THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
By
Sydney George
Fisher
Preface
THE purpose of this history of the Revolution is to
use the original authorities rather more frankly than has
been the practice with our historians. They appear
to
have thought it advisable to omit from their narratives
a great deal which, to me, seems essential to a true
picture.
I cannot feel satisfied with any description of the Revolution
which treats the desire for independence
as a sudden
thought, and not a long growth and development,
or which
assumes that every detail of the conduct of the British government
was absurdly stupid, even from its own point of
view, and that the loyalists were few in numbers and their
arguments not worth considering. I cannot see any advantage
in not describing
in their full meaning and force
the smuggling, the buying
of laws from the governors,
and other irregular conduct in the colonies which led England
to try to remodel them as soon as the fear of the
French in Canada was removed. Nor can I accept a
description which fails to reveal the salient details of the
great controversy over the rather peculiar methods adopted
by General Howe to suppress the rebellion. This controversy
was a part of the Revolution. It involved the
interesting question of Howe's instructions from the ministry
and the methods which the ministry intended to
use with the revolted colonists.
Whatever we may now think of Howe's conduct, and
in whatever way we may try
to explain it, the fact remains
that it was once a subject which attracted universal attention and aroused most violent attacks upon him in
England and among the loyalists in America. Some of
these very plain-spoken arraignments, with the evidence
in support of them,
can still be read in the writings of
Galloway, Van Schaack, and others, or in Howe's own
defense, which some thought was the strongest argument
against him. Why should these documents and the evidence
taken before the Parliamentary committee of inquiry
he concealed from the ordinary reader, with the result that
if by chance he turns to the original authorities he is surprised
to find that the Revolution there described is entirely
different from the one in which he had been taught
to believe ?
Some of us might possibly not accept
these attacks
upon Howe as just or well founded
; they might think
that his reply, which we can still read in his published
"Narrative," was a complete defense and justification.
There is no reason why we should not adopt any opinion
or
explanation which seems best. But I protest against
the
historians who refuse to give us a chance to form an opinion
of our own on either the one side or the other. I protest
against the concealing of this subject, of suppressing
the
whole of the evidence against Howe as well as the evidence
in his favor
;
and I protest because his conduct necessarily
produced momentous results in the Revolution.
To my mind the whole question of the conduct of
General Howe is as important a part of history as the
assistance rendered us by France
;
for if what the people
of his own time said of Howe be true, his conduct directly
contributed to bring about our alliance with that country,
and ultimately our independence.
There has, it seems, been a strong temptation
to withhold
from the modern public a knowledge
of the controversy
over Howe's conduct, because it is impossible
to disclose that controversy
in all its bearings without at the
same time showing that the British government, up
to the
summer of 1778, used extremely
lenient and conciliatory
methods in dealing with the revolted colonists. The historians
appear to have felt that to admit that such gentle
methods were used would be inadvisable, would tend to
weaken our side of the argument, and show that we were
bent on independence
for mere independence'
sake.
The historians seem to have assumed that we do not
want to know about that controversy,
or that it will be better
for us not to know about it. They have assumed that
it will be better for Americans to think that independence
was a sudden and deplorable necessity and not a desire of
long and ardent growth and cautiously planned
intention.
They have assumed that we want to think of England as
having lost the colonies by failure to be conciliatory, and
that the Revolution was a one-sided, smooth affair, without
any of the difficulties or terrors of a rebellion or a
great upheaval of settled opinion.
The taint of these assumptions
runs through
all our histories.
They are, I think, mistaken assumptions and an
affront to our people. They prefer
to know the truth, and
the whole truth
;
and there is nothing
in the truth of which
they need be afraid.
Having decided to withhold from the public a knowledge
of the contemporary opinion of Howe, the historians naturally
conceal or obscure his relations to the Whig party,
the position of that party
in England,
its connection with
the rebel colonists, the peculiar
difficulties under which
the Tory ministry labored, and their instructions to Howe
on the conduct of the war. Unless all these conditions
are clearly set forth, most of the events and battles of the Revolution are inexplicable.
