Chapter III: The War of American Independence (5)

Charleston was the main point of attack. It was bravely defended for several weeks by General Lincoln, but his communications were cut by Clinton’s stronger force, the investment was gradually completed, and on the 12th of May, 1780, the town was surrendered and the garrison became prisoners of war. This success was followed by the annihilation of another small body of American troops, on which occasion Tarleton, the British commander, was accused of indiscriminate slaughter. Clinton having returned to New York, the command in the south devolved on Cornwallis, whose campaigns in 1780 and 1781 were the closing scenes of the war. He began with a great success. General Gates had been sent south to take command of the American forces in the Carolinas, and, having collected an army which largely outnumbered the troops at the disposal of Cornwallis, marched to attack the latter at Camden to the north-west of Charleston. Cornwallis resolved on a counter attack; and, after a night march on either side, the two forces came into collision near Camden at dawn on the 16th of August. After hard fighting the Americans gave way before a British bayonet charge and a rout ensued, which was supplemented by a further small victory gained by Tarleton over the American general Sumter, who had previously intercepted Cornwallis’ communications and captured a convoy and some prisoners. Cornwallis now advanced into North Carolina, but behind him the backwoodsmen gathered, and on the 7th of October overwhelmed, after heavy fighting, a strong detachment of Loyalists under Major Ferguson at a place called King’s Mountain. This reverse had the same effect as the fights at Trenton or Bennington. Cornwallis had to fall back, the American cause revived in the south, and the extraordinary difficulty of dealing with guerilla warfare in an immense territory was once more effectively illustrated. In December Gates was superseded by an abler and more trustworthy general, Nathaniel Greene.

In the north no decisive action took place during the year. The English made an incursion into New Jersey, without producing any effect. A French fleet and army under de Rochambeau arrived at Rhode Island, where Clinton would have attacked them in force but for want of co-operation on the part of the English admiral Arbuthnot. The American cause received a heavy blow in the treachery of Arnold, and on the other hand, before the close of the year, the Dutch were added to the long list of enemies against whom England was maintaining an unequal struggle.

[Sidenote: The campaign of 1781, Cornwallis moves north.]

[Sidenote: Cowpens.]

[Sidenote: Guilford Court House.]

[Sidenote: Cornwallis in Virginia.]

With the opening of the new year, 1781, Cornwallis moved northwards. In the middle of January the light troops from his force, who were under Tarleton’s command, were heavily defeated by the American general Morgan, at Cowpens near the border line between South and North Carolina. Having received reinforcements, Cornwallis still advanced, Greene falling back before him until he had collected a larger number of men than the English general had at his disposal. The two forces met near Guilford Court House on the 15th of March, under much the same conditions as had preceded the fight at Camden; and after an even fight the English were victorious, though with a loss of about one-third of their small army. After the battle, Cornwallis fell back for a while towards Wilmington, and, as the Americans were again active behind him in South Carolina, debated whether to continue his efforts to stamp out resistance in the south, or to march forward into Virginia where there was now a strong British force, commanded at first by Arnold and afterwards by Burgoyne’s colleague General Phillips, who were opposed by Lafayette. He determined on the northward movement and effected a junction with Phillips’ troops, their commander having in the meantime died at Petersburg in Virginia late in May.

[Sidenote: Cornwallis takes up a position at Yorktown.]

The fighting went on in the Carolinas with varying success. On the 25th of April Lord Rawdon, who was then in command, defeated Greene at Hobkirk’s Hill. In September his successor Colonel Stuart fought a drawn battle at Eutaw Springs, but the Americans secured one point and another, and the balance of the campaign was against the British cause. In Virginia Cornwallis and Lafayette manœuvred against each other, the British operations being hampered by the apprehension of a combined attack in force by the French and Americans on New York, which led Clinton to order the return of a part of the army in Virginia. The order was countermanded, but Cornwallis was instructed to take up a defensive position in touch with the sea, and in August he concentrated his troops at Yorktown on the bank of the York river, where a peninsula is formed by that river and the James flowing into the mouth of Chesapeake Bay; the village of Gloucester on the opposite side of the York river was also held. It was not a strong position, and all depended on keeping command, of the water. For once the English lost the command, and the consequence was the loss of the army.

[Sidenote: Naval operations. The French fleet under de Grasse comes into touch with Washington and Lafayette.]

[Sidenote: Cornwallis besieged at Yorktown.]

