knowledge and a more discriminating love of justice, is well
illustrated in the following critical examination, wherein
Ludlow, a living English historian, carefully considers the
various factors at work in the Revolution, and the personal
forces through which its results were produced. Prefixed to
this is the official statement of the American peace
commissioners--John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and
Henry Laurens--to Robert R. Livingston, then superintendent
of foreign affairs, of the conditions of the preliminary
treaty, which ended the war in 1782. This was followed by
the definitive Treaty of Paris, September 3, 1783.
THE AMERICAN PEACE COMMISSIONERS
PARIS, 14 December, 1782.
We have the honor to congratulate Congress on the signature of the
preliminaries of a peace between the Crown of Great Britain and the
United States of America, to be inserted in a definitive treaty so soon
as the terms between the crowns of France and Great Britain shall be
agreed on. A copy of the articles is here enclosed, and we cannot but
flatter ourselves that they will appear to Congress, as they do to all
of us, to be consistent with the honor and interest of the United
States, and we are persuaded Congress would be more fully of that
opinion if they were apprised of all the circumstances and reasons which
have influenced the negotiation. Although it is impossible for us to go
into that detail, we think it necessary, nevertheless, to make a few
remarks on such of the articles as appear most to require elucidation.
_Remarks on Article 2d, relative to Boundaries_
The Court of Great Britain insisted on retaining all the territories
comprehended within the Province of Quebec, by the act of Parliament
respecting it. They contended that Nova Scotia should extend to the
river Kennebec; and they claimed not only all the lands in the Western
country and on the Mississippi, which were not expressly included in our
charters and governments, but also such lands within them as remained
ungranted by the King of Great Britain. It would be endless to enumerate
all the discussions and arguments on the subject.
We knew this Court and Spain to be against our claims to the Western
country, and, having no reason to think that lines more favorable could
ever have been obtained, we finally agreed to those described in this
article; indeed, they appear to leave us little to complain of and not
much to desire. Congress will observe that, although our northern line
is in a certain part below the latitude of 45 deg., yet in others it
extends above it, divides the Lake Superior, and gives us access to its
western and southern waters, from which a line in that latitude would
have excluded us.
_Remarks on Article 4th, respecting Creditors_
We had been informed that some of the States had confiscated British
debts; but although each State has a right to bind its own citizens,
yet, in our opinion, it appertains solely to Congress, in whom
exclusively are vested the rights of making war and peace, to pass acts
against the subjects of a power with which the Confederacy may be at
war. It therefore only remained for us to consider whether this article
is founded in justice and good policy.
In our opinion no acts of government could dissolve the obligations of
good faith resulting from lawful contracts between individuals of the
two countries prior to the war. We knew that some of the British
creditors were making common cause with the refugees and other
adversaries of our independence; besides, sacrificing private justice to
reasons of state and political convenience is always an odious measure;
and the purity of our reputation in this respect, in all foreign
commercial countries, is of infinitely more importance to us than all
the sums in question. It may also be remarked that American and British
creditors are placed on an equal footing.
_Remarks on Articles 5th and 6th, respecting Refugees_
These articles were among the first discussed and the last agreed to.
And had not the conclusion of this business at the time of its date been
particularly important to the British administration, the respect, which
both in London and Versailles is supposed to be due to the honor,
dignity, and interest of royalty, would probably have forever prevented
our bringing this article so near to the views of Congress and the
sovereign rights of the States as it now stands. When it is considered
that it was utterly impossible to render this article perfectly
consistent, both with American and British ideas of honor, we presume
that the middle line adopted by this article is as little unfavorable to
the former as any that could in reason be expected.
As to the separate article, we beg leave to observe that it was our
policy to render the navigation of the river Mississippi so important to
Britain as that their views might correspond with ours on that subject.
Their possessing the country on the river north of the line from the
Lake of the Woods affords a foundation for their claiming such
navigation. And as the importance of West Florida to Britain was for the
same reason rather to be strengthened than otherwise, we thought it
advisable to allow them the extent contained in the separate article,
especially as before the war it had been annexed by Britain to West
Florida, and would operate as an additional inducement to their joining
with us in agreeing that the navigation of the river should forever
remain open to both. The map used in the course of our negotiations was
Mitchell's.
As we had reason to imagine that the articles respecting the boundaries,
the refugees, and fisheries did not correspond with the policy of this
court, we did not communicate the preliminaries to the minister until
after they were signed (and not even then the _separate article_). We
hope that these considerations will excuse our having so far deviated
from the spirit of our instructions. The Count de Vergennes, on perusing
the articles, appeared surprised (but not displeased) at their being so
favorable to us.
