Beginnings of the American People Part 9

Had they known them better they would have liked them less; and in fact ten years' "discussion of the points in controversy only served to put farther asunder" men who reasoned from different premises and in a different temper. Englishmen were generally content with the fact of power registered in legal precedents; but Americans, profoundly convinced that they deserved to be free, were ever concerned with its moral justification. "To what purpose is it to ring everlasting changes ... on the cases of Manchester and ... Sheffield," cried James Otis. "If these places are not represented, _they ought to be_." This _ought_ is the fundamental premise of the entire colonial argument. "Shall we Proteus-like perpetually change our ground, a.s.sume every moment some new strange shape, to defend, to evade?" asks a Virginian in 1774. This was precisely what could not be avoided. For the end determined the means.

If, therefore, the distinction between external and internal taxes was untenable, it convinced the American, not that Parliament had a right to tax the colonies, but only that it had no right to legislate for them.

And when Englishmen grounded the legislative rights of Parliament upon the solid basis of positive law, the colonial patriot appealed with solemn fervor to natural law and the abstract rights of man. Little wonder that the more logical the American argument became the less intelligible it appeared to most Englishmen, and what seemed at last the very axioms of politics to the colonial radical struck the conservative British mind as the sophistry of men bent on revolution.

If ten years' discussion convinced American patriots that they possessed more rights than their philosophy had yet dreamed of, constant dwelling on their condition developed a sensitiveness which registered oppression where none had been felt before. What a profound influence had those liberty-pole festivals so a.s.siduously promoted by men like Samuel Adams and Alexander MacDougall: "for they tinge the minds of the people; they impregnate them with the sentiments of liberty; they render the people fond of their leaders in the cause, and averse and bitter against all opposers." In August, 1769, John Adams dined with three hundred and fifty Sons of Liberty at Dorchester, in an open field. "This," he said, noting the effect of the patriotic toasts and the inspiring popular songs, "is cultivating the sensations of freedom." For a decade these excitable Americans did, indeed, cultivate the sensations of freedom; went out periodically, as it were, to "snuff the approach of tyranny on every tainted breeze"; a practice which, becoming habitual, developed a peculiar type of mind which marked a man out from his fellows. Such a man was William Hall, Esquire, of North Carolina, at whose house Josiah Quincy stopped; "a most sensible, polite gentleman, and, although a Crown officer, a man replete with the sentiments of general liberty."

How useless, indeed, were arguments drawn from positive law, or the citation of many legal precedents, to convince men _replete with sentiments of general liberty!_

And those who so a.s.siduously cultivated the sensations of freedom could not easily deny themselves the martyr's crown. Like the Girondins in France at a later day, many American patriots, such as Josiah Quincy himself and Richard Henry Lee, have somewhat the air of loving liberty because they had read the cla.s.sics. They liked to think of themselves as exhibiting "a resolution which would not have disgraced the Romans in their best days"; and seem almost to welcome persecution in order to prove that the spirit of Regulus still lived. It was no mere dispute in the practical art of politics that engaged them, but a cosmic conflict between the unconditioned good and the powers of darkness. "It is impossible that vice can so triumph over virtue," writes Lee in all soberness, "as that the slaves of Tyranny should succeed against the brave and generous a.s.serters of Liberty and the just rights of Humanity." Even the common people, said Joseph Warren, "take an honest pride in being singled out by a tyrannous administration." Knowing that "their merits, not their crimes, make them the objects of Ministerial vengeance," they refused to pay a penny tax with the religious fervor of men doing battle for the welfare of the human race. Consider the dry common sense with which Dr. Johnson disposed of the alleged Tyranny of Great Britain: "But I say, if the rascals are so prosperous, oppression has agreed with them, or there has been no oppression"; and contrast it with the reverent spirit which pervades the writings of John d.i.c.kinson or the formal protests of the Continental Congress. Reconciliation was indeed difficult between men who could treat the matter lightly, in the manner of Soame Jenyns, and men who, with John Adams, thought themselves one company with that "mighty line of heroes and confessors and martyrs who since the beginning of history have done battle for the dignity and happiness of human nature against the leagued a.s.sailants of both."

This lyric enthusiasm for liberty, and the radical political theories which were its most formal expression, were all the more incomprehensible to the average Briton inasmuch as they were the result of a conflict of interests in America quite as much as of English legislation. "The decree has gone forth," said John Adams, "that a more equal liberty than has prevailed in other parts of the earth, must be established in America." Not for home rule alone was the Revolution fought, but for the democratization of American society as well. The quarrel with Great Britain would hardly have ended in war, had the landed and commercial interests, those little aristocracies which had hitherto controlled colonial politics, been free to conduct it in their own fas.h.i.+on. At every stage in the controversy, the most uncompromising opponents of Parliamentary taxation were those who felt themselves inadequately represented in colonial a.s.semblies. Fear of British tyranny was most felt by those who had little influence in shaping colonial laws. And half the bitter denunciation of corruption in England was inspired by jealous dislike of those high-placed families in America whose ostentatious lives and condescending manners were an offense to the laborious poor, or to men of talent ambitious to rise from obscurity to influence and power.

What Heaven-sent opportunity, then, was this quarrel with Britain for all those who resented the genial complacence with which fortune's favorites, "with vanity enough to call themselves the better sort,"

monopolized privilege in nearly every colony! The Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions, which according to Governor Bernard of Ma.s.sachusetts sounded "an alarum bell to the disaffected," would a.s.suredly never have been pa.s.sed by the Pendletons or the Blands, nor yet by Peyton Randolph, who swore with an oath that he would have given 500 for a single vote to defeat them. They were carried by the western counties under the leaders.h.i.+p of Patrick Henry, recently elected from the back country to sit in sober home-spun garb with the modish aristocrats of the tide-water. Product of the small farmer democracy beyond the "Fall Line," uniting the implacable temper of the Calvinist with the humanitarian sentiments of the eighteenth-century _philosophe_, he joined hands with Jefferson and the Lees to form the radical party. It was this party which carried Virginia into rebellion against England.

