Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

WASHINGTON RESIGNING HIS COMMISSION AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.

A
POPULAR HISTORY
OF THE
UNITED STATES
OF
AMERICA:
FROM THE DISCOVERY OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT TO THE PRESENT TIME.

BY MARY HOWITT.

Illustrated with Numerous Engravings.

VOL. II.

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

FRANKLIN SQUARE.

1860.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine, by

Harper & Brothers,

in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

CONTENTS TO VOL. II.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. II

A POPULAR

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

CHAPTER I.
COMMENCEMENT OF THE GREAT WARS.

In 1744, the disputed Austrian succession threw the whole of Europe into arms, and France and England were of course once more at war. In expectation of this event, when an invasion from Canada might be feared, New York fortified Albany and Oswego, and the friendship of the Six Nations was secured. This precaution was additionally necessary, as they had taken offence, owing to a collision which some of their people had come into with the backwoodsmen of Virginia. At a convention held at Lancaster, to which Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were parties, the Six Nations, with due oratory and ceremonial, relinquished all title to the valley of the Blue Ridge, the central chain of the Alleganies. The western frontiers thus secured, New England proposed a combination of the five northern colonies for their mutual defence, which New York declined, trusting to enjoy her former neutrality.

The war broke out. Fort Canso, in Nova Scotia, was taken by the French; Annapolis was besieged by a united force of Canadians and Indians; privateers issued from Louisburg, and the eastern Indians again attacked the frontiers of Maine. The northern provinces were routed, and Governor Shirley of Massachusetts resolved to attack Louisburg. Louisburg, the capital of Cape Breton, was called, from the strength of its fortifications, the Dunkirk of America. Its position was one of great importance, commanding the navigation of the St. Lawrence and the fisheries of the adjoining seas.

The scheme was a bold one, and Shirley applied to the British ministry for naval assistance, in the meantime laying open his views to the general assembly, after having first sworn all the members to secrecy. Six days were taken to deliberate upon it, and then the scheme was negatived as too hazardous and expensive. And so it might have ended, had not one of the members, during his evening devotions, been heard to pray for the success of the undertaking. The scheme got wind, and the populace approved; the plan was therefore again proposed in the council, and carried by one vote.

Troops were immediately raised by New England. Connecticut sent 500 men; Rhode Island and New Hampshire each 300; but those of Rhode Island did not arrive until Louisburg was taken. Pennsylvania, refusing troops, furnished provisions; and New York, £3,000, a quantity of provisions, and ten eighteen-pounders. The great burden of the war, of course, fell upon Massachusetts, who furnished an army of 3,250 men, with ten armed vessels,—all the fishermen, whose trade the war had interrupted, entering the service as volunteers. The command in chief was given to William Pepperell, a rich merchant in Maine, who was celebrated for his universal good fortune; and Whitfield, then preaching in New Hampshire, suggested as the motto of their flag, “Never despair with Christ for the captain;” and one of the army chaplains, a disciple of Whitfield, carried with him a hatchet, to hew down the images in the French chapels.[^[1]]

An express sent to Commodore Warren, in the West Indies, requesting the co-operation of such ships as he could spare, returned with a negative answer just before the expedition was leaving Boston. Nothing daunted, however, they set sail, and approaching Cape Breton, were prevented from entering its harbours by the great quantity of floating ice. Returning then to Casco, they lay there for several days under a bright sky and in clear weather, and here were agreeably surprised by the arrival of a squadron from Commodore Warren, who had received subsequent orders to render all possible assistance. The next day, nine vessels from Connecticut joined them also, with the troops from that colony. On the 30th of April, the fleet, consisting of 100 vessels, entering Cape Breton, came in sight of Louisburg. This commanding fortress, the walls of which were forty feet thick at the base and from twenty to thirty feet high, was surrounded by a ditch eighty feet wide, and was furnished with 101 cannon, seventy-six swivels, and six mortars; its garrison numbered 1,600 men, and the harbour was defended by an island battery of thirty twenty-two pounders, and by the royal battery on the shore, having thirty large cannon, a moat, and bastions, all so perfect that it was supposed 200 men could defend it against 5,000. The assailants, on the contrary, had only eighteen cannon and three mortars. Reaching the shore, however, they effected a landing almost without opposition, and the following day Colonel Vaughan of New Hampshire led a detachment through the woods, past the city, which they greeted with three cheers. The French, at their approach, having spiked their guns, fled from the royal battery in the night, and the next morning Vaughan and thirteen of his men, having gained possession, defended it against the boats which were sent from Louisburg to retake it. Seth Pomroy, a gunsmith, and a major in one of the Massachusetts regiments, was now employed in the oversight of twenty smiths, who were employed in drilling the cannon; and in the meantime, and for fourteen nights in succession, the hardy besiegers were engaged in dragging their artillery over some miles of boggy morass impassable to wheels, and for the carriage of which a New Hampshire colonel, a carpenter, constructed sledges, which the men, with straps over their shoulders and midleg-deep in mud, drew safely over. Five unsuccessful attempts were made on a battery which defended the town, and the troops, insufficiently provided with tents and other comforts, suffered severely in that cold and foggy climate. But nothing could daunt their ardour. Seth Pomroy, the gunsmith-major, wrote to his wife: “Louisburg is an exceedingly strong place, and seems impregnable. It looks as if our campaign would last long; but I am willing to stay till God’s time comes to deliver the city into our hands.” And his wife replied in the same resolute spirit: “Suffer no anxious thoughts to rest in your mind about me. The whole town is much engaged with concern for the expedition, how Providence will order the affair, for which religious meetings every week are maintained. I leave you in the hand of God.”

At length it was resolved that the fleet should enter the harbour and bombard the city, whilst the land forces attempted to scale the walls. Whilst this was under meditation, a French ship of sixty-four guns, laden with supplies, was taken, after an active engagement, within sight of the town. Fortunately for the besiegers, disaffection prevailed within the walls, and the governor, dispirited by this success of the enemy, sent out a flag of truce and offers of capitulation. On the forty-ninth day of the siege, Louisburg surrendered, together with the island of Cape Breton. When the conquerors entered the city and beheld the strength of the works, their very hearts sunk within them at the greatness of their undertaking; “God has gone out of the way of his common providence,” said they, “to incline the hearts of the French to give up this strong city into our hands.”

The loss of Louisburg exasperated the French nation, and a powerful armament was fitted out to ravage, in return, the whole coast of North America; but Providence again interfered in their behalf; the fleet, under the Duke d’Anville, was scattered and destroyed by storms and wreck, and, to complete its misfortunes, the commander died suddenly, and his successor, in a fit of delirium, committed suicide. The following year, a second fleet, sent out for the same purpose, was taken by Anson and Warren.

The capture of Louisburg was not less a cause of rejoicing in England than in the colonies. Pepperell was made a baronet, and commissioned as a colonel in the British army, and Warren promoted to the rank of rear-admiral. The report of Warren, however, as regarded the New England people, only confirmed the suspicions which were entertained of them at home. “They have,” said he, “the highest notions of the rights and liberties of Englishmen, and, indeed, are almost levellers.”

The Canadian French retaliated immediately for their loss, by attacking the English frontiers and taking several outposts, but no great damage was done. This success revived the favourite scheme of the conquest of Canada, and England, as well as the colonies, began active preparations for carrying it out. In Pennsylvania, where hitherto peace principles had been very carefully maintained, an active military spirit, excited by Benjamin Franklin, who now, after twenty years of industry, had acquired a handsome property, prevailed. “He was the originator,” says Logan, “of two lotteries, that raised above £6,000 to pay for the charge of the batteries on the river, and he found out a way to put the country on raising above 120 companies of militia, of which Philadelphia raised ten, or about 100 men each. The women, too, were so zealous that they furnished ten pair of silk colours, wrought with various mottoes.” Logan, himself a Quaker, though not a strict one, was highly satisfied, as he says, with “Benjamin Franklin for contriving the militia,” and he adds, that, “Franklin, when elected to the command of a regiment, declined the distinction, and carried a musket among the common soldiers.”

