luggage except blankets.
As Washington had foreseen, the British came after him, not the city, and he
retreated westward and north, with the enemy following. They retreated across the
Schuylkill high up, some thirty miles from the city, leaving behind on the enemy shore
only one brigade of light infantry commanded by Anthony Wayne. “The cutting of the
enemy's baggage would be a great matter,” Washington wrote him, “but take care of
ambuscades.” But Wayne did not take care. He woke one morning near Paoli to find the
British in his camp, operating silently with nothing but bayonets. On hearing that 240 of
their compatriots had been skewered like pigs by the feared and hated bayonet charge,
many farmboys vanished from Washington's army.
Congress was still in Philadelphia, though poised for flight. Earlier in the year the
delegates had returned from Baltimore, where they had fled during the Jersey campaigns,
vowing never again to desert Philadelphia. Now, in the face of a new British threat, this
vow was forgotten. Awakened from their beds at two or three o'clock in the morning, the
congressmen fled into the night. “Oh! Heaven grant us one great soul! . . . One active,
masterly capacity would bring order out of this confusion and save this country!” So
cried John Adams as he fled. They all made for the little town of York, which, to its
uneasy surprise, found itself the de facto capital of the United States of America.
On September 26, Hessian and British grenadiers under Lord Cornwallis entered the
city of Philadelphia “amidst the acclamations of some thousands of the inhabitants,”
though the eyewitness added that the crowds were “mostly women and children.” The
rest of the British forces took up posts at Germantown - now a Philadelphia suburb halfway between the city and the American Army.
William Howe had won another of these North American victories that looked well
in dispatches to his government. But beyond that, there was very little to be proud of:
He had wasted weeks of fighting weather by keeping his formidable army wallowing at
sea, out of action and powerless to influence the progress of Burgoyne's invasion from
the north. He had captured Philadelphia, but only after long and dreary actions, and once
again, George Washington's army was still very much in existence, as it had been after
Long Island, after White Plains, after the retreat through New Jersey, and now lay
undisturbed above Germantown. And the American Congress was still functioning in
York.
Yet the loss of Philadelphia, capital of the new nation, was a staggering blow. And
then, as if to underline Washington's humiliation, news came in of the great triumph won
by the Northern Army under Gates. And, inevitably, the whispers began: Was the right
man really in command? Civilians asked such questions in ignorance, but their worries
were reflected in many quarters of Washington's own force. Adjutant Timothy Pickering
expressed the opinion of many when he said to Nathanael Greene: “Before I came to the
army, I entertained an exalted opinion of General Washington's military talents, but I
have since seen nothing to enhance it.”
Washington must certainly have been aware of such rumblings, but nothing in his
behavior gave an indication. Calm and unshaken as ever, he assessed his situation and
the British positions around Germantown. He was delighted to learn that Howe had
chosen to publicly demonstrate his contempt for the rebels by leaving his camp
unfortified. In meetings with his commanding officers he convinced them that it was
always better to attack than to be attacked. It had worked well at Trenton, why not try it
again.
Germantown was a village of small houses and stone mansions strung along the main
highway leading to Philadelphia. Washington's planned move against it was an ambitious
one: one heavy column under General Sullivan was to strike straight down on the
Germantown Road, while a second, led by Nathanael Greene would break in from the
east, joining Sullivan at some vaguely defined crossroad deep inside the British position.
All this was to take place in a surprise raid in the dead of night.
More or less as planned, the army set out for its various objectives about seven
o'clock in the evening of October 7, 1777. There were nearly twenty miles to cover
before contact could be made with the enemy, and not until nearly six in the morning,
with dawn already breaking, did the main column approach Mount Airy, where the first
British outposts were expected. By this time little could be made out; with the sunrise an
autumn mist had risen, wrapping the entire countryside in a ghostly pale. Moving silently
through this fog, with bayonets exposed, the Americans managed to surprise the British
outpost, sweeping them back in a yelling, stabbing onrush. The American striking force
surged ahead, suddenly buoyed by the taste of this rare experience of victory. Muskets
blared and crackled, adding their smoke to the thickening fog. British drums began
beating out a retreat, and William Howe, riding out from Philadelphia, suddenly found
himself caught up in a swirling mass of scarlet coats. Furious, the British commander
tried to halt the retreat: “For shame . . . it's only a scouting party!” Just then masses of
Continentals appeared through the fog and a field piece fired a load of grape shot. A
British officer remembered later that “We really all felt pleased . . . to hear the Grape
rattle about the commander in chief's ears after he had accused the battalion of running
away from a scouting party.”
But the American attack was already fizzling out. At the east of the road, the stone
mansion of a Tory named Benjamin Chew, still looking today much as it looked then,
rose up through the mists, like a haunted castle. Some of the fleeing British troops had
barricaded themselves behind its thick walls and fired on all passing Americans. The
logical move would have been to detach a small force to contain the defenders and push
on with the rest of the columns as far as possible. But Henry Knox decided that “It would
be unmilitary to leave a castle in our rear.” So more infantry was thrown against the
house; field pieces were brought up and maintained a useless fire that might have turned
the scales had it been employed in another part of the field. To the south, American
ammunition was beginning to run low. Militia units fired on each other in the persistent
fog and fled, their panic spreading to other units. Commands, falling back to draw more
ammunition, got caught up in this irresistible impulse and began to break and run.
Sullivan's force, victorious to the last, was falling apart all around him, just as British
resistance was beginning to stiffen.
Off to the east, Nathanael Greene's column was moving, but they were late due to
gross miscalculations of the distance of their winding march. When they finally came
into action and collided with unknown infantry in the mist, both groups opened fire
before it was discovered that the opponents were Anthony Wayne's men. Just then fresh
British troops struck and drove the entire American forces back, and soon the Americans
were grudgingly leaving the field they had come so close to winning. “The enemy kept a
civil distance behind, sending every now and then a shot after us and receiving the same
from us,” wrote soldier-pamphleteer Thomas Paine some time later. And George
Washington, too, remembered that day, which “could have had the most unfortunate
consequences if the English (and Cornwallis especially) had profited by their
advantages.”
The cost of October 4 had been horrendous enough - American casualties totaled
about a thousand men, including deserters, and Washington claimed between 1,500 and
2,500 British losses, though the official British figure was 534. But, wrote Washington,
his troops were not “the least dispirited,” and had “gained what all young troops gain by
being in action.” Still, Americans had fled, and the enemy was still in possession of the
capital city.
***
Other eyes had taken notice of recent events in America. “Eminent generals and
statesmen,” wrote British historian Sir George Trevelyan, “were profoundly impressed . .
. that a new army, raised within the year and undaunted by a series of recent disasters,
had assailed a victorious army in its own quarters and had only been repulsed after a
sharp and dubious conflict.” And Benjamin Franklin, in Paris since December 1776,
made certain that all France noticed that the American Army had a most astonishing way
of bouncing back, alert and dangerous, after each flooring. All in all, the Battle of
Germantown was a substantial rung in the ladder of world opinion up which the United
States of America was slowly climbing.
Sir William Howe was either too much or too little impressed by this American
Army. He made no serious efforts to meet Washington, whose forces now interfered with
the overland flow of supplies into captured Philadelphia. Instead, he turned his attention
to freeing a sea route to that city. Only two little American strongpoints - Fort Mifflin
and Fort Mercer - blocked the approaches in the lower Delaware River, but it took
relatively heavy British forces and an entire month to drive off the American commands
from those amateur fortifications. And still the American Army survived, while Howe
satisfied himself with barricading the former rebel capital.
Like the army, the Congress of the United States had also managed to keep together
through the year 1777. Quite comfortably lodged in the town of York, it continued to
hold its meetings and dreamed up ambitious plans. Month after month the delegates
struggled with the never-ending stream of problems, never quite sure what their real
powers were, and continuously irritated by the exasperating cantankerousness with
which, at one time or another, each of the thirteen states mocked at the efforts and
decrees of its own elected representatives.
And yet, in this dark year of 1777, one vital step was accomplished. Ever since the
first thoughts of American independence had been stirred, the logical question had arisen
- just what was this new nation to be? Was it truly to be a United States of America, or
was it merely a loose league of individual states, a combination of convenience, to be
disbanded once the danger had passed?
Ever since that early summer of 1776, when Richard Henry Lee of Virginia had first
proposed such a permanent union, states-rights men from all thirteen colonies had
furiously objected. Even to think about such a possibility was to exceed by far any
delegated powers. But Lee held firm and moved that “a plan of confederation be
prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and
approbation.” In June of 1776, against heavy opposition, Farmer John Dickinson was
finally named to head a committee to prepare Articles of Confederation and Perpetual
Union. Serving with him were men like Samuel Adams, Robert Livingston of New York
and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina and nine others, and they began deliberations at
about the same time Thomas Jefferson was writing the first drafts of his Declaration of
Independence.
At the age of 54, Samuel Adams was working as hard as any delegate in
Philadelphia. Men meeting him for the first time found that the perpetual tremor in his
hands and the quaver in his voice gave his words a touching gravity. But many of the
delegates to the Congress simply did not trust Adams, and were certain that he was
meddling behind the scenes on every issue. And as resentment against him rose, hints
were even dropped about the usefulness of an assassination.
Two known opponents of independence served with Dickinson - Livingston and
Rutledge - and six others supported the idea of the Declaration but were conservative by
temperament or wealth. Two more were simply cautious. As a result, Adams set out to
shape the future with reliable support only from Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island, who
was even older than Adams and was impatient to leave the Congress.
Since Dickinson represented Pennsylvania, there had been no place on the committee
for Benjamin Franklin. But Franklin's views were well known; ten years before the
Stamp Act, he had drawn up a plan of confederation during the Albany Conference in
1754, though George II's ministers and the colonial assemblies had rejected Franklin's
entire concept. 21 years later, in the summer of 1775, he had drafted another detailed
version of “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union,” but again it ran into such
opposition, that Franklin laid it aside.
But now another eleven months had passed, and the mood in Philadelphia was
different. Though Dickinson and his supporters were resigned to independence, the
objections came from a wide variety of delegates, who now transferred their suspicions of
England to their fellow Americans. They detested any central power, whether it was held
by Parliament or by a new body created in Philadelphia. Samuel Adams was determined
that each state should remain sovereign within its own boundaries; with the people of the
states sharing neither a common history nor a common vision of the future, how could
there be a strong union? Massachusetts had its own charter, which the Patriots revered,
and a crown-appointed governor they had despised and run out of the colony.
Connecticut and Rhode Island had charters as well, but they controlled their own
executive branches. Other states had been managed by families who held most of the
rights and benefits, but most other states had been guided only by traditions and customs
rather than formal constitutions.
There also were sharp differences in religion and racial stock. Some of
Massachusetts' 300,000 residents boasted that their bloodlines were more purely English
than those in England itself. Virginia planters, who could not make that claim, wanted to
exclude their blacks from any tax census and count them instead as property, and on and
on. Two years after Patrick Henry had proclaimed himself an American, the Congress
was still confronting questions of representation and voting.
The draft that finally went before the Congress in August of 1776 reflected all the
strains between Samuel Adams and the conservatives and among the conservatives
themselves. The first article ratified the title for the new nation: “The name of this
confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.' “The second article described the
colonies as entering into “a firm league of friendship with each other,” one that would
bind them all to join against attacks made on any one of them. But from there on, the
opinions and debates could agree on little more, and the confederation proposal seemed
to have no solutions. At the end of August, the Congress agreed to put aside the whole
question; more pressing and immediate matters were calling for their attention. One
delegate’s letter home reflected the frustration of most delegates that there was still no
union six weeks after independence had been declared. “It is of little consequence if we
never see it again,” wrote Ned Rutledge of South Carolina, “for we have made such a
Devil of it already that the colonies can never agree to it.”
Not until November 15, 1777 were these Articles of Confederation finally adopted
and sent to the various states for “consideration and approbation,” a process which was
to drag on another four years, until the spring of 1781. The Articles were makeshift, at
best; they dodged issue after issue, leaving the Congress of the United States almost
entirely dependent on the collective wishes of the states. In fact, Congress was
authorized to call on the states for whatever was thought necessary, and the states,
collectively or individually, were empowered to refuse if they saw fit. Yet the concept of
a Perpetual Union was definitely embodied in the Articles, and from them, weak and
unworkable as they were, was eventually to come the Constitution of the United States.
***
As the last days of November 1777 trickled away, most of the delegates to the
Congress of the United States packed up and left for their homes, a move that a good part
of the Army of the United States would have been happy to follow. Numerically,
Washington's command, now at Whitemarsh, was nearly 11,000 strong, with
Continentals heavily predominating. But this strength was largely illusory, since each
day's reveille brought thousands of men closer to the expiration of their term. Constant
campaigning had gnawed on the equipment of every soldier, and tattered clothes were
patched and patched again. Blankets were scarce, shoes more so. Individual states were
helping, but not intelligently. Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia sent a load of clothing,
not for general distribution, but for his state's troops alone, and most other states acted as
narrowly, if at all.
Food could have been plentiful, but its flow was cut off by poor transportation
arrangements and a civilian tendency to hoard. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Dearborn
wrote resignedly: “This is Thanksgiving Day . . . but God knows we have very little to
keep it with, this being the third day we have been without flour or bread . . . Upon the
whole I think all we have to be thankful for is that we . . . are not in the grave with many
of our friends.” Too weak to mount an attack, too wise to count on Howe's lethargy,
Washington decided to move out of reach of any sudden British coup. His selection of a
site for winter quarters could hardly be termed ideal, but pressure, civilian as well as
military, narrowed his choice, forcing a compromise.
20-odd miles to the northwest of Philadelphia, the placid Schuylkill is joined by
Valley Creek flowing up from the south. At the junction of these two streams rises a
rolling two-mile plateau called Valley Forge, and it was toward this plateau that the main
Army of the United States headed in December as powdery snow began to sift through
the pine forests of Pennsylvania. It was less than thirteen miles from the Whitemarsh
camps, but more than a week was spent in covering that distance. Baggage wagons went
astray. Snow thickened, became stingy sleet, softened into rain. The freeze came swiftly
and the wretched boggy roads stiffened into knife-ruts that slashed at rag-bound feet.
George Washington said “you must have tracked the army . . . to Valley Forge by the
blood of their feet.”
Winter in Pennsylvania could not be faced in tents, and on the very first day at
Valley Forge orders went out to build huts to a prescribed pattern. Unlike their European
counterparts, the American soldiers needed no army engineers to show them how American farmers were well familiar with erecting their own buildings. The fact that
nails were not available to them was not a problem either - the classic log cabin, as used
at Valley Forge, dispensed with nails by laying the logs in reciprocal notches. Short of
tools as of everything else, weakened and hungry men forced themselves into the woods,
felled trees, split out boards, kneaded clay to plug up wall-chinks. Street by street a hutcity slowly arose, until at last the commander in chief felt free to quit his own tent and
move into an abandoned field-stone house, a step he had sternly refused to take as long as
his men were under canvas.
Food began to trickle into Valley Forge. The flow dried up, appeared again, stopped,
in a frightening pattern that was a nightmare for every man in authority. Soap was as rare
as meat and flour, and bruised feet and chapped hands, wrapped in dirty rags, began to
fester. Drafty huts, sunless and damp inside, were powerful allies of sickness and
infection.
The country around Philadelphia was soon plucked clean of supplies by the opposing
armies, with Lancaster county being hit the hardest. Some farmers were said to have
been forced at bayonet point to surrender the grain they had stored for seed. Because of a
shortage of teams, wagons and drivers, transportation had come to an almost complete
standstill. Detachments were being sent out to impress teams and wagons, but they
usually returned empty-handed, for the farmers had become very skillful in hiding their
property from redcoats and rebels alike. And at the worst of the crisis, the teamsters went
on strike; Congress had fixed their wages so low that they claimed to be losing money on
every load they hauled. A congressional committee later found that hundreds of wagons
had been sent to New York and New England with loads of flour and such, and that
private contractors had made fortunes by this traffic, while no wagons were available for
the army. Pork was plentiful in New York, and hundreds of barrels of flour awaited
shipment on the wharves along the Susquehanna, but these desperately needed supplies
never reached the starving men at Valley Forge.
Civilian tours of Valley Forge might have shocked the stay-at-home Patriots into
aiding the army. But outside the immediate region around Philadelphia, few Americans
seem to have been much concerned over such conditions. During January, 1778, several
elaborate balls and receptions were held at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, not fifty miles from
where the American Army was encamped. Ladies and gentlemen in all their fineries
gathered to enjoy “wine, punch, sweet cakes, &tc. music, dancing, singing &tc.” The
music was provided by a band composed of Hessian prisoners, and among the guests
were men like General Mifflin.
The winter of 1777-78 revealed that it had been with good reason that American
Patriots had long considered the Middle States “the enemy's country.” After the capture
of Philadelphia, the nearby country seemed largely to have gone to the British side.
British foraging parties went out all over the countryside without opposition. Farmers
trooped to the Philadelphia markets with supplies for the army, and many of the
inhabitants freely took the oath of loyalty. All in all, during its stay in Philadelphia, the
British Army lived off the fat of the land and enjoyed a pleasant winter of gambling,
drinking and parties.
It was chiefly the color of the Englishmen's money that procured their necessities.
“Notwithstanding, they are displeased with our Government, they are not so with our
guineas,” remarked one English officer, “and although they are fighting for
independency, they place very little dependence upon paper money . . .” And a German
officer observed that “If any people worship money, it is the Americans.”
It is fair to say that the state of the homefront did more to undermine the morale of
the soldiers than all the defeats administered by the British Army. Most soldiers seem to
have remained confident of winning the war, but at Valley forge they were beginning to
ask themselves the most disquieting questions a soldier can ask: To what end victory? “I
shall soon be no more!” exclaimed one dispirited veteran, “and all the reward I shall get
will be - 'Poor Will is dead!' I know of no reason why one part of the community shall
sacrifice their all for the good of it, while the rest are filling their coffers.”
For every man who stuck it out at Valley Forge, there were many others who, unable
or unwilling to endure the suffering, deserted or refused to reenlist when their enlistments
expired. In the first few weeks in camp, more than 2,000 men went home, and during the
following weeks, hundreds of officers tendered their resignations. Resignations reached
such proportions that it seemed the army would be left without officers, if any army
remained at all.
Rather than watch his forces dwindle to nothing, Washington was urged by some of
his officers to throw them at the British lines at Philadelphia. Washington was not
opposed to such winter campaigns; after all, the previous winter's activities had produced
his most spectacular successes, but this time it was different. There were too few
effective troops available to assume such an offensive - over 3,000 of his men were
reported unfit for duty because they had neither shoes nor clothing. And many of the
men were so weak from hunger and fatigue that they were unable even to attack British
foraging parties.
For the commander in chief, the winter at Valley Forge was in many ways the most
difficult part of the entire war. It was difficult enough to watch helplessly as his army
was at a point of scattering into the cold Pennsylvania winter winds, as he realized that
the patriotism of the people left much to be desired; but it was at this critical moment that
his own leadership of the army was jeopardized by the intrigues of his enemies at home.
It was during this difficult winter at Valley Forge that a strange, semi-secret plot
developed which was supposed to get Washington out of command and have him
replaced with someone else. Although this plot became known as the Conway Cabal, it
had little to do with General Conway, and never was much of a cabal. The threat,
however, was very real.
There was never a time when George Washington was not trusted by the military
leaders or by the majority of the people. But a general who does not win victories is open
to attack, and American civilian leaders like John Adams and others needed no
encouragement. To these Patriots, a potential dictator lurked in the uniform of every
Continental general; they lived in constant fear that this war would “kindle the fatal
ambition of some Cromwell . . .” John Adams warned his countrymen to keep “a
watchful eye over the army, to see that it does not ravish from them that liberty for which
all have been contending.”
Much of this talk of military tyranny was a quite natural reluctance on the part of the
civilian leaders of the Revolution to take a back seat while the military men assumed
control. The American Revolution was the work of civilians; it was they who had laid
the foundations of the American union, who had organized resistance to British authority,
and who had provided the leadership. Now that this Revolution had passed from being a
constitutional argument to that of being an armed conflict, their leadership had been
passed on to the military men. Many of these new heroes of the American Revolution
had scarcely been known a few years earlier - now they threatened to eclipse “the heroes
of '76.” John Adams deeply resented the adulation the commander in chief received
everywhere. To his mind, Americans ought to put their trust in a well-balanced
government rather than any individual, no matter how great or worthy.
Looking around the Congress, John Adams saw that he and his cousin Samuel were
among the few left from the first assembly. The rest had died, resigned or, like Patrick
Henry and Christopher Gadsden, gone home to become governors or legislators in their
home states. Sam Adams made occasional trips to Boston, where he assured those
friends who thought the war was causing a breakdown in society. As always, Adams
believed the solution was to instill principles of morality in the young. Uncorrupted men
whose love of country was their ruling passion would lead the state to purity and virtue.
In the meantime, the war must be won. By the time the Congress had moved back to
Philadelphia in March 1777, Adams was actively promoting the fortunes of that middleaged major general, Horatio Gates. It had been due largely to the Adamses influence that
Gates been given the command of the Northern Army, where, at least in the eyes of the
Congress, he had quickly justified his appointment with the victory at Saratoga.
Washington was well aware of these problems. It had long been a British tradition
that standing armies were a menace to liberty, and this tradition had crossed the Atlantic
with powerful reinforcement. Americans carried into the War for Independence much of
this fear of a standing army, reinforced by their experiences as British subjects. In
Boston, for example, on each anniversary of the Boston Massacre, public orations were
delivered with special emphasis on the British standing army that had spilled the blood of
British subjects.
The militia, on the other hand, was usually identified with democracy. Freedom was
not secure unless every citizen was a soldier and every soldier a citizen. James Lovell
claimed that the New Jersey militia were far better than any Continental troops, and
Benjamin Rush, the Philadelphia physician, knew no bounds in his admiration for the
militia. All they required was an active and enterprising commander who could make
them into an army of national heroes. “The militia began, & I sincerely hope the militia
will end the present war.” Dr. Rush considered it a mark of depravity for any American
to enter the services of the Continental Army.
In most of the colonies, the militia had been established on the English model.
Theoretically, at least, this system made every able-bodied citizen a soldier, and should
have provided approximately a half million American males with basic military training.
But the law also provided that any man called for service might hire a substitute; the
logical result was that well-to-do colonists simply hired someone else to take their places,
and the militia quickly became a poor man's club. Washington regarded this system as a
distinct threat to the American cause, and urged that military service be made obligatory
for everyone, but throughout the war wealthy Americans managed to evade such service.
And, unfortunately for the Patriot cause, by the beginning of the Revolution militia
training and exercise had deteriorated to a point where most days consisted mainly of
parading on the village green and much drinking in the village tavern.
Washington was totally exasperated whenever he had to deal with militia units, and
he pitied any officer who had to command them. To rely on such untrustworthy,
undisciplined and battle-shy troops he considered as courting disaster. They were
“useless Hands and Mouths . . . who are here today and gone tomorrow . . . They come in
you cannot tell how, go, you cannot tell when, and act, you cannot tell where, consume
your Provisions, exhaust your Stores, and leave you at last in a critical moment.”
Still, with all its shortcomings, even George Washington could not have taken the
field without militia. The Continental Army was never sufficiently strong to meet the
enemy by itself. The militias were useful in mounting guard, patrolling the roads, and
skirmishing with enemy details. Battlewise generals soon learned when and where to use
the militia effectively, when and where to deploy them, and in many areas, the Southern
states in particular, they formed the nucleus of resistance to the enemy. But it was fatal
to depend on them to bear the brunt of the fighting; Anthony Wayne remarked that at the
utmost he could expect three volleys from the militia; other generals considered
themselves fortunate if militia fired one good volley before making tracks for home.
In contrast to Washington, Horatio Gates was fond of working with the militia; in
fact, he considered them equal, if not actually superior, to regular troops. He knew how
to handle them; his system was “never to call for them until the instant they are wanted,
and to return them to their Homes as soon as the service is performed.” Against
Burgoyne he had made such effective use of militia that his admirers claimed that he had
shown “the folly and danger of standing armies.”
It was under such conditions that began a not so subtle campaign against General
Washington. He had, it was said, worn out his men by useless marches; with an army
three times that of Howe he had gained few, if any, victories. There was good fighting
quality in the American soldier if properly led, but General Washington despised the
militia. Gates, on the other hand, had won battles and had forced an entire British army
to surrender, and so on and so on. James Lovell, for example, saw only defeat unless
Gates assumed immediate leadership. After Burgoyne's surrender, he wrote to the hero
of Saratoga that “The army will be totally lost unless you come down and collect the
virtuous band who wish to fight under your banner.” And Thomas Conway wrote to
Gates that “Heaven has determined to save your country or a weak general and bad
counsellors would have ruined it.”
How much Gates was involved in all this has never been clear, but he was ambitious
enough to let such letters be circulated publicly. There were men in Congress who
supported him vigorously, and Thomas Conway certainly did his best to make Gates an
active participant. It was during this time, too, that Congress created the Board of War
which was to relieve them of the burdens of directing the war effort. But in selecting the
members of the Board, Congress appointed the very men who had long been
Washington's worst enemies - Generals Gates, Mifflin and Conway. Gates was made
president of the board, Conway was given the post of inspector general of the army, and
Mifflin became military advisor.
As President of the Board of War, Gates had technically become Washington's
superior, and he missed few opportunities to emphasize that fact. He deliberately snubbed
his rival and pointedly demonstrated that General Washington's advice and approval was
neither sought nor was it considered necessary to the deliberations of the Board of War.
The board immediately began to draw up yet another plan for the invasion of Canada
without ever consulting or informing Washington. It was made plain that the direction of
the war, the planning and the strategy had now passed to others, and that the commander
in chief was no longer a member of the inner circle.
The open partiality shown by Congress for men he regarded as personal enemies,
and his virtual exclusions from the councils of war, must have dispelled any doubts he
might have had about rumors of a plot to remove him from command. “I have never
seen any stroke of ill fortune affect the General in the manner that this dirty underhand
dealing had done,” wrote an aide to the General. While he was exerting all his strength
in trying to hold the crumbling army together, his enemies were trying to drag him down.
He could not even dispute their claim that his army was three times the size of Howe's,
unless he was to reveal his true weakness. Next to being strong, said Washington, “it is
best to be thought so by the Enemy.” It was chiefly to this deception that he attributed
the caution and slowness of Howe.
The scheme of conquering Canada, like all previous efforts in that direction, fizzled
out. Apparently the brainchild of Gates himself, the project was hurriedly conceived and
badly organized. This was the dead of winter, and few useful preparations were being
made. And the American Army, far from being in any condition to conquer Canada, was
battling for its very survival on the barren hills of Valley Forge. Under the assumption
that a French officer would be welcomed by the Canadians, the Board of War appointed
Lafayette as commander of the expedition with Conway as his second-in-command. But
Lafayette declared that before he would serve with a notorious enemy of General
Washington, he would return to France and take with him as many French officers as he
could. But Lafayette need not have worried; the Canada fever abated as sudden as it had
begun, and by March 1778, Congress called off the entire affair. What remained was
blame and recriminations for another botched plan, and this time most of it fell on
General Gates, the short-lived hero of Congress.
The reactions were swift. The Board of War fell into such disrepute that many
officers refused to serve. Thomas Mifflin was called before a congressional committee to
account for his financial administration as quartermaster general, which was suddenly
perceived as the disaster it had been all along. And General Gates was reassigned to
command the Hudson River forts, where he was once again under the command of
General Washington. And Thomas Conway resigned before very long and returned to
France.
Almost in spite of himself, Washington now suddenly became the very embodiment
of resistance to Great Britain. Hardly a whisper of criticism of the commander in chief
was heard after 1778, and as the war progressed, the very thing the congressional
delegates had feared was coming true - the prestige of the Continental Congress declined,
while Washington's reputation and popularity steadily increased.