At the end of March a strong French fleet under de Grasse sailed from Brest for the West Indies. After a few weeks’ operations among the islands, and taking Tobago, de Grasse made for Cap François in Hayti and found dispatches from Washington. Taking on board 3,500 French soldiers, he sailed for the North American coast and reached the Chesapeake at the end of August. The object was to co-operate with Washington and de Rochambeau in blockading Cornwallis and compelling him to surrender. Meanwhile a French squadron at Newport in Rhode Island, under de Barras, put out to sea with a convoy containing the siege train, making a wide circuit in order to escape detection by the English ships and join de Grasse in Chesapeake Bay. On land Lafayette, strengthened by a body of Pennsylvanians, already harassed Cornwallis, especially charged to prevent as far as possible a retreat to the south; while de Rochambeau from Rhode Island joined Washington who was facing New York, and the combined army, after threatening an attack on Clinton, crossed the Hudson in August, marched through New Jersey to Philadelphia, and passing on to Virginia, with the help of French transports appeared before Yorktown in the latter end of September. Cornwallis was now besieged by 16,000 men on land and an overwhelming fleet at sea.

[Sidenote: Ineffective movements of the English fleet.]

The movement had been well planned and skilfully executed. Clinton at New York had been misled by a feint of attack, and on the sea the English had been found wanting. When Rodney learnt that de Grasse had left the West Indies for the North American coast, in ill health himself and about to leave for England, he dispatched Sir Samuel Hood in pursuit with fourteen ships of the line. A stronger force was needed and had apparently been intended by Rodney. Hood reached the Chesapeake three or four days before de Grasse arrived, and passing on to New York came under the orders of a senior officer, Admiral Graves, who had at the time but five ships with him. The combined squadron sailed for the Chesapeake, and found that de Grasse had forestalled them with a stronger fleet. They attacked on the 5th of September, with no decisive result on either side: for three or four days longer the two fleets faced each other, then Graves returned to New York and de Grasse went back to block Cornwallis, his manœuvres having enabled de Barras in the meantime to bring in his ships in safety to the Chesapeake.

[Sidenote: Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown.]

Cornwallis was now in hopeless case, unless Clinton could relieve him. Expectation of relief was given, the 5th of October being named as the day on which the relieving force would probably leave New York. On the night of the 5th the Americans began their trenches, on the 9th the guns opened fire: after a week’s fighting, on the 17th, Cornwallis treated for surrender; and on the 19th, the day on which Clinton actually sailed from New York to bring the promised aid, the British army laid down their arms, sickness having reduced the number of fighting men from 7,000 to barely 4,000.

[Sidenote: Consequences of the surrender.]

[Sidenote: Carleton succeeds Clinton.]

[Sidenote: Negotiations for peace.]

[Sidenote: Peace concluded and the Independence of the United States recognized.]

Four years had passed almost to the day since the similar disaster at Saratoga. The second surrender practically finished the war, though there was still some small fighting in the south, the English being driven back to Charleston and Savannah. Savannah was eventually evacuated in July, 1782, and Charleston in the following December, by which date terms of peace between Great Britain and the United States had already been signed. Meanwhile in England Carleton had been nominated to take the place of Clinton as Commander-in-Chief in America, Germain resigned, and in March, 1782, Lord North’s ministry came to an end. The Whigs came in pledged to make peace, Rockingham being Prime Minister and Shelburne and Fox Secretaries of State. Within four months Lord Rockingham died, and Shelburne became Prime Minister, Fox leaving the Government, and the younger Pitt joining it as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Already negotiations for peace were proceeding at Paris, where Richard Oswald, a nominee of Shelburne’s, had been treating with Franklin, complaisantly entertaining every American demand. Rodney’s great victory over de Grasse in the battle of the Saints, on the 12th of April, 1782, enabled England to speak with a firmer voice. The failure in September of the combined efforts of France and Spain to take Gibraltar again added strength: and Shelburne’s ministry was enabled to conclude a peace, which, if it contrasted sadly with the triumphant Treaty of 1763, was at least far from being the capitulation of a ruined Power. On the 30th of November, 1782, articles were signed between Oswald, on behalf of Great Britain, and the Commissioners of the United States, ‘to be inserted in and to constitute the treaty of Peace’ which was to be concluded when Great Britain and France had come to terms. On the 20th of January, 1783, Preliminary Articles of Peace were signed between Great Britain and France on the one hand and between Great Britain and Spain on the other; and on the following 3rd of September the Peace of Versailles was finally concluded, treaties being made by Great Britain with France, Spain, and the United States, a treaty with the Netherlands having been signed on the previous day. Under the first article of the treaty with the United States the King of England acknowledged the thirteen colonies then forming the United States to be ‘free sovereign and Independent States’.

[Sidenote: Comparison of the American War of Independence with the late war in South Africa.]

[Sidenote: Effect on war of submarine cables.]

