Volume II Part 14 (1/2)
”_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 8,954 'Provincials' among the British forces in America, and on March 7th, 1781, a letter from Lord George Germaine 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 the Congress.' As late as September 1st, 1781, there were 7,241. We hear of loyal 'a.s.sociations' in Ma.s.sachusetts, Maryland, and Pennsylvania; of 'a.s.sociated Loyalists' in New York; and everywhere of 'Tories,' whose arrest Was.h.i.+ngton is found suggesting to Governor Trumbull, of Connecticut, as early as November 12th, 1775. But New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania remained long full of Tories. By June 28th, 1776, the disaffected on Long Island had taken up arms, and after the evacuation of New York by Was.h.i.+ngton a brigade of Loyalists was raised on the island, and companies were formed in two neighbouring counties to join the King's troops. During Was.h.i.+ngton'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 a.s.sistance 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 expedition 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 aroused the three States above mentioned to self-defence, yet, as late as May, 1780, Was.h.i.+ngton still speaks of sending a small party of cavalry to escort La Fayette safely through the 'Tory settlements' of New York. Virginia, as late as the spring of 1776, was 'alarmed at the idea of independence.' Was.h.i.+ngton 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 royalist regiment was raised in a few days in 1776, and again in 1779. In Georgia and in South Carolina the bitterest partisan warfare was carried on between 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, the British generals did not receive that support from the Loyalists which they had expected. They seem to have looked upon the Loyalists as an inferior cla.s.s of aids to the regular soldiery; their advice seems to have been unsought, and the mode of war pursued was European, and not adapted to the peculiar circ.u.mstances of America.
The Loyalist volunteers were looked upon as the rivals to rather than fellow-soldiers of the regular army; and no provincial Loyalist was promoted to lead any expedition or command any position of importance.
This depreciation of the Loyalists by the English (utterly incompetent) generals exactly answered the purposes of American writers. _But the real cause of its protraction_, though it may be hard to an American to admit the fact, lay in the incapacity of the American politicians, and, it must be added, in the supineness and want of patriotism of the American people. If indeed importing into the views of 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 Was.h.i.+ngton in the chief command--is seen to have been so pitiable, from first to last, as to be in fact almost unintelligible.”
”DESCRIPTION OF THE AMERICAN ARMY, AND THE MANNER OF RAISING IT.
”We can only understand the case when we see 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 common danger. Even in the army divisions broke out. Was.h.i.+ngton, in a General Order of August, 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 n.o.ble cause in which we are engaged.'”
”WANT OF PUBLIC SPIRIT AND PATRIOTISM IN THE STATES.
”It was seldom that much help could be obtained in troops from any State, unless the 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 embarra.s.sments.' 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 State only; and this before the proper measures are 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.”
”DECLINE OF CONGRESS.
”After the first year, the best men were not returned to Congress, and did not return to it. Whole States remained frequently unrepresented. In the winter of 1777-78, Congress was reduced to twenty-one members. But even with a full representation it could do little. 'One State will comply with a requisition,' writes Was.h.i.+ngton in 1780, 'another neglects to do it, a third executes 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 Was.h.i.+ngton wrote in 1785, 'little more than a shadow without a substance, and the Congress a nugatory body;' or, as it was described by a late writer, 'powerless for government, and a rope of sand for union.'”
”DECLINE OF ENERGY AND SPIRIT AMONG THE COLONISTS AND ARMY.
”Like politicians, like people. There was, no doubt, a brilliant display of patriotic ardour at the first flying to arms of the colonists.
Lexington and Bunker's 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 'was friendly to the present revolution, and inspired that confidence of success in all ranks of the people which was necessary to unite them in so arduous a cause.' As early as November, 1775, Was.h.i.+ngton 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 advantage of one kind or another, I never saw before, and pray G.o.d's mercy that I may never be witness to it 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 desertion 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 burned down. On February 28th, 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.'
”'Can we carry on the war much longer?' Was.h.i.+ngton asks in 1778, after the treaty with France and the appearance of the French fleet off the coast. 'Certainly not, unless some measures can be devised and speedily executed to restore the credit of our currency and 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, seems to have become a mere business and an epidemical disease.'
On December 30th, 1778, 'speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seems to have got the better of every consideration, and almost of every order of men; * * party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the day (in Congress), whilst the momentous concerns of an empire, a great and acc.u.mulating debt, ruined finances, depreciated money, and want of credit, which in its consequences is the want of everything, are but secondary considerations.”
”DECLINE OF PATRIOTIC FEELING ON THE PART OF THE AMERICANS.
”After the first loan had been obtained from France and spent, and 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 Charleston still in British hands, Was.h.i.+ngton writes: 'That spirit of freedom which at the commencement of the contest would have gladly sacrificed everything to the attainment of its object, has long since subsided, and every selfish pa.s.sion has taken its place.' But, indeed, the mere fact that from the date of the battle of Monmouth (July 28th, 1778), Was.h.i.+ngton was never supplied with sufficient means, even with the a.s.sistance of the French fleets and troops, to strike one blow at the English in New York--though these were but very sparingly reinforced 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.”
”INCAPACITY OF ENGLISH GENERALS IN AMERICA.
”Why, then, must we ask on the other side, did the English fail at last?
”The English were p.r.o.ne to attribute their ill success to the incompetency of their generals. Lord North, with his quaint humour, 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 losses, our disgraces and misfortunes.' 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's movement, justly censured by Sir Henry Clinton, in transferring the bulk of his army from the far south to Virginia, within marching distance of Was.h.i.+ngton, 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.”
”INEFFECTIVE MILITARY ARRANGEMENTS IN AMERICA.
”Political incapacity was, of course, charged upon Ministers as another cause of disaster; and no doubt their miscalculation of the severity of the struggle was almost childish. But no mistakes in the management of the war by British statesmen can account for their ultimate failure.
However great British mismanagement may have been, it was far surpa.s.sed by the Americans. There was nothing on the British side equal to that caricature of a recruiting system in which different bounties were offered by Congress, by the States, by the separate towns, so as to make it the interest of the intended soldier to delay enlistment as long as possible, in order to sell himself to the highest bidder; to that caricature of a war establishment, the main bulk of which broke up every twelvemonth in front of the enemy, which was only paid, if at all, in worthless paper, and left continually without supplies. On the whole, no better idea can be had of the nature of the struggle on the American side, after the first heat of it had cooled down, than from the words of Count de Rochambeau, writing to Count de Vergennes, July 10th, 1780: 'They have neither money nor credit; their means of resistance are only momentary, and called forth when they are attacked in their own homes.