In later years, the surest way to ruin a political opponent in the United States was to
imply that he had been against George Washington in '77. The story was that there had
been a vote in Congress to decide whether Gates or Washington should be commander in
chief, and it was worth a politician's career to be accused of having voted against
Washington. Every one of his actual opponents later stoutly denied even having lifted so
much as a finger against their beloved general. Already in the midst of the war, George
Washington had begun to mount his pedestal, standing above the party strife of lesser
men, the indispensable hero, revered by his countrymen.
***
But the torments of Valley Forge were to prove anything but the death struggle of the
American Continental Army. Valley Forge separated the men from the boys; those who
survived the sufferings were those who were willing to dedicate their lives to a cause in
which they truly believed, who had caught a vision of the greatness that was possible for
an American nation. These men did far more than survive this winter. When the
campaigns of 1778 began, the Continental Army had truly become an army, an American
Army, an effective fighting force that would not be defeated. And this change was due to
a handful of men who became the saviors of a nation.
All through the early days of 1778, the pitiful remnants of the Continental Army held
together, to the utter astonishment of the numerous foreign officers among them. No
other troops they had ever known, they declared, could have or would have kept the field
under such conditions. And in late February, Washington rode out of camp to meet yet
another foreign officer whose letters had impressed both him and Congress by their very
modesty. On a rutted road in Pennsylvania, Washington thus met Baron Friedrich
Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben, of late a lieutenant general of the armies
of Frederick the Great of Prussia, the reigning military genius of the day.
Von Steuben's military background was actually far less exalted than his dossier
made out. In real life he had been a staff captain, and he had been out of service for
nearly fourteen years when he first met Benjamin Franklin in Paris. But Franklin had
sized him up as a valuable man and connived - if he did not actually prepare - the Von
Steuben dossier, as a means of impressing Congress. With the help of French confidants,
they turned Von Steuben into a Prussian lieutenant general simply by buying him the
proper uniform and equipping him with necessary letters. The French also provided him
a temporary cash subsidy so that their creation was able to protest that he wanted no pay
from the Americans and no position of command: he simply wanted to serve General
Washington, no strings attached. Benjamin Franklin wrote to Congress recommending
that this generous offer be accepted. Congress was properly dazzled - one of the great
Frederick's lieutenant generals offering to serve without pay on the staff? Who could
refuse such an offer! In this benevolent deception, Franklin probably performed one of
his greatest services to the American Army.
Washington and Von Steuben apparently formed an instant friendship with each
other, despite the language barrier. Von Steuben spoke some French but only very little
English; Washington detailed two of his aides, Col. John Laurens and Lieut. Col.
Alexander Hamilton, to serve as aides to Von Steuben. Both men spoke French, and Von
Steuben's own secretary, Pierre DuPonceau, spoke French and German. In a roundabout
way, the language problem was thereby solved.
The Prussian captain-made-general at once flung himself into the seemingly hopeless
task of making fighting formations out of Washington's regiments. He had never seen an
army like Washington's, nor had he ever dealt with men like these American soldiers.
Ragged and hungry, crouching around their campfires or sprawled miserably in their
huts, these men bore little resemblance to anything Von Steuben had seen in Europe.
Beginning with small groups, the indefatigable Baron toiled from sunrise to sunset and
beyond, teaching the men to stand at attention or such basics as right-face or left-face.
He simplified the manual of arms. When the first small groups' progress suited him, he
sent them back to their commands to become drill inspectors themselves. Soon he
progressed from squad to platoon to company to regiment, and then on to whole brigades
and divisions, until heavy masses could maneuver smoothly and in unison, day after day,
week after week.
And all during this time an odd thing happened: Von Steuben, a Prussian martinet,
an irascible officer, a drill instructor, suddenly became the best-liked officer in camp.
His lack of knowledge of the English language did not prevent him from filling his
instructions with frequent profanities; when one of the drill teams screwed up an
assignment, as frequently happened, the Baron would fly into colossal rages, swearing in
German, French, and what he thought was English, even calling on his aides to swear for
him, and ending up making himself and everyone within range double up with laughter.
Von Steuben could laugh at himself, and that became contagious, and the men took it all
with good humor and knuckled down to learn what he had to teach. And they learned in
an amazingly short time.
The army now learned how to swing from a marching column into a fighting line;
bayonets were provided, and men were drilled in their proper use. Even the smallest
squad on some insignificant assignment was now required to march in proper military
formation, and the days of sauntering casually from here to there had come to an end. By
the spring of 1778, the Continental Army had received that professional touch it had so
sorely needed, and would be ready to meet British and Hessian regulars on equal terms.
As winter neared its end, the conditions at Valley Forge improved for everyone. In
March, Nathanael Greene was named to succeed Thomas Mifflin, who had retired as
quartermaster general. Greene, whose first interest was service with the troops - he
protested that no quartermaster ever became famous - protested long and loud, but as a
good Patriot he took the assignment and did what needed to be done. During endless and
wearying searches throughout the countryside he uncovered great caches of abandoned
and forgotten food and clothing and had them lugged back to Valley Forge. Before long
the worst of the crisis was over, as men began to eat regularly and received usable
clothing. Greene later returned to combat duty and won much distinction, but he never
served the American cause better than he did at Valley Forge.
Life became more bearable for the commander in chief as well when Martha
Washington, always cheerful, came up from Mount Vernon, and was soon followed by
other officers' wives. But as if to offset this softer influence, two men with a talent for
starting discord under the calmest of conditions came into camp. Benedict Arnold
reported, still semi-invalid from his wounds received fighting against Burgoyne, and at
once drew a harsh rebuke from General Washington for attempting to throw a lavish
banquet, drawn from army stores, for a select guest list. Few accepted Arnold's invitation
and it was noted that many officers who had served with him in Canada were markedly
cold toward him.
And in Major General Arnold's wake there stalked gaunt Charles Lee, recently
exchanged after his capture at that New Jersey tavern. Lee was unchanged; disregarding
the visible results of Von Steuben's training, he disparaged everything he saw and
produced plans for The Formation of the American Army, since “I understand it better
than almost any other man living.” He hoped, too, that he should stand “well with
General Washington . . . I am persuaded . . . that he cannot do without me.” On top of
this he pronounced loudly that American troops could never defeat British troops, no
matter what the circumstances, and what's more, George Washington was not fit to
command a sergeant's guard.
***
And one day that spring of 1778, the new American Army was paraded at Valley
Forge to listen to the reading of an official announcement: “It having pleased the
Almighty Ruler of the Universe propitiously to defend the cause of the United States of
America and finally by raising us up a powerful friend, among the Princes of the Earth . .
. “ Behind this bombastic opening lay a staggering revelation: Encouraged by the defeat
of Burgoyne, further encouraged by the display of strength and morale at Germantown,
Louis XVI, King of France, had bound his nation as an ally to the United States of
America. Not only would French funds and supplies be available to the Continental
Army, but the French Army and Navy would cooperate in every way possible to defeat
the common enemy of both nations, Great Britain.
In back of this momentous announcement lay an intricate game of diplomacy that
had long been played behind the scene for the highest stakes. In the day immediately
following the outbreak of hostilities, before the word Independence had become more
than a whisper, the Continental Congress had begun to consider the possibility of support
from some European country. Financial aid was of utmost importance, since Great
Britain had never encouraged the accumulation of any great capital in its colonies.
Supplies of all kinds would also have to be found and a steady reliable flow arranged
from Europe into America, for again, British policy had discouraged any attempts at
large-scale colonial manufacturing. And finally, if the colonies had any chance against
Great Britain at all, the support of an efficient, modern navy would be essential to check
British control of the seas.
But at this early stage of the Revolution, the question of an alliance with a foreign
power was seriously contemplated only by a few of the most desperate or daring men in
America. It was clear that among all the European powers, only France held the financial
and naval strength to make such aid possible, but France was hardly the ideal candidate.
Older Americans still held bitter memories of French officers leading murderous raids
against their frontiers in earlier days, and Protestant America still resented any alliance
with a Catholic power. But the need for support could not be denied, and the lack of an
American Navy soon became a critical issue. As the war went on, it became obvious that
the American Army was chained to a wretched system of American roads which made
supply movements often impossible. It was found, for example, that the cost of moving
wheat overland from Virginia to the army in New Jersey became prohibitive, for the
transport animals ate up more forage en route than they brought to the troops. And
meanwhile, the British commanders, with control of the seas, were able to move by water
up and down the coast, strike when and where they chose, and supply their armies
wherever they went.
So, foreign financial and supply aid held the attention of Congress, and as early as
November 1775, a Committee of Secret Correspondence under Benjamin Franklin, was
instructed to put out feelers to “the friends of America . . .” During that winter, the
committee was greatly encouraged by the assurances of a French agent in Philadelphia,
and in March of '76 sent Silas Deane of Connecticut to Paris as a sort of undercover
purchasing agent for Congress.
Deane, on the surface, was singularly ill-equipped for his task. He spoke no French
and was utterly ignorant of diplomatic protocol. Yet somehow he managed to offset all
shortcomings through resoluteness and courage - and a great deal of luck. Even before he
arrived in Paris, much of the groundwork for his mission had already been laid by the
unlikely hand of the Comte de Vergennes, French Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Vergennes and his associates had already successfully fought for a French policy of
granting money and supplies to the new nation across the Atlantic. They looked on the
loss of British North America as England's ruin, with France then taking over as the
leading power of the world. In fact, substantial shipments of French supplies had already
been made to America through a private firm which had mysteriously been able to
purchase weapons from French government arsenals. And soon after Deane's arrival in
Paris, there materialized the shadowy form of Hortalez et Cie, which over the next few
years did an astounding amount of business with the British American colonies.
By September of 1776, Congress apparently had decided to actively seek a French
alliance and formal recognition of American independence. In that month, Benjamin
Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were appointed to go to Paris and aid Silas Deane in
obtaining aid of all sorts and perhaps even a treaty of alliance with that country.
Jefferson never served, and his place was taken by Arthur Lee, a Virginian who was
living undisturbed in London at that time. The bait held out to France in return for such
aid was to be the commerce of the United States, and American aid for a French conquest
of the British sugar islands in the Caribbean.
But Louis XVI turned out to be a most reluctant potential ally. His finance minister,
Turgot, warned that any such alliance would surely mean war with England, and such a
war would almost certainly bankrupt France, whose finances were just barely recovering
from the Seven Years War. Turgot also thought very little of the prospect of gaining
America's commerce; he was convinced that, regardless of the outcome of the American
Revolution, such trade would always center on Great Britain. The reported bad news
from the fighting front in America also did little to encourage King Louis to side with the
Americans. And finally, there was no doubt another consideration: why should a
monarchy side itself with an American rebel force which might only set a bad example to
his own subjects at home? France, eager “to wound and yet afraid to strike,” proclaimed
her neutrality and continued granting secret aid.
But the last word had not yet been spoken. The Comte de Vergennes, the implacable
enemy of Great Britain, continued to labor incessantly to convince the royal court that the
American war offered France unique opportunities to restore her own fortunes. Besides,
if France did not openly aid the Americans, Great Britain would sooner or later make
peace with her colonies, and all French possession and influence might then be lost
forever.
And then there was Benjamin Franklin. Already 70 years old when he arrived in
Paris in December of 1776, Mr. Franklin quickly became a celebrity of the first
magnitude in all France. In the past, he had corresponded with many of Europe's most
noted scientists and intellectuals, and as a philosopher and scientist himself, he greatly
appealed to the French nobility. As the author of Poor Richard's maxims of prudence,
thrift and industry, he was already adored by the Parisian middle class, and as a democrat,
once an artisan, he delighted all the urban masses. Crowds followed him wherever he
went, they besieged his quarters to see him or hear him speak, and he was given balls and
dinners in his honor. Portraits, busts, statuettes of him appeared everywhere, and his face
smiled from brooches and watches and was printed on coarse handkerchiefs and on the
finest silk.
Soon he was installed in the suburb of Passy on the banks of the Seine River, in the
Chateau de Chaumont, which was put at his disposal gratis by its owner. But soon
Franklin sensed that the French really regarded him as a sort of rustic philosopher, as the
natural man so praised by Rousseau, and he quickly obliged them to the hilt. Hardly
averse to fancy clothing, he now dressed the part, wearing a fur cap and very plain and
drab clothing and walking around with a long, patriarchal staff of wood. He wore his
gray hair long, letting it fall nearly to his shoulders, and in this homey appearance drew
around him a worshipping entourage of French ladies - among them Madame Brillon,
with whom he was said to have played chess while Madame soaked in her bath.
Using this odd mixture of sophistication, gallantry, and simple rusticity as a cover,
Benjamin Franklin went to work furiously. Peering wisely over the tops of his
spectacles, he steered a steady course toward far bigger stakes. Carefully keeping clear
of court intrigues, he chatted amiably here, dropped a hint there, and soon more and more
ships began to clear French ports bound for America. And all the while he professed
very little interest in any formal alliances, which might bind America beyond “its True
interests.” So firmly and convincingly did he state this position that Louis XVI's
ministers began to wonder if Monsieur Franklin could even be induced to accept such an
alliance for his country - assuming that such an offer should ever be made.
The news of Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga and Washington's successes at
Germantown seems to have thrown all of Louis XVI's ministers into a panic. Vergennes'
agents now informed him that Lord North, the British Prime Minister, had been in touch
with Franklin, Deane and Lee. Suppose Great Britain offered the Americans such terms
that they could simply not refuse?! All of Vergennes' worst fears would then come true.
Great Britain had indeed done precisely that. Early in 1778, Lord North had laid
before Parliament his so-called Conciliatory Propositions, measures intended to end
hostilities in America. Their provisions were long and involved, but they showed a keen
desire on the ministry's part to bring the colonists back into the Empire again. Almost
every important point of friction was abolished: Parliamentary taxation of the colonies
was renounced; no military forces were to be kept in the colonies without their consent;
the Coercive Acts of 1774 and all other objectionable acts were to be repealed; an
immediate conference with the former colonies would be held to guarantee all these
concessions - if only Americans would acknowledge the sovereignty of the King.
This was more than Congress had asked for in 1775, all that any American
pamphleteer had ever demanded; in fact, it was all that Canada enjoyed as late as 1920.
Only a few months earlier, Congress and the American revolutionaries would have
jumped at the chance to end it all so profitably, but once again, a British offer came too
late. Lord North's Propositions were unanimously rejected by a Congress who felt that
England could not be trusted, since “upon the first favorable occasion” that country
would once again be overcome by “that lust of domination which hath rent in twain the
mighty empire of Britain.”
If any of the delegates had had any doubts about this course of action, all was
forgotten on May 2, when Congress received the French Treaty of Alliance. Foreign
Minister Vergennes had pulled out all stops in his effort to secure a French-American
alliance. He argued that American success was all but certain, and if France did not enter
the war now, Americans would eventually come to terms with Great Britain and join her
in the effort to evict France from the West Indies. Finally, on February 6, the French
government signed the treaty of alliance by which France recognized the independence of
the United States and promised military cooperation until this independence became an
established fact. France also recognized American conquests of all British territory on
the continent of America, including all of Canada. In return, America pledged itself to
recognize and defend French possessions in the Caribbean. Each party also agreed not to
conclude any peace treaties without the approval of the other.
Having risked so much and gained so little in return, the French set out to add the
Spanish Navy to the forces against Britain. In tangled negotiations it was finally agreed
that France would stand by Spain until that country had regained Gibraltar, which had
been lost to the British during the Seven Years War; but since French approval was now
necessary to a peace between England and America, France had thereby bound the
United States, without its consent, to a Spanish conquest of Gibraltar.
Though Congress ratified the treaty only two days after receiving it, not all
Americans were universally pleased. Many realized that France was in this primarily to
damage Great Britain and would then set out to recreate that old dream of a New France
empire, reaching from arctic Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. But few seem to have
grasped the fact that the entry of France into the hostilities, with the overlapping
European interests of countries like Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and such, would
inevitably turn what had begun as a struggle between England and a group of her
colonies into about as complete a World War as the times permitted.
***
In the spring of 1778 word also arrived at Valley Forge that General Washington had
outlasted yet another enemy commander in chief. Sir William Howe had been recalled to
England, and Sir Henry Clinton, his top subordinate, had moved from New York to
Philadelphia to assume command. William Howe, John Burgoyne and Henry Clinton
had sailed across the Atlantic together to save America for England. Now, after delays
and defeats, the job had fallen to Clinton alone. It was a responsibility he had tried to
avoid; he considered it a hopeless command for a professional soldier. But London
couldn't persuade any better-qualified general to take on the assignment.
The British government, which had repeatedly underestimated the fighting ability of
the rebels, was resolved not to make the same mistake with the new American ally,
France. Fearing a French naval attack on New York, the government ordered the
evacuation of Philadelphia and ordered the army and navy back to New York as quickly
as possible. For the present, England would hold onto what she already had. 5,000 men
were ordered to the Caribbean for an immediate attack on French St. Lucia, and another
3,000 to St. Augustine in Florida. Early in June, Clinton gave up Philadelphia and led his
army across New Jersey to New York.
The main road across New Jersey ran through the villages of Trenton, Princeton and
Brunswick, but there was also a much less traveled road, leading to Sandy Hook, and it
was this road that General Clinton chose. But the army faced a killing march. The
weather turned near tropical with unusually heavy rains. The innumerable bridges over
ravines and creeks had been torn down by American militiamen, and vital hours and days
were swallowed up in repairs. The British were particularly vulnerable in their immense
baggage train of 1,500 wagons, sometimes 10-12 miles long, which trailed the army
across New Jersey. Much of this baggage consisted of goods belonging to almost 3,000
Loyalists who had fled Philadelphia with the fleet rather than face the wrath of the
American Army. All these circumstances combined to keep the British advance to less
than six miles a day.
Despite the vulnerability of the enemy, the American commanders remained wary
and inactive at Valley Forge. It was agreed not to risk a general engagement on the flat
country of New Jersey, where the British regulars were most formidable. A few thousand
men - New Jersey militia and Morgan's Riflemen, mostly - were assigned to harass the
British flank and rear, but a pitched battle was to be avoided.
Yet Washington was reluctant to let Clinton's army slip away unscathed. He now
had approximately 13,000 men to throw against perhaps 10,000 British, and the
American army was now far better trained and prepared than ever before. But Charles
Lee once again counseled caution. Many of America’s amateur generals still deferred to
Lee, whom they considered a seasoned expert who, after all, had even commanded
British troops during the recent war. And Lee had announced that he was “passionately
opposed” to any attack on Clinton. Was anyone really convinced that American rabble
could stand up to British regulars? The thing to do, as Lee preached constantly, was to sit
tight at Valley Forge and see what would develop. Both Lafayette and Anthony Wayne,
however, argued so vehemently against him that Washington had to calm their tempers
by asking each of his officers to submit his opinion in writing.
Lee's behavior during these critical days and during the coming fighting was strange
behavior by any measure, and rumors questioning his loyalty were not unusual. He had
rejoined the American Army after having been captured by the British, and already then
the circumstances under which he had been taken had led some Patriots to suspect that he
had deliberately permitted himself to fall into enemy hands. In fact, he had been captured
by men from the very same regiment he had led during the Seven Years War. And far
from languishing in a British dungeon, as American Patriots supposed, General Lee had
all during his captivity been living merrily in New York, feasting and drinking with his
former countrymen better than he had ever been able to do as an American officer. He
had been confined in one of the more luxurious houses in New York, where he was said
to have kept “a genteel table.”
Even as a prisoner of war, Lee had tried to steal the limelight from George
Washington. Although he enjoyed in his prison most of the comforts of home, he was
eager to rejoin his former comrades who were sure to need him desperately. But he did
not propose to lead the Patriots to victory; rather, he now saw himself as peacemaker. He
succeeded in convincing the Howe brothers that he stood so high in the esteem of the
Continental Congress that he alone could bring this body to the peace table. The
rebellion was doomed in any case, and Lee considered it his duty to open American eyes
to the hopelessness of the situation.
Whether Lee returned to his command with the intention to sell out the American
cause is a matter of doubt, but it is almost certain that he had promised the Howes that he
would make every effort to bring about peace and reconciliation. He returned to the
American headquarters with the British commanders' best wishes and a changed attitude.
Where he was formerly an ardent advocate of independence, he now yearned to reunite
the mother country and her colonies.
Not until June 23 did Washington finally overcome all of Lee's objections and set out
after Clinton with the bulk of his forces. But now came the question of over-all
battlefield command over this force. Military etiquette, all powerful in those days,
decreed that it must go to Charles Lee, second only to Washington. At first he scorned
the assignment as not important enough, and Washington, vastly relieved, detailed
Lafayette to the command; but Lee almost immediately changed his mind and went
galloping off to relieve Lafayette.
On June 28, at Monmouth Court House, the American Army finally overtook
Clinton. The initial objective was to attack the British rear and destroy the lumbering
wagon train with about 6,000 men, while Washington with the main elements of the army
remained in readiness for support. The British responded furiously to the first assault;
they really had no alternative but to fight or allow much of their supplies to fall into
enemy hands. As a result, Lee's forward units found themselves engaged by a far
superior force. They broke into confusion and wavered for a moment, but Anthony
Wayne and his men fought on.
Charles Lee, the self-proclaimed master of the art of war, scattered his command all
over the broken terrain and then apparently forgot about it. No orders ever reached the
firing line. Behind General Wayne, entire regiments and brigades marched aimlessly,
undirected. When Lafayette urged the commander to advance all along the line, he was
rebuked with the chilling answer: “Sir, you do not know British soldiers. We cannot
stand against them.”
Wayne's men in the meantime fought on doggedly, fully expecting reinforcements
from their commander. But there were none. Lee had already ordered a general retreat,
leaving Wayne and the others stranded. Somehow, the young Pennsylvania general
managed to get his men and their supporting guns off the field.
Washington, at the head of the main body of the army, was informed that Lee's corps
were fleeing before the British. It is said that Washington stormed off towards the
battlefield and like an avenging fury fell upon General Lee and gave the hapless general a
dressing down that has become legendary, if probably somewhat exaggerated, in
American military history. But the chance for a major coup had been lost, and the British
were now advancing and for the rest of the day Washington had his hands full as counterattack after counter-attack thundered down on the reforming American lines. But as the
British lines advanced, their morale must have suffered at the sight of American units
advancing and falling back with a precision and effectiveness no British soldier had
anticipated. By late afternoon, the exhausted British began to withdraw before the
relentless Americans and all through the night continued to do so, with General Clinton
satisfied that he had saved his immense wagon train which was now far along on its way
to Sandy Hook and an easy crossing to Manhattan and Staten Island.
Monmouth may be called a draw, since the Americans held the blood-and-sweat
soaked terrain, or a British defensive victory, since Henry Clinton accomplished his
purpose of getting army and baggage train safely to Sandy Hook. Stalemate or victory,
that 28th of June, 1778, marked the last time that the two main contending armies were to
meet in the field. For the rest of the war, all the fighting would be carried out by smaller
units or by detachments from either side.
And General Lee? At first, he expected and actually demanded an apology from
Washington for the outrageous accusations against him. About his behavior on the
battlefield, Lee later was to remember that he had been “flattering myself” that he would
receive “congratulations and applause” for extricating the army from a situation of great
danger. “I confess I was disconcerted, astonished, and confounded by the word and the
manner in which His Excellency accosted me.”
When the expected apology from Washington never arrived, Lee finally demanded
an immediate court martial so that this controversy between them should not disrupt the
cause. Washington quickly agreed. Found guilty of all charges against him disobedience of orders, making a disorderly retreat, and disrespect to the commander in
chief - he was nevertheless given an extremely mild sentence: suspension from any
command for twelve months. The general, however, could not leave well enough alone.
Continuing to bluster and threaten from his enforced temporary retirement, he wrote a
letter to Congress in July, 1780 which was considered so insulting that he was dismissed
from service entirely.
***
One immediate effect of the French alliance with the American states was that the
North American continent had suddenly become a secondary concern of both England
and France. Both the European powers held sugar islands in the West Indies, and both
countries considered these islands as extremely valuable possessions. Clinton had
abandoned Philadelphia in part because he had been ordered to send 8,000 men - nearly
one-third of his entire command - to the West Indies and Florida.
Clinton was still waiting to get those troops off. He had been forced to use all his
shipping to transport army baggage from Philadelphia to New York, when suddenly,
during the early days of July, a strong French fleet appeared off the Delaware capes and
then inched northward along the coast toward Sandy Hook, where the British were still
ferrying men and supplies from the Jerseys to Manhattan. The British ships at this point
were heavily outnumbered and outgunned, but French Admiral d'Estaing, fearing the loss
of his ships in the unknown shoal waters, decided not to join the action, and Clinton's
evacuation was completed without interference.
Washington now sent Alexander Hamilton to the coast to confer with d'Estaing. He
found the French commander eager enough to fight and to cooperate with his new allies,
but he was hampered by restrictive orders from Paris which in effect ordered him not to
get so entangled in North American affairs that he could not quickly go down to the West
Indies to fight off expected raids by the British Navy. Such orders were repeatedly to
hamper full cooperation between the new allies, much to the anger and disgust of the
Americans. What Americans failed to grasp was that France, like England, was now
fighting a world-wide war in which the thirteen new states were merely one theater, and
not necessarily the most important one.
There was enough time, however, for one swift blow, and American and French
commanders mapped out a land and sea attack against British-held Newport, Rhode
Island. D'Estaing had brought about four thousand French marines; he was now to sweep
in from the sea and land these troops, while from the interior a strong American force
would strike down in a pincer movement. Washington quickly swelled General
Sullivan's Continentals, who had been watching the enemy from the mainland of Rhode
Island, with so many regulars and militia that the Patriot force soon numbered nine
thousand. Only John Sullivan posed a potential problem. Cantankerous and vain, the
New Hampshire frontiersman was sure to clash with the arrogant French commanders.
Hoping to provide a buffer between the two sides, Washington sent out his own highborn French general, the Marquis de Lafayette.
For a while all went well. Sullivan and d'Estaing successfully landed their troops
and marines on Newport Island and prepared for the attack on the British installation.
But as expected, hot-tempered Sullivan began to quarrel violently with the French brass,
and as August approached, action had slowed to a halt. Then came the news that Admiral
Howe, still in command of the British fleet, had sailed out of New York and was headed
toward Newport. D'Estaing reacted violently. He ordered all his marines back onto the
ships, lifted sails, and set out after the enemy, leaving the American troops sitting on the
island by themselves, face to face with the 6,000 British and Hessians. But a naval battle
was prevented this time out by a storm of near-hurricane proportions which left both
fleets scattered and badly damaged. Howe returned to safe harbor in New York, while
d'Estaing sailed north to Boston to refit.
Washington was furious. He had little love for the French; they had been his
enemies in his previous war and had incited the Indians to great brutality against
Virginians. He also knew very well that France had entered the war for no high-minded
motives, but merely because it was to her advantage to weaken Great Britain. And now
they had prompted his men in Rhode Island into jeopardizing themselves and then had
taken off, leaving the troops in great danger.
As it turned out, Sullivan managed to get his troops back to the mainland before the
British could take advantage of their plight, with John Glover's Marbleheaders once again
salvaging yet another beaten American command. But this situation had stirred up
disagreements of major proportions that endangered all future Franco-American
cooperation. And Washington's fears as to how the French fleet would be received in
Boston proved only too well founded - French marines and American waterfront thugs
clashed violently on several occasions, and disorders mounted until rioters mortally
wounded a French officer. Luckily, both sides then stepped back from the abyss.
D'Estaing offered to lead his own troops on foot to Rhode Island, where he would put
himself under Sullivan's command, an offer that was politely refused. Washington then
wrote d'Estaing that the French officer could only have been murdered by some stray
Englishman, and he praised the Admiral's forbearance as flowing “from a great mind.”
And with winter approaching, d'Estaing's fleet sailed off to the warmer climate of the
West Indies to protect the sugar islands of Louis XVI.
