Volume 2 — APPENDIX A. TO CHAPTER XXXVII.

Review of the Principal Characteristics of the American Revolution, and Remarks on the Feelings which should now be Cultivated by both of the Former Contending Parties.

The entire failure of the Americans to conquer Canada in the war of 1812-1815 is an illustration of the folly of coercing the allegiance of a people against their will. Upper Canada at that time consisted of less than 100,000 inhabitants; yet, with the extra aid of only a few hundred English soldiers, she repelled for three years the forces of the United States—more than ten times their number, and separated only by a river.

Mr. J.M. Ludlow, in his brief but comprehensive "History of the War of American Independence, 1775-1783," Chapter vii., well states the folly of England in endeavouring to conquer by arms the opinions of three millions of people, and the impossibility of the American colonists achieving their independence without the aid of men and money, and ships from France, to which, in connection with Spain and Holland, the Americans are actually indebted for their independence, and not merely to their own sole strength and prowess, as American writers so universally boast. Mr. Ludlow observes:

"At a time when steam had not yet baffled the winds, to dream of conquering by force of arms, on the other side of the Atlantic, a people of the English race, numbering between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000, with something like 1,200 miles of seaboard, was surely an act of enormous folly. We have seen in our own days the difficulties experienced by the far more powerful and populous Northern States in quelling the secession of the Southern, when between the two there was no other frontier than at most a river, very often a mere ideal line, and when armies could be raised by 100,000 men at a time. England attempted a far more difficult task, with forces which, till 1781, never exceeded 35,000 men, and never afterwards exceeded 42,075, including 'Provincials,' i.e., American Loyalists." (But England, repeatedly on the verge of success, failed from the incapacity and inactivity of the English generals.)

"Yet it is impossible to doubt that not once only, but repeatedly during the course of the struggle, England was on the verge of triumph. The American armies were perpetually melting away before the enemy—directly, through the practice of short enlistments; indirectly, through desertions. These desertions, if they might be often palliated by the straits to which the men were reduced through arrears of pay and want of supplies, arose in other cases, as after the retreat from New York, from sheer loss of heart in the cause. The main army, under Washington, was seldom even equal in numbers to that opposed to him. In the winter of 1776-77, when his troops were only 4,000 strong, it is difficult to understand how it was that Sir William Howe, with more than double the number, should have failed to annihilate the American army."

"WEAKNESS OF THE AMERICAN ARMY.

"In the winter of 1777-78 the 'dreadful situation of the army for want of provisions,' made Washington 'advise' that they should not have been excited to a general mutiny and desertion. In May, 1779, he hardly knew any resource for the American cause except in reinforcements from France, and did not know what might be the consequence if the enemy had it in their power to press the troops hard in the ensuing campaign. In December of that year his forces were 'mouldering away daily,' and he considered that Sir Henry Clinton, with more than twice his numbers, could 'not justify remaining inactive with a force so superior.' A year later he was compelled, for want of clothing, to discharge the levies which he had always so much trouble in obtaining; and 'want of flour would have disbanded the whole army' if he had not adopted this expedient.

"In March, 1781, again the crisis was 'perilous,' and though he did not doubt the happy issue of the contest, he considered that the period for accomplishment might be too far distant for a person of his years. In April he wrote: 'We cannot transport provisions from the States in which they are assessed to the army, because we cannot pay the teamsters, who will no longer work for certificates. It is equally certain that our troops are approaching fast to nakedness, and that we have nothing to clothe them with; that our hospitals are without medicines, and our sick without nutriment, except such as well men eat; and that all our public works are at a stand, and the artificers disbanding. * * It may be declared in a word that we are at the end of our tether, and that now or never our deliverance must come.' Six months later, when Yorktown capitulated, the British forces remaining in North America, after the surrender of that garrison by Cornwallis, were more considerable than they had been as late as February, 1779, and Sir Henry Clinton even then declared that with a reinforcement of 10,000 he would be responsible for the conquest of America.

