Part 35 (1/2)
Lawrence Valley. The trade was open to any duly licensed subject, superintendents were established at the posts, local courts were erected in the interior, and settlement limited to the immediate neighborhood of the posts in order not to drive away the fur bearing animals.
The French traders ruined.--The conquest had destroyed the French fur trading organization. Under the mercantile system then in vogue, supplies and markets had now to be sought in England. The French merchants were ruined, and the entire trade of the Great Lake region was thrown into the hands of the British traders. The French _coureurs de bois_, however, remained in the country, and, in the employ of the British, continued to be the backbone of the fur gathering business in the interior.
The rush to the interior.--As early as 1761 British traders of Montreal began to enter the field left vacant by the French. Pontiac's War caused a suspension of their activities, and during it British traders were plundered and murdered. By 1765, however, there was a new rush to the interior, though it was 1771 before they could safely trade in the most remote posts on the Saskatchewan. In the meantime the Indians had learned to take their furs to the posts on Hudson Bay or down the Mississippi.
Extent of operations.--The American Revolution destroyed the western fur trade of the seaboard colonies and threw the commerce of the entire Northwest into the hands of the Quebec and Montreal traders. By the close of the war they were conducting operations on both sides of the Great Lakes, in the Illinois country, beyond the upper Mississippi, on the Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, Churchill, and Athabasca Rivers, to the neighborhood of Great Slave Lake. They traded on the a.s.siniboine, and may have reached the Missouri by that route.
Management of the trade.--During and after the Revolution the value of the furs annually sent from Montreal and Quebec to London was probably $1,000,000. The trade centered mainly in Montreal. In London great mercantile establishments throve by the commerce. At Montreal other great houses were founded. Detroit and Michillimackinac were interior supply posts, where branch houses or lesser merchants conducted business. Wintering partners and clerks went with the fleets of batteaux into the far interior, but most of the common hands or _engages_ were French and half-breed _coureurs de bois_, just as in the case of the Spanish fur trade in Louisiana. The entire business was conducted on the credit system.
The fur magnates.--Many of the fur magnates were Scotchmen. Among the Montreal merchants of importance in this period were Alexander Henry, Benjamin and Joseph Frobisher, James Finlay, and Peter Pond. Henry was one of the earliest in the West. Finlay is said to have been among the first on the Saskatchewan River. The Frobishers were leading traders on the Saskatchewan and Churchill. Pond was probably the pioneer on the Athabasca, having wintered there in 1778-1789.
The Northwest Company formed.--The free access of all licensed traders to the interior resulted in reckless compet.i.tion in regions remote from the military posts. Acts of violence were committed and Indians were involved in the contest. Besides the grave disadvantages of compet.i.tion, there were obvious advantages of combination. In 1779, therefore, nine enterprises were consolidated for one year. The success caused the arrangement to be repeated, and finally in 1783-1784 the Northwest Company was organized and became permanent. This company soon monopolized the larger part of the Montreal trade, and became the great rival of the Hudson's Bay Company.
Advance of Hudson's Bay Company.--After the Peace of Utrecht the Hudson's Bay Company had returned to an era of prosperity. Urged on by French compet.i.tion, by 1700 expeditions inland had been made by Kelsey (1691) and Sanford, and Henley House had been built a hundred and fifty miles inland from Fort Albany; and by 1720 other minor inland expeditions had been made by Macklish and Stewart, but in the main the Company had held to the sh.o.r.es of the Bay. Instead of sending employees inland, as did the French, reliance was placed on furs brought by the Indians to the posts, all of which were close to the Bay. The monopoly enjoyed was a cause of jealousy among British merchants, and critics arose, notably Arthur Dobbs, who charged that the Company had failed in its obligation to seek the northwest pa.s.sage and explore the interior.
Coerced by criticism, between 1719 and 1737 the Company made some explorations, but little was accomplished.
Hearne's explorations.--After 1763 criticism of the Company was reinforced by the rise of the Montreal trade, and new explorations northwestward were undertaken. After two unsuccessful attempts in 1769 and 1770 to reach the Coppermine River overland, in December, 1770, Samuel Hearne set out from Fort Prince of Wales to seek ”a North-West Pa.s.sage, copper-mines, or any other thing that may be serviceable to the British nation in general, or the Hudson's Bay Company in particular.”
Going west, then north, on July 18, 1771, Hearne reached the mouth of the Coppermine River near lat.i.tude 68, where he took formal possession of the Arctic Ocean for the Company. Returning by way of Lake Athabasca, which he discovered and crossed, he reached his fort on June 30, 1772.
Rival posts in the interior.--Hearne's explorations were indicative of a new policy. Coerced by the aggressive Montreal traders, the Company now pushed into the interior in a struggle for the mastery. Side by side the two, companies placed rival forts on all the important streams from the Hudson Bay to the Rockies and from the Red River of the North to Great Slave Lake.
