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THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS

679

relations with Great Britain. By thus assuming legislative functions and arrogating to itself the right to compel citizens to obey its decrees, Congress was beginning to act as though it were a legal national Convention. Loyalists, with reason, recognised in this act an usurpation and the threat of a republic.1 From this moment their numbers increased; many of the moderate patriots, like Dickinson, joined them, breaking away from the extremists. They criticised freely the acts and tendencies of Congress. Separation, they foresaw, must be the result; and that, they foretold with accuracy, would end not only in war with Great Britain, but in civil wars, in anarchy and mob rule, and financial chaos. They protested; and the patriots answered by suppressing freedom of speech, and driving many of them from their farms and from the country.

Probably many of those who voted for these measures of Congress did not perceive their full significance, and believed that Great Britain would yield to threats and demonstrations of force, as she had yielded before, first over the question of governors' salaries, then over the Stamp Act, and lastly over the Townshend duties. Only so, can their protestations of allegiance to the Crown be reconciled with their actions; only so, and by realising that in many minds union with Great Britain had come to mean independence within the Empire, with the King for head. They had read by this time Jefferson's Summary View, in which he described the King as "the Chief Magistrate of the Empire", claimed free trade as a natural right, and denied the legislative supremacy of Parliament. All the Acts which it had imposed upon the colonists were therefore null and void. Thus the argument reached the last stage but one. To the King himself, the reverse side of the medal alone was visible. "All men", he wrote at this time to Lord North, "seem now to feel that the fatal compliance in 1766 has encouraged the Americans annually to increase their pretensions to that independency which one state has of another, but which is quite subversive of the obedience which a colony owes to its mother country." And on 18 November he wrote to Lord North "The New England Governments are in rebellion.... Blows must decide".

Congress broke up on 29 October after appointing 10 May for its next meeting. Whilst it was sitting, Massachusetts had taken a further step. The spirit displayed by the Assembly had left Gage no choice but to dissolve it. He issued writs for another to meet at Salem; then, finding that so many of the councillors had been forced to resign, he countermanded them. But the delegates met none the less (5 October). Calling themselves a Provincial Congress, they began to act as a revolutionary government. A "Committee of Safety" was appointed from their number. They denounced the

1 The Congress canvassed (1774), p. 14.

2 A Summary View of the Rights of British America, Williamsburg, 1774.

steps taken by Gage to fortify Boston against attacks from the mainland, and at the same time justified him by issuing bills of credit, calling upon the people to arm and drill, and by taking steps to accumulate military stores at Concord, and to secure the aid of the Mohawks.1 A company was recruited from the Stockbridge Indians. The other colonies followed their example and began to arm.

In England a new Parliament met on 1 November 1774. The elections had shown that the feeling of the country was clearly on the side of the ministry. Conciliation, it was felt, had been tried and had failed; the rebellious spirit of Massachusetts must be quelled. The challenge from America to the supremacy of Parliament was indeed too definite to have any other possible reaction. As the King was opposed to any further negotiation, North brought in further coercive measures. The military forces were to be strengthened and all the colonies except New York, Delaware, Georgia and North Carolina were cut off from the use of the fisheries and trade with Great Britain. All who resisted were proclaimed rebels and traitors. In the House of Lords (1 February 1775), Chatham continued his championship of the American cause. He brought in a bill which, whilst affirming the right of Parliament to control trade and quarter soldiers, would have established an annual Congress, charged with making a free grant to the imperial Exchequer. The bill was rejected on the first reading. Similar resolutions moved by Burke and David Hartley met with a similar fate (March). Attempts to obtain the repeal of the Quebec Act were also rejected by enormous majorities. But North was fully aware that the Rubicon had been reached. With the approval of the King, but to the disgust of the "King's Friends" and the Bedford Whigs, who nearly brought about his downfall, he made a sudden last gesture of reconciliation. On 20 February he proposed that any colony which should make an acceptable offer for the support of the civil and military government should be exempt from imperial taxation for the purpose of revenue. It was too late. The concession granted did not go far enough. It was open to the suspicion that it was merely intended to create division among the colonies. But it was, at least, an olive branch held out, which could be rejected only by those who had ceased to desire to negotiate. Yet it was spurned by the Opposition, and contemptuously rejected by every one of the colonial Assemblies. Indeed, by the time it reached America, the situation had passed beyond all possibility of reconciliation.

