Pass L : i 5 ^6V %\^t Hit)er0it)e llibran? for i^oung ^Beople Number 1 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE By JOHN FISKE THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE LIBRARY 'i JL'N.19 1890 ' JOHN FISKE BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1890 Copyright, 1889, By JOHN FISKE. All rights reserved. 57 Trausftr JUN 6 }^f TJie Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by II. 0. Houghton & Company. PEEFACE. This little book does not contain the substance of the lectures on the American Revolution which I have delivered in so many parts of the United States since 1883. Those lectures, when com- pleted and published, will make quite a detailed narrative ; this book is but a sketch. It is hoped that it may prove useful to the higher classes in schools, as well as to teachers. When I was a boy I should have been glad to get hold of a brief account of the War for Independence that would have suggested answers to some of the questions that used to vex me. Was the conduct of the British government, in driving the Americans into rebellion, merely wanton aggression, or was it not rather a bungling attempt to solve a political problem which reaUy needed to be solved ? Why were New Jersey and the Hudson river so impor- tant ? Why did the British armies niake South Carolina their chief objective point after New vi PREFACE. York ? Or liow did Cornwallis happen to be at Yorktown when Washington made such a long leap and pounced upon him there ? And so on. Such questions the old-fashioned text-books not only did not try to answer, they did not even recognize their existence. As to the large histories, they of course include so many details that it requires maturity of judgment to discriminate between the facts that are cardinal and those that are merely incidental. When I give lectures to schoolboys and schoolgirls, I observe that a reference to causes and effects always seems to heighten the interest of the story. I therefore offer them this little book, not as a rival but as an aid to the ordinary text-book. I am aware that a narrative so condensed must necessarily suffer from the omission of many picturesque and striking de- tails. The world is so made that one often has to lose a little in one direction in order to gain some- thing in another. This book is an experiment. If it seems to answer its purpose, I may follow it with others, treating other portions of American history in similar fashion. Cambridge, February 11, 1889. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. Introduction 1 II. The Colonies in 1750 4 III. The French Wars, and the First Plan of Union 26 IV. The Stamp Act, and the Revenue Laws . 39 V. The Crisis 78 VI. The Struggle for the Centre . . . 104 VII. The French Alliance 144 VIII. Birth of the Nation 182 Note. — The maps are used by permission of, and by ar- rangement with, Messrs. Ginn & Company. LIBRA RY'^'i Jl'N 19 1890 I THE WAE OFlNDEPEI^DEl^OE. CHAPTEK I. INTRODUCTION. Since the year 1875 we have witnessed, in many parts of the United States, public proces- sions, meetings, and speeches in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of some important event in the course of our struggle for national independence. This series of centennial celebra- tions, which has been of great value in stimulat- ing American patriotism and awakening through- out the country a keen interest in American history, will naturally come to an end in 1889. The close of President Cleveland's term of office marks the close of the first century of the gov- ernment under which we live, which dates from the inauguration of President Washington on the balcony of the Federal building in Wall street. New York, on the 30th of April, 1789. It was on that memorable day that the American Rev- olution may be said to have been completed. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 de- tached the American people from the supreme 2 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. government to which they had hitherto owed allegiance, and it was not until Washington's in- auguration in 1789 that the supreme government to which we owe allegiance to-day was actually put in operation. The period of thirteen years included between these two dates was strictly a revolutionary period, during which it was more or less doubtful where the supreme authority over the United States belonged. First, it took the fighting and the diplomacy of the revolutionary war to decide that this supreme authority be- longed in the United States themselves, and not in the government of Great Britain ; and then "after the war was ended, more than five years of sore distress and anxious discussion had elapsed before the American people succeeded in setting up a new government that was strong enough to make itself obeyed at home and respected abroad. It is the story of this revolutionary period, ending in 1789, that we have here to relate in its principal outlines. When we stand upon the crest of a lofty hill and look about in all direc- tions over the landscape, we can often detect re- lations between distant points which we had not before thought of together. While we tarried in the lowland, we could see blue peaks rising here and there against the sky, and follow babbling brooks hither and thither through the forest. It was more homelike down there than on the hill- top, for in each gnarled tree, in every moss-grown INTRODUCTION. 3 boulder, in every wayside flower, we had a friend that was near to us ; but the general bearings of things may well have escaped our notice. In climbing to our lonely vantage-ground, while the familiar scenes fade from sight, there are gradu- ally unfolded to us those connections between crag and meadow and stream that make the life and meaning of the whole. We learn the " lay of the land," and become, in a humble way, geographers. So in the history of men and nations, while we remain immersed in the study of personal inci- dents and details, as what such a statesman said or how many men were killed in such a battle, we may quite fail to understand what it was all about, and we shall be sure often to misjudge men's characters and estimate wrongly the importance of many events. For this reason we cannot clearly see the meaning of the history of our OAvn times. The facts are too near us ; we are down among them, like the man who could not see the forest because there were so many trees. But when we look back over a long interval of years, we can survey distant events and personages like points in a vast landscape and begin to discern the mean- ing of it all. In this way we come to see that history is full of lessons for us. Very few things have happened in past ages with which our pres- ent welfare is not in one way or another concerned. Few things have happened in any age more in- teresting or more important than the American Revolution. CHAPTER II. THE COLONIES IN 1750. It is always difficult in history to mark the beginning and end of a period. Events keep rushing on and do not pause to be divided into chapters ; or, in other words, in the history which really takes place, a new chapter is always begin- ning long before the old one is ended. The di- visions we make when we try to describe it are merely marks that we make for our own conven- ience. In telling the story of the American Revo- lution we must stop somewhere, and the inaugu- ration of President Washington is a very proper place. We must also begin somewhere, but it is quite clear that it will not do to begin with the Declaration of Independence in July, 1776, or even with the midnight ride of Paul Revere in April, 1775. For if we ask what caused that "hurry of hoofs in a village street," and what brought together those five-and-fifty statesmen at Philadelphia, we are not simply led back to the Boston Tea-Party, and still further to the Stamp Act, but we find it necessary to refer to events that happened more than a century before the Revolution can properly be said to have begun. THE COLONIES IN 1750. 5 Indeed, if we were going to take a very wide view of the situation, and try to point out its re- lations to the general history of mankind, we should have to go back many hundreds of years and not only cross the ocean to the England of King Alfred, but keep on still further to the ancient market-places of Rome and Athens, and even to the pyramids of Egypt ; and in all this long journey through the ages we should not be merely gratifying an idle curiosity, but at every step of the way could gather sound practical les- sons, useful in helping us to vote intelligently at the next election for mayor of the city in which we live or for president of the United States. We are not now, however, about to start on any such long journey. It is a much nearer and narrower view of the American Revolution that we wish to get. There are many points from which we might start, but we must at any rate choose a point several years earlier than the Declaration of Independence. People are very apt to leave out of sight the "good old colony times " and speak of our country as scarcely more than a hundred years old. Sometimes we hear the presidency of George Washington spoken of as part of " early American history ; " but we ought not to forget that when Washington was born the commonwealth of Virginia was already one hundred and twenty-five years old. The first governor of Massachusetts was born three cen- 6 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. turies ago, in 1588, the year of the Spanish Ar- mada. Suppose we take the period of 282 years between the English settlement of Virginia and the inauguration of President Benjamin Harrison, and divide it in the middle. That gives us the The half-way J^^^ 1T48 as the lialf-way station in the Ame?k;a\" history of the American people. There history. were just as many years of continuous American history before 1748 as there have been since that date. That year was famous for the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which put an end to a war between England and France that had lasted ^YQ years. That war had been waged in America as well as in Europe, and American troops had played a brilliant part in it. There was now a brief lull, soon to be followed by ano^ ler and greater war between the two mighty rivals, and it was in the course of this latter war that some of the questions were raised which presently led to the American Revolution. Let us take the oc- casion of this lull in the storm to look over the American world and see what were the circum- stances likely to lead to the throwing off of the British government by the thirteen colonies, and to their union under a federal government of their own making. In the middle of the eighteenth century there were four New England colonies. Massachusetts extended her sway over Maine, and the' Green Mountain territory was an uninhabited wilder- THE COLONIES IN 1750. 7 ness, to which New York and New" Hampsliire alike laid claim. The four commonwealths of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island had all been in existence, under one form or another, for more than a century. The men who were in the prime of life there in 1750 were the great-grandsons and great-great- crrandsons of the men who crossed the ocean be- tween 1620 and 1640 and settled New England. Scarcely two men in a hundred were of other than English blood. About one in a hundred could say that his family came from Scotland or the north of Ireland ; one in five hundred may have been the grandcliild of a Huguenot. The four Upon religious and political questions J^nJj^"f.* these jleople thought very much alike. "^^^* Extreme poverty was almost unknown, and there were but few who could not read and write. As a rule every head of a family owned the house in which he lived and the land which supported him. There were no cities ; and from Boston, which was a town with 16,000 inhabitants, down to the smallest settlement in the White Mountains, the government was carried on by town-meetings at which almost any grown-up man could be present and speak and vote. Except upon the sea-coast nearly all the people lived upon farms ; but all along the coast were many who lived by fishing and by building ships, and in the towns dwelt many merchants grown rich by foreign trade. In 8 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. those days Massachusetts was the richest of the thirteen colonies, and had a larger population than any other except Virginia. Connecticut was then more populous than New York ; and when the four New England commonwealths acted to- gether — as was likely to be the case in time of danger — they formed the strongest military power on the American continent. Among what we now. call southern states there were two that in 1750 were more than a hundred years old. These were Virginia and Maryland. The people of these commonwealths, like those of New England, had lived together in America long enough to become distinctively Americans. Both New Englander and Virginian had had time to forget their family relationships with the kindred Virginia and ^^ft behind SO loug ago in England; Maryland, though there were many who did not forget it, and in our time scholars have by re- search recovered many of the links that had been lost from memory. The white people of Virginia were as purely English as those of Connecticut or Massachusetts. But society in Virginia was very different from society in New England. The wealth of Virginia consisted chiefly of tobacco, which was raised by negro slaves. People lived far apart from each other on great plantations, usually situated near the navigable streams of which that country has so many. Most of the great planters had easy access to private wharves, THE COLONIES IN 1750. 9 where their crops could be loaded on ships and sent directly to England in exchange for all sorts of goods. Accordingly it was but seldom that towns grew up as centres of trade. Each planta- tion was a kind of little world in itself. There were no town-meetings, as the smallest political division was the division into counties ; but there were county-meetings quite vigorous with politi- cal life. Of the leading county families a great many were descended from able and distinguished Cavaliers or King's-men who had come over from England during the ascendency of Oliver Cromwell. Skill in the management of public affairs was hereditary in such families, and dur- ing our revolutionary period Virginia produced more great leaders than any of the other colonies. There were yet two other American common- wealths that in 1750 were more than a hundred years old. These were New York and little Dela- ware, which for some time was a kind of append- age, first to New York, afterward to Pennsyl- vania. But there was one important respect in wliich these two colonies were different alike from New England and from Virginia. Their popu- lation was far from beino^ purely Eno^- New York lish. Delaware had been first settled by and Oeia- Swedes, New York by Dutchmen ; and the latter colony had drawn its settlers from al- most every part of western and central Europe. A man might travel from Penobscot bay to the 10 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. Harlem river without hearing a syllable in any other tongue than English ; but in crossing Man- hattan island he could listen, if he chose, to more than a dozen languages. There was ahnost as much diversity in opinions about religious and political matters as there was in the languages in which they were expressed. New York was an English community in so far as it had been for more than eighty years under an English govern- ment, but hardly in any other sense. Accordingly we shall find New York in the revolutionary pe- riod less prompt and decided in action than Massa- chusetts and Virginia. In population New York ranked only seventh among the thirteen colonies ; but in its geographical position it was the most important of all. It was important commercially because the Mohawk and Hudson rivers formed a direct avenue for the fur-trade from the region of the great lakes to the finest harbour on all the Atlantic coast. In a military sense it was impor- tant for two reasons ; firsts because the Mohawk valley was the home of the most powerful confed- eracy of Indians on the continent, the steady al- lies of the English and deadly foes of the French ; secondly^ because the centre of the French power was at Montreal and Quebec, and from those points the route by which the English colonies could be most easily invaded was formed by Lake Champlain and the Hudson river. New York was completely interposed between New England THE COLONIES IN 1750. 11 and the rest of the English colonies, so that an enemy holding possession of it would virtually cut the Atlantic sea-board in two. For these reasons the political action of New York was of most crit- ical importance. Of the other colonies in 1750, the two Car- olinas and New Jersey were rather more than eighty years old, while Pennsylvania had been settled scarcely seventy years. But the grov/th of these younger colonies had been rapid, espe- cially in the case of Pennsylvania and North Car- olina, which in populousness ranked third and fourth among the thirteen. This rapid ThetwoCar- increase was mainly due to a large im- GeoJgia"^ migration from Europe kept up during Spenusyi- the first half of the eighteenth century, ^^"^^• so that a large proportion of the people had either been born in Europe, or were the children of peo- ple born in Europe. In 1750 these colonies had not had time enough to become so intense^ American as Virginia and the New England col- onies. In Georgia, which had been settled only seventeen years, people had had barely time to get used to this new home on the wild frontier. The population of these younger colonies was very much mixed. In South Carolina, as in New York, probably less than half were English. In both Carolinas there were a great many Hugue- nots from France, and immigrants from Germany and Scotland and the north of Ireland were still 12 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. pouring in. Pennsylvania had many Germans and Irish, and settlers from other parts of Eu- rope, besides its English Quakers. With all this diversity of race there was a great diversity of opinions about political questions, as about other matters. We are now beginning to see why it was that Massachusetts and Virginia took the lead in bringing on the revolutionary war. Not only were these two the largest colonies, but Why Massa- chusettsand their pcoplc had become much more Virginia took the thoroughly welded together in their thoughts and habits and associations than was as yet possible with the people of the younger colonies. When the revolutionary war came, there were very few Tories in the New Eng- land colonies and very few in Virginia ; but there were a great many in New York and Pennsylvania and the two Carolinas, so that the action of these commonwealths was often slow and undecided, and sometimes there was bitter and bloody fighting between men of opposite opinions, especially in New York and South Carolina. If we look at the governments of the thirteen colonies in the middle of the eighteenth century, we shall observe some interesting facts. All the colonies had legislative assemblies elected by the people, and these assemblies levied the taxes and made the laws. So far as the legislatures were concerned, therefore, all the colonies governed THE COLONIES IN 1750. 