Before I discovered the omissions of our standard histories I always felt as though
I were reading about something
that had never happened, and that was contrary
to
the ordinary experience of human nature. I could not
understand how a movement which was supposed
to have
been such a deep uprooting of settled thought and custom
a movement which is supposed
to have been one of the
great epochs of history could have happened
like an
occurrence in a fairy-tale. I could not understand the
military operations ;
and it seemed strange
to me that they
were not investigated, explained, and criticized like those
of Napoleon's campaigns
or of our own Civil War.
I was never satisfied until I had spent a great
deal of
time in research, burrowing
into the dust of the hundreds
of old brown pamphlets, newspapers, letters, personal memoirs,
documents, publications of historical societies, and
the interminable debates of Parliament which, now that the
eye-witnesses are dead, constitute all the evidence that is
left us of the story of the Revolution. Those musty documents
painted a very vivid picture upon my mind, and I
wish I had the power
of painting
the picture as the original
sources reveal it.
I understand, of course, that the methods used by our
historians have been intended to be productive of good
results,
to build up nationality, and to check sectionalism and
rebellion. Students and the literary
class do not altogether
like successful rebellions
;
and the word revolution
is merely another name for a successful rebellion. Rebellions
are a trifle awkward when you have settled down,
although the Declaration of Independence
contains a clause
to relieve this embarrassment by declaring that
"
governments
long established should not be changed
for light or
transient causes." The people who write histories are
usually of the class who take the side of the government in
a revolution
;
and as Americans they are anxious to believe that our Revolution was different from others, more decorous,
and altogether
free from the atrocities, mistakes,
and absurdities which characterize even the patriot party
in a revolution. They do not like to describe in their
full coloring the strong Americanism and the doctrines
of the rights of man which inspired the party
that put
through our successful rebellion. They have accordingly
tried to describe a revolution in which all scholarly, refined,
and conservative persons might
have unhesitatingly taken
part; but such revolutions have never been known to
happen.
The Revolution was a much more ugly and unpleasant
affair than most of us imagine. I know of many people
who talk a great deal about their ancestors, but who I am.
quite sure would not now take the side their ancestors
chose. Nor was it a great, spontaneous, unanimous uprising,
all righteousness, perfection, and infallibility, a
marvel of success at every step, and incapable of failure,
as many of us very naturally
believe from what we have
read.
The device of softening the unpleasant
or rebellious
features of the Eevolution does not, I think, accomplish
the improving and edifying
results among us, which the
historians from their exalted station are so gracious
as to
wish to bestow. A candid and free disclosure of all that
the records contain would be more appreciated by our
people and of more advantage
to them. They are as fully
competent to judge
of actions and events as any
one of
their number who takes upon
himself the tasks of the
historian,
It will be observed that I invariably speak of those
colonists who were opposed
to the rebellion as loyalists,
and not as Tories. They never fully accepted the name
Tory, either in its contemptuous
sense or as meaning
a member of the Tory party
in England. They were not
entirely in accord with that party. They regarded themselves
as Americans who were loyal to what they called
the empire, and this distinction was,
in their minds, of
vast importance. I have labored to describe them strictly
from their own point of view, with the arguments, facts,
principles, and feelings which they used in their pamphlets
and documents
;
and I give them the name which they
preferred. They were far more numerous than is generally
supposed; and on the difficult question of their
numbers I shall give my readers the advantage
of all that
I can find in the records.
In the illustrations of this volume I have for the
most part avoided reproductions of portraits, because they
are apt to be misleading. I have given, however, the portraits
of two loyalists, whose fine clothes do not perhaps
misrepresent them. We can have faith in very few of the
Revolutionary portraits as likenesses
;
and the handsome
clothes or magnificent uniforms in which it was easy
enough to paint patriot officers, and the modern illustrator's
efforts to produce elegance
or quaintness, are altogether
inconsistent
with the agitation, ragged poverty, suffering, and
apparent hopelessness which marked one of the most remarkable
political outbursts of history.
The True History
of the
American Revolution
1.