At the time of the late war in South Africa an analogy was sometimes drawn between that war and the War of American Independence. In some respects there was similarity. In either case a group of British colonies was primarily concerned, and in either case the British Government was faced with the difficulty of transporting large bodies of troops across the sea to a distant scene of war, America in the eighteenth century before the days of steam being for all practical purposes more remote than South Africa in our own time. There were two distinct spheres of operations in America in the earlier years of the war, Canada and the Atlantic states, just as in South Africa the war was divided between Natal and the Cape Colony; and the Boer invasion of Natal and investment of Ladysmith to some extent recalls the overrunning of Canada by Montgomery’s troops and the hemming up of Carleton inside Quebec. In both cases there was the same kind of half knowledge of the country and its conditions in the public mind in Great Britain, and, curiously enough, in either case the estimate seems to have been most at fault where fighting had been most recent; in Natal, where less than twenty years had elapsed since the previous Boer war, and on the line of Lake Champlain and the Hudson, presumed to be well known to many who had served at a somewhat shorter interval of time under Abercromby and Amherst, and who encouraged Germain to give his confident instructions to Burgoyne for a march to Albany. Distance, transport, supplies, communications, rather than hard fighting, were the main elements of either war; and the description of the American war given in the _Annual Register_ for 1777, which has been already quoted,[161] that it was ‘a war of posts, surprises, and skirmishes instead of a war of battles’, would apply equally to the South African war. But here the likeness ceases, and no real parallel can be drawn between the two contests. The American war was a civil war, Englishmen were fighting Englishmen. The war in South Africa was a war between two rival races. In the earlier war the great forces which have been embodied in British colonization, mental and physical vigour, forwardness and tenacity, the forces of youth, which have the keeping of the future, were in the main ranged against the mother country: in the later war they contributed, as never before, to the sum of national patriotism. In the earlier war foreign nations intervened, with fatal effect, and the sea power of England was crippled. In the later, the struggle was kept within its original limits and British ships went unmolested to and from South Africa. Not least of all, while on the former occasion ministers at home tried to do the work of the generals on the spot, Carleton’s bitter comments on the disastrous result, which have been quoted above[162], could in no sense be applied to the later crisis. As bearing on this last point, it is interesting to speculate what would have happened had submarine cables existed in the days of King George the Third. The telegraph invites and facilitates interference from home. It tends to minimize the responsibility, and to check the initiative, of the men on the spot: and if the cables which now connect England and America, had been in existence in the years 1776 and 1777, it might be supposed that the commanders in America would have been even more hampered than they were by the meddling of the King, and his ministers. But the evil was that, in the absence of the telegraph, interference could not be corrected, and co-operation could not be ensured. Germain laid down a rigid plan: a second-rate man received precise instructions which he felt bound to follow against his own judgement; and for want of sure and speedy communication the cause was lost. It is impossible to suppose that even the King and Germain would have refused to modify their plans, had they known what was passing from day to day or from week to week: in other words, the invention which more than any other has opened a door to undue interference, would probably in the case in point have done most to remedy the ignorant meddling which was the prime cause of the disaster at Saratoga.

[Sidenote: Effects of the American War of Independence on the British Empire as a whole.]

The War of American Independence was ‘by far the most dangerous in which the British nation was ever involved’.[163] It was seen at the time that its issues would colour all future history and modify for ever political and commercial systems, but no prophet seemed to contemplate a colonial future for Great Britain, and Benjamin Franklin said ‘he would furnish Mr. Gibbon with materials for writing the history of the Decline of the British Empire’.[164] Yet the present broad-based Imperial system of Great Britain was for two reasons the direct outcome of that war. While the United States were still colonial possessions of Great Britain, they overshadowed all others; and, had they remained British possessions, their preponderance would in all probability have steadily increased. It is quite possible that the centre of the Empire might have been shifted to the other side of the Atlantic; it is almost certain that the colonial expansion of Great Britain would have been mainly confined to North America. Nothing has been more marked and nothing sounder in our recent colonial history than the comparative uniformity of development in the British Empire. In those parts of the world which have been settled and not merely conquered by Europeans, and which are still British possessions, in British North America, Australasia, and South Africa, there has been on the whole parity of progress. No one of the three groups of colonies has in wealth and population wholly out-distanced the others. This fact has unquestionably made for strength and permanence in the British Empire, and it is equally beyond question that the spread of colonization within the Empire would have been wanting, had Great Britain retained her old North American colonies. Unequalled in history was the loss of such colonies, and yet by that loss, it may fairly be said, Great Britain has achieved a more stable and a more world-wide colonial dominion.

But this result would not have been attained had not the lesson taught by the American war sunk deep into the minds of Englishmen. It is true that for a while the moral drawn from this calamitous war was that self-governing institutions should not be given to colonies lest they should rebel, as did the Americans, and win their independence: but, as the smart of defeat passed away and men saw events and their causes in true perspective, as Englishmen again multiplied out of England but in lands which belonged to England, and as the old questions again pressed for solution, the answer given in a wiser and a broader age was dictated by remembrance of the American war, and Lord Durham’s report embodied the principles, on which has been based the present colonial system of Great Britain. It was seen--but it might not have been seen had the United States not won their independence--that English colonists, like the Greek colonists of old, go out on terms of being equal not subordinate to those who are left behind, that when they have effectively planted another and a distant land, they must within the widest limits be left to rule themselves; that, whether they are right or whether they are wrong, more perhaps when they are wrong than when they are right, they cannot be made amenable by force; that mutual good feeling, community of interest, and abstention from pressing rightful claims to their logical conclusion, can alone hold together a true colonial empire.