And it was this party which destroyed the domination of the little coterie of great planters by abolis.h.i.+ng entail, disestablis.h.i.+ng the Anglican Church, and proclaiming a state const.i.tution founded, in theory if not altogether in fact, upon the principles of liberty and equality and the rights of man.

From the point of view of most cultivated and conservative Americans, admirable indeed were the restrained and conciliatory arguments of John d.i.c.kinson in support of the right of the colonies to be taxed only by their own representatives. But how vulnerable was his position in defending the existing government in Pennsylvania, by which the three Quaker counties, with less than half the population of the province, elected twenty-four of the thirty-six deputies in the a.s.sembly! "We apprehend," so runs a pet.i.tion from the German and Scotch-Irish counties of the interior, "that as freemen and English subjects, we have an indisputable t.i.tle to the same privileges and immunities with his Majesty's other subjects who reside in the counties of Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks." German Protestants and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, resenting Quaker domination more than they feared British tyranny, and the mechanics and artisans and small shopkeepers of Philadelphia, unwilling "to give up our liberties for the sake of a few smiles once a year," made the strength of the radical and revolutionary party in Pennsylvania. Opposed to all attempts to infringe their rights "either here or on the other side of the Atlantic," they at last gained control of the anti-British movement, and made use of it, employing the very arguments which d.i.c.kinson and his kind had used in resistance to British oppression, to overthrow the Quaker-merchant oligarchy that had so long governed the colony in its own interests.

One day in 1772 old Governor s.h.i.+rley, then living in retirement, heard that the "Boston Seat" was responsible for the opposition to Hutchinson's administration. When they told him who it was that made the Boston Seat, he is said to have replied: "Mr. Cus.h.i.+ng I knew, and Mr.

Hanc.o.c.k I knew, but where the devil this brace of Adamses came from I know not." He might have been told that they had risen from obscurity to inject into politics the acrid and self-righteous spirit of their Puritan ancestors. It would be interesting to inquire to what issue the quarrel with England would have been conducted had it been left to Mr.

Cus.h.i.+ng and Mr. Hanc.o.c.k. Half the persistent opposition of the brace of Adamses to British legislation was inspired by the commanding position of a few families in Boston--the Hutchinsons and Olivers, who "will rule and overbear in all things." As a youngster John Adams had confided to his _Diary_: "I will not ... confine myself to a chamber for nothing.

I'll have some boon in return, exchange: fame, fortune, or something."

Laborious days had gained him little. "Thirty seven years, more than half the life of man, are run out," he complains in 1773, "and I have my own and my children's fortunes to make." Yet there was his boyhood friend, Jonathan Sewall, already attorney-general, "rewarded ... with six thousand pounds a year, for propagating as many ... slanders against his country as ever fell from the pen of a sycophant." And the Hutchinsons and Olivers! With what concentrated bitterness does the young lawyer write of these men who, he is convinced, had submitted to be ministerial tools for the aggrandizement, of their families. His bitterness is the greater, and his conscious rect.i.tude the more obtrusive, because he also, the virtuous Adams, might have sat in that gallery. For the wily Hutchinson had offered him the lucrative post of solicitor-general--the open road to power; but he had declined it; he could not be bought by the man "whose character and conduct have been the cause for laying a foundation for perpetual discontent and uneasiness between Britain and the colonies, of perpetual struggle of one party for wealth and power at the expense of the liberties of this country, and of perpetual contention in the other party to preserve them." Not in England was the plot hatched, but in Boston itself; and much brooding on his injuries and his abnegations had brought Adams to the pa.s.s, in 1774, that he could set down the names of the three "original conspirators."

It was this opposition of interests in America that chiefly made men extremists on either side. Adams would have been less radical had Hutchinson and Jonathan Sewall been more so; and perhaps Hutchinson and Sewall might have been more loyal patriots had the brace of Adamses been less bitter ones. Most of those who in the end became Loyalists were men who had once been opposed to the ministerial policy, and many remained so to the end of their lives. But with every stage in the conflict they looked with increasing apprehension upon the growing influence of obscure leaders who proclaimed the rights of the people. The prevalence of mobs; the entrance of the unfranchised populace, by means of "body"

meetings and ma.s.s meetings, into the political arena; the leveling principles and the smug self-righteousness of the patriot politicians;--all this led many a conservative to consider whether his interest were not more threatened by the insurgence of radicalism in America than by the alleged oppression of British legislation. Boston is indeed mad, Hutchinson writes in 1770. The frenzy, kept up by "two or three of the most abandoned atheist fellows in the world, united with as many precise enthusiast deacons, who head the rabble in all their meetings," was not higher "when they banished my pious great-grandmother, when they hanged the Quakers." People of "the best character and estate ... decline attending. Town Meetings where they are sure to be outvoted by men of the lowest orders." And even in Philadelphia, where, according to Joseph Reed, "there have been no mobs, the frequent appeals to the people must in time occasion a change." "We are hastening on to desperate resolutions," he a.s.sured Dartmouth, and "our most wise and sensible citizens dread the anarchy and confusion that must ensue."

