Number 62
(_Double Number_)
RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
BY JOHN FISKE
WITH MAPS, INDEX AND A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO
The Riverside Press Cambridge
Price, paper 30 cents; linen, 40 cents
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The Riverside Literature Series
THE
WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
BY
JOHN FISKE
WITH MAPS, INDEX, AND A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
[Decoration]
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 85 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
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COPYRIGHT, 1889
BY JOHN FISKE
COPYRIGHT, 1894
BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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PREFACE.
This little book does not contain the substance of the lectures on the
American Revolution which I have delivered in so many parts of the
United States since 1883. Those lectures, when completed and published,
will make quite a detailed narrative; this book is but a sketch. It is
hoped that it may prove useful to the higher classes in schools, as well
as to teachers. When I was a boy I should have been glad to get hold of
a brief account of the War for Independence that would have suggested
answers to some of the questions that used to vex me. Was the conduct of
the British government, in driving the Americans into rebellion, merely
wanton aggression, or was it not rather a bungling attempt to solve a
political problem which really needed to be solved? Why were New Jersey
and the Hudson river so important? Why did the British armies make South
Carolina their chief objective point after New York? Or how did
Cornwallis happen to be at Yorktown when Washington made such a long
leap and pounced upon him there? And so on. Such questions the
old-fashioned text-books not only did not try to answer, they did not
even recognize their existence. As to the large histories, they of
course include so many details that it requires maturity of judgment to
discriminate between the facts that are cardinal and those that are
merely incidental. When I give lectures to schoolboys and schoolgirls, I
observe that a reference to causes and effects always seems to heighten
the interest of the story. I therefore offer them this little book, not
as a rival but as an aid to the ordinary text-book. I am aware that a
narrative so condensed must necessarily suffer from the omission of many
picturesque and striking details. The world is so made that one often
has to lose a little in one direction in order to gain something in
another. This book is an experiment. If it seems to answer its purpose,
I may follow it with others, treating other portions of American history
in similar fashion.
CAMBRIDGE, _February 11, 1889_.
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CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF JOHN FISKE vii
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. THE COLONIES IN 1750 4
III. THE FRENCH WARS, AND THE FIRST PLAN OF UNION 26
IV. THE STAMP ACT, AND THE REVENUE LAWS 39
V. THE CRISIS 78
VI. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CENTRE 104
VII. THE FRENCH ALLIANCE 144
VIII. BIRTH OF THE NATION 182
COLLATERAL READING 195
INDEX 197
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LIST OF MAPS.
_Facing page_
INVASION OF CANADA 92
WASHINGTON'S CAMPAIGNS IN NEW JERSEY AND PENNSYLVANIA 120
BURGOYNE'S CAMPAIGN 130
THE SOUTHERN CAMPAIGN 172
NOTE.--These maps are used by permission of, and by arrangement with,
Messrs. Ginn & Company.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
To relate, by way of leading up to this little book, all the previous
achievements of its author would--without disrespect to the greater or
the less--have somewhat the appearance of putting a very big cart in
front of a pony. But no idea could be more mistaken than that which
induces people to believe a small book the easiest to write. Easy
reading is hard writing; and a thoroughly good small book stands for so
much more than the mere process of putting it on paper, that its value
is not at all to be judged by its bulk. The offhand word of a man full
of knowledge is worth a great deal more than the carefully prepared
utterance of a person who having spoken once has nothing more to say. In
our introduction to this work, therefore, we propose to reverse the
common process of tracing the author's development upwards, and instead,
after stating the mere events of Mr. Fiske's life, to begin with "The
War of Independence" and to follow his work backwards, attempting very
briefly to show how each undertaking was built naturally upon something
before it, and that the original basis of the structure was uncommonly
broad and strong.
John Fiske was born in Hartford, Conn., 30th March, 1842, and spent
most of his life, before entering Harvard as a sophomore in 1860, with
his grandmother's family in Middletown, Conn. Two years after taking his
degree at Harvard, in 1863, he was graduated from the Harvard Law
School, but he cared so much more for writing than for the law that his
attempt to practice it in Boston was soon abandoned. In 1861 he made his
first important contribution to a magazine, and ever since has done much
work of the same sort. He has served Harvard College, as University
lecturer on philosophy, 1869-71, in 1870 as instructor in history, and
from 1872 to 1879 as assistant librarian. Since resigning from that
office he has been for two terms of six years each a member of the board
of overseers. In 1881 he began lecturing annually at Washington
University, St. Louis, on American history, and in 1884 was made a
professor of the institution. Since 1871 he has devoted much time to
lecturing at large. He has been heard in most of the principal cities of
America, and abroad, in London and Edinburgh. All this time his home has
been in Cambridge, Mass.
So much for the simple outward circumstances of Mr. Fiske's life.