[Sidenote: Its effects on Canada.]

Though the United States, in the war and in the treaty which followed it, attained in the fullest possible measure the objects for which they had contended, it is a question whether, of all the countries concerned in the war, Canada did not really gain most, notwithstanding the hardship which she suffered in respect of the boundary line between the Dominion and the United States. For Canada to have a future as a nation, it was necessary, in the first place, that she should be cut adrift from the French colonial system as it existed in the eighteenth century. This was secured as the result of the Seven Years’ War. In the second place, it was necessary that she should not be absorbed by and among the British colonies in North America. This end was attained, and could only be attained by what actually happened, viz., by the British colonies in North America ceasing to belong to Great Britain, while Canada was kept within the circle of the British Empire. Had the United States remained British possessions, Canada must eventually have come into line with them, and been more or less lost among the stronger and more populous provinces. The same result would have followed, had the British Government entertained, as their emissary Oswald did, Franklin’s proposal that Canada should be ceded to the United States. It would have followed too, in all probability, if Canada had been left at the time independent both of Great Britain and of the United States, for she would have been too weak to stand alone. The result of the war was to give prominence and individuality to Canada as a component part of the British Empire; to bring in a strong body of British colonists not displacing but supplementing the French Canadians and antagonistic to the United States from which they were refugees; to revive the instinct of self-preservation which in old days had kept Canada alive, and which is the mainspring of national sentiment, by again directly confronting her with a foreign Power; and at the same time to give her the advantage of protection by and political connexion with what was still to be the greatest sea-going and colonizing nation of the world. The result of the War of American Independence was to make the United States a great nation; but it was a result which, whether with England or without, they must in any case have achieved. The war had also the effect, and no other cause could have had a like effect, of making possible a national existence for Canada, which possibility was to be converted into a living and a potent fact by the second American war, the war of 1812.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] Shortt and Doughty, p. 195.

[59] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 196-9.

[60] Ib., pp. 205-7.

[61] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 227-8.

[62] Shortt and Doughty, p. 196.

[63] See above, p. 67 note.

[64] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 208-10.

[65] Letter to Shelburne, December 24, 1767, Shortt and Doughty, p. 203.

[66] Shortt and Doughty, p. 454. See also note to p. 377. Carleton had a much better opinion than most people of the administration of justice under the old French régime. In his examination before the House of Commons on the Quebec Bill, he was asked, ‘Do you know from the Canadians themselves, what sort of administration of justice prevailed under the French Government, whether pure or corrupt?’ His answer was, ‘Very pure in general. I never heard complaints of the administration of justice under the French Government.’ Egerton and Grant, pp. 56-7.

[67] See above, p. 79.

[68] Shortt and Doughty, p. 295.

[69] In 1775 the population of the whole of Canada was according to Bouchette’s estimate 90,000 (see the _Census of Canada_, 1870-1, vol. iv, _Statistics of Canada_). On the other hand Carleton, in his evidence given before the House of Commons at the time when the Quebec Act was being passed in 1774, estimated the number of the ‘new subjects’ at ‘about 150,000 souls all Roman Catholics’ as against less than 400 Protestants, excluding in the latter case women and children. Egerton and Grant, pp. 51-2.

[70] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 410-11.

[71] Referred to by Carleton as ‘The Suffolk County Resolves in the Massachusetts’. Shortt and Doughty, p. 413.

[72] Carleton, however, after the war broke out, sternly repressed any attempt of the Indians to act except under close supervision of white officers. See Colonel Cruikshank’s paper on Joseph Brant in the American Revolution, April 3, 1897. _Transactions of the Canadian Institute_, vol. v, p. 243, &c.

[73] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 412-14.

[74] See above, p. 67.

[75] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 450-2.

[76] See the letter and the note to it at p. 451 of Shortt and Doughty. Sir William Johnson had died in July, 1774; his nephew and son-in-law, Colonel Guy Johnson, had acted as his deputy for Indian affairs, and continued to do so for a while after his death, but in 1775 Major John Campbell was appointed Superintendent of Indian affairs.

[77] The reference is to the raising of a body of 300 Canadians in 1764 for service under Bradstreet in Pontiac’s war. See above p. 24. It seems doubtful whether the complaint to which Carleton refers had any foundation. See Kingsford, vol. v, p. 76.