By the end of 1778, the British were still in New York and the Americans were once
again encamped north of the city of White Plains. The position of the two armies was
almost the same as it had been two years earlier when Sir William Howe had set out on
his conquest of America. British dominion was confined almost entirely to islands Long Island, Staten Island, and Manhattan in New York, and Newport in Rhode Island.
From the course of events of the previous two years it could be concluded, said Nathanael
Greene, that although Americans could not conquer the British Army at once, “they
cannot conquer us at all.”
***
All through the changing months and years when the seaboard and immediate
hinterlands of the United States were in the midst of the formal struggle against England,
another type of warfare went on all along the frontiers and in the mysterious, little known
regions that lay beyond them. This border strife had been full blown and cruelly
conducted long before Americans had ever thought of independence, and it was to
continue long after the Revolution had become a memory.
The chief opponents in these border wars were Indians, whether backed by white
allies or operating on their own. And these Indian tribes would have been on the warpath
regardless of the white men's shifting allegiances. To the Indians, the whites they
encountered in the north - the trappers, the voyageurs, the coureur de bois, who lived off
the land and who built few, if any, settlements, were their allies - be they French, as in the
beginning, or the later English. Such whites were their allies against the ever advancing
settlers from the south, who were slowly eating into the Indian lands and eroding the
Indian way of life. They were the ones who built the cabins, worked the plows and felled
the forest, who built roads and brought in wheeled vehicles - these were the mortal
enemies of the Indians, no matter how friendly the cabin builder might be by nature or
how peaceful his intentions.
Back in 1763, in those long-ago days of peace in the colonies, George III had drawn
up his Proclamation Line, ostensibly to “secure the allegiance and trade of the Indians
beyond the Alleghenies,” by assuring the protection of native hunting grounds. The real
reason was to curtail the power of the colonies by discrediting their original sea-to-sea
charters and by confining the settlers to the narrow region along the Atlantic coast, where
they could always be within easy reach of British authority. This Proclamation Line was
a bitter disappointment to ambitious frontiersmen; after having defeated French attempts
to shut them out from that region, they were now being kept out by the British
government as well, while vengeful Indian tribes swept up and down their frontiers.
Despite such bans, sturdy woodsmen and pioneers from the backcountries of
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas had long begun to push along river valleys,
through wild mountain passes and ranges, and into the trans-Appalachian lands of the
Ohio, the Cumberland and the Tennessee valleys. They had trickled into western
Virginia and into the area now known as Kentucky, guided there by men like Daniel
Boone over the newfound Cumberland Gap and Boone's Wilderness Road. All in all,
these settlers were a hard-driving lot, intent on owning land and clearing it, and they
possessed a callous disregard for the native tribes they encountered. The Shawnee, the
Delaware, Miami, Ottawa, Cherokee, Chippewa, and the Fox, all struck at these white
men savagely, and were struck back with equal savagery.
In October 1774, while the First Continental Congress was discussing methods of
resistance to English taxation, Virginia backwoodsmen defeated the Shawnee at the
Kanawha River; and in 1776, while Washington's dwindling army was fleeing across
New Jersey, a decisive repulse of the Cherokee from white settlements at Watauga
opened much of Tennessee and Kentucky to the pioneers. But with the Revolutionary
War well under way, the Indians soon found a strong ally in the British along the eastern
Great Lakes.
Lieutenant Colonel Henry Hamilton was the commanding officer of Great Britain's
major outpost in the western country, the fort at Detroit. He set to work at once
supplying the tribes with arms and ammunition, with rum and blankets, and all the usual
trinkets of the Indian trade, and he urged them on raids southward. There was not much
need for such encouragement for an Ottawa or Miami chief. In the old days, the French
along the northern lakes and rivers had always armed the Indians against the pushing
English invaders to the south. Now it was the English, replacing the French, who were
acting in the old familiar ways against the new Americans, and the years from 1775 on
became hideous ones for the pioneer settlers.
Congress tried to mount several expeditions in 1777-1778, with Detroit always the
objective, expecting that if the main source of Indian ammunition supplies was crushed,
the western peril would be considerably eased. But all these ventures ended in failure
and frustration. England remained in its role of Protector of the Wilderness, and Indian
raiding parties swooped out of the forest wherever and whenever they chose.
In all Tennessee and in Kentucky, a shadowy area known as the Indians' Dark and
Bloody Ground, there were perhaps a few hundred settlers at the outbreak of the
Revolution, an intensely democratic and patriotic bunch. Several months before the
Declaration of Independence was adopted, one settlement at the Watauga drummed out
every Tory among them, and when another settlement in the heart of Kentucky heard the
news of that first battle of the Revolution, they enthusiastically named their camp
Lexington. And in 1776, though technically a county of Virginia's sea-to-sea grant,
Kentucky petitioned Congress to be admitted as the 14th state of the Union, and sent a
delegation to Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, to offer the services of “a
respectable body of prime riflemen.”
One of these delegates was George Rogers Clark, a young Virginian surveyor,
scarcely past twenty years old, who had cast in his lot with the Kentucky settlers, where
he soon became one of the leaders. On his return to Kentucky, Clark conceived a plan of
action against the British. Convinced that the French settlers and the Indians were only
lukewarm in their allegiance to their new English masters, he determined to seize the
Kentucky territory for the American cause. In the autumn of 1777, he once again
traveled over the Wilderness Road to lay his plans before Governor Henry.
Once in Virginia, he met with Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and Richard Henry
Lee, and outlined his plans. His aim was to hit the British supply centers in what was
then known as the Illinois Country, an area bounded by the Wabash and Miami rivers in
the east, the Illinois River in the north, the Mississippi on the west, and the Ohio to the
south. Out of this area, said Clark, came most of the supplies that made Indian raids on
Kentucky possible. And most of the white inhabitants there were French, who lived
peacefully under British rule but were by no means attached to it.
The main settlements in this territory were Kaskaskia, at the mouth of the Kaskaskia
River on the Mississippi, about fifty miles south of today's St. Louis. There was Prairie
du Rocher, about seventeen miles northward of Kaskaskia; Cahokia, north again, just
below today's East St. Louis; and Vincennes on the Wabash in today's Indiana. Making
Kaskaskia the chief objective, Clark reasoned, would have a dampening effect on the
Indians, open communications with the Spanish across the Mississippi, and greatly
improve the fur trade - all of which would be of inestimable value to Kentucky and also
to Virginia, which exercised control over that territory.
Jefferson and his colleagues managed to convince Governor Henry of Clark's
scheme, but the most that the state legislature could do for him was to authorize 350 men
and advance him £1,200 in depreciated currency to purchase flatboats and supplies. The
Virginia Burgesses were under the impression that this force was for the defense of
Kentucky; no one had informed them that Clark's plan included the capture of Kaskaskia
and, if possible, Detroit itself.
Clark began his campaign in June 1778, at the Falls of the Ohio, near present
Louisville, and found to his disappointment that he had barely 200 men. But Clark seems
never to have shrunk from any adventure or adversity. The small force shot the rapids of
the Ohio until they reached the mouth of the Tennessee River. Hiding their boats they
struck out northward across the trackless prairie and forest, depending for supplies what
each man was able to carry. After a killing march, they sighted Kaskaskia on July 4. The
settlement was totally surprised and unguarded and fell to Clark without any resistance at
all. A small detachment was immediately sent out to Prairie du Rocher and Cahokia,
both of which surrendered without firing a single shot. And by the middle of August,
another small detachment had managed to occupy Vincennes and the frontier post of Fort
Sackville that guarded it.
Within only a few weeks' time every one of George Rogers Clark's immediate
objectives had fallen into his hands without a single shot ever being fired, and with no
losses at all through enemy action. But Clark was now in a perilous position. His
command had been small to begin with, and soon he was faced with the same problem
that plagued all American commanders throughout the entire Revolutionary War. His
force was already beginning to shrink through expired enlistments and desertions, and
supplies and ammunition were running critically short. Luckily, an American merchant
in New Orleans had heard of Clark's adventure and on his own financed several flatboats
to float up the Mississippi to Cahokia, and the expedition's supply problem was solved
for the time being.
The other danger was always present in the form of deadly Indian tribes who,
without much effort, could easily have wiped out all of Clark's gains. But the young
Virginian had somehow developed a gift of dealing with people, red or white, and
showed a rare tact and understanding. All through August and September, he met with
chiefs and tribal councils from the feared Chippewa, Ottawa, Miami and Fox, always
being careful not to promise what he could not keep, always anticipating their demands
and being prepared. And soon he had managed to arrange a truce which was strictly
observed by both sides for months to come.
The third threat, as dangerous as the Indians or starvation, lay in the British base at
Detroit. Colonel Hamilton, in charge of that post, was a tough, energetic soldier, well
fitted for a frontier command. As soon as he was notified of the fall of the four southern
posts, he realized that the next logical step would be Detroit. No man to sit and wait
behind log walls, Hamilton prepared an immediate counter offensive. With about 175
European settlers, mostly French militiamen, and 60 Indians he set out at the beginning of
October on a heroic water and land journey from the shores of Lake Erie down the
Maumee River, across today's Ohio and into Indiana, down the Wabash and across land
to Vincennes in southwestern Indiana. He seems to have had plenty of boats, but there
were long portages, and heavy floodwaters frequently swamped the barges and ruined
provisions. But they reached Vincennes on December 17 and began what looked like
Clark's invasion in reverse.
At the sight of the invading force, the people at Vincennes rushed out to proclaim
their allegiance to England again, and the small American detachment there was made
prisoners of war. But Clark refused once again to be intimidated. Through much
arguing, pleading and cajoling, he induced local militiamen at Kaskaskia and Cahokia to
join him and his Kentucky riflemen, and in February 1779, in the dead of winter, 180
men sloshed and fought their way through the flooded, icy Illinois countryside toward
Vincennes, 180 miles away. By the end of that month they stood before Fort Sackville
and began a siege, while English guns thudded out from behind the eleven-foot palisade
walls. But Clark's men were not to be denied; either unaware of or unimpressed by the
theory that frontier troops cannot stand up against artillery fire, the riflemen began
picking off the gunners one by one until, by the end of the day, Hamilton and his little
force surrendered.
In the scope of the American Revolution, these campaigns had been relatively small
ones, but they secured the whole Illinois territory for Virginia, and hence the United
States of America, for the rest of the war. And when peace between the United States
and Great Britain was finally negotiated, all Kentucky and the Old Northwest Territory
went to the United States.
The Indians, however, were not signatories to any such treaties, and the same sort of
fighting, without overt British support, dragged on and on. In 1794, United States troops
under Anthony Wayne were to win an overwhelming victory against the Indians at Fallen
Timbers on the Maumee River. Back and back the Indians fell, always fighting, adding
one battle after another into the dismal pages of that history until the very dawn of the
20th century.
***
Ever since the British warships had limped away after their futile attack on
Charleston in 1776, the Southern states had known peace of a sort, or at least the absence
of formal warfare. Their governments had contributed powerfully to the American cause
in men and supplies, and had strained their credit to the breaking point to bolster the war
effort. But no campaigns comparable to those in New Jersey or Pennsylvania had rolled
up and down their coasts and valleys, and no enemy troops had wasted their lands and
towns. Instead, bands of Patriots and Tories had raided each other’s areas, plundering,
burning, and killing. Roving groups took advantage of any local unrest to shoot up any
center that promised loot. Like the war in other areas, these were actually symptoms of
old grudges and feuds, and had little to do with the larger conflict.
But in late 1778, all this began to change as the British prepared to shift their
attention toward the South, from where troops could be quickly available for use among
the sugar islands. Down from New York came warships and transports, unloading
British and Hessian troops and Tory units, all under the command of Lieutenant Colonel
Archibald Campbell, at Tybee Island at the mouth of the Savannah River. Up the coast
from British Florida came another contingent commanded by General August Prevost.
General Robert Howe, in command of the Southern American forces at Savannah, with a
force of less than a thousand, maneuvered to get between these approaching forces and
the Georgian capital. But inevitably, Howe was brushed aside and his command was
badly scattered. As 1779 came in, Sunbury and Augusta fell, and so did Savannah.
Loyalists flocked to the British colors; the royal governor was reinstated and an assembly
summoned. By the spring of 1779 it looked as though Georgia was back in the Empire.
Congress now replaced General Howe with Benjamin Lincoln, who set up his
command across the Savannah River in South Carolina, trying to build up a force of
Continentals and militia strong enough to recapture Savannah. The task seemed
hopeless, for the Carolinas contained no great reservoirs of manpower as there had been
in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, or in New England. Neither was there any chance of
sealing Savannah off from seaborne supplies as long as the British fleet controlled the
coastal waters. It was then that it was decided to contact Admiral d'Estaing, lying off the
coast somewhere in the French West Indies.
Somehow communications were established with the French admiral, who replied
promptly. As soon as possible he would appear off the mouth of the Savannah River
with a strong fleet and about 6,000 French regulars. All along the American lines, men
began to take heart; now the great alliance between America and France would drive
ahead under full sail.
But this latest cooperation, too, was marked for failure from the very start. On
September 12, the Admiral began unloading his troops by the hundreds. There were so
many, they probably could have walked into Savannah, where the British General Prevost
was struggling desperately to repair the old and crumbling earthworks. But the Admiral,
his mind still set on 17th-century warfare, halted his men and issued a formal summons to
Prevost to surrender in the name of His Most Christian Majesty, Louis XVI.
Benjamin Lincoln, arriving with his little American force, was most cavalierly
treated by d'Estaing, as, indeed, nearly every officer, French or American, seemed to be.
Not until two weeks after his arrival did d'Estaing get underway, while every day the
Savannah defenses loomed stronger and stronger. At last, on October 9, a joint attack
was mounted, well planned on paper, poorly executed in the field. Before that disastrous
day ended, more than 800 of the 5,000 attackers had become casualties, while the British
defenders suffered less than a hundred losses. Among the dead was another of the
foreign officers who had contributed their services to America, a Polish officer named
Casimir Pulaski.
Although Lincoln was anxious to resume the assault, the Admiral would hear none
of it. His ships were in an unsheltered anchorage, their crews ill with scurvy; the fall
storm season was just around the corner, and so was an enemy fleet. So d'Estaing once
again reembarked his troops and sailed away for Martinique, while Lincoln wearily
gathered up his men and returned to Charleston, wondering, as men had wondered after
Newport, just what this alliance would really accomplish.
A year and a half had elapsed since the conclusion of the French alliance, and victory
for either side was nowhere in sight. Washington, without effective sea power, could not
force the British out of New York, and Henry Clinton thus far had not dared to invade the
interior countryside. But fringe warfare went on, savage and bloody. Long Island Sound
was crisscrossed by small craft as each side launched raids that had little effect on the
course of the war. Small parties pounced on supplies they felt were desirable or on
people whom they considered objectionable. There was British participation in some of
this, but a good deal of the fighting seems to have come out of local grudges.
Westchester County became a place of horror, a sort of no-man's land, where roving
bands with fine impartiality attacked any objective weak enough to promise success and
rich enough to deliver loot. Off in western New York State, Tory-led forces swept out in
murderous, fiery raids in which there was little to choose, as far as savagery went,
between Indians and white men.
Wholesale carnage was limited to the northern frontier. The torch which had been
dropped by Burgoyne's surrender had been taken up, during the summer of 1778, by
Indians, primarily from the powerful Iroquois League, operating with Tory exiles from
the Mohawk Valley. July 4th had seen Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley flowing with the
blood of several hundred scalped inhabitants. In September, the settlements around
German Flats on the Mohawk River were laid to waste, and in November the Cherry
Valley Massacre depopulated the northern end of the Susquehanna Valley, where
Washington had suffered through much of the French and Indian War service.
Throughout 1778, bitter appeals came pouring in to Congress and to Washington's
headquarters from these regions for any sort of help.
By the spring of 1779, these cries for help had become so ghastly that they could no
longer be ignored. At the end of May, Washington ordered General Sullivan into the
Finger Lakes region of New York: “The immediate objects are the total destruction and
devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and
sex as possible.” These prisoners were to be held as hostages, being “the only kind of
security to be depended on” for the future good behavior of the Indians, in the opinion of
the commander in chief.
To Washington's “inexpressible concern,” Sullivan's men carried out their
instructions only too well. The lands of the Six Nations covered much of today's New
York State to the Catskill Mountains, with impressive settlements that were anything but
mere huddles of wigwams. The tribes had actual towns, studded with good houses,
orchards and agricultural fields and farms. Into this land marched Sullivan's force,
burning the towns and destroying their fields. As to Washington's concern about seizing
hostages, this point seems to have been totally forgotten. At town after town, the
invaders found nothing but empty streets and deserted houses, with the population long
since having fled into the forest ahead of the clanging, noisy approach of the white man's
columns. Kanadaseagea, a Seneca town of eighty such houses set in flourishing orchard
country, went up in flames along with Schoyere and Canandaigua, Honeoye and
Kanagha. At last the command reached Genesee, about twenty miles south of today's
Rochester, New York, and marked its farthest western penetration by sending nearly 130
houses up in flames. From there the invasion force turned back. By mid-October 1779,
John Sullivan was able to report from Easton, Pennsylvania, that “there is not a single
town left in the Country of the five nations.” No mention was made of the prime
objective of this whole cruel business, the securing of hostages. Whatever his private
feelings might have been, Washington warmly thanked his general and publicly hailed
the expedition as a “full success.”
Strategically, however, the sweep would prove a dismal failure. Its ultimate aim had
been to protect the frontier settlers. Instead, the Six Nation tribes had been pushed back
to the British post at Niagara; their crops were smoke and ashes; all their accumulated
supplies were hopelessly lost, and the Indians huddled miserably and destitute under the
British flag, dependent on the Crown for their very survival. But they were still armed,
and their furious eyes turned toward the horizon behind which lay the hated settlements
of the new America.
***
Military action during this time was limited to skirmishes. The navy raided small
rebel outposts in places like New Bedford and Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, and
Egg Harbor in New Jersey, and burned several American villages along the Atlantic
shore. There was no military purpose in such exploits except to terrify the civilian
population, and the British lost more in the hatred they engendered than they reaped in
enemy fright or supplies. Congress, in retaliation, even discussed the possibility of
ordering Benjamin Franklin to hire terrorists to burn down London; but saner heads
prevailed and left foreign retaliation in the able hands of Captain John Paul Jones.
Jones had already begun to make a name for himself by raiding English ports, by
burning English shipping and even capturing a British warship. In 1779, Franklin and the
French Admiralty fitted out for him a task force of five vessels, including his flagship,
which Jones appropriately renamed the Bonhomme Richard, all under the American flag.
It was said that eleven different nationalities were represented in Jones' crew, but the
captain whipped this motley collection into as capable a force as ever served under the
Stars and Stripes.
Jones sailed around the British Isles, took many prizes and scared the daylights out
of Edinburgh and Newcastle. Then, on September 23, 1779, in the North Sea, he fought
what became one of the inspirational moments of the war. In a classic ship-to-ship, four
hour battle, Jones kept his disabled Bonhomme Richard afloat until he received the
British surrender. It was during this battle, when called upon to surrender, that Jones is
said to have replied “I have just begun to fight!” His flagship was so badly damaged that
she went down, but Jones sailed the rest of his squadron, including a captured British
sloop, into a neutral Dutch fort.
But exploits like these, while they stimulated the national pride, were in reality
remote and basically unrewarding. Very real and close to home was the galloping
inflation caused by the Congress' inability to tax or control the separate states; despite the
brave words that had been spoken, it seemed to the war-weary people that perhaps this
was really just a brief alliance of little provinces rather than a united country. Perhaps the
very idea of independence was only a delusion that would quickly vanish after some
definitive ceremonies in the Tower of London. Never in all the years of war, not in that
dark autumn of 1776, not during that long, hungry Valley forge winter did the Patriot
cause come closer to final defeat than it did in 1780 - especially so after the two
disastrous events about to occur.
***
The city of Charleston, South Carolina, had always been a tough objective for an
enemy, as Lord Cornwallis had already found in 1776, but the general was eager to try
again. Cornwallis had long despised the hit-and-run strategy that Henry Clinton had been
employing, and in the fall of 1779 he sold his commander in chief on a master plan for
the conquest of the entire South. An amphibious expedition against Charleston would be
followed by the conquest of both Carolinas with the help of local Loyalists; and a joint
military and naval campaign would then secure Virginia and Chesapeake Bay. With the
thirteen states reduced to nine, American independence would seriously be hampered, if
not destroyed.
The Southern master plan opened promisingly for Great Britain. In January 1780,
Clinton, with Cornwallis his second in command, embarked 8,500 troops at New York.
They landed on Johns Island, thirty miles south of Charleston, and began a leisurely
overland march on the city, while his fleet of fourteen warships confined themselves to
blockading the city from well off shore.
General Benjamin Lincoln, instead of falling back into the interior where Clinton
would have to follow him, shut himself behind the works of Charleston, and with that
decision gave up his prime advantages of mobility and knowledge of the terrain. Instead
his Southern army, barely 5,000 strong, largely green and disorganized, was now being
besieged by trained British troops, supported by a fleet.
The outcome was predictable. Clinton drew his lines tighter and tighter, while his
ships crashed through the fire of Fort Moultrie and entered Charleston harbor. On May
12, Lincoln was forced into an unconditional surrender that turned his 5,000 Continentals
and militia into prisoners of war. Huge quantities of supplies were lost, and nearly all the
Patriot leaders of South Carolina, political and military, were seized, except for Governor
Rutledge, whom Lincoln managed to slip out of the city. The American cause had
suffered the severest disaster of the entire Revolutionary War.
Early in June 1780, Clinton turned the Carolina command over to Cornwallis, and
with 4,500 of his troops returned to New York. Cornwallis, ever alert and ever active,
proceeded to overrun the whole of South Carolina in a matter of three months. He
overwhelmed what remained of the local militia and set up a line of fortified posts
between the towns of Camden and Ninety-Six to protect against attack from the north,
and he placed garrisons at Savannah, Port Royal, and Charleston to protect the coast.
Expedient Charleston merchants resumed trade with England, the former royal governor
returned, and to all appearances, South Carolina, like Georgia, was back in the Empire.
As Clinton had written to Lord Germain in London somewhat overly optimistic: “I may
venture to assert that there are few men in South Carolina who are not our prisoners or
in arms with us.”
But Cornwallis already faced a new problem, as American reinforcements in the
form of Maryland and Delaware line regiments were coming to the Carolina under the
command of Baron de Kalb, who had come to America in 1777 with Lafayette as an
avowed soldier of fortune, but who had since become a sincere Patriot. Originally
intended to reinforce Lincoln at Charleston, these outfits made a killing march across the
Southern states, living off the thinly settled country. Soldiers went without food for days,
then gorged on peaches, green corn, and undercooked beef, with devastating results to
their digestive tracts. On June 22, they reached Hillsboro, North Carolina, where they
were met by the news that Charleston had been lost to the British.
When the news of the fall of Charleston reached Congress, the delegates suddenly
decided that the Southern command could not be left in the hands of a foreign
commander; over de Kalb's head and against Washington's advice, they appointed
Horatio Gates, in semi-retirement since the Conway affair, to go out and command the
southern Department. Gates had few illusions about his new command: “an army
without strength, a military chest without money, a department apparently deficient in
public spirit . . .” Most of the fighting men under him were militia, with only a few
hundred Continental troops from Maryland and Delaware. Still, for Gates this was not
considered a hardship at all; he had employed militia with spectacular results at Saratoga,
and had made no secret of his opinion that he considered militia the equal of any regular
American troops.
Full of hope and energy, Gates at once pushed southward toward Camden, South
Carolina, where Cornwallis' forces were encamped. Of the two possible routes there, he
chose the direct route through the pine barrens, where there was not enough food to
support a hog, instead of following the longer wagon road, along which there were many
farms and a relatively friendly population. Despite the fact that he had barely 3,000 men
in his command, most of whom were untrained and inexperienced, Gates now decreed a
night march and a surprise attack on the British. And all through the night of August 15
this American Army, half crippled by intestinal problems brought on by the questionable
food supply, plodded wearily southward.
But Cornwallis was not about to let the enemy pick the time and place of the action.
Before the Americans reached their objective, the British attacked them in the middle of
the night with cavalry and light infantry, and against this onslaught the Patriot militia
stood little chance.
Gates might still have had time to withdraw; a move which most of his officers
recommended after it was learned that the British forces numbered nearly 3,000, most of
them regulars. The commander, however, refused to budge, and the results were as
predictable as the fall of Charleston had been. The Virginia militia panicked first,
spreading their hysteria as they fled. The Maryland line was broken, and though
Continental troops doggedly tried to resist, many soldiers were killed, captured, or
wounded. Baron de Kalb was killed, as were nearly half the Continental troops. As for
the militia, it was said that most of them suffered little more than “palpitations of the
heart brought on by fright or too much running.”
Camden proved to be the end of Major General Horatio Gates' military career. When
he realized his vaunted militia was deserting the field, Gates, mounted on one of his
Virginia thoroughbreds, and accompanied by a guard of six men, fled the scene of the
action for Hillsboro, North Carolina, some 240 miles from the battlefield, where the
surviving troops caught up with him three weeks later. “Was there ever an instance,”
asked Alexander Hamilton, “of a general running away from his whole army?” And his
speed was astonishing - nearly 200 miles in only three days. “It does admirable credit to
the activity of a man at his time of life,” concluded a sardonic Hamilton. While the
barely 700 survivors of the Battle of Camden huddled miserably at Hillsboro, without
equipment, arms, blankets, artillery, ammunition, or even any food, Gates was removed
from command and ordered before a court of inquiry. And while much of the South now
lay at Cornwallis' feet, Congress suddenly decided that a new commander was needed if
the entire South were not to be lost be default. No longer so sure of its own military
wisdom, Congress now turned to the one man whose opinion it had so consistently
bypassed until now, and almost begged George Washington to name his own
commander.
Hard on the heels of the bad news from Camden came still worse news: One of
America's ablest generals had defected and gone over to the enemy's side.
***
Benedict Arnold had not only been a close friend of George Washington, but
probably the army's ablest and most energetic commander. Again and again he had
demonstrated military skills and outstanding courage - at Ticonderoga, at Quebec, as a
commander on Lake Champlain - and each time he had been denied a promotion to
which he had every right, simply because of the rivalry between the provinces. And even
though he was again bypassed when General Gates received the northern command from
Schuyler, and even though Gates removed Arnold from all command, the general not
only stayed in the field but actually commanded an aggressive battle which led directly to
Burgoyne's surrender. And while Gates claimed and received all the credit, Arnold's
reward was a leg wound which kept him out of action for many months.
Congress very belatedly restored Arnold's rightful rank, and in the spring of 1778 the
general appeared at Valley Forge, now a bitter, crippled man. Seeking a suitable post for
this wounded war hero, Washington had, on the British evacuation of Philadelphia, made
Arnold the military commandant of the capital.
Washington soon heard rumors that Arnold was courting a much younger, well-born
belle of Philadelphia society. Peggy Shippen had stayed in Philadelphia all during the
British occupation and had danced and flirted with the British officers. And soon it was
rumored that General Arnold was preferring such suspected Tories to the virtuous Patriot
maidens who had fled British-held Philadelphia; raised eyebrows watched as the general
seemed to seek out as intimates many of the wealthy Tory businessmen; and eyebrows
were raised still higher as the always-needy general suddenly began to entertain lavishly,
even taking over Mount Pleasant, the mansion Sir William Howe had occupied.
But the vain and explosive Arnold brushed aside all such criticism, implied or
spoken. He was perfectly happy to go on courting Peggy, or would have been happy
except for that damned crowd of civilian busybodies known as Congress, who were
always prodding him for accounting of public funds he had expended. Congress began
asking other questions as well, such as why the general was so free in granting passes
between British-held New York and Philadelphia. There was the matter of his use of
public wagons for private ends, and charges that he was using his office to buy and sell
goods at exorbitant profits. Though he was cleared of most of these charges in a courtmartial, other charges kept cropping up as they had since the start of his military career.