Turning to his studies and writings, one finds them reaching out into
almost every direction of human thought; and this book, from which our
backward course is to be taken, is but a page from the great body of his
work. It is especially as a student of philosophy, science, and history
that Mr. Fiske is known to the world; and at the present it is
particularly as an historian of America that his name is spoken. In no
other way more satisfactorily than in tracing the growth of his own
nation has he found it possible to study the laws of progress of the
human race, and from the first, through all the time of his most active
philosophical and scientific work, this study of human progress has been
the true interest of his life. With his historical works, then, let us
begin.
In 1879 he delivered a course of six lectures on American history, at
the Old South Meeting House in Boston. In previous years he had written
occasional essays on historical subjects in general, but the impulse
towards American history in particular was given by the preparation for
these lectures, which were concerned especially with the colonial
period. Of his own treatment of an historical subject he is quoted as
saying: "I look it up or investigate it, and then write an essay or a
lecture on the subject. That serves as a preliminary statement, either
of a large subject or of special points. It is a help to me to make a
statement of the kind--I mean in the lecture or essay form. In fact it
always assists me to try to state the case. I never publish anything
after this first statement, but generally keep it with me for, it may
be, some years, and possibly return to it again several times." Thus it
may safely be assumed that these Old South Lectures and the many others
that have followed them have found or will find a permanent place in the
series of Mr. Fiske's historical volumes.
The succession of these books has not been in the order of the periods
of which they treat; but from the similarity of their method and the
fact that they cover a series of important periods in American history,
they go towards making a complete, consecutive history of the country.
The periods which are not yet covered Mr. Fiske proposes to deal with in
time. One who has talked with him on the subject of his works reports
the following statement as coming from Mr. Fiske's own lips: "I am now
at work on a general history of the United States. When John Richard
Green was planning his 'Short History of the English People,' and he and
I were friends in London, I heard him telling about his scheme. I
thought it would be a very nice thing to do something of the same sort
for American history. But when I took it up I found myself, instead of
carrying it out in that way, dwelling upon special points; and
insensibly, without any volition on my part, I suppose, it has been
rather taking the shape of separate monographs. But I hope to go on in
that way until I cover the ground with these separate books,--that is,
to cover as much ground as possible. But, of course, the scheme has
become much more extensive than it was when I started."
Taken in the order of their subjects, the five works already contributed
to this series are, "The Discovery of America, with some Account of
Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest" (two volumes); "Old Virginia
and her Neighbours" (two volumes); "The Beginnings of New England, or
the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty;"
"The American Revolution" (two volumes); and "The Critical Period of
American History, 1783-1789." Allied with these books, though hardly
taking a place in the series, is "Civil Government in the United States,
Considered with some Reference to its Origins," "The War of
Independence," it will thus be seen, is the least ambitious of all
these historical works. "A History of the United States for Schools" is
addressed to the same audience, and in so far may be considered a
companion volume.
What makes Mr. Fiske's histories just what they are? Another step
backward in the stages of his own development will enable us to see, and
the sub-title, "Viewed from the Standpoint of Universal History," of one
of his earlier books, "American Political Ideas," will help towards an
understanding of his power. It is due to the fact that he brings to his
historical work on special subjects the broad philosophic and general
view of a man who is much more than a specialist,--the scientific habit
of mind which must look for causes when effects are seen, and must point
out the relations between them. There could be no better preparation for
the writing of history than the apparently alien study of the questions
with which the names of Darwin and Spencer are inseparably associated.
When Darwin's "Origin of Species" appeared, Mr. Fiske's own thought had
prepared him to take the place of an ardent apostle of Evolution, and it
is held that no man has done more than he in expounding the theory in
America. Standing permanently for his work in this field are his books,
"Excursions of an Evolutionist" and "Darwinism, and Other Essays." One
of his first important works was "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy" (1874),
and in more recent years "The Destiny of Man" and "The Idea of God"
speak forth very distinctly, not as interpretations, but as his own
contributions to the progress of philosophic thought. One other phase of
the use to which Mr. Fiske's mind has been put should surely be
mentioned in any summary of his qualifications for writing histories. He
is extremely fond of hearing and telling good stories. His book on
"Myths and Myth-makers" (1872) gave early evidence of this fondness, and
surely there is the very spirit of the lover of tales in the Dedication
of the book, "To my dear Friend, William D. Howells, in remembrance of
pleasant autumn evenings spent among were-wolves and trolls and nixies."
Thus, besides the ability to see a story in all its bearings, Mr. Fiske
has the gift of telling it effectively,--a golden power without which
all the learning in the world would serve an historian as but so much
lead.
But all of these works preceding Mr. Fiske's historical writings did not
come out of nothing. His mental acquirements as a young man and boy were
very extraordinary, and give to the last stage of his career at which we
shall look--the earliest--perhaps the greatest interest of all. A
description of it without a knowledge of what followed would be all too
apt to remind readers whose memories go back far enough of the
instances, all too common, of men whose early promise is not fulfilled.
_Summa cum laude_ graduates settle down into lives of timid routine that
leads to nothing, just as often as the idle dreamers who stay
consistently at the foot of their classes wake up when the vital contact
with the world takes place, and do something astonishingly good. These,
however, are the exceptions. A development like Mr. Fiske's follows the
lines of nature.
