Part 9 (2/2)

The men who with resolution and high hope pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the defense of these novel principles, could scarcely have foreseen the emotional reaction that was soon to follow; the profound disillusionment of those weary years when only an occasional victory came to lift the despondency occasioned by constant defeat: years when ”the spirit of the people begins to flag, or the approach of danger dispirits them”; when ”few of the numbers who talked so largely of death and honor” were to be found on the field of battle; when a febrile enthusiasm for liberty and the just rights of humanity seemed strangely transformed into the sordid spirit of the money-changer; those years of the drawn-out war when drudgery in obscure committee rooms was valued above declamation and the practical sense of Robert Morris counted for more than the finished oratory of Richard Henry Lee; the times that tried men's souls, when ”the summer soldier and the suns.h.i.+ne patriot ... shrinks from the service of his country, but he that stands ... deserves the love of man and woman.”

Happily for America there were many who kept the faith, who fought the good fight, during these dark days. Yet one is apt to think that the Declaration must have proved a vain boast of rebels but for that Virginia colonel whom the Congress appointed, on June 17, 1775, to be ”General and Commander in Chief of the armies of the United Colonies”; that man so modest that he thought himself incompetent for the task, yet of such heroic resolution that neither difficulties nor reverses nor betrayals could bring him to despair; that man of rect.i.tude, whose will was steeled to finer temper by every defeat, and who was not to be turned, by any failure or success, by any calumny, by gold, or by the dream of empire, from the straight path of his purpose.

He had come, in June, 1776, fresh from the notable achievement which drove the British army out of Boston, to defend New York against the most formidable military and naval force ever seen in America. With a rashness born of inexperience or the necessity of making a stand, Was.h.i.+ngton carried his undisciplined farmers and frontier riflemen across to Brooklyn Heights on Long Island, to meet inevitable defeat at the hands of General Howe. A s.h.i.+p or two, which the slow-moving British commander might have sent up the East River, would have prevented the masterly retreat which saved the American army from capture. But Howe seemed bent only upon occupying New York, which thus became, and until the end of the war remained, the British and Loyalist headquarters. With a deliberation that enraged the Loyalist and non-plussed his subordinates, the general pushed the patriot army northward to White Plains, missing there a second opportunity to win a decisive battle. But the capture of Fort Was.h.i.+ngton on the Hudson opened the river to the British navy, and compelled the American forces to retreat through New Jersey, and across the Delaware River at Trenton into Pennsylvania. Half a year had not pa.s.sed since the Declaration of Independence when the cause of America seemed already lost. ”We looked upon the contest as nearly closed,” Major Thomas a.s.sured his patriot friends, ”and considered ourselves a vanquished people.” The indifferent populace of New York and New Jersey came in crowds to swear allegiance to the victorious army. No one doubted that Howe would cross the river and take Philadelphia. The jubilant Loyalists of the capital city awaited their deliverance. Congress, bundling its records into a farm wagon, scrambled away to Baltimore. And even the steadfast Was.h.i.+ngton, with his tatterdemalion army reduced to three thousand effectives, wrote that if new troops could not be raised without delay ”the game is nearly up.”

Of Villeroi, a general in the army of Louis XIV, it was said that he had ”well served the king--William.” It might be said of Howe that he shares with Was.h.i.+ngton the merit of achieving American independence. He never quite deserted the patriot cause; and now, at this critical moment, instead of pressing on to Philadelphia, he retired his main army, leaving only some Hessian outposts at Trenton and Bordentown. This arrangement enabled Was.h.i.+ngton to revive the waning enthusiasm of the country by executing one of the most daring and brilliant strokes of the war. Amidst the snow and sleet of a bitter December night, he ferried his forlorn little force through the floating ice of the Delaware, and on Christmas morning of 1776 surprised and captured Colonel Ball and one thousand Hessians. Cornwallis, on the point of departure for England, was hastily recalled to recover the lost ground; but he was out-generaled and defeated, and Was.h.i.+ngton occupied Morristown Heights, where he would indeed have been ”left to scuffle for Liberty like another Cato,” had he not been, to his great amazement, allowed by the British commander to remain unmolested there until the next spring. ”All winter,” he writes, ”we were at their mercy, with sometimes scarcely a sufficient body of men to mount the ordinary guards, liable at every moment to be dissipated, if they had only thought proper to march against us.”

