intelligent, too active, too various-minded, too full of native quality
and genius to be ruled from abroad. If they were to fall under foreign
subjection, they would become a dead weight in the world, instead of a
source of life; as Adams said, every increase in population would be
but an increase of slaves. And that they preferred death to slavery was
every day becoming increasingly manifest. They felt that the future was
in them, and that they must have space and freedom to bring it forth;
and it is one of the paradoxes of history that England, to whom they
stood in blood-relationship, from whom they derived the instinct for
liberty, should have attempted to reduce them to the most absolute
bondage anywhere known, except in the colonies of Spain. She was
actuated partly by the pride of authority, centered in George III., and
from him percolating into his creatures in the ministry and Parliament;
and partly by the horde of office-seekers and holders whose aim was
sheer pecuniary gain at any cost of honor and principle. The mercantile
class had borne their share in oppression at first; but when it became
evident that tyranny applied to America would kill her productiveness,
the merchants were no longer on the side of the tyrants. It was then
too late to change the policy of the country, however; George would
have his way to the bitter end; the blind lust to thrash the colonies
into abject submission had the upper hand in England; reason could not
get a hearing; and such criticisms as the opposition could offer served
only to make still more rigid and medieval the determination of the
king.
It was the policy of the English government to regard Boston as the
head-center of revolt, and to concentrate all severities against her.
It was thought that in this way she could be isolated from the other
colonies, who would say to themselves that her troubles were none of
their affair, and that so long as they were treated with decency they
would not antagonize all-powerful England. Arguing from the average
selfishness of human nature, this policy did not seem unwise; but the
fact was that in this case human nature manifested an exceptional
generosity and enlightenment. Although the colonies, being on the
coast, must depend largely for their prosperity on commerce, and
commerce is notoriously self-seeking, nevertheless all the American
settlements without exception made the cause of Boston their own, sent
her supplies to tide over her evil days, and passed resolutions looking
to union and common action against oppression. South Carolina had every
selfish ground for siding with England; her internal affairs were in a
prosperous condition, and her traffic with England was profitable, and
not likely to be interfered with; yet none of the colonies was more
outspoken and thoroughgoing than she in denouncing England's action and
befriending Boston. The great commonwealth of Virginia was not less
altruistic in her conduct, and did more than any of her sister
provinces to enforce the doctrine of union and independence. New York,
a colony in which aristocracy held a dominant place, owing to the
tenure of large estates by the patroons, and which necessarily was a
commercial center, yet spoke with no uncertain voice, in spite of the
fact that there were there two parties, representing the lower and the
upper social class, whose differences were marked, and later led to the
formation of two political parties throughout the colonies. In
Pennsylvania, the combination of non-fighting Quakers and careful
traders deadened energy in the cause, and the preachings of Dickinson,
the venerable "Farmer," were interpreted as favoring a policy of
conciliation; but this hesitation was only temporary. The new-made city
of Baltimore was conspicuous in patriotism; and the lesser colonies,
and many out-of-the-way hamlets and villages, were magnificent in their
devotion and liberality. The demand for a congress was general, and
Boston was made to feel that her sacrifices were understood and
appreciated. She had but to pay for the tea which had been thrown
overboard, and her port would have been reopened and her business
restored; but she staked her existence upon a principle and did not
weaken. There were, in all parts of the colonies, a strong minority of
loyalists, as they called themselves, traitors, as they were termed by
extremists on the other side, or tories, as they came to be known later
on, who did and said what they could to induce submission to England,
with all which that implied. But the practical assistance they were
able to give to England was never considerable, and, on the other hand,
they sharpened the senses of the patriots and kept them from slackening
their efforts or modifying their views.
Gage, a weak and irresolute man, as well as a stupid one, was making a
great bluster in Boston. His powers were despotic. Soldiers and
frigates were his in abundance; he talked about arresting the patriots
for treason, to be tried in England; and Parliament had passed an act
relieving him and his men from all responsibility for killings or other
outrages done upon the colonists. He transferred the legislature from
Boston to Salem; and urged in season and out of season the doctrine
that resistance to England was hopeless. Upon the whole, his threats
were more terrible than his deeds, though these were bad enough.
Meanwhile Hutchinson in England had been encouraging and at the same
time misleading the king, by assurances that the colonies would not
unite, and that Boston must succumb. At the same time, Washington was
declaring that nothing was to be expected from petitioning, and that he
was ready to raise a thousand men and subsist them at his own expense,
and march at their head for the relief of Boston; Thomson Mason was
saying that he did not wish to survive the liberties of his country a
single moment; Prescott of New Hampshire was affirming that "a glorious
death in defense of our liberties is better than a short and infamous
life"; Israel Putnam of Connecticut announced himself ready to treat
the army and navy of England as enemies; and thousands of citizens in
Massachusetts were compelling royal councilors to resign their places,
and answering those who threatened them with the charge of treason and
death with--"No consequences are so dreadful to a free people as that
of being made slaves." Jay's suggestion to form a union under the
auspices of the king was disapproved: "We must stand undisguised on one
side or the other." Gage's orders were ignored; judges appointed by
royal decree were forced to retire; and "if British troops should march
to Worcester, they would be opposed by at least twenty thousand men
from Hampshire County and Connecticut." Gage, finding himself
confronted by a population, could think of no remedy but more troops.