EARLY CONDITIONS AND CAUSES
THE great underlying
conditions which brought about
the Revolution were the presence of the French in Canada,
and the extremely liberal governments, semi-independence,
and disregard of laws and regulations which England,
in the early days, was compelled
to allow the colonies in
America. The increasing power of France in the north
compelled England to be liberal and even lax in governing
her colonies. As tho, attitude of France became more
and more threatening down to the year 1763, England
could take no severe or repressive measures with the
Americans, who were growing up very much as they
pleased.
In our time colonies usually
are regarded
as places
for
the overflow of the mother country's
excess of population.
But down to the time of our Revolution England had no
overflow of population. When England began
to have
colonies in America, about the year 1610, her population
was only five million. At the time of our Revolution it
was barely eight million, and large
districts of country,
especially in the northern part of England, were still almost as primitive and uncultivated as the American
wilderness.
Colonies were in early times regarded
as places
for
obtaining gold; silver, and furs
;
and it was hoped that if
people could be forced to go
out to them they might be
able to extend trade, furnish England raw material, and
create a market for manufactured goods. The people who
settled in America were either mere adventurous characters,
like the first "Virginia colonists, or Puritans, Quakers,
and Roman Catholics driven out of England by the severity of royalists and churchmen, or they were royalists,
like those of the second migration
to Virginia, driven
out of England when the Puritans under Cromwell got
into power.
When persecution
ceased there was no migration of any
importance to the colonies. Migration
to New England
ceased after 1640; and in all the colonies the migration
was comparatively
small. The people
increased in the
natural way by births, and increased with remarkable
rapidity. The two million, white colonists of 1776 were
largely a native stock, whose ancestors had been on the
soil for many generations ;
and they had grown
out of an
original stock of immigrants which had not numbered
one hundred thousand.* This native and natural growth
is worth remembering when we are seeking
to explain
the
desire for independence.
* F. B. Dexter, u Estimates of Population in the American. Colonies/' p. 29, published by the American Antiquarian Society
Alluring promises of gold and easy systems of government
were the great persuasions to English colonization.
The British government, only
too glad
to be rid of rebellious
Puritans, Quakers, and Roman Catholics, willingly
gave them liberal charters. This explains
that freedom in
many of the old charters which has surprised so many students of our colonial history. Some of these liberal
instruments were granted by
the Stuart kings, with the
approval of their officials and courtiers,
all of whom
showed by almost every other act of their lives that they
were the determined enemies of free parliaments and free
representation of the people.
Connecticut, for example,
obtained in 1662 from Charles
II. a charter which made the colony
almost independent
and to-day there is no colony of the British empire
that
has so much freedom as Connecticut and Rhode Island
always had, or as Massachusetts had down to 1685. Connecticut
and Rhode Island elected their own legislatures
and governors, and did not even have to send their laws to
England for approval.* No modern British colony elects
its own governor and,
if it has a legislature elected by
its people, the acts of that legislature can be vetoed by
the
home government. A community electing
its own governor
and enacting whatever laws it pleases
is not a colony
in the modern English meaning
of the word. Connecticut
and Rhode Island could not make treaties with foreign
nations, but in other respects they were,
as we would now
say, semi-independent commonwealths under the protectorate
or suzerainty of England.+
* The charters can be read in the collections of Poore or of Hazzard. See Palfrey, " New England, " vol. ii. pp. 540, 566.
+ Neither Connecticut nor Rhode Island changed its form of government during the Revolution. The Connecticut charter was found to be liberal enough to serve as the constitution of an American State ; and Connecticut lived under it until 1818. Rhode Island lived under her charter as a constitution until 1842.
The obtaining of this extremely liberal Connecticut
charter has sometimes been explained by suggesting
that
Winthrop, who went to England
to procure it, had money
to distribute among courtiers. A pretty story
is also told
of his having a ring which had been given
to his father by Charles I.
;
and this ring, when shown to Charles II.,
is supposed to have worked the miracle of the liberal
charter.