They were, indeed, hastening on to desperate resolutions on that 5th of September when men from twelve colonies a.s.sembled in Carpenter's Hall to form the First Continental Congress. A body of able men, it represented the division as well as the unity that prevailed in America; for there Galloway and Isaac Low, soon to become Loyalists, sat with Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, ready to welcome independence; of one opinion that American rights were threatened, irreconcilably opposed in their methods of defending them. John Adams, traveling by easy stages to Philadelphia, had noted with some surprise how greatly the Middle colonies feared "the levelling spirit of New England"; and he now found in the Congress many men who would hear "no expression which looked like an allusion to the last appeal"; men who were quite content to confine the action of Congress to protest and negotiation, deeming a non-intercourse measure useless if voluntary and revolutionary if maintained by force. For two weeks the advantage seemed to lie with these men; but on September 17, when the famous "Suffolk Resolutions"

were laid before Congress, many conservatives, unwilling to abandon a neighboring colony however much they might regret the step it had taken, voted with the radicals of New England and Virginia to approve the act which virtually put Ma.s.sachusetts in a state of rebellion. The final stand of the conservatives was made eleven days later when Galloway introduced his Plan for a British American Parliament, a serious and practicable plan according to Lord Dartmouth, "almost a perfect plan,"

thought John Rutledge, of South Carolina, for effecting a permanent reconciliation. But the motion, upon which "warm and long debates ensued," was finally rejected by a majority of one colony, and late in October the resolution itself, and all minutes concerning it, were expunged from the records of Congress.

After the rejection of Galloway's Plan, conservatives and radicals united to formulate the non-intercourse measures, which New England delegates thought so essential, and those famous addresses--to the King, to the Inhabitants of Great Britain, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies--which Pitt declared to be unsurpa.s.sed for ability and moderation. Able and moderate the addresses undoubtedly were; the work of conservative deputies, designed to conciliate conservatives in America and win Whig support in England. But the important work of the First Continental Congress was embodied in the "a.s.sociation," through which Congress "recommended" to the colonies the adoption of non-importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation agreements to become effective December 1, 1774, March 1 and September 10, 1775. From previous experience it was well understood that such agreements as these, far more drastic than any which had yet been tried, would prove ineffective if they remained purely voluntary a.s.sociations; and what made the non-intercourse policy of the First Congress distasteful to conservative men were the measures taken to enforce it. To this end it was provided that there should be appointed in "every county, city, and town" a committee of inspection "whose business it shall be to observe the conduct of all persons touching the a.s.sociation"; to publish the names of all who violated it; to inspect the customs entries; and to seize and dispose of all goods imported contrary to its provisions. Thus was a voluntary agreement not to do certain things transformed into a kind of general law to be enforced upon all alike by boycott and confiscation of property.

The a.s.sociation of the First Congress created a revolutionary government and gave birth to the Loyalist as distinct from the conservative party.

Radicals and conservatives had differed in respect to the theoretical basis of colonial rights and the most effective methods of securing redress. But the authority now a.s.sumed in the name of Congress raised the ultimate question of allegiance. Of the pamphleteers and preachers who now denounced the a.s.sociation as a revolutionary measure, Samuel Seabury perceived the issue most clearly and stated it most effectively: "If I must be enslaved, let it be by a King at least, and not by a parcel of upstart, lawless committeemen." Whether to submit to the king or to the committee--this was, indeed, the fundamental question during those crucial months from November, 1774, to July, 1776. For extremists on either side, the question presented no difficulty; for conservatives like Hutchinson, who had long since lost all sympathy with prevailing measures of resistance, or for radicals like Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, who pressed eagerly forward toward independence. But in 1774 the great majority of thinking men, abhorring the notion of war or separation from England, were yet convinced that strong protest, and even a kind of forcible resistance, was justified in order to maintain their just rights. These men sooner or later found themselves "between Scylla and Charybdis ": compelled to choose what was for them the lesser evil; to acknowledge the authority of Parliament in spite of laws which they regarded as oppressive and unconst.i.tutional, or to identify themselves with the cause of Congress however ill-advised they may have thought its action. Those men who wished to take a safe middle ground, who wished neither to renounce their country nor to mark themselves as rebels, could no longer hold together, and the conservative party disappeared: perhaps one half chose sooner or later to submit to British authority; the other half, either with deliberation or yielding insensibly to the pressure of events, went with their country.

That a majority of conservatives refused to meet this issue until after the battle of Lexington, and many not until the Declaration of Independence "closed the last door of reconciliation," was largely due to the widespread belief that if the colonies took a bold, stand the English Government would once more back down. Upon the conduct of radicals and conservatives alike, this persistent belief, one of those delusions which often change the course of history, exercised, indeed, a decisive influence. Even as high a Son of Liberty as Richard Henry Lee would have favored more cautious measures in the First Congress had he not been certain that "the same s.h.i.+p which carries home the resolutions will bring back the redress." Inspired among radicals partly by the feeling that so just a cause could not fail, the conviction was chiefly grounded upon information sent home by Americans residing in England. If Congress is unanimous, wrote Franklin in September, 1774, "you cannot fail of carrying your point. If you divide you are lost." Josiah Quincy, sent to England in order to get first-hand information, wrote letter after letter to men in every part of America, a.s.suring them that the oppression of the colonies was an affair of corrupt ministers who were not supported by one in twenty of the inhabitants of Great Britain.

"Corruption and the influence of the Crown hath led us into bondage," is the common cry here. "To Americans only we look for salvation." But yesterday a n.o.ble lord had a.s.sured him that, "this country will never carry on a civil war against America; we cannot, but the ministry hope to carry all by a single stroke." Certainly, he a.s.sured his friends, the common opinion here is that "if the Americans stand out, we must come to their terms."