The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, however, put an end to all these ambitious schemes of conquest, and the mutual restoration of all places taken during the war being one of its conditions, Cape Breton and Louisburg, to the grief and mortification of the northern colonies, were returned to France. The only thing which consoled Massachusetts for this loss was, that the British indemnified her for the expenses of this last enterprise, to the amount of £183,000, a very welcome boon, when her finances were suffering the most serious embarrassment, owing to her extensive issues of paper money and the depreciation of the currency. It was proposed by Thomas Hutchinson, grandson of the celebrated Anne Hutchinson, and now a wealthy merchant of Boston, and speaker of the House of Representatives, that the money thus granted should be imported in silver, and applied to redeem, at its current value, all the outstanding paper. This was done, and for a quarter of a century, says Hildreth, Massachusetts enjoyed the blessing of a sound currency.

It was just at this time when a great inroad was attempted on the rigidity of the Puritan manners, by the attempt of some young Englishmen at Boston to introduce theatrical entertainments. The play first announced was Otway’s Orphan, but it proceeded no further than announcement, such exhibitions being at once prohibited, “as tending to discourage industry and frugality, and greatly to the increase of impiety and contempt for religion.” Connecticut immediately followed the example; neither would she suffer such Babylonish pursuits. Two years afterwards, a London company of actors came over, and acted the Beau’s Stratagem and Merchant of Venice, at Annapolis and Williamsburg in Virginia. Connecticut and Massachusetts being closed against them, they confined their labours to Annapolis, Williamsburg, Philadelphia, Perth-Amboy, New York and Newport.

The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle left the great causes of difference, the undefined limits of the French and English claims in America, still unsettled. The French, by virtue of the discoveries of La Salle, Marquette, Champlain and others, claimed all the lands occupied by the waters flowing into the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi and the Lakes, and all watered by the Mississippi and its branches. In fact, they claimed the whole of America, except that portion which lies east of the Allegany chain, the rivers of which flow into the Atlantic, and even of this they claimed the basin of the Kennebec and all Maine to the east of that valley. The British on the contrary, asserted a right to the entire country, on account of the discovery of Cabot, extending their claims under the old patents with more than equal extravagance, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. To strengthen this title, they had lately purchased from the chiefs of the confederated Six Nations, acknowledged by the treaties of Utrecht and Aix-la-Chapelle as being under British protection, their claim to the country of the Mississippi, which, it was stated, had at some former period been conquered by them.

The French, as we have already said, had in part carried out their plan of a chain of forts, to connect their more recent settlements on the Mississippi with their earlier ones on the St. Lawrence, when in 1750 a number of gentlemen of Virginia, among whom was Lawrence Washington, the grandfather of the celebrated George, applied to the British parliament for an act for incorporating “the Ohio Company,” and granting them 600,000 acres of land on the Ohio river. This was done; the tract was surveyed, and trade commenced with the Indians. The jealousy of the French was roused; and the Marquis du Quesne, governor of Canada, complained to the authorities of New York and Pennsylvania, threatening to seize their traders if they did not quit this territory. The trade went on as before, and the French carried out their threat, burning the village of an Indian tribe which refused submission, and seizing the English traders and their merchandise; and the following year the number and importance of the French forts was increased.

Robert Dinwiddie, at that time royal governor of Virginia, alarmed at those violent proceedings, purchased permission of the Indians on the Monongahala to build a fort on the junction of that river with the Allegany, and determined to send a trusty messenger to the French commandant at Venango, to require explanation and the release of the captured traders. It was late in the season, and the embassy demanded both courage and wisdom. A young man of two-and-twenty, a major in the militia, and by profession a land-surveyor, and who when only sixteen had been employed as such by Lord Fairfax on his property in the Northern Neck, was selected for this service. This young man was George Washington.

The journey, about 400 miles through the untracked forest, and at the commencement of winter, though full of peril and wild adventure, was performed successfully. Washington was well received by the commandant, St. Pierre, who promised, after two days’ deliberation, to transmit his message to his superiors in Canada; and all unconscious of the present or future importance of their guest, who was making accurate observations as to the strength of the fort, the French officers revealed to him, over their wine, the intentions of France to occupy the whole country.

The reply of St. Pierre, the contents of which were not known till opened at Williamsburg, leaving no doubt of the hostile intentions of the French, Dinwiddie began immediately to prepare for resistance, promising to the officers and soldiers of the Virginian army 200,000 acres of land to be divided amongst them, as an encouragement to enlist. A regiment of 600 men, of which Washington was appointed lieutenant-colonel, marched in the month of April, 1754, into the disputed territory, and, encamping at the Great Meadows, were met by alarming intelligence; the French had driven the Virginians from a fort which, owing to his own recommendation, they were building at “the Fork,” the place where Pittsburg now stands, between the junction of the Monongahala and the Allegany, the importance of which position he had become aware of on his journey to Venango. This fort the French had now finished, and had called Du Quesne, in honour of the governor-general; besides which, a detachment sent against him were encamped at a few miles distance. Washington proceeded, surprised the enemy, and killed the commander, Jumonville—the first blood shed in this war.

On his return to the Great Meadows, Washington was joined by the troops from New York and South Carolina, and here erected a fort, which he called Fort Necessity. Frye, the colonel, being now dead, the chief command devolved upon Washington, who very shortly set out towards Du Quesne, when he was compelled to return and entrench himself within Fort Necessity, owing to the approach of a very superior force under De Villier, the brother of Jumonville. After a day of hard fighting, the fort itself was surrendered, on condition of the garrison being permitted to retire unmolested. A singular circumstance occurred in this capitulation: Washington, who did not understand French, employed a Dutchman as his interpreter, and he, either from ignorance or treachery, rendered the terms of the capitulation incorrectly; thus Washington signed an acknowledgment of having “assassinated” Jumonville, and engaged not again to appear in arms against the French within twelve months.

Hitherto, the intercolonial wars had originated in European quarrels; now, the causes of dispute existed in the colonies themselves, and were derivable from the growing importance of these American possessions to the mother-countries; the approaching war, in consequence, assumed an interest to the colonies which no former war had possessed. It was now, therefore, proposed by the British cabinet that a union should be formed among the colonies for their mutual protection and support, and that the friendship of the Six Nations should be immediately secured. Accordingly a congress was convened at Albany, in June, 1754, at which delegates appeared from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut; Delaney, governor of New York, being the president. A treaty of peace was signed with the Six Nations, and the convention entered upon the subject of the great union, a plan for which had been drawn up by Benjamin Franklin, the delegate from Pennsylvania, and which was carefully discussed, clause by clause, in the assembly. Both William Penn, in 1697, and Coxe in his “Carolana,” had proposed a similar annual congress of all the colonies for the regulation of trade, and these were the bases of Franklin’s plan of union.

This plan proposed the establishment of a general government in the colonies, the administration of which should be placed in the hands of a governor-general appointed by the crown, and a council of forty-eight members, representatives of the several provinces, “having the power to levy troops, declare war, raise money, make peace, regulate the Indian trade and concert all other measures necessary for the general safety; the governor-general being allowed a negative on the proceedings of the council, and all laws to be ratified by the king.” This plan was signed by all the delegates excepting the one from Connecticut, who objected to a negative being allowed to the governor-general, on the 4th of July, the day on which Fort Necessity was surrendered, and the very day twenty-two years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

This scheme of union was, however, rejected by all the colonial assemblies, on the plea of giving too much power to the crown; and, strange to say, was rejected likewise by the crown, because it gave too much power to the people. The colonial union, therefore, being at an end for the present, it was proposed by the British ministry that money should be furnished for the carrying on of the war by England, to be reimbursed by a tax on the colonies. This scheme, however, the colonies strongly opposed, being averse, argued Massachusetts, to everything that shall have the remotest tendency to raise a revenue in America for any public use or purpose of government. It was, therefore, finally agreed to carry on the war with British troops, aided by such auxiliaries as the colonial assemblies would voluntarily furnish. These pending territorial disputes led to the publication of more complete maps, whereby the position and danger of the British colonies were more clearly understood. The British colonies occupied about a thousand miles of the Atlantic coast, but their extent inland was limited; the population amounted to about 1,500,000. New France, on the contrary, contained a population not exceeding 100,000, scattered over a vast expanse of territory from Cape Breton to the mouth of the Mississippi, though principally collected on the St. Lawrence. The very remoteness of the French settlements, separated from the English by unexplored forests and mountains, placed them in comparative security, while the whole western frontier of the English, from Maine to Georgia, was exposed to attacks of the Indians, disgusted by constant encroachments and ever ready for war.[^[2]]

While negotiations were being carried on with France for the adjustment of the territorial quarrel, the establishment of French posts on the Ohio and the attack on Washington being regarded as the commencement of hostilities, General Braddock was selected as the American major-general, under the Duke of Cumberland, commander-in-chief of the British army. Braddock was a man of despotic temper, intrepid in action, and severe as a disciplinarian; and as the duke had no confidence in any but regular troops, it was ordered that the general and field officers of the colonial forces should be of subordinate rank when serving with the commissioned officers of the king. Washington, on his return from the Great Meadows, found Dinwiddie re-organising the Virginia militia, and that, according to the late orders, he himself was lowered to the rank of captain, on which he indignantly retired from the service.