Gage had decided to seize the arms and ammunition which had been collected at Concord on 19 April. The troops sent from Boston found an armed force drawn up near Lexington to resist them. These they dispersed. But lantern signals, the firing of guns, and tolling of church bells had called the whole country-side to arms. On their

1 4 April 1775; Washington, Works, II, 495.

LEXINGTON AND BUNKER HILL

681 way home, after destroying the stores at Concord, the troops were attacked. A rain of bullets was poured into them from behind farmhouses, stone walls and hedgerows. When they reached Boston at sunset, they had lost some 65 killed and 208 wounded and prisoners. The Americans lost 93 in all. The Rubicon had been crossed. Three weeks later the important forts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point commanding the approach to Canada were surprised and captured by a party of volunteers from Connecticut.

On the same day, 10 May, the second Continental Congress, though prohibited by the British Government, assembled in the Quaker city of Philadelphia. New York, which had held aloof after the first Congress, rallied to the cause. Georgia, after the news of Lexington, threw in its lot with the others. In Virginia, the old aristocracy of planters and men of property were taking alarm. But the forceful eloquence of Patrick Henry secured by one vote a decision to elect delegates. When the governor, the Earl of Dunmore, began to transfer the powder from the magazine at Williamsburg to a man-of-war, he was compelled to return it. At the news of Lexington, Henry placed himself at the head of the Hanover Militia. Dunmore subsequently made an ineffectual endeavour to raise a royalist force and suppress the rebels. But he was forced to seek refuge on board H.M.S. Fowey. After burning Norfolk, which had fired on the King's ships, he sailed for New York (November-December). He had gone to the length of declaring all negroes of rebels free. The third Revolutionary Convention (July) declared that he had deserted his post; authorised a large issue of paper bills, and appropriated the coveted western lands. In most of the other colonies, where the governor had no military support, the King's rule ceased, and governments were administered by Provincial Congresses.

In Massachusetts, immediately after Lexington, the Provincial Congress decided to raise its army to 30,000 men and to seize the arms of all Loyalists. Gage, after remaining for some time on the defensive in Boston, at length determined to occupy a small eminence commanding the city, called Bunker Hill, which he had omitted to include within his lines. Learning of his intention the colonists, on the night of 16 June 1775, entrenched themselves on the neighbouring height of Breed's Hill. When the British troops advanced, they were met by a withering fire from behind entrenchments. Twice they were flung back, and yet a third time they advanced and won the position, but with the loss of over 1000 men out of some 2500. The Americans had numbered little more than 1500. Not only did their losses very seriously weaken the small British force in America, but the effect upon the military spirit of the colonists was incalculable. The courage and coolness displayed by the raw levies of militiamen had demonstrated for the first time their power to engage regular troops, and

provided a triumphant answer to those who, like Lord Sandwich, echoing the verdict of Wolfe, had sneered at the cowardice and incompetence of the Americans.

