Chapter VIII: Introduction (3)

On the side of the colonists the contest had also been very disastrous. Twelve or thirteen towns had been entirely ruined, and many others partially destroyed. Six hundred houses had been burned, near a tenth part of all in New England. Twelve captains and more than six hundred men in the prime of life had fallen in battle. There was hardly a family not in mourning. The pecuniary losses and expenses of the war were estimated at near a million of dollars. Massachusetts was burdened with a heavy debt. No aid nor relief seems to have come from abroad, except a contribution from Ireland of £500 for the benefit of the sufferers by the war, chiefly collected by the efforts of Nathaniel Mather, lately successor to his brother Samuel as minister of the non-conformist congregation at Dublin.

SYNOPSIS OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS, CHIEFLY MILITARY, BETWEEN THE DEFEAT OF KING PHILIP, 1676, AND THE CAPTURE OF QUEBEC, 1759

1676. Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia against the government of Sir William Berkeley.

1679. The Scottish Covenanters are defeated by the Duke of Monmouth at Bothwell Bridge.

1681. William Penn obtains his patent from the English Crown.

1682. Purchase of East Jersey by William Penn. He takes possession of New Castle (Delaware) and founds the Colony of Pennsylvania. La Salle descends the Mississippi to its mouth.

1684. The charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company is declared forfeited to the English Crown.

1685. James II. succeeds his brother, Charles II., as King of England. Insurrection of the Earl of Argyll and the Duke of Monmouth. Defeat of Monmouth at Sedgemoor; his execution.

1686. Sir Edmund Andros is made Governor of New England.

1688. William of Orange lands in England; flight of James II.

1689. William and Mary are proclaimed King and Queen of England. England declares war against France. Victory of the Scottish Jacobites at Killiecrankie. Overthrow of Andros in New England. Beginning of King William’s War in America.

1690. The Orangemen in Ireland win the battle of the Boyne. Destruction of Schenectady by the French and Indians. Sir William Phips, commanding a New England expedition, captures Port Royal, and later makes a fruitless demonstration against Quebec.

1691. The Jacobites are overcome in Scotland. Surrender of Limerick, the last stronghold of James II. in Ireland.

1692. Union of the Plymouth and Massachusetts colonies. Witchcraft delusion at Salem.

1693. The French Admiral Tourville defeats the English fleet off Cape St. Vincent.

1697. France makes peace at Ryswick with Holland, Spain, and England. Close of King William’s War in America.

1699. The French begin the settlement of Louisiana.

1701. Beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession.

1702. Death of William III. and accession of Queen Anne. Successful campaign of Churchill (Marlborough) in the Netherlands. Naval triumph of the English and Dutch over the Spanish and French at Vigo. Queen Anne’s War in America. French settlement in Alabama.

1704. The English are victorious over the French at the battle of Blenheim. Capture of Gibraltar by the English. Massacre of white settlers by the Indians at Deerfield, Massachusetts.

1706. Marlborough defeats the French and Bavarians at the battle of Ramillies.

1708. Victory of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, at Oudenarde, over the Dukes of Burgundy and Vendôme.

1711. Unsuccessful expedition of the English and New England forces under Walker against Canada.

1713. Treaty of Utrecht. Close of Queen Anne’s War in America. Acadia (Nova Scotia, etc.) ceded to England by France, which also restores the Hudson Bay region. The power of the Tuscarora Indians broken by the Carolinians.

1714. George I., Elector of Hanover, succeeds to the English Crown.

1715. Rebellion in Scotland and in the North of England in favor of James Edward Stuart, the Jacobite pretender.

1718. French settlement of New Orleans.

1720. Failure of Law’s Mississippi scheme in France.

1722. Establishment of the Moravian settlement in Pennsylvania under Count Zinzendorf.

1727. Accession of George II.

1728. Discovery of Behring’s Strait.

1729. Carolina, purchased by the English Crown, is divided into the royal provinces of North and South Carolina.

1730. Baltimore is laid out.

1732. Oglethorpe embarks from England to establish a settlement in Georgia.

1733. Founding of Savannah.

1741. New Hampshire is finally separated from Massachusetts.

1744. Beginning of King George’s War in America. The French capture Canseau (afterward Canso), and are repulsed at Annapolis.

1745. Jacobite rising in Scotland. Charles Edward, the young Pretender, is victorious at Prestonpans. The New England troops, under Sir William Pepperell, reduce the French fortress of Louisburg.

1746. Jacobite defeat at Culloden.

1748. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle terminates the War of the Austrian Succession and King George’s War in America. Louisburg restored to France.

1749. The Ohio Company receives its grant from George II.

1753. Friction between French and Americans on tributaries of the Alleghany, along American western frontier. Washington’s vain protest against the French seizure of Venango.

1754. Beginning of the French and Indian War in America. Washington’s attack upon Jumonville, near Great Meadows, the first action. The French compel Washington to capitulate at Fort Necessity.

1755. Braddock’s expedition against Fort Duquesne and his disastrous defeat. Abortive expeditions by the English against Niagara and Crown Point.

1756. Formal declaration of hostilities between France and England, and beginning of the Seven Years’ War. Capture of Oswego by the French.

1757. Montcalm takes Fort William Henry on Lake George.

1758. Victory of Montcalm at Ticonderoga. Reduction of Louisburg, and capture of Forts Frontenac and Duquesne by the English.