But the liberality
is more easily accounted for by the
desire of the British government
to encourage planting,
as
it was called, and get
rid of rebellious and troublesome
people. England had not then made up her mind exactly
what she meant by a colony, except
that she was anxious
to have people go
out and settle on the wild land in
America which was hers by right of discovery. The year
after the Connecticut charter was granted Rhode Island
obtained a liberal charter, almost word for word the same
as the charter of Connecticut
;
and the agent
in that case
was the Rev. John Clark, a Baptist minister of the gospel,
who had no money and no ancestral ring.
Some thirty years
before that time Massachusetts had
obtained a liberal charter. It was possibly intended that
the governing body under this charter should remain in
England; but the Puritans who had obtained it moved
the whole governing body out to Massachusetts,
elected
their own legislature and governor, and did not submit
their laws to England for approval. They assumed several
of the attributes of sovereignty. They coined their
own money, and issued the famous pine-tree shilling.
They established by
law a form of religion, sometimes
called Congregationalism, which was-; not recognized by
the laws of England. They ceased to issue writs in the
king's name. They dropped
the English
oath of allegiance
and adopted
a new oath in which public
officers and
the people swore allegiance, not to England,
but to Massachusetts.
They debated what allegiance they owed to England,
and concluded that they were independent
in government,
that no appeals could be taken to England,
but that they were under an English protectorate. When
some captains of vessels reminded them that no English
flag was displayed in the colony, they
debated whether the
British flag should be allowed to fly on the fort at Castle
Island, and concluded that it might
be put there, as that
particular fort was the king's property. But they had
given so little attention to allegiance and the symbol of it
that at the close of this debate no English flags could be
found in Boston, and they had to borrow one from the
captain of a ship.*
* Winthrop's Journal, published as the "History of New England, vol. i. pp. 187, 188; vol. ii. pp. 279, 282 j Palfrey, "New England," vol. i, pp. 284, 375, 499, et passim.
Under the charter which allowed so much freedom
Massachusetts existed from 1629 to 1685, when her disregard
of British authority and the killing, whipping, and
imprisoning of Quakers and Baptists had reached such a
pass that the charter was annulled, and Massachusetts
became a colony, with a governor appointed by the king,
and controlled in a way which, after her previous freedom,
was very galling.
These instances show why New England was so hot for
independence from 1764 to 1776. Virginia was also ardent,
and there, too, we find that an extremely
liberal government
had been allowed to grow up. Virginia had,
alone and single-handed,
in 1676, rebelled against the
whole authority of the British government,
because she
thought her privileges were being impaired. Such an outbreak
as this and a similar rebellion in Massachusetts in
1690 warned England
to be as gentle
as possible with the
colonies, while France was becoming more and more of a
power on the north and west.
The other colonies never had so much freedom. None
of them elected their own governors ; they had not had such a taste of independence
as New England and Virginia,
which from the English point of view were regarded
as the leaders in rebellion. But they had all had a certain
measure of their own way of doing things, and had struggled
to have more of their own way, and had found that
England was compelled
at times to yield
to them. It is
not necessary to describe the details of this struggle,
its
successes or failures. It is of more importance
to describe
a method of government
which grew up
in all the colonies
that did not elect their own governors, a method which
they regarded as the bulwark of their liberties, which in
England was regarded
as scandalous, and which had an
important influence on the Revolution.
It arose out of the system by which the people of the
colony elected the legislature, and the crown, or a proprietor
under the crown, as in Pennsylvania and Maryland,
appointed the governor. Under this system the legislature
voted the governor
his salary out of taxes which all
these colonial legislatures had the power
of levying. The
governor had the power of absolute veto on all acts of the
legislature, and, as representing the crown, he wanted
certain laws passed
to carry out the ideas or reforms of the
home government.
The members of the legislature cared little or nothing
for these reforms. As representing
the people, they had
their popular measures which they wished carried out.
These measures the governor usually wanted to veto,
either because he deemed them hostile to the interests of
the crown, or because he wished to punish
the legislature
for failing to pass crown measures on which his reputation
at home depended.