13 themselves. But with regard to the executive department of the government, there were very important differences. Only two of the colonies, Connecticut and Rhode Island, had governors elected by the people. These two colonies were completely self-governing. In almost everything but name they were independent of Great Brit- ain, and this was so true that at the time of the revolutionary war they did not need . • . P , The two re- to make any new constitutions tor them- publics ; •^ , , Connecticut selves, but continued to live on under and Rhode Island. their old charters for many years, — Connecticut until 1818, Rhode Island until 1843. Before the revolution these two colonies had com- paratively few direct grievances to complain of at the hands of Great Britain ; but as they were next neighbours to Massachusetts and closely connected with its history, they were likely to sympathize promptly with the kind of grievances by which Massachusetts was disturbed. Three of the colonies, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, had a peculiar kind of govern- ment, known ^'^proprietary government. The proprie- Their territories had originally been ments; Penn- sylvania, granted by the crown to a person known Delaware, ° *^ , ^ andMary- as the Lord Proprietary, and the lord- laud. proprietorship descended from father to son like a kingdom. In Maryland it was the Calvert family that reigned for six generations as lords proprietary. Pennsylvania and Delaware had 14 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. each its own separate legislature, but over both colonies reigned the same lord proprietary, who was a member of the Penn family. These colo- nies were thus like little hereditary monarchies, and they had but few direct dealings with the British government. For them the lords proprie- tary stood in the place of the king, and appointed the governors. In Maryland this system ran smoothly. In Pennsylvania there was a good deal of dissatisfaction, but it generally assumed the form of a wish to get rid of the lords proprietary and have the governors appointed by the king ; for as this was something they had not tried they were not prepared to appreciate its evils. In the other eight colonies — New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia — the governors The crown wcrc appointed by the king, and were their^royai"*^ commouly kuowu as " royal governors." governors. Tlicy wcrc sometimcs natives of the colonies over which they were appointed, as Dud- ley and Hutchinson of Massachusetts, and others ; but were more often sent over from England. Some of them, as Pownall of Massachusetts and Spotswood of Virginia, were men of marked abil- ity. Some were honest gentlemen, who felt a real interest in the welfare of the people they came to help govern ; some were unprincipled adventurers, who came to make money by fair means or foul. Their position was one of much dignit}^ and they THE COLONIES IN 1750. 16 behaved themselves like lesser kings. What with their crimson velvets and fine laces and stately coaches, they made much more of a show than any president of the United States would think of making to-day. They had no fixed terms of office, but remained at their posts as long as the king, or the king's colonial secretary, saw fit to keep them there. Now it was generally true of the royal govern- ors that, whether they were natives of America or sent over from England, and whether they were good men or bad, they were very apt to make themselves disliked by the people, and they were almost always quarrelling with their legislative assemblies. Questions were always coming up about which the governor and the legislature could not agree, because the legislature repre- sented the views of the people who had chosen it, while the governor represented his own views or the views which prevailed three thousand miles away among the king's ministers, who very often knew little about America and cared less. One of these disputed questions related to the gov- ernor's salary. It was natural that the r^^^ question governor should wish to have a salary »« to salaries. of fixed amount, so that he might know from year to year what he was going to receive. But the people were afraid that if this were to be done the governor might become too independent. They preferred that the legislature should each 16 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. year make a grant of money such as it should deem suitable for the governor's expenses, and this sum it might increase or diminish according to its own good pleasure. This would keep the governor properly subservient to the legislature. Before 1750 there had been much bitter wrangling over this question in several of the colonies, and the governors had one after another been obliged to submit, though with very ill grace. Sometimes the thoughts of the royal governors and their friends went beyond this immediate question. Since the legislatures were so froward and so niggardly, what an admirable plan it would be to have the governors paid out of the royal treasury and thus made comparatively independ- ent of the legislatures ! The judges, too, who were quite poorly paid, might fare much better if remunerated by the crown, and the same might be said of some other public officers. But if the British government were to undertake to pay the salaries of its officials in America, it must raise a revenue for the purpose ; and it would naturally raise such a revenue by levying taxes in America rather than in England. People in England felt that they were already taxed as heavily as they could bear, in order to pay the expenses of their own government. They coidd not be expected to submit to further taxation for the sake of paying the expenses of governing the American colonies. If further taxes were to be laid for such a jmr- THE COLONIES IN 1750. 17 pose, they must in fairness be laid upon Amer- icans, not upon Englishmen in the old country. Such was the view which people in England would naturally be expected to take, and such was the view which they generally did take. But there was another side to the question which was very clearly seen by most people in America. If the royal governors were to be paid by the crown and thus made independent of their legislatures, there would be danger of their becoming petty tyrants and interfering in many ways with the liberties of the people. Still greater would be the danger if the judges were to be paid by the crown, for then they would feel themselves re- sponsible to the king or to the royal governor, rather than to their fellow-citizens ; and it would be easy for the governors, by appointing corrupt men as judges, to prevent the proper adminis- tration of justice by the courts, and thus to make men's lives and property insecure. Most Amer- icans in 1750 felt tliis danger very keenly. They had not forgotten how, in the times of their grand- fathers, two of the noblest of Englislunen, Lord William Russell and Colonel Algernon Sidney, had been murdered by the iniquitous sentence of time-serving judges. They had not forgotten the ruffian George Jeffreys and liis " bloody assizes " of 1685. They well remembered how their kins- men in England had driven into exile the Stuart family of kings, who were even yet, in 1745, 18 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. making efforts to recover their lost throne. They remembered how the beginnings of New England had been made by stout-hearted men who could not endure the tyranny of these same Stuarts; and they knew well that one of the worst of the evils upon which Stuart tyranny had fattened had been the corruption of the courts of justice. The Americans believed with some reason, that even now, in the middle of the eighteenth century, the administration of justice in their own common- wealths was decidedly better than in Great Britain ; and they had no mind to have it disturbed. But worse than all, if the expenses of govern- ing America were to be paid by taxes levied upon Americans and collected from them by king or parliament or any power whatsoever residing in Great Britain, then the inhabitants of the thirteen American colonies would at once cease to be free people. A free country is one in which the gov- ernment cannot take away people's money, in the shape of taxes, except for strictly pub- " No taxation "^ \ • ^ ^ c ^ without rep- he purposcs and with the consent oi the reseiitation." peoj^le themselves, as expressed by some body of representatives whom the people have chosen. If people's money can be taken from them without their consent, no matter how small the amount, even if it be less than one dollar out out of every thousand, then they are not politi- cally free. They do not govern, but the power that thus takes their money without their consent THE COLONIES IN 1750. 19 is the power that governs ; and there is nothing to prevent such a power from using the money thus obtained to strengthen itself until it can trample upon people's I'ights in every direction, and rob them of their homes and lives as well as of their money. If the British government could tax the Americans without their consent, it might use the money for supporting a British army in America, and such an army might be employed in intimidating the legislatures, in dispersing town- meetings, in destroying newspaper-offices, or in other acts of tyranny. The Americans in the middle of the eighteenth century well understood that the iDrinci- , ^ . ^ It was the pie 01 " no taxation without representa- fundamental . ,,., p 1 .., « principle of tion is the fundamental principle of English ^ . . liberty. free government. It was the principle for which their forefathers had contended again and again in England, and upon which the noble edifice of English liberty had been raised and consolidated since the grand struggle between king and barons in the thirteenth century. It had passed into a tradition, both in England and in America, that in order to prevent the crown from becoming despotic, it was necessary that it should only wield such revenues as the representatives of the people might be pleased to grant it. In Eng- land the body which represented the people was the House of Commons, in each of the American colonies it was the colonial leo'islature ; and in 20 rUE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. dealing witli the royal governors, the legislatures acted upon the same general principles as the House of Commons in dealino^ with the kin^:. It was not until some time after 1750 that any grand assault was made upon the princij^le of " no taxation without representation," but the fre- quent disputes with the royal governors were such as to keep people from losing sight of this princi- ple, and to make them sensitive about acts that might lead to violations of it. In the particular disputes the governors were sometimes clearly right and the people wrong. One of the princi- pal objects, as we shall presently see, for Sometimes \ - ^ \ i the royal whicli the govcmors wanted money, was governors . . "^ , were in the to maintain troops for defence asrainst right, as to x o the particu- tlic Freiicli and the Indians ; and the lar question. legislatures were apt to be short-sighted and unreasonably stingy about such matters. Again, the people were sometimes seized with a silly craze for " paper money " and " wild-cat banks " — devices for making money out of noth- ing — and sometimes the governors were sensible enough to oppose such delusions but not alto- gether sensible in their manner of doing it. Thus in 1740 there was fierce excitement in Massachu- setts over a quarrel between the governor and the legislature about the famous " silver bank " and "land bank." These institutions were a public nuisance and deserved to be suppressed, but the governor was obliged to appeal to parliament in THE COLONIES IN 1750. 21 order to succeed in doing it. This led many peo- ple to ask, " What business has a paHiament sit- ting the other side of the ocean to be making laws for us ? " and the grumbling was loud and bitter enough to show that this was a very dangerous question to raise. It was in the eight colonies which had royal governors that troubles of a revolutionary char- acter were more likely to arise than in the other five, but there were special reasons, besides those already mentioned, why Massachusetts and Vir- ginia should prove more refractory than Bitter mem- any ot the others. Both these ofreat ories ; in ,,-,,,. . Virginia. commonwealths had bitter memories. Things had happened in both which might serve as a warning, and which some of the old men still living in 1750 could distinctly remember. In Virginia the misgovernment of the royal gov- ernor Sir William Berkeley had led in 1675 to the famous rebellion headed by Nathaniel Bacon, and this rebellion had been suppressed with much harslmess. Many leading citizens had been sent to the gallows and their estates had been confis- cated. In Massachusetts, though there were no such scenes of cruelty to remember, the grievance was much more deep-seated and enduring. Massachusetts had not been originally a royal province, with its governors appointed by the king. At first it had been a republic, such as Connecticut and Rhode Island now were, with 22 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. governors chosen by the people. From its foun- dation in 1629 down to 1684 the commonwealth of Massachusetts had managed its own affairs at And in Mas- ^^^ ^^u good plcasurc. Practicallj it sachusetts. |^^^| ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^j self-govcming but almost independent. That was because affairs in England were in such confusion that until after 1660 comparatively little attention was paid to what was going on in America, and the liberties of Massachusetts prospered through the neglect of what was then called the " home government." After Charles II. came to the throne in 1660 he began to interfere with the affairs of Massachu- setts, and so the very first generation of men that had been born on the soil of that commonwealth were engaged in a long struggle against the Brit- ish king for the right of managing their own af- fairs. After more than twenty years of this struggle, which by 1675 had come to be quite bit- ter, the charter of Massachusetts was annulled in 1684 and its free government was for the moment destroyed. Presently a viceroy was sent over from England, to govern Massachusetts (as well as several other northern colonies) despotically. This viceroy. Sir Edmund Andros, seems to have been a fairly well meaning man. He was not es- pecially harsh or cruel, but his rule was a despot- ism, because he was not responsible to the people for what he did, but only to the king. In point of fact the two-and-a-half years of his adminis- THE COLONIES IN 1750. 23 tratlon were characterized by arbitrary arrests and by interference with private property and with the freedom of the press. It was so vexa^ tions that early in 1689, taking advantage of the Eevohition then going on in England, the people of Boston rose in rebellion, seized Andros and threw him into jail, and set up for themselves a provisional government. When the affairs of New England were settled after the accession of Wil- liam and Mary to the throne, Connecticut and Ehode Island were allowed to keep their old gov- ernments ; but Massachusetts in 1693 was obliged to take a new charter instead of her old one, and although this new charter revived the election of legislatures by the people, it left the governors henceforth to be appointed by the king. In the political controversies of Massachusetts, therefore, in the eighteenth century, the people were animated by the recollection of what they had lost. They were somewhat less free and in- dependent than their grandfathers had been, and they had learned what it was to have an irrespon- sible ruler sitting at his desk in Boston and sign- ing warrants for the arrest of loved and respected citizens who dared criticise his sayings and doings. "Taxation without representation" was not for them a mere abstract theory ; they knew what it meant. It was as near to them as the presidency of Andrew Jackson is to us ; there had not been time enough to forget it. In every contest be- 24 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. tween the popular legislature and the royal gov- ernor there was some broad principle involved which there were plenty of well-remembered facts to illustrate. These contests also helped to arouse a strong sympathy between the popular leaders in Massa- chusetts and in Virginia. Between the people of the two colonies there was not much real sym- pathy, because there was a good deal of differ- ence between their ways of life and their opin- ions about things ; and people, unless they are unusually wise and generous of nature, are apt to dislike and despise those who differ from them in oj^inions and habits. So there was little cor- Grounds of diality of feeling between the people of beuvetn^ Massachusctts and the people of Vir- ^tts and^" ginia, but in spite of this there was a "■g'"'^- great and gromng political sympathy. This was because, ever since 1693, they had been obliged to deal with the same kind of political questions. It became intensely interesting to a Virginian to watch the progress of a dispute be- tween the governor and legislature of Massachu- setts, because whatever principle might be victo- rious in the course of such a dispute, it was sure soon to find a practical application in Virginia. Hence by the middle of the eighteenth century the two colonies were keenly observant of each other, and either one was exceedingly prompt in taking its cue from the other. It is worth while THE COLONIES IN 1750. 