V

THE FALL OF QUEBEC, 1759

[The visits of Breton fishermen to Newfoundland in the early
sixteenth century, the voyages of Cartier to the St. Lawrence in
1534 and 1541–43, the foundation of Port Royal in Acadia in 1605,
and of Quebec by Champlain in 1608, were the beginnings of a French
occupancy of the northern and central portions of North America
which led inevitably to conflict with England and the American
colonists. The title based upon Marquette’s discovery of the
Mississippi in 1673, and La Salle’s exploration and claim to the
whole vast valley in 1682, would have confined the English to the
Atlantic seaboard. The contact between the wholly different types
represented in English and French colonization caused friction
which became acute when King William’s War broke out in 1689. The
eight years of that war, with its profitless capture of Port Royal,
Nova Scotia, were followed by Queen Anne’s War, 1702–13, and King
George’s War, 1744–48, and the interval after the Treaty of Utrecht
was a truce rather than peace. The French were strengthening their
hold along the western frontier of the English colonists, at Fort
Duquesne, and elsewhere. Braddock’s defeat in 1755, and attacks
upon Crown Point and Niagara, preceded the formal declaration of
hostilities between France and England in 1756, the beginning of
the Seven Years’ War, involving nearly all Europe, with England
and Prussia facing Russia, France, Austria, Sweden, and Saxony. In
America, in 1756–57, the incompetency of Loudon and Abercrombie,
the dilatory preparations to attack Louisburg, and Montcalm’s
capture of Fort William Henry, made the first stage of the war
a gloomy one. But Pitt’s entrance into the British cabinet as
Secretary of State brought an intelligent and active prosecution
of the war. The next year, 1758, witnessed the capture of Fort
Frontenac on Ontario, Fort Duquesne, and Louisburg by the English
and American forces.--EDITOR.]

The British Parliament met late in November, 1758, at a time when the nation was aglow with enthusiasm over the successes of the year--Louisburg and Frontenac in North America, and the driving of the French from the Guinea coast as the result of battles at Sénégal (May) and Gorée (November).[22] The war was proving far more costly than had been anticipated, yet Pitt rigidly held the country to the task; but not against its will, and the necessary funds were freely voted. Walpole wrote to a friend: “Our unanimity is prodigious. You would as soon hear ‘No’ from an old maid as from the House of Commons.” The preparations for the new year were on a much larger scale than before; both by land and sea France was to be pushed to the uttermost, and the warlike spirit of Great Britain seemed wrought to the highest pitch.

The new French premier, Choiseul, was himself not lacking in activity. He renewed with vigor the project of invading Great Britain, preparations therefor being evident quite early in the year 1759. Fifty thousand men were to land in England, and twelve thousand in Scotland, where the Stuart cause still lingered. But as usual the effort came to naught. The Toulon squadron was to co-operate with one from Brest; Boscawen, who now commanded the Mediterranean fleet, apprehended the former while trying to escape through the Straits of Gibraltar in a thick haze (August 17), and after destroying several of the ships dispersed the others; while Sir Edward Hawke annihilated the Brest fleet in a brilliant sea-fight off Quiberon Bay (November 20).[23] Relieved of the possibility of insular invasion, the Channel and Mediterranean squadrons were now free to raid French commerce, patrol French ports, and thus intercept communication with New France, and to harry French--and, later, Spanish--colonies overseas.

1600–1762]

In 1757 Clive had regained Calcutta and won Bengal at the famous battle of Plassey. Two years thereafter the East Indian seas were abandoned by the French after three decisive actions won by Pitt’s valiant seamen, and India thus became a permanent possession of the British empire.[24] In January, 1759, also, the British captured Guadeloupe, in the West Indies.[25] Lacking sea power, it was impossible for France much longer to hold her colonies; it was but a question of time when the remainder should fall into the clutches of the mistress of the ocean.

Notwithstanding all this naval activity, Pitt’s principal operations were really centred against Canada. The movement thither was to be along two lines, which eventually were to meet in co-operation. First, a direct attack was to be made upon Quebec, headed by Wolfe, who was to be convoyed and assisted by a fleet under the command of Admiral Saunders; second, Amherst--now commander-in-chief in America, Abercrombie having been recalled--was to penetrate Canada by way of Lakes George and Champlain. He was to join Wolfe at Quebec, but was authorized to make such diversions as he found practicable--principally to re-establish Oswego and to relieve Pittsburg (Fort Duquesne) with reinforcements and supplies.

Wolfe’s selection as leader of the Quebec expedition occasioned general surprise in England. Yet it was in the natural course of events. He had been the life of the Louisburg campaign of the year before, and when Amherst was expressing the desire of attacking Quebec after the reduction of Cape Breton he wrote to the latter: “An offensive, daring kind of war will awe the Indians and ruin the French. Block-houses and a trembling defensive encourage the meanest scoundrels to attack us. If you will attempt to cut up New France by the roots, I will come with pleasure to assist.”[26]

Wolfe, whose family enjoyed some influence, had attained a captaincy at the age of seventeen and became a major at twenty. He was now thirty-two, a major-general, and with an excellent fighting record both in Flanders and America. Quiet and modest in demeanor, although occasionally using excitable and ill-guarded language, he was a refined and educated gentleman; careful of and beloved by his troops, yet a stern disciplinarian; and although frail in body, and often overcome by rheumatism and other ailments, capable of great strain when buoyed by the zeal which was one of his characteristics. The majority of his portraits represent a tall, lank, ungainly form, with a singularly weak facial profile; but it is likely that these belie him, for he had an indubitable spirit, a profound mind, quick intuition, a charming manner, and was much thought of by women. Indeed, just before sailing, he had become engaged to the beautiful and charming Katharine Lowther, sister of Lord Lonsdale, and afterward the Duchess of Bolton.[27]

On February 17 Wolfe departed with Saunders’ fleet of twenty-one sail, bearing the king’s secret instructions to “carry into execution the said important operation with the utmost application and vigor.”[28] The voyage was protracted, and after arrival at Louisburg he was obliged to wait long before the promised troops appeared. He had expected regiments from Guadeloupe, but these could not yet be spared, owing to their wretched condition; and the Nova Scotia garrisons had also been weakened by disease, so that of the twelve thousand agreed upon he finally could muster somewhat under nine thousand.[29] These were of the best quality of their kind; although the general still entertained a low opinion of the value of the provincials, who, it must be admitted, were, however serviceable in bush-ranging, far below the efficiency of the regulars in a campaign of this character. The force was divided into three brigades, under Monckton, Townsend, and Murray, young men of ability; although Townsend’s supercilious manner--the fruit of a superior social connection--did not endear him either to his men or his colleagues.