Above all, therefore, America must stand out; she must be "firm and united," waiting the day when England would come to her terms. But the difficulty was to be firm and at the same time united; for with every measure bolder than the last, conservative men grew timid or deserted the cause to swell the ranks of the Loyalist party. It was precisely to preserve the appearance of unity where none existed that the journals of the First Congress had been falsified; for this reason alone many conservatives had voted for the a.s.sociation; and in the year 1775, after the battle of Lexington had precipitated a state of war, radical members of the Second Congress voted for conciliatory pet.i.tions, and conservatives voted to take up arms against the British troops, in the hope that if the colonists showed themselves unanimous in the profession of loyalty, and at the same time unanimous in their determination to resort to forcible resistance as a last resort, the English Government would never press the matter to a conclusion.

In February, 1775, Lord North had, indeed, offered resolutions of conciliation. The measure amazed his own followers and was greeted by the Whigs with Homeric laughter. Offers of conciliation could scarcely have arrived in America at a more inopportune time,--the very moment almost when the battle of Lexington came like an alarm-bell in the night to waken men from the dream of peace. And the resolutions themselves had all the appearance of being a clever ruse designed to separate the Middle colonies from New England and Virginia, in order to destroy that very union which Americans believed to be the best hope of obtaining real concession. Such the Whigs in England a.s.serted them to be; and generally so regarded in America, they were everywhere rejected with contempt. In November, after the non-exportation agreement became effective, when an American army was endeavoring to drive the British troops out of Boston, Lord North declared in Parliament that whereas former measures were intended as "civil corrections against civil crimes," the time was now come for prosecuting war against America as against any foreign enemy; and with the opening of the new year it was at last becoming clear, even to the most optimistic, that the English Government was prepared to exact submission at the point of the sword.

As the vain hope of conciliation died away, the radicals, under the able lead of John Adams and Richard Henry Lee, pushed on to a formal declaration of independence. This was now, indeed, the only way out for them. The non-intercourse policy, injuring America more than it injured England, had proved a hopeless failure. During the year 1775 imports fell from, 2,000,000 to 213,000; and after the non-exportation agreement became effective, business stagnation produced profound discontent and diminished the resources necessary for carrying on war.

So drastic a self-denying ordinance could not be maintained, for "people will feel, and will say, that Congress oppresses them more than Parliament." Unable "to do without trade," they were "between Hawk and Buzzard"; and on April 6, 1776, the ports of America were opened to the world. "But no state will treat or trade with us," said Lee, "so long as we consider ourselves subjects of Great Britain." A declaration of independence was therefore recognized, gladly by some, with profound regret by many more, as the only alternative to submission; for it alone would make possible that military and commercial alliance with France without which America could not successfully withstand the superior power of Great Britain; and at the same time it would enable the _de facto_ colonial Governments, with a show of legality, to suppress the disaffected Loyalists and confiscate their property to the uses of the cause which they had so basely betrayed.

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, in behalf of the Virginia delegation and in obedience to instructions from the Virginia a.s.sembly, accordingly moved "that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; ... that it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign alliances"; and "that a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective colonies for their consideration." Debated at length, the final decision, already a foregone conclusion, was deferred in deference to the wishes of the conservative Middle colonies. It was on July 2 that the momentous resolutions were finally carried; and two days later the Congress published to the world that famous declaration which derived the authority of just governments from the consent of the governed, and grounded civil society upon the inherent and inalienable rights of man.

In the history of the Western world, the American Declaration of Independence was an event of outstanding importance: glittering or not, its sweeping generalities formulated those basic truths which no criticism can seriously impair, and to which the minds of men must always turn, so long as faith in democracy shall endure.

V

The men who with resolution and high hope pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the defense of these novel principles, could scarcely have foreseen the emotional reaction that was soon to follow; the profound disillusionment of those weary years when only an occasional victory came to lift the despondency occasioned by constant defeat: years when "the spirit of the people begins to flag, or the approach of danger dispirits them"; when "few of the numbers who talked so largely of death and honor" were to be found on the field of battle; when a febrile enthusiasm for liberty and the just rights of humanity seemed strangely transformed into the sordid spirit of the money-changer; those years of the drawn-out war when drudgery in obscure committee rooms was valued above declamation and the practical sense of Robert Morris counted for more than the finished oratory of Richard Henry Lee; the times that tried men's souls, when "the summer soldier and the suns.h.i.+ne patriot ... shrinks from the service of his country, but he that stands ... deserves the love of man and woman."

Happily for America there were many who kept the faith, who fought the good fight, during these dark days. Yet one is apt to think that the Declaration must have proved a vain boast of rebels but for that Virginia colonel whom the Congress appointed, on June 17, 1775, to be "General and Commander in Chief of the armies of the United Colonies"; that man so modest that he thought himself incompetent for the task, yet of such heroic resolution that neither difficulties nor reverses nor betrayals could bring him to despair; that man of rect.i.tude, whose will was steeled to finer temper by every defeat, and who was not to be turned, by any failure or success, by any calumny, by gold, or by the dream of empire, from the straight path of his purpose.