He wrote to England that "the people are numerous, waked up to a fury,
and not a Boston rabble, but the freeholders of the county. A check
would be fatal, and the first stroke will decide a great deal. We
should therefore be strong before anything decisive is urged." He had,
on the 1st of September, 1774, captured two hundred and fifty
half-barrels of provincial powder, stored at Quarry Hill, near Medford.
Forty thousand militia, from various parts of the country, took up arms
and prepared to march on Boston; and though word was sent to them that
the time had not yet come, their rising was an object lesson to those
who had been asserting that the colonies would submit. Gage had ten
regiments at his disposal, but was trying to raise a force of Canadians
and Indians in addition, and was asking for still more re-enforcements
from England. The employment of Indians was a new thing in English
policy, and was a needless barbarism which can never be excused or
palliated. Gage fortified Boston Neck, thus putting all within the
lines at the mercy of his army; yet the starving carpenters of the town
refused to erect barracks for the British troops. Outside of Boston,
the towns threw off the English yoke. Hawley said he would resist the
whole power of England with the forces of the four New England colonies
alone; and every man between sixteen and seventy years of age was
enrolled under the name of "minute-men," ready to march and fight at a
minute's warning.
On the 5th of September, the first American Congress met in
Philadelphia. Almost all the eminent men of the country were
present--Gadsden of South Carolina, Washington, Dickinson, Patrick
Henry, Lee, the Adamses, and many more. They agreed to vote by
colonies. Their business was to consider a constitution, to protest
against the regulating act in force at Boston, which left no liberty to
the citizens; to frame a declaration of rights, and to make a statement
to the king of their attitude and demands. The session was long, for
the delegates had to make one another's acquaintance, and to discover a
middle course between what was desired by separate colonies and what
was agreeable to all. Great differences of opinion and policy were
developed, and there were not wanting men like Galloway, the Speaker,
who aimed at paralyzing all resistance to England. But the longer they
debated and voted, the more clearly and unanimously did they oppose the
tyrannous acts of Parliament and the extension of the royal
prerogative, and the more firmly did they demand liberty and equality.
Separation they did not demand, but a free union with the mother
country, to the mutual enrichment and advantage of both. By a
concession, they admitted the right of Parliament to lay external
duties and to regulate trade; but they strongly indorsed the resistance
of Massachusetts, and declared that if her oppression were persisted
in, it would be the duty of all America to come to her aid. With the
hope of influencing the merchants of England to reflect upon the
injustice of the present trade restrictions, they voted to cease all
imports into England, and to refuse all exports therefrom, though the
loss and inconvenience to themselves from this resolve must be
immeasurably greater than to the older country, which had other sources
of supply and markets for goods. In all that they did, they were ruled
by the consideration that they possessed no power of enforcing their
decrees upon their own fellow-countrymen, and must therefore so frame
them that the natural instinct for right and justice should induce to
obedience to them. Their moderation, their desire for conciliation, was
marked throughout; and when a message was received from Boston,
reciting the iniquitous proceedings of Gage, and proposing, if the
Congress agreed, that the citizens of the wealthiest community in the
new world should abandon their homes and possessions and retire to a
life of log huts and cornfields in the wilderness--when this heroic
suggestion was made, the Congress resisted the fiery counsel of Gadsden
to march forthwith on Boston and drive Gage and his army into the sea;
and bade the people of Boston to be patient yet a while, and await the
issue of the message to England. But although they were conscientious
in adopting every measure that could honorably be employed to induce
England to reconsider her behavior, they had little hope of a favorable
issue. "After all, we must fight," said Hawley; and Washington, when he
heard it, raised his hand, and called God to witness as he cried out,
"I am of that man's mind!"
Their final utterance to England was noble and full of dignity. "To
your justice we appeal. You have been told that we are impatient of
government and desirous of independence. These are calumnies. Permit us
to be as free as yourselves, and we shall ever esteem a union with you
to be our greatest glory and our greatest happiness. But if you are
determined that your ministers shall wantonly sport with the rights of
mankind: if neither the voice of justice, the dictates of law, the
principles of the constitution, or the suggestions of humanity, can
restrain your hands from shedding human blood in such an impious cause,
we must then tell you that we will never submit to be hewers of wood
and drawers of water for any ministry or nation in the world."