On June 1 the fleet began to leave Louisburg. There were thirty-nine men-of-war, ten auxiliaries, seventy-six transports, and a hundred and sixty-two miscellaneous craft, which were manned by thirteen thousand naval seamen and five thousand of the mercantile marine--an aggregate of eighteen thousand, or twice as many as the landsmen under Wolfe.[30] While to the latter is commonly given credit for the result, it must not be forgotten that the victory was quite as much due to the skilful management of the navy as to that of the army, the expedition being in all respects a joint enterprise, into which the men of both branches of the service entered with intense enthusiasm.

The French had placed much reliance on the supposed impossibility of great battle-ships being successfully navigated up the St. Lawrence above the mouth of the Saguenay without the most careful piloting. This portion of the river, a hundred and twenty miles in length, certainly is intricate water, being streaked with perplexing currents created by the mingling of the river’s strong flow with the flood and ebb of the tide; the great stream is diverted into two parallel channels by reefs and islands, and there are numerous shoals--moreover, the French had removed all lights and other aids to navigation. But British sailors laughed at difficulties such as these, and, while they managed to capture a pilot, had small use for him, preferring their own cautious methods. Preceded by a crescent of sounding-boats, officered by Captain James Cook, afterward of glorious memory as a pathfinder, the fleet advanced slowly but safely, its approach heralded by beacons gleaming nightly to the fore, upon the rounded hill-tops overlooking the long thin line of riverside settlement which extended eastward from Quebec to the Saguenay.[31]

The French had at first expected attacks only from Lake Ontario and from the south. But receiving early tidings of Wolfe’s expedition, through convoys with supplies from France that had escaped Saunders’ patrol of the gulf, general alarm prevailed, and Montcalm decided to make his stand at Quebec. To the last he appears to have shared in the popular delusion that British men-of-war could not ascend the river; nevertheless, he promptly summoned to the capital the greater part of the militia from all sections of Canada, save that a thousand whites and savages were left with Pouchot to defend Niagara, twelve hundred men under De la Corne to guard Lake Ontario, and Bourlamaque, with upward of three thousand, was ordered to delay Amherst’s advance and thus prevent him from joining Wolfe. The population of Canada at the time was about eighty-five thousand souls, and of these perhaps twenty-two thousand were capable of bearing arms.[32] The force now gathered in and about Quebec aggregated about seventeen thousand, of whom some ten thousand were militia, four thousand regulars of the line, and a thousand each of colonial regulars, seamen, and Indians; of these two thousand were reserved for the garrison of Quebec, under De Ramezay, while the remainder were at the disposal of Montcalm for the general defence.[33]

The “rock of Quebec” is the northeast end of a long, narrow triangular promontory, to the north of which lies the valley of the St. Charles and to the south that of the St. Lawrence. The acclivity on the St. Charles side is lower and less steep than the cliffs fringing the St. Lawrence, which rise almost precipitously from two to three hundred feet above the river--the citadel cliff being three hundred and forty-five feet, almost sheer. Either side of the promontory was easily defensible from assault, the table-land being only reached by steep and narrow paths. Surmounting the cliffs, at the apex of the triangle, was Upper Town, the capital of New France. Batteries, largely manned by sailors, lined the cliff-tops within the town, and the western base, fronting the Plains of Abraham, was protected by fifteen hundred yards of insecure wall--for, after all, Quebec had, despite the money spent upon it, never been scientifically fortified, its commanders having from the first relied chiefly upon its natural position as a stronghold.

At the base of the promontory, on the St. Lawrence side, is a wide beach occupied by Lower Town, where were the market, the commercial warehouses, a large share of the business establishments, and the homes of the trading and laboring classes. A narrow strand, little more than the width of a roadway, extended along the base of the cliffs westward, communicating with the up-river country; another road led westward along the table-land above. Thus the city obtained its supplies from the interior both by highway and by river.

Entrance to the St. Charles side of the promontory had been blocked by booms at the mouth of that river, protected by strong redoubts; and off Lower Town was a line of floating batteries. Beyond the St. Charles, for a distance of seven miles eastward to the gorge of the Montmorenci, Montcalm disposed the greater part of his forces, his position being a plain naturally protected by a steep slope descending to the meadow and tidal flats which here margin the St. Lawrence. This plain rises gradually from the St. Charles, until at the Montmorenci cataract it attains a height of three hundred feet, and along the summit of the slope were well-devised trenches. The gorge furnished a strong natural defence to the left wing, for it could be forded only in the dense forest at a considerable distance above the falls, and to force this approach would have been to invite an ambuscade. Wolfe contented himself, therefore, with intrenching a considerable force along the eastern bank of the gorge, and thence issuing for frontal attacks on the Beauport Flats--so called from the name of the village midway. Montcalm had chosen this as the chief line of defence, on the theory that the approach by the St. Charles would be the one selected by the invaders; as, indeed, it long seemed to Wolfe the only possible path to the works of Upper Town.

