THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC 637 more than one-third of the total, they provided about seven-tenths of all colonial troops.1 66 It seemed evident, then, that the defence of the colonies must depend upon the energy and initiative of the mother country, and that for this purpose a standing army must be kept in America. It was decided, therefore, to maintain twenty battalions (10,000 men) in that service. The mother country was to pay the whole expense of this establishment for the first year. After that, it was understood, the cost of the army was to be paid, in part at least, by the colonies it was intended to protect, as is reasonable" was the comment of Edmund Burke. Such a step was regarded by Benjamin Franklin also at this time as reasonable and, indeed, desirable. He saw in the possible establishment by Parliament of "some revenue arising out of the American trade to be applied towards supporting troops" in America a source of protection from foreign enemies and internal disorder "without the expense and trouble of a militia". The proposed establishment had indeed been denounced by Burke and the Opposition as excessive and unnecessary. But they were silenced by Pitt, and the measure passed the House of Commons in March 1763. It was, in truth, a small Enough force for guarding an Empire which now extended from the Bahamas to Tobago, and from Pensacola to Quebec, apart altogether from the task of garrisoning the chain of forts which stretched along a line of 3000 miles from the St Lawrence to the Mississippi. The distribution of troops on the continent had been entrusted to General Amherst, who had been appointed to the American command by Pitt. He had divided them among the frontier forts, of which the most western centres were Niagara, Detroit, commanding the passage from Lake Erie to Lake Huron, and Pittsburg. Detachments from these centres garrisoned the smaller forts. Michillimackinac (Macinac) commanded communications between Lakes Huron and Michigan. Fort St Joseph, near the foot of the latter lake, Fort Ouatanon, on the Wabash River, and Fort Miami, on the Maumee, were links in the chain between the southern points of Lake Michigan and Lake Erie. Thence, along the southern shore of Lake Erie to Niagara, the line was held by the Forts Sandusky, Le Bœuf and Presqu'ile. On the line from Pennsylvania to the Ohio stood Forts Cumberland, Bedford, Ligonier and Pitt, whilst northwards to Niagara Fort Venango linked Forts Pitt and Presqu'ile. This arrangement proved very expensive on account of the cost of transporting supplies through the wilderness. But Amherst defended his dispositions on the ground that these scattered and · advanced posts would encourage settlers to occupy the frontier in their vicinity and so act as a barrier against the French and Spaniards. The need for maintaining a regular army in America was amply 1 Cf. Beer, G. L., Brit. Col. Policy, p. 68. 3 Franklin, B., Works, iv, 89. demonstrated in this very year, 1763. After the fall of Montreal, the Indians had appeared to acquiesce in the handing over of the French posts on the Great Lakes and at the back of Canada, and even in the transference of the whole country, which they regarded as their own, to another white nation without their being consulted. But the smouldering fires of discontent lit by this grievance were fanned by the French traders and agents who lived amongst them, and at length burst out into flames. Under the leadership of an Ottawa chief named Pontiac, a confederation of all the Indian tribes from Michigan to Mobile was formed, on a grander and more successful scale than that which had desolated Carolina in 1715. The Six Nations, indeed, under the influence of Sir William Johnson, for the most part remained loyal. But the Senecas joined the confederacy. Pontiac planned a simultaneous attack upon the whole line of forts in the hope of driving the British into the sea.1 Nor was the design without some prospect of success. For those distant forts, isolated in the frontier-wildernesses, were now garrisoned by the wretched remnants of a motley regiment, who were left, as had so often been the case with colonial garrisons, short of clothes, provisions, arms and pay. On 10 May the Indians under Pontiac suddenly attacked Fort Detroit. It was gallantly defended by Captain Gladwyn. But before the middle of June all the other posts above mentioned, except those between Pennsylvania and the Ohio, had been captured and their garrisons massacred. All those settlers who escaped torture and death fled in panic. Their farms were laid waste. Only the few thinly garrisoned forts from Niagara to Pittsburg and Detroit, tenaciously blockaded, saved Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia from devastation. After some delay, Amherst organised a relieving column to march under the command of Colonel Bouquet along the line of these forts. Being in great straits for want of regular troops, he applied