THE DISRUPTION OF THE EMPIRE, 1773-1776
When the news reached England that the people of the town of Boston had
thrown the tea of the East India Company into the harbour, the patience
of the North ministry, already severely strained, reached an end. Its
members felt--and most of the English people felt with them--that to
submit to such an act of violence was impossible. Every consideration
of national dignity demanded that Boston and its rioters should be
punished, and that the outrage done to the East India Company should
receive atonement. Hitherto, they said, the contumacious colonists had
been dealt with chiefly by arguments, reproofs, and, as it seemed to
most Englishmen, with concessions and kindnesses which had won only
insult and violence.
It was resolved to make an example of the delinquent community; and the
first step was to humiliate its representative, Benjamin Franklin.
Ever since 1765 he had been residing in England, respected as a
philosopher and admired as a wit, bearing a sort of diplomatic
character through his position as agent for the assemblies of
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. In close {52} association
with the Whig opposition, he was undoubtedly the best-known American,
and among the most influential. Now, in 1774, having to present a
petition from Massachusetts to the Privy Council for the removal of
Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, Franklin found it an awkward feature of
the case that the colony's charges were based on private letters which
he himself had in some way acquired and sent to Boston. The Court
party determined to crush him, and at the hearing put forward
Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General--a typical King's Friend--who passed
over the subject of the petition to brand Franklin in virulent
invective as a thief and scoundrel. Amidst general applause, the
petition was rejected as false and scandalous, and Franklin was
dismissed from his position of colonial Postmaster-General.
When Parliament met, it was instantly made clear that the sole idea
controlling King, Cabinet, and the majority of Members was to bring the
Massachusetts colonists to their senses by severe punitive legislation.
The Whig opposition did not attempt to defend the destruction of the
tea; but it spared no effort to make the Ministers see the folly of
striking at effects and ignoring causes. In a masterly speech of April
19, 1774, Burke showed that the insistence on submission regardless of
the grievances and of the nature {53} of the colonists was a dangerous
and absurd policy, and Pownall and Chatham repeated his arguments, but
without avail. The Ministerial party saw no danger, and felt nothing
but the contempt of an irritated aristocracy. The original ideals of a
general colonial reform were now lost sight of; the men responsible for
them had all passed off the stage; Grenville, Townshend, and Halifax
were dead, and North, careless and subservient to George III,
Hillsborough, Suffolk, Sandwich, and Rochford--all noblemen, and in
many cases inefficient--did not see beyond the problem of coercing
noisy and troublesome rioters, indistinguishable from the followers of
Wilkes. Over and over again they reiterated that the colonists'
resentment was not to be feared, that they would submit to genuine
firmness, that they were all cowardly and dared not resist a few
regular troops. Lord George Germaine earned the thanks of Lord North
by declaring that the colonists were only "a tumultuous and noisy
rabble," men who ought to be "following their mercantile employment and
not attempting to govern." Not a gleam of any other statesmanship
appears in any of the Ministerial speeches than that displayed in the
determination to exact complete submission.
There were passed, accordingly, by the full Ministerial majority, five
measures known as {54} the Coercive Acts, or, in America, as the Five
Intolerable Acts. The first one punished Boston by closing the port to
all trade until the offending town should recompense the East India
Company for the tea destroyed. The next altered the government of
Massachusetts Bay by making the councillors appointive instead of
elective, by placing the appointment and removal of all judicial
officers entirely in the hands of the governor, by placing the
selection of jurors in the hands of the sheriffs and prohibiting
town-meetings--apart from the annual one to elect officers--without the
governor's permission. A third Act authorized the transfer to England
for trial of British officers charged with murder committed while in
discharge of their duties. A fourth Act re-established the system of
quartering troops.
The fifth Act reorganized the province of Quebec, whose government,
under the Proclamation of 1763, had proved defective in several
respects. The legal institutions of the new colony were not well
adapted to the mixed French and British inhabitants, and the religious
situation needed definition. The Quebec Act altered the government of
the province by the creation of an appointive council, authorized the
Catholic Church to collect tithes, and allow the French to substitute
an oath of allegiance for the oath of {55} supremacy. Moreover, French
civil law was permitted to exist. At the same time the boundaries of
the province were extended into the region west of the mountains so as
to include the lands north of the Ohio River.