Although some of the charges against Arnold were doubtlessly trumped up, the hidden
truth was that the general had been indeed guilty of financial peculations that so many
suspected but could not prove - and, indeed, many others. But the wounded hero
continued to feel himself persecuted; he had sacrificed so much for the cause, and now he
was being singled out for practices which so many others were conducting without ever
having made any sacrifices.
Arnold finally married his Peggy, and the couple began to entertain so lavishly that
even General Washington must have begun to have some doubts. But certainly, no
Patriot was entitled more to a little pleasure than the hero who had suffered such
injustices and who was so crippled that he needed four men to help him in and out of his
coach. But Arnold's marriage to this girl, almost twenty years younger than he, had
caused his expenses to mount still higher. His spinster sister came to live with the couple
and look after Arnold's three sons. Hannah Arnold disapproved of her new sister-in-law not so much because of Peggy's taste for luxuries than her susceptibility to any attentive
man.
But during the spring of 1779, matters with Benedict Arnold went far beyond shady
business dealings. In New York, Major John Andre, an elegant, foppish adjutant to Sir
Henry Clinton, began to receive mysterious letters through devious channels, hinting
strongly that a highly placed but unnamed American officer might offer “his services to
the commander in chief of the British forces in any way that would most effectually
restore the former government . . . either by immediately joining the British Army or
cooperating on some concealed plan with Sir Henry Clinton.” Andre, with whom Peggy
had openly flirted during the British occupation of Philadelphia, was more than
interested, and he leaped at the bait. The Major soon found out that he had no starry-eyed
dreamer to deal with, but a hard-headed businessman, now revealed as the celebrated
Benedict Arnold, who insisted on substantial monetary rewards, a rank in the British
Army, and possibly a title for his services. Demands piled on demands, until the British
commanders reluctantly closed the file.
But a year later, in June of 1778, the entire affair was suddenly revived as the
American general abruptly made a startling offer - Benedict Arnold spoke of obtaining
the command of West Point, fifty miles up the Hudson River from New York, the only
true strongpoint created by the Continental Army. Volunteer engineers from abroad men like Thaddeus Kosciuszko - had designed it, and millions of dollars and three years
of hard labor had created the towering ramparts of the fortress. And now General Arnold
offered to turn it all over to the British in New York. This appealed greatly to Sir Henry,
who had Andre transmit his interest at once, adding that there would be “ample stipend.”
It was on this last point that negotiations threatened to break down once more, for
there was a considerable difference between Clinton's definition of ample and Arnold's.
The Connecticut general demanded not only a lump-sum payment for the surrender of the
fortress, but also a specified amount per head for every American soldier he was able to
turn in to the British as prisoners of war. Haggling dragged on, while Arnold prudently
began to turn his possessions into cash, banking the proceeds in British-held New York
through various obliging agents.
Ironically, at this very moment, Arnold's plan nearly was destroyed by the very
same offer he had so long awaited. To his frequent requests for the West Point
command, Washington had always replied that “as we had a prospect of an active and
vigorous campaign, I should be glad of General Arnold's aid and assistance.” However,
the command of West Point would be utterly unworthy of an officer of Arnold's rank and
abilities. Yet, if Arnold was really too crippled for a field command, as he now insisted
he was, “I should readily indulge him.” But in late July, Washington finally decided to
offer his long-time friend and controversial general the position to which his rank and
abilities entitled him - command of a wing of the main army.
Arnold's reaction amazed Washington. “His countenance changed and he appeared
to be quite fallen, and, instead of thanking me or expressing any pleasure at the
appointment, never opened his mouth.” The soldier who had always been so eager for
service just stood there in dreadful silence. And on hearing the news at a Philadelphia
dinner party, Peggy Arnold had hysterics, which was interpreted as a young bride's fear
that, on active duty, her husband might be killed - and she could not be calmed, even
though friends explained that this was a promotion for her husband. However such
reactions may have struck Washington, he soon had the orders changed, and on August 3,
1780, the commander in chief of the American forces announced that “My General
Arnold will take command of the garrison at West Point.”
Less than six weeks later Washington wrote to Arnold that he was on his way east to
Hartford to confer with the Comte de Rochambeau, leader of a French force which had
landed at Newport in July. On his way back he would visit with the Arnolds at their new
home near West Point.
On September 25, as Washington was returning from Hartford, the entire scheme
began to unravel, and by the time the commander in chief arrived at West Point, a
bombshell awaited him. A local outpost commander informed him that some militiamen
had been patrolling close to the Westchester no-man's land, when they had stopped a lone
rider in civilian clothes. The rider, who had stated that his name was John Anderson, had
behaved so strangely that the militiamen had detained him and searched him, finding
suspicious documents in his boots. They were holding the man and were hereby
forwarding the documents.
There was an official pass, allowing John Anderson to move between the lines and
made out by General Benedict Arnold. Also in Arnold's handwriting were transcripts of
confidential and secret orders issued by General Washington, pages of detailed plans of
the West Point forts, and various ordnance data. The prisoner, a shabbily dressed
civilian, was soon revealed as none other than Major John Andre, adjutant general to Sir
Henry Clinton.
There could be little doubt about what had happened here; the question now was
what to do next. To Washington the immediate action required was to capture the traitor
and hang him - if he was still within the American lines. Since no one knew if, or how
many, others were involved in the treason, no one could tell if Arnold had not already
been alerted.
But it was already too late. A messenger sent out to General Arnold before the true
scope of the treason had been discovered, had reached the general's headquarters while
Arnold was at breakfast with his staff. The letter he delivered must have come as a total
shock to Benedict Arnold, who nevertheless managed to remain cool. He excused
himself, bade a hurried farewell to Peggy, and hurried off to the Hudson shore where his
official barge was as usual waiting for him. He boarded it and ordered the crew to row
him, not across to West Point as usual, but downstream where the British HMS Vulture
rode at anchor, waiting for the return of Major Andre whom it had brought north the
previous day. Arnold brusquely informed the captain that Major Andre had decided to
return to New York by land and that he had been captured in the process. Arnold does
not seem to have told anyone that it had been he who had advised Andre to try for the
British lines over land. Nor did he ever admit that the unfortunate major had, at Arnold's
urging, changed his uniform - which would have made him a mere prisoner of war - for
civilian clothes, which sealed his fate as a spy under military law and custom.
At any rate, the HMS Vulture returned to New York with Arnold aboard; the traitor
had no longer much to offer, and his final rewards were far below what he had hoped for.
He was finally made a brigadier general in the British Army and given permission to
recruit an Arnold Legion among the Tories. He could scarcely have been elated, nor
Clinton impressed, when barely enough men turned out to fill a major's command, much
less a brigadier's. And 20-year old Peggy Arnold decided to turn her back on the plot that
had failed. Given a choice to join her husband in New York or return to her father in
Philadelphia, she tearfully proclaimed herself an innocent and unfortunate victim and
returned to Philadelphia.
The real victim of the affair turned out to be Major Andre. Brought to the American
headquarters, Washington found him “a man of the first abilities.” Born in London of
French background, he was an intelligent young officer with a brilliant future, much
concerned with personal honor. He was now in a situation of mortal danger, yet he
displayed cool charm and grace which impressed all his captors.
Andre's plight was particularly poignant because he had allowed himself to get
caught in a predicament which by 18th-century standards was considered far below his
station. Gentlemen could be spymasters, but they did not themselves wear disguises and
rummage behind enemy lines. Andre claimed that he had come ashore in his uniform in
his official capacity, had met Arnold on what was neutral ground, but had been tricked by
Arnold into entering American territory. He then had had no choice but to try an escape
in civilian clothes that made him look like a spy. Still, the fact remained that he had been
caught carrying incriminating papers, functioning as a spy. The established punishment
for espionage was not the gentleman's death - being shot - but the death of a scoundrel being dangled from the gallows.
But even after Major Andre had been sentenced to die, there were repeated attempts
at exchanging Andre for Arnold, with the American offer “that if Sir Henry Clinton
would in any way whatever suffer General Washington to get within his power General
Arnold, then Major Andre should be immediately released.” There even was a letter
from Benedict Arnold himself, threatening that if Andre were executed, he would “think
myself bound by every tie of duty and honor to retaliate on such unhappy persons of your
army as may fall within my power . . .” Washington, in turn, devised an elaborate plot to
kidnap the traitor from his new home in New York City and bring him out alive for
hanging before a Patriot audience.
But as the British propaganda machine ground out statements attributed to Arnold in
which he described his treason as true patriotism and urged his former associates to
imitate him, as hatred for the traitor swept the American nation, as George Washington
publicly declared his gratitude that the plot had been foiled, Major John Andre was
executed on a chilly October morning, hanged from the gallows as prescribed by military
law.
There was, no doubt, another victim of the disastrous events of 1780 - Patriot morale
had suffered a terrible shock. If Arnold had been ready to sell out the American cause,
who could be trusted? If he thought the American cause was doomed, who could be
hopeful? And yet, having reached bottom, the pendulum had already begun to swing
upward again, unexpectedly, almost unnoticeably, but steadily.
***
The first encouraging sign had appeared in early May 1780, when the Marquis de
Lafayette returned from a visit to France, and he returned with sensational news indeed:
the French government was sending across the ocean not only a fleet of six ships, but
with that fleet came an army of 5,000 French regulars under the command of an
experienced and capable general named the Comte de Rochambeau. Lafayette also
repeated - and may have believed - the official French statement that Rochambeau and
his army were to be under General Washington's orders. Washington, remembering his
resentment during the French and Indian War at the way the lowest British officer had
insisted on ordering around the highest provincials, was gratified to be told that if officers
of the same rank served together, the American was to have precedence. What
Washington was not told was Rochambeau's orders to keep the armies so distinct that
such a situation would never arise.
In working out plans with Lafayette, Washington put forward the concept that was to
remain the center of his strategy nearly to the end: although other coups would weaken
the enemy, the only blow that would by itself end the war would be to capture the British
base in New York. He directed that word should be sent to General Rochambeau, urging
him “in the strongest terms to proceed both fleet and army with all possible expedition to
Sandy Hook” outside New York harbor; if Clinton and his fleet were still away
besieging Charleston, New York should be easily captured. If, on the other hand, the
British expedition had returned, the French should sail on to Newport, where they could
establish a permanent base on the island the British had recently evacuated.
The French forces arrived at Newport on July 10, and within days it was learned that
at almost the same time the British fleet at New York had been reinforced with six capital
ships. Any attack plans on the British base would have to wait. In came a letter from
General Rochambeau, abrim with those rotund compliments which flow so easily from a
courtier's pen: “Sir: The commands of the King, my master, place me under the orders of
Your Excellency. I come, wholly obedient and with the zeal and the veneration which I
have for you and for the remarkable talents you have displayed in sustaining a war which
will always be memorable.” Washington, in turn, found it impossible to answer such
epistles in the same style. However, he had once again at hand the man he considered a
perfect instrument for communicating with the French commander. In an effusive letter
to Rochambeau, Washington stated that in the future he would communicate with them
through Lafayette, “a friend from whom I conceal nothing . . .”
Washington would have been flabbergasted could he have read the thoughts of the
French commander on receiving the letter. Lafayette, although a general in the American
army, was merely a captain of the reserve in France, yet he had intrigued at the French
court to get the very command Rochambeau now held. Rochambeau, who was only
moderately wellborn, had down through the years had his fill of bumptious young
aristocrats, and the Marquis' passionate ambition, which Washington found so charming,
grated on the life-long professional soldier.
Lafayette set out for Newport carrying with him a memorandum in which
Washington still continued to urge a combined attack on New York - if the French could
assure naval superiority. At the same time, however, Washington admitted that the
required American troops had not yet gathered, and that he could not even state precisely
when they would. Washington was soon “greatly disappointed” to hear that most of the
supplies he had expected the French to bring had been left behind because of a shortage
of transports. And by now there was little doubt that the British fleet in New York was
far superior to the six ships in the French squadron. But there was still hope: the rest of
the supplies and a second French land and naval force were expected in a few weeks - it
may be added here that this reinforcement, blocked by a British fleet at Brest, was still
waiting to sail when the war ended.
Washington had no way of knowing that his insistence on an attack on New York
made life embarrassingly difficult for his new French ally. Rochambeau had been
ordered by his king to take no unwarranted risks and yet, at the same time to give the
impression that he was obeying Washington's orders. To his government, the French
general reported that the entire country was “in consternation.” General Washington had
only 3,000 men, and the American paper money had fallen sixty to one. “Send us troops,
ships, and money,” wrote Rochambeau, “but do not depend on these people nor upon
their means: they have neither money nor credit; their means of resistance are only
momentary and called forth when they are attacked in their own homes.” Puzzling over
Washington's frequently expressed desire, under such negative circumstances, to attack
New York, he concluded that the American commander felt a desperate need to strike
because he “really believed that . . . this campaign was the last struggle of expiring
patriotism.” Still, Rochambeau found it hard to believe that Washington could publicly
endorse such a crackbrained scheme. The real problem, as Rochambeau saw it, must be
“mischief-making” on the part of Lafayette. He was sure the young Marquis was
exaggerating Washington's desires in order to make it seem as if Rochambeau was afraid
to attack. If only General Washington had not “sent Lafayette to me with full powers
from him.”
All such considerations were brought to a halt when it was learned that Clinton, with
a large land and naval force, had set sail for the French position at Newport. Washington
quickly assured Rochambeau that he would march to the rescue, if necessary; meanwhile,
he was taking an army across the Hudson to menace New York in conjunction with the
militia who were coming out to meet the emergency. If Clinton had embarked enough
men to endanger the French at Newport, Washington reasoned, he would have to return
to New York or face the possibility of losing his most important base.
Washington proved right. Although the British fleet remained off Newport to
blockade the French squadron, Clinton hurried back to New York.
The appearance of the French at Newport had begun as such a dramatic event, but
now it quickly faded in anticlimax. Weeks slipped by, and the French high command
became increasingly impatient that no role had been assigned its regiments. In midSeptember, Washington rode to Hartford to confer with Rochambeau, and the latter was
disappointed to note that the American commander in chief spoke only in generalities and
extended no invitation to French officers to ride over to the Hudson and have a look at
the American Army. The truth probably was that Washington feared that the professional
French officers would be so shocked by the draggled mass of Continentals and militia
that they might well call for a fleet to take them back to France and out of this hopeless
dilemma.
As it was, the French settled down in Rhode Island, many of them chafing bitterly.
One of Rochambeau's aides wrote home: “Our position here is a very disagreeable one.
We are vegetating at the very door of the enemy in a most disastrous state of idleness and
uncertainty. . . We are of no possible aid to our allies.” For an entire year, the French
Army did little except to enrich the Rhode Island farmers and to fascinate their daughters.
But idle time hung heavily on their hands, and some could find no solace even in the
Rhode Island girls. They “missed their mistresses, and the pleasures of Paris; no
theaters, no balls; they are in despair; only an order to march upon the enemy will
console them.”
Rochambeau himself, impatient like his fellow officers, deserves much of the credit
for keeping discipline in this difficult situation. There could have been bitter, violent
trouble between an idle army and the civilian population of Rhode Island. But somehow,
mutual understanding, tolerance, and a willingness to compromise on both sides
combined to set up a remarkable record in the long months of waiting for action. There
seem to have been few, if any, fights between troops and civilians. No spurious claims
for damage were lodged against the French and, in return, Rochambeau's records indicate
no charges of Yankee profiteering.
***
As he prepared to march into North Carolina, Cornwallis had detached a force of
1,400 Tories under the command of a British officer, Major Patrick Ferguson. This little
force was to march north in an effort to clear Cornwallis' left flank, and to pay special
attention to the need for restoring British authority in the mountain country. But
Ferguson went a bit too far; he tried to overawe the simple mountain folk by intimidation,
and sent word to the so-called Watauga settlements of present Tennessee that they were
to declare for the Crown or he would pay them a visit and hang their leaders. Anyone
who knew these people could have predicted the response. The Watauga men, hardiest of
hardy pioneers, had no intentions of submitting to an invasion. Rallying around leaders
like Isaac Shelby and Jack Sevier, reinforced by backwoods riflemen from Virginia and
North Carolina, they set out to meet Ferguson before he had a chance to make good on
his threats. On October 7, 1780, on a long, wooded hill at the border between South and
North Carolina, known as King's Mountain, about 900 of these frontiersmen stormed
Ferguson's position and annihilated the entire command, including its leaders, while a
few survivors stumbled eastward to safety.
King's Mountain was little more than a small fight at an unimportant outpost, but the
same could have been said of Trenton. And like Trenton, it proved to be a smashing
victory won at a time when men despaired of victory, and it brought new hope and
enthusiasm. King's Mountain marked a definite turn of the tide. Already harassed by
constant guerrilla attacks by bands under Colonel Francis Marion, Andrew Pickens and
Thomas Sumter, Lord Cornwallis began to rethink his previous plans for an easy,
leisurely march northward toward the Potomac River. Instead he settled down in winter
quarters at Winnsboro, well to the west of Camden.
General Washington now appointed his own choice to replace the disgraced Gates Nathanael Greene, son of a Rhode Island farmer, and generally conceded to be the ablest
general on the American side. Greene arrived early in December, 1780, at Charlotte,
North Carolina, and took over the command from Horatio Gates; he quickly found out,
though, that he was not taking command of very much. He found the remnants of the
Southern command in a terrible state, both morally and materially. There were about 800
men fit for duty in the regular ranks and perhaps 550 militia, all of them hungry and
ragged in the best Revolutionary tradition. There were only three days' rations in the
entire camp. The military chest was empty, but even if it had not been, there would have
been little to buy in the ravaged countryside. Most of the wheeled transport had vanished
at Camden, as had Gates' artillery.
The army's greatest asset, however, was one that Gates had apparently overlooked and that was the skilled subordinate commanders. There was the able cavalry
commander, Colonel William Washington, a distant cousin of the American commander
in chief, and Otho Williams, who had been with the army since the early days in Boston.
There was William Richardson Davie, whom Greene appointed commissary; when Davie
protested that he was a combat man and knew nothing of money and accounts, Greene
soothed him: “Don't concern yourself. There is no money and hence no accounts.”
Baron von Steuben was still active in Virginia, holding the British in check, training fresh
recruits and keeping open the lines of communication with the north. Within days after
his arrival, Greene also welcomed to camp General Daniel Morgan, the resourceful
commander of Virginia riflemen, and still on his way south was Lieutenant Colonel
Harry Light Horse Lee, with his famous Legion of several hundred men on foot and on
horse, newly equipped in Virginia. Somehow, the new commander managed to instill a
new spirit in his troops. He obtained enough food to feed his men properly and managed
to come up with clothes - not uniforms, of course; no man under the rank of colonel ever
saw a Continental uniform in the Carolina campaign.
Greene now considered his command as a whole. He was obviously too weak to
attack Cornwallis, but on the other hand, he could not afford to waste his force away in
winter camp. Accordingly, he coolly decided upon a dangerous alternative that violated
every principle of warfare - that of dividing a weaker command in the face of a stronger.
Part of his force would move to a temporary camp just across the South Carolina border.
The rest, a bare 600 men under Daniel Morgan, were to strike westward across the
Catawba River. The hope was that Cornwallis, in turn, would split his army and send a
detachment after Morgan, which the latter would have a fair chance of beating. But if
Cornwallis did not fall for what was really a decoy move, and struck with his entire force,
the Southern campaign and possibly the entire war might be over.
On December 21, Morgan headed west with a force of Continentals and covered by
William Washington's little cavalry corps. Word of this move reached Cornwallis almost
immediately, but the British commander hesitated; he well realized that if he struck full
force against either part of Greene's army, the other part might well drive southward,
wrecking British supply bases. He finally did what Greene had hoped he would do; he
ordered Colonel Banastre Tarleton and his feared Legion out in pursuit of Morgan; a
small force was left at Camden, while Cornwallis' main force slowly moved northward,
where he would be in a position to mop up the wreck of Morgan's certain defeat, and then
head east at Greene's command.
Colonel Tarleton was one of Cornwallis' ablest commanders, and one the Southern
colonies had learned to hate. Tarleton was a graceful pretty-boy type, judging by
surviving portraits, and, as is frequently true of such types, he was endowed with a cold
and brutal ferocity. He was notorious for his refusal to give mercy on the battlefield rarely did he take prisoners, bayoneting instead the wounded and the submissive. All in
all, Tarleton was known as a dangerous, hard driving commander.
But this time the feared Tarleton's Legion was to meet its match. Warned by roving
militiamen of the British approach, Morgan carefully chose the spot where he could meet
the enemy, a lightly wooded, level stretch in the very shadow of King's Mountain, known
as the Cowpens. At dawn on January 17, 1781, the confident British and Tory infantry
bore down on their American victims, only to be savagely repulsed. In a short and
decisive battle, Morgan's force inflicted nearly 900 casualties on their enemy, nearly
ninety percent of Tarleton's Legion.
Cornwallis was profoundly shocked when news of the debacle at Cowpens finally
reached him. But unlike his fellow British officers, he was not shocked into inactivity.
He started out at once after Morgan, hoping that his opponents had remained lingering at
the scene of their victory. But even though they moved swiftly, Morgan had already
gone more than a hundred miles to the northeast on his way to join Greene.
Cheated of revenge, a Gage or Howe would have fallen back to Winnsboro or
Camden to regroup, but Cornwallis decided on pursuit. He also realized that he would
have to move fast if he was to catch up with the American force. Contrary to all British
regulations and precedent, he now stripped his army of all surplus wagons, supplies, and
equipment, including his own. On January 28, he began his march; if he could not lure
the enemy into open action he would strike out for the fords of the Dan River, knowing
full well that these fords could become a deathtrap for Greene's forces if Cornwallis
could reach them first.
The campaign now turned into little more than a foot race between the enemy forces.
Through these first weeks of February, while rain turned into biting sleet and wet snow,
making the poor roads miserable to travel, both commanders whipped their forces into a
killing march. This was a new kind of warfare for an American commander to face, with
the British pursuit matching him stride for stride, but Greene was equal to it. On the
night of February 14, the last of his men was ferried across the Dan to the Virginia shore,
just as the spearhead of the pursuing British appeared and stared helplessly across the
bridgeless river. Once again an American force had shifted all available boats to the far
side.
That day, Cornwallis made a formal report that not a single American soldier was in
arms against the Crown from the Virginia border down to Florida. Yet his exultation was
somewhat premature. South Carolina still held effective bands of militia which became
legendary - groups led by Francis Marion, the famous Swamp Fox, whose hideout in the
marshes the British never could find, and by Pickens and Sumter, all of whom continued
to raid British outposts and supply bases and kept the entire state in ferment. And there
still was Greene's army, just across the Dan, still in existence and eager for action, just as
Washington's had always been.
And what was Cornwallis to do now? He had lost over 200 men on the pursuit, had
destroyed wagons and supplies in his attempt to overtake Greene. His well-stocked
supply base at Winnsboro was far to the south, so Cornwallis elected Hillsboro, North
Carolina, as the best place to camp. Back his army tramped, its commander once again
bemused by reports that the district swarmed with eager Tories. From Hillsboro,
Cornwallis issued florid proclamations, stating that it was “His Majesty's most gracious
wish to rescue his faithful and loyal subjects from the cruel tyranny under which they
have groaned . . .” If any of these oppressed souls were to decide to come into Hillsboro
with arms and perhaps ten days' ration, they would be more than welcome.
For a time, Loyalists actually did come to him in surprising numbers; but across the
Dan, Patriot forces were stirring again. Henry Lee's horsemen swooped down to break
up Tory formations heading for Hillsboro. Other detachments broke up Tory meetings,
captured supply parties and seized local leaders, and soon Cornwallis' flow of allies dried
to a mere trickle. Isolated, as he wrote, “amongst timid friends,” denied reinforcements,
and finding that the Hillsboro area was already stripped of supplies, Cornwallis had to
plan some major steps, particularly since his scouts reported that the supposedly beaten
Greene had begun to move his command south across the Dan again.
Once again, Nathanael Greene had coolly assumed a calculated risk. Some added
strength had been forwarded to him from Virginia by Von Steuben, and he now counted
some 4,000 men under his command. But a bare 1,600 of these were Continentals, some
of them totally untested, and much of the militia's time was about to run out. So south he
went, with Washington and Lee screening his advance, and on March 14 brought his
forces to a halt at a clearing near the headwaters of Reedy Fork. There was a hill with a
brick building known as Guilford Court House, and Greene hoped that at this spot
Cornwallis would accept the challenge of the American advance.
He did not have long to wait. Cornwallis had been trying for weary weeks to bring
his army to battle, and he drove at it now, making a powerful attack which brought on
one of the bloodiest and most hard-fought battles of the entire war. Greene's forces stood
firm and repulsed the British attack with heavy losses and even went over to a counter
attack, but the militiamen got entangled in this business of going from defense to offense.
Still, the priceless Delaware and Maryland Continentals continued to inflict heavy losses
on the enemy until heavy artillery fire checked them too. As dusk came on, Greene
withdrew, leaving Cornwallis in possession of the field. But one quarter of the British
force had become casualties, including many irreplaceable officers, and, worse still,
Greene's army, the ultimate objective, was still in the field. Having outrun his supplies,
unable to live off the country, Cornwallis had few choices. He pulled his forces together
and started east for Wilmington at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, to reorganize and
re-equip under the protection of the guns of the Royal Navy.
Greene, to the surprise of many, turned away from pursuit. Though he had
technically lost the battle at Guilford Court House, he had won a campaign, and his
mission now lay in the Carolinas. As he saw it, the South must be reconquered at all
cost; if he turned northward, he said, “the Southern states thus cut off will die like the tail
of a snake.”
The British hold on the Carolinas was based on a chain of strongpoints, reaching
from Charleston on the coast westward to Ninety-Six in the far interior, with lines
northward to Camden and south to Augusta in Georgia. Between these points moved the
bulk of the British traffic, reinforced by little posts at strategic points. If this traffic flow
could be broken anywhere at the center, the British might be forced to fall clear back to
their main supply post at Charleston. Greene lacked the strength to crush any major post
by himself, but he counted on nullifying British might by having Marion, Pickens and
Sumter, reinforced by Henry Lee and his entire Legion, deliver swift hit-and-run blows at
various points, thus choking off reinforcements destined for larger targets which he
himself hoped to strike.
The pattern of the campaign began at once, with Greene's forces losing a number of
small engagements, gaining a stand-off here and there and winning small victories here
and there. But always, win or lose, Greene managed to inflict far greater losses on the
enemy than he suffered himself. Post after post was burned and deserted by the British,
who gradually withdrew eastward. On September 8, 1781, at a place called Eutaw
Springs, Greene fought the last bitter battle of this campaign; though neither side gained a
real victory on that day, the British were so crippled that they had to withdraw. By the
end of September, the entire chain of interior posts was gone for good. The British colors
flew only at Charleston and Savannah, thanks to the Royal Navy. When Nathanael
Greene’s forces finally closed in an arc around Charleston, it was an arc which was to be
held until the last transport docked to take on board the last British soldier.
At Wilmington, meanwhile, Cornwallis was confronted with the same problem that
had plagued him throughout the Southern campaign: Where to go from here?
To battle up and down the Carolinas no longer made much sense to the British
commander. He was weary of this inhospitable region of swamps and forests and rivers.
It was the country as much as anything, he was certain, that had robbed him of the fruits
of victory. Sparsely settled, producing little that could sustain an army, plundered by
both friends and foes, plagued with snakes, mosquitoes, merciless heat, endless pine
forests and creeks which would be called rivers in any other country - how could warfare
be carried on in such a region? How could one claim a victory against an enemy who
slipped away into the swamps and forests after every defeat, only to emerge stronger than
before? As one of Cornwallis' own officers wrote, “Our march thro' this country may be
compared to the passage of a Ship thro' the Waves which gave Way on the least Impulse,
but immediately close when the Body has passed.”