to Pennsylvania for help. The Quaker province refused to provide a man. Nor would the refugee settlers themselves take arms to defend the forts or face the Indians. Of the 500 regular troops who set out under Bouquet, no fewer than sixty were Highlanders who ought to have been in hospital. Too weak to march, they were carried in waggons to reinforce the garrisons on the way. It was with this force, augmented by a few backwoodsmen, that Bouquet, after a long march, fought a desperate battle with the Indians near a stream called Bushey's Run, some twenty miles from Fort Ligonier. The heroic endurance and disciplined steadiness of his troops, combined with a stratagem inspired by his experience of Indian warfare, at last enabled him, after twenty-four hours of critical fighting, to put the enemy to flight (6 August 1763). Amherst, after again appealing to the Americans to call up local 1 See Parkman, F., Conspiracy of Pontiac. 2 Fortescue, J. W., Hist. of the British Army, III, 13. NEED OF A STANDING ARMY 639 levies for their own defence, returned to England, leaving the final suppression of the rising to his successor, General Gage. The Virginian militia had already taken the field; but the New England colonies evinced extreme reluctance to comply with Amherst's appeal for aid. Everywhere there was evasion or delay. New Jersey and New York, whose frontiers were being ravaged by the Senecas, stipulated that two-thirds of their men should be employed on their own borders. Massachusetts and Connecticut made similar conditions. The Quaker Assembly of Philadelphia refused to vote its contingent until a body of Pennsylvanian borderers marching upon Philadelphia compelled it, after first calling upon the King's troops for protection against its own people, to consent to take steps to defend them. When raised, 300 of the Pennsylvanian contingent deserted within a month. But at length, after a war of extreme horror lasting fourteen months, the confederacy was shattered by columns operating under Colonels Bradstreet and Bouquet, and peace was signed in September 1764. The brunt of this arduous warfare was borne by British troops. The reluctance of the colonists to co-operate or even to contribute men for their own preservation had again been clearly demonstrated. But the problem of imperial defence was not confined to danger from the Indians. France, it was thought, would endeavour to regain Canada, and might be helped by an insurrection of her former subjects. In any such war the presence of British troops in America would prove a vital factor. Otherwise French forces massed in the West Indies might be moved to the continent, whilst the arrival of transports from distant England would be left to the hazard of the winds and waves. Moreover, the Spaniards still held New Orleans and the Mississippi. A standing army, then, was to be kept in America. There remained the problem of paying for its maintenance. Great Britain had been left with an enormous bill of costs to pay. Her debt was double what it had been before the war, and now amounted to over £130,000,000. She was faced, too, with the prospect of greatly increased expenditure in holding and settling her new possessions all over the world. The land tax stood at four shillings in the pound. Since, in America, the advantages to be derived from this great imperial expenditure would to a large extent accrue to the colonies, it was generally agreed that they ought to shoulder some part of the financial burden now laid upon the mother country. It was in these circumstances that Bute's Government had begun to contemplate a change in colonial administration, which should include the establishment in America of a uniform system of government, and of regular troops supported by taxes levied in the colonies by Act of Parliament.1 When Bute suddenly insisted upon resigning after peace was made, the direction of affairs passed into the hands of three men, popularly 1 Knox, W., Extra-Official Papers (1789), 11, 29. designated "The Triumvirate". These were George Grenville, First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom Bute had named as his successor, Lord Egremont and Lord Halifax, Secretaries of State (April 1763). During his brief Presidency of the Board of Trade, Charles Townshend had proposed a scheme for taxing the colonies by the authority of Parliament. In this he was following the policy of Halifax, who had suggested the imposition of a stamp tax to Pitt,1 and he was strongly supported by Lord Mansfield and George Grenville. Townshend, however, resigned before he could proceed with his measure in the House (March 1763). To Lord Shelburne, who succeeded him as President of the Board of Trade and Plantations, Egremont now addressed three questions on behalf of the Government (5 May 1763): (1) What new governments should be established in North America, and in what form, etc.? (2) What military establishment would be sufficient? and (3) In what way, least