[78] Carleton’s account of the above, given in a letter to Dartmouth, dated Montreal, June 7, 1775, is that on May 19 he received news from Gage of the outbreak of hostilities, i.e. the fight at Lexington, coupled with a request that he would ‘send the 7th Regiment with some companies of Canadians and Indians to Crown Point, in order to make a diversion and favour his (Gage’s) operations’. The next morning news reached Quebec ‘that one, Benedict Arnold, said to be a native of Connecticut, and a horse jockey, landed a considerable number of armed men at St. John’s: distant from this town (Montreal) eight leagues, about eight in the morning of the 18th, surprised the detachment of the 26th doing duty there, consisting of a sergeant and ten men, and made them prisoners, seized upon the King’s sloop, batteaus, and every other military store, and a few hours after departed, carrying off the craft, prisoners, and stores they had seized. From this party we had the first information of the rebels being in arms upon the lakes, and of their having, under the command of said Arnold, surprised Ticonderoga, Crown Point, the detachment of the 26th doing duty at these two places, and all the craft employed upon those lakes’.... ‘The same evening another express brought an account of the rebels having landed at St. John’s a second time, in the night, between the 18th and 19th.’ Shortt and Doughty, pp. 453-5.

[79] This seems to have been an under-estimate. There were apparently at the time three British regiments in Canada, the 7th, the 8th, and the 26th.

[80] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 453-5.

[81] Chief Justice Hey to the Lord Chancellor, August 28, 1775. Shortt and Doughty, pp. 456-9.

[82] Chief Justice Hey saw what a strong position Canada held, from a military point of view, in regard to the other North American colonies. In his letter to the Lord Chancellor of August 28, 1775, he wrote, ‘It appears to me that while England has a firm hold of this country, which a good body of troops and nothing else will give her, her cause with the colonies can never be desperate, though she should not have an inch of ground in her possession in any one of them: from this country they are more accessible, I mean the New England people (paradoxical as it may seem), than even from Boston itself.’ Shortt and Doughty, p. 457.

[83] ‘A few of the gentry, consisting principally of the youth, residing in this place (Montreal) and its neighbourhood, formed a small corps of volunteers under the command of Mr. Samuel Mackay, and took post at St. John’s.’ (Letter from Carleton to Dartmouth as above. Shortt and Doughty, p. 454.)

[84] Shortt and Doughty, p. 459.

[85] This may probably have been the Major Preston referred to in Horace Walpole’s letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory, December 27, 1775. ‘Adam Smith told us t’other night at Beauclerk’s, that Major Preston, one of two, but he is not sure which, would have been an excellent commander some months since, if he had seen any service.’

This and other quotations from Horace Walpole’s letters are taken from Mrs. Paget Toynbee’s edition, Clarendon Press, 1904.

[86] The general view seems to have been that Chambly might have held out longer, and that the commander, Major Stopford, was shielded by his aristocratic connexions, but the _Annual Register_ for 1776 (p. 5) says that it ‘was in no very defensible condition’, and Carleton seems to have found no fault with its surrender. See the entry on p. 110 of Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 2201, 1904, _Historical MS. Commission, Report on American manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great Britain_, vol. i. Sir Guy Carleton to (Lord Barrington), May 21, 1777, ‘has nothing to charge either the garrison of Chamblee or St. John’s with.’

[87] The _Annual Register_ for 1776, p. 12, makes Montgomery’s advance from Montreal to Quebec a kind of repetition of Arnold’s march. ‘Their march was in winter, through bad roads, in a severe climate, beneath the fall of the first snows, and therefore made under great hardships.’ He seems, on the contrary, to have come down the river in the captured British vessels.

[88] There is or was a dispute about the date. Kingsford makes it the night of December 31 to January 1, but there seems no doubt that the attack took place on the previous night, that of December 30-1. See Sir James Le Moyne’s Paper on the Assault on Quebec in 1775, in the _Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada_, 1899.

[89] Letter to Sir Horace Mann, June 5, 1776.

[90] Letter to Sir Horace Mann, August 11, 1776. It is not clear why Horace Walpole thought poorly of Carleton’s writing. His dispatches are as clear and straightforward as could be wished.

[91] Horace Walpole to Sir H. Mann, March 22, 1776.

[92] p. 15.

[93] _Parliamentary History of England_, vol. xxix, p. 379. Debate of May 6, 1791.

[94] _Annual Register_ as above.

[95] The letter, in which Montgomery complained of personal ill-treatment of himself by Carleton, concluded--‘Beware of destroying stores of any kind, public or private, as you have done in Montreal and in the river; if you do, by Heavens there will be no mercy shown.’

[96] _Annual Register_ for 1776; _State Papers_, p. 255. Carleton’s kindness to the American prisoners was so great that when some of them returned on parole, they were not allowed to communicate with the American troops serving at Crown Point for fear that they might cause disaffection. See Stone’s _Life of Brant_ (1838), vol. i, p. 165.

[97] There is an interesting account of the incident at the Cedars in Stone’s _Life of Brant_ (1838 ed.), vol. i, p. 153, &c. Stone says that Forster had with him one company of regulars and nearly 600 Indians, led by Joseph Brant, the celebrated Mohawk chief. But in spite of the note to p. 151 there seems no doubt that Brant, who had gone to England on a visit in the previous autumn, did not start on his return voyage till late in May or June, and did not arrive at New York till July, long after the event at the Cedars. See Colonel Cruikshank’s paper on ‘Joseph Brant in the American Revolution’, April, 1897, _Transactions of the Canadian Institute_, vol. v, pp. 243, &c., Colonel Cruikshank says that Brant sailed from Falmouth early in June, 1776, and reached New York on July 29, where he fought under Howe. Probably the affair of the Cedars was confounded with the fighting at St. John’s and the attack on Montreal when Ethan Allen was taken prisoner in 1775. Brant seems to have been present in these actions.