As Cornwallis saw it, his only hope to end the rebellion in the South was to track it
down to its roots in Virginia. There he would destroy the very seat of resistance that had
kept the war alive in the Carolinas and Georgia by sending them men and supplies. By
conquering Virginia, Cornwallis reasoned, the provinces to the south of the Old
Dominion would be forced to cease resistance as well. Virginia became so important a
target to Cornwallis that he even urged Henry Clinton to abandon New York, if
necessary, in order to force a final showdown in the Old Dominion.
Geographically, Virginia had been virtually untouched by the war since early 1776,
but in all other respects the state had contributed more than its share to the success of the
Revolution. Its exports of tobacco had been a powerful prop of American credit in
Europe; the state he been literally stripped bare of guns and military supplies in its
support of Gates and later Greene in their struggle with Cornwallis for the Carolinas; its
militia and Continental lines contributed everywhere to the strength of the American
army.
On the other hand, Virginia, more than any other state, was teetering close to
bankruptcy. No state had issued more paper money than had Virginia, and the paper
money of no other state had depreciated as dangerously. Owing millions, its promise to
pay broken repeatedly, without a trace of hard cash in the treasury, the State of Virginia
had ceased to be even a poor risk - it was a virtual certainty that it would never pay its
debts. Almost the only resource left to the government to procure supplies was to employ
force against its own citizens.
In the spring of 1779, a strong British amphibious force from New York had
appeared off the mouth of the James River and had taken possession of Portsmouth, and
from that vantage point had bottled up whatever American shipping there had been on the
Chesapeake. Small parties went out from Portsmouth to forage for food and destroy
tobacco warehouses, and they inevitably returned laden with plunder and without ever
having encountered serious resistance. Virginians cried that the British were “plundering
women and children, burning houses and committing every kind of outrage . . .” yet they
submitted with surprising timidity to such treatment. Even George Washington was
dismayed at his home state's failure to defend itself.
Encouraged by such successful hit-and-run tactics, Henry Clinton's thoughts turned
to the possibility of basing a permanent force on the James, and for its command he
selected a man who would not be hampered by any sympathies toward the rebels. Back
into action came Benedict Arnold, now a British brigadier general, with some 1,200 men.
In January 1781, Arnold landed near Westover; by January 5 he was in Richmond,
spreading havoc and destruction wherever he went. The governor, the Burgesses, and
most of the citizens fled the town, which Arnold shortly after plundered and burned. A
few days later he appeared in Westham, where he destroyed an important munitions
works. He then fell back to Portsmouth and went into winter quarters.
It was Thomas Jefferson's misfortune to be governor of Virginia at the time of
Arnold's invasion. Few leaders could probably have galvanized the indifferent
population of the state, or could have overcome the cumulative effects of five years of
inflation which had utterly destroyed the finances of the state; but it is certain that
Jefferson did neither. He won little honor in the governorship, and when he retired from
office, many Virginians blamed him bitterly for a failure probably no man could have
averted.
From his predecessor, Patrick Henry, Jefferson had inherited many of the difficulties
by which he was now beset. As governor, Henry had courted popularity rather than make
the citizens of his state face up to the hardships of a war. He had opposed enlistments for
the duration of the war, favoring instead the more popular system of short term
volunteers. Bounties of thousands of dollars were offered in cash or land or equipment to
prospective enlistees, many of whom promptly deserted, probably to reenlist and get yet
another bounty. In Virginia, it was said, enlisting and deserting had been made “a kind
of business. A man enlists himself for six or Eight thousand pounds this spring, deserts,
and in the summer . . . he enlists in another part of the State for eight or ten thousand
more, desert . . . and practices the same Villainy over again in some other part of the
country.”
At the same time, there were almost no arms and ammunition left in the entire state;
there were not even enough guns to supply the militia, and whole companies turned out
with hardly a musket among them. Without artillery, cavalry and military magazines,
Virginia was almost powerless, and its governor nearly despaired. The North, declared
Jefferson, has for so long enjoyed the protection of virtually all the Continental Army,
“their independence has been established by the joint efforts of the whole.” Yet in this
spring of 1781 there was not a Continental soldier in all Virginia. It was now time to
share the resources of the continent. If Congress now repaid the arms and supplies that
had been loaned by Virginia, Jefferson promised that the Old Dominion would dispose in
short order of the “British barbarians.” Congress, of course, had little to send the
beleaguered state.
But up in his winter quarters at Tappan on the Hudson, Washington had long begun
to realize the necessity of sending at least some troops to Virginia. There might be a
chance of ridding the state of the British raiders, while at the same time capturing the
traitor Arnold. In February 1781, he ordered Lafayette southward with a hand-picked
force of some 1,200 New England and New Jersey troops. This was a small enough
command to undertake the defense of Virginia, but it was to be backed by the French
fleet now stationed in Newport, which would also carry 1,200 French troops.
At last it seemed as if France and America were cooperating in an effective
operation, and Arnold's situation in Virginia looked critical. But once again bad weather
and a well-timed British fleet intervened, and the French fleet returned to Newport after
having reached the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Yet Lafayette kept doggedly at his march
with his 1,200 men, seemingly undisturbed by the news that Arnold had been replaced by
Major General William Phillips, Burgoyne's second in command in 1777, and that the
new commander had brought with him another 2,600 men.
With each step of Lafayette's progress, enemy numbers seemed to pile up. In May,
Cornwallis, having rested and refitted his men at Wilmington after Guilford Court House,
appeared in Virginia with 1,500 men, while down from New York sailed yet another
1,500 from Clinton's garrison, until the total British forces along the James River came
to some 7,000 - nearly as many as New York, the headquarters of the British Army.
While this British build-up was in progress, Lafayette had led his small force as far
as Richmond before he realized the strength that was massing against him. He managed
to pick up some Virginia militia and some Virginia Continentals fresh from Von
Steuben's training camp, men who had originally been planned for Greene's forces far
south in the Carolinas, but even with these additions, Lafayette could count barely 3,000
men. This was his first independent command, operating in a strange country and with
no one to turn to for advice, and so young a man might easily have panicked. But
Lafayette kept a clear head and clear vision. In May he wrote to Washington, “Were I to
fight a battle, I should be cut to pieces . . . Were I to decline fighting, the country would
think itself given up. I am therefore determined to skirmish, but not to engage too far . .
.”
But Cornwallis, now in total command after the sudden death of General Phillips,
had no intentions of letting the young commander chose the action. He moved up from
Petersburg, forcing the Americans to retreat northward to Fredericksburg, and now found
himself once again in the situation so familiar to all British commanders in North
America: waging a war against an enemy who refused to do more than skirmish. Since
he failed to bring Lafayette to a battlefield, he was obliged to content himself with raiding
and plundering the countryside. With almost a thousand cavalry at his disposal,
Cornwallis was able to spread such devastation over wide areas. In June, Tarleton's
Raiders swooped down on Charlottesville, routed the Virginia assembly and almost
captured Governor Jefferson. Stores of powder, clothing and muskets were destroyed,
and the entire state was thrown into panic by the exploits of the hard-riding British
cavalry. But Lafayette kept his force intact and out of reach, biding his time, waiting for
reinforcements he was hoping would arrive.
The Chesapeake had suddenly become the central theater of war, yet Washington
refused to be distracted from what he considered his main purpose: keeping an eye on
Clinton in New York and preparing for the day when the allied fleet and armies would
drive the British from that city. But, in order to reinforce Lafayette, he now sent Anthony
Wayne to Virginia with what remained of the Pennsylvania line. Reinforced by three
more brigades of Virginia militia and additional Continentals, Lafayette finally counted
about 4,500 men, and with this force began to move southward.
In his camp at Williamsburg, Cornwallis had sat contentedly. He had done great
damage to Virginia, in addition to what Arnold and Phillips had been able to do. He had
a great advantage in numbers over Lafayette's forces, and had the additional advantage of
the Royal Navy at Portsmouth. But then orders came down from New York; Sir Henry
Clinton, alarmed by various signs and portents north of Manhattan Island, had sent out a
call for 3,000 of Lord Cornwallis' men. And Cornwallis, in turn, had seen this as an
opportunity to catch the approaching forces of Lafayette. Through July 4 and 5 he moved
his entire corps from Williamsburg to the north bank of the James River, which the
departing 3,000 had to cross on their way to the embarkation point at Portsmouth. As he
had hoped, both Lafayette and Wayne took this movement as a signal for British action,
and on July 6, Wayne and about 900 men took up position at Greenspring Farm, a bare
half mile from the spot where British outposts guarded the supposed passage of the
James.
A few hours of fighting produced little decision on either side and by sunset all
fighting was broken off. Lafayette and Wayne retired to Malvern Hill, and Cornwallis
gathered up his command and pushed on to Portsmouth, where the three thousand troops
were to embark for New York. But conflicting orders kept coming in from Clinton; on
July 8, their destination was changed to Philadelphia; on the 12th, word was received that
Clinton wanted them in New York after all, and the 20th brought a complete reversal for
the bewildered men. They were to stay where they were. All the while, the luckless
3,000 were kept packing and unpacking, scrambling on and off ships as ever more
instructions arrived from Manhattan.
Cornwallis, too, must have felt the effects of such indecision. The same orders
directed him to establish himself at Old Point Comfort and, if possible, occupy Yorktown
as well. Surveying the Point, Cornwallis came to the conclusion that it would never do
for a naval base, which was what Clinton had in mind. But he liked Yorktown, a dying
old tobacco port on the deep water York River, and he seized it along with Gloucester
Point on the opposite side of the river. And with this chance decision a moribund little
town was given a new lease on life, and a short time later it would enter into immortality
in the annals of a new nation.
***
The winter of 1780-81 marked the nadir of the American cause. England,
controlling the sea, could throw in troops anywhere she chose, on short notice, if
necessary. If Cornwallis managed to establish another military and naval base on
Chesapeake Bay, Britain would control most of America's Atlantic shore, and every
seaport except Boston. Congress seemed impotent to raise men or money, the French
alliance had turned out to be a bitter disappointment, and many Americans were
beginning to accept the probability of defeat. Desperate diplomatic deals were being
proposed in Congress: to cede to Spain all lands west of the Appalachians in return for
an alliance; to offer Catherine II of Russia a slice of western territory if she would attack
England. Rochambeau's French expeditionary force had been in Newport since the
previous summer, but without the proper naval support Washington had few options on
how to employ these five thousand French regulars.
The legend that Washington and Rochambeau enjoyed a friendship of perfection is
based on the fact that both labored hard and successfully to present to the public an image
of Franco-American unity. But French sources, and particularly Rochambeau's own
memoirs, paint a different picture. Washington is depicted as an obstinate commander
who insisted to the very end that New York City alone was to be the goal for an all-out
attack by the allied forces; he never even agreed to the possibility, urged by Rochambeau,
that Cornwallis could be trapped somewhere on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
Actually, there was no way for anyone to know that Cornwallis, who was still operating
in inland Virginia, would ever come to the coast and roost at Yorktown or any other spot
where he could be pinned down and be besieged. Everyone, including Henry Clinton, his
commander in chief in New York City, expected Cornwallis eventually to return to the
Carolinas. Furthermore, Rochambeau kept from Washington a fact on which any plan
for such a southern campaign depended. Although Washington had been informed that a
“numerous” French fleet under Admiral de Grasse would operate this summer in the
Indies, he was given no reason to believe that this fleet was any more likely to cooperate
with the American Army than had previous such fleets. Rochambeau, on the other hand,
knew that de Grasse had been given orders to come north in July or August. This had
been communicated to him by his government in what he called “a confidential message
to me alone.” Rochambeau was more than happy to keep this information from
Washington, since he had come to doubt American discretion.
What Rochambeau did let Washington know was the arrival of a new naval
commander at Newport, the Comte de Barras St. Laurent, and it was agreed that a
conference was to be held to decide on the proper objective for the coming campaign
year; the date was set for May 21, 1781. During this conference, Rochambeau wrote in
his memoirs, “General Washington had scarcely another objective in view but an
expedition against the island of New York,” while the French commander insisted that the
allies should march southward to Virginia. Washington replied that such a march would
ruin his army. It would be expensive, and the New England troops, who were disinclined
to go so far from home units to a climate they considered dangerously unhealthy, would
soon dwindle through sickness and desertion. If such a move was to be considered at all,
Washington believed, water transport was essential, and that was entirely dependent on
French naval supremacy in the Atlantic waters.
Rochambeau now asked Washington to speculate on what should be done if, by
some chance, “a French naval reinforcement” should appear and establish such naval
supremacy. Knowing about de Grasse's ultimate orders, Rochambeau wanted
Washington to agree to an attack in the south, but Washington insisted that the southern
plan should remain second choice, to be embraced only if the allied forces proved too
weak to overrun New York. Rochambeau finally signed a paper agreeing with
Washington that, should de Grasse's fleet arrive, “an operation against New York”
seemed preferable to “sending a force to the southward.” However, he secretly rushed a
message off to de Grasse at Santo Domingo, urging the admiral not to sail for New York
but for the Chesapeake Bay area. De Grasse was to send back immediate word so that
the French army at Newport could “combine our march with that of General Washington,
so as to proceed by land as expeditiously as possible and to join him at any stipulated
part of the Chesapeake.”
All during the conference at Wethersfield, Washington had insisted that
Rochambeau's army join him on the outskirts of New York. This would remove pressure
from the South, since Clinton could no longer afford to weaken his base and might,
indeed, feel it necessary to call some of Cornwallis' men back. And should de Grasse's
fleet appear, the allied armies would then be ready to cooperate in the capture of New
York.
For once, Rochambeau cheerfully obeyed Washington's request - New York, after
all, was on the way south. And though he could not yet know it, Washington, too, had
been right - Clinton, when he learned of Rochambeau's movement, did indeed order
Cornwallis to send those 3,000 men back to New York, while at the same time ordering
his general to take up a defensive station at Yorktown. Thus, by pushing Cornwallis into
a besiegable position on the coast, Washington had just stacked the deck in favor of a
move which Rochambeau was about to force him to undertake. There was hardly ever
another general in history that had to have victory forced upon him quite the same way.
All through the early days of the summer of 1781, as the French army marched
southward to join the American forces on the banks of the Hudson, Washington and
Rochambeau spent long hours debating on their proper deployment and various schemes
for an attack on New York. Washington, in fact, was already having landing crafts built
and was making serious plans. But it was becoming more and more evident by the day
that such a possibility was becoming remote. The American army had not received much
in supplies or manpower since it emerged from winter quarters, nor had any of the
governors of the states promised that any more troops would be sent. By August 1,
Washington noted in his diary, “I could scarce see a ground upon which to continue my
preparations against New York . . .” And Rochambeau, who still had not admitted that
the matter had already been independently decided, kept pushing for “a definite plan of
campaign.” Although Washington “could not but acknowledge” the weakness of his
army, something might still turn up. He still hoped that de Grasse would appear off
Sandy Hook; perhaps the admiral could destroy the British fleet in the harbor, even if the
army were not taken. Or, if a British army was still operating in Virginia, and it seemed
most expedient to attack that force, de Grasse could carry the allied armies by water to
the Chesapeake.
Then, on August 14, all such considerations became irrelevant as news arrived in a
letter from Barras St. Laurent, the French naval commander at Newport. Admiral de
Grasse had sailed from Santo Domingo with 29 ships and a fleet of transports carrying
3,200 land troops. He was sailing directly for Chesapeake Bay, where he expected to
arrive on September 3. However, since his orders also instructed him to start back to the
West Indies by the middle of October, there was no time to be wasted. If Washington
and Rochambeau expected to cooperate with him in an assault on the British, they would
have to be in the Chesapeake by the time the fleet arrived. Such orders made it clear
once again that France and England were engaged in a world-wide war of which North
America was just one more theater.
There were numerous problems connected with moving a French and American
army 450 miles southward to the Chesapeake, and the most serious of all was finances.
The American treasury was empty and could not be replenished until far too late.
Luckily, Rochambeau came generously to the rescue, offering Washington half of what
was left in his own military chest, and preparations for an overland march to Virginia got
underway.
During the third week in August, the allies began crossing to the west bank of the
Hudson via King's Ferry, an endless shuttle of barges and boats and rafts, floating men
and guns and wagons and horses. And all during this time, not a single British ship
cleared from New York City for action, and no land forces tried to interfere. Sir Henry
Clinton, who might have created serious difficulties, remained strangely passive and
made no notable effort to break up the allied movements.
When French and American details appeared on the Jersey shore and ostentatiously
built a great system of ovens that could have baked bread for a massive attack force
directed against Manhattan, he let the work go on and devote more and more time to
strengthening his own defenses. A French officer wrote in profound relief and wonder:
“An enemy, a little bold and able would have seized the moment . . . so favorable for him,
so embarrassing for us, for an attack. His indifference and lethargy . . . is an enigma that
cannot be solved by me.” But inside the fortified city of New York, Sir Henry Clinton
knew very well what he was doing. An attack on the city was surely coming, and he
would be prepared.
From his overlook on the heights above the Hudson River, Washington must have
watched these activities with some impatience and trepidations. As he watched his
troops, he could recognize weather-beaten faces on which the record of the entire war
was written - from Breed's Hill to Long Island to Harlem Heights and White Plains, from
Trenton and Princeton to the Indian country, from the St. Lawrence to Freeman's Farm.
Timothy Pickering was there, and Henry Dearborn, Benjamin Lincoln, James Clinton and
Alexander Hamilton, John Laurens and Henry Knox. The French troops below him were
moving with slow and ceremonious efficiency in a precise exercise of military knowhow. For them, this expedition was little more than a passing adventure in a distant land.
Those who survived would go home to tell fine stories of adventure before a fireplace.
But Washington did not have to be overly pessimistic to anticipate the day when they
might not have a homeland at all. Although the whole future of America was now being
staked on a junction with de Grasse, Washington could have had little confidence that the
rendezvous would even be achieved. French promises had so often been unfulfilled. The
admiral might be called back by new developments in the Indies or by new dispatches
from Versailles - or he might simply change his mind.
And Barras, still holding his squadron at Newport, was another problem. The
commander who did not like the idea of serving under de Grasse, had already threatened
to sail northward on his own enterprise. Not only would this have weakened the
available naval strength, but it would have left no way of transporting to the Chesapeake
region Rochambeau's heavy cannon, which would be necessary in case of a siege, or any
of the essential provisions for the thousands of allied troops.
Barras had finally been persuaded to cooperate, but it was still questionable whether
he would ever make it to the Chesapeake. There was always the much stronger squadron
in New York Harbor, which he would have to pass on his way south, and then there were
the Atlantic storms. Again and again, Washington had seen how they could scatter entire
fleets of sailing vessels. Even if Barras and de Grasse were full of energy and good
intentions, they might never arrive at the appointed site at all.
It was the habit of the British to counter every French naval move with a stronger
move of their own. Rumors had already reached Washington that, even as he was
expecting de Grasse, Clinton was expecting the British West Indies fleet under Admiral
Rodney. Supposing the two fleets met as they approached through the ocean; de Grasse
might be defeated, and by the time the French and American armies arrived at the
Chesapeake, they might find nothing but English ships in the bay.
***
For once, an American campaign against the enemy worked with perfect
coordination of land and sea forces. Once across the Hudson River from White Plains,
the French and American armies began moving southward. Washington had left some
troops behind as a screen and began to spread rumors that an attack on New York was in
prospect. The pretense was further aided by the fact that a good part of the march from
King's Ferry to the Delaware was the same route the armies would traverse if they meant
to meet de Grasse at Sandy Hook and then attack Staten Island. To further encourage the
enemy in this belief, Washington even dragged along landing craft suited to crossing the
bay from New Jersey to Staten Island.
Thus it was not until September 1 that it dawned on Clinton that the enemy armies
were by-passing New York, and that perhaps Cornwallis was now in danger. Against this
eventuality Clinton had made few preparations, and he never sent a single soldier to
reinforce his general in the South.
As yet unknown to Clinton, de Grasse had arrived at the Chesapeake and had landed
about three thousand French troops near Yorktown to aid Lafayette in preventing
Cornwallis from retreating inland before the arrival of Rochambeau and Washington with
the allied armies. The English commander was aware that a French fleet had sailed from
the West Indies, and also that Barras' squadron had left Newport, but all reports seriously
underestimated the combined French naval strength. And when Admiral Graves sailed
early in September from New York to the Chesapeake to head off this French fleet, he
was met by a most unpleasant surprise. Instead of ten or twelve French ships, he was
suddenly confronted by 29 enemy vessels, and the fleet from Newport had not even
arrived as yet.
The ensuing sea battle between de Grasse and Graves on September 5 was to become
one of the great decisive battles in American history, though not a single American was
present to take part or even to observe and report about it. The fleets were not badly
matched ship for ship, but this time the difference was the quality of the commanders.
After a day filled largely with maneuvering but climaxed by some hard ship-to-ship
slugging, the British were finally driven out to sea, and found that many of their ships had
been seriously damaged. For a few days more the two fleets lingered within sight of each
other near the mouth of the Chesapeake. By September 10, Barras' squadron arrived
from Newport, increasing the French presence to thirty-six ships. Hopelessly
outmatched, crippled by damages, the British fleet now limped off to New York to repair
and refit for nearly a month. When Graves again appeared off the Chesapeake capes, the
war was all but over.
The allied armies had meanwhile crossed New Jersey. Their destination had been
kept secret even from the soldiers themselves, and it was not until September 5, when the
army lay at Chester, Pennsylvania, that Washington, having learned that de Grasse had
arrived at the Chesapeake, let it be known that they were on their way to Yorktown.
The French army marched to Virginia in near perfect order and discipline, something
neither the English nor the American armies had ever been able to accomplish. As the
French marched through the streets of Philadelphia, lined with spectators, past the State
House where members of Congress watched, Rochambeau ordered his men “to salute
Congress as a crowned head . . .” The smart appearance and exemplary behavior of these
troops greatly impressed Americans everywhere; even Anthony Wayne was moved to
declare that “The French are the finest body of troops I have ever viewed.”
For the American troops, the march proved almost as difficult as Washington had
feared. Although the heavy artillery and supplies, and some of the troops were able to go
down the Chesapeake by boat from Elkton - the same place where Howe had brought his
troops ashore in 1777 - for most of the men it was tough going over bad roads and across
unbridged rivers. Food, as usual, was scarce, and even the French began to experience
for the first time some of the hardships so frequent to campaigning in America. Yet,
gradually, the allied camps in Virginia grew. First there were the original 9,000 French
and Americans; then the total climbed to 11,000, to 14,000 and finally reached the 16,000
mark.
After a conference aboard de Grasse's flagship, Washington and Rochambeau set to
work in earnest. Cornwallis had dug in solidly at Yorktown and had also established
works at Gloucester Point, on the north bank of the York, and around these fortifications
the French and Americans now drew regular siege lines. Up from the James River
rumbled the heavy guns of Henry Knox and the impressive French cannon and mortars,
and as fire was opened from the allied lines, the advanced trenches were pushed closer
and closer and tighter around the city until Cornwallis was forced to abandon his outer
works, since he did not have enough troops to man them. This left him in Yorktown a
space so narrow that nearly every part of it could be swept by enemy artillery, and the
results were almost inevitable.
For one who had won the reputation of being a tough fighter, the toughest among
British generals, Cornwallis made a surprisingly weak defense of Yorktown; he did little
more than the minimum gesture required by the honor of his army by sending out some
350 troops who managed to kill a few French soldiers and superficially damaged six guns
before they rushed back to their own lines.
Cornwallis, so stragglers from the doomed city reported, had “built a kind of grotto .
. . where he lives underground.” He seems to have lurked there in a stupor of despair and
rage against Clinton, who had ordered him to garrison a weak position and who had then
abandoned him. It was his expectation of naval relief, he explained later, that had made
him decide to concentrate his forces behind the walls of Yorktown, and which had made
him decide against trying to hold the outer defenses or making any effort at breaking free
for a long and hazardous inland retreat.
As the allies opened more and more guns ever closer to his walls; as the whole river
bank shook under their fire, while his own fire dwindled to almost nothing; as he watched
the tumbling ruins of his own defenses, and as more and more wounded and dying lay in
the streets around him, Cornwallis reached a melancholy decision. He sent off a secret
dispatch to Henry Clinton in New York: “My situation now becomes very critical; we
dare not show a gun to their old batteries, and I expect their new ones will open
tomorrow morning . . . The safety of the place is, therefore, so precarious that I cannot
recommend that the fleet and army should run great risque in endeavouring to save us.”
And still the French and American guns pushed in tighter by the hour. On the
morning of October 17, the fourth anniversary of Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga, the
allied guns were roaring at full blast. The haze of a soft Virginia fall day was thickened
by welling cannon smoke created by nearly a hundred heavy guns. “The whole peninsula
trembles under the incessant thunderings of our infernal machines,” wrote an American
officer at the scene; he also found it noteworthy that there was almost no answering fire
from inside Yorktown.
Then, about ten o'clock, as gunners paused to shift their pieces onto new targets and
as the reeking haze lifted a little, a lone, small figure appeared on the city's parapet,
valiantly hammering out a message which everyone recognized as the parley, a stuttering
long roll, an invitation to talk things over. As a stunned hush settled over the FrenchAmerican lines, an English officer appeared on the parapet beside the drummer boy,
waving a white cloth.
General George Washington, commander in chief of the allied forces, was busily
writing reports back at Williamsburg, when an aide, red-faced with excitement, burst in
on him with a sealed letter in hand. Washington broke the seal and froze as he realized
the full impact of the words before him: “I propose a cessation of hostilities for 24
hours, and that two officers may be appointed by each side, to meet at Mr. Moore's house
to settle terms for the surrender of the posts of York & Gloucester. I have the honor to be
Sir your most obedient and most humble Servant, Cornwallis.”
Like most men before Yorktown, the commander in chief must have known the
inevitability of this moment, so surely forecast by de Grasse's victory at sea, yet its
impact must have been staggering after the long and desperate years that had passed. But
Washington quickly rallied himself, and with trusted aides carefully worked out an
answer: “An Ardent Desire to spare the further Effusion of Blood, will readily incline me
to listen to such Terms . . . as are admissible.”
In his entrenchment in Yorktown, Cornwallis received Washington's letter outlining
surrender terms. One sentence filled his heart with dismay: “The same honors will be
granted to the surrendering army as were granted to the garrison of Charleston.” When
General Lincoln had been forced to surrender at Charleston, Clinton had expressed
disdain for the rebels by refusing to grant customary honors of war, traditionally
accorded a defeated army which had fought well. If Washington were now to insist on
retaliation, the British could not march out of Yorktown with their colors flying. To
apply to the British professionals at Yorktown what Clinton had imposed on American
amateurs would disgrace Cornwallis and his officers before all civilized Europe. The
British command could only hope that their French opponents, as European gentlemen,
would not permit such a thing to happen.
To reach final terms, two commissioners from each side met in the Moore House, a
half mile downriver from Yorktown. All issues except the one of honors were subject to
compromise. The British agreed to become prisoners of war, rather than be allowed to
return to England; recaptured slaves would be returned to their owners; and even the
knotty question of Tories was resolved to both sides' satisfaction. But Washington felt so
strong a need to avenge dishonor to his troops that he refused to give on the honors issue;
not until the morning of October 19 were the final terms agreed on.
The surrender ceremony was set for the afternoon of the same day, but Lord
Cornwallis, so distressed that he could not bear the idea of being present at “the
humiliating scene,” decided to pretend that he was ill; in his place he sent his Brigadier
General, Charles O'Hara.
On a clear autumn afternoon, the allies drew up on both sides of the main road out of
Yorktown, the Americans on the right, the French on the left. At the far end of this long
file waited the general officers - George Washington, Rochambeau, Lincoln and others.
De Grasse had stayed with his fleet; the French Navy was represented by Barras. Then,
from behind Yorktown’s shattered walls appeared the enemy column, accompanied by a
melancholy tune The World Turned Upside Down. As the Britons and Hessians moved
between their conquerors' lines, their officers ordered the men to turn their heads to the
right, acknowledging the French, ignoring the Americans. But Lafayette, who had
stationed himself proudly beside his tattered American division, shouted an order; a fife
and drum corps broke into the puckish irreverence of Yankee Doodle, and the British
were thus startled into looking at the very men whom they so desperately wanted to
avoid.