25 to remember this fact, for without it there would doubtless have been rebellions or revolutions of American colonies, but there would hardly have been one American Revolution, ending in a grand American Union. CHAPTER III. THE FRENCH WARS, AND THE FIRST PLAN OF UNION. It was said a moment ago that one of the chief objects for which the governors wanted money was to maintain troops for defence against the French and the Indians. This was a very serious matter indeed. To any one who looked at a map of North America in 1750 it might well have seemed as if the French had secured for them- selves the greater part of the continent. The _. , ^ western frontier of the Eng^lish settle- Disputed <-• frontier be- meuts was s-enerallv within two hun- tween ~ j EngiiishcoL. ^^^^ "^^l^s ^^ *^^ sea-coast. In New onies. York it was at Johnson Hall, not far from Schenectady ; in Pennsylvania it was about at Carlisle ; in Virginia it was near Winchester, and the first explorers were just making their way across the Alleghany mountains. Westward of these frontier settlements lay endless stretches of forest inhabited by warlike tribes of red men who, everywhere except in New York, were hostile to the English and friendly to the French. Since the beginning of the seventeenth century French towns and \allages had been growing up along THE FRENCH WARS. 27 the St. Lawrence, and French explorers had been pushing across the Great Lakes and down the valley of the Mississippi river, near the mouth of which the French town of New Orleans had been standing since 1718. It was the French doctrine that discovery and possession of a river gave a claim to all the territory drained by that river. According to this doctrine every acre of Ameri- can soil from which water flowed into the St. Law- rence and the Mississippi belonged to France. The claims of the French thus came up to the very crest of the Alleghanies, and they made no secret of their intention to shut up the English forever between that chain of mountains and the sea-coast. There were times when their aims were still more aggressive and dangerous, when they looked with longing eyes upon the valley of the Hudson, and would fain have broken through that military centre of the line of English com- monwealths and seized the keys of empire over the continent. From this height of their ambition the French were kept aloof by the deadly enmity of the most fierce and powerfid savages in the New World. The Indians of those days who came into contact with the white settlers were divided into many tribes with different names, but they all belonged to one or another of three great stocks ^j^^ j^^jj^^ or families. First, there were the Mo- *"''^^- b'ilians, far down south ; to this stock belonged 28 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. the Creeks, Cherokees, and others. Secondly, there were the Algonquins^ comprising the Dela- wares to the south of the Susquehanna ; the Miamis, Shawnees, and others in the western wiklerness ; the Ottawas in Canada ; and all the tribes still left to the northeast of New England. Thirdly, there were the Iroquois^ of whom the most famous were the Five Nations of what is now central New York. These five great tribes — the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas — had for several generations been united in a confederacy which they likened to a long wigwam with its eastern door looking out upon the valley of the Hudson and its western toward the falls of Niagara. It was known far and wide over the continent as the Long House, and wherever it was known it was dreaded. When Frenchmen and Englishmen first settled in America, this Iroquois league was engaged in a long career of conquest. Algonquin tribes all the way from the Connecticut to the Mississippi were treated as its vassals and forced to pay trib- ute in weapons and wampum. This conquering career extended through the seventeenth century, until it was brought to an end by the French. When the latter began making settlements in Canada, they courted the friendship of their Al- gonquin neighbours, and thus, without dreaming what deadly seed they were sowing, they were led to attack the terrible Long House. It was easy THE FRENCH WARS. 29 enougli for Champlain in 1609 to win a victory- over savages who had never before seen a white man or heard the report of a musket ; but the victory was a fatal one for the French, for it made the Iroquois their eternal enemies. The Long House allied itself first with the Dutch and afterwards with the English, and thus checked the progress of the French toward the lower Hudson. We too seldom think how much we owe to those formidable savages. The Iroquois pressed the French with so much vigour that in 1689 they even laid siege to Montreal. But by 1696 the French, and the , . . Iroquois. assisted by all the Algonquin tribes within reach, and led by their warlike viceroy, Count Frontenac, one of the most picturesque figures in American history, at length succeeded in getting the upperhand and dealing the Long House a terrible blow, from the effects of which it never recovered. The league remained formid- able, however, until the time of the revolutionary war. In 1715 its fighting strength was partially repaired by the adoption of the kindred Iroquois tribe of Tuscaroras, who had just been expelled from North Carolina by the English settlers, and migrated to New York. After this accession the league, henceforth known as the Six Nations, formed a power by no means to be despised, though much less bold and aggressive than in the previous century. 30 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. After administering a check to the Iroquois, the French and Algonquins kept up for more than sixty years a desultory warfare against the Eng- lish colonies. Whenever war broke out between England and France, it meant war in America as well as in Europe. Indeed, one of the chief ob- jects of war, on the part of each of these two na- tions, was to extend its colonial dominions at the expense of the other. France and England were at war from 1689 to 1697; from 1702 to 1713; and from 1743 to 1748. The men in New York or Boston in 1750, who could remember the past sixty years, could thus look back over at least four-and-twenty years of open war ; and even in the intervals of professed peace there was a good deal of disturbance on the frontiers. A most frightful sort of warfare it was, ghastly with tor- ture of prisoners and the ruthless murder of women and children. The expense of raising and arming troops for defence was great enough to subject several of the colonies to a heavy burden of debt. In 1750 Massachusetts was just throw- ing off the load of debt under which she had staggered since 1693 ; and most of this debt was incurred for expeditions against the French and Algonquins. Under these circumstances it was natural that the colonial governments should find it hard to raise enough money for war expenses, and that the governors should think the legislatures too THE FRENCH WARS. 31 slow in acting. They were slow ; for, as is apt to be the case when money is to be borrowed with- out the best security, there were a good many things to be considered. All this was made worse by the fact that there were so many separate gov- ernments, so that each one was inclined to hold back and wait for the others. On the other hand, the French viceroy in Canada had despotic power ; the colony which he governed never pretended to be self-supporting ; and so, if he could not squeeze money enough out of the people in Canada, he just sent to France for it and got it ; for the gov- ernment of Louis Xy. regarded Canada as one of the brightest jewels in its crown, and was always ready to spend money for damaging the English. Accordingly the Frenchman getting the could plan his campaign, call his red oniestoact , in concert. men together, and set the whole frontier in a blaze, while the legislatures in Boston or New York were talldng about what had better be done in case of invasion. No wonder the royal governors fretted and fumed, and sent home to England dismal accounts of the perverseness of these Americans ! Many people in England thought that the colonies were allowed to govern themselves altogether too much, and that for their own good the British government ought to tax them. Once while Sir Robert Walpole was prime minister (1721-1742) some one is said to have advised him to lay a direct tax upon the Ameri- 32 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. cans ; but that wise old statesman shook his head. It was bad enough, he said, to be scolded and abused by half the people in the old country ; he did not wish to make enemies of every man, woman, and child in the new. But if the power to raise American armies for the common defence, and to collect money in America for this purpose, was not to be assumed by the British government, was there any way in which unity and promptness of action in time of war could be secured ? There was another way, if people could bo persuaded to adopt it. The thirteen colonies might be joined together in a federal union ; and the federal government, with- out interfering in the local affairs of any single colony, might be clothed with the power of levy- ing taxes all over the country for purposes of common defence. The royal governors were in- clined to favour a union of the colonies, no matter how it might be l^rought about. They union be- thouglit it ncccssary that some decisive English col- step should be taken quickly, for it was evident that the peace of 1748 was only an armed truce. Evidently a great and decisive struggle was at hand. In 1750 the Ohio Com- pany, formed for the purpose of colonizing the valley drained by that river, had surveyed the country as far as the present site of Louisville. In 1753 the French, taking the alarm, crossed Lake Erie, and began to fortify themselves at THE FRENCH WARS. 33 Presque Isle, and at Venango on tlie Alleghany river. Tliey seized persons trading within the limits of the Ohio Company, which lay within the territory of Virginia ; and accordingly Governor Dinwiddle, of Virginia, selected George Washing- ton — a venturous and hardy young land-sur- veyor, only twenty-one years old, but gifted with a sagacity beyond his years — and sent him to Venango to warn off the trespassers. It was an exceedingly delicate and dangerous mission, and Washington showed rare skill and courage in this first act of his public career, but the French com- mander made polite excuses and remained. Next spring the French and English tried each to fore- stall the other in fortifying the all-important place where the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers unite to form the Ohio, the place long afterward commonly known as the " Gateway of the West," the place where the city of Pittsburgh now stands. In the course of these preliminary manoeuvres Washington was besieged in Fort Necessity by overwhelming numbers, and on July 4, 1754, was obliged to surrender the whole of his force, but obtained leave to march away. So the French got possession of the much-coveted situation, and erected there Fort Duquesne as a menace to all future English intruders. "As yet war had not been declared between France and England, but these skirmishings indicated that war in earnest was not far off. 34 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. In view of the approaching war a meeting was arranged at Albany between the principal chiefs of the Six Nations and commissioners from sev- eral of the colonies, that the alliance between Eng- lish and Iroquois might be freshly cemented ; and some of the royal governors improved the occasion to caU for a Congress of all the colonies, in order to prepare some plan of confederation at Albany, sucli as aU thc colonics might be willino^ 1754, o to adopt. At the time of Washington's surrender such a Congress was in session at Al- bany, but Maryland was the most southerly colony represented in it. The people nowhere showed any interest in it. No public meetings were held, in its favour. The only newspaper which warmly approved it was the "Pennsylvania Gazette," which appeared with a union device, a snake di- vided into thirteen segments, with the motto " Unite or Die ! " The editor of this paper was Benjamin Frank- lin, then eight-and-forty years of age and already one of the most famous men in America. In the preceding year he had been appointed by the crown postmaster-general for the American colo- nies, and he had received from the Royal Society the Copley medal for his brilliant discovery that lightning is a discharge of electricity. Franklin was very anxious to see the colonies united in a federal body, and he was now a delegate to the Congress. He drew up a plan of union which the THE FIRST- PLAN OF UNION. 35 Congress adopted, after a very long debate ; and it has ever since been known as the Albany Plan. The federal government was to consist, Jirst, of a President or Governor-general, appointed and paid by the crown, and holding office during its pleasure ; and secondly, of a Grand Council com- posed of representatives elected every third year by the legislatures of the several colonies. This federal government was not to meddle Franklin's with the internal affairs of any colony, Federal * but on questions of war and such other "^°"* questions as concerned all the colonies alike, it was to be supreme ; and to this end it was to have the power of levying taxes for federal purposes directly upon the people of the several colonies. Philadelphia, as the most centrally situated of the larger towns, was mentioned as a proper seat for the federal government. The end of our story will show the wonderful foresightedness of Franklin's scheme. If the Rev- olution had never occurred, we might very likely have sooner or later come to live under a constitu- tion resembling the Albany Plan. On the other hand, if the Albany Plan had been put into oper- ation, it might perhaps have so adjusted the rela- tions of the colonies to the British government that the Revolution would not have occurred. Perhaps, however, it would only have reproduced, on a larger scale, the irrepressible conflict between royal governor and popular assembly. The scheme OfP'TOF 86 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. failed for want of support. The Congress rec- ommended it to the colonial legislatures, but not one of them voted to adopt it. The difficulty was the same in 1754 that it was thirty years later, — only much stronger. The ]3eople of one colony saw but little of the people in another, had but few dealings with them, and cared not much about them. They knew and trusted their own local assemblies which sat and voted almost under their eyes ; they were not inclined to grant strange powers of taxation to a new assembly distant by a week's journey. This was a point to which peo- ple could never have been brought except as the alternative to something confessedly worse. The failure of the Albany Plan left the ques- tion of providing for military defence just where it was before, and the great Seven Years' War came on while governors and assemblies were wrangling to no pur23ose. In 1755 Braddock's army was unable to get support except from the steadfast personal exertions of Franldin, who used his great influence with the farmers of Pennsylvania to obtain horses, wagons, and provisions, pledging his own property for their payment. Nevertheless, as the war went on and the people of the colonies became fully alive to its importance, they did contribute liberally both in men and in money, and at last it appeared that in proportion to their wealth and population they had done even more than the regular army THE FIRST PLAN OF UNION. 