If the conduct of the British general in the winter of 1777 amazed Was.h.i.+ngton, his management of the next campaign was even more inexplicable. The army of Burgoyne was then moving slowly southward from Canada by way of Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. It was the intention of the ministers that Howe should cooperate with the northern army; and Was.h.i.+ngton supposed that the purpose of the campaign was to effect a complete separation of New England from the more Loyalist Middle and Southern colonies. As this was thought to be precisely the most fatal circ.u.mstance which could come to pa.s.s, an army, far larger than that of Was.h.i.+ngton, was gathering to check if possible the advance of Burgoyne. But Howe neither moved north to the relief of Burgoyne, nor sent any part of his troops until it was too late. Wasting the early summer in fruitless maneuvers in northern Jersey, he finally carried his army by sea to the Chesapeake Bay, where he arrived on the 21st of August. The general had sailed three hundred miles, and had now to march fifty miles more, in order to reach Philadelphia, which was ninety-two miles from the point where he first embarked; and the army of Was.h.i.+ngton, the very army which he had sailed so far and wasted so many precious weeks to avoid, still lay across his path. At Brandywine and Germantown he fought, and easily won, the battles which could no longer be avoided. The way to Philadelphia was indeed open; but the fate of the northern army was already sealed. Caught in the difficult forests of the Hudson Valley, with supplies exhausted, unable either to retreat or to advance, on October 17, thirteen days after Howe won the battle of Germantown, Burgoyne lost the battle of Saratoga and surrendered his entire army to General Gates.

The loss of Philadelphia was almost forgotten in the general rejoicing that followed the victory of Saratoga. And the surrender of Burgoyne was indeed a decisive event; for it inspired Americans with new resolution and was followed by the formal alliance with France. For months Franklin had been in France preparing the way for a treaty. The very presence of the man on the streets of Paris was an influence in favor of the American cause. To the Frenchmen of that day, when Voltaire and Rousseau and Fenelon had come into their own, this sage from the primitive forest, already famous as a scientist, this homely preacher of the virtues of frugality, with his unconventional wisdom and his genial tolerance, was the ideal philosopher of that state of nature which they had in imagination set over as a s.h.i.+ning contrast to the artificial and corrupt society in which they lived. The enthusiasm of the nation for an oppressed people gave support to the Government when war was once declared, but it cannot be said that it had much influence in inducing the king to agree to the alliance with England's rebellious colonies.

Bringing to bear all the resources which native wit and long experience had placed at his command, Franklin had already, enc.u.mbered as he was with unwise colleagues, procured much secret a.s.sistance. And it was probably the intention of the French Government not to depart from this policy; but after the surrender of Burgoyne, French agents in London a.s.sured Vergennes that the colonies were on the point of making peace with England, and of joining her, as the price of independence, in an attack upon the French West Indies. Since war seemed inevitable, it was manifestly better to have the a.s.sistance of America than her opposition.

Vergennes therefore signified to Franklin his willingness to negotiate a treaty without delay; and there was signed under date of February 6, 1778, at Versailles, a defensive and offensive alliance between the United States of America,--recently founded upon the revolutionary principle of popular sovereignty, and His Most Christian Majesty, Louis XVI, by Grace of G.o.d King of France and Navarre.[2]

In spite of the resource and tenacity of Was.h.i.+ngton and the convenient inactivity of Howe, it is difficult to see how the Revolution could have succeeded without the a.s.sistance which now came from France. Contrary to expectation, French troops and even the French navy were of little direct aid until the battle of Yorktown. But French gold financed the war. In the winter of 1778, when Was.h.i.+ngton's heroic remnant of barefoot soldiers lay starving at Valley Forge while Pennsylvania farmers sold provisions to the British and Loyalists who were comfortable and merry at Philadelphia, the Continental Congress was already a discredited and half bankrupt Government. Confiscated Loyalist property was sold for the benefit of the new State Governments; and Congress, unable to collect its requisitions, was forced to rely upon ever-increasing issues of paper money. In this very year $63,000,000 were added to the $38,000,000 already in circulation, and in 1779 the printers turned out $143,000,000 more. Laws fixing prices were without effect, and the value of paper fell to 33 cents on the dollar in 1777, to 12 cents in 1779, and to 2 cents in 1780. When a pound of tea sold for $100, when Thomas Paine bought woolen stockings at $300 a pair and Jefferson brandy at $125 a quart, General Gates could with $500,000 of paper get a hundred yards of fence built in which to guard British prisoners, but arms and munitions of war were forthcoming only so long as drafts on Franklin were honored by the French Government.