Coming to the end of the long road, General O'Hara turned his horse toward the
French officers and offered his sword to Rochambeau, but the French commander shook
his head and gestured where Washington sat on his horse: “You are mistaken. The
Commander in chief of our army is on the right.” O'Hara had no choice but to ride over
to Washington and again offer his sword - but Washington, too, refused it. Since the
British had chosen to send a subordinate, one of Washington's subordinates would accept
the surrender and give orders to the surrendering army. Washington indicated General
Lincoln - whose capture at Charleston was being avenged - and with aristocratic
nonchalance O'Hara went once more through the ceremony. The long column of British
troops marched out and laid down their arms - and all at once the curtain fell on the
greatest defeat which the European aristocratic way of life had so far ever suffered.
***
Lafayette joyfully wrote the news from Yorktown to Paris, concluding that “The
play is over; the fifth act has just come to an end.” And when the news of Cornwallis'
surrender reached England, Lord North was said to have thrown up his hands and
exclaimed: “My God! It is all over.”
But it was not quite as simple as that. Although the British had lost about one
quarter of their North American army, they still had on American soil forces several
times as large as the Continental Army - there were 13,000 in New York, 3,300 in
Charleston, 5,000 in Canada, 3,500 in Halifax, and another 500 at Penobscot. There was
nothing to keep the British ministry from sending in more troops. And, at the very
moment of surrender, the great armada which was said to have sailed from New York to
save Yorktown was probably on the ocean and could be expected any day.
Although de Grasse had never given Washington the least hope that there would be
time for another siege, Washington did his best to sell the French admiral on an attack on
Charleston. But de Grasse declared that his timetable forced him to sail directly to the
West Indies. And when the British fleet arrived and, finding Yorktown had already
fallen, returned to New York, it ended all speculation. DeGrasse with his flotilla and his
military detachments vanished from the North American scene.
De Grasse's departure closed the 1781 campaign. Rochambeau, “from the exhausted
state of his stores and other considerations,” decided that his army would winter in
Virginia. Washington ordered his Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania troops to join
Greene in South Carolina, still trying to regain Charleston, while the northern regiments
returned to the old encampments in New Jersey and on the Hudson.
Yet events were moving toward a definite end. They came so slowly, so
inconclusively that they passed little noted. There was no one blazing moment to
celebrate, to set the nation whooping and roaring in exultation. The curtain was falling
almost imperceptible on this American drama
Washington must have gotten some grim satisfaction when he learned in the spring
of 1782 that he had now outlasted three British commanders-in-chief; Sir Henry Clinton
had been recalled. He was replaced by the long-time commander of Canada, Sir Guy
Carleton. Carleton brought no significant reinforcements, but neither did he show any
signs of giving up New York. To Washington, New York was still the key; if he hoped
to end the war, New York would have to be recaptured.
But whatever hopes and prospects he might have had flew out the window when it
was learned that de Grasse's fleet had been decisively defeated by Admiral Rodney off
Guadeloupe, and that de Grasse himself had been captured. And a smaller French
squadron, which had taken refuge in Boston harbor, had been instantly pinned there by a
large British fleet under Admiral Hood.
Despite such victories, however, the British ambitions in America, feeble at best, had
all but evaporated. In the spring of 1782, the British command in New York notified
Washington “by authority, that negotiations for a general peace have already
commenced at Paris,” and that “His Majesty, in order to remove all obstacles to that
peace, which he so ardently wishes to restore,” had ordered his ministers not only to
accept, but to propose “the independency of the thirteen provinces.”
***
British Prime Minister Lord North had long been in favor of ending the war in
America by recognizing the colonies' independence, and since 1779 had pressured
George III to allow him to resign. George would permit no such thing; the king was well
aware that North's departure would put an end to his attempts at personal rule by bringing
into the government his long-time enemies, the Whigs. George vowed that he would
sooner give up the crown of England and retire to his ancestral Hanover than call in “a
set of men” that would make him a slave.
But the defeat at Yorktown took the final decision out of his hands. The House of
Commons unanimously called for a negotiated peace with America, and in 1782, Lord
North resigned his post as Prime Minister. Back into power came the Whigs, including
Lord Shelburne and George's nemesis, Charles James Fox, and among their first acts was
to open peace negotiations with the Americans.
During the previous summer, the Congress in Philadelphia had already appointed
envoys to join Benjamin Franklin in Paris to feel out the British representatives. John
Jay, John Adams and Henry Laurens eventually arrived to become the American peace
commission. The commissioners ran into immediate problems, since their instructions
from Congress forced them to keep the French government fully informed of all
negotiations, to follow French advice and leadership, and to conclude no treaty without
the consent of the French ministry.
France was more than ready for peace. Their shaky financial system had already
been strained to the point of collapse by the expenses of the American war, and France
was prepared to end this war at nearly any price. But France was also committed to her
other ally, Spain, and the Spaniards, of course, had entered this war in pursuit of their
own goals. Their agreement stated that all the allies would go on fighting until Spain had
recovered Jamaica - captured by Oliver Cromwell in 1665 - and the rock fortress of
Gibraltar, captured by the English in 1704. The French-American alliance had now been
successful, but the French-Spanish hopes of destroying English supremacy at sea had
gone nowhere. The siege of Gibraltar was no more successful, and was not likely to
improve. But since all the allies in this fight had promised to keep fighting, American
attempts to find a basis for settlement within the confines of all these agreements and
restrictions made little progress.
It was to prove lucky for Great Britain that the initial negotiations were thus delayed,
for at that time Shelburne would have been willing to concede almost any demands if he
could only recall the nearly 30,000 troops stationed in America at enormous expense to
the country. As it was, however, there were endless complications, scheming, and
delays, and with every month the British position improved, the war-weary Americans'
spirit became more apathetic, and the French treasury became more depleted. In May,
1782, Admiral Rodney restored British naval power in the Atlantic by defeating de
Grasse's fleet in the West Indies, and Gibraltar still held out against the French fleet and
Spanish army. Still, Spain declared that she would never make peace without the
surrender of Gibraltar, even if American independence was left undecided. And during
the summer of 1782, Benjamin Franklin learned that the French minister Vergennes had
begun to enter into secret negotiations with Great Britain, apparently prepared to divide
the fledgling United States if need be, or at least limit their size. “This court is interested
in separating us from Great Britain,” wrote John Jay, “but it is not in their interest that
we should become a great and formidable people.” Faced by this outright duplicity and
violation of the pact, Benjamin Franklin began his own secret discussions with a willing
and anxious Whig ministry in England.
Despite the desire of both sides to come to terms, there were difficult points in the
American negotiations with Britain. The independence of the United States was by now
an accepted fact, and the size of the new nation caused few problems. But the question of
debts due to British merchants from the various colonies before hostilities began proved
to be very troublesome.
The Congress at Philadelphia had as yet no funds of its own nor did it have the
authority to dispose of the individual states' money. Congress could therefore give the
British government no satisfactory guarantees that colonial debts would ever be paid.
Though John Adams indignantly assured the British ministry that Americans had no
intentions of reneging on their obligations, this declaration was largely assumed to be
“Mr. Adams' private opinion merely.” The issue of these debts long frustrated the
negotiations until the British supplemented the American assurances of good will by the
secret plan to hold on to the valuable fur-trading posts along the Great Lakes until all the
monies were paid.
Still more delicate was the question of the treatment of the Loyalists. Tens of
thousands of American colonists had opposed the war with the British mother country;
many held deep loyalties to their ancestors' way of life and no doubt hoped that this war
was merely a temporary dispute that would soon be settled. Others, less sentimental but
far more practical, opposed the war because it was sure to disrupt flourishing trade and
businesses and would bring nothing but ruin to their enterprises. The more vocal of these
Loyalists denounced Congress and the Revolutionary leaders as a collection of
“quarrelsome, pettifogging lawyers,” and when the Declaration of Independence turned
them into traitors, thousands of them entered into the services of the British army. To
abandon these people, who had sacrificed their properties and reputations in America,
who had obeyed their sovereign's call to aid in putting down the rebellion, was not
something the British ministry was prepared to do. It demanded that Congress return to
these Loyalists all their confiscated property or reimburse them with new territory.
But the issue of Loyalists roused bitter memories among American Patriots. It was
not just their traitorous behavior, their steady encouragement of desertions and mutinies
in the American Army, their appearances in uniforms of the King's troops. It was more
even than the memories of men like Benedict Arnold. Members of Congress still
remembered how, in that dark winter of 1776, when Washington was imploring the
farmers of New Jersey for food for his destitute soldiers, the Tory squires of that state
instead sold their rich harvests at good prices to Lord Howe and the British troops. And
how, in the still darker winter that followed, while Washington's starving and shivering
army at Valley Forge was losing hundreds of men daily, the Tory drawing rooms of
Philadelphia were brightly lit and lavishly stocked in honor of the British officers. It was
a hard thing to ask this new country, already burdened with millions in war debt, with its
political life yet to be established on a firm basis, and its industry and commerce all but
destroyed, to recompense the very people who had done their best to wreck the Patriot
cause. The British ministry finally accepted the assurances of the American
commissioners that they would recommend the restitution of property to all Loyalists
who had not taken up arms against the United States.
The preliminary treaty of peace was signed on November 30, 1782, more than a year
after Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown; it was not to go in effect, however, until Great
Britain and France had come to terms as well. Final peace arrangements continued until
September, 1783, with the so-called Peace of Paris at Versailles. The thirteen former
British colonies were now recognized as the independent United States of America. The
territory of this new nation was to extend westward to the Mississippi and north
approximately to the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River. To Americans were
granted the continued right to fish off Newfoundland. Private debts contracted before the
war were to be repaid. Both British and Americans were to retain navigation rights on
the Mississippi River. The United States, in turn, promised only that the Congress would
“earnestly recommend” that the states restore Loyalist properties and that “no future
confiscations” be made. This recommendation was never heeded by the state
governments. Thousands of Loyalists fled persecution during the coming months and
years and sought safety and a measure of happiness in Canada or overseas. Across the
following decades many of their descendants returned to live in the United States, but
Canada thus gained about 40,000 inhabitants who proved numerous enough less than a
decade later to split that country into Upper (English) Canada and Lower (French)
Canada, now the Province of Quebec.
To Spain was returned Florida south of the 31st parallel, which she had lost in 1763,
and Minorca, which she had lost fifty years earlier, both as compensation for England's
keeping Gibraltar. Spain also retained all of North America south of the Canadian border
and west of the Mississippi River. And France, with all her ambitions and hopes, wound
up with a few West Indian islands, her West African settlements and a bankrupt treasury.
More ominously, they inherited a spirit of liberte and egalite which, before the end of this
very century, would throw their own country into a violent revolution.
News of the preliminary treaty did not reach America until March 1783, and since
this treaty included an armistice, the war in America was thereby at an end. On April 18,
the eighth anniversary of the night when Paul Revere and William Dawes had roused the
minutemen of Lexington, General George Washington officially pronounced hostilities at
an end. The Continental treasury was so empty that the soldiers were released from duty
and sent home without pay, with only three months arrears in chits, signed by Robert
Morris, superintendent of finance, and their muskets as a gift, relying on the goodwill of
their new government to reward them eventually.
***
The British did not evacuate their last outposts in America until Sir Carleton had
gathered all the Loyalists who claimed his protection. To Charleston and to New York
City, thousands of unhappy people made their way, often by long and distressing
journeys overland. From these seaports, shipload after shipload of sad-hearted people
sailed away, most of them never to see their homeland again. In November 1783, more
than seven years after they had captured New York, the last of the British fleet put to sea.
George Washington marched in, his raggedy troops in stark contrast to the scarletuniformed British regulars who had just departed. But, as one spectator remarked, “They
were our troops . . . and I admired and gloried in them the more, because they were
weather-beaten and forlorn.”
***
John Adams had returned home from the Paris peace talks to help draft a constitution
for the State of Massachusetts, had then gone to Holland as America's minister in the
Netherlands. He pressed successfully for diplomatic recognition at The Hague and even
managed to convince a Dutch syndicate to advance to the United States five million
guilders. In case his countrymen failed to appreciate the magnitude of his achievement,
Adams was prepared to tell them. His success in Holland, he wrote, “was the greatest
blow that had been struck in the American cause, and the most decisive.” When he
returned to France someone remarked, “Sir, you are the Washington of negotiations,”
and Adams dutifully recorded it verbatim. And in the fall of 1782, he was back in Paris
to join the peace negotiations.
***
For Sam Adams, the end of the revolution could not have been a very happy time;
but then, happiness had never been the supreme goal of Samuel Adams. He preferred
virtue. While other men in the Congress and the army had found ways to improve their
fortunes, Adams had returned to Boston in the spring of 1781 even poorer than when he
had left for the First Continental Congress. Since his own house had been damaged
during the British occupation, the state allowed him to occupy, at nominal rent, a house
once owned by the British port commissioner. He used money due to him as clerk of the
Massachusetts assembly to pay for bits of furniture confiscated from the Tories. As the
peace negotiations went forward in France, Samuel Adams was elected president of his
state's senate and again aroused his countrymen by vowing to oppose any treaty that did
not protect New England's fishing rights. “No peace without the fisheries!” became the
cry.
Many of Adams' followers had dropped away, and John Hancock was swept into the
governor's mansion in an outpouring of popular affection. Once installed, he hosted night
after night of lavish parties and balls. In 1782 Adams ran against Hancock for governor
but finished a distant second in a poorly managed campaign. By now his tremors would
disappear for long periods but return ever more violently. As styles in dress grew more
opulent, he went on wearing the coats and breeches from the days when the revolution
was young. Again Samuel Adams was standing alone, but this time the past seemed to
hold more promise than the future. “I love the people of Boston,” he wrote to a friend.
“I once thought the city would be the Christian Sparta. But alas! Will men never be
free?”
***
Samuel Adams' first ally was spared the disillusionment of peace. James Otis had
lived for years on farms outside Boston, sometimes under restraint. Other times he was
lucid, and he even ventured into Boston occasionally to plead a case in court. After many
invitations, Governor Hancock finally persuaded Otis to come to dinner, but the evening
proved too stimulating for him, and the family had to send him back to his retreat in
Andover. By that time, Otis had become enormously fat on a diet of bread and honey,
and although he wasn't yet sixty he began to have premonitions of death. He was
fascinated by perishing in fire and told visitors he envisioned being struck by lightning.
In March, 1783, he drew up his will; to his daughter who had married a British officer he
left only five shillings.
Eight weeks later, when Otis' family was visiting him at the farm, a heavy cloud
arose in the spring sky. As James Otis stood in the doorway of the house, a crash of
lightning struck, and Otis fell to the ground dead.
***
Paul Revere's rides had become legend, but his services as a lieutenant colonel in the
militia had threatened to tarnish their luster. In one of the now-familiar engagements
with British troops, his men had refused to engage the enemy and Revere had marched
them back to Boston, and was later accused of cowardice and disobedience and relieved
of his command. Revere sought a court-martial to clear himself, but his request was
denied. Now in his mid-forties and angered by the slur against his name, he returned to
silver engraving, and after six petitions was finally given a trial in 1782. The court
acquitted him on all counts and ruled that Colonel Revere should be accorded equal
honors with the other officers of the confused and failed expedition.
***
The peace had left John Hancock with little to complain about. As governor of
Massachusetts, he reveled in his title, his entertainments, and his independence from
King George and from Samuel Adams. Hancock was now the first citizen of
Massachusetts; whenever he appeared in public, admirers ran beside his carriage to
cheer, gape at his mink coat and scramble for the coins he tossed out to them. As the
governor's wife, Dorothy Quincy Hancock served so many rich sauces to visiting French
nobility that she instructed her servants to milk every cow on the Boston Common, no
matter who owned it. Before the war's end, Dolly Hancock had completed her husband's
happiness by giving him a son; Hancock used his son's birth to demonstrate that he held
no grudge from the day John Adams had risen in Philadelphia and nominated a
commander in chief. He named the new heir John George Washington Hancock.
***
In Virginia, Patrick Henry had continued to surprise politicians who thought they
could predict him. When Horatio Gates was defeated at Camden, Henry forgave Gates
his role in the Conway Cabal and pushed through the Virginia legislature a tribute to the
general's past glories. Thomas Jefferson watched scornfully as Henry bought himself a
10,000-acre plantation and paid for it in depreciated paper money that Jefferson claimed
was not worth oak leaves.
Yet even his enemies acknowledged that the size of Patrick Henry's family gave him
unusual responsibilities. After his first wife died, he married Dorothea Dandridge, a
cousin of Martha Washington. Henry's wife had left him with six children. In time,
Dorothea would provide him with another eleven.
While tending his financial interests, Henry did not lose his political touch. Thomas
Jefferson might deplore his greed, but he never underestimated Henry's hold over the
state. The introduction of any legislation was hopeless if Henry opposed it. As the war
ended, Henry tried to help Virginians avoid paying their outstanding debts to the British.
At the same time, he also urged his state to permit the Loyalists to return from abroad.
Henry argued that Virginia's prosperity depended on greater population, and he was
willing to set aside personal resentment. “Open your doors,” Henry preached to
America. “Tell them to come and bid them welcome.”
***
After leaving the governorship, Thomas Jefferson found happiness most often in his
library. Jefferson had been a life-long collector of books, and by the end of the
Revolutionary War he had acquired more than 2,600 volumes. He was also producing a
book of his own - Notes on the State of Virginia - with essays which ranged from natural
history to moral philosophy. He also once again exposed his anguished conflict over the
question of slaves and slavery, deploring the way white children first witnessed
despotism on a plantation and then grew up to imitate it. He thought only the rarest of
men could remain undepraved; but though he considered himself one of these rare men,
his writings are far more revealing about his attitudes and the attitudes of his
contemporaries. According to Jefferson, blacks required far less sleep than whites, and
he offered as proof the fact that even after a long and hard day's labor in the fields, the
slightest amusement could keep them up until past midnight. Because blacks secreted
less by their kidneys than through their glands, he added, they could have a very strong
and disagreeable odor. Blacks seemed to him more passionate, but he believed their love
was more desire than the tender mixture of sentiment and feelings he defined as love.
But after compiling his observations, his biases, his keen interest and his ignorance,
Jefferson knew, as he had always known, the final truth about slavery: “Indeed, I tremble
for my country when I reflect that god is just.”
***
In Britain, Sir Henry Clinton had begun a long and fruitless attempt to explain his
failures as a commander. He wrote a massive reconstruction of the war that blamed
Britain's loss on the king's ministers and his fellow generals, especially Lord Cornwallis.
By that time the public had moved beyond excuses. Sir Guy Carleton agreed to assume
command in North America, but only to oversee the British evacuation of New York.
John Burgoyne and William Howe had both joined the opposition faction in Parliament,
and in 1782 Burgoyne was named commander in chief in Ireland. William Howe lost his
seat in Parliament, but with the king's personal support was named Britain's lieutenant
general of ordnance. Charles, Earl Cornwallis, did better still. Sent to India, he ran up a
list of accomplishments for the Empire that reduced Yorktown to a mere stumble in his
long career.
Benedict Arnold had not convinced Britain to pursue the war, but when peace came,
the king rewarded Arnold and his family with liberal pensions. Arnold's three sons by his
first marriage were given commissions in the British Army and lifetime pensions. And
the king eventually gave the Arnold family more than 13,000 acres of crown land in
Canada.
***
The American generals who had crossed George Washington politically did not
prosper as well as their British counterparts. While the peace treaty was still being
negotiated in Paris, Charles Lee died in a squalid Pennsylvania tavern. In his will, Lee
requested that he not be buried near any churchyard. In America, he explained, “I have
kept so much bad company when living that I do not chose to continue it when dead.”
His last estimate of George Washington described him as a “puffed up charlatan.” All
the same, Lee's estate repaid the money Lee had borrowed that long ago day at Mount
Vernon from his comrade-in-arms George Washington.
Horatio Gates' disgrace at Camden had endured for two years before the Congress
repealed its call for an official inquiry and reinstated him as the second-ranking officer of
the Continental Army. The same year the peace treaty was signed, Gates left military
service to attend to his dying wife.
General Washington's indispensable partner at Yorktown, Admiral de Grasse, was
defeated in American waters only six months later. In April 1782 the British Navy
defeated him in a battle off Saints Passage in the West Indies, and de Grasse was taken
prisoner.
***
Silas Deane had been instrumental in bringing de Grasse's fleet to America, but he
immediately followed that up with an action that ensured that his country would never
honor him. In March, 1781, Deane had offered his services to Lord North, and began
writing letters from London urging Americans to end the war and stop insisting on
independence. His letters were printed in New York just as the nation was celebrating
Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown. By 1783 Deane had moved on to Belgium, where he
was living in cheap hotels and avoiding any face from home.
Thomas Paine, too, had gone to Europe in 1781 to secure aid from the French court.
He returned with a gift for America of 2,500,000 silver livres but reaped nothing from his
achievement. After Yorktown, he had to remind George Washington that “the country
which ought to have been a home has scarcely afforded me an asylum.” Washington
contacted Robert Morris, America's superintendent of finance, and arranged for Paine
secretly to be paid $800 a year for his future writings.
Paine had planned to write the history of the American Revolution as Benjamin
Franklin had once urged him to do, but when the peace treaty was signed, his clandestine
salary ended. He wrote one final Crisis: “The times that tried men's souls are over - and
the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily
accomplished.” Over the following months, General Washington continued to solicit
money for Paine, but a bill in the Virginia legislature that would have awarded him a
grant of land lost on its third try. The Treaty of Paris was a year old before the state of
Pennsylvania voted Paine a generous payment for his past services.
***
Francis Bernard had died of an epileptic seizure long before Yorktown, and Thomas
Hutchinson had died of a stroke. He didn't live to hear that James Warren and his wife
had bought his former estate in Milton and greatly enjoyed the magnificent view. John
Adams heard of Hutchinson's death while in Europe and sent a letter to the Boston press
that became the former governor's obituary. Adams did not feel obliged to temper his
judgment, and the words ambition and avarice figured prominently. But in his hatred
Adams endowed Thomas Hutchinson with a sort of grandeur: “He was, perhaps, the only
man in the world who could have brought on the controversy between Great Britain and
America . . .”
***
It was fitting that General Washington should bid farewell to the few remaining
officers of his quickly vanishing army at New York, the center of most of his hopes and
worries during the greatest part of the long struggle. They met on December 4, 1783, at
Fraunce's Tavern in New York City: Baron von Steuben was there, and so were Henry
Knox and James Clinton and a few lower officers. The commander in chief spoke in a
shaky voice, the words came out with difficulty: “With a heart full of love and gratitude,
I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your later days may be as prosperous
and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.” Tears ran down his
cheeks as he shook their hands in silence, and then they watched as he was rowed away
in his barge to the New Jersey shore.
Hurrying on, Washington reached Annapolis, Maryland, where Congress was now
sitting, and there, on December 23, the commander in chief of the Continental Army
appeared and resigned his commission in “a solemn and affecting spectacle,” as James
McHenry wrote; “. . . there was hardly a member of Congress who did not drop tears.
The General’s hand which held the address shook as he read it. When he spoke of the
officers who had composed his family, and recommended those who had continued in it
to the present moment to the favorable notice of Congress he was obliged to support the
paper with both hands. But when he commended the interests of his dearest country to
Almighty God . . . his voice faultered and sunk, and the whole house felt his agitation.
After the pause which was necessary for him to recover himself, he proceeded to say in
the most penetrating manner, ‘Having now finished the work assigned me I retire from
the great theater of action . . . and take my leave of all the employments of public life.’ “
By very hard riding, George Washington, private citizen, reached Mount Vernon in
time to keep Christmas Eve with Martha and her grandchildren.
***
CHAPTER FOUR
__________________
THE CONFEDERATION
When Richard Henry Lee presented his famous resolution to the Continental
Congress in June 1776, he called not only for a declaration of independence, but also for
the preparation of a plan of confederation, to be “transmitted to the respective Colonies
for their consideration.” The Continental Congress had perhaps been sufficient
cooperation when a group of colonies began protesting the actions of their home
government; it might even have been adequate to prepare for initial armed resistance
against the mother country, should such action become necessary. But now, with a
Revolutionary War actually begun, these sovereign colonies had little choice but to
consider some plan of union - if for no other reason than to heed Benjamin Franklin’s
sage advice that they must all hang together, or they would surely hang separately.
But on the issue of a central federal authority, these new Americans were as divided
as they had already been in the creation of their individual state governments. The
democratic spirits – the small farmers, the mechanics, and the Southern planters – held
true to their opinion that the further removed a government was from the people, the less
power it should hold. Their state governments, therefore, should hold the influence and
power, while the central government should be limited as much as possible. Most
Americans were determined not to create a new institution vested with the old powers of
king and Parliament. The states must retain control over military forces in order to
prevent their use against the people as the British army had been used. The state
legislatures alone should be allowed to authorize taxes on the people. There should be no
federal judiciary empowered to set aside decisions of the state courts or nullify state laws,
as the British Privy Council had been able to do. To the states should belong the right to
coin money, issue bills of credit, and regulate property matters and land claims.
Against these democratic states’ rights factions were aligned once again the
conservatives, the advocates of a strong central government, the merchants, investors,
men of wealth whose interests often extended across several state boundaries. In their
opinion, a central government should be dominant; it should regulate trade within the
union and with other nations; it should establish a uniform currency, enact navigation
laws, and conduct diplomatic negotiations with foreign nations. The central government
should control an army and navy and be able to use them to suppress domestic
insurrections and rebellions which might endanger existing private property. The laws of
a general congress regulating currency and financial matters should take precedence over
the states' acts. No state should be allowed to exclude merchants and business interests
from another state, and owners of large tracts of land should be protected against settlers
from other areas who might swarm in and help themselves to free farm land. The central
government should take possession of all western territory in order that the citizens of all
states might have equal access to such lands.
Only a few days after Richard Henry Lee’s resolution, the Continental Congress
appointed a committee, headed by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, to develop a plan for
an American confederation. Within six weeks, the first draft of their plan, called the
Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was ready, but it could not have been
presented at a worse time. Congressional attention was by that time occupied with more
crucial problems: independence had been declared, the Howe brothers had arrived in
New York with their army and navy, and the battles of Long Island and New York City
were looming ahead. The Confederation draft thus received only erratic consideration for
more than a year, and even those few debates that were held, soon revealed that the
proposed plan would face all sorts of opposition. It proposed a constitution that placed
few limitations on the powers of Congress, and issued no guarantees of any powers to the
states. There were disputes over the states’ representation in a new Congress, over state
boundaries, over western lands. There were so many disputes that final arguments did
not come until November 1777, when the Continental Congress formally adopted thirteen
Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, and on November 17 submitted them to
the states for ratification.
The Articles began by stating that “the stile of this confederacy shall be the ‘United
States of America’ . . . a firm league of friendship . . . for their common defence, the
security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare.” The states agreed to
assist one another “against . . . all attacks made upon them.” In the optimistic spirit of
things, the Articles also provided for the possible admission of Canada into the
Confederation: “Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of
the united states, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this union.”
Each of the thirteen states was to retain “its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and
every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not . . . expressly delegated to the United
States, in Congress assembled.” The states, in turn, could make neither treaties nor
alliances with each other or with foreign nations. They could not engage in war on their
own, unless their territory was invaded; they could not maintain warships of their own or
armed forces, except for local defense.
The central government was to consist of a unicameral Congress, in which each state
was represented by varying numbers of delegates, though each delegation was to have
only one vote. The members were to have freedom of speech and debate, “not to be
impeached or questioned in any Court,” as well as freedom from arrest during legislative
sessions, except for “treason, felony, or breech of the peace.” To this Congress was
reserved the sole right to declare war and make peace, to name ambassadors, and to
negotiate treaties and alliances. Congress determined the value of United States coins,
fixed standards of weights and measures, regulated post offices, appointed all United
States military and naval officers, and supervised Indian affairs.