The governor and the legislature being
thus dependent
on each other, the question of salary throw the balance of
power into the hands of the legislature. They quickly learned the trick of withholding
the governor's salary
until he had assented to their measures. The system
became practically one of bargain and sale, as Franklin
called it. The people, through
their legislators, bought
from the governor,
for cash, such laws as they needed.
The petty squabbles with the governor, based on the
detailed working of the system, were interminable in
every colony where it prevailed. They fill the minute books
and records, making colonial history more tiresome
than it might otherwise be, except
in one instance, where
Franklin, who often came in contact with the system,
described it in his inimitable manner:
"
Hence arose the custom of presents twice a year
to the governors,
at the close of each session in which laws were passed, given at the
time of passing ; they usually amounted to a thousand pounds per
annual. But when the governors and assemblies disagreed,
so that
laws were not passed, the presents were withheld. When a disposition
to agree ensued, there sometimes still remained some diffidence.
The governors would not pass the laws that were wanted without
"being sure of the money, even all that they
called their arrears
;
nor
the assemblies give the money without being sure of the laws. Thence
the necessity of some private conference, in which mutual assurances
of good faith might he received and given, that the transaction should
go hand in hand. "What name the impartial
reader will give
to this
kind of commerce I cannot say.
. . . Time established the custom
and made it seem honest
;
so that our governors, even those of the
most undoubted honor, have practiced
it. ...
" 'When they came to resolve, on the report of the grand committee,
to give the money, they guarded their resolves very cautiously, to
wit :
' Resolved that on the passage of such bills as now lie before the
governor (the naturalization bill and such other bills as may be presented
to him during the sitting) there be paid him the sum of five
hundred pounds.' . . .
" Do not, my.courteous reader, take pet
at our proprietary constitution
for these our bargain and sale proceedings
in legislation. It is a
happy country where justice and what was your own before can be
had for ready money. It is another addition to the value of money,
and, of course, another spur
to industry. Every land is not so blessed, Works, Bigelow edition,
vol. iii. pp. 311-316.
What was thought and said of this system depended
entirely on one's point of view. Franklin ridiculed it
when it worked against him. Afterwards,
in the Revolution,
when he saw that colonial self-government depended
upon it, he became,
like Dickinson and other patriot
leaders, a stanch upholder
of it* In England it was
regarded as corruption. There was plenty of corruption
in England at that time
;
but outside corruption always
seems the more heinous
;
and this particular corruption
blocked and thwarted nearly
all the plaus of the mother
country to regulate her colonies. It was believed to have
seriously interfered with the raising of supplies and aids
for the war against the French and Indians. If anything
of the sort existed in our time,
if a territory of the United
States, or an island like Porto Rico, were governed
in that
way, we would denounce it as most atrocious and absurd
;
and in all probability put
a stop
to it very quickly.
It
was very natural that England, acting from her point of
view, should start to abolish it as soon ay France was
driven from the continent, and this attempt was one of the
fundamental causes of the Revolution.
* Franklin, "Works, Bigolow edition, vol. iv. pp. 407, 4M j vol. v. p. 465. Dickinson describes tho advantages of the system iu his "Letters from a Farmer, 7 ' letters ix., x., etc.
The colonists who had become Americanized, tinged
with the soil, differentiated from English influence, or,
as Englishmen said, rebelliously inclined, were all enthusiastic
supporters of the bargain and sale system. They
loved it and were ready
to die for it, and resisted any
change or reform in it. They would not hear of fixing
regular salaries upon the governors, because they knew
that the moment the governors ceased to be dependent on
the legislatures for their salaries, the legislatures would be
powerless to accomplish
the popular will, and the colonies, except Connecticut and Rhode Island, would fall completely
under control of Parliament and the king. Each
legislature was called and adjourned by the governor;
and he would hardly
take the trouble to call it
? except
to
pass crown measures,
unless he was dependent on it for his
salary.