37 and tlie royal exchequer toward overthrowing the common enemy. When the war came to an end m 1763 the whole face of things in America was changed. Seldom, if ever, had the world seen so complete a victory. France no longer possessed so much as an acre of ground in all North America. The unknown regions beyond the Mississippi river were handed over to Spain in payment for boot- less assistance rendered to France toward the close of the war. Spain also received New Or- leans, while Florida, which then reached west- ward nearly to New Orleans, passed from Sj)anish into British hands. The whole country north of Florida and east of the Mississippi river, includ- ing Canada, was now English. A strong combi- nation of Indian tribes, chiefly Algonquin, under the lead of the Ottawa sachem Pontiac, made a last desperate attempt, after the loss of their French allies, to criiu)le the Eno-lish; -^ ^ ^ . Overthrow but by 1765, after many harrowinsf of the , French pow- scenes of bloodshed, these red men were er in Amer- ica. crushed. There was no power left that could threaten the peace of the thirteen colonies unless it were the mother-country herself. " Well," said the French minister, the Duke de Choiseul, as he signed the treaty that shut France out of North America, " so we are gone ; it will be Eng- land's turn next ! " And like a prudent seeker after knowledge, as he was, the Duke presently 38 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. bethought him of an able and high-minded man, the Baron de Kalb, and sent him in 1767 to Amer- ica, to look about and see if there were not good grounds for his bold prophecy. CHAPTER IV. THE STAMP ACT, AND THE REVENUE LAWS. It did not take four years after the peace of 1763 to show how rapidly the new situation of affairs was bearing fruit in America. The war had taught its lessons. Earlier wars had men- aced portions of the frontier, and had been fought by single colonies or alliances of two or three. This war had menaced the whole frontier, and the colonies, acting for the first time in general con- cert, had acquired some dim notion of their united strength. Soldiers and officers by and by to be arrayed against one another had here fought as allies, — John Stark and Israel Putnam by the side of William Howe ; Horatio Gates by the side of Thomas Gage, — and it had not always been the regulars that bore off the palm for skill and endurance. One young man, of immense energy and fiery temper, united to rare prudence and fertility of resource, had already become famous enough to be talked about in England; in George Washington the Virginians recognized a tower of strength. The overthrow of their ancient enemy, while further increasing' the self-confidence of the Amer- 40 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. icans, at the same time removed the principal check which had hitherto kept their differences with the British government from coming to an open rupture. Formerly the dread of French at- tack had tended to make the Americans complai- conse- ^^^* toward the king's ministers, while the great"^ at tlic samc time it made the king's min- Frencii War. ^g^g^^g unwiUiug to losc the good will of the Americans. Now that the check was removed, the continuance or revival of the old disputes at once foreboded trouble ; and the old occasions for dispute were far from having ceased. On the contrary the war itself had given them fresh vital- ity. If money had been needed before, it was still more needed now. The war had entailed a heavy burden of expense upon the British gov- ernment as well as upon the colonies. The na- tional debt of Great Britain was much increased, and there were many who thought that, since the Americans shared in the benefits of the war they ouo-ht also to share in the burden which it left behind it. People in England who used this ar- gument did not realize that the Americans had really contributed as much as could reasonably be expected to the support of the war, and that it had left behind it debts to be paid in America as well as in England. But there was another argument which made it seem reasonable to many Englishmen that the colonists should be taxed. It seemed right that a small military force should THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 41 be kept up in America, for defence of the fron- tiers against the Indians, even if there were no other enemies to be dreaded. The events of Pon- tiac's war now showed that there was clearly need of such a force ; and the experience of the royal governors for half a century had shown that it was very difficult to get the colonial legislatures to vote money for any such purpose. Hence there errew up in Ensfland a feelino- that taxes , ... . Need for a ouofht to be raised in America as a con- steady rev- . . T T enue. tribution to the war debt and to the military defence of the colonies ; and in order that such taxes should be fairly distributed and promptly collected, it was felt that the whole busi- ness ought to be placed under the direct super- vision and control of parliament. In accordance with this feeling the new prime minister, George Grenville in 1764 announced his intention of passing a Stamp Act for the easier collection of revenue in America. Meanwhile things had hap- pened in America which had greatly irritated the people, especially in Boston, so that they were in the mood for resisting anything that looked like encroachment on the part of the British govern- ment. To understand this other source of irrita- tion, we must devote a few words to the laws by which that government had for a long time un- dertaken to regulate the commerce of the Amer- ican colonies. 42 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. Wlien European nations began to plant colo- nies in America, they treated them in accordance with a theory which prevailed until it was upset by the American Revolution. According to this ignorant and barbarous theory, a colony was a community which existed only for the purpose o£ enriching the country which had founded it. At the outset, the Spanish notion of a colony was that of a military station, which might j)lunder the heathen for the benefit of the hungry treas- ury of the Most Catholic monarch. But this theory was short-lived, like the enjoyment of the plunder which it succeeded in extorting. Accord- ing to the principles and practice of France and England — and of Spain also, after the first romantic fury of buccaneering had spent itself — What Euro- tlic great object in founding a colony, SLTweJe' besides increasing one's general impor- Kunded tance in the world and the area of one's ^°^' dominions on the map, was to create a dependent community for the purjiose of trading with it. People's ideas about trade were very absurd. It was not understood that when two parties trade with each other freely, both must be gainers, or else one would soon stop trading. It was supposed that in trade, just as in gambling or betting, what the one party gains the other loses. Accordingly laws were made to regulate trade so that, as far as possible, all the loss might fall upon the colonies and all the gain accrue to THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 43 the mother-country. In order to attain this ob- ject, the colonies were required to confine their trade entirely to England. No American colony could send its tobacco or its rice or its indigo to France or to Holland, or to any other country than England ; nor could it buy a yard of French silk or a pound of Chinese tea except from Eng- lish merchants. In this way English merchants sought to secure for themselves a monopoly of purchases and a monopoly of sales. By a fur- ther provision, although American ships might take goods to England, the carrying - trade be- tween the different colonies was strictly confined to British ships. Next, in order to protect British manufacturers from competition, it was thought necessary to prohibit the colonists from manufac- turing. They might grow wool, but it must be carried to England to be woven into cloth ; they might smelt iron, but it must be carried to Eng- land to be made into ploughshares. Finally, in order to protect British farmers and their land- lords, corn-laws were enacted, putting a prohibi- tory tariff on all kinds of grain and other farm produce shipped from the colonies to ports in Great Britain. Such absurd and tyrannical laws had begun to be made in the reign of Charles II., and by 1750 not less than twenty-nine acts of parliament had been passed in this spirit. If these laws had been strictly enforced, the American Revolution 44 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. would probably have come sooner tlian it did. In point of fact they were seldom strictly enforced, because so long as the French were a power in America the British government felt that it could not afford to irritate the colonists. In spite of laws to the contrary, the carrying-trade between the different colonies was almost monopolized by vessels owned, built, and manned in New Eng- land ; and the smuggling of foreign goods into Boston and New York and other seaport towns was winked at. It was in 1761, immediately after the over- throw of the French in Canada, that attempts were made to enforce the revenue laws more strictly than heretofore ; and trouble was at once threatened. Charles Paxton, the principal officer of the custom-house in Boston, applied to the Writs of Superior Court to grant him the author- assistance. '^^ ^^ ^g^ " writs of assistaucc " in searching for smuggled goods. A writ of assist- ance was a general search-warrant, empowering the officer armed with it to enter, by force if necessary, any dwelling-house or warehouse where contraband goods were supposed to be stored or hidden. A special search-warrant was one in which the name of the suspected person, and the house which it was proposed to search, were ac- curately specified, and the goods which it was intended to seize were as far as possible described. In the use of such special warrants there was not THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 45 much danger of gross injustice or oppression, because the court would not be likely to grant one unless strong evidence could be brought against the person whom it named. But the general search-warrant, or " writ of assistance," as it was called because men try to cover up the ugliness of hateful things by giving them inno- cent names, was quite a different affair. It was a blank form upon which the custom-house officer might fill in the names of j)ersons and descrip- tions of houses and goods to suit himself. Then he could go and break into the houses and seize the goods, and if need be simimon the sheriff and his^90SS(3 to help him in overcoming and brow- beating the owner. The writ of assistance was therefore axi abominable instrument of tyranny. Such writs had been allowed by a statute of the evil reign of Charles II. ; a statute of WiUiam III. had clothed custom-house officers in the col- onies with like powers to those Avhich they pos- sessed in England ; and neither of these statutes had been repealed. There can therefore be little doubt that the issue of such search-warrants was strictly legal, unless the authority of Parliament to make laws for the colonies was to be denied. James Otis then held the crown office of advo- cate-"^eneral, with an ample salary and ^ , . 1 . 1 . P ^ J'-tnies Otis. prospects oi high lavour irom govern- ment. AVhen the revenue officers called upon him, in view of his position, to defend their cause, he 46 THE WAR GF INDEPENDENCE. resigned his office and at once undertook to act as counsel for the merchants of Boston in their protest against the issue of the writs. A large fee was offered him, but he refused it. " In such a cause," said he, " I despise all fees." The case was tried in the council-chamber at the east end of the old town-hall, or what is now known as the " Old State-House," in Boston. Chief-justice Hutchinson presided, and Jeremiah Gridley, one of the greatest lawyers of that day, argued the case for the writs in a very powerful speech. The reply of Otis, which took five hours in the deliv- ery, was one of the greatest speeches of modern times. It went beyond the particular legal ques- tion at issue, and took up the whole question of the constitutional relations between the colonies and the mother-country. At the bottom of this, as of all the disjDutes that led to the Revolution, lay the ultimate question whether Americans were bound to yield obedience to laws which they had no share in making. This question, and the spirit that answered it flatly and doggedly in the nega- tive, were heard like an undertone pervading all the arguments in Otis' s wonderful speech, and it was because of this that the young lawyer John Adams, who was present, afterward declared that on that day " the child Independence was born." Chief -justice Hutchinson was a man of great ability and as sincere a patriot as any American of his time. He could feel the force of Otis's THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 47 argument, but he believed that Parliament was the supreme legislative body for the whole Brit- ish empire, and furthermore that it was the duty of a judge to follow the law as it existed. He reserved his decision until advice could be had from the law-officers of the crown in London ; and when next term he was instructed by them to grant the writs, this result added fresh impetus to the spirit that Otis's eloquence had aroused. The custom-house officers, armed with their writs, began breaking into warehouses and seizing goods which were said to have been smuggled. In this rough way they confiscated private property to the value of many thousands of pounds ; but sometimes the owners of warehouses armed them- selves and barricaded their doors and windows, and thus the officers were often successfully de- fied, for the sheriff was far from prompt in com- ing to aid them. While such things were going on in Boston, the people of Virginia were wrought into fierce excite- ment by what was known as the " Parsons' Cause." Tlie Church of England was at that time estab- lished by law in Virginia, and its clergymen, ap- pointed by English bishops, were unpopular. In 1758 the legislature, under the pressure of the French war, had passed an act which affected aU public dues and incidentally diminished the sal- aries of the clergy. Complaints were made to the Bishop of London, and the act of 1758 was vetoed 48 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. by the Idng in council. Several clergymen then Patrick brought suits to recover the unpaid por- Se°Parsons' tious of tlicir Salaries. In the first test ^^"^®' case there could be no doubt that the royal veto was legal enough, and the court there- fore decided in favour of the plaintiff. But it how remained to settle before a jury the amount of the damages. It was on this occasion, in De- cember, 1763, that the great orator Patrick Henry made his first speech in the court-room and at once became famous. He declared that no pov/er on earth could take away from Virginia the right to make laws for herself, and that in annulling a wholesome law at the request of a favoured class in the community " a king, from being the father of his people, degenerates into a tyrant, and for- feits all right to obedience." This bold talk aroused much excitement and some uproar, but the jury instantly responded by assessing the par- son's damages at one penny, and in 1765 Henry was elected a member of the colonial assembly. Thus almost at the same time in Massachusetts and in Virginia the preliminary scenes of the Rev- olution occurred in the court-room. In each case the representatives of the crown had the let- ter of the law on their side, but the principles of the only sound public policy, by which a Revolu- tion coidd be avoided, were those that were de- fended by the advocates of the people. At each successive move on the part of the British govern- TUE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 49 ment which looked like an encroachment upon the rights of Americans, the sympathy between these two leading colonies now grew stronger and stronger. It was in 1763 that George Grenville became prime minister, a man of whom Macaulay says that he knew of " no national interests except those which are expressed by pounds, shillings, and pence." Grenville proceeded to introduce into Parliament two measures which had conse- quences of which he little dreamed. The first of these measures was the Molasses Act, the second was the Stamp Act. Properly speaking, the Molasses Act was an old law which Grenville now made up his mind to revive and enforce. The commercial wealth of the New England colonies depended largely upon their trade with the fish which their fishermen cauo^ht alono^ the coast and as far out as the banks of Newfoundland. The finest fish could be sold in Europe, but the poorer sort found their chief market in the French West Indies. The ^he Moias- French government, in order to ensure ^^^ ^'^*" a market for the molasses raised in these islands, would not allow the planters to give anything else in exchange for fish. Great quantities of molas- ses were therefore carried to New England, and what was not needed there for domestic use was distilled into rum, part of which was consumed at home, and the rest carried chiefly to Africa where- 50 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. with to buy slaves to be sold to the southern col- onies. All this trade required many ships, and thus kept up a lively demand for New England lumber, besides finding employment for thousands of sailors and shipwrights. Now in 1733 the British government took it into its head to " pro- tect " its sugar planters in the English West In- dies by compelling the New England merchants to buy all their molasses from them ; and with this end in view it forthwith laid upon all sugar and molasses imported into North America from the French islands a duty so heavy that, if it had been enforced, it would have stopped all such importation. It is very doubtful if this measure would have attained the end which the British government had in view. Probably it would not have made much difference in the export of molasses from the English West Indies to New England, because the islanders happened not to want the fish which their French neighbours ooveted. But the New Englanders could see that the immediate result would be to close the market for their cheaper kinds of fish, and thus ruin their trade in lumber and rum, besides shutting up many a busy shipyard and turning more than 5000 sailors out of employment. It was estimated that the yearly loss to New England would ex- ceed £300,000. It was hardly wise in Great Britain to entail such a loss upon some of her best customers ; for with their incomes thus cut THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 51 down, it was not to be expected that the people of New England would be able to buy as many farm- ing tools, dishes, and pieces of furniture, garments of silk or wool, and wines or other luxuries, from British merchants as before. The government in passing its act of 1733 did not think of these consequences ; but it proved to be impossible to enforce the act without causing more disturbance than the government felt prepared to encounter. Now in 1764 Grenville announced that the act was to be enforced, and of course the machinery of writs of assistance was to be employed for that purpose. Henceforth all molasses from the French islands must either pay the prohibitory duty or be seized without ceremony. Loud and fierce was the indignation of New England over this revival of the Molasses Act. Even without the Stamp Act, it might very likely have led that part of the country to make armed resistance, but in such case it is not so sure that the southern and middle colonies would have come to the aid of New England. But in the Stamp Act Grenville provided the colonies with an issue which concerned one as much as another, and upon