The nearest thing to an executive branch in this government was a Committee of the
States, consisting of one delegate from each state. This committee, which elected its own
presiding officer, was to act during congressional recesses. Congress also established
government departments which, given any real powers, might have functioned
adequately. But Congress had no power to give them, and though several capable
secretaries were appointed, they were never allowed to accomplish much. Robert
Livingston of New York presided over a Department of Foreign Affairs, and was
eventually succeeded by John Jay. General Henry Knox headed a War Department, and
the Department of Finance became Robert Morris’ responsibility. But under the
restrictions of the Articles of Confederation, these men could accomplish only what the
states allowed them to do, and for most of their terms they remained essentially
figureheads without any real authority.
The result of the Articles of Confederation was that the newly-created United States
of America was little more than a league of thirteen sovereign states, each of which
retained its independence and all powers and rights they had not expressly granted to
Congress. But that was precisely the kind of national government most Americans
wanted; the old distrust and resentment, even the fear of anything resembling British
authority, all were still strong enough to prevent the creation of a strong Congress to rule
over them, not to mention a powerful executive who might one day turn on them. Under
such conditions, the most remarkable thing may well be that the Articles of
Confederation were ever approved at all.
Yet approved they were. Most of the states’ legislatures ratified the Articles within a
year, though argument over the disposal of Western lands delayed final ratification for
another two years. But on March 1, 1781, the Continental Congress recognized the
formal ratification by all thirteen states, and the following day the first legal form of
government for the United States of America officially went into effect. On that day, a
Pennsylvania newspaper described the event in prophetic terms, if perhaps more
optimistically than the occasion might have warranted: “This great event, which will
confound our enemies, fortify us against their acts of seduction, and frustrate their plans
of division, was announced to the public at twelve o'clock under the discharge of the
artillery on land, and the cannon of shipping in the Delaware . . . “
“Thus has the Union, begun by necessity, been indissolubly cemented. Thus
America, like a well constructed arch, whose parts, harmonizing and mutually supporting
each other, are the more closely united the greater the pressure upon them, is growing up
in war into greatness and consequence among the nations.”
***
One of the very first problems to face the Confederation Congress was the disposal
of Western lands, one of the most bitterly contested issues of the day. Out there, past the
royal Proclamation Line and up to the borders of Spanish America, many of the states
still laid claim to millions of acres of land, granted to them under their original colonial
charters. Only very reluctantly, state after state agreed to cede these lands to their newly
created Confederation government: Virginia in 1783, Massachusetts in 1784, Connecticut
in 1786, followed by the Carolinas and Georgia. But everywhere there were claims and
disputes to be settled before any agreements could be reached – one of the major reasons
why ratification of the Articles had been delayed to begin with.
North Carolina was a typical case: in 1783 the state had opened its western lands –
known as the Tennessee country – to its restless frontier settlers at the ridiculously low
price of five dollars for a hundred acres. To no one’s surprise, within a single year nearly
five million acres of that land had been taken up under this offer. But almost
immediately, opposition had begun to this liberal give-away by the residents of the older
and established areas, whose taxes would now have to be used to protect this vast new
frontier. Soon petitions rolled in to the North Carolina assembly to cede the Tennessee
country to the national government in order to avoid such expenses, and they were
quickly supported by land speculators who saw potential increases in land values if the
United States controlled those sales. This combination proved strong enough to force
through the North Carolina assembly a bill which ceded all its remaining western lands to
the national government.
But the settlers who already lived in the Tennessee country were not about to be
pushed around. At a mass meeting in Jonesborough in August 1784, they declared the
formation of an independent state, to be called Franklin, in honor of that most respected
of statesmen, Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin. The North Carolina legislature,
however, suddenly changed its mind; worried about losing so much of its land and so
many of its citizens, the assemble repealed the previous cession act, while at the same
time promising the Westerners more governmental services, particularly protection from
Indian attacks. Thus, when the provisional Franklin assembly met in December, there
were two rival forces: one group favored accepting North Carolina’s proposal and to
remain within the state, while the majority renewed the declaration of independence. Led
by John Sevier, a celebrated Indian fighter, they adopted a constitution similar to that of
North Carolina, and drew up a petition to Congress for admission as a state of the Union.
But the State of Franklin never got off the ground. Congress not only refused to
admit it into the Union, but rejected a controversial treaty in which the Tennesseans had
‘persuaded’ some Cherokee chiefs to relinquish enormous tracts of land. By that time,
too, North Carolina had made so many concessions to the inhabitants of Franklin that
most of them decided to end the fruitless experiment in statehood and return their
territory to North Carolina. When Sevier's term as governor ended there was no interest
at all in electing a successor, and by early 1789, the State of Franklin had passed into
oblivion. John Sevier remained active in frontier politics, and in 1796 began the first of
his six terms as governor of the new State of Tennessee.
These Western territories had now become the problem of the Confederation
Congress - once the lands had been surrendered by the states, there was no more
government and law in this wilderness, and something had to be done to provide
government administration for these people. It was the regulation of this so-called
Northwest, a territory which now stretched from the northern Kentucky country to
Canada, that became one of the few lasting achievements of the Confederation
government.
The man chiefly responsible for the foundation of the first Western policy of the
United States was Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson had long been deeply interested in the
West, and would remain so for the rest of his life - not as a speculator, as were so many
of his contemporaries, but as a statesman, a scientist, and above all, as the spokesman of
an agrarian democracy. Where others were ready to hand the Western lands over to
speculators, Jefferson wanted to see the lands occupied by actual settlers and farmers;
where others regarded the Westerners as little more than restless never-do-wells, if not
outright outlaws, who could be controlled only by military force, Jefferson saw a
population of peaceful, industrious yeoman farmers, governed by assemblies they
themselves had elected. It was Jefferson’s well-known interest and faith in the West that
almost naturally made him chairman of a committee to draw up plans for the
administration of the territory.
The original draft by this committee reflected many of Mr. Jefferson’s views and
some of his overly idealistic notions as well. The plan was to carve fourteen new states
from the national domain, each neatly shaped in squares, and saddled with such flighty
names as Sylvania, Michigania, Cheronesus, Assenissippa, Metropotamia, Illinoia,
Polypotania and Pelisipia. In each of these new units the free adult males were to
establish a temporary government, adopt a constitution, and use any of the laws of the
original thirteen states. Whenever its population reached 20,000, the unit could then
draw up a permanent constitution and plan of government. This government would
forever remain a part of the Confederation and bear its share of the federal expenses and
debts. After 1800, all slavery and involuntary servitude would be banned from the
territory. And whenever a unit obtained as many inhabitants as the least populous
original state, Congress might admit the unit into the Union as a state.
Congress did in fact adopt this report as the Ordinance of 1784, though with two
important changes: discarded was the specific provision for fourteen states, along with
the fanciful names selected for them; and, tragically for future generations of Americans,
the Confederation Congress set a precedent by removing the ban on slavery. Yet, after
all the work was done, the plan was never implemented at all. Opposition to the 1784
Ordinance came from all sides. Easterners feared that too many states would emerge
from the region, overshadowing the political power of the seaboard states, forcing them
to accept agrarian priorities and interests. Others voiced the old prejudices that regarded
frontier folk as little more than lawless mobs, certain that the proposed liberal
governments for that wild country would inevitably end in chaos. And the Westerners
themselves objected to the rigid boundaries stipulated, preferring to let nature take its
course.
Jefferson also served on a committee appointed to provide for the survey and sale of
these Western lands, and there, too, he had his own ideas - though his personal belief that
the lands should be given away to actual settlers was soon abandoned in view of the
Congressional need for revenue. Obviously, the sale of so much land could provide a
healthy source of revenue, and the resulting Ordinance of 1785 tried to do just that
through an intricate system of organization. The government-owned lands in the West
were now to be divided into townships six miles square, each consisting of thirty-six
sections of 640 acres each. All sections in every township were to be numbered and sold
in consecutive order; Section Sixteen in each township was to be reserved “for the
maintenance of public schools,” while other sections were to be set aside for government
use. One-seventh of all the land was allocated to the Secretary of War, to be distributed
by him “for the use of the late Continental Army.”
The Ordinance did provide security for the purchasers by preventing the helterskelter development of earlier frontier settlements, and by avoiding the conflicting claims
that had long troubled westward expansion. But this orderly system also prevented the
hoped for revenue bonanza from land sales; surveys were slow, and very few prospective
settlers had the $640 needed to buy an entire section at the minimum price of a dollar an
acre. Two years after the passage of the land ordinance, only a fraction of the acreage
had been surveyed, and rough terrain and repeated Indian attacks slowed the work still
more. By the fall of 1787, government records showed only little more than $175,000 in
profits - and nearly all of that had come in the form of highly depreciated paper currency.
It was inevitable, perhaps, that the vast Northwest wilderness would attract the land
speculators, who saw in it great financial opportunities. Rufus Putnam, a New England
general, and several associates had already formed the Ohio Company for just such
purposes. Veterans of the late war had been paid off in Continental certificates of
indebtedness, which the government would accept for land, but which otherwise were all
but worthless; the Ohio Company now offered to exchange its company stock for the
veterans certificates, which it would, in turn, use to purchase large tracts of Western
lands. The company, of course, expected to reap rich profits by reselling small plots of
this same land to settlers. The proposal was clearly against all provisions of the 1785
Land Ordinance, and company agents found Congress little interested in such dealings.
Just as the agents were ready to give up on the scheme, they were approached by
William Duer, Secretary of the Board of Treasury, who made an incredible proposal to
the Ohio Company representatives. A group of wealthy merchants, together with a
number of government officials and members of Congress had formed the Scioto
Company for the purpose of land speculations in the West. Because of the official
position of so many of their members, however, the Scioto Company could not openly
apply for western land grants. Mr. Duer therefore proposed that if the Ohio Company
would renew the previous request for Western land purchases, Duer would see to it that
the deal was approved - provided that this time the Ohio Company would also ask for
lands which the Scioto Company was hoping to acquire. Within a few days thereafter,
the Board of Treasury, with the approval of Congress, sold to the Ohio Company its
originally requested 1,500,000 acres, plus 5,000,000 acres more, just as had been planned
by the Scioto Company managers – all of it at eight cents an acre, and all of it to be paid
for with depreciated veterans certificates.
But out of this sordid deal there emerged, phoenix-like, the great Northwest
Ordinance of 1787. No sooner had the sale been approved, than the company
representatives complained to the congressional members that they could not attract
many settlers into this wilderness unless they were assured of law and order there.
Congress was well aware of the region's problems, and had debated the issue for nearly a
year already. From Vermont, which had begun to threaten rejoining the British Empire
unless matter improved, to Tennessee, where John Sevier and his associates were deep
into their State of Franklin, the West was in turmoil everywhere, confirming conservative
Eastern opinion that the wild frontiersmen could never be trusted to rule themselves.
Now, in the summer of 1787, quickly and without much discussion, the
Confederation Congress passed what became its most important piece of legislation, the
Northwest Ordinance. The law provided for national territories to become states by
passing through three stages: at first, Congress would exercise all authority through
appointed officials - a territorial governor, a secretary and three judges. When the adult
male population reached 5,000, the territory would elect a legislature of their own, which
would share control with a council appointed by the territorial governor and Congress.
They would also send a representative to Congress who could participate in debates, but
who would have no vote. When the inhabitants had reached a total of 60,000 - the
population of the least populous state - the territory could frame a constitution for itself
and apply to Congress for admission to the Union. Eventually, the states of Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin were carved out of the Northwest Territory
covered by this legislation. Most of the provisions of the Northwest Ordinance were later
reenacted by the Congress after the United States Constitution superseded the Articles of
the Confederation, and provided a basis for territorial legislation in other regions.
***
For all the excitement and enthusiasm created by independence and the end of the
war, Americans could never forget that they were still a part of the larger world, just as
they had been as colonists. While they had freed themselves from the British Empire,
they still had to deal with a world dominated by such empires. The export of farm
produce and forest products, of catches from the sea, had always been a vital part of
American colonial life, and so had the import of manufactured goods from the mother
country. The new nation could not exist without such dealings, and its status and legal
position among the other nations of the world became a matter of vital importance.
Most of America’s trade and financial connections were limited almost exclusively
to Great Britain. While the colonies had been a part of the Empire, the British acts of
trade and navigation had both helped and hindered them, but many Americans greeted
freedom from these measures as if they had just been released from slavery. Thus the
Massachusetts Sentinel wrote in July of 1784 that Americans should be grateful “to the
supreme ruler of the universe by whose beneficence our commerce is freed from those
shackles it used to be cramped with, and bids fair to extend to every part of the globe
without passing through the medium of England, that rotten island, absorbed in debt, and
crumbling fast to annihilation.”
Obviously, such invectives were inspired by more than economic restrictions, real or
imagined. The fact was that a large part of the American population had for so long now
been indoctrinated into a hatred of all things British. Before 1775, the propaganda of the
revolutionary leaders had drummed the fear of British tyranny into the consciousness of
the population, and during the war itself, much was made of British ‘atrocities.’ Some of
it was true and some of it was not, but the revolutionary leaders indiscriminately spread
such stories in order to keep up popular enthusiasm for the cause. And once the war was
over, hundreds of real or imagined offenses by a vengeful Great Britain kept the rumor
mills churning. This antagonism became deeply embedded in American minds,
reinforced for generations to come by popular histories, by anniversaries of such events
as the Boston Massacre, Bunker Hill, Fourth of July celebrations, not to mention years of
more or less serious disputes with the former mother country.
At the close of the Revolutionary War, moreover, such feelings were reinforced with
the return of many of the Loyalists and the question of what to do with people who, in
spirit or in action, had supported the British cause. Some had simply fled to Great
Britain, and some had remained in America behind the British lines. But others had
actually taken up arms against their fellow-colonists, and now that the war was over,
many would have liked to return to their old homes, or at least remain in their homeland
after the British army had been withdrawn.
During the peace negotiations, they began to appeal for protection of some sort, and
two articles in the final Treaty of Paris did in fact address their problems. Article Five
declared that Congress should recommend to the states' legislatures that the property of
British citizens should be returned, as long as they had not taken up arms against the
Americans. All other persons were to have liberty to return for a period of one year to
seek recovery of any property that had been confiscated. Article Six provided that there
be no further confiscation of property, that there be no further prosecution of persons for
their actions during the war, and that all Loyalists still held in confinement at the time of
ratification of the peace treaty be released.
Other Loyalists had already assured their property and safety even before the peace
treaty terms were being worked out. Many of them had kept up their contacts and
friendships with Patriot Americans despite their differences, and as the war ended, they
sought the help of these friends. And they did not appeal in vain. Many a conservative
Patriot held similar political and social views, even if they had disagreed on the question
of independence. Many of the wealthy conservative Americans were Loyalists at heart
themselves, but had sided with the Patriots in order to preserve their estates and their way
of life. Men like Alexander Hamilton wrote to a friend that he thought “we have already
lost too large a number of valuable citizens,” and deplored the fact that “second class
merchants” with no apparent social graces and of no political consequence were now
growing rich on dealings that had previously been reserved for the aristocratic members
of society. Timothy Pickering, prominent general and future United States Cabinet
member, openly declared that if some of those who had remained in the country could be
exchanged for some who had fled, the country as a whole would be better for it.
The Loyalists thus had strong and influential friends among conservative Americans
in nearly all the states, and most everywhere the legislatures gradually removed all
barriers against their return. But the feelings of the conservative elements among the
Patriots were clearly not those of the people in general, including many of the democratic
leaders, who would never forgive the Tories, and were determined that they be never
allowed to return and enjoy the independence which they had fought to avoid.
Thousands of their kind were leaving for Canada, reported William Paterson of New
Jersey, and he wished “speed to them all!” From Philadelphia it was reported that
associations were being formed everywhere to keep the Loyalists from returning to
Pennsylvania and the other Northern states. In New York, too, in community after
community all over the state, public meetings were held and resolutions were passed,
insisting that those who had joined the British should not be allowed to return.
Still, by the time of the United States Constitutional Convention, practically all the
states had repealed their wartime measures against the Loyalists. But though many of
them were gradually admitted back into American society, and though some of them
were even elected to important state positions, few were ever able to recover their
confiscated properties. Those who chose to stay in exile in Great Britain lived out their
lives in lonely isolation. Those who had settled in Canada, where they had been granted
some three million acres of land by the British government, brought a new vigor and
valuable imperial sentiment to Upper Canada and Nova Scotia. By 1782, the British
government was paying £ 70,000 in pension to Loyalist exiles, and was paying
compensation to those who had lost offices and property. But even decades later, the
government was still being besieged to meet debts outstanding to English merchants by
her former American colonies.
Not all Americans were united, therefore, in their feelings toward Great Britain, not
even all of the Patriots, and certainly not groups like the merchants, the planters, or even
the farmers. Membership in the British Empire had been so many things to so many
people that it was all but impossible at the time to realistically evaluate its true
advantages or disadvantages. And all the various groups of Americans were affected
differently by the imperial regulations and restrictions.
Merchants, for example, had made money largely by trading with the British Empire,
and they wanted to continue to do so – in fact, many did not think they could survive
without it. Those whose main business was the importation of British goods were little
bothered by British trade regulations, while those who made a business of importing nonBritish goods certainly resented the laws of trade and navigation as an attack on
American liberties – and used it as an excuse and a justification for smuggling. American
farmers probably had little opinion – or interest – one way or another in British
regulations except, perhaps, when it interfered with their movements to new lands, while
the tobacco planters of the South were hard hit by the British trade laws and charges,
which took away so large a part of their crop’s profitability. And American ship owners,
whose chief business was the carrying trade, enjoyed all the advantages as member of the
worldwide society that was the British Empire.
For a while, at least, Americans appeared to be headed toward the unrealistic ideal of
free trade, but the American peace negotiators in Paris, all men from the leading
commercial towns of the United States, had no intentions of allowing their country to go
its separate way. Equally unrealistic, they now tried to have the best of both worlds -
both independence and all the commercial advantages they had had under the rule of the
Empire.
There were many interests in England which were quite willing to alter the
Navigation Acts in favor of the United States. Certainly men like Lord Shelburne and
William Pitt favored a free trade with the United States, and so did the English merchants
whose chief business had been the trade with the American colonies. They were afraid
that European competitors might steal from them what had been England's greatest
market. And the West Indian planters, a powerful pressure group, recognized that the
very life of their islands depended on a regular supply of food, lumber, and other
provisions from the former mainland colonies. All wanted unhampered trade with the
United States, where the much-needed products could be purchased more reasonably than
anywhere else.
But Parliament soon demonstrated the political realities of the times when it
denounced both Shelburne and the proposed provisions of the peace treaty. Shelburne
resigned, and with his departure vanished all hopes for an effective trade agreement.
William Pitt tried, but the opposition remained unmoved by any arguments. The
Americans be damned; they would take over the entire West Indies' trade; they would
compete with English shipping everywhere in the Empire; Britain would decline in peace
and be helpless in war. Wrote the conservative Lord Sheffield “. . . it is the situation she
(the United States) herself has chosen by asserting her independence . . . By asserting
their Independence the Americans have renounced the privileges, as well as the duties, of
British subjects. If, in some instances, as in the loss of the carrying trade, they feel the
inconvenience of their choice, they can no longer complain.”
The mercantilists now gained undisputed control in Parliament, and all during the
summer of 1783 they backed a series of orders and decisions designed to monopolize the
imperial traffic. The moving force behind much of this legislation was William Knox,
former Undersecretary for the American Colonies, a man whose bitterness toward the
United States knew no bounds. Not only had he lost his lucrative position in the
government, but his estate in Georgia and all his property had been confiscated. Above
all, however, William Knox was a firm believer in the subordination of colonies to the
mother country and in the purpose of the Navigation Acts. Not only was he horrified at
the very idea of cooperating with the upstart United States, but disgusted that there would
be no punishment at all for a people so stupid as to revolt against the benevolence of the
Empire.
Then, on July 2, came the order which was to cause the ship owners of America, and
particularly those of New England, so much anguish for so many years: an Order in
Council provided that certain American products and produce - lumber and lumber
products, livestock, vegetables and grain products - could from now on be shipped from
the United States to the British West Indies only in “British built ships owned by His
Majesty's subjects and navigated according to law . . .” West Indian products, such as
rum, sugar, molasses, coffee, 'cocoa nutts', ginger and pimento could be shipped to the
United States as if they still were British colonies. Cured meats, fish and dairy products,
all exports of great importance to the Northern states, would not be allowed into the West
Indies at all.
The hope of the supporters of this system was that the remaining British colonies –
Canada in particular - would take the place of the lost thirteen in supplying the British
West Indies, and that British shipping would take the place of American in carrying
supplies to the islands. Above all, they believed, they had saved the sacred principle of
the Navigation Acts. British shipping would, of course, continue to carry manufactured
goods to the United States. Thus Britain would develop a happy and lucrative triangle
trade: manufactured goods to the United States, their produce to the West Indies, and
West Indian products to England.
Hardest hit by the new rules were the New England ship owners and fishermen, and
their loud complaints and petitions obscured the plain fact that the rest of the United
States was little affected by these rules and enjoyed the new freedom to trade and sell
outside the British Empire. West Indian planters were even more bitter than the
American ship owners. They and their assemblies appealed to Parliament for revisions,
and their efforts were backed by sympathetic American newspapers. By the time
Parliament met again in the spring of 1784, “petitions, complaints, and remonstrances
were poured in from almost every island in the West Indies.” Some said they had but six
weeks' provisions; all expected slave rebellions; and prices of all provisions had risen
from fifty to a hundred percent as soon as the order was made public. Americans were
already threatening retaliation, and a press campaign in England demanded relaxation.
But the defenders of the ancient British traditions were not to be denied their victory.
In pamphlets and newspaper articles they appealed to the British public against any
special favors for the former colonies, or any relaxations of the sacred Navigation Acts.
Lord Sheffield published a pamphlet called Observations on the Commerce of the
American States, which greatly influenced many who might have been undecided on the
issue. The Revolution was not the calamity so many British had been thinking, wrote the
Prime Minister, for now Britain could regain the West Indian carrying trade which had
been lost to the Americans long before the war. Britain need not worry about losing the
American market for British manufactures; Americans had to have them and British ship
owners would carry them there. The Americans would be helpless for years to come.
The book was filled with fact and figures of trade in the past, and its tables and
appendices proved conclusively, for those who wanted such proof, that Lord Sheffield
was right and that, if anything, Britain was being much too easy on her former colonies.
In the end, the pleas of the West Indian planters were discounted; Canada and the
Maritime Provinces would take the place of the United States in supplying the islands,
and a special committee of the Privy Council recommended to let things stand as they
were.
But once again, British policy and the realities of American conditions did not
correspond. British North America could never supply the needs of the West Indies most of the supplies they did send they got from the United States in the first place,
because Canada had always imported much of what they needed, just like the West
Indies. Smuggling had never been a problem for American ship captains, and the West
Indian governments usually yielded to the pressure of local planters rather than worry
about some rules laid down in faraway London. Thus trade went on in the old channels
determined by supply and demand. The West Indian restrictions no doubt had far more
usefulness for American politicians than they had any serious effects on American ship
owners, though they protested loud and long.
In 1785, John Adams was sent to England as the first minister of the United States to
that country, while Thomas Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin as minister to France.
The British found Adams' stiff and formal nature hard to take, and he was often ignored
and even snubbed, yet he kept digging away at the problems. He and Jefferson were
finally able to get the British merchants to agree to waive interest payments on debts
during the war, but they never did get a commercial treaty. The British government also
felt, and correctly so, that the Confederation government would not be able to impose a
uniform trade policy on the thirteen sovereign commonwealths which now made up the
United States.
Yet in all Europe, it was the British merchants alone who continued to offer longterm credits to Americans. By resuming these practices of colonial times, however, they
exploited an American weakness: American merchants could not avoid going ever more
deeply in debt in order to obtain the British goods their American customers demanded
and needed. As a result, hard money drained out of the United States and into British
hands even faster after the Revolution than before, and the once bright dreams of
economic independence turned into fears of commercial bankruptcy. A few Englishmen
had the foresight to realize that a prosperous and solvent America would be a far more
valuable customer, but for now Tory mercantilism and vindictiveness remained the basis
of British policy throughout the Confederation period. But more than commerce was
involved; the three great imperial governments of Europe - Great Britain, Spain and
France - had no intentions of allowing an upstart republic across the Atlantic to become
genuinely independent and powerful within the generous boundaries of the peace treaty.
***
In the early 1780s, the town officials of a starving village in the Azores sent a plea
to the inhabitants of America, asking for Indian corn, flour, and other provisions, and
Portugal became a market for American fish and flour; but this trade, as much of the
Mediterranean trade, was always subject to attacks by the ever-present Barbary corsairs.
The British government, despite its pride in its powerful navy, had long paid tribute
to these pirates, and in turn issued passes to British ships which were thus able to sail in
and out of the Mediterranean with only minor difficulties. The Americans had had the
same privileges as colonials, and over the years had developed a healthy and extremely
profitable market for fish, wheat, flour and West Indian produce. This market remained
after the war, and Americans sought to supply it, only now they found themselves subject
to attacks and capture and even imprisonment.
American leaders remained undecided as to what should be done about these pirates.
John Adams, ever protective of the New England market for fish, suggested the payment
of tribute, just as the British were doing - after all, American merchants were losing
£1,000,000 each year because of these pirates. But Thomas Jefferson scoffed at any
suggestion of bribery; he proposed to go to war with them and end the threat once and for
all, and John Jay was ready to arm privateers to accomplish the same end. Congress, on
the other hand, was still too new and too timid for such decisive action. Besides, how
could the United States hope to subdue the pirates if so many powerful European nations
were not able to do so?
While men in high place debated policy, the merchants themselves had found their
own way to carry on the trade. The British government provided passes for its ships, and
nothing was simpler than to forge a British pass. Before long, most American vessels
sailing the Mediterranean carried such forged passes. Eventually, in 1787, a treaty was
made with Morocco at a cost of some $30,000, but Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli refused all
attempts at peaceful settlement. The issue was allowed to remain unsolved for nearly two
decades more, until Thomas Jefferson, as President of the United States, made good on
his earlier proposal and sent in naval forces which convinced the pirates to leave
American shipping unmolested.
At this early date, American commerce, as commerce everywhere, had already
established its own peculiar ways. Governments everywhere might enact laws and
regulations, but usually provided only the weakest of enforcement. Merchants and ship
owners everywhere followed the legal channels if they seemed profitable; if not, or if
greater profits could be found elsewhere, the laws be damned. Americans, as well as
English or Dutch or French or any other nationality, evaded these laws, perjured
testimony, forged documents, and made money. Commerce very simply went wherever
merchants willed it to go - governments or laws or pirates to the contrary. It was Robert
Morris, perhaps 18th-century's most successful merchant, who stated the international
merchant's credo when he declared: “A merchant, as such, can be attached to no country
particularly. His mere place of residence is, as merchant, perfectly accidental . . .”
New opportunities were beginning to open to Americans everywhere in the world,
and they took full advantage of them, until nearly everything that had been lost by the
separation from the British Empire was more than replaced by the gains made with
France, Holland and the Orient. Traffic in the trade goods of these countries was not
unknown even before the Revolution, but the freedom to do business with them was new.
The French, in particular, had high hopes of capturing a large share of the American
market, a fact which had been one of the goals used to persuade the French king to lend
assistance to the American Revolution. The Dutch had equally high hopes, but they
talked less and worked harder at the actual business of shipping goods back and forth
across the Atlantic. And the American traders proved ambitious enough to go out and
open the markets of the Orient for themselves.