In order to cripple America, the new province of Quebec was enlarged,
so as to cut off the western extension of several of the older
colonies. At the same time discrimination against the Catholics was
relaxed, and the Canadians were given to understand that they would be
treated with favor. The Americans, however, were not blind to the value
of Canadian friendship, and sent emissaries among them to secure their
good will. "If you throw in your lot with us," they were told, "you
will have been conquered into liberty." In Virginia, Lord Dunmore had
been appointed governor, and in order to gratify his passion for
wealth, he broke the injunction of the king, and allowed the extension
of the province westward; but this was the result of his personal
greed, and did not prevent his hostility to all plans for colonial
liberty. Nevertheless, his conduct gained him temporary popularity in
Virginia; and still more did his management of the war against the
Shawnees, brought on by their attacks upon the frontiersmen who had
pushed their little settlements as far as the Mississippi. These
backwoodsmen were always on the borders of peril, and aided in
hastening the spread of population westward.
The proceedings of the American Congress produced a sensation in
England; they were more moderate in tone and able in quality than had
been anticipated. They could not divert the king from his purpose, but
they aroused sympathy in England among the People, and from Lord
Chatham the remark that the annals of Greece and Rome yielded nothing
so lofty and just in sentiment as their remonstrance. The
non-representative character of Parliament at this juncture is
illustrated by the fact that three-fourths of the English population
were estimated to be opposed to the war with America. It was also
pointed out that it would be difficult to find men to fill the
regiments, inasmuch as all the ablebodied men in England were needed to
carry on the industries of the country; there were no general officers
of reputation, and many of those holding commissions were mere boys, or
incompetent for service. There were three million people in America,
and they would be fighting for their own homes, and amid them, with the
whole vastness of the continent to retire into. On the other hand, it
was asserted that the Americans were all cowards, and incapable of
discipline; that five thousand English soldiers were more than a match
for fifty thousand provincials. They had no navy, no army, no forts, no
organization. They would collapse at the first real threat of force.
The English ministry and their followers vied with one another in
heaping contempt and abuse upon the colonists. It was in reply to them
that Burke made one of his greatest speeches. Burke was an artist in
sentiments, and cannot be regarded as a statesman of settled and
profound convictions; his voice regarding America had not been
consistent or wise; but ever and anon he threw forth some worthy and
noble thought. "I do not know the method," he said in his speech, "of
drawing up an indictment against a whole people." Franklin, in March,
after listening to one of Lord Sandwich's shallow and frothy
vilifications of America, "turned on his heel" and left England. With
him vanished the last hope of reconciliation. "Had I been in power,"
exclaimed Hutchinson, "I would not have suffered him to embark."
The colonists everywhere were collecting arms and ammunition, storing
powder, and diligently drilling. Whatever the leaders might say, or
refrain from saying, the mass of the people believed in the immediate
probability of war with England. In every village you could see the
farmers shouldering arms and marching to and fro on the green, while an
old man played the fife and a boy beat the drum. They did not concern
themselves about "regimentals" or any of the pomp and glory of battle;
but they knew how to cast bullets, and how to shoot them into the
bull's-eye. In their homespun small-clothes, home-knit stockings,
home-made shirts and cowhide shoes, they could march to the cannon's
mouth as well as in the finest scarlet broadcloth and gold epaulets.
Their intelligence, their good cause, their sore extremity, made them
learn to be soldiers more quickly than seemed possible to English
officers who knew the sturdy stupidity of the English peasant of whom
the British regiments were composed. And while the Yankees (as they
began to be called) were learning how to march and countermarch, and do
whatever else the system of the British regulars called for, they also
knew, by inheritance, if not by actual experience, the tactics of the
Indians; they could make a fortress of a rock or a tree or a rail
fence, and could shoot and vanish, or fall, as it seemed, from the
empty air into the midst of the unsuspecting foe. They were effective
not only in bodies, but individually; and in the heart of each, as he
faced the foe, would be not only the resolve to conquer, but the holy
thought of wife and children, and of liberty. They were as fit to be
led by Washington as was he to lead them. Professing to despise them,
Gage nevertheless protested against taking the field with less than
twenty thousand men; upon which David Hume scornfully observed, "If
fifty thousand men and twenty millions of money were intrusted to such
a lukewarm coward, they never could produce any effect." It was
resolved to supersede him.