which they were accordingly sure to unite in resistance. It was also a much better issue for the Americans to take up, for it was not a mere revival of an old act ; it was a new depart- ure ; it was an imposition of a kind to which the x\mericans had never before been called upon 62 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. to submit, and in resisting it they were sure to enlist the sympathies of a good many powerful people in England. The Stamp Act was a direct tax laid upon the whole American people by Parliament, a legisla- tive body in which they were not represented. The British government had no tyrannical pur- j)ose in devising this tax. A stamp duty had The stamp already been suggested in 1755 by Wil- ^^^' liam Shirley, royal governor of Massa- chusetts, a worthy man and much more of a fa- vourite with the people than most of his class. Shirley recommended it as the least disagreeable kind of tax, and the easiest to collect. It did not call for any hateful searching of people's houses and shops, or any unpleasant questions about their incomes, or about their invested or hoarded wealth. It only required that legal docmnents and commercial instruments should be written, and newspapers printed, on stamped paper. Of all kinds of direct tax none can be less annoying, except for one reason ; it is exceedingly difficidt to evade such a tax ; it enforces itself. For these reasons Grenville decided to adopt it. He ar- ranged it so that all the officers charged with the business of selling the stamped paper should be Americans ; and he gave formal notice of the measure in March, 1764, a year beforehand, in order to give the colonies time to express their opinions about it. THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 53 In the Boston town-meeting in May, almost as soon as the news had arrived, the American view of the case was very clearly set forth in a series of resolutions drawn up by Samuel Adams. This was the first of the remarkable state papers from the pen of that great man, who now, at Samuel the age of forty-two, was just entering ^*^^^- upon a glorious career. Samuel Adams was a graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1740. He had been reared in politics from boyhood, for his father, a deacon of the Old South Church, had been chief spokesman of the popular party in its disputes with the royal governors. Of all the agencies in organizing resistance to Great Britain none were more powerful than the New England town-meetings, among which that of the people of Boston stood preeminent, and in the Boston town- meeting for more than thirty years no other man exerted so much influence as Samuel Adams, This was because of his keen intelligence and per- suasive talk, his spotless integrity, indomitable courage, unselfish and unwearying devotion to the public good, and broad sympathy with all classes of people. He was a thorough democrat. He respected the dignity of true manhood wherever he found it, and could talk with sailors and ship- wrights like one of themselves, while at the same time in learned argument he had few superiors. He has been called the '' Father of the Revolu- tion," and was no doubt its most conspicuous 64 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. figure before 1775, as Washington certainly was after that date. This earliest state paper of Samuel Adams con- tained the first formal and public denial of the right of Parliament to tax the colonies, because it was not a body in which their people were rep- resented. The resolutions were adoj)ted by the Massachusetts assembly, and a similar action was taken by Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina. The colonies pro- fessed their willingness to raise money in answer to requisitions upon their assemblies, which were the only bodies competent to lay taxes in Amer- ica. Memorials stating these views were sent to England, and the colony of Pennsylvania sent Dr. Franklin to represent its case at the British court. Franldin remained in London until the spring of 1775 as agent first for Pennsylvania, afterward for Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia, — a kind of diplomatic representative of the views and claims of the Americans. Grenville told Franklin that he wished to do things as pleasantly as possible, and was not dis- posed to insist upon the Stamp Act, if the Ameri- cans could suggest anything better. But when it appeared that no alternative was offered except to fall back upon the old clumsy system of requisi- tions, Grenville naturally replied that there ought to be some more efficient method of raising money for the defence of the frontier. Accordingly in THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 55 March, 1765, the Stamp Act Avas passed, with so little debate that people hardly noticed what was going on. But when the news reached America there was an outburst of wrath that was soon heard and felt in London. In May the Virginia legislature was assembled. George Washington was sitting there in his seat, and Thomas Jeffer- son, then a law-student, was listening eagerly from outside the door, when Patrick Henry introduced the famous resolutions in which he de- clared, among other things, that an at- Resolutions, - /. . . 17G5. tempt to vest the power oi taxation m any other body than the colonial assembly was a menace to the common freedom of Engiislunen, whether in Britain or in America, and that the people of Virginia were not bound to obey any law enacted in disregard of this principle. The language of the resolutions was bold enough, but a keener edge was put upon it by the defiant note which rang out from Henry in the course of the debate, when he commended the example of Tar- quin and Caesar and Charles I. to the attention of George III. " If this be treason," he exclaimed, as the speaker tried to call him to order, " if this be treason, make the most of it ! " The other colonies were not slow in acting-. Massachusetts called for a general congress, in order that all might discuss the situation and agree upon some course to be pursued in common. South Carolina responded most cordially, at the 66 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. instance of her noble, learned, and far-siglited patriot, Cliristoplier Gadsden. On the 7th of October, delegates from nine colonies met in a congress at New York, adopted resolutions like those of Virginia, and sent a memorial to the king, whose sovereignty over them they admitted, and a remonstrance to Parliament, whose authority to tax them they denied. The meeting of this congress was in itself a prophecy of what was to hapj^en if the British government should persist in the course upon which it had now entered. Meanwhile the summer had witnessed riots in many places, and one of these was extremely dis- graceful. Chief-justice Hutchinson had tried to dissuade the ministry from passing the Stamp Act, but an impression had got abroad among the wharves and waterside taverns of Boston that he had not only favoured it but had gone out of his way to send information to London, naming cer- tain merchants as smugglers. Under the influ- ence of this mistaken notion, on the night of the s^ampAct ^^*^ ^^ August a druukcn mob plun- riots. dered Hutchinson's house in Boston and destroyed his library, which was probably the finest in America at that time. Here, as is apt to be the case, the mob selected the wrong victim. Its shameful act was denounced by the people of Massachusetts, and the chief-justice was indem- nified by the legislature. In the other instances the riots were of an innocent sort. Stamp officers THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 57 were forced to resign. Boxes of stamped paper arriving by sliip were burned or thrown into tlie sea, and at length the governor of New York was compellad by a mob to surrender all the stamps entrusted to his care. These things were done for the most part under the direction of societies of workingmen known as " Sons of Liberty," who were pledged to resist the execution of the Stamp Act. At the same time associations of merchants declared that they would buy no more goods from England until the act should be repealed, and lawyers entered into agreements not to treat any document as invalidated by the absence of the re- quired stamp. As for the editors, they published their newspapers decorated with a grinning skull and cross-bones instead of the stamp. These demonstrations produced their effect in England. In July, 1765, the Grenville ministry fell, and the new government, with Lord Rock- ingham at its head, was more inclined to pay heed to the wishes and views of the Americans. The debate over the repeal of the Stamj) Act j^^ ^ of the lasted nearly three months and was one ^'^''*™p ^°*" of the fiercest that had been heard in Parliament for many a day. William Pitt declared that he rejoiced in the resistance of the Americans, and urged that the act should be repealed because Parliament ought never to have passed it ; but there were very few who took this view. As the result of the lons^ debate, at the end of March, 58 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 1766, the Stamp Act was repealed, and a De- claratory Act was passed in wliicli Parliament said in effect that it had a right to make such laws for the Americans if it chose to do so. The people of London, as well as the Amer- icans, hailed with delight the repeal of the Stamp Act ; but the real trouble had now only begun. The resolutions of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry and their approval by the Congress at New York had thrown the question of American tax- ation into the whirlpool of British politics, and there it was to stay until it worked a change for the better in England as well as in America. The principle that people must not be taxed except by their representatives had been to some extent recognized in England for five hundred years, and it was really the fundamental principle of Eno^lish liberty, but it was only very How the . ^, I'lii . question was impcriectlv that it had been put into affected by ^ . t i • i i British poll- practicc. ill tlic eighteenth century the House of Commons was very far from being a body that fairly represented the people of Great Britain. For a long time there had been no change in the distribution of seats, and mean- while the population had been increasing very dif ferently in different parts of the kingdom. Thu; great cities which had grown up in recent times such as Sheffield and Manchester, had no repre sentatives in Parliament, while many little bor ouo'hs with a handful of inhabitants had theii THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 59 representatives. Some such boroughs had been granted representation by Henry VIII. in order to create a majority for his measures in the House of Commons. Others were simply petty towns that had dwindled away, somewhat as the moun- tain villages of New England have dwindled since the introduction of railroads. The famous Old Sarum had members in Parliament long after it had ceased to have any inhabitants. Seats for these rotten boroughs, as they were called, were simply bought and sold. Political life in Eng- land was exceedingly corrupt ; some of the best statesmen indulged in wholesale bribery as if it were the most innocent thing in the world. The country was really governed by a few great fam- ilies, some of whose members sat in the House of Lords and others in the House of Commons. Their measures were often noble and patriotic in the highest degree, but when bribery and corrup- tion seemed necessary for carrying them, such means were employed without scruple. When George III. came to the throne in 1760, the great families which had thus governed Eng- land for half a century belonged to the party known as Old Whigs. Under their rule the power of the crown had been reduced to in- significance, and the modern system of and his poiit- ^ . ioal schemes. cabmet government by a responsible ministry had begun to grow up. The Tory famV ilies during this period had been very unpopular, 60 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. because of tlieir sympathy with the Stuart pre- tenders who had twice attempted to seize the crown and given the country a brief taste of civil war. By 1760 the Tories saw that the cause of the Stuarts was hopeless, and so they were in- clined to transfer their affections to the new king. George III. was a young man of narrow intelli- gence and poor education, but he entertained very strong opinions as to the importance of his kingly office. He meant to make himself a real king, like the king of France or the king of Spain. He was determined to break down the power of the Old Whigs and the system of cabinet government, and as the Old Whigs had been growing unpopu- lar, it seemed quite possible, with the aid of the Tories, to accomplish this. George was quite decorous in behaviour, and, although subject to fits of insanity which became more troublesome in his later years, he had a fairly good head for busi- ness. Industrious as a beaver and obstinate as a mule, he was an adept in political trickery. In the corrupt use of patronage he showed himself able to beat the Old Whigs at their own game, and with the aid of the Tories he might well be- lieve himself capable of reviving for his own ben- efit the lost power of the crown. Beside these two parties a third had been for some time growing up which was in some essential points opposed to both of them. This third party was that of the New Whigs. They wished to THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 61 reform the representation in Parliament in such wise as to disfranchise the rotten bor- The "New oughs and give representatives to great ^?jfa,nlntary towns like Leeds and Manchester. They ''^°'°'- held that it was contrary to the principles of Eng- lish liberty that the inhabitants of such great towns should be obliged to pay taxes in pursuance of laws which they had no share in making. The leader of the New Whigs was the greatest Eng- lishman of the eighteenth century, the elder Wil- liam Pitt, now about to pass into the House of Lords as Earl of Chatham. Their leader next in importance, William Petty, Earl of Shelburne, was in 1765 a young man of eight-and-twenty, and afterward came to be known as one of the most learned and sagacious statesmen of his time. These men were the forerunners of the great lib- eral leaders of the nineteenth century, such men as Russell and Cobden and Gladstone. Their first decisive and overwhelmln-^; victory w^as the passage of Lord John Russell's Reform Bill in 1832, but the agitation for reform was begun by William Pitt in 1745, and his famous son came very near winning the factory on that question in 1782. Now this question of parliamentary reform was intimately related to the question of taxing the American colonies. From some points of view they might be considered one and the same ques- tion. At a meeting of Presbyterian ministers in 62 rUE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. Philadelphia, it was pertinently asked, " Have two men chosen to represent a poor English borough that has sold its votes to the highest bidder any pretence to say that they represent Virginia or Pennsylvania ? And have four hundred such fel- lows a right to take our liberties ? " In Parlia- ment, on the other hand, as well as at London dinner tables, and in newspapers and pamphlets, it was repeatedly urged that the Americans need not make so much fuss about being taxed without being represented, for in that respect they were no worse off than the people of Sheffield or Birming- ham. To this James Otis replied, " Don't talk to us any more about those towns, for we are tired of such a flimsy argument. If they are not rej)- resented, they ought to be ; " and by the New Whigs this retort was greeted with ap2)lause. The opinions and aims of the three different parties were reflected in the long debate over the repeal of the Stamp Act. The Tories wanted to have the act continued and enforced, and such was the wish of the king. Both sections of Whigs were in favour of repeal, but for very different reasons. Pitt and the New Whigs, being advo- cates of parliamentary reform, came out flatly in support of the principle that there should be no taxation without representation. Edmund Burke and the Old Whigs, being opposed to parliamen- tary reform and in favour of keeping things just as they were, could not adopt such an argument ; THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 63 and accordingly tliey based tlieir condemnation o£ the Stamp Act upon grounds of pure expediency. They argued that it was not worth while, for the sake of a little increase of revenue, to irritate three million people and run the risk of getting drawn into a situation from which there would be no escape except in either retreating or fighting. There was much j)ractical wisdom in this Old Whig argument, and it was the one which pre- vailed when Parliament repealed the Stamp Act and expressly stated that it did so only on grounds of expediency. ^ There was one person, however, who was far from satisfied with this result, and that was George III. He was opposed to parliamentary reform for much the same reason that the Old Whigs were opposed to it, because he felt that it threatened him with political ruin.- The ^ "Why George Old Whio's needed the rotten borouGfhs ni- was ready *=* '^ topickaquar- in order to maintain their own control ^f ^ ^^'!