But if the French alliance brought a.s.sistance to the Americans, it induced the English Government to undertake a more vigorous prosecution of the war. The ministers had doubtless thought that the policy of conducting the war with the olive branch and the sword in either hand would prove successful. Certainly Howe had so interpreted his instructions. He had fought only when it was necessary to fight; easily accomplished everything he seriously attempted; never pressed any advantage; had supposed that by occupying the princ.i.p.al cities, affording protection to the loyal, and by moderation winning the lukewarm, the flame of rebellion would burn low for want of fuel and in good time quite flicker out. Too faithfully followed by half, this policy had ended in the humiliation of Saratoga and in the added burden of a war with France. News of Burgoyne's surrender scarcely reached England before offers of conciliation, embracing more than every concession the colonies had originally demanded, were hastily pushed through Parliament and entrusted to commissioners sent to America to negotiate peace. It was now too late. Once before, just after the battle of Long Island, General Howe, declaring himself authorized to discuss terms of conciliation, had induced Congress to send a committee to meet him at Staten Island. The conference came to nothing; and the only effect of the episode was to create a strong suspicion in the mind of the French Minister that the Americans would abandon their Declaration at the first convenient opportunity. It was above all necessary that the ardor of France should not again be damped by any further dallying with English offers. The commissioners were therefore coolly received, and the attempt of Johnstone to bribe Was.h.i.+ngton and Reed, published by Congress in August, 1778, only furnished new fuel to the patriot flame.

Aroused by the French alliance and the flouting of its offers of conciliation, the English Government now set about to wage war in earnest. General Howe had returned to England in May, 1778, to stand a Parliamentary investigation; and when General Clinton who succeeded him evacuated Philadelphia, and, barely escaping disaster at the battle of Monmouth, carried his army back to New York, the olive branch was thrown away and the war took on a new character. Ignoring the patriot army, the British general resorted to the policy of ruthless raids against the prosperous Northern coast communities, burning their towns and their s.h.i.+pping, destroying their industries, and carrying off their provisions. In 1779, Virginia, which since 1776 had quietly raised tobacco, and the provisions which had so largely subsisted Was.h.i.+ngton's army, was laid waste all along its easily accessible river highways.

Savannah was taken late in 1778, and at the close of the next year Clinton himself commanded an expedition which in May, 1780, captured the city of Charleston and forced General Lincoln to surrender his army of 2500 Continental troops. ”We look upon America as at our feet,” wrote Horace Walpole. And in fact the occupation of Georgia and South Carolina was regarded by the English, by the American Loyalists, and by many patriots, as the prelude to the conquest of the entire South and the end of the rebellion.

Little wonder if in these days of constant defeat and declining enthusiasm Congress too often fell to the level of a wrangling body of mediocre men. After the first years the ability that might have given it dignity was largely employed in the army, on diplomatic missions, or in the establishment and administration of the new State Governments. The particularism of the time is revealed in the belief that a man's first allegiance was to his State; to construct a const.i.tution for Ma.s.sachusetts was thought to be a greater service than to draft the Articles of Confederation; to be Governor of Virginia a higher honor than to be President of Congress. The political wisdom of the decade is therefore chiefly embodied in the first state const.i.tutions and the legislation of the new State Governments. The const.i.tutions gave formal expression to the philosophy of the Revolution, but in their detailed arrangements followed closely the practices and traditions inherited from the colonial period; popular sovereignty was everywhere declared, but everywhere limited by basing the suffrage upon property, and often half defeated by adopting an administrative mechanism in harmony with the prevailing belief that good government springs from ”power balanced and cancelled and dispersed.” The new regime was not altogether such as Patrick Henry or Jefferson would have made it, but it marked a safe and conservative advance toward the ”establishment of a more equal liberty”

than had hitherto prevailed.