In the meantime Congress had taken fateful steps. North's conciliatory resolution was dismissed as "unseasonable and insidious". The British Government was denounced. Appeals for support were addressed to the people of Ireland and Jamaica. A declaration was published "on the causes and necessity for taking up arms", and resolutions were passed for raising and regulating a Continental army under the authority of Congress. The most important step, however, was the appointment of Washington as Commander-in-Chief (February). At the instance of Dickinson, a second petition was addressed to the King, declaring the fundamental loyalty of the colonies. This petition, known as the "Olive Branch", was entrusted to Richard Penn, one of the proprietors of Pennsylvania, where, as in New York, Maryland and South Carolina, the conservative party was particularly strong. The King, failing to see how professions of loyalty could be consistent with armed rebellion, refused to receive it on the ground that it was drawn up by an illegal and self-constituted body. This was in September. In the same month the Americans began their unsuccessful invasion of Canada, which had been decided upon in June.1 Emissaries had already been despatched to stir up sedition in the West Indies. Though the islands depended for their protection entirely upon the British fleet, they depended for their provisions upon their trade with America. They had had, too, their share in the smuggling trade on the American coast, and in the long struggle with governors and councils for the supremacy of the Assemblies. Now, as so often before, addresses from the Assemblies of Jamaica and Barbados echoed the language of Boston. From Bermuda delegates were sent to the Congress at Philadelphia. The Bahamas openly supported the Americans, and permitted them to carry off the guns and ammunition from their forts, which they had refused to the ships sent by Gage (August).

Parliament met on 26 October. The King's Speech announced the intention of dealing vigorously with the colonists, and the ill-judged decision to engage foreign troops. Difficulty was already being experienced in obtaining recruits to fight their fellow-subjects. The English army was small and the demands from America were already large. The hiring of Hessian troops for this purpose was none the less a blunder of the first magnitude. It "made reconciliation hopeless and the Declaration of Independence inevitable".2 The presence of foreign troops made the Americans feel that they were being treated as a foreign foe; the misconduct of the troops exasperated them and brought discredit upon British arms. Their employment prepared the colonists to enlist the aid of foreigners themselves. The 1 Washington, Works, III, 41. 2 Lecky, IV, 244.

PAINE'S COMMON SENSE

683

Duke of Grafton, when shown a draft of the King's Speech, resigned on those grounds. His post of Privy Seal was filled by Lord Dartmouth, a well-intentioned and religiously-minded man and a former member of the Rockingham ministry, who had succeeded the blundering Hillsborough as Secretary for the Colonies in 1772. Lord George Germain succeeded him, and Lord Weymouth succeeded Lord Rochford as Secretary of State. Lord Lyttleton, Chief Justice, was added to the Cabinet. These changes reflected the strengthening of the determination to bring the colonists to their knees. Grafton, after resigning, threw himself into vigorous opposition, endeavouring, not without success, to unite the warring factions of the Whig party. His aim was speedy reconciliation with the thirteen colonies, for he regarded even their loss as a lesser evil than an attempt to hold them by force.1 But though Barré and Shelburne and Camden and Dunning added their eloquence to that of Burke, the division between the old-fashioned Whigs and the Rockingham party remained, and weakened the effect of their onslaughts on the Government programme.

2

In November 1775 Lord North introduced a bill to prohibit all trade and intercourse with the Thirteen Colonies. So dispirited was the Opposition that the bill was passed on 11 December by a majority of 112 to 16. In November, too, Congress issued letters of marque and appointed a Committee of Foreign Affairs to correspond "with friends of America in other countries". Early in 1776 Silas Deane was despatched to France. For in the background of this dispute there was always France, that proud, imperial nation which had been worsted in the unceasing struggle for expansion waged with Great Britain for a hundred years at home and across the seas; France, eagerly and inexorably determined to exact vengeance for the loss of Canada and India, by helping to wrest the American colonies from the hated English.

Money, arms, ammunition, ships were essential for the success of the Americans. But they could not hope to obtain these from France without a declaration of their complete separation from Great Britain. French agents were at hand to make this clear. Both steps were distasteful to many, and to the southern colonies in particular the idea of a republican government was hardly acceptable. The struggle in Congress was long and bitter. By the inexorable logic of events arising from action and reaction on either side, from mishandling, misjudgment, and the inevitable clash of principles whose significance and solution were not perceived, colonial opinion was brought up to the last fence. It was helped to take it by the timely publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. That pamphlet, written by an Englishman, attacked England and monarchy in terse and violent phrases, and proclaimed in sledge-hammer style that the 1 Duke of Grafton, Autobiography, p. 318.

2 Vide infra, pp. 705-12.

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