The French began by breaking down their imperial monopolies in order to attract the
trade of the United States. This policy had begun even before the war, for the French,
more rationally than the British, well realized that if Americans wanted to trade with the
French islands in the Caribbean, they would do so, no matter what the rules. As early as
1763, the French government had already legalized the importation of American products
and the exportation of rum and molasses. A few years later, two ports were officially set
aside in Santo Domingo and St. Lucia to serve as depots for foreign merchandise. And in
1778, America was granted most favored nation status and free ports were established in
France itself, to which American merchants could bring and sell their products.
It was this direct trade between France and the United States that both sides hoped
would reduce the British share of the American commerce. But the fact was that many
Americans preferred English manufactures and continued to buy them despite artisans
and politicians who denounced continued economic dependence on Britain. Also,
English merchants provided credit and they knew the American market from long
experience. French merchants often depended on ship captains to sell their goods, and
most failed to establish the necessary American connections. Yet if they did supply a
limited market in French brandies, silks, linens and other luxury goods which were much
valued in America, this in no way interfered with the steady flow of goods between the
United States and England. All in all, the French attempts at cornering the American
market failed miserably, but the United States gained greatly as a result of the exchange,
for France always bought far more from America than she sold.
It was the Dutch traders who managed to take over a considerable part of the trade
that had once been exclusively Britain's. During his early contacts with them, John
Adams had declared that the Dutch were a nation of “idolaters”; they lent money and
hired transports to the English, sold goods to the Americans, and naval stores to France
and Spain. They got “money out of all nations, but go to war with none . . .” Eventually
the Dutch were forced into the war, and they came out of it with an interest in American
trade, stimulated by the fact that their West Indian islands had been a profitable way
station in legal and illegal wartime trade.
In the first flush days after the war, many English mercantile houses overextended
credit to their American customers, and many of them eventually went bankrupt. English
exports fell off sharply during those years, but the Dutch commerce with the United
States increased sharply. The Dutch possessed a vast wealth, but always used it
cautiously. Dutch bankers started loaning money to the United States government in
1782; by 1786 they had acquired enough confidence in the United States that they offered
to buy its entire debt to the French government. Only two years later the Dutch were
speculating in American debt certificates, and the credit of the American government was
better in Holland than that of any other nation.
Dutch mercantile houses established branches in America, particularly in New York,
Pennsylvania and Maryland, where they did their largest business, and soon outdid the
British in total tonnage shipped, despite the higher duty on Dutch shipping. But duties
were never a handicap for the Dutch anyway, for their skill at smuggling could not be
matched even by the notorious New England traders. Even simpler was the device of
branch houses in American cities. A ship leaving Holland might be Dutch, but when it
arrived in Philadelphia it belonged to the Philadelphia branch, an American company.
And on the return voyage that process was simply reversed. The practice worked both
ways, of course; soon the Dutch envoy to America complained that traders brought not
only rum and molasses from the Dutch West Indies, but such forbidden products as
coffee, sugar, indigo and cotton were shipped directly into the United States in American
ships and with such boldness that the coffee and cotton bales still bore the marks of the
Dutch plantations from where they were purchased.
But no matter how important this new trade with France and Holland might be, it
could not equal the interest, the glamour, and the anticipated profits that the beginnings of
trade with the Orient excited in America, especially so among New Englanders, who
were anxious to find new sources of income.
From the earliest days in Massachusetts, the wealth of the sea had offset the
deficiencies of the land. “The aboundance of Sea-Fish are almost beyond beleeving,”
Francis Higginson had written in 1630, “and sure I whould scarce have beleeved it
except I had seene it with mine owne Eyes.” The first settlers found not only mackerel,
cod, bass, and lobster, but also “Heering, Turbot, Sturgion, Cuskes, Haddocks, Mullets,
Eeles, Crabs, Muskles, and Oysters,” and before the end of the 17th century, fishing had
already become the main industry of Massachusetts Bay. The codfish became to colonial
Massachusetts what tobacco had been to colonial Virginia; by 1784, when the
Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a resolution “to hang up the
representation of a Codfish in the room where the House sit, as a memorial of the
importance of the Cod-Fishery to the welfare of the Commonwealth” - a symbol which
kept its place into the mid-20th century - the sacred cod had more than earned its
eminence.
But if the Old Dominion was founded, as its hostile critics declared, “on smoke,” the
Puritan Commonwealth was founded on salt water. And while tobacco and the newly
dominant Southern crop, cotton, put Southern roots ever deeper into the soil, the fisheries
drew New England ever farther out toward the world. During the revolutionary era, New
England fishery dwindled, less from the force of English laws than from the distractions
and demands of the war. In 1774, the little town of Chatham, for example, still had 27
cod fishing vessels; ten years later there were only four or five. Fishing schooners had
been fitted out as merchant ships and privateers, and peace-loving fishermen had become
fighting seamen.
The commerce of the sea demanded versatility. It called for quick decisions and the
willingness to jettison unprofitable cargo. It called for sale in Buenos Aires of whatever
was unusually scarce there at the moment; for the ability to pick up unexpected bargains
anywhere, for changing destination from Canton to Calcutta if a storm made the passage
dangerous; for sudden disposal of the ship itself if the voyage could not go on with profit.
Captain and super-cargo had unfettered discretion to shift investment, to convert the
voyage from one purpose to another, to give up and return home - to do whatever
promised the most.
There are countless examples of this search for new markets: stories of men long
since forgotten - so commonplace was adventure in their day - and of commodities hardly
remembered. As good as any is the story of Major Samuel Shaw and the marketing of
ginseng.
New Englanders had soon appeared everywhere in the East, but it was Canton, the
world's greatest tea market, that became the center of their attention. The Revolution was
barely over before Robert Morris, whose hands were everywhere and in everything that
promised a profit, had made plans to send a ship to China; in order to receive official
recognition for such a voyage, he asked Congress for letters worded in “ample terms.”
His captain, John Greene, was a naval officer of the United States, and Mr. Morris
thought this deserved “peculiar notice.” Congress responded with a letter of
introduction, addressed to the “most serene, serene, most puissant, high, illustrious,
noble, honorable, venerable, wise, and prudent Emperors, kings, Republics, Princes,
Dukes, Earls, Barons, Lords, Burgomasters, Councillors, as also judges, officers,
justiciaries, and regents” of all places where Captain Greene might visit. The letter also
certified him as a citizen of the United States and his vessel as the property of American
citizens.
While these preparations were under way, an adventurous captain from
Massachusetts set out in a 55-ton sloop loaded with ginseng. He got only as far as the
Cape of Good Hope when he met with a British East India trader. The Englishmen were
well aware of the danger of American competition in this market, and rather than see him
make contact with the Orient, they bought out the captain's entire cargo for twice its
weight in tea and sent him happily back to New England.
Captain Greene's expedition did not get away that easy. On February 22, 1784 he
sailed from New York with his vessel, the Empress of China, loaded mostly with
ginseng, a rare herb found in North America, prized by Chinese physicians as an
aphrodisiac and a prolonger of life. In charge of the business end of that voyage was
Major Samuel Shaw, Boston-born veteran of the American Revolution. Shaw had fought
at Trenton, Princeton, and Brandywine; he had suffered with General Washington at
Valley Forge, and he had heard Washington deliver his tearful farewell to his officers in
December 1783. And like so many other veterans, he re-entered civilian life without
property and burdened with debt. But when the Boston businessmen purchased the
Empress of China, and organized the venture to export ginseng to Canton, they appointed
Shaw supercargo of the voyage.
The vessel sailed eastward to the Cape Verde Islands, where Shaw saw whale and
swordfish, enjoyed the jovial ceremony of his first crossing of the equator; after six
months they reached the exotic shores of the islands of Java and Macao, and by the end
of August arrived at Canton. There they stayed for the next four months, trading and
preparing for the long way back home, and on May 11, 1785 reached New York harbor.
The Massachusetts Centinel announced the return of the Empress of China and declared
that “this passage is one of the greatest nautical prodigies we ever recollect hearing . . .”
The voyage was a great accomplishment for the nation's merchants, and the rumored
profits excited interest everywhere. Before the end of the year, several more ships set out
for China, including the Empress again, as many a New England merchants joined in the
profitable trade. Until these New Englanders carried the American flag to China, it had
been assumed that the whole annual Chinese consumption of ginseng would perhaps
amount to four tons. But the first American ship alone carried ten times that amount, and
within another year Americans had more than doubled their ginseng exports to China.
The demand and the price long kept up. In exchange for ginseng, the merchants secured
tea and other marketable products of China which, in turn, produced considerable profits
back in America.
Ginseng long remained worth a fortune, but even that had its limits, and before long
the China trade required additional products valuable to the Chinese traders. From John
Ledyard, the merchants of Boston and Salem soon learned the answer. Ledyard had been
with James Cook on one of his famous voyages to the East, and his accounts of the
expedition were published in Hartford in 1783. Ledyard now revealed that the Chinese
had paid unbelievable prices for furs which Cook's men had picked up on the Northwest
Pacific coast, and he proposed a simple system: send out ships to trade with the
Northwestern Indians for sea otter skins, take these skins to China and watch the profits
roll in.
Six Boston businessmen were convinced enough to put up the money to outfit two
vessels, the Columbia, under Captain Robert Gray, and the Lady Washington under John
Kendrick. They left Boston in September 1787, and eleven months later arrived at
Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island. There they spent the winter of 1788-89 trading with
the Indians, and the following July, Robert Gray set out with the Columbia for China.
After trading his cargo of furs for tea, they continued eastward and on around the world
to Boston - the first American vessel to girdle the globe.
Other captains soon followed in the wake of the Columbia with cargoes to the
Indians of the Pacific Northwest, and from there with furs to China. On this trade in iron,
blankets, trinkets, furs, silks, fragile china, tea, and other exotic luxuries and necessities,
many fortunes were founded and others enlarged. It was a difficult trade, for the Chinese
were troublesome trading partners, with cunning as great as that of the notorious sea
captains of New England. But the profits were immense as long as the otter skins were
plentiful and the Indians could be kept ignorant and their fickle tastes easily satisfied.
At first, as Shaw wrote in his journal, the Chinese could not quite understand the
distinction between Englishmen and Americans. “They styled us the New People; and
when by the maps we conveyed to them an idea of the extent of our country, with its
present and increasing population, they were highly pleased at the prospect of so
considerable a market for the production of their own empire.”
European traders soon came to resent the brash Americans who had virtually
overnight become serious competitors in the Oriental trade. What's more, Americans
imported far more than they could ever use, and they certainly did not store these goods
to have them molder away. Instead, they found their way to many European countries,
even to England, by devious means or otherwise, until a British consuls in America could
write home that Americans were shipping tea to the British West Indies, covered with
Indian corn, and he predicted that this traffic would soon “through some other medium of
deception be extended to Britain and Ireland . . .” He also declared that European agents
in the United States were actually helping Americans in this trade by supplying them with
goods on credit, hoping to get their money back after the goods had gotten to Europe, by
whatever devious and illegal means.
But everywhere in the world, the New Englanders carried on a lesser trade, some of
it legal, much of it not. No corner of the world remained untouched. Americans had
found their way into the Baltic soon after the war was over, and Sweden had been the
first of the countries in that region to offer a treaty. From Salem, American vessels also
appeared at the west coast of Africa in sight of British forts, but well out of range of their
gunfire, and there carried on a lucrative slave trade; they brought copal for varnish from
Zanzibar. In 1784, one of George Cabot's ships carried the first American flag to St.
Petersburg in Russia. Boston ships carried food to starving Irishmen. They picked up
sandalwood in Hawaii or otter skins in British Columbia as currency for Chinese tea.
They sought out the best coffees in the Southern Hemisphere, bought Peruvian bark to
make quinine against malaria, jute for gunny sacks, linseed oil for paint and ink, shellac
for ships and furniture.
Nothing was too big or too small, too exotic or too commonplace for New England's
enterprise. Salem quickly became the world headquarters for trade in the tiny
peppercorn, which in the era before refrigeration was wanted everywhere. In 1791 the
United States merchants handled less than 500 pounds of pepper; fifteen years later, they
exported 7,500,000 pounds - nearly the entire crop of northwestern Sumatra. Whaling
boats from New Bedford and Nantucket set out on voyages lasting as long as three years
all over the North Atlantic and South Pacific. In distant places, New England became a
name for the new nation. At the sources of otter skins along the northwest coast of North
America, the very name of Boston became a synonym for the whole United States, and as
late as the 1830s, prosperous native merchants on South Pacific Islands thought of Salem
as “a country by itself, and one of the richest and most important sections of the globe.”
***
Spain had been a most reluctant partner in the Revolutionary War, one never happy
with the prospect of an independent and aggressively expanding American nation. They
consistently demanded that Americans give up all claims to rights to Mississippi River
navigation, and even to claims west of the Alleghenies. And when at the end of the war
Great Britain returned Florida to Spain and secretly agreed that the new United States
southern boundary would be the 31st parallel, Spain again refused to recognize such
claims; she continued to hold on to Natchez on the Mississippi and to claim sovereignty
over all the Indians of the region - most of whom preferred nearly anyone else to the
onrushing Americans.
In 1785, the Spaniards finally decided to act on their fears of American expansion.
In that year they sent to the United States Diego de Gardoqui, who was to try and
persuade Americans to give up all claims to the Mississippi. The Spanish government
knew very well that certain groups in America intensely disliked the growth of the West
and were willing to stop it if they could. Men like John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and
several of the Middle States' leaders had already indicated that they were willing to cede
to Spain all of the trans-Allegheny country. Few of the American merchants had as yet
any vision of the great profits that could be made in trade with the West - they still faced
eastwards across the Atlantic. Land speculators with large eastern holdings were little
interested in opening the West, which would almost certainly lower the value of their
own holdings. Conservative political leaders in the East feared the future power of a
rapidly growing society of crude backwoodsmen who were bound to be unpleasantly
democratic-minded. Rufus King bluntly declared that the West had absolutely nothing in
common with the East, and eventually these differences would lead to separation from
the Union. If the West was permitted free use of the Mississippi, they could consider
“every emigrant to that country from the Atlantic states as forever lost to the
Confederacy.”
Gardoqui was therefore certain he would find sympathetic listeners when he arrived
in New York, particularly from John Jay and his wife, whom he had already met in
Spain. He considered Jay “a very self-centered man,” and Mrs. Jay a woman who “likes
to be catered to and even more to receive presents.” She dominated her husband, who
nevertheless appeared to love her blindly, and her opinion always prevailed, even if at
first he might disagree. Considering all this, Gardoqui said, he was certain that “a little
management in dealing with her and a few timely gifts will secure the friendship of both .
. .”
Gardoqui threw himself into the business of lobbying for the Spanish cause with
consummate skill. He supplied George Washington's plantation with Spanish donkeys,
he humored John Jay, and he became a constant escort to Mrs. Jay. “Not withstanding
my age,” he reported to his government, “I am acting the gallant and accompanying
Madame to the official entertainments and dances, because she likes it and I will do
everything which appeals to me for the King's best interest.” His success with the Jays
was spectacular, and had it not been for conflicting instructions from their respective
governments, the matter would quickly have been settled. But the Congress had
instructed Jay never to surrender the ‘right of Americans to use the Mississippi’, while
Gardoqui had instructions never to admit the right of Americans to the river. But
Gardoqui had also been authorized to make certain trade concession if only Americans
would give up their claims.
This was the gilded bait which American merchants were eager to swallow, and soon
John Jay asked Congress to allow him to surrender any claim to use the river for twenty
to thirty years. Congress, after a bitter debate, agreed. The South and West roared with
anger, and even James Madison, who sided with conservative politicians on so many
issues, remained a Southerner on this one. “The use of the Mississippi,” he said, “is
given by nature to our western country, and no power can take it from them.” And
Westerners protested: “Should we tamely submit to such manacles we should be
unworthy the name of Americans, and a scandal to the annals of its history.” The
Spanish finally relented somewhat and allowed Americans to use the Mississippi on
payment of duties, but the wrangling long continued.
In the end it all mattered very little, for as Thomas Jefferson had already predicted,
and as the Spanish themselves had realized all along, the westward movement of the
American nation proved irresistible. Time, and the growth of the American population,
would take from Spain all her vast dominions in western America.
***
The lack of an independent income was the great political and economic weakness of
the Confederation government, and it was this fact, more than any other, which
eventually brought about its downfall. If the government had been able to acquire an
income of its own, the strongest argument against it would have been shattered. As it
was, one state after another during the Confederation assumed the national debt share
owed by its citizens, mainly on the urging of local politicians who feared that national
payment of this debt would create a powerful central government.
The first part of the national debt to be assumed by the states was the military debt.
After Congress gave up paper money in 1780, arrears in the back pay of the Continental
Army began to mount, since any available cash went to pay army contractors and
suppliers and holders of loan office debts, not the soldiers. Congress demanded money
from the states to pay the army, but the states instead began paying their soldiers in the
Continental Army directly. Robert Morris threatened that the states would get no credit
for this money when the accounts were balanced, but the assemblies ignored him. And
when the soldiers at war's end were paid their back pay in congressional certificates, the
states began to accept these as well; some states paid interest on them, and others took
them in as taxes. There was nothing to do for Congress except to face the fact that in one
way or another, the states would be assuming this portion of the debt, and finally agreed
that credit would be given against the day of final settlement of accounts between the
states and the central government.
But the great problem of individuals everywhere was to find something with which
to pay taxes and private debts. The paper money had been repudiated at the end of the
war, and whatever specie had been available had long ago been drained abroad. The
supply of money was thus disproportionately small in view of the resources of the
country, and it certainly was inadequate to the needs of the people. Farmers were at a
special disadvantage, for whatever wealth they possessed was not in monetary value; and
it was the farmers, in particular, combined with debtors in general, who demanded new
issues of paper money, for tender acts requiring creditors to accept land and produce in
payment of debts, and for stay laws on collections. Men could be thrown in jail for such
debts, and in many places they were.
By 1786, when these struggles finally reached crisis proportions, seven of the states
had adopted some form of paper money, though their successes varied greatly. South
Carolina, and for a time New York, managed to keep its currency in healthy shape, but it
depreciated badly in North Carolina, where creditors bitterly opposed it. But it was
Rhode Island which provided the most extreme example.
Long noted for its individualism, Rhode Island's legislature had fallen into the hands
of the farmer-debtor groups, who lost no time in pushing through extreme laws in their
favor, thereby justifying the conservative fears of popular rule. The paper money which
was eventually issued by the state could be borrowed by debtors on easy terms, and
creditors were forced to accept the quickly depreciating currency. Things finally got so
bad that many creditors simply refused to accept the paper, while others decided to flee
the state rather than be forced to accept worthless paper, and before long the law itself
was repealed. But by pushing for such extremes, the radical farmers had played into the
very hands of the conservative merchants.
But the most bitter of all these struggles between debtors and creditors occurred in
Massachusetts. Trouble had been brewing there for years. Life had been hard enough
during the Revolution, and if independence had first brought a flush of prosperity, worse
times than ever followed. People and government alike struggled under crushing debts,
while much of the Revolutionary notes were hopelessly irredeemable. People were still
paying for the war through steep taxes. The farmers suffered the most, perhaps, for their
cattle, their plows, even their very farms could be taken away for unpaid debts.
Massachusetts courts were extremely harsh against debtors, some of whom had already
been thrown in jail and languished there while family and friends desperately scrounged
for money that simply could not be found.
Discontent was particularly widespread in the western part of the state, where
farmers comprised an important segment of the population, and out of their despair and
suffering, a deep hatred had grown up on the farms along the Connecticut and the
settlements in the Berkshires - hatred for sheriffs and other minions of the law who flung
their neighbors into jail; hatred for the judges who could sign orders that might wipe out a
man's whole property; hatred for the scheming lawyers who connived in all this; hatred,
above all, for the rich people in Boston, the merchants and bankers who seemed to
control the governor and the state legislature. When the state legislature adjourned in
July 1786 without taking any relief actions, meetings of protest were held in Worcester
and Hatfield. Daniel Shays emerged as the most visible leader among these people, but
the uprising was as natural and indigenous as any peasant revolt in Europe. The
malcontents did not consider themselves members of a Shays' Rebellion. They called
themselves once again the Regulators.
Still filled with the spirit of revolution, the people took matter into their own hands.
Their tactic was simple: close up the courts. Mobs prevented the meetings of courts in
places like Worcester, Northampton and Great Barrington; time and again, during the late
summer and early fall of 1786, rough-hewn men by the hundreds crowded into and
around court houses, while judges and sheriffs stood by helplessly. The authorities
feared to call out the local militias, knowing the men would desert in droves. Most of the
demonstrations were peaceful affairs, even jocular and festive, reaching a high point
whenever debtors were released from jail. Most of them were proud men, property
owners, who had served as soldiers and even officers in the Revolution, and now they
sought justice, not to topple governments. Some men of substance even backed the
Regulators, while some of the poorer folk feared these uprisings. But in general, a man's
property and source of income placed him on one side or another.
Then, as the weather turned bitter in the late fall, so did the mood of the Regulators.
The attitude of the authorities, too, shifted from the implacable to the near-hysterical.
Alarmists exaggerated the strength of the Regulators. Rumors flew about that Boston or
some other Eastern town would be attacked. A respectable Bostonian reported that “We
are now in a State of Anarchy and confusion bordering on a Civil War.” Boston
propagandists spread reports that British agents in Canada were secretly backing the
rebels. So now the Regulators were treasonable as well as illegal. The state suspended
habeas corpus and raised an army, but lacking public funds had to turn to local gentlemen
for loans to finance it.
Throughout these weeks, George Washington had been savoring the life that he had
hungered to return to years earlier, during the bleak days of Boston, Valley Forge,
Germantown. After the years of harrowing struggle with Britain and of earlier bloody
combat against Frenchmen and Indians, Washington luxuriated in the sense of order that
enveloped Mount Vernon, with its formal gardens, its greenhouses and graceful drives.
But now the news of the disturbances in the north came crashing in on his serenity.
Washington's first reaction was of sheer incredulity. What was the cause of these
commotions, he implored of friends; “do they proceed from licentiousness,” Britishinfluenced Tory propaganda, or did they have real grievances that needed to be
redressed? “If the latter, why were the grievances not dealt with; if the former, why were
the disturbances not put down?” Most mortifying of all to the general was the likely
reaction in London; the Tories had always said that Americans could not govern
themselves, and now they would be proven correct. “There are combustibles in every
state which a spark might set fire to,” wrote Washington. “I feel infinitely more than I
can express for the disorders which have arisen. Good God! Who besides a Tory could
have foreseen them…?”
In London, John and Abigail Adams also waited anxiously for news from
Massachusetts. As American minister to the Court of St. James, Adams paced
impatiently as weeks passed without word from home, across the wayward Atlantic.
When news finally did arrive, it seemed to be getting darker all the time. Not only was
Congress as irresolute and slow moving as ever, but the unrest in Massachusetts appeared
to be getting out of hand. What in earlier letters had been termed disturbances now were
verging on anarchy and civil war. His friends left Adams no doubt about the true nature
of the rebels. They were violent men who hated all persons of substance, especially
lawyers. Some were of the most “turbulent and desperate disposition,” moving from
town to town to inflame the locals. They would annihilate the courts, and then all law
and order. Among the leaders there were no persons of reputation and education. Not
one of Adams' correspondents sympathized with the rebels, or even explained their
hardships, except as the result of speculation and prodigality.
In Paris, in the spacious town house that he had rented on the Champs-Elysees, just
within the city walls, the American minister to France, Thomas Jefferson, pondered early
reports of the disturbances in Massachusetts. He felt not so much alarmed as mildly
embarrassed, for he did not expect independent farmers to disrupt law courts and abolish
debts - or so he had explained to his European friends.
Later that fall, more portentous reports arrived, and Jefferson hardly knew whether to
be more concerned about the alarms or the alarmists. The Adamses in London in
particular seemed to want to share their concerns with him. But Jefferson was uneasy at
the turn that his correspondence with the Adamses was taking. John had reassured him in
November, stating that the Massachusetts assembly had indeed laid too heavy a tax on
the people, but that “all will be well.” But by January, when the Regulators seemed
more threatening, Abigail Adams wrote about the “ignorant, wrestless desperadoes,
without conscience or principals,” who had “led a deluded multitude to follow their
standard, under pretense of grievances which have no existance but in their
imaginations.” “Instead of that laudible spirit which you approve, which makes a people
watchfull over their Liberties and alert in the defense of them, these mobish insurgents
are for sapping the foundation, and distroying the whole fabrick at once . . .” Jefferson
knew that Abigail was speaking for John as well as herself. Indeed, her views were
shared in varying degree by the most important leaders in America - by George
Washington, John Jay, Rufus King, Alexander Hamilton, by powerful men in every state.
Thomas Jefferson, almost alone among America's leadership, rejected this attitude
toward the rebels. The spirit of resistance to government was so important that it must
always be kept alive. It would often be exercised wrongly, but better wrongly than not
exercised at all. “I like a little rebellion now and then,” he wrote back to Abigail Adams.
“It's like a storm in the Atmosphere.” Yet he knew that the problem was not this simple.
He did not really approve of rebellion, certainly not a long and bloody one; he simply
feared repression more. The solution, he felt, lay in better education of the people and in
the free exchange of ideas. Unlike George Washington, he believed in reading the
newspapers, not because the press was all that dependable, but because a free press was
vital to liberty. If he had to choose, he said, he would prefer newspapers without a
government to a government without newspapers. Still, Jefferson realized that liberty
was impossible without order, just as one day he would prefer to run a government
without certain newspapers. The problem now was to reconcile liberty - and equality too
- with authority. As the summer of 1787 approached, he wondered whether the planned
convention in Philadelphia could cope with the problems that had eluded so many
previous constitution-makers.
But he would not yield to the panic over rebellion. Had they not all been
revolutionaries? Months later, he was still taking the same line: “The tree of liberty must
be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural
manure.”
Back in western Massachusetts, in January 1787, people were suffering through the
worst snowstorm any of them could remember. But weather could not stop the
insurrection. For months, both government men and Regulators had been eyeing the
arsenal at Springfield, with its stores of muskets and ammunition. Late in January,
Captain Shays led a thousand of his men toward the arsenal. General William Shepard,
commanding the 'loyal' troops, sent his aide to warn the Regulators to stop. Shays'
response was to laugh and to order his men, “March, God damn you, march!” March
they did, their muskets still shouldered, straight into Shepard's artillery. A single heavy
cannonade into the center of Shays' column left three men dead and another dying, the
rest in panic. In a few seconds the rebels were breaking rank and fleeing for their lives.
But the Regulators were not quite done. They gathered in friendly towns in the
Berkshires, hoping that the mountain range would provide a natural haven for guerilla
resistance. But this time they had underrated the determination of the government to
finally stamp out the last embers of rebellion. The well-armed militia ranged up and
down the country, routing the rebels. Hundreds of them escaped into New York and
Vermont, from where they sent raiding parties into Massachusetts towns. They roamed
through the streets, pillaging the houses of prominent citizens and arresting their foes on
the spot. After one such raid on Stockbridge, the rebels streamed out of town to the
south. They had time to free some debtors from jail and celebrate in a tavern. Then the
militiamen cornered them in the woods, killing or wounding over thirty of them.
The uprising was over; most felt that they had gambled all and lost all. Though it
was not much of a revolution as such, the reverberation of the rebellion were to prove
significant. It frightened conservatives and moderates everywhere in the Confederation,
and everywhere there was general fear that similar uprisings might occur throughout the
United States and lead to a civil war between the haves and the have-nots. And as it
turned out, the rebels had served as a catalyst in one of the decisive transformations in
American history. Though their own rebellion had failed, they had succeeded in
fomenting powerful insurrections in people's minds. Rising out of the grass roots of the
day - out of the cornfields and pasture lands of an old commonwealth long whipped by
religious and political conflict - they had challenged the system and had rekindled the
burning issue of this revolutionary age: Who was to rule, how, and how much?
The ultimate victim were the Articles of Confederation, as the upper classes became
convinced that they had been right all along - that there was a definite need for a stronger
central government which would prevent any such problems in the future.
***