In every colony where this system prevailed there was a
body of popular laws on the statute-book which, in the
course of fifty or a hundred years, had been secured, one by
one, by this bargaining with the governor. The people, who
were patriotically inclined, loved these laws; and had
enjoyed the contests for them. They had heard and read
the details of these contests at the taverns and coffeehouses;
the self-confident, haughty,
or scolding messages
of the governor, and the astute or sarcastic replies of the
legislature ;
and they fought
the wordy battle over again
with keen interest. So long
as they
controlled the governor's
salary they felt themselves freemen
;
once lose that
control, and they were,
as they expressed it, political
slaves.
The system extended to the judges, who, though appointed
by the crown or governor, were dependent
for their
salaries on the annual vote or whim of the legislature. In
New York the judiciary was believed to be notoriously
dependent. A chief justice,
it was said, gave a decision
against a member of the legislature, who promptly,
in
retaliation, had the judge's salary reduced fifty pounds.
The local magistrates
in New York were controlled by the
assemblymen. Some of these magistrates could not write,
and had to affix their marks to warrants.
*
* "Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York," vol. vii. pp. 500, 705, 760, 774, 796, 797, 906, 979
The colonists insisted that they must retain control of
the judges' salaries, because,
if the crown both appointed
the judges and paid them their salaries, the decisions would all be crown decisions. They were willing
to compromise,
however, and fix permanent
salaries on the judges
if the
home government would agree
that the judges
should be
appointed for life and good
behavior instead of holding
office at the pleasure of the crown. This apparently
reasonable
suggestion
the English government would not
adopt* They seem to have feared that the judges appointed
by that tenure would gradually
drift to the side of
the colonists, and make regulation and administration more
difficult than ever. It was already extremely difficult to
get a jury to decide in favor of the crown. The control
of the colonies seemed to be slipping away, and the ministry
must retain as much of it as was possible.
* Franklin, "Works, Bigelow edition, vol, v, pp. 408, 404
Those acts of Parliament by which the money raised
from taxes on the colonies was not to be cast generally into
the English exchequer, but to be used for "defraying
the expenses of government and the administration of
justice in the colonies," and therefore would be all spent
in the colonies, read innocently enough. What could be
more fair and honorable towards you, Englishmen would
say, than an act which takes no money out of your
country ? It is the same money which you now raise by
taxing yourselves ;
it will be spent, in the same way as
you apply it, to pay governors and judges, and on a fixed
and regular system.
But the
"
fixed and regular system" destroyed what the
Americans considered their fundamental, constitutional
principle, by which executive salaries must be within
popular control. That principle was vitally necessary
to all the colonies, except
to Connecticut and Rhode
Island. It would become vital to Connecticut and Rhode
Island if they should lose the right to elect their own
governors, as was not improbable when England began her remodeling after the expulsion of France from
Canada.
One effect of the system was to divide the upper classes
of the colonists, and indeed all the people, into two
parties, those who were interested in the governor and
the executive officers, and those who were interested in
the legislature. Around every governor appointed from
England there grew up a little aristocracy of powerful
families and individuals, with their patronage, influence,
and branches extending down through
all classes. The
people of this party who had means and education considered
themselves the social superiors, because they were
most closely connected with England
and the king, who
was the source of all rank and nobility. They considered
themselves the only American society that deserved
recognition. Nearly
all of them became loyalists in the
Revolution.
Among the legislative party,
as it may be called, there
were individuals and families of as much means and as
good education as any in the governor's
or executive party.
But they formed a set by themselves, and were sometimes
hardly on speaking
terms with the executive party. In
some of the colonies the two parties were on friendly terms
;
but in Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts the
contests and hatred between them were,
at times, extremely
bitter and violent.
Prominent men whose names have become household
words among us Hancock, Adams, and Warren, of
Massachusetts, Schuyler, Hamilton, and Livingston, of
New York, Eeed, Morris, Dickinson, and Mifflin, of Pennsylvania,
Paca and Chase, of Maryland, and Lee, Washington,
Bland, and Harrison, of Virginia were all of the
Whig legislative set They were more or less distinctly
separated from the high society that basked in the regal sunlight which, even when filtered through
a colonial governor,
was supposed
to redeem America from vulgarity.