He had come, in June, 1776, fresh from the notable achievement which drove the British army out of Boston, to defend New York against the most formidable military and naval force ever seen in America. With a rashness born of inexperience or the necessity of making a stand, Was.h.i.+ngton carried his undisciplined farmers and frontier riflemen across to Brooklyn Heights on Long Island, to meet inevitable defeat at the hands of General Howe. A s.h.i.+p or two, which the slow-moving British commander might have sent up the East River, would have prevented the masterly retreat which saved the American army from capture. But Howe seemed bent only upon occupying New York, which thus became, and until the end of the war remained, the British and Loyalist headquarters. With a deliberation that enraged the Loyalist and non-plussed his subordinates, the general pushed the patriot army northward to White Plains, missing there a second opportunity to win a decisive battle. But the capture of Fort Was.h.i.+ngton on the Hudson opened the river to the British navy, and compelled the American forces to retreat through New Jersey, and across the Delaware River at Trenton into Pennsylvania. Half a year had not pa.s.sed since the Declaration of Independence when the cause of America seemed already lost. "We looked upon the contest as nearly closed," Major Thomas a.s.sured his patriot friends, "and considered ourselves a vanquished people." The indifferent populace of New York and New Jersey came in crowds to swear allegiance to the victorious army. No one doubted that Howe would cross the river and take Philadelphia. The jubilant Loyalists of the capital city awaited their deliverance. Congress, bundling its records into a farm wagon, scrambled away to Baltimore. And even the steadfast Was.h.i.+ngton, with his tatterdemalion army reduced to three thousand effectives, wrote that if new troops could not be raised without delay "the game is nearly up."

Of Villeroi, a general in the army of Louis XIV, it was said that he had "well served the king--William." It might be said of Howe that he shares with Was.h.i.+ngton the merit of achieving American independence. He never quite deserted the patriot cause; and now, at this critical moment, instead of pressing on to Philadelphia, he retired his main army, leaving only some Hessian outposts at Trenton and Bordentown. This arrangement enabled Was.h.i.+ngton to revive the waning enthusiasm of the country by executing one of the most daring and brilliant strokes of the war. Amidst the snow and sleet of a bitter December night, he ferried his forlorn little force through the floating ice of the Delaware, and on Christmas morning of 1776 surprised and captured Colonel Ball and one thousand Hessians. Cornwallis, on the point of departure for England, was hastily recalled to recover the lost ground; but he was out-generaled and defeated, and Was.h.i.+ngton occupied Morristown Heights, where he would indeed have been "left to scuffle for Liberty like another Cato," had he not been, to his great amazement, allowed by the British commander to remain unmolested there until the next spring. "All winter," he writes, "we were at their mercy, with sometimes scarcely a sufficient body of men to mount the ordinary guards, liable at every moment to be dissipated, if they had only thought proper to march against us."

If the conduct of the British general in the winter of 1777 amazed Was.h.i.+ngton, his management of the next campaign was even more inexplicable. The army of Burgoyne was then moving slowly southward from Canada by way of Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. It was the intention of the ministers that Howe should cooperate with the northern army; and Was.h.i.+ngton supposed that the purpose of the campaign was to effect a complete separation of New England from the more Loyalist Middle and Southern colonies. As this was thought to be precisely the most fatal circ.u.mstance which could come to pa.s.s, an army, far larger than that of Was.h.i.+ngton, was gathering to check if possible the advance of Burgoyne. But Howe neither moved north to the relief of Burgoyne, nor sent any part of his troops until it was too late. Wasting the early summer in fruitless maneuvers in northern Jersey, he finally carried his army by sea to the Chesapeake Bay, where he arrived on the 21st of August. The general had sailed three hundred miles, and had now to march fifty miles more, in order to reach Philadelphia, which was ninety-two miles from the point where he first embarked; and the army of Was.h.i.+ngton, the very army which he had sailed so far and wasted so many precious weeks to avoid, still lay across his path. At Brandywine and Germantown he fought, and easily won, the battles which could no longer be avoided. The way to Philadelphia was indeed open; but the fate of the northern army was already sealed. Caught in the difficult forests of the Hudson Valley, with supplies exhausted, unable either to retreat or to advance, on October 17, thirteen days after Howe won the battle of Germantown, Burgoyne lost the battle of Saratoga and surrendered his entire army to General Gates.

The loss of Philadelphia was almost forgotten in the general rejoicing that followed the victory of Saratoga. And the surrender of Burgoyne was indeed a decisive event; for it inspired Americans with new resolution and was followed by the formal alliance with France. For months Franklin had been in France preparing the way for a treaty. The very presence of the man on the streets of Paris was an influence in favor of the American cause. To the Frenchmen of that day, when Voltaire and Rousseau and Fenelon had come into their own, this sage from the primitive forest, already famous as a scientist, this homely preacher of the virtues of frugality, with his unconventional wisdom and his genial tolerance, was the ideal philosopher of that state of nature which they had in imagination set over as a s.h.i.+ning contrast to the artificial and corrupt society in which they lived. The enthusiasm of the nation for an oppressed people gave support to the Government when war was once declared, but it cannot be said that it had much influence in inducing the king to agree to the alliance with England's rebellious colonies.

Bringing to bear all the resources which native wit and long experience had placed at his command, Franklin had already, enc.u.mbered as he was with unwise colleagues, procured much secret a.s.sistance. And it was probably the intention of the French Government not to depart from this policy; but after the surrender of Burgoyne, French agents in London a.s.sured Vergennes that the colonies were on the point of making peace with England, and of joining her, as the price of independence, in an attack upon the French West Indies. Since war seemed inevitable, it was manifestly better to have the a.s.sistance of America than her opposition.