We beg leave to add our advice that copies be sent us of the accounts
directed to be taken by the different States, of the unnecessary
devastations and sufferings sustained by them from the enemy in the
course of the war. Should they arrive before the signature of the
definitive treaty, they might possibly answer very good purposes.
JOHN M. LUDLOW
Paradoxical as it may seem, two things must equally surprise the reader
on studying the history of the war of American Independence--the first,
that England should ever have considered it possible to succeed in
subduing her revolted colonies; the second, that she should not have
succeeded in doing so. At a time when steam had not yet baffled the
winds, to dream of conquering by force of arms on the other side of the
Atlantic a people of English race numbering between three millions and
four millions with something like twelve hundred miles of seaboard, was
surely an act of enormous folly. Horace Walpole had wittily said, at the
very commencement of the so-called rebellion, that "if computed by the
tract of the country it occupies, we, as so diminutive in comparison,
ought rather be called in rebellion to that."
We have seen in our own days the difficulties experienced by the far
more powerful and populous Northern States in quelling the secession of
the Southern, when between the two there was no other frontier than at
most a river, very often a mere ideal line, and when armies could be
raised by a hundred thousand men at a time. England attempted a far more
difficult task with forces which, till 1781, never reached 35,000 men,
and never exceeded 42,075, including "provincials," _i.e._, American
loyalists.
Yet it is impossible to doubt that, not once only, but repeatedly during
the course of the struggle, England was on the verge of triumph. The
American armies were perpetually melting away before the enemy directly
through the practice of short enlistments, and indirectly through
desertions. These desertions, if they might be often palliated by the
straits to which the men were reduced through arrears in pay and want of
supplies, arose in other cases, as after the retreat from New York, from
sheer loss of heart in the cause. The main army under Washington was
seldom even equal in number to that opposed to him. In the winter of
1776-1777, when his troops were only about four thousand strong, it is
difficult to understand how it was that Sir William Howe, with more than
double the number, should have failed to annihilate the American army.
In the winter of 1777-1778 the "dreadful situation of the army for want
of provisions" made Washington "admire" that they should not have been
excited to a general mutiny and desertion. In May, 1779, he hardly knew
any resource for the American cause except in reenforcements from
France, and did not know what might be the consequence if the enemy had
it in his power to press the troops hard in the ensuing campaign. In
December of that year his forces were "mouldering away daily," and he
considered that Sir Henry Clinton, with more than twice his numbers,
could "not justify remaining inactive with a force so superior." A year
later he was compelled for want of clothing to discharge levies which he
had so much trouble in obtaining, and "want of flour would have
disbanded the whole army" if he had not adopted this expedient. In
March, 1781, again, the crisis was "perilous," and, though he did not
doubt the happy issue of the contest, he considered that the period for
its accomplishment might be too far distant for a person of his years.
In April he wrote: "We cannot transport the provisions from the States
in which they are assessed to the army, because we cannot pay the
teamsters, who will no longer work for certificates. It is equally
certain that our troops are approaching fast to nakedness, and that we
have nothing to clothe them with; that our hospitals are without
medicines, and our sick without nutriment except such as well men eat;
and that our public works are at a stand and the artificers disbanding.
It may be declared in a word that we are at the end of our tether, and
that now or never our deliverance must come." Six months later, when
Yorktown capitulated, the British forces still remaining in North
America after the surrender of that garrison were more considerable than
they had been as late as February, 1779; and Sir Henry Clinton even then
declared that with a reenforcement of ten thousand men he would be
responsible for the conquest of America.
How shall we explain either puzzle--that England should have so nearly
missed success, to fail at last? or that America should have succeeded,
after having been almost constantly on the brink of failure?
The main hope of success on the English side lay in the idea that the
spirit and acts of resistance to the authority of the mother-country
were in reality only on the part of a turbulent minority; that the bulk
of the people desired to be loyal. It is certain indeed that the
struggle was, in America itself, much more of a civil war than the
Americans are now generally disposed to admit. In December, 1780, there
were eight thousand nine hundred fifty-four provincials among the
British forces in America, and on March 7, 1781, a letter from Lord
George Germain to Sir H. Clinton, intercepted by the Americans, says,
"The American levies in the King's service are more in number than the
whole of the enlisted troops in the service of Congress."
As late as September 1, 1781, there were seven thousand two hundred
forty-one. We hear of "loyal associates" in Massachusetts, Maryland, and
Pennsylvania, of "associated loyalists" in New York, of a fort built and
maintained by "associated refugees," and everywhere of "Tories," whose
arrest Washington is found suggesting to Governor Trumbull, of
Connecticut, as early as November 12, 1775. New England may indeed be
considered to have been cleared of active opposition to the American
cause when more than one thousand refugees left Boston in March, 1776,
with the British troops. But New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania
remained long full of Tories. By June 28, 1776, the disaffected on Long
Island had taken up arms, and after the evacuation of New York by
Washington a brigade of loyalists was raised on the island, and
companies were formed in two neighboring counties to join the King's
troops.