With the passage of these Acts, the original causes for antagonism were
superseded. The commissioners of customs might have enforced the
Navigation Acts indefinitely; the objectionable Tea Act might have
stood permanently on the statute-book; but, without a more tangible
grievance, it is not easy to conceive of the colonists actually
beginning a revolution. The time had now come when a more serious
issue was raised than the right of Parliament to collect a revenue by a
tariff in the colonies. If Parliament was to be allowed to crush the
prosperity of a colonial seaport, to centralize a hitherto democratic
government created by a royal charter, and to remove royal officers
from the scope of colonial juries, it was clear that the end of all the
powers and privileges wrung from royal or proprietary governors by
generations of struggle was at hand. Yet the striking feature in this
punitive legislation was that the North Ministry expected it to meet no
resistance, although its execution, so far as the government of
Massachusetts was concerned, rested on the consent of the colonists.
There was, under the British {56} system, no administrative body
capable of carrying out these laws, no military force except the few
regiments in Boston, and no naval force beyond a few frigates and
cruisers. The mere passage of the laws, according to North and to Lord
Mansfield, was sufficient to bring submission.
Nothing more clearly shows the profound ignorance of the Tory Ministry
than this expectation, for it was instantly disappointed. At the news
of the Acts, the response from America was unanimous. Already the
colonial Whigs were well organized in committees of correspondence, and
now they acted not merely in Massachusetts but in every colony. The
town of Boston refused to vote compensation, and was immediately closed
under the terms of the Port Act. Expressions of sympathy and gifts of
provisions came pouring into the doomed community; while public
meetings, legislatures, political leaders and clergymen, in chorus
denounced the Acts as unconstitutional, cruel, and tyrannous. The
Quebec Act, extending the Catholic religion and French law into the
interior valley under despotic government, was regarded as scarcely
less sinister than the Regulating Act itself.
Under the efficient organization of the leaders a Continental Congress
met in Philadelphia in October, 1774, to make united {57} protest.
This body, comprising without exception the most influential men in the
colonies, presented a clear contrast to Parliament in that every man
was the representative of a community of freemen, self-governing and
equal before the law. The leaders did not regard themselves in any
sense as revolutionaries. They were simply delegates from the separate
colonies, met to confer on their common dangers. Their action
consisted in the preparation of a petition to the King, addresses to
the people of England, the people of Quebec, and the people of the
colonies, but not to Parliament, since they denied its right to pass
any such laws as those under complaint. The Congress further drew up a
declaration of rights which stated sharply the colonial claims, namely,
that Parliament had no right to legislate for the internal affairs of
the separate colonies. It also adopted a plan for putting commercial
pressure on England by forming an Association whose members pledged
themselves to consume no English products, and organize committees in
every colony to enforce this boycott. The leaders in the body were
destined to long careers of public prominence--such men as George
Washington, Lee, and Patrick Henry of Virginia, Rutledge of South
Carolina, Dickinson of Pennsylvania, Jay of New York, Samuel and John
Adams of {58} Massachusetts. They differed considerably in their
temper, the Massachusetts men being far more ready for drastic words
and deeds than the others; but they held together admirably. If such
protests as theirs could not win a hearing in England, it was hardly
conceivable that any could.
Meanwhile the situation gave signs of being more explosive in reality
than the respectful words of the Congress implied. In Massachusetts,
the town of Boston showed no sign of submitting, and endured distress
and actual starvation, although much cheered by gifts of food from all
parts of the continent. The new government under the Regulating Act
proved impossible to put into operation, for the popular detestation
was visited in such insulting and menacing forms that the new
councillors and judges dared not serve. More radical action followed.
When Gage, having caused the election of a legislature, prorogued it
before it had assembled, the members none the less gathered. Declaring
that the Regulating Act was invalid, they elected a council, appointed
a committee of safety, and named a receiver of taxes. On February 1,
1775, a second Provincial Congress was chosen by the towns, which had
not even a nominal sanction by the governor. The colony was, in fact,
in peaceful revolution, for Gage found himself unable to collect {59}
taxes or to make his authority respected as governor beyond the range
of his bayonets. Equally significant was it that in several other
colonies, where the governors failed to call the legislatures,
provincial congresses or conventions were spontaneously elected to
supervise the situation and choose delegates to the Continental
Congress.