"The main hope of success on the English side lay in the idea that the spirit and acts of resistance to the authority of the mother country were in reality only on the part of a turbulent minority—that the bulk of the people desired to be loyal. It is certain indeed that the struggle was, in America itself, much more of a civil war than the Americans are now generally disposed to admit. In December, 1780, there were 8,954 'Provincials' among the British forces in America, and on March 7th, 1781, a letter from Lord George Germaine to Sir H. Clinton, intercepted by the Americans, says: 'The American levies in the King's service are more in number than the whole of the enlisted troops in the service of the Congress.' As late as September 1st, 1781, there were 7,241. We hear of loyal 'associations' in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Pennsylvania; of 'associated Loyalists' in New York; and everywhere of 'Tories,' whose arrest Washington is found suggesting to Governor Trumbull, of Connecticut, as early as November 12th, 1775. But New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania remained long full of Tories. By June 28th, 1776, the disaffected on Long Island had taken up arms, and after the evacuation of New York by Washington a brigade of Loyalists was raised on the island, and companies were formed in two neighbouring counties to join the King's troops. During Washington's retreat through New Jersey, 'the inhabitants, either from fear or disaffection, almost to a man refused to turn out.' In Pennsylvania, the militia, instead of giving any assistance in repelling the British, exulted at their approach and over the misfortunes of their countrymen. On the 20th of that month the British were 'daily gathering strength from the disaffected.' In 1777, the Tories who joined Burgoyne in his expedition from the North are said to have doubled his force. In 1778, Tories joined the Indians in the devastation of Wyoming and Cherry Valley; and although the indiscriminate ravages of the British, or of the Germans in their pay, seem to have aroused the three States above mentioned to self-defence, yet, as late as May, 1780, Washington still speaks of sending a small party of cavalry to escort La Fayette safely through the 'Tory settlements' of New York. Virginia, as late as the spring of 1776, was 'alarmed at the idea of independence.' Washington admitted that his countrymen (of that State), 'from their form of government, and steady attachment heretofore to royalty,' would 'come reluctantly' to that idea, but trusted to 'time and persecution.' In 1781, the ground for transferring the seat of war to the Chesapeake was the number of Loyalists in that quarter. In the Southern States the division of feeling was still greater. In the Carolinas, a royalist regiment was raised in a few days in 1776, and again in 1779. In Georgia and in South Carolina the bitterest partisan warfare was carried on between Whig and Tory bands; and a body of New York Tories contributed powerfully to the fall of Savannah in 1778, by taking the American forces in the rear.

"On the other hand, the British generals did not receive that support from the Loyalists which they had expected. They seem to have looked upon the Loyalists as an inferior class of aids to the regular soldiery; their advice seems to have been unsought, and the mode of war pursued was European, and not adapted to the peculiar circumstances of America. The Loyalist volunteers were looked upon as the rivals to rather than fellow-soldiers of the regular army; and no provincial Loyalist was promoted to lead any expedition or command any position of importance. This depreciation of the Loyalists by the English (utterly incompetent) generals exactly answered the purposes of American writers. But the real cause of its protraction, though it may be hard to an American to admit the fact, lay in the incapacity of the American politicians, and, it must be added, in the supineness and want of patriotism of the American people. If indeed importing into the views of later date, we look upon it as one between two nations, the mismanagement of the war by the Americans on all points save one—the retention of Washington in the chief command—is seen to have been so pitiable, from first to last, as to be in fact almost unintelligible."

"DESCRIPTION OF THE AMERICAN ARMY, AND THE MANNER OF RAISING IT.

"We can only understand the case when we see there was no such thing as an American nation in existence, but only a number of revolted colonies, jealous of one another, and with no tie but that of common danger. Even in the army divisions broke out. Washington, in a General Order of August, 1776, says: 'It is with great concern that the general understands that jealousies have arisen among the troops from the different provinces, and reflections are frequently thrown out which can only tend to irritate each other and injure the noble cause in which we are engaged.'"

"WANT OF PUBLIC SPIRIT AND PATRIOTISM IN THE STATES.

"It was seldom that much help could be obtained in troops from any State, unless the State were immediately threatened by the enemy; and even then these troops would be raised by that State for its own defence, irrespectively of the general or 'continental army.' 'Those at a distance from the seat of war,' wrote Washington, in April, 1778, 'live in such perfect tranquillity, that they conceive the dispute to be in a manner at an end, and those near it are so disaffected that they serve only as embarrassments.' In January, 1779, we find him remonstrating with the Governor of Rhode Island, because that State had 'ordered several battalions to be raised for the State only; and this before the proper measures are taken to fill the continental regiments.' The different bounties and rates of pay allowed by the various States were a constant source of annoyance to him."