^'^ t^^® Americans. over Parliament and the country. The king needed them because he felt himself able to wrest them from the Old Whigs by intrigue and corruption, and thus hoped to build up his own power. He believed, with good reason, that the suppression of the rotten boroughs and the grant- ing of fair and equal representation would soon put a stronger curb upon the crown than ever. Accordingly there were no men whom he droaded and wished to put down so much as the New 64 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. Whigs ; and he felt that in the repeal of the Stamp Act, no matter on what ground, they had come altogether too near winning a victory. He felt that this outrageous doctrine that people must not be taxed except by their representatives needed to be sternly rebuked, and thus he found himseK in the right sort of temper for j)icking a fresh quarrel with the Americans. An occasion soon presented itself. One of the king's devices for breaking down the system of cabinet government was to select his ministers from different parties, so that they might be un- able to work harmoniously together. Owing to the peculiar divisions of parties in Parliament he was for some years able to carry out this j^olicy, and while his cabinets were thus weak and di- vided, he was able to use his control of patronage with telling effect. In July, 1766, he got rid of Lord Rockingham and his Old Whigs, and formed a new ministry made up from all parties. It con- tained Pitt, who had now, as Earl of Chatham, gone into the House of Lords, and at the same time Charles Townshend, as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Townshend, a brilliant young man, without any j^olitical principles worth mentioning, was the most conspicuous among a group of wire- pullers who were coming to be known as "the king's friends." Serious illness soon kept Chatham at home, and left Townshend all-powerful in the cabinet, because he was bold and utterly unscru- THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. Q^ pulous and had the king to back him. His auda- city knew no limits, and he made up his mind that the time had come for gathering all the disputed American questions, as far as possible, into one bundle, and disposing of them once for all. So in May, 1767, he brought forward in Par- '' ^ ' ^ ^ ^ , Charles liament a series of acts for raisins: and Townshend *-" and his rev- applying a revenue in America. The ^'^^JJ^ ^^^^^ colonists, he said, had objected to a di- rect tax, but they had often submitted to port duties, and could not reasonably refuse to do so again. Duties were accordingly to be laid on glass, paper, lead, and painter's colours ; on wine, oil, and fruits, if carried directly to America from Spain and Portugal ; and especially on tea. A board of commissioners was to be established at Boston, to superintend the collection of revenue throughout the colonies, and writs of assistance were to be expressly legalized. The salaries of these commissioners were to be paid out of the revenue thus collected. Governors, judges, and crown-attornej^s were to be made independent of the colonial legislatures by having their salaries paid by the crown out of this same fund. A small army was also to be kept up ; and if after 23roviding for these various expenses, any sur- plus remained, it could be used^ by the crown in giving pensions to Americans and thus be made to serve as a corruption-fund. These measures were adopted on the 29th of June, and as if to refute 66 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. anybody who might be inclined to think that rash- ness could no further go, Townshend accompanied them with a special act directed against the New York legislature, which had refused to obey an order concerning the quartering of troops. By way of punishment, Townshend now suspended the legislature. A few weeks after carrying these measures Townshend died of a fever, and his place was taken by Lord North, eldest Lord North. ^ _ ^ ^ ' son of the Earl of Guilford. North was thirty-five years of age. He was amiable and witty, and an excellent debater, but without force of will. He let the king rule him, and was at the same time able to show a strong hand in the House of Commons, so that the king soon came to regard him as a real treasure. Soon after North's appointment. Lord Chatham and other friends of America in the cabinet resigned their places and were succeeded by friends of the king. From 17G8 to 1782 George III. was to all intents and purposes his own prime minister, and con- trived to keep a majority in Parliament. During those fourteen years the American question was uppermost, and his policy was at all hazards to force the colonists to abandon their position that taxation must go hand in hand with representa- tion. This purpose was already apparent in Charles Townshend's acts. They were not at all like previous acts imposing port duties to which the THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 67 Americans had submitted. British historians sometimes speak of the American Revohition as an affair which grew out of a mere dispute about money ; and even among Americans, in ordinary conversation and sometimes in current literature, the unwillingness of our forefathers to pay a tax of threepence a pound on tea is mentioned with- out due reference to the attendant circumstances which made them refuse to pay such a tax. We cannot hope to understand the fierce wrath by which they were animated unless we bear in mind not only the simple fact of the tax, but also the spirit in which it was levied and the purpose for which the revenue was to be used. The ^j^^^ ^.^^ Molasses Act threatening the ruin of lets'reaiiy*^ New England commerce was still on '"^''"*- the statute-book, and commissioners, armed with odious search-warrants for enforcing this and other tyrannical laws, were on their way to Amer- ica. For more than half a century the people had jealously guarded against the abuse of power by the royal governors by making them depend- ent upon the legislatures for their salaries. Now they were all at once to be made independent, so that they might even dismiss the legislatures, and if need be call for troops to help them. The judges, moreover, with their power over men's lives and property, were no longer to be respon- sible to the people. If these changes were to be effected, it would be nothing less than a revolu- 68 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. tion by which the Americans woukl be deprived of their liberty. And, to crown all, the money by which this revolution was to be brought about was to be contributed in the shape of port duties by the Americans themselves I To expect our fore- fathers to submit to such legislation as this was about as sensible as it would have been to expect them to obey an order to buy halters and hang themselves. When the news of the Townshend acts reached Massachusetts, the assembly at its next session took a decided stand. Besides a petition to the king and letters to several leading British states- men, it issued a circular letter addressed to the other twelve colonies, asking for their friendly advice and cooperation with reference to the Townshend measures. These paj)ers were v/rit- ten by Samuel Adams. The circular letter was really an invitation to the other colonies to con- cert measures of resistance if it should be found necessary. It enraged the king, and j^resently an order came across the ocean to Francis Ber- nard, royal governor of Massachusetts, to demand of the assembly that it rescind its circular letter, under penalty of instant dissolution. Otis ex- claimed that Great Britain had better rescind the Townshend acts if she did not wish to lose her colonies. The assembly decided, by a vote of 92 to 17, that it would not rescind. This flat de- fiance was everywhere applauded. The assem- THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 69 blies of the other colonies were ordered to take no notice of the Massachusetts circular, but the order was generally disobeyed, and in several cases the governors turned the assemblies out of doors. The atmosphere of America now became alive with politics ; more meetings were held, more speeches made, and more pamphlets printed, than ever before. In England the dignified and manly course of the Americans was generally greeted with ap- plause by Whigs of whatever sort, except those who had come into the somewhat widening circle of " the king's friends." The Old Whigs, — Burke, Fox, Conway, Savile, Lord John ' . ' , ^ ' ' The quarrel Cavendish, and the Duke of Richmond : ^^ -^^ -lot be- tween Eng- and the New Whio-s, — Chatham, Shel- ^^'i '?»d, , ^ ' ' America, but bui-ne, Camden, Dunning, Barre, and Ggor^e"iii Beckford ;- steadily defended the Amer- 'J-pie'^'yj.'Jj leans throuohout the whole of the Rev- ^!!f,A"lTi" olutionary crisis, and the weight of the <^^"'^^- best intelligence in the country was certainly on their side. Could they have acted as a united body, could Burke and Fox have joined forces in harmony with Chatham and Shelburne, they might have thwarted the king and prevented the rupture with America. But George III. profited by the hopeless division between these two Whig parties ; and as the quarrel with America grew fiercer, he succeeded in arraying the national pride to some extent upon his side and against 70 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. the Wliigs. This made him feel stronger and stimulated his zeal against the Americans. He felt that if he could first crush Whig principles in America, he could then turn and crush them in England. In this he was correct, except that he miscalculated the strength of the Americans. It was the defeat of his schemes in America that ensured their defeat in England. It is quite wrong and misleading, therefore, to remember the Revolutionary War as a struggle between the British people and the American people. It was a struggle between two hostile principles, each of which was represented in both countries. In win- ning the good fight, our forefathers won a victory for England as well as for America. What was crushed was George III. and the kind of despot- ism which he wished to fasten upon America in order that he might fasten it upon England. If the memory of George III. deserves to be exe- crated, it is especially because he succeeded in giving to his own selfish struggle for power the appearance of a struggle between the people of England and the ]3eople of America; and in so doing, he sowed seeds of enmity and distrust be- tween two glorious nations that, for their own sakes and for the welfare of mankind, ought never for one moment to be allowed to forget their brotherhood. Time, however, is rapidly re- pairing the damage v/hich George III.'s policy wrought, and it need in nowise disturb our narrar THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 71 tive. In this brief sketch we must omit hun- dreds of interesting details ; but, if we would look at things from the right point of view, we must bear in mind that every act of George III., from 1768 onward, which brought on and carried on the Revolutionary War, was done in spite of the ea^rnest protest of many of the best people in England ; and that the king's wrong-headed pol- icy prevailed only because he was able, through corrupt methods, to command a parliament which did not really represent the people. Had the principles in support of which Lord Chatham joined hands with Samuel Adams for one moment prevailed, the king's schemes would have collapsed like a soap-bubble. As it was, in 1768 the king succeeded, in spite of strong opposition, in carrying his point. He saw that the American colonies were disposed to resist the Townshend acts, and that in this defiant attitude Massachusetts was the ringleader. The Massachusetts circular pointed toward united ac- tion on the part of the colonies. Above all things it was desirable to prevent any such union, and accordingly the king decided to make his prin- cipal attack upon Massachusetts, while dealing more kindly v/itli the other colonies. Thus he hoped Massachusetts might be isolated and hum- bled, and in this belief he proceeded faster and more rashly than if he had supposed himself to be dealing with a united America. In order to 72 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. catcli Samuel Adams and James Otis, and get them sent over to England for trial, lie attempted to revive an old statute of Henry VIII. about treason committed abroad ; and in order to en- force the revenue laws in spite of all opposition, lie ordered troops to be sent to Boston. This was a very harsh measure, and some ex- Troopssent ^^^® ^^^ nccdcd to justify it before to Boston. Parliament. It was urged that Boston was a disorderly town, and the sacking of Hutch- inson's house could be cited in support of this view. Then in June, 1768, there was a slight con- flict between townspeople and revenue officers, in which no one v/as hurt, but which led to a great town-meeting in the Old South Meeting-House, and gave Governor Bernard an opportunity foi saying that he was intimidated and hindered in the execution of the laws. The king's real pur- pose, however, in sending troops was not so much to keep the peace as to enforce the Towiishend acts, and so the people of Boston understood it. Except for these odious and tyrannical laws, there was nothing that threatened disturbance in Bos- ton. The arrival of British troops at Long Wharf, in the autumn of 1768, simply increased the danger of disturbance, and in a certain sense it may be said to have been the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Very few people realized this at the time, but Samuel Adams now made up his mind that the only way in which the Anieri- THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 73 can colonies could preserve tlieir liberties was to unite in some sort of federation and declare themselves independent of Great Britain. It was with regret that he had come to this conclusion, and he was very slow in proclaiming it, but after 1768 he kept it distinctly before his mind. He saw clearly the end toward which public oj)inion was gradually drifting, and because of his great influence over the Boston town-meeting and the Massachusetts assembly, this clearness of purpose made him for the next seven years the most for- midable of the king's antagonists in America. The people of Boston were all the more indig- nant at the arrival of troops in their town because the king in his hurry to send them had even disre- garded the act of Parliament which provided for such cases. According to that act the soldiers ought to have been lodged in Castle William on one of the little islands in the harbour. Even ac- cording to British-made law they had no business to be quartered in Boston so long as there was room for them in the Castle. During the next seventeen months the people made several formal protests against their presence in town, and asked for their removal. But these protests were all fruitless until innocent blood had been shed. The soldiers generally behaved no worse than rough troopers on such occasions are apt to do, and the townspeople for the most part preserved decorum, but quarrels now and then occurred, and after ^^^^^ ^(>-zaJcj^ 74 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. a while became frequent. In September, 1769, James Otis was brutally assaulted at the British Coffee House by one of the commissioners of cus- toms aided and abetted by two or three army offi- cers. His health was already feeble and in this affray he was struck on the head with a sword and so badly injured that he afterward became insane. After this the feeling of the peojile toward the soldiers was more bitter than ever. In February, 1770, there was much disturbance. Toward the end of the month an informer named Richardson fired from his window into a crowd and killed a little boy about eleven years of age, named Christopher Snyder. The funeral of this poor boy, the first victim of the Revolution, was attended on Monday, the 26th, by a great proces- sion of citizens, including those foremost in wealth and influence. The rest of that week was full of collisions which on Friday almost amounted to a riot and led the governor's council to consider seriously whether the troops ought not to be removed. But The "Boston ^^forc they had settled the question the Massacre." crisis camc on Monday evening, March 5, in an affray before the Custom House on King street, when seven of Captain Preston's company fired into the crowd, killing five men and wounding several others. Two of the victims were innocent bystanders. Two were sailors from ships lying in the harbour, and they, together with THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 75 the remaining victim, a ropemaker, had been ac- tively engaged in the affray. One of the sailors, a mulatto or half-breed Indian of gigantic stat- ure, named Crispus Attucks, had been especially conspicuous. The slaughter of these five men se- cured in a moment what so many months of deco- rous protest had failed to accomplish. Much more serious bloodshed was imminent when Lieutenant- governor Hutchinson arrived upon the scene and promptly arrested the offending soldiers. The next day there was an immense meeting at the Old South, and Samuel Adams, at the head of a committee, came into the council chamber at the Town House, and in the name of three thousand freemen sternly commanded Hutchinson to remove the soldiers from the town. Before sunset they had all been withdrawn to the Castle. When the news reached the ears of Parliament there was some talk of reinstating them in the town, but Colonel Barre cut short the discussion with the pithy question, " if the officers agreed in remov- ing the soldiers to Castle William, what minister will dare to send them back to Boston ? " Thus the so-called " Boston Massacre " wrought for the king a rebuff which he felt perhaps even more keenly than the repeal of the Stamp Act. Not only had his troops been peremptorily turned out of Boston, but his policy had for the moment weakened in its hold upon Parliament. In the smnmer of 1769 the assembly of Virginia adopted 76 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. a very important series of resolutions condemning the policy of Great Britain and recommending united action on tlie part of the colonies in de- fence of their liberties. The governor then dis- solved the assembly, whereupon its members met in convention at the Kaleigh tavern and adopted a set of resolves prepared by Washington, strictly forbidding importations from England until the Townshend acts should be repealed. These re- solves were generally adopted by the colonies, and presently the merchants of London, finding their trade falling off, petitioned Parliament to recon- Lord North, sidcr its policy. In January, 1770, Lord miSe?, re- Nortli bccamc prime minister. In April duties ex- aU the duties were taken off, except the 1770.