burthensome and most palatable to the colonies, could they contribute towards the additional expense which must attend their civil and military establishments upon the arrangements to be proposed? The expediency of such contribution, it will be observed, was assumed. In considering the first question, Lord Egremont laid stress upon the importance of deciding two points: "By what regulations the most extensive commercial advantages may be derived from those cessions, and how those advantages may be rendered most permanent and secure to His Majesty's trading subjects?" The newly acquired territory in America had been divided in the past into three districts. To the north lay Canada with some 70,000 French inhabitants; at the extreme south were the Floridas, the land along the Gulf of Mexico, with a few Spaniards living in small and unimportant villages. Between these stretched an immense wilderness around the Great Lakes and in the eastern half of the Mississippi Valley, the home of Indians, wherein were only a few small French settlements such as Detroit and Kaskaskia. It was evidently understood that these districts, so different in themselves, would require different treatment. The representation of the Board of Trade in answer to Egremont's enquiries was dated 8 June 1763. Shelburne proposed that three new colonial governments should be formed. One was to consist of the newly acquired islands in the West Indies, the others of Florida and the province of Quebec. The question of what to do with the region west of the mountains was complicated by Indian rights and rival colonial claims. The opening of that territory for settlement had been deferred during the war. For not only was it a question which must be decided in connection with the rights and protection of the Indians, but the Imperial Government very properly held, then as on future occasions, that land speculation on debatable borders was not permissible in time of war. Not a little 1 Williams, Basil, Life of William Pitt, 1, 299. THE PROCLAMATION OF 1763 641 to the disgust of speculators in furs and lands, colonial governors were instructed in 1761 to prohibit all land purchases beyond the Alleghany Mountains. Several colonies, however, including Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia and North Carolina, had received by royal grants extensive titles reaching to the Pacific, and their citizens were looking forward to immensely profitable developments in that direction. Other colonies, on the other hand, such as Pennsylvania, whose western boundaries were defined, held now that the trans-Appalachian region having been conquered by the imperial army, its ownership was vested in the Crown. Regarding the protection of the Indians as an imperial trust, Shelburne proposed to reserve "a large tract of country round the Great Lakes as an Indian country, open to trade, but not to grants and settlements", and that the governors of the existing colonies should be instructed not to make any new grants of lands beyond certain fixed limits. The boundary between the Indian hunting grounds and the region open to immediate settlement should be determined by the superintendents of Indian affairs, who were to satisfy the Virginians by immediately opening for occupation the lands in the upper Ohio Valley. The protection of the vast territory west of the Appalachian Mountains and the Great Lakes was to be secured by the existing forts and such garrisons as the commander-in-chief might find necessary. The proposed restriction of the bounds of Canada so as not to include the newly acquired western territory Shelburne deemed desirable, because it would prevent settlers from moving to remote places where "they neither could be so conveniently made amenable to the jurisdiction of any colony nor made subservient to the interest of the trade and commerce of this kingdom by an easy communication with and vicinity to the great River of St Lawrence". As to contributions from the colonies towards the expense of their civil and military establishment, "on this point of the highest importance" the Board of Trade declined to give an opinion on the information then at its disposal. Shelburne soon found himself in disagreement with his colleagues not only as to taxing the colonies, but also as to the conduct of colonial business and the arrest of Wilkes. When, upon the death of Egremont, an attempt was made to induce Pitt to join the ministry, Shelburne acted as intermediary. The negotiations failed. Shelburne resigned and, enlisting under the banner of Pitt, became the most intimate and weighty of his supporters. He was succeeded at the Board of Trade by Lord Hillsborough. The Duke of Bedford joined the Government, and a mixed ministry of Whigs was formed of his followers and those of Grenville, with Lord Halifax and Lord Sandwich as Secretaries of State (September 1763). So it came about that the famous Proclamation of 7 October 1763, which was founded CHBEI 41 |