In February, 1755, Braddock, with two British regiments, arrived in Chesapeake Bay, the colonies having levied forces in preparation, and a tax being already imposed on wine and spirituous liquors, spite of the general opposition to such imposts, and which excited a very general discontent, each family being required on oath to state the quantity consumed by themselves each year, and thus either to perjure or to tax themselves. This unpopular tax gave rise to several newspapers, the first newspaper of Connecticut dating from this time.

Braddock having arrived, a convention of colonial governors met at Alexandria, in Virginia, to concert the plan of action, when four expeditions were determined upon. Lawrence, the lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, was to reduce that province; General Johnson, from his long acquaintance with the Six Nations, was selected to enrol the Mohawk warriors in British pay, and conduct an army of Indians and provincial militia against Crown Point; Governor Shirley was to do the same against Niagara; while Braddock was to attack Fort Du Quesne, and thus recover the Ohio Valley and take possession of the North West.

Soon after Braddock sailed, the French sent out a fleet with a large body of troops under the veteran Baron Dieskau, to reinforce the army in Canada. Although England at this time had avowed only the design of resisting encroachment on her territory, Boscawen was sent out to cruise on the banks of Newfoundland, where he took two of the French ships; of the remainder, some aided by fog, and others by altering their course, arrived safely at Quebec and Louisburg; at the same time, De Vaudreuil, a Canadian by birth, and formerly governor of Louisiana, arrived and superseded Du Quesne as governor of Canada.

Three thousand men sailed from Boston under Lieutenant-colonel Winslow, on the 29th of May, for the expedition against Nova Scotia. This Winslow was the great-grandson of the Plymouth patriarch, and grandson of the commander of the New England forces in King Philip’s war; he was a major-general in the Massachusetts militia, and now, under the British commander-in-chief, was reduced to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. At Chignecto, in the Bay of Fundy, he was joined by Colonel Monckton with 300 British regulars, and advancing against the French forts at Beau Sejour and Gaspereau, took possession of them in five days, after slight resistance; and no sooner did the English fleet appear in the St. John’s, than the French, setting fire to their fort at the mouth of that river, evacuated the country. The English thus, with the loss of about twenty men, found themselves in possession of the whole of Nova Scotia: when great difficulty arose, what was to be done with the people?

Acadia was the oldest French colony in America, having been settled by Bretons sixteen years before the landing of the pilgrim fathers. Thirty years before the commencement of the present war, the treaty of Utrecht had ceded Acadia to Great Britain, yet the settlement remained French in spirit, character, and religion. By the terms granted to them when the British took possession, they were excused from bearing arms against France, and were thence known as “French Neutrals.” From the time of the Peace of Utrecht, they appear, however, almost to have been forgotten, until the present war brought them, to their great misfortune, back to remembrance. Their life had been one of Arcadian peace and simplicity; neither tax-gatherer nor magistrate was seen among them; their parish priests, sent over from Canada, were their supreme head. By unwearied labour they had secured the rich alluvial marshes from the rivers and sea, and their wealth consisted in flocks and herds. Their houses, gathered in hamlets, were full of the comforts and simple luxuries of their position; their clothing was warm, abundant, and home-made, spun and wove from the flax of their fields and the fleeces of their flocks. Thus were the Acadians prosperous and happy as one great family of love. Their population, which had doubled within the last thirty years, amounted at this time to about 2,000.

Unfortunately, these good Acadians had not strictly adhered to their character of neutrals; 300 of their young men had been taken in arms at Beau Sejour, and one of their priests was detected as an active French agent. It was resolved, therefore, to remove them from their present position, in which they had every opportunity of aiding the French. Lawrence, lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, Boscawen, and Mostyn, commanders of the British fleet, consulted with Belcher, chief-justice of the province, and the result was a scheme of kidnapping and conveying them to the various British provinces, although at the capitulation of Beau Sejour it had been strictly provided that the neighbouring inhabitants should not be disturbed. But no matter; they must be got rid of, for there was no secure possession for the English while they, bound by all the ties of language, affection, and religion to France, remained there. A sadder incident of wholesale outrage hardly occurs in history than this. The design was kept strictly secret, lest the people, excited by despair, should rise en masse against their oppressors. Obeying the command, therefore, to assemble at their parish churches, they were surrounded by soldiers, taken prisoners and marched off, without ceremony, to the ships, for transportation. At Grand Pré, for example, says Bancroft, 418 unarmed men came together, when Winslow, the American commander, addressed them, as follows: “Your lands and tenements, cattle of all kinds, and live stock of all sorts, are forfeited to the crown, and you yourselves are to be removed from this province. I am, through, his Majesty’s goodness, directed to allow you to carry off your money, and your household goods, as many as you can without discommoding the vessels you go in.” They were the king’s prisoners; their wives and families shared their lot; their sons, 527 in number; their daughters, 576; the whole, including women and babes, old men and children, amounting to about 2,000 souls. They had left home in the morning; they were never to return. Wonderful it seems, that Heaven left such an outrage on humanity unavenged on the spot!

The 10th of September was the day of transportation. They were marched down to the vessels six abreast; the young men first, driven forward by the bayonet, but not a weapon was allowed to them. It was a scene of heart-breaking misery, and in the confusion of embarkation, wives were separated from their husbands, parents from their children, never to meet again! It was two months before the last of the unhappy people were conveyed away, and in the meantime many fled to the woods; but even this availed nothing, the pitiless conquerors had already destroyed the harvests, to compel their surrender, and burnt their former homes to the ground.

A quota of these poor, unhappy people were sent to every British North American colony, where, broken-hearted and disconsolate, they became burdens on the public charity, and failed not to excite pity by their misery, spite of the hatred to them as Catholics and the exasperation produced by the protracted war. Some few made their way to France; others to Canada, St. Domingo, and Louisiana; and to those who reached the latter country, lands were assigned above New Orleans, still known as the Acadian coast. A number of those sent to Georgia constructed rude boats, and endeavoured to return to their beloved homes in the Bay of Fundy. Generally speaking, they died in exile, the victims of dejection and despair.

It will be remembered by our readers, doubtless, that one of the finest poems which America has produced, “Evangeline,” by Longfellow, is founded on this cruel and unjustifiable outrage on humanity.

The English, in the meantime, as if their arms were not to be blessed, had met with a severe repulse in their attempt to drive the French from the Ohio. Braddock’s troops landed at Alexandria, a small town at the mouth of the Potomac, early in June; and Colonel Washington, being permitted to retain his rank in consequence of the reputation he had already attained, joined the expedition soon after. Braddock made very light of the whole campaign; being stopped at the commencement of his march, for want of horses and wagons, he told Benjamin Franklin, that after having taken Fort Du Quesne, whither he was hastening, he should proceed to Niagara, and having taken that, to Frontenac. “Du Quesne,” said he, “will not detain me above three or four days, and then I see nothing which can obstruct my march to Niagara.” Franklin calmly replied, that the Indians were dexterous in laying and executing ambuscades. “The savages,” replied Braddock, “may he formidable to your raw American militia; upon the king’s regulars it is impossible that they should make any impression.”

Among the wagoners, whom the energy of Franklin obtained, was Daniel Morgan, famous as a village wrestler, who had emigrated as a day-labourer from New Jersey to Virginia, and who, having saved his wages, was now the owner of a team, all unconscious of his future greatness.[^[3]] By the advice of Washington, owing to the difficulty of obtaining horses and wagons, the heavy baggage was left under the care of Colonel Dunbar, with an escort of 600 men; and Braddock, at the head of 1,300 picked men, proceeded forward more rapidly. Fort Du Quesne, in the meantime, was receiving reinforcements.