During Washington's retreat through New Jersey "the inhabitants, either
from fear or disaffection, almost to a man refused to turn out." In
Pennsylvania the militia, instead of giving any assistance in repelling
the British, exulted at their approach, and over the misfortunes of
their countrymen. On the 20th of that month the British were "daily
gathering strength from the disaffected." In 1777 the Tories who joined
Burgoyne in his invasion from the north are said to have doubled his
force. In 1778 Tories joined the Indians in the devastation of Wyoming
and Cherry Valley; and although the indiscriminate ravages of the
British, or of the Germans in their pay, seem to have roused the three
States above mentioned to self-defence, yet, as late as May, 1780,
Washington still speaks of sending a small party of cavalry to escort
Lafayette "safely through the Tory settlements" of New York. Virginia,
as late as the spring of 1776, was "alarmed at the idea of
independence."
Washington admitted that his countrymen--of that State--"from their form
of government, and steady attachment heretofore to royalty," would "come
reluctantly" to that idea, but trusted to "time and persecution." In
1781 the ground for transferring the seat of war to the Chesapeake was
the number of loyalists in that quarter. In the Southern States the
division of feeling was still greater. In the Carolinas, a Loyalist
regiment was raised in a few days in 1776, and again in 1779. In
Georgia, in South Carolina, the bitterest partisan warfare was carried
on between the Whig and Tory bands; and a body of New York Tories
contributed powerfully to the fall of Savannah in 1778 by taking the
American forces in the rear.
On the other hand it is unquestionable that in the extent and quality of
the support which they met with, the British generals were cruelly
disappointed. Up to May, 1778, General Howe had declared that in
thirteen corps raised, with a nominal strength of six thousand five
hundred men, the whole number amounted only to three thousand six
hundred nine, of whom only a small proportion were Americans, and that
"all the force that could be collected in Pennsylvania, after the most
indefatigable exertions during eight months," was only nine hundred
seventy-four men. Of the far more numerous loyalist levies in the South,
Lord Cornwallis speaks in the most disparaging terms. A whole regiment
in South Carolina marched off on one occasion in a body. Speaking of the
friends to the British cause in North Carolina he wrote, "If they are as
dastardly and pusillanimous as our friends to the southward, we must
leave them to their fate." At the time of the battle of Guilford Court
House (1781) the idea of such friends "rising in any number and to any
purpose had totally failed." No "provincial" general ever rose to
eminence on the British side, although more than one was appointed, and
it is clear that if the struggle was so long protracted it was not
through the valor or constancy of the loyalists.
The real causes of its protraction--though it may be hard to an American
to admit the fact--lay in the incapacity of American politicians, and,
it must be added, in the supineness and want of patriotism of the
American people. If, indeed, importing into the struggle views of a
later date, we look upon it as one between two nations, the
mismanagement of the war by the Americans, on all points save one--the
retention of Washington in the chief command--is seen to have been so
pitiable from first to last as to be in fact almost unintelligible. We
only understand the case when we see that there was no such thing as an
American nation in existence, but only a number of revolted colonies,
jealous of one another, and with no tie but that of a common danger.
Even in the army, divisions broke out. Washington, in a general order of
August 1, 1776, says: "It is with great concern that the general
understands that jealousies have arisen among the troops from the
different provinces, and reflections are frequently thrown out which can
only tend to irritate each other and injure the noble cause in which we
are engaged." It was seldom that much help could be obtained in troops
from any State, unless that State were immediately threatened by the
enemy; and even then these troops would be raised by that State for its
own defence, irrespectively of the general or "Continental Army."
"Those at a distance from the seat of War," wrote Washington in April,
1778, "live in such perfect tranquillity that they conceive the dispute
to be in a manner at an end; and those near it are so disaffected that
they serve only as embarrassments." In January, 1779, we find him
remonstrating with the Governor of Rhode Island because that State had
"ordered several battalions to be raised for the defence of the State
only, and this before proper measures were taken to fill the Continental
regiments." The different bounties and rates of pay allowed by the
various States were a constant source of annoyance to him. After the
first year, the best men were not returned to Congress, or did not
return to it. Whole States remained frequently unrepresented. In the
winter of 1777-1778 Congress was reduced to twenty-one members. But even
with a full representation it could do little. "One State will comply
with a requisition of Congress," writes Washington in 1780, "another
neglects to do it, a third executes it by halves, and all differ either
in the manner, the matter, or so much in point of time that we are
always working up-hill." At first Congress was really nothing more than
a voluntary committee. When the Confederation was completed--which was
only, be it remembered, on March 1, 1781--it was still, as Washington
wrote in 1785, "little more than a shadow without the substance, and the
Congress a nugatory body"; or, as it was described by a later writer,
"powerless for government, and a rope of sand for union."