Happily, there were books in the house in which he was brought up. At
the age of seven he was reading Rollin, Josephus, and Goldsmith's
Greece. Much of Milton, Pope, and Bunyan, and nearly all of Shakespeare
he had read before he was nine; histories of many lands before eleven.
At this age he filled a quarto blank book of sixty pages with a
chronological table, written from memory, of events between 1000 B. C.
and 1820 A. D.
All this would seem enough for one boy, but there were the other worlds
of languages and science to conquer. It is almost discouraging merely to
write down the fact that at thirteen he had read a large part of Livy,
Cicero, Ovid, Catullus, and Juvenal, and all of Virgil, Horace, Tacitus,
Sallust, and Suetonius,--to say nothing of Cæsar, at seven. Greek was
disposed of in like manner; and then came the modern languages,
--German, Spanish,--in which he kept a diary,--French, Italian, and
Portuguese. Hebrew and Sanskrit were kept for the years of seventeen and
eighteen. In college, Icelandic, Gothic, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, and
Roumanian were added, with beginnings in Russian. The uses to which he
put these languages were not those to which the weary schoolboy puts his
few scraps of learning in foreign tongues, but the true uses of
literature,--reading for pleasure and mental stimulus.
It is needless to relate the rapid course of Mr. Fiske's first studies
in science; it is no whit less remarkable than that of his other
intellectual enterprises. As mathematics is akin to music, it will be
enough to say that when he was fifteen a friend's piano was left in his
grandmother's house, and, without a master, the boy soon learned its
secrets well enough to play such works as Mozart's Twelfth Mass. Later
in life Mr. Fiske studied the science of music. He has printed many
musical criticisms, and has himself composed a mass and songs.
Few boys can hope to take to college with them, or, for that matter,
even away from it, a mind so well equipped as Mr. Fiske's was when he
went to Cambridge. Three years of stimulating university atmosphere, and
of indefinitely wide opportunities for reading, left him prepared as few
men have been for just the work he has done. He has had the wisdom to
see what he could do, and being possessed of the qualities that lead to
accomplishment, he has done it; and any reader who understands more than
the mere words he reads will be very likely to discover in this small
volume, "The War of Independence," something of the spirit, and some
suggestions of the method which, in this sketch, we have endeavored to
point out as characteristic of one of the foremost living historians.
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
Since the year 1875 we have witnessed, in many parts of the United
States, public processions, meetings, and speeches in commemoration of
the hundredth anniversary of some important event in the course of our
struggle for national independence. This series of centennial
celebrations, which has been of great value in stimulating American
patriotism and awakening throughout the country a keen interest in
American history, will naturally come to an end in 1889. The close of
President Cleveland's term of office marks the close of the first
century of the government under which we live, which dates from the
inauguration of President Washington on the balcony of the Federal
building in Wall street, New York, on the 30th of April, 1789. It was on
that memorable day that the American Revolution may be said to have been
completed. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 detached the American
people from the supreme government to which they had hitherto owed
allegiance, and it was not until Washington's inauguration in 1789 that
the supreme government to which we owe allegiance to-day was actually
put in operation. The period of thirteen years included between these
two dates was strictly a revolutionary period, during which it was more
or less doubtful where the supreme authority over the United States
belonged. First, it took the fighting and the diplomacy of the
revolutionary war to decide that this supreme authority belonged in the
United States themselves, and not in the government of Great Britain;
and then after the war was ended, more than five years of sore distress
and anxious discussion had elapsed before the American people succeeded
in setting up a new government that was strong enough to make itself
obeyed at home and respected abroad.
It is the story of this revolutionary period, ending in 1789, that we
have here to relate in its principal outlines. When we stand upon the
crest of a lofty hill and look about in all directions over the
landscape, we can often detect relations between distant points which we
had not before thought of together. While we tarried in the lowland, we
could see blue peaks rising here and there against the sky, and follow
babbling brooks hither and thither through the forest. It was more
homelike down there than on the hilltop, for in each gnarled tree, in
every moss-grown boulder, in every wayside flower, we had a friend that
was near to us; but the general bearings of things may well have escaped
our notice. In climbing to our lonely vantage-ground, while the familiar
scenes fade from sight, there are gradually unfolded to us those
connections between crag and meadow and stream that make the life and
meaning of the whole. We learn the "lay of the land," and become, in a
humble way, geographers. So in the history of men and nations, while we
remain immersed in the study of personal incidents and details, as what
such a statesman said or how many men were killed in such a battle, we
may quite fail to understand what it was all about, and we shall be sure
often to misjudge men's characters and estimate wrongly the importance
of many events. For this reason we cannot clearly see the meaning of the
history of our own times. The facts are too near us; we are down among
them, like the man who could not see the forest because there were so
many trees. But when we look back over a long interval of years, we can
survey distant events and personages like points in a vast landscape and
begin to discern the meaning of it all. In this way we come to see that
history is full of lessons for us. Very few things have happened in past
ages with which our present welfare is not in one way or another
concerned. Few things have happened in any age more interesting or more
important than the American Revolution.