Braddock was by no means deficient in courage or military skill, but he was wholly ignorant of the mode of conducting warfare amid American woods and morasses; and to make this deficiency the greater, he undervalued the American troops, nor would profit by the opinions and experience of American officers. Washington urged the expediency of employing the Indians, who, under the well-known chief Half-king, had already offered their services as scouts and advance parties; but Braddock rejected both the advice and this offered aid, and that so rudely that Half-king himself and his Indians were seriously offended.

It was now the 9th of July, and the governor of Du Quesne almost gave up his fort as lost; for Braddock and his army were that morning only twelve miles distant. Washington, about noon riding a little a-head, looked back from the height above the right bank of the Monongahala, and beheld the advanced guard of regulars, headed by Lieutenant-colonel Gage, advancing, with all the glitter of their brilliant uniform, into an open wood. At that moment the Indian war-whoop sounded, and they were fired upon from all quarters by an invisible foe. The assailants, about 200 French and 600 Indians, hidden in some ravines on each side of the road and amid the long grass, poured in a deadly fire: the British troops, seized with sudden panic, were thrown into hopeless confusion, and would have fled, but that Braddock rallied them and exerted himself to the utmost to restore order. Succeeding in part, and preserving something like the order of battle, the horrors of the moment were increased; for his men, “penned like sheep in a fold,” were the better mark for the invisible enemy, who themselves, expecting merely to harass, never hoping to defeat, were astonished at their own success. The Indians, singling out the officers, shot down every one; of eighty-six officers, twenty-six were killed and thirty-seven wounded; of the men one-half were killed or wounded. Washington alone seemed to be preserved as by an especial Providence. In vain the Indian singled him out also as a mark for his rifle; no bullet took his life, though two horses were shot under him, and four bullets, after the battle, were found lodged in his coat. Well might the savage exclaim, “Some powerful Manitou guards his life!” This singular preservation of the young Washington, in the midst of death, attracted the attention of all. “I cannot but hope,” said a learned divine, a month afterwards, “that Providence has preserved that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, in so especial a manner for some important service to his country.” And in England Lord Halifax inquired, “Who is this Mr. Washington? I know nothing of him; but they say that he behaved in Braddock’s action as bravely as if he loved the whistling of bullets.”

Braddock remained undismayed amid the shower of bullets; five horses were shot under him, and at length a ball entering his right side, he fell mortally wounded. With difficulty he was borne off the field; for many hours he remained silent; towards evening he said, “Who would have thought it?” On the 12th, Braddock being conveyed to Dunbar’s camp, the remaining artillery was destroyed, the public stores and heavy baggage burnt, to the value of £100,000, Dunbar assigning as the reason, the dying general’s commands. The next day they retreated, and the same night Braddock died; his last words being, “We shall know better how to deal with them another time.” His grave may still be seen near the public road, about a mile west of Fort Necessity.[^[4]]

Philadelphia was preparing for the triumph of victory, when the news of this shameful defeat reached the city, in the arrival of Dunbar, on whom the command had now devolved. The whole frontier of Virginia was thus left open to the depredations of the French and Indians. The French at Fort Du Quesne endeavoured to withdraw the Cherokees from their fidelity to the English, and news of this reaching the ears of Glen, governor of South Carolina, a council of Cherokee chiefs was called, the covenant of peace was renewed, and the cession of a large tract of land in South Carolina was obtained.

The expedition against Niagara was entrusted to Governor Shirley, who now, by the death of Braddock, was commander-in-chief of the British forces. It was intended that the troops destined for this service should assemble at Oswego, whence they were to proceed by water to the mouth of the Niagara. The march, however, was one of extreme difficulty, the troops being disabled by sickness and disheartened by the news of Braddock’s defeat; and when after six weeks it was accomplished, various adverse circumstances, violent winds and rains, and the desertion of their Indian allies, rendered it unadvisable for them to proceed. Two strong forts were, however, erected, and vessels built in preparation for their embarkation.

The troops destined for the expedition against Crown Point, consisting principally of the militia of Connecticut and Massachusetts, were entrusted to General (afterwards Sir William) Johnson. In June and July, about 6,000 New England men, having Phineas Lyman as their major-general, reached the portage between Hudson River and Lake George, where they constructed a fort called Fort Lyman, afterwards Fort Edward. Here they were joined by General Johnson, with about 3,400 irregulars and Indians, towards the end of August, when he assumed command and advanced towards Lake George. Dieskau, in the meantime, having ascended Lake Champlain with 2,000 men from Montreal, was now pushing on to Fort Lyman, when, altering his route, probably at the request of his Indian allies, who dreaded the English artillery, he suddenly attacked the camp of Johnson. Already informed of his intended attack on Fort Edward, Johnson had sent out 1,000 Massachusetts men, under Ephraim Williams, and a body of Mohawk warriors, under a famous chief called Hendricks, for the purpose of intercepting their return. Unfortunately, however, this detachment fell in with the whole force of Dieskau’s army in a narrow defile, and were driven back with great slaughter, Williams and Hendricks being soon slain. It was this Williams who, when passing through Albany, made his will, leaving his property, in case of his death, to found a Free School for Western Massachusetts, which is now the Williams College; a better monument, as Hildreth justly observes, than any victory would have been. The loss of the enemy was also considerable.

The firing being heard in the camp of Johnson, the repulse of Williams was suspected. A breast-work of felled trees was therefore hastily constructed, and a few cannon mounted, which had just been brought up from Fort Edward; and scarcely had the fugitives reached the camp, when the enemy appeared, who met with so warm a reception from the newly-planted cannon, that the Canadian troops and the Indians soon fled, greatly to the chagrin of Dieskau. Johnson, being early wounded, retired from the fight, and the New Englanders, under their own officers, fought bravely for five hours. It was a terrible day for the French; nearly all their regulars perished, and Dieskau was mortally wounded, though he still refused to retire. Two Canadians, who wished to carry him from the field, were shot dead at his side, and he himself soon after, being found seated on the stump of a tree, was wantonly shot by a renegade Frenchman. A small remnant fled, only to be pursued by a detachment from Fort Edward. Instead of pursuing his advantage, Johnson spent the autumn in erecting a fort on the site of his encampment, called Fort William Henry; and the season being late, dispersed his army to their respective provinces. In the meantime the French were strengthening their position at Crown Point, and fortifying Ticonderoga. These actions are known as the battle of Lake George.

Benjamin Franklin having about this time published an account of the rapid increase of population in the United States, the attention of England was turned to the immensely growing power of her colonies. Let us hear the reasoning of the two parties on this subject. “I have found,” said the royal governor, Shirley, who had been appealed to, “that the calculations are right. The number of the inhabitants is doubled every twenty years.” He admitted that the demand for British manufactures and the employment of shipping increased in an equal ratio; also that the sagacity which had been displayed in the plan of union proposed at the late congress at Albany, might justly excite the fear of England, lest the colonists should throw off their dependence on the mother-country and set up a government of their own. But, added he, let it be considered how various are the present constitutions of their respective governments; how much their interests clash, and how opposed their tempers are, and any coalition among them will be found to be impossible. “At all events,” said he, “they could not maintain such an independency without a strong naval force, which it must ever be in the power of Great Britain to prevent. Besides, the 7,000 troops which his Majesty has in America, and the Indians at command, provided the provincial governors do their duty and are maintained independent of the assemblies, may easily prevent any such step being taken.”

The royal governor of Virginia, Dinwiddie, urged upon parliament his plan of a general land and poll tax, begging, however, that the plan might come entirely as from them; he urged also the subversion of charter-governments, arguing that all would remain in a distracted condition until his majesty took the proprietary government into his own hands. Another advised that Duke William of Cumberland should be sent out as sovereign of the united provinces of British America, on the plea that in a few years the colonies of America would be independent of Britain.

These fears were prophetic of the future, and indeed were but an echo of the popular sentiment. Franklin was thinking, and acting, and scattering abroad words, which were winged seeds of liberty; Washington was already doing great deeds; and John Adams, then the young teacher of a New England free school, was giving words to ideas which thousands besides himself were prepared to turn into deeds. “All creation,” said he, “is liable to change; mighty states are not exempted. Soon after the Reformation, a few people came out here for conscience sake. This apparently trivial incident may transfer the great seat of empire into America. If we can remove these turbulent Gallics, our people, according to the exactest calculation, will in another century become more numerous than England itself. All Europe will not be able to subdue us. The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves, is to disunite us.” They had learnt already that union was strength.