The erection of stable State Governments greatly diminished the power and the prestige of federal authority. Insensibly the Congress and the Continental army found themselves dependent upon thirteen sovereign masters. The feebleness with which the war was supported sometimes strikes one as incredible; but the amazing difficulty of maintaining an army of ten thousand troops for the achievement of independence, in the very colonies which had raised twenty-five thousand for the conquest of Canada, was due less to the lack of resources, or to indifference to the result, than to the uncertain authority of Congress, the republican fear of military power, and the jealous provincialism which had everywhere been greatly accentuated by the establishment of the new state const.i.tutions. Was.h.i.+ngton's army naturally looked with contempt upon a Government that could not feed or clothe its own soldiers. Congress, jealous of its authority for the very reason that it had none, criticized the army in defeat and feared it in victory. The State Governments, refusing to conform to the recommendations of Congress, alternately complained of its weakness and denounced it for usurping unwarranted power. Each State wished to maintain control of its own troops, and was offended if, in the Continental forces, its many military experts were not all major-generals. The very colony which gave little support to the army when war raged in another province, cried aloud for protection when the enemy crossed its own sacred boundaries; and, with perhaps one eighth of its proper quota of men at the front, with its requisitions in taxes unpaid, wished to know whether it was because of incompetence or timidity that General Was.h.i.+ngton failed to win victories.

After all the wonder is rather that Congress accomplished anything than that it did so little. A Frenchman, asked what he did during the Terror, replied that he lived. It was no small merit in the Continental Congress that it held together and maintained even the tradition of union; a higher merit still that in the midst of war it fas.h.i.+oned a federal const.i.tution which the thirteen States, more divided by jealousy and their newly won authority than they were united by a common danger, could be induced to approve. Yet this task the Congress with difficulty got accomplished. In 1777, after months of debate, it adopted the Articles of Confederation. Leaving political sovereignty in the several states, they provided for a federal legislature with a very limited authority to make laws, but no federal executive to enforce them.

Hopelessly inadequate as this const.i.tution was to prove, the small States, notably Maryland, refused to approve it until the larger States ceded their Western lands to the common Government. Virginia, possessed of the most extensive domain, held out longest, but finally renounced her claims January 2, 1781; and in March of that year it was announced that Maryland had ratified the Articles of Confederation, which thus became the first const.i.tution of the United States.

In 1779, while the States were wrangling over their Western lands, a little band of valiant backwoodsmen won a victory which gave substance to their claims and made their cessions something more than waste paper.

Throughout the war the frontier communities were most loyal supporters of the Revolution. Their expert riflemen, organized in companies, of which that of Daniel Morgan is perhaps the most famous, served in the army of Was.h.i.+ngton, helped Gates to win the battle of Saratoga, and were of indispensable service in driving Clinton out of North Carolina in 1780, and Cornwallis in 1781. The borderers of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and the little settlements at Watauga and Boonesboro, maintained a heroic defense against the Indians, who were paid by General Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, to wage a war of ma.s.sacre and pillage on the frontier. Against intermittent Indian raids the backwoodsmen could defend their homes; but so long as the British held Detroit and Vincennes and the Mississippi forts, there could be no peace in the interior, and even if the colonies won independence, it was likely that the Alleghanies would mark the boundary of the new State. Under these circ.u.mstances, George Rogers Clark, trapper and expert woodsman and Indian fighter, set himself, with the confident idealism of the frontiersman, to achieve an object which must have seemed to most men no more than a forlorn hope. It was in 1777 that he crossed the mountains to Virginia, secured the secret and semi-official authorization of Patrick Henry, the Governor of the State, and raised a company of one hundred and fifty men with which to undertake nothing less than the destruction of British power in the great Northwest.