Vergennes therefore signified to Franklin his willingness to negotiate a treaty without delay; and there was signed under date of February 6, 1778, at Versailles, a defensive and offensive alliance between the United States of America,--recently founded upon the revolutionary principle of popular sovereignty, and His Most Christian Majesty, Louis XVI, by Grace of G.o.d King of France and Navarre.[2]

In spite of the resource and tenacity of Was.h.i.+ngton and the convenient inactivity of Howe, it is difficult to see how the Revolution could have succeeded without the a.s.sistance which now came from France. Contrary to expectation, French troops and even the French navy were of little direct aid until the battle of Yorktown. But French gold financed the war. In the winter of 1778, when Was.h.i.+ngton's heroic remnant of barefoot soldiers lay starving at Valley Forge while Pennsylvania farmers sold provisions to the British and Loyalists who were comfortable and merry at Philadelphia, the Continental Congress was already a discredited and half bankrupt Government. Confiscated Loyalist property was sold for the benefit of the new State Governments; and Congress, unable to collect its requisitions, was forced to rely upon ever-increasing issues of paper money. In this very year $63,000,000 were added to the $38,000,000 already in circulation, and in 1779 the printers turned out $143,000,000 more. Laws fixing prices were without effect, and the value of paper fell to 33 cents on the dollar in 1777, to 12 cents in 1779, and to 2 cents in 1780. When a pound of tea sold for $100, when Thomas Paine bought woolen stockings at $300 a pair and Jefferson brandy at $125 a quart, General Gates could with $500,000 of paper get a hundred yards of fence built in which to guard British prisoners, but arms and munitions of war were forthcoming only so long as drafts on Franklin were honored by the French Government.

But if the French alliance brought a.s.sistance to the Americans, it induced the English Government to undertake a more vigorous prosecution of the war. The ministers had doubtless thought that the policy of conducting the war with the olive branch and the sword in either hand would prove successful. Certainly Howe had so interpreted his instructions. He had fought only when it was necessary to fight; easily accomplished everything he seriously attempted; never pressed any advantage; had supposed that by occupying the princ.i.p.al cities, affording protection to the loyal, and by moderation winning the lukewarm, the flame of rebellion would burn low for want of fuel and in good time quite flicker out. Too faithfully followed by half, this policy had ended in the humiliation of Saratoga and in the added burden of a war with France. News of Burgoyne's surrender scarcely reached England before offers of conciliation, embracing more than every concession the colonies had originally demanded, were hastily pushed through Parliament and entrusted to commissioners sent to America to negotiate peace. It was now too late. Once before, just after the battle of Long Island, General Howe, declaring himself authorized to discuss terms of conciliation, had induced Congress to send a committee to meet him at Staten Island. The conference came to nothing; and the only effect of the episode was to create a strong suspicion in the mind of the French Minister that the Americans would abandon their Declaration at the first convenient opportunity. It was above all necessary that the ardor of France should not again be damped by any further dallying with English offers. The commissioners were therefore coolly received, and the attempt of Johnstone to bribe Was.h.i.+ngton and Reed, published by Congress in August, 1778, only furnished new fuel to the patriot flame.

Aroused by the French alliance and the flouting of its offers of conciliation, the English Government now set about to wage war in earnest. General Howe had returned to England in May, 1778, to stand a Parliamentary investigation; and when General Clinton who succeeded him evacuated Philadelphia, and, barely escaping disaster at the battle of Monmouth, carried his army back to New York, the olive branch was thrown away and the war took on a new character. Ignoring the patriot army, the British general resorted to the policy of ruthless raids against the prosperous Northern coast communities, burning their towns and their s.h.i.+pping, destroying their industries, and carrying off their provisions. In 1779, Virginia, which since 1776 had quietly raised tobacco, and the provisions which had so largely subsisted Was.h.i.+ngton's army, was laid waste all along its easily accessible river highways.

Savannah was taken late in 1778, and at the close of the next year Clinton himself commanded an expedition which in May, 1780, captured the city of Charleston and forced General Lincoln to surrender his army of 2500 Continental troops. "We look upon America as at our feet," wrote Horace Walpole. And in fact the occupation of Georgia and South Carolina was regarded by the English, by the American Loyalists, and by many patriots, as the prelude to the conquest of the entire South and the end of the rebellion.

Little wonder if in these days of constant defeat and declining enthusiasm Congress too often fell to the level of a wrangling body of mediocre men. After the first years the ability that might have given it dignity was largely employed in the army, on diplomatic missions, or in the establishment and administration of the new State Governments. The particularism of the time is revealed in the belief that a man's first allegiance was to his State; to construct a const.i.tution for Ma.s.sachusetts was thought to be a greater service than to draft the Articles of Confederation; to be Governor of Virginia a higher honor than to be President of Congress. The political wisdom of the decade is therefore chiefly embodied in the first state const.i.tutions and the legislation of the new State Governments. The const.i.tutions gave formal expression to the philosophy of the Revolution, but in their detailed arrangements followed closely the practices and traditions inherited from the colonial period; popular sovereignty was everywhere declared, but everywhere limited by basing the suffrage upon property, and often half defeated by adopting an administrative mechanism in harmony with the prevailing belief that good government springs from "power balanced and cancelled and dispersed." The new regime was not altogether such as Patrick Henry or Jefferson would have made it, but it marked a safe and conservative advance toward the "establishment of a more equal liberty"

than had hitherto prevailed.

The erection of stable State Governments greatly diminished the power and the prestige of federal authority. Insensibly the Congress and the Continental army found themselves dependent upon thirteen sovereign masters. The feebleness with which the war was supported sometimes strikes one as incredible; but the amazing difficulty of maintaining an army of ten thousand troops for the achievement of independence, in the very colonies which had raised twenty-five thousand for the conquest of Canada, was due less to the lack of resources, or to indifference to the result, than to the uncertain authority of Congress, the republican fear of military power, and the jealous provincialism which had everywhere been greatly accentuated by the establishment of the new state const.i.tutions. Was.h.i.+ngton's army naturally looked with contempt upon a Government that could not feed or clothe its own soldiers. Congress, jealous of its authority for the very reason that it had none, criticized the army in defeat and feared it in victory. The State Governments, refusing to conform to the recommendations of Congress, alternately complained of its weakness and denounced it for usurping unwarranted power. Each State wished to maintain control of its own troops, and was offended if, in the Continental forces, its many military experts were not all major-generals. The very colony which gave little support to the army when war raged in another province, cried aloud for protection when the enemy crossed its own sacred boundaries; and, with perhaps one eighth of its proper quota of men at the front, with its requisitions in taxes unpaid, wished to know whether it was because of incompetence or timidity that General Was.h.i.+ngton failed to win victories.