°" ea, ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ wliicli tlic king insisted upon retaining, in order to avoid surrendering the principle at issue. The effect of even this partial concession was to weaken the spirit of opposition in America, and to create a division among the colonies. In July the merchants of New York refused to adhere any longer to the non-impor- tation agreement except with regard to tea, and they began sending orders to England for va- rious sorts of merchandise. Rhode Island and New Hampshire also broke the agreement. This aroused general indignation, and ships from the three delinquent colonies were driven from such ports as Boston and Charleston. Union among the colonies was indeed only skin THE STAMP ACT, AND REVENUE LAWS. 77 deep. The only thing which kept it alive was British aggression. Almost every colony ^^^^^ ^j had some bone of contention with its ™^°"" neighbours. At this moment New York and New Hampshire were wrangling over the possession of the Green Mountains, and guerrilla warfare was going on between Connecticut and Pennsylvania in the valley of Wyoming. It was hard to secure concerted action about anything. For two years after the withdrawal of troops from Boston there was a good deal of disturbance in different parts of the country ; quarrels between governors and their assemblies were kept up with increasing bit- terness ; in North Carolina there was an insurrec- tion against the governor which was suppressed only after a bloody battle near the Cape Fear river ; in Rhode Island the revenue schooner Gaspee was seized and burned, and when an order came from the ministry requiring the offenders to be sent to England for trial, the chief-justice of Rhode Island, Stephen Hopkins, refused to obey the order. But amid all these disturbances there appeared nothing like concerted action on the part of the colonies. In June, 1772, Hutchinson said that the union of the colonies seemed to be broken, and he hoped it woidd not be renewed, for he believed it meant separation from the mother-country, and that he regarded as the worst of calamities. CHAPTER V. THE CRISIS. The surest way to renew and cement the union was to show that the ministry had not relaxed in its determination to enforce the principle of the Townshend acts. This was made clear in August, Salaries of 1^72, wlicu it was Ordered that in Mas- the judges, sachusctts the judges should henceforth be paid by the crown. Popular excitement rose to fever heat, and the judges were threatened with impeachment should they dare accept a penny from the royal treasury. The turmoil was in- creased next year by the discovery in London of the package of letters which were made to support the unjust charge against Hutchinson and some of his friends that they had instigated and aided the most extreme measures of the ministry. In the autumn of 1772 Hutchinson refused to call an extra session of the assembly to consider what should be done about the judges. Samuel Adams then devised a scheme by which the towns of Massachusetts could consult with each other and agree upon some common course of action in case of emergencies. For this purpose each town was to appoint a standing committee, and as a THE CRISIS. 79 great part of their work was necessarily done by letter they were called " committees of correspondence." This was the step of corre- p., 'IT T^ t • spondence. that lairly organized the Ke volution. It was by far the most important of all the steps that preceded the Declaration of Independence. The committees did their work with great effi- ciency and the governor had no means of stopping it. They were like an invisible legislature that was always in session and could never be dis- solved ; and when the old government fell they were able to administer affairs until a new govern- ment could be set up. In the spring of 1778 Virginia carried this work of organization a long step further, when Dabney Carr suggested and carried a motion calling for committees of cor- respondence between the several colonies. From this point it was a comparatively short step to a permanent Continental Congress. It happened that these preparations were made just in time to meet the final act of aggression which brought on the Revolutionary War. The Americans had thus far successfully resisted the Townshend acts and secured the repeal of all the duties except on tea. As for tea they had plenty, but not from England ; they smuggled it from Holland in spite of custom-houses and search- warrants. Clearly unless the Americans could be made to buy tea from England and pay the duty on it, the king must own himself defeated. 80 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. Since it appeared that tliey could not be forced into doing- this, it remained to be seen if they could be tricked into doing it. A truly ingenious scheme was devised. Tea sent by the East India Tea ships sent Company to America had formerly paid aJ a chai-"^' a duty in some British port on the way. This duty was now taken off, so that the price of the tea for America might be low- ered. The company's tea thus became so cheap that the American merchant could buy a pound of it and pay the threepence duty beside for less than it cost him to smuggle a pound of tea from Holland. It was supposed that the Americans would of course buy the tea which they could get most cheaply, and would thus be beguiled into submission to that principle of taxation which they had hitherto resisted. Ships laden with tea were accordingly sent in the autumn of 1773 to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston ; and consignees were appointed to receive the tea in each of these towns. Under the guise of a commercial operation, this was purely a political trick. It was an insulting challenge to the American people, and merited the reception which they gave it. They would have shown themselves unworthy of their rich political heritage had they given it any other. In New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston mass- meetings of the people voted that the consignees should be ordered to resign their offices, and they THE CRISIS. 81 did so. At Philadelphia the tea-ship was met and sent back to England before it had come within the jurisdiction of the custom-house. At Charleston the tea was landed, and as there was no one to receive it or pay the duty, it was thrown into a damp cellar and left there to spoil. In Boston things took a different turn. The stubborn courage of Governor Hutchinson pre- vented the consignees, two of whom were his own sons, from resigning ; the ships arrived and were anchored under guard of a committee of citizens ; if they were not unloaded within twenty days, the custom-house officers were empowered by law to seize them and unload them by force ; and having once come within the jurisdiction of the custom- house, they could not go out to sea with- Howthechai- out a clearance from the collector or a ceSTthr' pass from the governor. The situation pa^fy^^^D^c! was a difficult one, but it was most nobly ^^' ^"^' met by the men of Massachusetts. The excite- ment was intense, but the proceedings were char- acterized from first to last by perfect quiet and decormn. In an earnest and solemn, almost prayerful spirit, the advice of aU the towns in the commonwealth was sought, and the response was unanimous that the tea must on no account what- ever be landed. Similar expressions of opinion came from other colonies, and the action of Mas- sachusetts was awaited with breathless interest. Many town-meetings were held in Boston, and the 82 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. owner of the ships was ordered to take them away without unloading ; but the collector contrived to fritter away the time until the nineteenth day, and then refused a clearance. On the next day, the 16th of December, 1773, seven thousand peo- ple were assembled in town-meeting in and around the Old South Meeting-House, while the owner of the ships was sent out to the governor's house at Milton to ask for a pass. It was nightfall when he returned without it, and there was then but one thing to be done. By sunrise next morning the revenue officers would board the ships and unload their cargoes, the consignees would go to the cus- tom-house and pay the duty, and the king's scheme would have been crowned with success. The only way to prevent this was to rip open the tea-chests and spill their contents into the sea, and this was done, according to a preconcerted plan and with- out the slightest uproar or disorder, by a small party of men disguised as Indians. Among them were some of the best of the townsfolk, and the chief manager of the proceedings was Samuel Adams. The destruction of the tea has often been spoken of, especially by British historians, as a " riot," but nothing could have been less like a riot. It was really the deliberate action of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the only fit- ting reply to the king's insulting trick. It was hailed with delight throughout the thirteen colo- nies, and there is nothing in our whole history of THE CRISIS. 83 which an educated American should feel more proud. The effect upon the king and his friends was maddening, and events were quickly brought to a crisis. In spite of earnest opposition retaliatory acts were passed throush Parliament in I ^ * The Retalia- ' April, 1774. One of these was the Port tory Acts, l^ ' ^ April, 1774. Bill, for shutting up the port of Boston I and stopping its trade until the people should be starved and frightened into paying for the tea that had been thrown overboard. Another was the Regulating Act, by which the charter of Mas- sachusetts was annulled, its free government swept away, and a military governor appointed with des- potic power like Andros. These acts were to go into operation on the 1st of June, and on that day Governor Hutchinson sailed for England, in the vain hope of persuading the king to adopt a milder policy. It was not long before his prop- erty was confiscated, like that of other Tories, and after six years of exile he died in London. The new governor, Thomas Gage, who had long been commander of the military forces in America, was a mild and pleasant man without much strength of character. His presence was endured but his authority was not recognized in Massachusetts. Troops were now quartered again in Boston, but they could not prevent the people from treating the Regulating Act with open contempt. Courts organized under that act were prevented from sit- 84 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. ting, and councillors were compelled to resign tlieir places. The king's authority was everywhere quietly but doggedly defied. At the same time the stoppage of business in Boston was the cause of much distress which all the colonies sought to relieve by voluntary contributions of food and other needed articles. The events of the last twelve months had gone further than anything before toward awakening a sentiment of union among the people of the colo- nies. It was still a feeble sentiment, but it was strong- enouo-h to make them all feel that Boston was suffering in the common cause. The system of Continental corresponding~coTiimittees now ripened meetJ^Sept. ^^^^^ *^^^ Continental Congress, which ■^^^*" held its firs^/*fieeting at Philadelphia in September, 1774. Among the delegates were Sam- uel and John Adams, Robert Livingston, John Rutledsre, John Dickinson, Samuel Chase, Edmund Pendleton, Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and George Washington. Their action was cau- tious and conservative. They confined themselves for the present to trying the effect of a candid state- ment of grievances, and drew up a Declaration of Rights and other papers, which were pronounced by Lord Chatham unsurpassed for ability in any age or country. In Parliament, how^ever, the king's friends were becoming all-powerful, and the only effect produced by these papers was to goad them toward further attempts at coercion. Mas- THE CRISIS. 85 saclmsetts was declared fco be in a state of rebel- lion, as in truth she was. While Samuel Adams was at Philadelphia, the lead in Boston was taken by his friend Dr. War- ren. In a county convention held at Milton in September, Dr. Warren drew up a series of re- solves which fairly set on foot the Revolution. They declared that the Regulating Act was null and void, and that a king who violates the char- tered rights of his subjects forfeits their allegiance ; they directed the collectors of taxes to refuse to pay the money collected to Gage's treasurer ; and they threatened retaliation in case Gage should venture to arrest any one for political •^ ^ The Suffolk reasons. These bold resolves were Resolves Sept. 17(4. adopted by the convention and sanc- tioned by the Continental Congress. Next month the people of Massachusetts formed a provisional government, and began organizing a militia and collecting military stores at Concord and other inland towns. General Gage's position at this time was a try- ing one for a man of his temperament. In an unguarded moment he had assured the king that four regiments ought to be enough to bring Mas- sachusetts into an attitude of penitence. Now Massachusetts was in an attitude of rebellion, and he realized that he had not troops enough to command the situation. People in England were blaming him for not doing something, and late in 86 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. the winter he received a positive order to arrest Samuel Adams and his friend John Hancock, then at the head of the new provisional government of Massachusetts, and send them to England to be tried for high treason. On the 18th of April, 1775, these gentlemen were staying at a friend's house in Lexington ; and Gage that evening sent out a force of 800 men to seize the military stores accumulated at Concord, with instructions to stoj) on the way at Lexington and arrest Adams and Hancock. But Dr. Warren divined the purpose of the movement, and his messenger, Paul Re- vere, succeeded in forewarning the people, so that by the time the troops arrived at Lexington the birds were flown. The soldiers fired into a company of militia on Lexington common and slew eight or ten of their number ; but by the time they reached Concord the country was fairly Battle of aroused and armed yeomanry were com- Aprlr^io"' ^^^& upon the scene by hundreds. In a ^^^"^- sharp skirmish the British were defeated and, without having accomplished any of the ob- jects of their expedition, began their retreat toward Boston, hotly pursued by the farmers who fired from behind walls and trees after the Indian fashion. A reinforcement of 1200 men at Lex- ington saved the routed troops from destruction, but the numbers of their assailants grew so raj)- idly that even this larger force barely succeeded in escaping capture. At sunset the British reached THE CRISIS. 87 Charlestown after a march wliicli was a series of skirmishes, leaving nearly 300 of their number killed or wounded along the road. By that time yeomanry from twenty-three townships had joined in the pursuit. The alarm spread like wildfire through New England, and fresh bands of militia arrived every hour. Within three days Israel Putnam and Benedict Arnold had come from Connecticut and John Stark from New Hamp- shire, a cordon of 16,000 men was drawn around Boston, and the siege of that town was begun. The bellifi^erent feelino; in New Ens^land had O O o now p^rown so stronsr as to show itself in an act of offensive warfare. On the 10th of May, just three weeks after Lexington, the fort- rrr- i i /-^ -r* • Capture of resses at iiconderosra and Crown Point, Ticonderoga, n. -, 1. r. . . May 10, 1775. controlling the line oi communication between New York and Canada, were surprised and captured by men from the Green Mountains and Connecticut valley under Ethan Allen and Seth Warner. The Congress, which met on that same day at Philadelphia, showed some reluctance in sanctioning an act so purely offensive ; but in its choice of a president the spirit of defiance toward Great Britain was plainly shown. John Hancock, whom the British commander-in-chief was under stringent orders to arrest and send over to England to be tried for treason, was chosen to that eminent position on the 24tli of May. This showed that the preponderance of sentiment 88 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. in the country was in favour of supporting the New England colonies in the armed struggle into which they had drifted. This was still further shown two days later, when Congress in the name of the " United Colonies of America " assumed the direction of the rustic army of New England men engaged in the siege of Boston. As Con- gress was absolutely penniless and had no power to lay taxes, it proceeded to borrow £6000 for the purchase of gunpowder. It called for ten com- panies of riflemen from Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, to reinforce what was henceforth known as the Continental army ; and on the 15th Washington ^^ ^^^^ ^^ appointed George Washing- command**^ tou commander-iu-chief. The choice of jinrSf' Washington was partly due to the gen- ^^^^' eral confidence in his ability and in his lofty character. In the French War he had won a military reputation higher than that of any other American, and he was already commander- in-chief of the forces of Virginia. But the choice was also partly due to sound political reasons. The Massachusetts leaders, especially Samuel Adams and his cousin John, were distrusted by some people as extremists and fire-eaters. They wished to bring about a declaration of independ- ence, for they believed it to be the only possible cure for the evils of the time. The leaders in other colonies, upon Avhich the hand of the Brit- ish government had not borne so heavily, had not THE CRISIS. 