THE FERMENT OF AMERICAN LIBERTY.
In 1755, four military expeditions were planned by the Colonies: one
against the French in Nova Scotia; one against Crown Point; one against
Fort Niagara, and the fourth, that of Braddock, against the French posts
along the Ohio river.
In 1758, additional expeditions were undertaken, the first against
Louisburg, the second against Ticonderoga, and the third against Fort Du
Quesne. Washington led the advance in the third, a successful attack,
Nov. 25, 1758, thereby securing peace with the Indians on the border,
and making the fort itself more memorable by changing its name to that
of Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) in memory of William Pitt (Lord Chatham),
the eminent British statesman, and the enthusiastic friend of America.
In 1759, Quebec was captured by the combined British and Colonial
forces, and the tragic death of the two commanders, Wolfe and Montcalm,
made the closing hours of the siege the last opportunity of their heroic
valor. With the capture of Montreal in 1760, Canada came wholly under
British control. In view of those campaigns, it was not strange that so
many Colonial participants readily found places in the Continental Army
at the commencement of the war for American Independence, and
subsequently urged the acquisition of posts on the northern border with
so much pertinacity and confidence.
In 1761, Spain joined France against Great Britain, but failed of
substantial gain through that alliance, because the British fleets were
able to master the West India possessions of Spain, and even to capture
the city of Havana itself.
In 1763, a treaty was effected at Paris, which terminated these
protracted inter-Colonial wars, so that the thirteen American colonies
were finally relieved from the vexations and costly burdens of aiding
the British crown to hold within its grasp so many and so widely
separated portions of the American continent. In the ultimate settlement
with Spain, England exchanged Havana for Florida; and France, with the
exception of the city of New Orleans and its immediate vicinity, retired
behind the Mississippi river, retaining, as a shelter for her fisheries,
only the Canadian islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, which are still
French possessions.
In view of the constantly increasing imposition of taxes upon the
Colonies by the mother country, in order to maintain her frequent wars
with European rivals, by land and sea, a convention was held at New York
on the seventh day of October, 1765, called a Colonial Congress, “to
consult as to their relations to England, and provide for their common
safety.” Nine colonies were represented, and three others either
ratified the action of the convention, or declared their sympathy with
its general recommendations and plans. The very brief advance notice of
the assembling of delegates, partly accounts for the failure of North
Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Georgia, to be represented. But
that convention made a formal “Declaration of Rights,” especially
protesting that “their own representatives alone had the right to tax
them,” and “their own juries to try them.”
As an illustration of the fact, that the suggestion of some common bond
to unite the Colonies for general defence was not due to the agencies
which immediately precipitated the American Revolution, it is to be
noticed that as early as 1607, William Penn urged the union of the
Colonies in some mutually related common support. The Six Nations
(Indian), whom the British courted as allies against the French, and
later, against their own blood, had already reached a substantial Union
among themselves, under the name of the Iroquois Confederacy; and it is
a historical fact of great interest, that their constitutional league
for mutual support against a common enemy, while reserving absolute
independence in every local function or franchise, challenged the
appreciative indorsement of Thomas Jefferson when he entered upon the
preparation of a Constitution for the United States of America.
And in 1722, Daniel Coxe, of New Jersey, suggested a practical union of
the Colonies for the consolidation of interests common to each. In 1754,
when the British government formally advised the Colonies to secure the
friendship of the Six Nations against the French, Benjamin Franklin
prepared a form for such union. Delegates from New England, as well as
from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, met at Albany on the fourth
of July, 1754, the very day of the surrender of Fort Necessity to the
French, for consideration of the suggested plan. The King’s council
rejected it, because it conceded too much independence of action to the
people of the Colonies, and the Colonies refused to accept its
provisions, because it left too much authority with the King.
Ten years later, when the Colonies had been freed from the necessity of
sacrificing men and money to support the British authority against
French, Spanish, and Indian antagonists, the poverty of the British
treasury drove George Grenville, then Prime Minister, to a system of
revenue from America, through the imposition of duties upon Colonial
imports. In 1755 followed the famous Stamp Act. Its passage by
Parliament was resisted by statesmen of clear foresight, with sound
convictions of the injustice of taxing their brethren in America who had
no representatives in either House of Parliament; but in vain, and this
explosive bomb was hurled across the sea. Franklin, then in London, thus
wrote to Charles Thompson, who afterwards became secretary of the
Colonial Congress: “The sun of Liberty has set. The American people must
light the torch of industry and economy.” To this Thompson replied: “Be
assured that we shall light torches of quite another sort.”