Westward of the city, upon the table-land, Bougainville headed a corps of observation, supposed continually to patrol the St. Lawrence cliff-tops and keep communications open with the interior; but this precaution failed in the hour of need. The height of Point Lévis, across the river from the town, on the south bank, was unoccupied. Montcalm had wished to fortify this vantage-point, and thus block the river from both sides, but Vaudreuil had overruled him, and the result was fatal. Other weak points in the defence were divided command and the scarcity of food and ammunition, occasioned largely by Bigot’s rapacious knavery.

On June 26 the British fleet anchored off the Isle of Orleans, thus dissipating the fond hopes of the French that some disaster might prevent its approach. Three days later Wolfe’s men, now encamped on the island at a safe distance from Montcalm’s guns, made an easy capture of Point Lévis, and there erected batteries which commanded the town. British ships were, in consequence, soon able to pass Quebec, under cover of the Point Lévis guns, and destroy some of the French shipping anchored in the upper basin; while landing parties harried the country to the west, forcing _habitants_ to neutrality and intercepting supplies. Frequently the British forces were, upon these various enterprises, divided into three or four isolated divisions, which might have been roughly handled by a venturesome foe. But Montcalm rigidly maintained the policy of defence, his only offensive operations being the unsuccessful dispatch of fire-ships against the invading fleet.

On his part, Wolfe made several futile attacks upon the Beauport redoubts. The position was, however, too strong for him to master, and in one assault (July 31) he lost half of his landing party--nearly five hundred killed, wounded, and missing.[34] This continued ill-success fretted Wolfe and at last quite disheartened him, for the season was rapidly wearing on, and winter sets in early at Quebec; moreover, nothing had yet been heard of Amherst. There was, indeed, some talk of waiting until another season. However, more and more British ships worked their way past the fort, and, by making frequent feints of landing at widely separated points, caused Bougainville great annoyance. Montcalm was accordingly obliged to weaken his lower forces by sending reinforcements to the plains west of the city. Thus, while Wolfe was pining, French uneasiness was growing, for the British were now intercepting supplies and reinforcements from both above and below, and Bougainville’s men were growing weary of constantly patrolling fifteen or twenty miles of cliffs.[35]

Meanwhile, let us see how Amherst was faring. At the end of June the general assembled five thousand provincials and sixty-five hundred regulars at the head of Lake George. He had previously dispatched Brigadier Prideaux with five thousand regulars and provincials to reduce Niagara, and Brigadier Stanwix, who had been of Bradstreet’s party the year before, to succor Pittsburg, now in imminent danger from French bush-rangers and Indians who were swarming at Presque Isle, Le Bœuf, and Venango.

Amherst himself moved slowly, it being July 21 before the army started northward upon the lake. Bourlamaque, whose sole purpose was to delay the British advance, lay at Ticonderoga with thirty-five hundred men, but on the twenty-sixth he blew up the fort and retreated in good order to Crown Point. On the British approaching that post he again fell back, this time to a strong position at Isle aux Noix, at the outlet of Lake Champlain, where, wrote Bourlamaque to a friend, “we are entrenched to the teeth, and armed with a hundred pieces of cannon.”[36] Amherst now deeming vessels essential, yet lacking ship-carpenters, it was the middle of September before his little navy was ready, and then he thought the season too far advanced for further operations.[37] Amherst’s advance had, however, induced Montcalm to defend Montreal, Lévis having been dispatched thither for this purpose.

Prideaux, advancing up the Mohawk, proceeded to Oswego, where he left half of his men to cover his retreat, and then sailed to Niagara. Slain by accident during the siege, his place was taken by Sir William Johnson, the Indian commander, who pushed the work with vigor. Suddenly confronted by a French force of thirteen hundred rangers and savages from the West, who had been deflected thither from a proposed attack on Pittsburg, with the view of recovering that fort, Johnson completely vanquished them (July 24). The discomfited crew burned their posts in that region and retreated precipitately to Detroit. The following day Niagara surrendered, and thus, with Pittsburg also saved, the West was entirely cut off from Canada, and the upper Ohio Valley was placed in British hands. The work of Stanwix having been accomplished by Johnson, the former, who had been greatly delayed by transport difficulties, advanced as promptly as possible to the Forks of the Ohio, and in the place of the old French works built the modernized stronghold of Fort Pitt.[38]

On August 20, Wolfe fell seriously ill. Both he and the army were discouraged. The casualties had thus far been over eight hundred men, and disease had cut a wide swath through the ranks. Desperate, he at last accepted the counsel of his officers, that a landing be attempted above the town, supplies definitively cut off from Montreal, and Montcalm forced to fight or surrender. From September 3 to 12, Wolfe, arisen from his bed but still weak, quietly withdrew his troops from the Montmorenci camp and transported them in vessels which successfully passed through a heavy cannonading from the fort to safe anchorage in the upper basin. Reinforcements marching along the southern bank, from Point Lévis, soon joined their comrades aboard the ships. For several days this portion of the fleet regularly floated up and down the river above Quebec, with the changing tide, thus wearing out Bougainville’s men, who in great perplexity followed the enemy along the cliff-tops, through a beat of several leagues, until from sheer exhaustion they at last became careless.

On the evening of September 12, Saunders--whose admirable handling of the fleet deserves equal recognition with the services of Wolfe--commenced a heavy bombardment of the Beauport lines, and feigned a general landing at that place. Montcalm, not knowing that the majority of the British were by this time above the town, and deceived as to his enemy’s real intent, hurried to Beauport the bulk of his troops, save those necessary for Bougainville’s rear guard. Meanwhile, however, Wolfe was preparing for his desperate attempt several miles up the river.