Had the Revolution terminated differently, another class
of names might be household words in America, Hunt,
Galloway, Allen, and Hamilton, of Pennsylvania, DeLancey,
Van Schaack, and Jones, of New York, Leonard,
Sewall, Curwen, and Oliver, of Massachusetts, names
which once filled a large place in the public vision, but
which now are meaningless
to nearly every one.
England's easy method of dealing with her colonies had
certainly produced a confused and irregular
state of affairs,
which was worse than has yet been described. It is important
for us to remember many of the details of this
condition, because they show the beginning
of English
dissatisfaction with the colonies and of the desire to have
a sweeping remodeling
as soon as Franco was out of the
way.
The colonies, in exercise of the extreme liberty that had
been allowed them, had taken on themselves to create their
own paper currency. In some of them, especially in Now
England, the paper currency was very seriously depreciated.
In Pennsylvania the currency never depreciated ;
*
but this
did not help matters, because conservative people
in England
would regard
it as merely
a delusive encouragement
of an evil system.
* " Pennsylvania : Colony and Commonwealth, pp. 72, 80, 87; Phillips, u Historical Sketches of Paper Currency in the American Colonies."
This paper money the colonists considered absolutely
necessary to supply
the place of the gold and silver which
were so rapidly drained from them into England to pay for
the manufactured goods they bought. There seems to be
no doubt but that they were right in this, 'and so long
as
the issues of paper money were kept within safe bounds,as in Pennsylvania, no harm resulted. But there were such
disastrous results in other colonies that there was a great
outcry in England. To many Englishmen this paper
money seemed to be a mere dishonorable device to avoid
paying the heavy debts which the colonists owed to the
British merchants, who sold to them the axes with which
they felled the forests, the ploughs
with which they
tilled
the land, and the utensils in which they cooked their
dinners.
This opinion was strengthened when it was remembered
that some British colonies had attempted
to pass stay laws
to prevent English merchants from collecting debts, and
that this risk had to be removed by an act of Parliament
in 1732, giving English
merchants the same right
to seize
private property for debt in the colonies that they had in
England.* Finally,
in 1751, Parliament tried to remedy
the paper money evil, and passed an act declaring
the
paper money of the New England colonies an illegal
tender in payment
of a debt.
* "The Interest of the Merchants and Manufacturers of Great Britain in the Present Contest with the Colonies," p. 38, London, 1774.
Good people in England and many members of Parliament
looked upon the whole revolutionary movement as
merely an attempt of debt-ridden provincials
to escape from
their obligations+ A nation on a firm gold basis always
despises a nation struggling with a depreciated currency.
We ourselves have had this feeling towards the West
Indian and South American republics.
+ Franklin, Works, Bigelow edition, vol. v. p. 629.
The people in England also heard a great deal about the
convicts who had been transported
to America, and that
some of these convicts had been employed as schoolteachers.
Historical writers have given
the number of these convicts that were sent here at from ten thousand to
twenty-five thousand, most of them going
to Maryland
and the Middle Colonies.* We may believe that this had
no demoralizing effect upon us, and perhaps
it had not
;
but English people would naturally think that it had
tinged our population, and they would exaggerate
the evil
effects, as we would ourselves if we should hear of twenty
thousand convicts dumped into Japan
or Cuba, or England
itself.
*Scharf, "History of Maryland, 3 ' vol. i. p. 371; Pennsylvania Magazine of History, vol. xii. p. 457.
In early colonial times piracy had been almost openly practiced, and respectable people, even governors of colonies,
were interested in its profits. The distinction between
privateering, smuggling, piracy, and buccaneering was
slight; the step from one to the other easy. The fascinating
life ofthese brethren ofthe wave cannot be described
here, except to say
that piracy had been another item in
the list of colonial offences. Protections to pirates were
openly sold in New York, where the famous Captain Kidd
lived, and handsome presents given
to the governor and
his daughters. It was a profitable occupation, and pursued
as eagerly as modern stock jobbing and speculation.