After all the wonder is rather that Congress accomplished anything than that it did so little. A Frenchman, asked what he did during the Terror, replied that he lived. It was no small merit in the Continental Congress that it held together and maintained even the tradition of union; a higher merit still that in the midst of war it fas.h.i.+oned a federal const.i.tution which the thirteen States, more divided by jealousy and their newly won authority than they were united by a common danger, could be induced to approve. Yet this task the Congress with difficulty got accomplished. In 1777, after months of debate, it adopted the Articles of Confederation. Leaving political sovereignty in the several states, they provided for a federal legislature with a very limited authority to make laws, but no federal executive to enforce them.

Hopelessly inadequate as this const.i.tution was to prove, the small States, notably Maryland, refused to approve it until the larger States ceded their Western lands to the common Government. Virginia, possessed of the most extensive domain, held out longest, but finally renounced her claims January 2, 1781; and in March of that year it was announced that Maryland had ratified the Articles of Confederation, which thus became the first const.i.tution of the United States.

In 1779, while the States were wrangling over their Western lands, a little band of valiant backwoodsmen won a victory which gave substance to their claims and made their cessions something more than waste paper.

Throughout the war the frontier communities were most loyal supporters of the Revolution. Their expert riflemen, organized in companies, of which that of Daniel Morgan is perhaps the most famous, served in the army of Was.h.i.+ngton, helped Gates to win the battle of Saratoga, and were of indispensable service in driving Clinton out of North Carolina in 1780, and Cornwallis in 1781. The borderers of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and the little settlements at Watauga and Boonesboro, maintained a heroic defense against the Indians, who were paid by General Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, to wage a war of ma.s.sacre and pillage on the frontier. Against intermittent Indian raids the backwoodsmen could defend their homes; but so long as the British held Detroit and Vincennes and the Mississippi forts, there could be no peace in the interior, and even if the colonies won independence, it was likely that the Alleghanies would mark the boundary of the new State. Under these circ.u.mstances, George Rogers Clark, trapper and expert woodsman and Indian fighter, set himself, with the confident idealism of the frontiersman, to achieve an object which must have seemed to most men no more than a forlorn hope. It was in 1777 that he crossed the mountains to Virginia, secured the secret and semi-official authorization of Patrick Henry, the Governor of the State, and raised a company of one hundred and fifty men with which to undertake nothing less than the destruction of British power in the great Northwest.

In May, 1778, the little band floated from Redstone down the Ohio, at the falls built a fort which they named Louisville in honor of the French King, and finally, on July 4, reached Kaskaskia. Guided by some hunters who had joined them, they took the fort by stratagem. The Indians, for the moment a greater danger than the British, were overawed by the skill and the masterful personality of Clark; and the Creoles, conciliated by his moderation, gladly joined in the capture of Cahokia.

Not until February, 1779, was the intrepid commander ready to march on Vincennes. General Hamilton had recently come there with a small force, and there he proposed to remain until spring before marching to the recapture of Kaskaskia and the destruction of the settlements south of the Ohio, never dreaming that men could be found to cross the "drowned lands" of the Wabash in the inclement winter months. This fearful challenge was what Clark and his men accepted; marching two hundred and thirty miles over bogs and flooded lowlands; without tents, and sometimes without food or fire; as they neared Vincennes breaking the thin ice at every step, often neck-deep in water; yet succeeding at last, they took the fort and sent Hamilton to Virginia a prisoner of war. Detroit remained in British hands; but the possession of Vincennes and the Mississippi forts probably saved the Kentucky and Tennessee settlements from destruction, and doubtless had some influence in disposing England to cede the Western country at the close of the war.

Yet in spite of this signal victory, in spite of the French alliance, the darkest days of the war were yet to come. In the year 1780 the Revolution seemed fallen from a struggle for worthy principles to the level of mean reprisals, a contest of brigands bent on plunder and revenge. That it had come to this pa.s.s was partly due to Clinton's policy of detached raids; but the policy of raids was a practical one precisely because in nearly every colony there was a large body of active Loyalists, a larger number still who were indifferent, wis.h.i.+ng only to be left alone, ready to submit to whichever side might win at last. Driven from their homes, plundered by British or patriot raiders, they in turn organized for revenge, sought plunder where they could find it, caring not whether they served under Loyalist or Revolutionist banners. In South Carolina, laid waste by the light troops of Tarleton and the partisans of Marion and Sumpter, in all the regions round New York, in the Jerseys, on Long Island and in parts of Connecticut, even the semblance of government and the customary routine of ordered society disappeared. The issues that had once divided men were forgotten while bands of a.s.sociated Loyalists and bands of Liberty Boys plundered the inhabitants indiscriminately, hailed each other as they pa.s.sed in the night, or agreed, with the honor that prevails among thieves, to an equitable division of the spoils.