Before daylight the following morning (September 13), thirty boats containing seventeen hundred picked men, with Wolfe at their head, floated down the stream under the dark shadow of the apparently insurmountable cliffs. They were challenged by sentinels along the shore; but, by pretending to be a provision convoy which had been expected from up-country, suspicion was disarmed. About two miles above Quebec they landed at an indentation then known as Anse du Foulon, but now called Wolfe’s Cove. From the narrow beach a small, winding path, sighted by Wolfe two days before, led up through the trees and underbrush to the Plains of Abraham. The climbing party of twenty-four infantrymen found the path obstructed by an abatis and trenches; but, nothing daunted, they clambered up the height of two hundred feet by the aid of stunted shrubs, reached the top, overcame the weak and cowardly guard of a hundred men, made way for their comrades, and by sunrise forty-five hundred men of the British army were drawn up across the plateau before the walls of Quebec.[39]

Montcalm, ten miles away on the other side of the St. Charles, was amazed at the daring feat, but by nine o’clock had massed his troops and confronted his enemy. The battle was brief but desperate. The intrepid Wolfe fell on the field--“the only British general,” declared Horace Walpole, “belonging to the reign of George the Second who can be said to have earned a lasting reputation.”[40] Montcalm, mortally wounded, was carried by his fleeing comrades within the city, where he died before morning. During the seven hours’ battle the British had lost forty-eight killed and five hundred and ninety-seven wounded, about twenty per cent. of the firing-line; the French lost about twelve hundred killed, wounded, and prisoners, of whom perhaps a fourth were killed.[41]

Tom by disorder, the militia mutinous, the walls in ruins from the cannonading of the British fleet, and Vaudreuil and his fellows fleeing to the interior, the helpless garrison of Quebec surrendered, September 17, the British troops entering the following day. The English flag now floated over the citadel, and soon there was great rejoicing throughout Great Britain and her American colonies; and well there might be, for the affair on the Plains of Abraham was one of the most heroic and far-reaching achievements ever wrought by Englishmen in any land or sea.

SYNOPSIS OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS, CHIEFLY MILITARY, BETWEEN THE CAPTURE OF QUEBEC, 1759, AND THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL, 1775

1760. Accession of George III. to throne of England. The English capture Montreal.

1761. American commerce and industry closely restricted by enforcement of navigation laws, acts of trade, and writs of assistance. Protests of James Otis and Patrick Henry.

1762. England declares war against Spain and captures Havana.

1763. Treaty of Paris, and cession of Canada to England.

1765. Passage of the Stamp Act by the British Parliament, followed by American protests.

1766. Repeal of the Stamp Act.

1767. The British Parliament, by the Townshend Acts, imposes duties on paper, glass, tea, etc., imported into America.

1769. Massachusetts House of Representatives refuses to pay for quartering British troops. Defeat of Paoli and subjection of Corsica by the French.

1770. “Boston Massacre”--British soldiers, provoked by citizens, kill three and wound several.

1772. First partition of Poland between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Samuel Adams actively advocates independence in Boston. British ship, the _Gaspee_, burned by Rhode Islanders. Virginia Assembly appoints Committee of Correspondence to keep in touch with other colonies.

1773. “Boston Tea-party”--taxed tea from England thrown overboard in Boston harbor by disguised Americans.

1774. Five oppressive Acts, including Boston Port Bill, passed by British Parliament. General Gage, commissioned as Governor, comes to Boston with additional British troops. A Congress meets in Philadelphia, with delegates from all colonies except Georgia, and issues a “Declaration of Rights,” frames Articles of Association, and indorses opposition of Massachusetts to the Oppressive Acts of Parliament.

1775. General Gage sends troops to destroy supplies gathered at Concord. Battles of Lexington and Concord. North Carolina the first to instruct delegates to Congress for independence. Battle of Bunker Hill. Seizure of Ticonderoga and occupation of Crown Point by Americans. Washington takes command of the army at Cambridge. The Americans capture Montreal. Arnold repulsed at Quebec and Montgomery killed.

VI

CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

I

Not a clause in the Declaration of Independence sets forth the real and underlying cause of the American Revolution. The attention of its writer was bent upon recent events, and he dwelt only upon the immediate reasons for throwing off allegiance to the British government. In the dark of the storm already upon them, the men of the time could hardly look with clear vision back to ultimate causes. They could not see that the English kings had planted the seeds of the Revolution when, in their zeal to get America colonized, they had granted such political and religious privileges as tempted the radicals and dissenters of the time to migrate to America. Only historical research could reveal the fact that from the year 1620 the English government had been systematically stocking the colonies with dissenters and retaining in England the conformers. The tendency of colonization was to leave the conservatives in England, thus relatively increasing the conservative force at home, while the radicals went to America to fortify the radical political philosophy there. Thus England lost part of her potentiality for political development.