In May, 1778, the little band floated from Redstone down the Ohio, at the falls built a fort which they named Louisville in honor of the French King, and finally, on July 4, reached Kaskaskia. Guided by some hunters who had joined them, they took the fort by stratagem. The Indians, for the moment a greater danger than the British, were overawed by the skill and the masterful personality of Clark; and the Creoles, conciliated by his moderation, gladly joined in the capture of Cahokia.

Not until February, 1779, was the intrepid commander ready to march on Vincennes. General Hamilton had recently come there with a small force, and there he proposed to remain until spring before marching to the recapture of Kaskaskia and the destruction of the settlements south of the Ohio, never dreaming that men could be found to cross the ”drowned lands” of the Wabash in the inclement winter months. This fearful challenge was what Clark and his men accepted; marching two hundred and thirty miles over bogs and flooded lowlands; without tents, and sometimes without food or fire; as they neared Vincennes breaking the thin ice at every step, often neck-deep in water; yet succeeding at last, they took the fort and sent Hamilton to Virginia a prisoner of war. Detroit remained in British hands; but the possession of Vincennes and the Mississippi forts probably saved the Kentucky and Tennessee settlements from destruction, and doubtless had some influence in disposing England to cede the Western country at the close of the war.

Yet in spite of this signal victory, in spite of the French alliance, the darkest days of the war were yet to come. In the year 1780 the Revolution seemed fallen from a struggle for worthy principles to the level of mean reprisals, a contest of brigands bent on plunder and revenge. That it had come to this pa.s.s was partly due to Clinton's policy of detached raids; but the policy of raids was a practical one precisely because in nearly every colony there was a large body of active Loyalists, a larger number still who were indifferent, wis.h.i.+ng only to be left alone, ready to submit to whichever side might win at last. Driven from their homes, plundered by British or patriot raiders, they in turn organized for revenge, sought plunder where they could find it, caring not whether they served under Loyalist or Revolutionist banners. In South Carolina, laid waste by the light troops of Tarleton and the partisans of Marion and Sumpter, in all the regions round New York, in the Jerseys, on Long Island and in parts of Connecticut, even the semblance of government and the customary routine of ordered society disappeared. The issues that had once divided men were forgotten while bands of a.s.sociated Loyalists and bands of Liberty Boys plundered the inhabitants indiscriminately, hailed each other as they pa.s.sed in the night, or agreed, with the honor that prevails among thieves, to an equitable division of the spoils.

And few victories came in this disastrous year to cheer the remnant of tried Americans. Clinton's invasion of North Carolina was, indeed, a failure; and at the close of 1780, after the frontier troops had overwhelmingly defeated General Ferguson at King's Mountain, the British were forced to evacuate that strongly revolutionary colony. But Was.h.i.+ngton could do little more than hold with the desperation of despair to West Point, where his army had lain helpless and almost pa.s.sive since the battle of Monmouth. Congress, barely able to hold together, could not maintain even that ”verbal energy” which had once distinguished it. In this year as never before men served their country with one hand and with the other filled their pockets by manipulating the currency which had fallen to be a worthless scrip. And it was in this year, when fidelity seemed a forgotten virtue, when men enlisted in the army and deserted to the enemy with equal indifference, that Benedict Arnold, entrusted at his own request with the command of West Point, forswore his trust and wrote treason across the fair record of a patriot's achievements. Well might Was.h.i.+ngton write, ”I have almost ceased to hope”; and Laurens, ”How many men there are who in secret say, could I have believed it would come to this!”

Yet at last a happy combination of circ.u.mstances enabled the American and French forces, for the first time operating in complete accord, to bring this disastrous war to a most successful conclusion. Well aware of the importance of the Southern campaign, Was.h.i.+ngton had procured for Greene, the ablest of his generals, command of the forces which were gathering in North Carolina to resist the advance of Cornwallis in 1781.

Defeated at the Cowpens and checked at Guilford, the British commander was forced to retire to Wilmington; but instead of returning to Charleston he moved into Virginia to join Arnold, convinced that the conquest of the Old Dominion must precede that of North Carolina. In May and June he carried ruin to all the prosperous towns of the province; but in July, when the American forces under Lafayette had been greatly strengthened, it was no longer safe for the British commander to divide his army. Acting under orders from Clinton, Cornwallis accordingly retired to the coast and fortified the neck of land at Yorktown.