So deep was the popular anger in Massachusetts Bay that the collection
of arms and powder and the organization of militia were rapidly begun.
Clearly, the Massachusetts leaders were preparing to persist to the
verge of civil war. But by this time there began to be felt in the
colonies a countercurrent of protest. As the situation grew darker,
and men talked openly of possible separation unless the intolerable
wrongs were redressed, all those whose interests or whose loyalty
revolted at the idea of civil war became alarmed at the danger. Soon
men of such minds began to print pamphlets, according to the fashion of
the time, and to attempt to prevent the radicals from pushing the
colonies into seditious courses. But the position of these
conservatives was exceedingly difficult, for they were obliged to
apologize for the home country at a time when every act on the part of
that country indicated a complete indifference to colonial prejudices.
Their arguments against {60} revolution or independence left, after
all, no alternative except submission. Denounced as Tories by the
hotter radicals, they found themselves at once more and more alarmed by
the daring actions of the Whigs, and more detested by the excited
people of their communities.
The action of the British government after these events showed no
comprehension of the critical situation into which they were rushing.
George III and North secured in the election of 1774 a triumphant
majority of the Commons, and felt themselves beyond reach of danger at
home. The arguments of the colonists, the protests of the Continental
Congress, fell upon indifferent ears. Although Burke and Chatham
exerted themselves with astonishing eloquence in the session of
Parliament which began in November 1774, the Whig motions for
conciliation were voted down by the full Ministerial majority.
Petitions from merchants, who felt the pressure of the Non-importation
Association, were shelved. So far as the policy of the Ministry may be
described, it consisted of legislation to increase the punishment of
Massachusetts Bay and extend it to other colonies, and to offer a
conditional exemption from Parliamentary taxation. Both houses of
Parliament declared Massachusetts Bay to be in rebellion, and voted to
{61} crush all resistance. An Act was passed on March 30, to restrain
the trade of New England, shutting off all colonial vessels from the
fisheries, and forbidding them to trade with any country but England or
Ireland. By a second Act, in April, this restriction was extended to
all the colonies except New York and Georgia. The only purpose of this
Act was punitive. Every step was fought by the Whig opposition, now
thoroughly committed to the cause of the colonists, but their arguments
had the inherent weakness of offering only a surrender to the
colonists' position which the parliamentary majority was in no mood to
consider. In fact it was only with great difficulty and after a stormy
scene that North induced his party to vote a so-called conciliatory
proposition offering to abstain from taxing any colony which should
make such a fixed provision for civil and judicial officers as would
satisfy Parliament.
It was only a few days after the passage of the restraining Acts by
Parliament that the long-threatened civil war actually broke out in
Massachusetts. General Gage, aware of the steady gathering of powder
and war material by the revolutionary committee of safety, finally came
to the conclusion that his position required him to break up these
threatening bases of supplies. On April 19, 1775, he sent out a force
of 800 men to {62} Lexington and Concord--towns a few miles from
Boston--with orders to seize or destroy provisions and arms. They
accomplished their purpose, after dispersing with musketry a squad of
farmers at Lexington, but were hunted back to Boston by many times
their number of excited "minute men," who from behind fences and at
every crossroad harassed their retreat. A reinforcement of 1500 men
enabled the raiding party to escape, but they lost over 800 men, and
inflicted a total loss of only 90 in their flight.
Thus began the American Revolution, for the news of this day of bloody
skirmishing, as it spread, started into flame the excitement of the
colonial Whigs. From the other New England colonies men sprang to
arms, and companies marched to Boston, where they remained in rude
blockade outside the town, unprovided with artillery or military
organization, but unwilling to return to their homes. From the
hill-towns, a band of men surprised Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain,
taking the cannon for use around Boston. In every other colony militia
were organized, officers chosen and arms collected, and almost
everywhere, except in Quaker Pennsylvania and in proprietary Maryland,
the governors and royal officials fled to the seacoast to take refuge
in royal ships of war, or resigned their positions at the command {63}
of crowds of armed "minute men." Conventions and congresses, summoned
by committees of safety, were elected by the Whigs and assumed control
of the colonies, following the example of Massachusetts. The British
colonial government, in short, crumbled to nothing in the spring of
1775. Only Gage's force of a few regiments, shut up in Boston, and a
few naval vessels, represented the authority of England in America.