CHAPTER II.
PROGRESS OF THE WAR—THE CONQUEST OF CANADA.

The plan of the campaign for 1756, arranged by a convention of provincial governors at New York, was similar to that of the preceding year: the reduction of Crown Point, Niagara and Fort Du Quesne. The enrolling of volunteer militia went on; Benjamin Franklin being active for this purpose in Pennsylvania, and he himself now assuming military command as a colonel on the frontier from the Delaware to the Maryland line. The frontiers of Virginia continued to suffer severely, though Washington, with 1,500 volunteers, did his utmost for their protection. It was difficult to obtain a larger volunteer force, on account, said Dinwiddie, writing to the Board of Trade on this subject, “of our not daring to part with any of our white men to a distance, as we must have a watch over our negro-slaves.”

The war had now continued two years without any formal declaration of hostilities between Great Britain and France. In May, however, of this year it was made.

In June, General Abercrombie, who superseded Shirley, arrived with two regiments from England, and proceeded to Albany, where the provincial troops and the remains of Braddock’s army were already assembled—short of provisions, however, and suffering from small-pox. Abercrombie, deeming his forces insufficient for the proposed campaign, determined to wait for the arrival of Lord Loudon, now appointed commander-in-chief. This occasioned a delay until the end of July. In the meantime, the French, under the Marquis of Montcalm, successor to the Baron Dieskau, taking advantage of the tardiness of the English, had made an attack on Fort Oswego, which it had been intended to reinforce with a regiment of regulars under General Webb; but it was then too late; the Forts Oswego and Ontario were taken, and Webb retired precipitately to Albany. Upwards of 1,000 men, 135 pieces of artillery, a great amount of stores, and a fleet of boats and small vessels built the year before for the Niagara expedition, fell into the hands of Montcalm.

To gratify the Six Nations, and induce them to assume a position of neutrality, Montcalm destroyed the forts, after which he returned to Canada. These disasters were as discouraging as the defeat of Braddock had been in the former year. The march to Ticonderoga was abandoned, and Forts Edward and William Henry were ordered to be strengthened. Feebleness and incapacity characterised the campaign. The Indians, incited by the French, renewed their border depredations; and the Quakers incurred no inconsiderable ignominy by persisting to advocate the cause of the Indians, holding conferences with them and forming treaties of peace. But though these measures were against the spirit of the time, they persevered, and succeeded in thus defending the frontiers of Pennsylvania as well as some of the other colonies by force of arms.

On July 9, 1757, Loudon sailed with 6,000 regulars against Louisburg, the important stronghold of the North, as Fort Du Quesne was of the West, and on the 13th reached Halifax, where he was reinforced by eleven sail of the line, under Admiral Holbourn, with 6,000 additional troops. Nothing, however, was done; for on learning that Louisburg was garrisoned by 6,000 men, and that a large French fleet lay in her harbour, the expedition was abandoned, and Loudon returned to New York. In the meantime, Montcalm, combining his forces from Ticonderoga and Crown Point, amounting to 9,000, with 2,000 Indians, ascended Lake George, and laid siege to Fort William Henry, which was at that time commanded by Colonel Munro, with upwards of 2,000 men, while Colonel Webb was stationed at Fort Edward, only fifteen miles distant, with 5,000. For six days the garrison made a brave resistance, until the ammunition being exhausted, and no relief coming from Fort Edward, Munro capitulated; honourable terms being granted, “on account,” said the capitulation, “of their honourable defence.” But the terms were not kept. The Indians attached to Montcalm’s army fell upon the retiring British, plundering their baggage and murdering them in cold blood. Munro and a part of his men retreated for protection to the French camp; great numbers fled to the woods, where they suffered extremely; many were never more heard of.

In the civil history of the colonies there is very little to chronicle during this period. In Pennsylvania a dispute arose respecting the rights of the proprietaries to exempt their own lands from taxes raised for the defence of those lands. Benjamin Franklin visited England in consequence, and the question was decided by the proprietaries yielding on certain conditions. In Georgia, also, arose a dispute in which the Creek Indians took a lively interest, as it grew out of the claims of that Mary Musgrove, the Indian interpreter, who had materially aided Oglethorpe on his arrival in that country. Mary had now married, for her third husband, Thomas Bosomworth, Oglethorpe’s former agent for Indian affairs, but who, having taken orders in England, had returned as successor of Wesley and Whitfield, and claimed the islands on the coast and a tract of land above Savannah, which the Creeks had made over to her, as well as twelve years’ arrears of salary as Indian interpreter. The dispute, after having continued twelve years, was settled at this time to the entire satisfaction of Mary and her nation. The island of St. Catherine was secured to her and her husband, and £2,000 paid in liquidation of her other demands. Georgia was also, about the same time, divided into parishes, and the Church of England established by law.

The unfortunate results of the campaigns of 1756–7 were extremely humiliating to England, and so strong was the feeling against the ministry and their measures, that a change was necessary. A new administration was formed, at the head of which was William Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham; Lord Loudon was recalled; additional forces were raised in America, and a large naval armament and 12,000 additional troops were promised. After this great expenditure of money and of blood on the part of the English, the French still held all the disputed territory. The English were still in possession of the Bay of Fundy, it is true; but Louisburg, commanding the entrance of the St. Lawrence, Crown Point and Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, Frontenac and Niagara on Lake Ontario, Presque Island on Lake Erie, and the chain of posts thence to the Ohio, were still in the hands of the French. They had driven the English from Fort Oswego and Lake George, and had compelled the Six Nations to neutrality. A devastating war was raging along the whole north-western frontier; scalping parties advanced to the very centre of Massachusetts; to within a short distance of Philadelphia, and kept Maryland and Virginia in perpetual alarm.[^[5]]

The campaign of 1758 began in earnest. Pitt addressed a circular to the colonies, demanding at least 20,000 men; the crown undertook to provide arms, ammunition, tents and provisions; the colonies were to raise, clothe and pay the levies, but were to be reimbursed by parliament. This energetic impulse was cheerfully responded to. Massachusetts voted 7,000 men, besides such as were needed for frontier defence. The advances of Massachusetts during the year amounted to about £250,000. Individual Boston merchants paid taxes to the amount of £500. The tax on real estate amounted to 13s. 4d. in the pound. Connecticut voted 5,000 men; New Hampshire and Rhode Island a regiment of 500 men each; New Jersey 1,000; Pennsylvania appropriated £100,000 for bringing 2,700 men into the field; Virginia raised 2,000. To co-operate with these colonial levies, the Royal Americans were recalled from Canada, and large reinforcements were sent from England. Abercrombie, the new commander-in-chief, found 50,000 men at his disposal—a greater number than the whole male population of New France. The total number of Canadians able to bear arms was 20,000; the regular troops amounted to about 5,000; besides which, the constant occupation of war had caused agriculture to be neglected. Canada was at this time almost in a state of famine.[^[6]] “I shudder,” wrote Montcalm to the French government, in February 1758, “when I think of provisions. The famine is very great; New France needs peace, or sooner or later it must fall; so great is the number of the English; so great our difficulty in obtaining supplies.” The French army, and the whole of Canada, were put on restricted allowance of food.

The campaign, as we have said, began in earnest; there was no trifling, no delay. Three simultaneous expeditions were decided upon; against Louisburg, Ticonderoga, and Fort Du Quesne. The possession of Louisburg was deemed very important, as opening the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and thus admitting the English at once to the capital of Canada. In June, Boscawen appeared before Louisburg with thirty-eight ships of war, convoying an army of 14,000 men, chiefly regulars, under General Amherst, but including a considerable body of New England troops. The siege commenced. It was here that General Wolfe first distinguished himself in America; his amiable disposition and calm, clear judgment early won the esteem and admiration of the colonists. Here, also, served Isaac Barre, raised by Wolfe from a subaltern position to the rank of major of brigade. The siege was conducted with great skill and energy, and on the 27th of July, this celebrated fortress was in the hands of the English, and with it the islands of Cape Breton, Prince Edward’s Island and their dependencies. The garrison became prisoners of war; the inhabitants were shipped off to France. Such was the end of the French power on the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

While the siege of Louisburg was going forward, General Abercrombie, with 16,000 men and a great force of artillery, advanced against Ticonderoga and Crown Point. On the 16th of July, having embarked at Fort William Henry, he advanced down Lake George, and landing near the northern extremity of the lake, the march commenced through a thick wood towards the fort, which Montcalm held with about 4,000 men. Unfortunately, the vanguard—headed by the young and gallant Lord Howe, who, like Wolfe, had already gained the enthusiastic affection of the Americans—ignorant of the ground, lost their way and fell in with a French scouting party, when a skirmish took place, and though the enemy was driven back, Lord Howe fell. The grief of the provincial troops, and, indeed, of the whole northern colonies, was very great for the loss of this brave young man, to whose memory Massachusetts afterwards erected a monument in Westminster Abbey.[^[7]]

The death of Lord Howe is said to have considerably abated the ardour of the troops; nevertheless, Abercrombie, without waiting for the coming up of his artillery, hastened on the attack of Ticonderoga, having been assured that the works were unfinished, and that it might easily be taken. The result, however, proved the contrary. The breast-work was of great strength, and defended by felled trees, their branches sharpened, and pointing outwards like spears. The utmost intrepidity, however, was shown in the attack; but, with the loss of about 2,000 killed and wounded, Abercrombie was repulsed, and the next day made a disorderly retreat to Fort William Henry.