READINGS
Alden, G.H., _New Governments west of the Alleghanies before 1780_; Alvord, C.W., ”Virginia and the West: An Interpretation,” in _The Mississippi Valley Historical Review_, III, 19-38; _The Critical Period, 1763-1765_; _The Mississippi Valley in British Politics_; Alvord, C.W., and Carter, C.E., editors, _The New Regime, 1765-1767_; Ba.s.sett, J.S., ”The Regulators of North Carolina,” in American Hist. a.s.soc., _Annual Report, 1894_, pp. 141-212; Bourinot, J.G., _Canada under British Rule, 1760-1905_ (G.W. Wrong revision), chs. 2-3; Bryce, George, _The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company_, chs. 8-13; Carter, C.E., _Great Britain and the Illinois Country, 1763-1774_; ”The Beginnings of British West Florida,” in _The Mississippi Valley Historical Review_, IV, 314-341; Coffin, Victor, _The Quebec Act_; Hamilton, P.J., Colonial Mobile, chs. 23-31; The Colonisation of the South, chs. 20-21; Henderson, A., ”Richard Henderson and the Occupation of Kentucky, 1775,” in _The Mississippi Valley Historical Review_, I, 341-363; Hinsdale, B.A., _The Old Northwest_, ch. 8; Howard, G.E., _Preliminaries of the Revolution, 1763-1775_, ch. 13; Roosevelt, Theodore, _The Winning of the West_, I-II; Siebert, W.H., ”The Loyalists in West Florida and the Natchez District,” in _The Mississippi Vauey Historical Review_, II, 465-483; Stevens, W.E., ”The Organization of the British Fur Trade, 1760-1800,” in _The Mississippi Valley Historical Review_, III, 172-202; Thwaites, R.G., _Daniel Boone_; Thwaites, R.G., and Kellogg, L.P., editors, _Doc.u.mentary History of Dunmore's War_, 1774, Introduction; Turner, F.J., ”Western State-Making in the Revolutionary Era,” in _American Historical Review_, I, 70-87, 251-269; Wallace, S., _The United Empire Loyalists_; Winsor, Justin, _The Westward Movement_, 38-100; Wood, W., _The Father of British Canada_; Davidson, G.C., _The North West Company_.
THE REVOLT OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES
CHAPTER XXIII
THE CONTROVERSY OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES WITH THE HOME GOVERNMENT (1763-1775)
THE BACKGROUND OF THE CONTEST
Nature of the causes.--While British statesmen were working out a system of government for the newly acquired domains, in the empire forces of disintegration were at work which brought on the American Revolution.
The causes of that convulsion cannot be traced to a group of events or laws. Through a long period social, political, and economic forces were at work which gradually brought thirteen of the mainland colonies into open rebellion. Because this opposition is more evident after the French and Indian War, and because the economic is the most obvious phase of the struggle, historians have sometimes concluded that the laws pa.s.sed by parliament between 1763 and 1776 were the cause of the Revolution.
The policy pursued by the British government no doubt hastened it, but alone does not account for it.
A mixed population.--For more than a century the colonies had been receiving new elements which were producing a society in many respects different from that of England. America had been the recipient of many of the radicals, the down-trodden, and the discontented from the mother country. The acquisition of New Netherlands had brought under British control a considerable number of Dutch, Swedes, and Finns. The Huguenot migration which followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had added another element. The German and Scotch-Irish influxes had brought in thousands. Welsh, Scotch, Irish, and Jews were also to be found in the colonies. America, then as now, was a melting pot of the nations.
Lack of American nationality.--Influenced largely by climatic and physiographic conditions, distinct industrial systems had developed. In the northern colonies the small farm prevailed, in the South the plantation system. The North produced the seamen, fishermen, and merchants, while few of the southerners were seafarers. The frontier with its foreign elements, its scattered settlements, and freedom from restraint had produced a society which differed from the tide-water region. The fur-trader, the cattleman, the lumberman, and the small farmer were distinctly different in speech, dress, habits, and point of view from the Boston merchant, the Philadelphia Quaker, or the Virginia planter. Separatist tendencies were stronger than those of coalescence.
A Virginian was a Virginian and not an American. There was little in common between the New Englander and the southern planter, or between the people of the Hudson Valley and the Quakers.
Cla.s.s distinctions.--In individual colonies society was continually growing in complexity. Though the great ma.s.s of the population continued to be rural, town life was becoming an important factor. Members of an aristocracy, of which the governor was usually the central social figure, were inclined to rear their heads above their fellows. The merchants and lawyers, ever increasing in numbers, found themselves outside the social pale of the official aristocracy, a source of silent mortification which was a real force in producing radicals.
Evolution of English society.--English as well as American society had also undergone a rapid evolution. Puritan England had pa.s.sed away; the Stuarts, the Hanoverians, and foreign conquests had transformed the viewpoint of the Englishman. Little was there in common between John Milton and Horace Walpole, or between a Cromwell and a Newcastle. The sudden greatness that had come through the Seven Years' War well-nigh turned the heads of Englishmen. To acquire wealth, to wield power, and to live gaily seemed to be the ideals of the upper cla.s.s Englishman of the reign of George III. The colonial who still considered the mother country as the traditional England of Magna Carta, the Puritan Revolution, and the Bill of Rights, had as little understanding of a Townshend as had a Townshend a comprehension of the colonial.
The a.s.semblies control the purse.--The governmental inst.i.tutions of the colonies had gradually evolved toward a common type, whose const.i.tuent parts were the governor, council, and a.s.sembly, the governor and council, except in Connecticut and Rhode Island, representing imperial or proprietary authority, and the a.s.sembly the will of the colonial inhabitants. The power of the a.s.semblies to control the purse had been steadily growing, until the colonies considered the principle established both by precedent and by inherent rights guaranteed by the English const.i.tution. By controlling the budgets and the salaries of the governors, the a.s.semblies held the whip hand over the executives.