Charleston was equally deep
in the business. Lord Bellamont
was sent out to New York in 1695, as the result
of what we would now call a reform movement. He
reported
"
a most lycencious
trade with pirates, Scotland
and Curagoa." The people of New York, he said, "grew
rich, but the customs, they decrease."+
+ Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, )T vol. ii. pp, 274-285; Johnson, " History of the Pirate;" EHquwuoling, "Buccaneers of America j" " Documents relating to tko Colonial History of New York," index vol., title, " Pirates.''
Piracy, however, had passed away, and it was only a
recollection of disorder, part of the ancient training of the colonists in self-will and love of independence. With
regard to the other offences, bargain and sale legislation,
dependent judiciary, or the reforms and remedies of them,
both the colonists and England were in a constrained
position so long as France kept strengthening her power
on the north and pushing round to the westward into the
valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi.
Kalm, the Swedish botanist, who traveled in America
in 1748, reported
that the presence of the French in
Canada was all that held the colonies in submission to
England. He met both Americans and English who
prophesied that the colonies would be absolutely independent
within thirty or fifty years.*
* " Travels into North America," vol. i. p. 265.
The more we consider the conditions at that time, the more
it becomes evident that the English-speaking communities
in America were not colonies in the modern acceptance of
the term. England had never fully reduced them to possession,
had never really established her sovereignty among
them.+ She had encouraged them in the beginning with
liberal grants for the sake of persuading them to occupy
the country, and after that she was unable to repress
their
steady and aggressive
increase of privileges so long
as
France hung as a menace in the snow-bound north. The
lucky colonists were ridden with a loose rein and given
their heads until a large
section of them began
to believe
that their heads were their own.
+ Dean Tucker said that British sovereignty
in the colonies was
gone as soon as the French were removed, and that the Kevolution
was a contest to recover it.
"
The True Interest of Great Britain set
forth," p. 12, London, 1774j Oartwright's
"
American Independence
the Interest and Glory of Great Britain," pp. 90, 91 j
"
The Constitutional
Bight of the Legislature of Great Britain to tax the British
Colonies," p. 8, London, 1768
;
"
Letters of Jainos Murray, Loyalist,"
p. 154
j Franklin, Works, Bigelow edition,
vol. iii. p. 144
The colonists, however, needed the assistance of England's
army and navy
to withstand France. They detested
the thought of becoming
colonies of the great Celtic and Roman Catholic power ;
and they were willing
to hold in
check their desire for extreme privileges, or anything like
independence, until France was removed from the continent.
Thus France occupied
the peculiar position of
encouraging our independent spirit and at the same time
checking its extreme development.
"When the great event of her removal was accomplished ;
when the superb organizing genius of William Pitt had
carried to a successful termination the long war lasting
from 1654 to 1763, a totally new condition of affairs arose.
Canada being conquered and England
in possession of it,
the colonies and England suddenly found themselves
glaring at each other. Each began
to pursue
her real
purpose more directly. England undertook to establish
her sovereignty, abolish abuses, or, as she expressed
it at
that time, to remodel the colonies. The patriotic party
among the colonists resisted the remodelling, sought
to retain
all their old privileges, and even to acquire new ones.*
* The change in tho situation was quickly
seen by the people of
that time.
" No sooner were tho French kites and tho Indian vulturos scared
away than they (tho colonists) began
to strut and to claim an independent
property to the dunghill. Their fear and tludr natural
affection forsook them at one and the same time." "Tho Justus and
Necessity of taxing the American Colonies," p. 7, London, 1766.
'* Ever since tho reduction of Canada," wrote one of tho ablest of
the loyalist pamphleteers,
"
we have been bloated with u vain opinion
of our own importance." "A Friendly Addreaw to all Reasonable
Americans," p. 25, New York, 1774. See, also,
"
Strictures upon tho
Declaration of the Congress j" "Observations on the American
Revolution, and published by order of Congress,
1770. This document
argues that the colonies wore semi-independent states under a protectorate
from Great Britain to save thorn from France.
to be continued...next
II
SMUGGLING, RIOTING,
AND REVOLT AGAINST CONTROL
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