Not only were radicals constantly settling in the colonies, because of the privileges granted them there, but the Crown neglected to enforce in the colonies the same regulations that it enforced at home. The Act of Uniformity was not extended to the colonies, though rigidly enforced in England; the viceregal officers, the governors, permitted themselves again and again to be browbeaten and disobeyed by the colonial legislatures;[42] and even the king himself had allowed Massachusetts (1635) to overreach him by not giving up her charter.[43]

After a century of great laxity toward the colonies--a century in which the colonists were favored by political privileges shared by no other people of that age; after the environment had established new social conditions, and remoteness and isolation had created a local and individual hatred of restraint; after the absence of traditions had made possible the institution of representation by population, and self-government had taken on a new meaning in the world; after a great gulf had been fixed between the social, political, and economic institutions of the two parts of the British empire--only then did the British government enter upon a policy intended to make the empire a unity.[44]

Independence had long existed in spirit in most of the essential matters of colonial life, and the British government had only to seek to establish its power over the colonies in order to arouse a desire for formal independence. The transition in England, therefore, to an imperial ideal, about the middle of the eighteenth century, doubtless caused the rending of the empire. Walpole and Newcastle, whose administrations had just preceded the reign of George III., had let the colonies alone, and thus aided the colonial at the expense of the imperial idea; while their successors, Grenville and Townshend, ruling not wisely but too well, forced the colonists to realize that they cared more for America than for England.

The time had come, though these ministers failed to see it, when the union of Great Britain with her colonies depended on the offspring’s disposition toward the mother-country. Good feeling would preserve the union, but dissatisfaction would make even forcible control impossible. Social and political and economic ties still bound the colonists to the home land, but these were weak ties as compared with an irrepressible desire for self-growth. The expression of their political ideals unrestrained by the conservatism of the parent was a desired end to which they strove, almost unconscious of their object.

To understand the American Revolution, therefore, several facts must be clearly in mind--first, that Great Britain had for one hundred and fifty years been growing to the dignity of an empire, and that the thirteen colonies were a considerable part of that empire; second, the colonies had interests of their own which were not favored by the growing size and strength of the empire. They were advancing to new political ideals faster than the mother-country. Their economic interests were becoming differentiated from those of England. They were coming to have wants and ambitions and hopes of their own quite distinct from those of Great Britain.

At the fatal time when the independent spirit of America had grown assertive, the politically active part of the British people began unconsciously to favor an imperial policy, which their ministers suggested, and which to them seemed the very essence of sound reasoning and good government. They approved of the proposed creation of executives who should be independent of the dictation of the colonial assemblies. There were also to be new administrative organs having power to enforce the colonial trade regulations; and the defensive system of the colonies was to be improved by a force of regular troops, which was in part to be supported by colonial taxes.

In order to accomplish these objects, the king’s new minister, the assiduous Grenville, who knew the law better than the maxims of statesmanship, induced Parliament, in March, 1764, to resolve upon “certain stamp duties” for the colonies. A year later the “Gentle Shepherd,” as Pitt had dubbed him, proved his watchfulness by getting a stamp act passed,[45] which, though nearly a duplicate of one in force in England, and like one of Massachusetts’ own laws, nevertheless aroused every colony to violent wrath.

This sudden flame of colonial passion rose from the embers of discontent with Grenville’s policy of enforcing the trade or navigation laws--those restrictions upon colonial industries and commerce which were the outgrowth of a protective commercial policy which England had begun even before the discovery of America.[46] As the colonies grew they began to be regarded as a source of wealth to the mother-country; and, at the same time that bounties were given them for raising commodities desired by England, restrictions were placed upon American trade.[47] When the settlers of the northern and middle colonies began manufacturing for themselves, their industry no sooner interfered with English manufactures than a law was passed to prevent the exportation of the production and to limit the industry itself. This system of restrictions, though it necessarily established a real opposition of interest between America and England, does not seem on the whole to have been to the disadvantage of the colonies;[48] nor was the English colonial system a whit more severe than that of other European countries.

In 1733, however, the Molasses Act went into effect,[49] and, had it been enforced, would have been a serious detriment to American interests. It not only aimed to stop the thriving colonial trade with the Dutch, French, and Spanish West Indies, but was intended to aid English planters in the British West Indies by laying a prohibitive duty on imported foreign sugar and molasses. It was not enforced, however, for the customs officials, by giving fraudulent clearances, acted in collusion with the colonial importers in evading the law; but, in 1761, during the war with France, the thrifty colonists carried on an illegal trade with the enemy, and Pitt demanded that the restrictive laws be enforced.

The difficulty of enforcing was great, for it was hard to seize the smuggled goods, and harder still to convict the smuggler in the colonial courts. Search-warrants were impracticable, because the legal manner of using them made the informer’s name public, and the law was unable to protect him from the anger of a community fully in sympathy with the smugglers. The only feasible way to put down this unpatriotic trade with the enemy was to resort to “writs of assistance,” which would give the customs officers a right to search for smuggled goods in any house they pleased.[50] Such warrants were legal, had been used in America, and were frequently used in England;[51] yet so highly developed was the American love of personal liberty that when James Otis, a Boston lawyer, resisted by an impassioned speech the issue of such writs his arguments met universal approval.[52] In perfect good faith he argued, after the manner of the ancient law-writers, that Parliament could not legalize tyranny, ignoring the historical fact that since the revolution of 1688 an act of Parliament was the highest guarantee of right, and Parliament the sovereign and supreme power. Nevertheless, the popularity of Otis’ argument showed what America believed, and pointed very plainly the path of wise statesmanship.

When, in 1763, the Pontiac Indian rebellion endangered the whole West and made necessary a force of soldiers in Canada, Grenville, in spite of the recent warning, determined that the colonies should share the burden which was rapidly increasing in England. He lowered the sugar and molasses duties,[53] and set out to enforce their collection by every lawful means. The trouble which resulted developed more quickly in Massachusetts, because its harsh climate and sterile soil drove it to a carrying-trade, and the enforced navigation laws were thought to threaten its ruin. It was while American economic affairs were in this condition that Grenville rashly aggravated the discontent by the passage of his Stamp Act.