Like politicians, like people. There was no doubt a brilliant display of
patriotic ardor at the first flying to arms of the colonists. Lexington
and Bunker Hill were actions decidedly creditable to their raw troops.
The expedition to Canada, foolhardy though it proved, was pursued up to
a certain point with real heroism. But with it the heroic period of the
war--individual instances excepted--may be said to have closed. There
seems little reason to doubt that the Revolution would never have been
commenced if it had been expected to cost so tough a struggle. "A false
estimate of the power and perseverance of our enemies," wrote James
Duane to Washington, "was friendly to the present revolution, and
inspired that confidence of success in all ranks of people which was
necessary to unite them in so arduous a cause."
As early as November, 1775, Washington wrote, speaking of military
arrangements, "Such a dearth of public spirit, and such want of virtue,
such stock-jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain
advantages of one kind or another, I never saw before, and pray God's
mercy that I may never be witness to again." Such "a mercenary spirit"
pervaded the whole of the troops, that he should not have been "at all
surprised at any disaster."
At the same date, besides desertions of thirty or forty soldiers at a
time, he speaks of the practice of plundering as so rife that "no man is
secure in his effects, and scarcely in his person." People "were
frightened out of their houses under pretence of those houses being
ordered to be burnt, with a view of seizing the goods"; and to conceal
the villainy more effectually some houses were actually burnt down. On
February 28, 1777, "the scandalous loss, waste, and private
appropriation of public arms during the last campaign" had been "beyond
all conception." Officers drew "large sums under pretence of paying
their men," and appropriated them. In one case an officer led his men to
robbery, offered resistance to a brigade-major who ordered him to return
the goods, and was only with difficulty cashiered.
"Can we carry on the war much longer?" Washington asks in 1778--after
the treaty with France and the appearance of a French fleet off the
coast. "Certainly not, unless some measures can be devised and speedily
executed to restore the credit of our currency, restrain extortion, and
punish forestallers." A few days later, "To make and extort money in
every shape that can be devised, and at the same time to decry its
value, seem to have become a mere business and an epidemical disease."
On December 30, 1778, "speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst
for riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration, and
almost of every order of men; party disputes and personal quarrels are
the great business of the day; whilst the momentous concerns of an
empire, a great and accumulating debt, ruined finances, depreciated
money, and want of credit, which in its consequences is the want of
everything, are but secondary considerations."
After a first loan had been obtained from France and spent, a further
one was granted in 1782. So utterly unpatriotic and selfish was known to
be the temper of the people that the loan had to be kept secret, in
order not to diminish such efforts as might be made by the Americans
themselves. On July 10th, of that year, with New York and Charlestown
still in British hands, Washington writes: "That spirit of freedom
which at the commencement of this contest would have gladly sacrificed
everything to the attainment of its object, has long since subsided, and
every selfish passion has taken its place." But indeed the mere fact
that from the date of the battle of Monmouth (July 28, 1778), Washington
was never supplied with sufficient means, even with the assistance of
the French fleets and troops, to strike one blow at the English in New
York--though these were but sparingly reenforced during the
period--shows an absence of public spirit, one might almost say of
national shame, scarcely conceivable, and in singular contrast with the
terrible earnestness exhibited on both sides some eighty years later in
the Secession War.
Why, then, must we ask on the other side, did England fail at last? The
English were prone to attribute their ill-success to the incompetency of
their generals. Lord North, with his quaint humor, would say, "I do not
know whether our generals will frighten the enemy, but I know they
frighten me whenever I think of them." When in 1778, Lord Carlisle came
out as commissioner, in a letter speaking of the great scale of all
things in America, he says: "We have nothing on a great scale with us
but our blunders, our misconduct, our ruin, our losses, our disgraces
and misfortunes." Pitt, in a speech of 1781, aptly described the war as
having been, on the part of England, "a series of ineffective victories
or severe defeats." No doubt it is difficult to account for Gage's early
blunders; for Howe's repeated failure to follow up his own success or
profit by his enemy's weakness; and Cornwallis' movement, justly
censured by Sir Henry Clinton, in transferring the bulk of his army from
the far south to Virginia, within marching distance of Washington,
opened the way to that crowning disaster at Yorktown, without which it
is by no means impossible that Georgia and the Carolinas might have
remained British.