Colonel Bradstreet, being about to march at the head of the provincials of New York and New England against Fort Frontenac, obtained from Abercrombie, after this defeat, a detachment of 3,000 men, and with these, having marched to Oswego, he crossed Lake Ontario, and on the 25th of August attacked Fort Frontenac, which in two days’ time surrendered. Three armed vessels were taken, and the fort, which contained military stores intended for the Indians, and provisions for the south-western troops, was destroyed. On their return, the troops assisted in erecting Fort Stanwix, midway between Oswego and Albany. Among the officers who served with Bradstreet were Woodhull and Van Schaick, afterwards distinguished in the revolutionary war.

The expedition against Fort Du Quesne was entrusted to General Forbes, who early in July commenced his march with 7,000 men, including the Pennsylvanian and Virginian levies, the royal Americans recalled from South Carolina, and a body of Cherokee Indians. Washington, who headed the Virginian troops, and was then at Cumberland ready to join the main army, advised that the military road cut by Braddock’s army should be made use of; instead of which, Forbes, induced by some Pennsylvanian land-speculators, commenced making a new road from Ray’s Town, where the Pennsylvanian forces were stationed, to the Ohio. Whilst a needless delay was thus caused, Major Grant, who, with 800 men, had been sent forward to reconnoitre, was repulsed with the loss of 300 men, and himself taken prisoner. This misfortune, and the loss of time caused by making the road, which drove them into the cold season, together with considerable desertion and sickness, so dispirited the troops, that a council of officers determined to abandon the enterprise for the present. Just at that moment, however, a number of French prisoners accidentally brought in, revealed the feeble state of the garrison, and the news of the taking of Fort Frontenac reaching them at the same time, it was resolved to push forward immediately; and though they were then fifty miles from Du Quesne, and had, at the commencement of winter, to traverse untracked forests, they succeeded in arriving at the fort on the 25th of November, when it was found to be a pile of ruins, the garrison having set fire to it the day before, and retired down the Ohio.

The possession of this post caused great joy. New works were erected on the site of Du Quesne, the name of which was now changed to Fort Pitt, afterwards Pittsburg, now the Birmingham of America.

The consequence of this success was immediately seen, by the disposition which the Indians showed for peace. The frontiers of Virginia and Maryland were relieved from their incursions; and at a grand council held at Easton, in Pennsylvania, not only deputies of the Six Nations, but from their dependent tribes, the Delawares and others, met Sir William Johnson and the governors of New York and New Jersey, and solemn treaties of peace were entered into. In order to check the north-eastern Indians, who still remained hostile, and to prevent their intercourse with Canada, Fort Pownall was erected; the first permanent English settlement in that district.

The great object of the campaign of 1759 was the so-long-desired conquest of Canada. The intention of the British minister was communicated to the various colonial assemblies under an oath of secrecy; and this, together with the faithful reimbursement of their last year’s expenses, induced such a general activity and zeal, that early in the spring 20,000 colonial troops were ready to take the field.

In consequence of his disaster at Ticonderoga, Abercrombie was superseded, and General Amherst became commander-in-chief. The plan for the campaign was as follows: Wolfe, who after the taking of Louisburg had gone to England, and was now returning with a powerful fleet, was to make a direct attack on Quebec; Amherst was directed to take Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and so proceed northerly; while General Prideaux, who commanded the provincial troops and Indians, was to descend the St. Lawrence after taking Fort Niagara, and join Amherst in an attack on Montreal. Such was the proposed plan. The three divisions were intended to enter Canada by three different routes of conquest, all to merge finally in the conquest of Quebec, the great heart of the French power and dominion in America.

According to arrangement, Amherst arrived before Ticonderoga in July, with 11,000 men, when the garrison of the fort having been weakened by the withdrawal of forces for the defence of Quebec, both this and Crown Point surrendered without difficulty; the want of vessels, however, prevented him for some time either proceeding to join Wolfe at Quebec or attacking Montreal.

General Prideaux proceeded in the expedition against Niagara with his provincials and a body of warriors of the Six Nations, who, in spite of their treaty of neutrality, had been induced to join in this enterprise. Prideaux advanced by way of Schenectady and Oswego, and on the 6th of July effected a landing near Fort Niagara without opposition. The bursting of a gun, however, killed General Prideaux, when the command devolved on Sir William Johnson. Twelve hundred French, and an equal number of Indian auxiliaries, advancing to the relief of the garrison, gave battle to the English, and were routed with great loss, leaving a considerable number prisoners; on which the dispirited garrison capitulated. The surrender of this post cut off all communication between Canada and the south-west.

Sir William Johnson having so far accomplished his object, should, according to pre-arrangement, have descended Lake Ontario, to co-operate with Wolfe on the St. Lawrence; but again the want of shipping, shortness of provisions and the incumbrance of his French prisoners, prevented his doing so.

Thus disappointed in receiving these important reinforcements, Wolfe was compelled to commence the siege of Quebec alone. The presence of Wolfe had already inspired the most unbounded confidence. His army consisted of 8,000 men; his fleet, commanded by Admirals Saunders and Holmes, consisted of twenty-two ships of the line, and the same number of frigates and armed vessels. On board of one ship was Jervis, afterwards Earl St. Vincent; another had for master, James Cooke, the afterwards celebrated navigator. The brigades were commanded by Robert Moncton, afterwards governor of New York, and the conqueror of Martinique. Wolfe selected as his adjutant-general Isaac Barre, his old associate at Louisburg, an Irishman of humble birth, but brave, eloquent, and ambitious.

On the 27th of June, the whole armament disembarked on the island of Orleans, just below the city. We will give a rapid account of the events of this important siege from Mrs. Willard’s excellent history.

“From the island of Orleans, Wolfe reconnoitred the position of his enemy, and saw the full magnitude of the difficulties which surrounded him. The city of Quebec rose before him upon the north side of the St. Lawrence; its upper town and strong fortifications situated on a rock whose bold and steep front continued far westward, parallel with the river, its base near to the shore, thus presenting a wall which appeared inaccessible. From the north-west came down the St. Charles, entering the St. Lawrence just below the town, its banks steep and uneven and cut into deep ravines, while armed vessels were borne upon its waters, and floating batteries obstructed its entrance. A few miles below, the Montmorenci leapt down its cataract into the St. Lawrence; and strongly posted along the sloping bank of that river and between these two tributaries, the French army, commanded by Montcalm, displayed its formidable lines.

“The first measure of Wolfe was to obtain possession of Point Levi, opposite Quebec. Here he erected and opened heavy batteries, which swept from the lower town the buildings along the margin of the river; but the fortifications, resting on the huge table of rock above, remained uninjured. Perceiving this, Wolfe next sought to draw the enemy from his entrenchments, and bring on an engagement. For this purpose he landed his army below the Montmorenci; but the wary Montcalm eluded every artifice to draw him out. Wolfe next crossed that stream with a portion of his army, and attacked him in his camp. The troops which were to commence the assault fell into disorder, having, with impetuous ardour, disobeyed the commands of the general. Perceiving their confusion, he drew them off, with the loss of 400 men, and re-crossed the Montmorenci. Here he was informed that his expected succours were likely to fail him. Amherst had possession of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, but was preparing to attack the forces withdrawn from these places at the Isle aux Noix. Prideaux had lost his life, and Sir William Johnson had succeeded him in the command; but the enemy were in force at Montreal, and from neither division of the British army could the commander at Quebec hope for assistance.”