Was.h.i.+ngton had scarcely been apprised of this circ.u.mstance before he received a letter from the Count de Gra.s.se, commander of the French naval forces in the West Indies, proposing joint operations in Virginia during the summer, and promising to bring his fleet to the Chesapeake sometime in August. The opportunity was a rare one. Abandoning the projected attack on New York, Was.h.i.+ngton and Rochambeau joined their forces and marched rapidly through New Jersey, entering Philadelphia the very day that De Gra.s.se appeared at the mouth of the bay. They had already joined Lafayette before Admiral Graves arrived from New York with a British fleet to rescue the British general. Had Graves been a Rodney or a Nelson he might have given a different issue to the American Revolution; but he was not the man to win against great odds, and after an indecisive engagement he sailed away, leaving Cornwallis to his fate.

Hemmed in by 16,000 American and French troops, the unhappy general, who never met Was.h.i.+ngton but to be defeated, surrendered his army of 7000, men on the 19th of October, 1781.

”It is all over!” cried Lord North when Germaine told him of the surrender of Cornwallis. The loss of 7000 men was not in itself an irremediable disaster; but the effort of the king and the ”King's Friends” to establish the personal rule of the monarch had alienated the nation, while their attempt to subjugate the colonies had embroiled England with all Europe. In armed conflict with France, Spain, and Holland, opposed by the ”armed neutrality” of Russia, Sweden, Denmark, the Empire, Portugal, the Two Sicilies, and the Ottoman Empire, never had the isolation of the little island kingdom been more splendid, or British prestige so diminished. The demand of the nation for peace could no longer be resisted, and the Whig party came into power over the king's will, and entered into negotiation with the enemies he had made.

The American amba.s.sadors were instructed by Congress and bound in honor not to make a treaty without the knowledge and consent of France. But in spite of Franklin's protest, Jay and Adams, who suspected, not without some show of reason but contrary to the fact, that Vergennes would oppose the extension of the United States beyond the Alleghanies, broke their instructions as readily as Jay broke his pipe, and without consulting their faithful ally arranged the terms of peace with England.

Independence was acknowledged as the indispensable preliminary to negotiation. John Adams declared that he ”had no notion of cheating anybody,” and it was agreed that British creditors should ”meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of all ... _bona fide_ debts heretofore contracted” in the colonies. The skill of Franklin and the resolute persistence of Jay and Adams, together with the desire of the English Government to make a peace without delay, enabled the Americans to gain, in every other disputed point, all they could hope for and more than they had any reason to expect. It was conceded that they should enjoy the customary right of fis.h.i.+ng in Northern waters. The best effort of England to secure a restoration of property and of the rights of citizens to the Loyalists was unavailing, and the compensation of that unhappy cla.s.s fell to the Government whose losing cause it had supported. But of all the provisions of this Peace of Paris, the most important, next to the acknowledgment of independence, was the one which gave to the new State that incomparably rich woodland and prairie country extending from the thirty-first, degree of north lat.i.tude to the Great Lakes, and as far west as the Mississippi River. With these as its main provisions, the definitive treaty was signed on September 3, 1783, and ratified by Congress January 14, 1784.

Before the treaty of peace was signed, the cessation of hostilities had been formally declared and announced to Was.h.i.+ngton's army on the 19th of April, eight years to a day after the battle of Lexington. British troops occupied New York until November 29, when the evacuation of the city was finally completed, and the United States of America entered the company of independent nations, the exhausted and half-ruined champion of those principles of liberty and equality which were soon to transform the European world. With the British troops there sailed away, never to return, a great company of Loyalist exiles; part of the thousands who renounced their heritage and their country in defense of political and social ideals that belonged to the past. America thus lost the service of many men of ability, of high integrity, and of genuine culture; clergymen and scholars, landowners and merchants of substantial estate, men learned in the law, high officials of proved experience in politics and administration. The great achievements of history have their price; and American independence was won only by the sacrifice of much that was best in colonial society. Something fine and amiable in manners, something charming in customs, much that was most excellent in the traditions of politics and public morality disappeared with the ruin of those who thought themselves, and who often were in fact, of ”the better sort.”

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