The explosion of this missile, charged with death to every noble
incentive to true loyalty to the mother country, dropped its
inflammatory contents everywhere along the American coast. The Assembly
of Virginia was first to meet, and its youngest member, Patrick Henry,
in spite of shouts of “Treason,” pressed appropriate legislation to
enactment. Massachusetts, unadvised of the action of Virginia, with
equal spontaneity, took formal action, inviting the Colonies to send
delegates to a Congress in New York, there to consider the grave issues
that confronted the immediate future. South Carolina was the first to
respond. When Governor Tryon, of North Carolina, afterwards the famous
Governor of New York, asked Colonel (afterwards General) Ashe, Speaker
of the North Carolina Assembly, what the House would do with the Stamp
Act, he replied, “We will resist its execution to the death.”
On the seventh of October the Congress assembled and solemnly asserted,
as had a former convention, that “their own representatives alone had
the right to tax them,” and “their own juries to try them.” Throughout
the coast line of towns and cities, interrupted business, muffled and
tolling bells, flags at half-mast, and every possible sign of stern
indignation and deep distress, indicated the resisting force which was
gathering volume to hurl a responsive missile into the very council
chamber of King George himself.
“Sons of Liberty” organized in force, but secretly; arming themselves
for the contingency of open conflict. Merchants refused to import
British goods. Societies of the learned professions and of all grades of
citizenship agreed to dispense with all luxuries of English production
or import. Under the powerful and magnetic sway of Pitt and Burke, this
Act was repealed in 1766; but even this repeal was accompanied by a
“Declaratory Act,” which reserved for the Crown “the _right_ to bind the
Colonies, in all cases whatsoever.”
Pending all these fermentations of the spirit of liberty, George
Washington, of Virginia, was among the first to recognize the coming of
a conflict in which the Colonial troops would no longer be a convenient
auxiliary to British regulars, in a common cause, but would confront
them in a life or death struggle, for rights which had been guaranteed
by Magna Charta, and had become the vested inheritance of the American
people. Suddenly, as if to impress its power more heavily upon the
restless and overwrought Colonists, Parliament required them to furnish
quarters and subsistence for the garrisons of towns and cities. In 1768,
two regiments arrived at Boston, ostensibly to “preserve the public
peace,” but, primarily, to enforce the revenue measures of Parliament.
In 1769, Parliament requested the King to “instruct the Governor of
Massachusetts” to “forward to England for trial, upon charges of high
treason,” several prominent citizens of that colony “who had been guilty
of denouncing Parliamentary action.” The protests of the Provincial
Assemblies of Virginia and North Carolina against the removal of their
citizens, for trial elsewhere, were answered by the dissolution of those
bodies by their respective royal governors. On the fifth day of May,
1769, Lord North, who had become Prime Minister, proposed to abolish all
duties, except upon tea. Later, in 1770, occurred the “Boston Massacre,”
which is ever recalled to mind by a monument upon the Boston Common, in
honor of the victims. In 1773 “Committees of Correspondence” were
selected by most of the Colonies, for advising the people of all
sections, whenever current events seemed to endanger the public weal.
One writer said of this state of affairs: “Common origin, a common
language, and common sufferings had already established between the
Colonies a union of feeling and interest; and now, common dangers drew
them together more closely.”
But the tax upon tea had been retained, as the expression of the
reserved right to tax at will, under the weak assumption that the
Colonists would accept this single tax and pay a willing consideration
for the use of tea in their social and domestic life. The shrewd and
patriotic citizens, however boyish it may have seemed to many, found a
way out of the apparent dilemma, and on the night of December 16, 1773,
the celebrated Boston Tea Party gave an entertainment, using three
hundred and fifty-two chests of tea for the festive occasion, and Boston
Harbor for the mixing caldron.
In 1774, the “Boston Port Bill” was passed, nullifying material
provisions of the Massachusetts Charter, prohibiting intercourse with
Boston by sea, and substituting Salem for the port of entry and as the
seat of government for the Province. It is to be noticed, concerning the
various methods whereby the Crown approached the Colonies, in the
attempt to subordinate all rights to the royal will, that Massachusetts,
Rhode Island, and Connecticut, until 1692, were charter governments,
whereby laws were framed and executed by the freemen of each colony. The
proprietary governments were Pennsylvania with Maryland, and at first
New York, New Jersey, and the Carolinas. In all of these, the
proprietors, under certain restrictions, established and conducted their
own systems of rule. There were also the royal governments, those of New
Hampshire, Virginia, Georgia, and afterwards Massachusetts, New York,
New Jersey, and the Carolinas. In these, appointments of the chief
officers pertained to the Crown.