"DECLINE OF CONGRESS.

"After the first year, the best men were not returned to Congress, and did not return to it. Whole States remained frequently unrepresented. In the winter of 1777-78, Congress was reduced to twenty-one members. But even with a full representation it could do little. 'One State will comply with a requisition,' writes Washington in 1780, 'another neglects to do it, a third executes by halves, and all differ either in the manner, the matter, or so much in point of time, that we are always working up-hill.'

"At first, Congress was really nothing more than a voluntary Committee. When the Confederation was completed, which was only, be it remembered, on March 1, 1781, it was still, as Washington wrote in 1785, 'little more than a shadow without a substance, and the Congress a nugatory body;' or, as it was described by a late writer, 'powerless for government, and a rope of sand for union.'"

"DECLINE OF ENERGY AND SPIRIT AMONG THE COLONISTS AND ARMY.

"Like politicians, like people. There was, no doubt, a brilliant display of patriotic ardour at the first flying to arms of the colonists. Lexington and Bunker's Hill were actions decidedly creditable to their raw troops. The expedition to Canada, foolhardy though it proved, was pursued up to a certain point with real heroism. But with it the heroic period of the war (individual instances excepted) may be said to have closed. There seems little reason to doubt that the revolution would never have been commenced if it had been expected to cost so tough a struggle. 'A false estimate of the power and perseverance of our enemies,' wrote James Duane to Washington, 'was friendly to the present revolution, and inspired that confidence of success in all ranks of the people which was necessary to unite them in so arduous a cause.' As early as November, 1775, Washington wrote, speaking of military arrangements: 'Such a dearth of public spirit, and such want of virtue—such stock-jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantage of one kind or another, I never saw before, and pray God's mercy that I may never be witness to it again.' Such a 'mercenary spirit' pervaded the whole of the troops that he should not have been 'at all surprised at any disaster.' At the same date, besides desertion of thirty or forty soldiers at a time, he speaks of the practice of plundering as so rife that 'no man is secure in his effects, and scarcely in his person.' People were 'frightened out of their houses under pretence of those houses being ordered to be burnt, with a view of seizing the goods;' and to conceal the villainy more effectually, some houses were actually burned down. On February 28th, 1777, 'the scandalous loss, waste, and private appropriation of public arms during the last campaign' had been 'beyond all conception.' Officers drew 'large sums under pretence of paying their men, and appropriated them.'

"'Can we carry on the war much longer?' Washington asks in 1778, after the treaty with France and the appearance of the French fleet off the coast. 'Certainly not, unless some measures can be devised and speedily executed to restore the credit of our currency and restrain extortion and punish forestallers.' A few days later: 'To make and extort money in every shape that can be devised, and at the same time to decry its value, seems to have become a mere business and an epidemical disease.' On December 30th, 1778, 'speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seems to have got the better of every consideration, and almost of every order of men; * * party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the day (in Congress), whilst the momentous concerns of an empire, a great and accumulating debt, ruined finances, depreciated money, and want of credit, which in its consequences is the want of everything, are but secondary considerations."

"DECLINE OF PATRIOTIC FEELING ON THE PART OF THE AMERICANS.

"After the first loan had been obtained from France and spent, and a further one was granted in 1782, so utterly unpatriotic and selfish was known to be the temper of the people that the loan had to be kept secret, in order not to diminish such efforts as might be made by the Americans themselves. On July 10th of that year, with New York and Charleston still in British hands, Washington writes: 'That spirit of freedom which at the commencement of the contest would have gladly sacrificed everything to the attainment of its object, has long since subsided, and every selfish passion has taken its place.' But, indeed, the mere fact that from the date of the battle of Monmouth (July 28th, 1778), Washington was never supplied with sufficient means, even with the assistance of the French fleets and troops, to strike one blow at the English in New York—though these were but very sparingly reinforced during the period—shows an absence of public spirit, one might almost say of national shame, scarcely conceivable, and in singular contrast with the terrible earnestness exhibited on both sides, some eighty years later, in the Secession War."