Again there met a Continental Congress at Philadelphia, whose duty it
was to unify colonial action and to give the colonial answer to the
late parliamentary acts. Once more the ablest men of the colonies were
present, now gravely perturbed over the situation, and divided into two
camps. On the one hand, most of the New Englanders, led by Samuel
Adams and John Adams, his cousin, felt that the time for parley was at
an end, that nothing was to be hoped for from the North Ministry, and
that the only reasonable step was to declare independence. Others
still hoped that George III would realize the extent of the crisis and
be moved to concessions, while yet others, who hoped little, thought
that one more effort should be made to avoid revolution. But none
dreamed of surrender. Of the growing number of Americans who recoiled
in horror from {64} the possibility of independence, and were beginning
to show their dread in every way, not one was in this body. It
represented only the radicals in the several colonies.
The Congress has been charged with inconsistency, for some of its
measures were impelled by the most radical members, others by the
conservatives. On the one hand, it declined to adopt a form of
federation suggested by Franklin, and authorized Dickinson to draw up a
final, respectful, almost obsequious petition to the King to avoid
war--a document called the "Olive Branch"; but, on the other hand, it
appointed Washington to command the troops near Boston as a Continental
commander, adopted a report censuring the conciliatory proposition in
bold language, and issued an address justifying with extravagant
rhetoric the taking up of arms. Still more daring, it went so far as
to arrange to pay the so-called "Continental army" by means of bills of
credit, redeemable by the united colonies. Later, in 1775, it
appointed a secret committee to correspond with friends abroad, and
undertook extensive measures for raising troops and accumulating
military stores. To the revolted colonies, who found themselves with
no legal authorities, it gave the advice to form such governments as
would secure peace and good order during the continuance {65} of the
existing dispute, a step which was promptly taken by several.
Fighting meanwhile went on. General Gage, on June 17, undertook to
drive from Charlestown, across the harbour from Boston, a body of about
1,500 provincial troops who had intrenched themselves on Breed's Hill.
In all, about 3,000 British were brought to the attack, while gunboats
raked the peninsula between Charlestown and the mainland, hindering the
arrival of reinforcements. With true British contempt for their
adversaries, the lines of red-uniformed troops marched under the hot
sun up the hill, to be met with a merciless fire at short range from
the rifles, muskets, and fowling pieces of the defenders. Two frontal
attacks were thus repelled with murderous slaughter; but a third
attack, delivered over the same ground, was pushed home, and the
defenders were driven from their redoubt. Never was a victory more
handsomely won or more dearly bought. The assailants lost not less
than 1,000 out of 3,000 engaged, including 92 officers. The Americans
lost only 450, but that was almost as large a proportion. It was
obvious to any intelligent officer that the Americans might have been
cut off from behind and compelled to surrender without being attacked;
but Gage and his subordinates were anxious to teach the rebels a
lesson. The {66} result of this action, known in history as "Bunker
Hill," was to render him and nearly all the officers who served against
Americans unwilling ever again to storm intrenchments. They discovered
that, as Putnam, who commanded part of the forces, observed, the
militia would fight well if their legs were covered. They were later
to discover the converse, that with no protection militia were almost
useless.
From this time the British force remained quietly in Boston, fed and
supplied from England at immense cost, and making no effort to attack
the miscellaneous levies which General Washington undertook to form
into an army during the summer and autumn. Nothing but the inaction of
the British made it possible for Washington's command to remain, for
they lacked powder, bayonets, horses and, most serious of all, they
lacked all military conceptions. The elementary idea of obedience was
inconceivable to them. Washington's irritation over the perfectly
unconcerned democracy of the New Englanders was extreme; but he showed
a wonderful patience and tenacity, and by sheer persistence began to
create something like a military organization. Yet, even after months
of drill and work the army remained little more than an armed mob. At
length, in March, 1776, Washington managed to {67} place a force on
Dorchester heights, which commanded the harbour from the south. At
first Gage had some idea of attacking, but storms intervened; and
finally, without another blow, he evacuated the city and sailed with
all his force to Halifax. So ended a siege which ought never to have
lasted a month had the British generals been seriously minded to break
it up.