As the resistance of the colonies to this taxation led straight to open war and final independence, it will be worth while to look rather closely at the stamp tax, and at the subject of representation, which was at once linked with it. The terms of the Stamp Act are not of great importance, because, though it did have at least one bad feature as a law, the whole opposition was on the ground that there should be no taxation whatever without representation. It made no difference to its enemies that the money obtained by the sale of stamps was to stay in America to support the soldiers needed for colonial protection. Nothing would appease them while the taxing body contained no representatives of their own choosing.

To attain this right, they made their fight upon legal and historical grounds--the least favorable they could have chosen. They declared that, under the British constitution, there could be no taxation except by persons known and voted for by the persons taxed. The wisest men seemed not to see the kernel of the dispute. A very real danger threatened the colonies--subject as they were to a body unsympathetic with the political and economic conditions in which they were living--but they had no legal safeguard.[54] They must either sever the existing constitutional bond or get Parliament of its own will to limit its power over the colonies. All unwittingly the opponents of the Stamp Act were struggling with a problem that could be solved only by revolution.

Two great fundamental questions were at issue: Should there be a British empire ruled by Parliament in all its parts, either in England or oversea? or should Parliament govern at home, and the colonial assemblies in America, with only a federal bond to unite them? Should the English understanding of representation be imposed upon the colonies? or should America’s institution triumph in its own home? If there was to be a successful imperial system, Parliament must have the power to tax all parts of the empire. It was of no use to plead that Parliament had never taxed the colonies before, for, as Doctor Johnson wrote, “We do not put a calf into the plough: we wait till it is an ox.”[55] The colonies were strong enough to stand taxation now, and the reasonable dispute must be as to the manner of it. To understand the widely different points of view of Englishmen and Americans, we must examine their systems of representative government.

In electing members to the House of Commons in England certain ancient counties and boroughs were entitled to representation, each sending two members, regardless of the number of people within its territory. For a century and a half before the American Revolution only four new members were added to the fixed number in Parliament. Meanwhile, great cities had grown up which had no representation, though certain boroughs, once very properly represented, had become uninhabited, and the lord who owned the ground elected the members to Parliament, taking them, not from the district represented, but from any part of the kingdom. The franchise was usually possessed either by the owners of the favored pieces of land or in the boroughs chiefly by persons who inherited certain rights which marked them as freemen. A man had as many votes as there were constituencies in which he possessed the qualifications.

In the colonial assemblies there was a more distinct territorial basis for representation, and changes of population brought changes of representation. New towns sent new members to the provincial assembly, and held the right to be of great value. All adult men--even negroes in New England--owning a certain small amount of property could vote for these members. In the South only the landholders voted, but the supply of land was not limited, as in England, and it was easily acquired. Finally, the voter and the representative voted for must, as a rule, be residents of the same district. From the first the colonial political ideals were affected by new conditions. When they established representative government they had no historic places sanctified by tradition to be the sole breeding-places of members of Parliament.

Backed by such divergent traditions as these, the two parts of the British empire, or, more accurately, the dominant party in each section of the empire, faced each other upon a question of principle. Neither could believe in the honesty of the other, for each argued out of a different past. The opponents of the Stamp Act could not understand the political thinking which held them to be represented in the British Parliament. “No taxation without representation” meant for the colonist that taxes ought to be levied by a legislative body in which was seated a person known and voted for by the person taxed. An Englishman only asked that there be “no taxation except that voted by the House of Commons.” He was not concerned with the mode of election to that house or the interests of the persons composing it. The colonists called the Stamp Act tyranny, but the British government certainly intended none, for it acted upon the theory of virtual representation, the only kind of representation enjoyed by the great mass of Englishmen either at home or in the colonies. On that theory nothing was taxed except by the consent of the virtual representatives of those taxed. But, replied an American, in England the interests of electors and non-electors are the same. Security against any oppression of non-electors lies in the fact that it would be oppressive to electors also; but Americans have no such safeguard, for acts oppressive to them might be popular with English electors.[56]

When the news of the Stamp Act first came oversea there was apparent apathy. The day of enforcement was six months away, and there was nothing to oppose but a law. It was the fitting time for an agitator. Patrick Henry, a gay, unprosperous, and unknown country lawyer, had been carried into the Virginia House of Burgesses on the public approval of his impassioned denial, in the “Parson’s Cause” (1763), of the king’s right to veto a needed law passed by the colonial legislature. He now offered some resolutions against the stamp tax, denying the right of Parliament to legislate in the internal affairs of the colony.[57] This “alarum bell to the disaffected,” and the fiery speech which secured its adoption by an irresolute assembly, were applauded everywhere. Jefferson said of Henry, that he “spoke as Homer wrote.”

As soon as the names of the appointed stamp-distributers were made known (August 1, 1765) the masses expressed their displeasure in a way unfortunately too common in America. Throughout the land there was rifling of stamp-collectors’ houses, threatening their lives, burning their records and documents, and even their houses. Their offices were demolished and their resignations compelled--in one case under a hanging effigy, suggestive of the result of refusal. The more moderate patriots cancelled their orders with British merchants, agreed not to remit their English debts, and dressed in homespun to avoid wearing imported clothes.