The bodily fatigues which Wolfe had undergone, and his anxiety and disappointment, threw him into a fever, which for a time disabled him from action; nevertheless he devised desperate means of attack, which, on proposing to his officers, were decided to be impracticable. Finally, it was determined to convey by night four or five thousand men to the level plain above the town, called the Heights of Abraham, and draw Montcalm “from his impregnable situation into open action.”[^[8]]

“Montcalm,” continues Mrs. Willard, “perceiving that something was about to be attempted, despatched M. de Bourgainville with 1,500 men higher up the St. Lawrence, to watch the movements of the English. Wolfe, pursuant to his plan, broke up his camp at Montmorenci and returned to Orleans. Then embarking with his army, he directed Admiral Holmes, who commanded the fleet in which himself and the army had embarked, to sail up the river several miles higher than the intended point of debarkation. This movement deceived De Bourgainville, and gave Wolfe the advantage of the current and the tide to float his boats silently down to the destined spot.

This was done about one hour before daybreak. Wolfe and the troops with him leapt on shore; the light infantry whom the force of the current was hurrying along clambered up the steep shore, staying themselves by the roots and branches of the trees. French sentinels were on the shore; one of these hailed in French and was answered by an officer in that language. Escaping the dangers of the water’s edge, they proceeded, though with the utmost difficulty, to scale the precipice. The first party which reached the heights secured a small battery which crowned them, and thus the remainder of the army ascended in safety. In the light of morning the British army were discovered by the French, drawn up on this lofty plain in the most advantageous position.

Montcalm, learning with surprise and consternation the advantage gained by the enemy, left his strong position, and displaying his lines for battle, intrepidly led on the attack. Being on the left of the French, he was opposed to Wolfe, who was on the right of the British. In the heat of the engagement both commanders were mortally wounded. This was the third wound which Wolfe had received, and Isaac Barre, who fought near him, received a ball in the head, which ultimately deprived him of sight. “Support me,” said Wolfe to an officer near him; “do not let my brave fellows see me fall!” He was removed to the rear, and water was brought to quench his thirst. Just then a cry was heard, “They run! they run!” “Who runs?” exclaimed Wolfe, faintly raising himself. “The enemy!” was the reply. “Then,” said he, “I die content;” and expired. Not less heroic was the death of Montcalm. He rejoiced when told that his wound was mortal, “For then,” said he, “I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec!”

After the battle, General Townsend conducted the English affairs with great discretion. The French on their part appear to have yielded at once to the suggestion of their fears. The capitulation of Quebec was signed five days after the battle. Favourable terms were granted to the garrison.

General Townsend returning to England, General Murray was left in command, with a garrison of 5,000 men. The French army retired to Montreal, and M. de Levi, who had succeeded Montcalm, being reinforced by Canadians and Indians, returned the following spring, 1760, with 6,000 men to Quebec. General Murray left the fortress, and a second still more bloody battle was fought on the Heights of Abraham. Each army lost about 1,000 men, but the French maintained their ground, and the English took refuge within the fortress. Here they were closely invested, until having received reinforcements, M. de Levi abandoned all hope of regaining possession of Quebec, and returned to Montreal, where Vaudreuil, the governor, assembled all the force of Canada.

DEATH OF GENERAL WOLFE.

Desirous of completing this great conquest, the northern colonies joyfully contributed their aid, and towards the close of the summer, three armies were on their way to Montreal; Amherst at the head of 10,000 men together with 1,000 Indians of the Six Nations, headed by Sir William Johnson; Murray with 4,000 men from Quebec; and Haviland at the head of 3,500 men, by way of Lake Champlain. The force which was thus brought against Montreal was irresistible; but it was not needed; Vaudreuil, the governor, surrendered without a struggle. The British flag floated on the city; and not alone was possession given of Montreal, but of Presque Isle, Detroit, Mackinaw and all the other posts of Western Canada. About 4,000 regular troops were to be sent to France, and to the Canadians were guaranteed their property and liberty of worship.

Great was the joy of New York and the New England states in the conquest of Canada, as their frontiers were now finally delivered from the terrible scourge of Indian warfare. But while they rejoiced from this cause, the Carolinian frontiers were suffering from incursions of the Cherokees, who had been instigated to these measures by the French, who, retiring from Fort Du Quesne, had passed through their country on their way to Louisiana. General Amherst, therefore, despatched Colonel Montgomery against them, who aided by the Carolinian troops, marched into their country, burned their villages, and was on his way to the interior, when they in their turn besieged Fort Loudon, which, after great suffering, the garrison were compelled to surrender, under promise of a safe conduct to the British settlements. This promise, however, was broken; great numbers were killed on the way and others taken prisoners; and again the war raged on the frontier. The next year Colonel Grant marched with increased force into their country; a terrible battle was fought, in which the Cherokees were defeated, their villages burned, and their crops destroyed. Finally they were driven to the mountains, and now subdued and humbled, besought for peace.

The war between England and France, though at an end on the continent of America, was still continued among the West India Islands, France in this case also being the loser. Martinique, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent’s—every island, in fact, which France possessed among the Caribbees—passed into the hands of the English. Besides which, being at the same time at war with Spain, England took possession of Havanna, the key to the whole trade of the Gulf of Mexico.

In November, 1763, a treaty of peace was signed at Paris, which led to further changes, all being favourable to Britain; whilst Martinique, Guadalope and St. Lucia were restored to France, England took possession of St. Vincent’s, Dominica and Tobago islands, which had hitherto been considered neutral. By the same treaty all the vast territory east of the Mississippi, from its source to the Gulf of Mexico, with the exception of the island of New Orleans, was yielded up to the British; and Spain, in return for Havanna, ceded her possession of Florida. Thus, says Hildreth, was vested in the British crown, as far as the consent of rival European claimants could give it, the sovereignty of the whole eastern half of North America, from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson’s Bay and the Polar Ocean. By the same treaty the navigation of the Mississippi was free to both nations. France at the same time gave to Spain, as a compensation for her losses in the war, all Louisiana west of the Mississippi, which contained at that time about 10,000 inhabitants, to whom this transfer was very unsatisfactory.

Three new British provinces were now erected in America; Quebec and East and West Florida. East Florida included all the country embraced by the present Florida, bounded on the north by the St. Mary’s. West Florida extended from the Apalachicola River to the Mississippi; from the 31st degree of latitude on the north, to the Gulf of Mexico on the south, thus including portions of the present states of Alabama and Mississippi. The boundary of Quebec corresponded with the claims of New York and Massachusetts, being a line from the southern end of Lake Nipissing, striking the St. Lawrence at the 45th degree of latitude, and following that parallel across the foot of Lake Champlain to the sources of the Connecticut, and thence along the highlands which separate the waters flowing into the St. Lawrence from those which fall into the sea.[^[9]]

All, however, was not yet peace in the northern provinces. The English might possess themselves of French territory, but they could not win the hearts of the Indian, whom the devoted missionaries and the kind and politic French traders had attached to their nation. When, therefore, the English, who treated the Indians with cold contempt, were about to take possession, Pontiac, the brave and intellectual chief of the Ottawas, who cherished the hope of restoring his nation to independence, endeavoured to excite the Red men against their new lords. “If,” reasoned he, addressing his people, “the English have expelled the French, what should hinder, but that the Indian should destroy them before they have established their power, and thus the Red man once more be lord of the forest?” Pontiac, by his eloquence and energy, gained the co-operation of the whole north-western tribes, and the plan of a simultaneous attack on all the British posts on the lakes was formed without any suspicion being excited. The day fixed was the 7th of July, and on that day nine forts—all, indeed, excepting those of Niagara, Detroit and Fort Pitt—were surprised and taken. Nor was the outbreak confined to the forts; the whole frontier of Pennsylvania and Virginia, especially the former, was attacked, and the scattered traders and settlers plundered and cruelly murdered. The back settlers of Pennsylvania—principally Scotch and Irish Presbyterians, men of a character very different to that of the mild Quakers, and who, in the spirit of the older Puritans, regarded the Indians as the Canaanites of the Old Testament—rose up in vengeance, and the leaders of this movement coming principally from a place called Paxton, the body assumed the name of “the Paxton Boys,” and pursued their victims with a bloodthirsty spirit, which aimed at nothing less than extermination. In vain Benjamin Franklin interfered to save such friendly Indians as had fled for refuge to Philadelphia and other towns; the avengers knew no mercy, and for these unhappy remnants of a once powerful race there appeared no place of refuge but the grave. Such of the Christianised Indians as escaped this cold-blooded massacre established themselves on a distant branch of the Susquehanna; though their peace there was but of short duration, being again compelled, within a few years, to emigrate to the country north-west of the Ohio, where they and their missionaries, the Moravians, settled in three villages on the Muskinghum.