At the crisis noticed, General Gage had been appointed Governor of
Massachusetts Colony, as well as commander-in-chief, and four additional
regiments had been despatched to his support. But Salem declined to
avail herself of the proffered boon of exceptional franchises, and the
House of Burgesses of Virginia ordered that “the day when the Boston
Port Bill was to go into effect should be observed as a day of fasting,
humiliation, and prayer.”
The Provincial Assembly did indeed meet at Salem, but solemnly resolved
that it was expedient, at once, to call a General Congress of all the
Colonies, to meet the unexpected disfranchisement of the people, and
appointed five delegates to attend such Congress. All the Colonies
except Georgia, whose governor prevented the election of delegates, were
represented.
This body, known in history as the First Continental Congress, assembled
in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, on the fifth day of September, 1774.
Peyton Randolph, of Virginia, was elected president, and Charles
Thompson, of Pennsylvania, was elected secretary. Among the
representative men who took part in its solemn deliberations must be
named Samuel Adams and John Adams, of Massachusetts; Philip Livingstone
and John Jay, of New York; John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania; Christopher
Gadsden and John Rutledge, of South Carolina; Patrick Henry, Richard
Henry Lee, and George Washington, of Virginia.
During an address by Lord Chatham before the British House of Lords, he
expressed his opinion of the men who thus boldly asserted their
inalienable rights as Englishmen against the usurping mandates of the
Crown, in these words: “History, my lords, has been my favorite study;
and in the celebrated writers of antiquity have I often admired the
patriotism of Greece and Rome; but, my lords, I must declare and avow,
that in the master states of the world, I know not the people, or
senate, who, in such a complication of difficult circumstances, can
stand in preference to the delegates of America assembled in General
Congress at Philadelphia.” This body resolved to support Massachusetts
in resistance to the offensive Acts of Parliament; made a second
“Declaration of Rights,” and advised an American association for
non-intercourse with England. It also prepared another petition to the
King, as well as an address to the people of Great Britain and Canada,
and then provided for another Congress, to be assembled the succeeding
May. During its sessions, the Massachusetts Assembly also convened and
resolved itself into a Provincial Congress, electing John Hancock as
president, and proceeded to authorize a body of militia, subject to
instant call, and therefore to be designated as “Minute Men.” A
Committee of Safety was appointed to administer public affairs during
the recess of the Congress. When Captain Robert Mackenzie, of
Washington’s old regiment, intimated that Massachusetts was rebellious,
and sought independence, Washington used this unequivocal language in
reply: “If the ministry are determined to push matters to extremity, I
add, as my opinion, that more blood will be spilled than history has
ever furnished instances of, in the annals of North America; and such a
vital wound will be given to the peace of this great country, as time
itself cannot cure, or eradicate the remembrance of.”
Early in 1775 Parliament rejected a “Conciliatory Bill,” which had been
introduced by Lord Chatham, and passed an Act in special restraint of
New England trade, which forbade even fishing on the banks of
Newfoundland. New York, North Carolina, and Georgia were excepted, in
the imposition of restrictions upon trade in the middle and southern
Colonies, in order by a marked distinction between Colonies, to conserve
certain aristocratic influences, and promote dissension among the
people; but all such transparent devices failed to subdue the patriotic
sentiment which had already become universal in its expression.
At that juncture the English people themselves did not apprehend rightly
the merits of the dawning struggle, nor resent the imposition by
Parliament, of unjust, unequal, and unconstitutional laws upon their
brethren in America. Dr. Franklin thus described their servile attitude
toward the Crown: “Every man in England seems to consider himself as a
piece of a sovereign; seems to jostle himself into the throne with the
King; and talks of ‘_our_ subjects in the Colonies.’”
The ferment of patriotic sentiment was deep, subtle, intense, and ready
for deliverance. The sovereignty of the British crown and the divine
rights of man were to be subjected to the stern arbitrament of battle.
One had fleets, armies, wealth, prestige, and power, unsustained by the
principles of genuine liberty which had distinguished the British
Constitution above all other modern systems of governmental control;
while the scattered two millions of earnest, patriotic Englishmen across
the sea, who, from their first landing upon the shores of the New World
had honored every principle which could impart dignity and empire to
their mother country, were to balance the scale of determining war by
the weight of loyalty to conscience and to God.