On the morning that the act went into effect (November 1, 1765) bells tolled the death of the nation. Shops were shut, flags hung at half-mast, and newspapers appeared with a death’s-head where the stamp should have been. Mobs burned the stamps, and none were to be had to legalize even the most solemn and important papers. The courts ignored them and the governors sanctioned their omission. None could be used, because none could be obtained. All America endorsed the declaration of rights of the Stamp-Act Congress, which met in New York, October, 1765. It asserted that the colonists had the same liberties as British subjects. Circumstances, they declared, prevented the colonists from being represented in the House of Commons, therefore no taxes could be levied except by their respective legislatures.[58]

This great ado was a complete surprise to the British government. On the passage of the Stamp Act, Walpole had written,[59] “There has been nothing of note in Parliament but one slight day on the American taxes.” That expressed the common conception of its importance; and when the Grenville ministry fell (July, 1765), and was succeeded by that of Rockingham, the American situation had absolutely nothing to do with the change. The new ministry was some months in deciding its policy. The king was one of the first to realize the situation, which he declared “the most serious that ever came before Parliament” (December 5, 1765). Weak and unwilling to act as the new ministry was, the situation compelled attention. The king at first favored coercion of the rebellious colonies, but the English merchants, suffering from the suspended trade, urged Parliament to repeal the act. Their demand decided the ministry to favor retraction, just as formerly their influence had forced the navigation laws and the restrictions on colonial manufactures. If the king and landed gentry were responsible for the immediate causes of the Revolution, the influence of the English commercial classes on legislation was the more ultimate cause.

After one of the longest and most heated debates in the history of Parliament, under the advice of Benjamin Franklin, given at the bar of the House of Commons,[60] and with the powerful aid of Pitt and Camden, the Stamp Act was repealed. Another act passed at the same time asserted Parliament’s power to legislate for the colonies in all cases whatsoever.[61] Thus the firebrand was left smouldering amid the inflammable colonial affairs; and Burke was quick to point out that the right to tax, or any other right insisted upon after it ceased to harmonize with prudence and expediency, would lead to disaster.[62]

It is plain to-day that the only way to keep up the nominal union between Great Britain and her colonies was to let them alone. The colonies felt strongly the ties of blood, interest, and affection which bound them to England.[63] They would all have vowed, after the repeal of the Stamp Act, that they loved their parent much more than they loved one another. They felt only the normal adult instinct to act independently. Could the British government have given up the imperial idea to which it so tenaciously clung, a federal union might have been preserved.

The genius of dissolution, however, gained control of the ministry which next came into power. When illness withdrew Pitt from the “Mosaic Ministry,” which he and Grafton had formed, Townshend’s brilliant talents gave him the unquestioned lead. This man, who is said to have surpassed Burke in wit and Chatham in solid sense, determined to try again to tax the colonies for imperial purposes.[64] He ridiculed the distinction between external and internal tax; but since the colonists had put stress on the illegality of the latter he laid the new tax on imported articles, and prepared to collect at the customhouses. The income was to pay the salaries of colonial governors and judges, and thus render them independent of the tyrannical and contentious assemblies. Writs of assistance, so effective in enforcing the revenue laws but so hated by the colonists, were legalized. The collection of the revenue was further aided by admiralty courts, which should try the cases without juries, thus preventing local sympathy from shielding the violators of the law.[65]

All the indifference into which America had relapsed, and which the agitators so much deplored, at once disappeared. The right of trial by jury was held to be inalienable. The control of the judiciary and executive by the people was necessary to free government, asserted the pamphleteers. Parliament could not legalize “writs of assistance,” they rashly cried. The former stickling at an internal tax was forgotten, and they objected to any tax whatever--a more logical position, which John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, supported by the assertion “that any law, in so far as it creates expense, is in reality a tax.” Samuel Adams drew up a circular letter, which the Massachusetts assembly dispatched to the other colonial assemblies, urging concerted action against this new attack on colonial liberties.[66] The British government, through the colonial governors, attempted to squelch this letter, but the Massachusetts assembly refused to rescind, and the other colonies were quick to embrace its cause.

Signs were not wanting that the people as well as the political leaders were aroused. When the customs officials, in 1768, seized John Hancock’s sloop _Liberty_ for alleged evasion of the customs duties, there was a riot which so frightened the officers that they fled to the fort and wrote to England for soldiers.

This and other acts of resistance to the government led Parliament to urge the king to exercise a right given him by an ancient act to cause persons charged with treason to be brought to England for trial. The Virginia assembly protested against this, and sent their protest to the other colonies for approval.[67] The governor dissolved the assembly, but it met and voted a non-importation agreement, which also met favor in the other colonies. This economic argument again proved effective, and the Townshend measures were repealed, except the tax on tea; Parliament thus doing everything but remove the offence--“fixing a badge of slavery upon the Americans without service to their masters.”[68] The old trade regulations also remained to vex the colonists.

In order that no disproportionate blame may be attached to the king or his ministry for the bringing on of the Revolution, it must be noted that the English nation, the Parliament, and the king were all agreed when the sugar and stamp acts were passed; and though Parliament mustered a good-sized minority against the Townshend acts, nevertheless no unaccustomed influence in its favor was used by the king. Thus the elements of the cloud were all gathered before the king’s personality began to intensify the oncoming storm. The later acts of Parliament and the conduct of the king had the sole purpose of overcoming resistance to established government. Most of these coercive acts, though no part of the original policy, were perfectly constitutional even in times of peace. They must be considered in their historical setting, however, just as President Lincoln’s extraordinary acts in a time of like national peril. Henceforth we are dealing with the natural, though perhaps ill-judged, efforts of a government to repress a rebellion.

After the riot which followed the seizure of the _Liberty_ (June, 1768), two regiments of British soldiers were stationed in Boston. The very inadequacy of the force made its relations with the citizens strained, for they resented without fearing it. After enduring months of jeering and vilification, the soldiers at last (March 5, 1770) fired upon a threatening mob, and four men were killed. Much was made of the “massacre,” as it was called, because it symbolized for the people the substitution of military for civil government. A Boston jury acquitted the soldiers, and, after a town-meeting, the removal of the two regiments was secured.