Other military events consisted of a few skirmishes in Virginia and
North Carolina, where the governors managed to raise small forces of
loyalists, who were thoroughly defeated by the Whig militia, and of a
gallant but hopeless attempt by the rebels to capture Canada. After
some futile efforts on the part of Congress to induce the French to
revolt, two bodies of men, in the autumn of 1775, made their way across
the border. One, entering Canada by way of Lake Champlain, occupied
Montreal, and then advanced against Quebec, where it was joined by the
other, which, with great hardships, had penetrated through the
wilderness of northern Maine. The commanders, Richard Montgomery,
Benedict Arnold, and Daniel Morgan of Virginia, were men of daring, but
their force, numbering not more than 1,000, was inadequate; and, after
the failure of an effort to carry the place by surprise on the night of
December 31--in which Montgomery was {68} killed and Morgan
captured--they were unable to do more than maintain a blockade outside
the fortress.
The action of the North Ministry during these months showed no
deviation from its policy of enforcing submission. The Olive Branch
petition was refused a reception, and a proclamation was issued
declaring the colonies in rebellion and warning all subjects against
traitorous correspondence. When Parliament met in November, 1775, the
opposition, led as usual by Burke, made one more effort to avoid civil
war; but the Ministerial party rejected all proposals for conciliation,
and devoted itself to preparing to crush the rebellion. On December
22, an Act became law which, if enforced, would have been a sentence of
death to all colonial economic life. It superseded the Boston Port Act
and the restraining Acts, absolutely prohibited all commerce with the
revolted colonies, and authorized the impressment into the navy of all
seamen found on vessels captured under the Act.
Military and naval preparations were slow and costly. The Admiralty
and War Office, unprepared for a general war, had insufficient troops
and sailors, and had to collect or create supplies and equipment. The
Earl of Sandwich showed activity but slight capacity as First Lord of
the Admiralty. Viscount {69} Barrington had been Secretary at War
under Pitt during the French war, but he lacked force and influence.
Hence, although Parliament voted 50,000 troops, there was confusion and
delay. To secure a prompt supply of men, the Ministry took the step of
hiring German mercenaries from the lesser Rhine princes--Hesse,
Waldeck, and others,--at a rate per head with a fixed sum for deaths.
This practice was customary in wars when England was obliged to protect
Hanover from the French; but to use the same method against their own
kindred in America was looked upon with aversion by many English, and
aroused ungovernable indignation in all Americans. It seemed to show a
callousness toward all ties of blood and speech which rendered any hope
of reconciliation futile. The war was not, in fact, popular in
England. The task of conquering rebels was not relished by many, and
officers and noblemen of Whig connections in some cases resigned their
commissions rather than serve. The parliamentary opposition denounced
the war with fiery zeal as an iniquity and a scandal. Nevertheless,
the general opinion in England supported the Ministry in its
determination to assert the national strength; for the colonial
behaviour seemed to the average Englishman as nothing more or less than
impudent sedition, to yield to which would be disgrace.
{70}
To the Americans, the British action in 1776 showed that the only
alternatives were submission or fighting; and, if the latter must be
chosen, then it was the feeling of a growing number that independence
was the only outcome. There now went on a contest between
conservatives, including on one side those who opposed all civil war,
those who were willing to fight to defend rights but who were unwilling
to abandon hopes of forcing England to surrender its claims, and those
whose businesses and connections were closely interwoven with the
mother country and all the radicals on the other. Unfortunately for
the conservatives they had only fear, or sentiment, for arguments,
since the North Ministry gave them nothing to urge upon doubtful men.
Still more unfortunately, they were, as a rule, outside the
revolutionary organizations of conventions and committees, and were
themselves without means of co-operating.
In the excitement and tension of the time, the ruder and rougher
classes tended to regard all reluctance to join in the revolution as
equivalent to upholding the North policy, and to attack as Tories all
who did not heartily support the revolutionary cause. Violence and
intimidation rapidly made themselves felt. Loyalists were threatened,
forced by mobs to sign the Association; their houses {71} were defiled,
their movements watched. Then [Transcriber's note: Their?] arms were
taken from them, and if they showed anger or temper they were
occasionally whipped or even tarred and feathered. In this way a
determined minority backed by the poorer and rougher classes, overrode
all opposition and swelled a rising cry for independence.