89 yet advanced quite so far as this. Most of them believed that the king could be brought to terms ; they did not realize that he would never give way because it was politically as much a life and death struggle for him as for them. Washington was not yet clearly in favour of independence, nor was Jefferson, who a twelvemonth hence was to be en- gaged in writing the Declaration. It is doubtful if any of the leading men as yet agreed with the Adamses, except Dr. Franklin, who had just re- turned from England after his ten years' stay there, and knew very well how little hope was to be placed in conciliatory measures. The Adamses, therefore, like wise statesmen, were always on their guard lest circumstances should drive Mas- sachusetts in the path of rebellion faster than the sister colonies were likely to keep pace with her. Tliis was what the king above all things wished, and by the same token it was what they especially dreaded and sought to avoid. To appoint George Washington to the chief command was to go a long way toward irrevocably committing Virginia to the same cause with Massachusetts, and «Tohn Adams was foremost in urging the appointment. Its excellence was obvious to every one, and we hear of only two persons that were dissatisfied. One of these was John Hancock, who coveted military distinction and was vain enough to think himself fit for almost any position. The other was Charles Lee, a British officer who had served 90 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. in America in the French War and afterward wandered about Europe as a soldier of fortune. He had returned to America in 1773 in the hope of playing a leading part here. He set himself up as an authority on mil- itary questions, and pretended to be a zealous lover of liberty. He was really an unprincipled charlatan for whom the kindest thing that can be said is that perhaps he was slightly insane. He had hoped to be appointed to the chief command, and was disgusted when he found himself placed second among the four major-generals. The first major-general was Artemas Ward of Massachu- setts ; the third was Philip Schuyler of New York ; the fourth was Israel Putnam of Connec- ticut. Eight brigadier-generals were appointed, among whom we may here mention Richard Mont- gomery of New York, William Heath of Massa- chusetts, John Sidlivan of New Hampshire, and Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island. The adju- tant-general, Horatio Gates, was an Englishman who had served in the French War, and since then had lived in Virginia. While Congress was appointing officers and making regulations for the Continental army, re- inforcements for the British had landed in Boston, making their army 10,000 strong. The new troops were commanded by General William Howe, a Whig who disapproved of the king's policy. With him came Sir Henry Clinton and THE CRISIS. 91 John Burgoyne, who were more in sympathy with the king. Howe and Burgoyne were members of Parhament. On the arrival of these reinforce- ments Gage prepared to occupy the heights in Charlestown known as Breed's and Bunker's hills. These heights commanded Boston, so that hostile batteries placed there would make it necessary for the British to evacuate the town. On the night of June 16, the Americans anticipated Gage in seizing the heights, and began erecting fortifica- tions on Breed's Hill. It was an exposed position for the American force, which might easily have been cut off and captured if the British had gone around by sea and occupied Charlestown Neck in the rear. The British preferred to storm the American works. In two desperate as- g^^^^^ ^^ saults, on the afternoon of the 17th, ^^"^^^^^^^ they were repulsed with the loss of one- ^"^' third of their number ; and the third assault suc- ceeded only because the Americans were not sup- plied with powder. By driving the Americans back to Winter HiU, the British won an impor- tant victory and kept their hold upon Boston. The moral effect of the battle, however, was in favour of the Americans, for it clearly indicated that under proper circumstances they might ex- hibit a power of resistance which the British would find it impossible to overcome. It was with George III. as with Pyrrhus : he could not afford to win many victories at such cost, for his supply 92 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. of soldiers for America was limited, and liis only- hope of success lay in inflicting heavy blows. In winning Bunker Hill his troops were only holding their own ; the siege of Boston was not raised for a moment. The practical effect upon the British army was to keep it quiet for several months. General Howe, who presently superseded Gage, was a brave and well-trained soldier, but slothful in temperament. His way was to strike a blow, and then wait to see what would come of it, hoping no doubt that political affairs might soon take such a turn as to make it unnecessary to go on with this fratricidal war. This was fortunate for the Americans, for when Washington took command of the army at Cambridge on the 3d of July, he saw that little or nothing could be done with that army until it should be far better organized, dis- ciplined, and equipped, and in such work he found enough to occupy him for several months. Meanwhile Congress, at the instance of John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and Jolm Jay of New York, decided to try the effect of one more candid statement of affairs, in the form of a petition to Last petition ^^^ king. This paper reached London Ind'ita^'"^' on the 14th of August, but the king answer. rcfuscd to reccive it, although it was signed by the delegates as separate individuals and not as members of an unauthorized or revolu- tionary body. His only answer was a proclama- THE CRISIS. 93 tion dated August 23, in which he called for volunteers to aid in putting down the rebellion in America. At the same time he opened negotia- tions with the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, the duke of Brunswick, and other petty German princes, and succeeded in hiring 20,000 troops to be sent to fight against his American subjects. When the news of this reached America it produced a profound effect. Perhaps nothing done in that year went so far toward destroying the lingering sentiment of loyalty. In the spring Congress had hesitated about en- couraging offensive operations. In the course of the summer it was ascertained that the governor of Canada, Sir Guy Carleton, was planning an invasion of northern New York and hoping to obtain the cooj)eration of the Six Nations and the Tories of the Mohawk valley. Congress accord- ingly decided to forestall him by invad- r^ ^ m T c • - Americans ing Canada. Iwo Imes oi invasion invade can- were adopted. Montgomery descended iTTS-June, Lake Champlain with 2000 men, and after a campaign of two months captured Mon- treal on the 12th of November. At the same time Benedict Arnold and Daniel Morgan set out from Cambridge with 1200 men, and made their way through the wilderness of Maine, up the val- ley of the Kennebec and down that of the Chau- diere, coining out upon the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec on the 13tli of November. This long 94 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. march through the primeval forest and over rugged and trackless mountains was one of the most remarkable exploits of the war. It cost the lives of 200 men, but besides this the rear-guard gave out and went back to Cambridge, so that when Arnold reached Quebec he had only 700 men, too few for an attack upon the town. After Montgomery joined him, it was decided to carry the works by storm, but in the unsuccessful as- sault on December 31, Montgomery was killed, Arnold disabled, and Morgan taken prisoner. During the winter Carleton was reinforced until he was able to recapture Montreal. The Amer- icans were gradually driven back, and by June, 1776, had retreated to Crown Point. Carleton then resumed his preparations for invading New York. While the northern campaign was progressing thus unfavourably, the British were at length driven from Boston. Howe had unaccountably neglected to occupy Dorchester heights, which Washington Commanded the town ; and Washington, tonrM^rch after waiting till a sufficient number of 17, 1^76. heavy guns could be collected, advanced on the night of March 4 and occupied them with 2000 men. His position was secure. The British had no alternative but to carry it by storm or retire from Boston. Not caring to repeat the ex- periment of Bunker Hill, they embarked on the 17th of March and sailed to Halifax, where they TEE CRISIS. 95 busied themselves in preparations for an expedi- tion against New York. Late in April Washing- ton transferred his headquarters to New York, where he was able to muster about 8000 men for its defence. Thus the line of the Hudson river was now threatened with attack at both its upper and lower ends. This change in the seat of war marks the change that had come over the political situation. It was no longer merely a rebellious Massachu- setts that must be subdued ; it was a continental Union that must be broken up. During the win- ter and spring the sentiment in favour of a dec- laration of independence had rapidly grown in strength. In November, 1775, Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, moreinvir- • • • 1 1 1 • ginia. sought to intimidate the revolutionary party by a proclamation offering freedom to such slaves as would enlist under the king's banner. This aroused the country against Dunmore, and in December he was driven from Norfolk and took refuge in a sliip of war. On New Year's Day he bombarded the town and laid it in ashes from one end to the other. This violence rapidly made converts to the revolutionary party, and further lessons were learned from the experience of their neighbours in North Carolina. That colony was the scene of fierce contests between Whigs and Tories. As early as May 31, 1775, the patriots of Mecklenburg county had 96 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. adopted resolutions pointing toward independence and forwarded them to tlieir delegates in Con- gress, who deemed it impolitic, however, to lay them before that body. Josiah Martin, royal governor of North Carolina, was obliged to flee on board ship in July. He busied himself with plans for the complete subjugation of the south- ern colonies, and corresponded with the govern- ment in London, as well as with his Tory friends ashore. In pursuance of these plans Sir Henry Clinton, with 2000 men, was detached in January, 1776, from the army in Boston, and sent North Caro- i at i /-^ t n t lina and vir- to tlic JN ortli Carolina coast ; a fleet under Sir Peter Parker was sent from Ireland to meet him; and a force of 1600 Tories was gathered to assist him as soon as he should arrive. But the scheme utterly failed. The fleet was buffeted by adverse winds and did not arrive ; the Tories were totally defeated on February 27 in a sharp fight at Moore's Creek ; and Clinton, thus deprived of his allies, deemed it most pru- dent for a while to keep his troops on shipboard. On the 12th of April the patriots of North Caro- lina instructed their delegates in Congress to con- cur with other delegates in a declaration of inde- pendence. On the 14th of May Virginia went further, and instructed her delegates to propose such a declaration. South Carolina, Georgia, and Rhode Island expressed a willingness to concur in any measures which Congress might think best THE CRISIS. 97 calculated to promote the general welfare. In the course of May town-meetings throughout Mas- sachusetts expressed opinions unanimously in fa- vour of independence. Massachusetts had already, as long ago as July, 1775, framed a new government in which the king was not recognized ; and her example had been followed by New Hampshire in January, 1776, and by South Carolina in March. Now on the 15th of May Congress adopted a resolution ad- vising all the other colonies to form new gov- ernments, because the king had " withdrawn his protection " from the American people, and all governments deriving their powers from him were accordingly set aside as of no account. This res- olution was almost equivalent to a declaration of independence, and it was adopted only after hot debate and earnest opposition from the middle colonies. On the 7th of June, in accordance with the instructions of May 14 from Virginia, Richard Eichard Henry Lee submitted to Con- SSta''' gress the following resolutions : — congress. " That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the Brit- ish Crown, and that all political connection be- tween them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved ; " That it is expedient forthwith to take the 98 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. most effectual measures for forming foreign alli- ances ; " That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective colonies for their consideration and approbation." This motion of Virginia, in which Independ- ence and Union went hand in hand, was at once seconded by Massachusetts, as represented by John Adams. It was opposed by John Dickinson and James Wilson of Pennsylvania, and by Rob- ert Livingston of New York, on the ground that the people of the middle colonies were not yet ready to sever the connection with the mother country. As the result of the discussion it was decided to wait three weeks, in the hope of hear- ing from all those colonies which had not yet de- clared themselves. The messages from those colonies came promptly enough. As for Connecticut and New Hamp- shire, there could be no doubt ; and their declara- tions for independence, on the 14th and 15th of June respectively, were simply dilatory expres- sions of their sentiments. They were late, only because Connecticut had no need to form a new government at all, while New Hampshire had formed one as long ago as January. Their sup- port of the proposed declaration of independence was already secured, and it was only in the formal announcement of it that they were somewhat belated. But with the middle colonies it was dif- THE CRISIS. 99 ferent. There the parties were more evenly bal- anced, and it was not until the last moment that the decision was clearly pronounced. This was not because they were less patriotic than the other colonies, but because their direct grievances were fewer, and up to this moment they had hoped that the quarrel was one which a change of ministry in Great Britain might adjust. In the earlier stages of the quarrel they had been ready enough to join hands with Massachusetts and Virginia. It was only on this irrevocable decision as to in- dependence that they were slow to act. But in the course of the month of June their responses to the invitation of Congress came in, — from Delaware on the 14th, from New Jersey on the 2 2d, from Pennsylvania on the 24th, from Maryland on the 28tli. This action of ^j^^ miMiQ the middle colonies was avowedly based colonies. on the ground that, in any event, united action was the thing most to be desired ; so that, what- ever their individual preferences might be, they were ready to subordinate them to the interests of the whole country. The broad and noble spirit of patriotism shown in their resolves is worthy of no less credit than the bold action of the colonies which, under the stimulus of direct aggression, first threw down the gauntlet to George III. On the 1st of July, when Lee's motion was taken up in Congress, all the colonies had been heard from except New York. The circumstances 100 TBE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. of this central colony were peculiar. We have already seen that the Tory party was especially strong in New York. Besides this, her position Difficulties in ^^^ morc cxposcd to attack on all New York. sidcs than that of any other state. As the military centre of the Union, her territory was sure to be the scene of the most desperate fighting. She was already threatened with invasion from Canada. As a frontier state she was exposed to the incursions of the terrible Iroquois, and as a seaboard state she was open to the attack of the British fleet. At that time, moreover, the popu- lation of New York numbered only about 170,000, and she ranked seventh among the thirteen colo- nies. The military problem was therefore much harder for New York than for Massachusetts or Virginia. Her risks were greater than those of any other colony. For these reasons the Whig party in New York found itself seriously ham- pered in its movements, and the 1st of July ar- rived before their delegates in Congress had been instructed how to vote on the question of inde- pendence. Richard Henry Lee had been suddenly called home to Virginia by the illness of his wife, and so the task of defending his motion fell upon John Adams who had seconded it. His speech on that occasion was so able that Thomas Jeffer- son afterward spoke of him as " the Colossus of that debate." As Congress sat with closed doors \ THE CRISIS. 101 and no report was made of tlie speech, we have no definite knowledge of its arguments. Fifty years afterwards, shortly after elohn Adams's death, Daniel Webster wrote an imaginary speech containing what in substance he might have said. The principal argument in opposition was made by John Dickinson, who thought that before the Americans finally committed themselves to a deadly struggle with Great Britain, they ought to establish some stronger government than the Con- tinental CouGfress, and ousfht also to secure a promise of help from some such country as France. This advice was cautious, but it was not sound and practical. War had already begun, and if we had waited to agree uj^on some permanent kind of government before committing all the col- onies to a formal defiance of Great Britain, there was great danger that the enemy might succeed in breaking up the Union before it was really formed. Besides, it is not likely that France would ever have decided to go to war in our behalf until we had shown that we were able to defend ourselves. It was now a time when the boldest advice was the safest. During this debate on the 1st of July Congress was sitting as a committee of the whole, and at the close of the day a preliminary tion of inde- 1 X M n 1 • pendence, vote was taken. L, and Adventure, IVitb Maps, Portraits, etc., where needed for fuller illustra- tion of the volume. Each, uniform, strongly bound in cloth, i6mo, 200-250 pages, j^ cents, ' , The War of Independence, By John Fiske. With Maps. George Washington : cAn Historical Biography, By Horace E. Scudder. With Portrait and Illustra- tions. ?. 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