The men of Portsmouth had seized a quantity of powder and arms, which
belonged to them, but had been sequestered in the fort. The British, as
a set-off, marched to Salem to capture some stores there; they did not
find them, and proceeded toward Danvers. A river, spanned by a
drawbridge, intervened, and when they arrived, the draw was up. There
stood Colonel Timothy Pickering, with forty provincials, asking what
Captain Leslie with his two hundred red-coated regulars wanted. The
captain blustered and threatened; but the draw remained up, and the
provincials all had guns in their hands, and looked able and willing to
use them, if occasion demanded. But the captain did not think it best
to give the signal for combat, and meanwhile time was passing, and no
soothsayer was needed to reveal that the stores were being removed to a
place of safety. After an hour or so, Colonel Pickering relented so far
as to permit the captain and his regulars to cross the bridge and
advance thirty yards beyond it; after which he must face about and
return to Boston. This he did; and thus ended the first collision
between the colonies and England. Nobody was hurt; but in less than two
months blood was to be shed on both sides. "The two characteristics of
this people, religion and humanity, are strongly marked in all their
proceedings," John Adams had said. "Resistance by arms against
usurpation and lawless violence is not rebellion by the law of God or
the land. If there is no possible medium between absolute independence
and subjection to the authority of Parliament, all North America are
convinced of their independence, and determined to defend it at all
hazards." The British answer to utterances like these was to seize a
farmer from the country, who had come to town to buy a firelock, tar
and feather him, stick a placard on his back, "American liberty, or a
specimen of democracy," and conduct him through the streets amid a mob
of soldiers and officers, to the strains of "Yankee Doodle."
As the last moments before the irrevocable outbreak passed away, there
was both a strong yearning for peace, and a stern perception that peace
must be impossible. "If Americans would be free, they must fight," said
Patrick Henry in Virginia. One after another, with singular unanimity,
the colonies fell in with this view. New York was regarded by the
British as most likely to be loyal; New England, and especially
Massachusetts, were expected to be the scene of the first hostilities.
Sir William Howe, brother of the Howe who died bravely in the Old
French War, was appointed commander-in-chief in place of Gage. The
latter was directed to adopt the most rigorous and summary measures
toward the Boston people, whose congress was pronounced by Thurlow and
Wedderburn to be a treasonable body, deserving of condign punishment.
Orders were given to raise regiments of French Papists in Canada; and
the signal that should let loose the red men for their work of
tomahawking women and children was in suspense. It was now the middle
of April.
The winter season had been exceptionally mild. In the country
neighboring Boston the leaves were budding a month earlier than usual,
and the grass was deep and green as in English meadows. The delicate
and fragrant blossoms of the mayflower made the wooded hillsides sweet,
and birds were singing and building their nests in the mild breezes,
under the cloud-flecked sky. The farmers were sowing their fields and
caring for their cattle; their wives were feeding their poultry and
milking their cows; New England seemed to have put off her sternness,
and to be wearing her most inviting and peaceful aspect. Innocence and
love breathed in the air and murmured in the woods, and warbled in the
liquid flowing of the brooks. In such a time and place, Adam and Eve
might have begun the life of humanity on earth, and found in the
loveliness and beauty of the world a fitting image of the tranquillity
and tenderness that overflowed their guileless hearts.
But Eden was far away from New England in the spring of 1775.
Committees of Safety had been formed in all the towns, whose duty it
was to provide for defense against what might happen; and two eminent
leaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, had been to Lexington and
Concord to oversee the dispositions, and to consult with the fathers of
the colony who had met in the latter town. A small quantity of powder
and some guns and muskets had been stored in both these places; for if
trouble should occur with the British, it was most likely to begin in
Boston, and the minute-men of the province would rendezvous most
conveniently at these outlying settlements, which lay along the high
road at distances of fourteen and twenty miles from the city. No
offensive operations, of course, were contemplated, nor was it known
what form British aggression would assume. Defense of their homes and
liberties was all that the New England farmers and mechanics intended.
They had no plan of campaign, and no military leaders who knew anything
of the art of war. They could be killed by invaders, and perhaps kill
some of them; they were sure of the holiness of their cause; but they
were too simple and homely-minded to realize that God had intrusted to
them the first irrevocable step in a movement which should change the
destinies of the world.
In Boston, during the 18th of April, there had been bustle and
mysterious conferences among the British officers, and movements among
the troops; which might mean anything or nothing. But there were
patriots on the watch, and it was surmised that some hostile act might
be meditated; and plans were made to give warning inland, should this
prove to be the case. At the British Coffee House, that afternoon, the
group of officers was gayer than usual, and there was much laughter and
many toasts. "Here's to the Yankee minute-men!" said one: "the men
who'll run the minute they see the enemy!" General Gage stalked about,
solemn, important and monosyllabic. Lieutenant-colonel Smith was very
busy, and held himself unusually erect; and Major Pitcairn, of the
marines, was often seen in his company, as if the two had some secret
in common. The plain citizens who walked the streets fancied that they
were shouldered aside even more arrogantly than usual by the haughty
redcoats; and that the insolent stare with which they afflicted the
handsome wives and pretty maidens of Boston was grosser and more
significant than common. But the evening fell with matters much as
ordinary, to all appearance; and as the town was under martial law,
most of the population was off the streets by nine o'clock.