"INCAPACITY OF ENGLISH GENERALS IN AMERICA.

"Why, then, must we ask on the other side, did the English fail at last?

"The English were prone to attribute their ill success to the incompetency of their generals. Lord North, with his quaint humour, would say, 'I do not know whether our generals will frighten the enemy, but I know they frighten me whenever I think of them.' When, in 1778, Lord Carlisle came out as Commissioner, in a letter speaking of the great scale of all things in America, he says, 'We have nothing on a great scale with us but our blunders, our losses, our disgraces and misfortunes.' No doubt, it is difficult to account for Gage's early blunders; for Howe's repeated failure to follow up his own success, or profit by his enemy's weakness; and Cornwallis's movement, justly censured by Sir Henry Clinton, in transferring the bulk of his army from the far south to Virginia, within marching distance of Washington, opened the way to that crowning disaster at Yorktown, without which it is by no means impossible that Georgia and the Carolinas might have remained British."

"INEFFECTIVE MILITARY ARRANGEMENTS IN AMERICA.

"Political incapacity was, of course, charged upon Ministers as another cause of disaster; and no doubt their miscalculation of the severity of the struggle was almost childish. But no mistakes in the management of the war by British statesmen can account for their ultimate failure. However great British mismanagement may have been, it was far surpassed by the Americans. There was nothing on the British side equal to that caricature of a recruiting system in which different bounties were offered by Congress, by the States, by the separate towns, so as to make it the interest of the intended soldier to delay enlistment as long as possible, in order to sell himself to the highest bidder; to that caricature of a war establishment, the main bulk of which broke up every twelvemonth in front of the enemy, which was only paid, if at all, in worthless paper, and left continually without supplies. On the whole, no better idea can be had of the nature of the struggle on the American side, after the first heat of it had cooled down, than from the words of Count de Rochambeau, writing to Count de Vergennes, July 10th, 1780: 'They have neither money nor credit; their means of resistance are only momentary, and called forth when they are attacked in their own homes. They then assemble for the moment of immediate danger and defend themselves.'"

"FRENCH MONEY, TROOPS, AND SHIPS TURN THE SCALE IN FAVOUR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.

"A far more important cause in determining the ultimate failure of the British was the aid afforded by France to America, followed by that of Spain and Holland. It was impossible for England to re-conquer a continent and carry on a war at the same time with the three most powerful naval States of Europe. The instincts of race have tended on both the English and American side to depreciate the value of the aid given by France to the colonists. It may be true that Rochambeau's troops, which disembarked on Rhode Island in July, 1780, did not march till July, 1781; that they were blockaded soon after their arrival, threatened with attack from New York, and only disengaged by a feint of Washington's on that city. But more than two years before their arrival, Washington wrote to a member of Congress: 'France, by her supplies, has saved us from the yoke thus far.' The treaty with France alone was considered to afford a 'certain prospect of success' to 'secure' American independence. The arrival of D'Estaing's fleet, although no troops joined the American army, and nothing eventually was done, determined the evacuation of Philadelphia. The discipline of the French troops, when they landed in 1780, set an example to the Americans; chickens and pigs walked between the lines without being disturbed. The recruits of 1780 could not have been armed without fifty tons of ammunition supplied by the French. In September of that year, Washington, writing to the French envoy, speaks of the 'inability' of the Americans to expel the British from the South unassisted, or perhaps even to stop their career; and he writes in similar terms to Congress a few days later. To depend 'upon the resources of the country, unassisted by foreign loans,' he writes to a member of Congress two months later, 'will, I am confident, be to lean upon a broken reed.' In January, 1781, writing to Colonel Laurens,[121] the American envoy in Paris, he presses for 'an immediate, ample, efficacious succour in money from France,' also for the maintenance on the American coasts of 'a constant naval superiority,' and likewise for 'an additional succour in troops.' And since the assistance so requested was in fact granted in every shape, and the surrender of Yorktown was obtained by the co-operation both of the French army and fleet, we must hold that Washington's words were justified by the event."[122]

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