[98] See the letter of Ebenezer Sullivan abstracted in the 1890 _Report on Canadian Archives, State Papers_, p. 78.

[99] Ibid. p. 74.

[100] _Annual Register_ for 1777, p. 2.

[101] See Carleton’s letter to Germain of September 28, 1776, quoting Germain’s of June 21, 1776. Shortt and Doughty, pp. 459-60.

[102] The letter is quoted in extenso at pp. 129-32 of the sixth volume of Kingsford’s _History of Canada_.

[103] _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. iii, 1882 ed., chap. xii, p. 447.

[104] Clinton was named to act instead of Sir William Howe, in the event of his succeeding Howe in command of the army; this contingency happened, and he, and not Howe, acted as commissioner. Under the Act any three of the five commissioners were empowered to treat with the Americans.

[105] Howe was a pronounced Whig. Burgoyne was more or less neutral until his later years, when he threw in his lot with Fox and his friends. Clinton belonged to a Whig family, but seems to have been a supporter of the Ministry; Cornwallis had voted with Lord Camden against taxing the colonists.

[106] _Influence of Sea Power on History_, chap. ix, pp. 342-3.

[107] See above, pp. 90-1.

[108] It is given in Lord E. Fitzmaurice’s _Life of Lord Shelburne_.

[109] p. 20.

[110] As to Lady Betty Germain’s bequest of Drayton to Lord George Sackville, see the letter from Lord Vere to Earl Temple of December 19, 1769, in the _Grenville Papers_ (edited by W. J. Smith, 1853, John Murray), vol. iv, p. 491. See also various references in Horace Walpole’s _Letters_ (Mrs. Paget Toynbee’s edition, Clarendon Press, 1904). In a letter to George Montagu, July 23, 1763, Walpole gives a description of Drayton, and refers to Lady Betty Germain as ‘its divine old mistress’. Drayton belonged to the Earls of Peterborough, the Mordaunt family. The daughter and heiress of the last earl married Sir John Germain, and left him the property. He married, as his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Berkeley, the Lady Betty Germain in question, and left Drayton to her, expressing a wish that if she had no children, she should leave it to one of the Sackvilles, which she accordingly did. Lady Betty Germain, whose father was Viceroy of Ireland, was a friend of Swift.

[111] Letter to Sir H. Mann, February 20, 1764. The other four were Pitt (Lord Chatham), Charles Townshend, Conway, and Charles Yorke.

[112] ‘I think nobody can doubt of Lord George’s resolution since he has exposed himself to the artillery of the whole town. Indeed I always believed him brave and that he sacrificed himself to sacrifice Prince Ferdinand.’ Letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory, November 23, 1775. The letter was written just as Germain was about to take office.

[113] To the Honourable Henry Seymour Conway and the Countess of Ailesbury, January 15, 1775.

[114] Quoted by Horace Walpole in his letter to Sir Horace Mann of March 5, 1777.

[115] Carleton’s letter was dated May 20, 1777. It is quoted in full at p. 129 of the sixth volume of Kingsford’s _History of Canada_, as well as in the _Report on the Canadian Archives_ for 1885.

[116] One reason alleged is that Carleton had given evidence against Germain at the latter’s court-martial.

[117] This letter, with Carleton’s letter of May 20, 1777, will be found in Mr. Brymner’s _Report on the Canadian Archives_ for 1885, pp. cxxxii-vii, Note D.

[118] The note to p. 474 of _Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada_ (Shortt and Doughty) condemns Carleton’s conduct to Germain.

[119] Chief Justice Hey to the Lord Chancellor, August 28, 1775. Shortt and Doughty, p. 458.

[120] Quoted in full at pp. 457-9 of the sixth volume of Kingsford’s _History of Canada_.

[121] October 15, 1777. See _Canadian Archives Report_ for 1890, p. 101. It is not absolutely clear that the reference is to Livius.

[122] The records as to the dates of Livius’ appointment are somewhat confusing. There is a printed pamphlet in the Colonial Office Library giving Livius’ petition and the proceedings which followed in England. It is dated 1779, and entitled ‘Proceedings between Sir Guy Carleton, K.B., late Governor of the Province of Quebec, and Peter Livius Esq., Chief Justice of the said Province, &c. &c.’. The note to p. 476 of _Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada_ (Shortt and Doughty) is favourable to Livius and unfavourable to Carleton.

[123] See also below, p. 238.

[124] One cause which reduced their numbers was that in the seventeenth century the Jesuits converted a considerable number of Mohawks and induced them to settle in Canada. They were known as the Caghnawagas.