And few victories came in this disastrous year to cheer the remnant of tried Americans. Clinton's invasion of North Carolina was, indeed, a failure; and at the close of 1780, after the frontier troops had overwhelmingly defeated General Ferguson at King's Mountain, the British were forced to evacuate that strongly revolutionary colony. But Was.h.i.+ngton could do little more than hold with the desperation of despair to West Point, where his army had lain helpless and almost pa.s.sive since the battle of Monmouth. Congress, barely able to hold together, could not maintain even that "verbal energy" which had once distinguished it. In this year as never before men served their country with one hand and with the other filled their pockets by manipulating the currency which had fallen to be a worthless scrip. And it was in this year, when fidelity seemed a forgotten virtue, when men enlisted in the army and deserted to the enemy with equal indifference, that Benedict Arnold, entrusted at his own request with the command of West Point, forswore his trust and wrote treason across the fair record of a patriot's achievements. Well might Was.h.i.+ngton write, "I have almost ceased to hope"; and Laurens, "How many men there are who in secret say, could I have believed it would come to this!"

Yet at last a happy combination of circ.u.mstances enabled the American and French forces, for the first time operating in complete accord, to bring this disastrous war to a most successful conclusion. Well aware of the importance of the Southern campaign, Was.h.i.+ngton had procured for Greene, the ablest of his generals, command of the forces which were gathering in North Carolina to resist the advance of Cornwallis in 1781.

Defeated at the Cowpens and checked at Guilford, the British commander was forced to retire to Wilmington; but instead of returning to Charleston he moved into Virginia to join Arnold, convinced that the conquest of the Old Dominion must precede that of North Carolina. In May and June he carried ruin to all the prosperous towns of the province; but in July, when the American forces under Lafayette had been greatly strengthened, it was no longer safe for the British commander to divide his army. Acting under orders from Clinton, Cornwallis accordingly retired to the coast and fortified the neck of land at Yorktown.

Was.h.i.+ngton had scarcely been apprised of this circ.u.mstance before he received a letter from the Count de Gra.s.se, commander of the French naval forces in the West Indies, proposing joint operations in Virginia during the summer, and promising to bring his fleet to the Chesapeake sometime in August. The opportunity was a rare one. Abandoning the projected attack on New York, Was.h.i.+ngton and Rochambeau joined their forces and marched rapidly through New Jersey, entering Philadelphia the very day that De Gra.s.se appeared at the mouth of the bay. They had already joined Lafayette before Admiral Graves arrived from New York with a British fleet to rescue the British general. Had Graves been a Rodney or a Nelson he might have given a different issue to the American Revolution; but he was not the man to win against great odds, and after an indecisive engagement he sailed away, leaving Cornwallis to his fate.

Hemmed in by 16,000 American and French troops, the unhappy general, who never met Was.h.i.+ngton but to be defeated, surrendered his army of 7000, men on the 19th of October, 1781.

"It is all over!" cried Lord North when Germaine told him of the surrender of Cornwallis. The loss of 7000 men was not in itself an irremediable disaster; but the effort of the king and the "King's Friends" to establish the personal rule of the monarch had alienated the nation, while their attempt to subjugate the colonies had embroiled England with all Europe. In armed conflict with France, Spain, and Holland, opposed by the "armed neutrality" of Russia, Sweden, Denmark, the Empire, Portugal, the Two Sicilies, and the Ottoman Empire, never had the isolation of the little island kingdom been more splendid, or British prestige so diminished. The demand of the nation for peace could no longer be resisted, and the Whig party came into power over the king's will, and entered into negotiation with the enemies he had made.

The American amba.s.sadors were instructed by Congress and bound in honor not to make a treaty without the knowledge and consent of France. But in spite of Franklin's protest, Jay and Adams, who suspected, not without some show of reason but contrary to the fact, that Vergennes would oppose the extension of the United States beyond the Alleghanies, broke their instructions as readily as Jay broke his pipe, and without consulting their faithful ally arranged the terms of peace with England.

Independence was acknowledged as the indispensable preliminary to negotiation. John Adams declared that he "had no notion of cheating anybody," and it was agreed that British creditors should "meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of all ... _bona fide_ debts heretofore contracted" in the colonies. The skill of Franklin and the resolute persistence of Jay and Adams, together with the desire of the English Government to make a peace without delay, enabled the Americans to gain, in every other disputed point, all they could hope for and more than they had any reason to expect. It was conceded that they should enjoy the customary right of fis.h.i.+ng in Northern waters. The best effort of England to secure a restoration of property and of the rights of citizens to the Loyalists was unavailing, and the compensation of that unhappy cla.s.s fell to the Government whose losing cause it had supported. But of all the provisions of this Peace of Paris, the most important, next to the acknowledgment of independence, was the one which gave to the new State that incomparably rich woodland and prairie country extending from the thirty-first, degree of north lat.i.tude to the Great Lakes, and as far west as the Mississippi River. With these as its main provisions, the definitive treaty was signed on September 3, 1783, and ratified by Congress January 14, 1784.

Before the treaty of peace was signed, the cessation of hostilities had been formally declared and announced to Was.h.i.+ngton's army on the 19th of April, eight years to a day after the battle of Lexington. British troops occupied New York until November 29, when the evacuation of the city was finally completed, and the United States of America entered the company of independent nations, the exhausted and half-ruined champion of those principles of liberty and equality which were soon to transform the European world. With the British troops there sailed away, never to return, a great company of Loyalist exiles; part of the thousands who renounced their heritage and their country in defense of political and social ideals that belonged to the past. America thus lost the service of many men of ability, of high integrity, and of genuine culture; clergymen and scholars, landowners and merchants of substantial estate, men learned in the law, high officials of proved experience in politics and administration. The great achievements of history have their price; and American independence was won only by the sacrifice of much that was best in colonial society. Something fine and amiable in manners, something charming in customs, much that was most excellent in the traditions of politics and public morality disappeared with the ruin of those who thought themselves, and who often were in fact, of "the better sort."