The Congress was slow, for it felt the need of unanimity; and such
colonies as New York and Pennsylvania were controlled by moderates.
But at length, in June, 1776, spurred on by the Virginia delegates and
by the tireless urgings of the Massachusetts leaders, the body acted.
Already some of the colonies had adopted constitutions whose language
indicated their independence. Now the Continental Congress, after a
final debate, adopted a Declaration of Independence, drafted by
Jefferson of Virginia and supported by the eloquence of John Adams and
the influence of Franklin. Basing their position on the doctrines of
the natural right of men to exercise full self-government and to change
their form of government when it became oppressive, the colonies, in
this famous document, imitated the English Declaration of Rights of
1689 in drawing up a bill of indictment against George III's
government. In this can be discovered every cause of resentment and
every variety of {72} complaint which the thirteen colonies were ready
to put forward. Practically all were political. There were allusions
in plenty to the wrangles between governors and assemblies,
denunciations of the parliamentary taxes and the coercing Acts, but no
reference to the Acts of Trade. To the end, the colonists, even in the
act of declaring independence, found their grievances in the field of
government and not in economic regulation. What they wanted was the
unrestricted power to legislate for themselves and to tax or refrain
from taxing themselves. When these powers were diminished, their whole
political ideal was ruined, and they preferred independence to what
they considered servitude. Such ideas were beyond the comprehension of
most Englishmen, to whom the whole thing was plain disloyalty, however
cloaked in specious words and glittering generalities.
It has been said that the rupture was due to a spirit of independence
in America which, in spite of all disclaimers, was determined to be
entirely free from the mother country. Such was the assertion of the
Tories and officials of the time, and the same idea is not infrequently
repeated at the present day. But the truth is that the colonists would
have been contented to remain indefinitely in union with England,
subjects of the British {73} crown, sharers of the British commercial
empire, provided they could have been sure of complete local
self-government. The independence they demanded was far less than that
now enjoyed by the great colonial unions of Canada, Australia, and
South Africa. It may be assumed, of course, that unless Parliament
exercised complete authority over internal as well as external
matters--to employ the then customary distinction--there was no real
imperial bond. Such was the position unanimously taken by the North
Ministry and the Tories in 1776. But in view of the subsequent history
of the English colonies it seems hardly deniable that some relationship
similar to the existing colonial one might have been perpetuated had
the Whig policy advocated by Burke been adopted, and the right of
Parliament "to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever" been allowed
to drop, in practice. The obstinate localism of the colonies was such
that not until a generation after the Revolution did a genuine American
national sentiment appear. The colonies were driven to act together in
1774-1776, but not to fuse, by a danger not to national but to local
independence. This fact indicates how sharply defined was the field
which the Americans insisted on having free from parliamentary
invasion. Had it been possible for England {74} to recognize this
fact, there would have been no revolution.
It is, of course, obvious that the traditional American view of the
Revolution as caused by tyranny and oppression is symbolical, if not
fictitious. The British government, in all its measures, from 1763 to
1774, was moderate, hesitating, and at worst irritating. Its action
threatened to destroy the practical independence of the colonial
assemblies; but the danger was political. Even the five "intolerable
Acts" inflicted hardship on the town of Boston alone. It was not until
the year 1775, when Parliament imposed severe commercial restrictions,
that anything resembling actual oppression began; but by that time the
colonies were in open revolt.
This fact only emphasizes, as Burke pointed out, the criminal folly of
the North Ministry in allowing the situation to become dangerous. It
was the misfortune of the British people in the eighteenth century
that, in the critical years after 1767, George III and his Ministers
were unable to conceive of any value in colonies which were not in the
full sense dependencies, and were narrowly limited by the economic
ideas of their time and the social conventions of their class. Since
the colonies had developed, unchecked, their own political life under
British government, it was not their duty humbly to {75} surrender all
that had come to be identical with liberty in their eyes. It was the
duty of British statesmen to recognize the situation and deal with it.
This they failed to do, and the result was revolution.
{75}