[125] As regards the Six Nation Indians, Joseph Brant, and the Border forays in the War of Independence, see Stone’s _Life of Brant_, and two papers by Lt.-Col. Ernest Cruikshank, on ‘Joseph Brant in the American Revolution’, in the _Transactions of the Canadian Institute_, vol. v, 1898, p. 243, and vol. vii, 1904, p. 391. The papers were read in April, 1897, and April, 1902. See also _The Old New York Frontier_, by F. W. Halsey. Scribners, New York, 1902.

[126] On Pownall’s map of 1776 is marked at the spot ‘The great portage one mile’, but the distance between the two rivers was rather greater.

[127] St. Leger’s dispatch to Burgoyne, dated Oswego, August 27, 1777, and written after his retreat, forms Appendix No. XIII to _A State of the Expedition from Canada as laid before the House of Commons by Lieutenant-General Burgoyne_. London, 1780.

[128] St. Leger reported it to be twelve miles distant.

[129] St. Leger says definitely, ‘Sir John Johnson put himself at the head of this party.’ Stone, on the other hand, makes out that Sir John Johnson remained behind in the camp and was at that part of it which was surprised by Willett (See Stone’s _Life of Brant_, 1838 ed., vol. i, p. 235, note). St. Leger says that he ‘could not send above 80 white men, Rangers and troops included, with the whole corps of Indians’, but all the accounts seem to agree in placing the number of Indians at 400 and no more.

[130] The details of the fighting at Oriskany, and Willett’s sortie from the fort, are more confusing and contradictory even than those of most battles and sieges. The American accounts make Oriskany an American victory, and Willett’s sortie a taking possession of the whole British camp, the contents of which, after the defenders had been put to flight, were carried off to the fort in seven wagons which made three trips between the fort and the camp. St. Leger, no doubt minimizing what happened, reported that the sortie resulted in no ‘further advantage than frightening some squaws and pilfering the packs of the warriors which they left behind them’. From the contemporary plan of the operations at Fort Stanwix it seems clear that Willett surprised only the post at the lower landing-place and not the whole British camp.

[131] See above pp. 96-7 and note.

[132] Junius to the Duke of Grafton, December 12, 1769.

[133] Walpole to the Honourable Henry Synan Conway, November 12, 1774.

[134] Letter to the Countess of Upper Ossory, June 14, 1787. See also letter to the same, January 16, 1786. ‘General Burgoyne’s _Heiress_, I hear, succeeded extremely well, and was besides excellently acted.’

[135] Letter to the Rev. William Mason, October 5, 1777. In this letter Horace Walpole, apparently without real ground, says that Burgoyne was the natural son of Lord Bingley.

[136] Letters of August 8, August 11, and August 24, 1777.

[137] Not to be confounded with the Wood Creek mentioned above, p. 147, &c., which was a feeder of Lake Oneida.

[138] Letter to Sir H. Mann, September 1, 1777.

[139] See _State Papers_, p. 97, in Mr. Brymner’s _Report on Canadian Archives_ for 1890.

[140] _State of the Expedition from Canada Narrative_, p. 12.

[141] Kingsford makes the number to have been 746: _History of Canada_, vol. vi, p. 216, note.

[142] From Burgoyne’s dispatch it appears that Baum was beginning a further advance when the attack was made. His words are, ‘Colonel Baum was induced to proceed without sufficient knowledge of the ground.’

[143] The American accounts put the British casualties at nearly 1,000.

[144] It may probably have been to the disaster at Bennington that Horace Walpole referred when he wrote to the Countess of Upper Ossory on September 29, 1777: ‘General Burgoyne has had but bad sport in the woods.’

[145] Benjamin Lincoln was the American commander charged with the duty of attacking Burgoyne’s communications. He was afterwards in command at Charleston when it was taken by the English in May, 1780.

[146] It is not easy to make out the details of the fighting. After the battle of September 19, the two armies were said to be only about half a mile distant from each other, but on October 7, according to Burgoyne’s dispatch, after advancing for some time he formed his troops within three-quarters of a mile of the enemy. The advance was apparently not direct but diagonal against the extreme left of the Americans. The main English camp near the river, where there was a bridge of boats, does not seem to have been at all molested, though it was presumably drawn back in the following night. Breyman’s camp which was stormed is shown on the plan appended to the _State of the Expedition from Canada_, as well in the rear of the extreme right of the English line.

[147] Horace Walpole, writing to the Countess of Upper Ossory on November 3, 1777, seems to be referring to reports of the battle at Freeman’s Farm. ‘If your angel would be seeing, why did he not put on his spectacles and hover over Arnold, who has beaten the vapouring Burgoyne and destroyed his magazines? Carleton, who was set aside for General Hurlothrumbo, is gone to save him and the remains of his army if he can.’ On November 13 he writes to the same, ‘General Swagger is said to be entrenched at Saratoga, but I question whether he will be left at leisure to continue his Commentaries: one Arnold is mighty apt to interrupt him.’ Authentic news of Burgoyne’s surrender did not reach England till December 1. Writing to Sir Horace Mann on December 4, Walpole says: ‘On Tuesday night came news from Carleton at Quebec, which indeed had come from France earlier, announcing the total annihilation (as to America) of Burgoyne’s army.... Burgoyne is said to be wounded in three places, his vanquisher, Arnold, is supposed to be dead of his wounds.’ It will be noted that Arnold is made the hero on the American side, and that there is no mention of Walpole’s godson, Gates. Walpole contemplated invasion of Canada and possible loss of Quebec as the result of the disaster.

[148] The above account has been taken almost entirely from the original dispatches, documents, and evidence published in _A State of the Expedition from Canada as laid before the House of Commons by Lieutenant-General Burgoyne_. London, 1780. Burgoyne, in a private letter to Howe of 20th October, attributed the surrender in part to the fact that his troops were not all British. See _Report on American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution_ (1904), vol. i, p. 140.

[149] Article 6 of the Treaty of Paris between France and the United States, dated February 6, 1778, ran as follows: ‘The most Christian King renounces for ever the possession of the islands of Bermudas as well as of any part of the continent of America which before the Treaty of Paris in 1763 or in virtue of that treaty were acknowledged to belong to the Crown of Great Britain or to the United States heretofore called British colonies or which are at this time or have lately been under the Power of the King and Crown of Great Britain.’ (_Annual Register_, 1778, p. 341.)

[150] Stone’s _Life of Brant_, and among recent books, Halsey’s _Old New York Frontier_, give good accounts of this border war from the American side. Fortunately the subject lies in the main outside the scope of the present book. It would probably be fair to say that there were undoubtedly great and horrible barbarities, not confined to one side only, and on the other hand that there was much exaggeration as, e.g. when Campbell in _Gertrude of Wyoming_ made Joseph Brant, who never took any part at all in the raid, one of the monsters of the story.

The Wyoming valley had been colonized from Connecticut and was claimed by and at the time actually incorporated with Connecticut, though geographically within the state of Pennsylvania. The settlers had sent a considerable contingent to Washington’s army and their homes were in consequence but slenderly guarded.

On Pownall’s ‘map of the Middle British Colonies in North America’, published March 25, 1776, on the western side of the east branch of the Susquehanna river, appears the following: ‘Colony from Wioming Connecticut.’

In the ‘Topographical Description’ attached to the above map there is the following note at pp. 35-6: ‘This Place and the District is now settled by a populous Colony, which swarmed and came forth from Connecticut. The People of Connecticut say, that their Charter and the grant of Lands under it was prior to that of Pennsylvania; that the grant of Lands to them extended within the Latitudes of their Grant (except where possessed by other powers at that Time) to the South Seas. They allow New York and New Jersey to have been so possessed at the time of their Grant, but say, that their right emerges again at the West boundary of those Provinces. Mr. Penn and the People of Pennsylvania who have taken Grants under him say, that this District is in the very Heart of the Province of Pennsylvania. On this State of Claims the Two Colonies are in actual war, which they have not even remitted against each other here, although united in arms against Great Britain 1775.’

The note is interesting as showing how very far from amicable were the relations of the colonies to each other when the War of Independence broke out, cf. the case of the Vermont settlers and New York referred to at the beginning of this chapter.

[151] This is the date given on p. 10 of _Sir Frederick Haldimand_, by Jean N. McIlwraith in the ‘Makers of Canada’ series. The notice in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ gives the date as 1756. The life states that Haldimand as a young man possibly took service with the King of Sardinia, and certainly served under Frederick the Great. The _Dictionary of National Biography_ states that there is no record of his having been in the Prussian army.

[152] For Du Calvet’s case see Mr. Brymner’s Introduction to the _Report on Canadian Archives_, 1888, p. xv, &c., and also Note D. This valuable Introduction and the equally valuable Introduction to the 1887 volume should be consulted for an estimate of Haldimand and his administration, the Haldimand papers being catalogued in these volumes.

[153] Shortt and Doughty, p. 497.

[154] Shortt and Doughty, p. 488.

[155] _Ibid._, p. 498.

[156] _Ibid._, p. 486. See also above, p. 92.

[157] 24 Geo. III, cap. 1, see Shortt and Doughty, pp. 499, 501 and notes. See also above, p. 88, note.

[158] Shortt and Doughty, p. 486. ‘The session’ must have been a later session than that of 1775, as Livius was not in the Council in that year. See above, p. 141.

[159] Shortt and Doughty, pp. 476-7 and notes, also 487, 488-9 and notes.

[160] Shortt and Doughty, p. 488. It will be remembered that Livius was not in Canada at this time.

[161] See above, p. 134.

[162] See above, p. 182.

[163] Preface to _Annual Register_ for 1782.

[164] Horace Walpole to the Rev. William Mason, April 25, 1781.