The conquest of Canada and the subjection of the eastern Indians giving security to the colonists of Maine, that province began to expand and flourish. The counties of Cumberland and Lincoln were added to the former single county of York, and settlers began to occupy the lower Kennebec, and to extend themselves along the coast towards the Penobscot. Nor was this northern expansion confined alone to Maine; settlers began to occupy both sides of the upper Connecticut, and to advance into new regions beyond the Green Mountains, towards Lake Champlain, a beautiful and fertile country which had first become known to the colonists in the late war. Homes were growing up in Vermont. In the same manner population extended westward beyond the Alleganies, as soon as the Indian disturbances were allayed in that direction. The go-a-head principle was ever active in British America. The population of Georgia was beginning to increase greatly, and in 1763 the first newspaper of that colony was published, called the “Georgia Gazette.” A vital principle was operating also in the new province of East Florida, now that she ranked among the British possessions. In ten years, more was done for the colony than had been done through the whole period of the Spanish occupation. A colony of Greeks settled about this time on the inlet still known as New Smyrna; and a body of settlers from the banks of the Roanoke planted themselves in West Florida, near Baton Rouge.[^[10]]

Nor was this increase confined to the newer provinces; the older ones progressed in the same degree. Hildreth calls this the golden age of Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina, which were increasing in population and productions at a rate unknown before or since. In the north, leisure was found for the cultivation of literature, art, and social refinement. The six colonial colleges were crowded with students; a medical college was established in Pennsylvania, the first in the colonies; and West and Copley, both born in the same year—the one in New York, the other in Boston—proved that genius was native to the New World, though the Old afforded richer patronage. Besides all this, the late wars and the growing difficulties with the mother-country had called forth and trained able commanders for the field, and sagacious intellects for the control of the great events which were at hand.

CHAPTER III.
CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.

A vast amount of debt, as is always the case with war, was the result of the late contests in America. With peace, the costs of the struggle began to be reckoned. The colonies had lost, by disease or the sword, above 30,000 men; and their debt amounted to about £4,000,000, Massachusetts alone having been reimbursed by parliament. The popular power had, however, grown in various ways; the colonial assemblies had resisted the claims of the royal and proprietary governors to the management and irresponsible expenditure of the large sums which were raised for the war, and thus the executive influence became transferred in considerable degree from the governors to the colonial assemblies. Another, and still more dangerous result, was the martial spirit which had sprung up, and the discovery of the powerful means which the colonists held in their hands for settling any disputed points of authority and right with the mother-country. The colonies had of late been a military college to her citizens, in which, though they had performed the hardest service and had been extremely offended and annoyed by the superiority assumed by the British officers and their own subordination, yet they had been well trained, and had learned their own power and resources. The conquest of New France, in great measure, cost England her colonies.

England, at the close of the war—at the close, in fact, of four wars within seventy years—found herself burdened with a debt of £140,000,000; and as it was necessary now to keep a standing army in her colonies, to defend and maintain her late conquests, the scheme of colonial taxation to provide a regular and certain revenue began again to be agitated. Already England feared the growing power and independence of her colonies, and even at one moment hesitated as to whether it were not wiser to restore Canada to France, in order that the proximity of a powerful rival might keep them in check and secure their dependence on the mother-country. As far as the colonists themselves were concerned, we are assured by their earlier historians that the majority had no idea of or wish to separate themselves from England, and that the utmost which they contemplated by the conquest of Canada, was the freedom from French and Indian wars, and that state of tranquil prosperity which would leave them at liberty to cultivate and avail themselves of the productions and resources of an affluent land. The true causes which slowly alienated the colonies from the parent state may be traced back to the early encroachments on their civil rights and the restrictive enactments against their commerce.

The Americans were a bold and independent people from the beginning. They came to the shores of the New World, the greater and better part of them, republicans in feeling and principle. “They were men who scoffed at the right of kings, and looked upon rulers as public servants bound to exercise their authority for the benefit of the governed, and ever maintained that it is the inalienable right of the subject freely to give his money to the crown or to withhold it at his discretion.” Such were the Americans in principle, yet were they bound to the mother-country by old ties of affection, and by no means wishful to rush into rebellion. It was precisely the case of the son grown to years of discretion, whom an unreasonable parent seeks still to coerce, until the hitherto dutiful, though clear-headed and resolute son, violently breaks the bonds of parental authority and asserts the independence of his manhood. The human being would have been less worthy in submission; the colonies would have belied the strong race which planted them, had they done otherwise.

England believed that she had a right to dictate and change the government of the colonies at her pleasure, and to regulate and restrict their commerce; and for some time this was, if not patiently submitted to, at least allowed. The navigation acts declared that, for the benefit of British shipping, no merchandise from the English colonies should be imported into England excepting by English vessels; and, for the benefit of English manufacturers, prohibited exportation from the colonies, nor allowed articles of domestic manufacture to be carried from one colony to another; she forbade hats, at one time, to be made in the colony, where beaver abounded; at another, that any hatter should have above two apprentices at one time; she subjected sugar, rum and molasses to exorbitant duties on importation; she forbade the erection of iron-works and the preparation of steel; or the felling of pitch and white pine-trees unless in enclosed lands. To some of these laws, though felt to be an encroachment on their rights, the colonies submitted patiently; others, as for instance, the duties on sugar and molasses, they evaded and opposed in every possible way, and the British authorities, from the year 1733, when these duties were first imposed, to 1761, made but little resistance to this opposition. At this latter date, however, George III. having then ascended the throne, and being, as Charles Townshend described him, “a very obstinate young man,” it was determined to enforce this law, and “writs of assistance,” in other words, search-warrants, were issued, by means of which the royal custom-house officers were authorised to search for goods which had been imported without the payment of duty. The people of Boston opposed and resented these measures; and their two most eminent lawyers, Oxenbridge Thatcher and James Otis, expressed the public sentiment in the strongest language. Spite of search-warrants and official vigilance, the payment of these duties was still evaded, and smuggling increased to a great extent, while the colonial trade with the West Indies was nearly destroyed.

In 1764 the sugar-duties were somewhat reduced, as a boon to the colonies, but new duties were imposed on articles which had hitherto been imported free; at the same time, Lord Grenville proposed a new impost in the form of a stamp-tax. All pamphlets, almanacs, newspapers; all bonds, notes, leases, policies of insurance, together with all papers used for legal purposes, in order to be valid, were to be drawn on stamped paper, to be purchased only from the king’s officers appointed for that purpose. This plan met with the entire approbation of the British parliament, but its enactment was deferred until the following year, in order that the colonies might have an opportunity of expressing their feelings on the subject. Though deference was thus apparently paid to their wishes, the intention of the British government was no longer concealed. The preamble of the bill openly avowed the intention of raising a revenue from “His Majesty’s dominions in America;” the same act gave increased power to the admiralty-courts, and provided more stringent means for enforcing the payment of duties and punishing their evasion.

The colonies received the news of these proposed measures with strong indignation. Massachusetts instructed her agent in London to deny the right of parliament to impose duties and taxes on a people who were not represented in the House of Commons. “If we are not represented,” said they, “we are slaves.” A combination of all the colonies for the defence of their common interests was suggested.

Otis, who had published a pamphlet on Colonial Rights, seeing the tide of public indignation rising very high, inculcated “obedience” and “the duty of submission,” but this was not a doctrine which the Americans were then in a state of mind to listen to. Better suited to their feeling was Thatcher’s pamphlet against all parliamentary taxation. Rhode Island expressed the same; so did Maryland, by their secretary of the province; so did Virginia, by a leading member of her House of Burgesses.[^[11]] Strong as the expression of resentment was in the colonies, addresses in a much milder strain were prepared to the king and parliament from most of them, New York alone expressing boldly and decidedly the true nature of her feelings, the same tone being maintained by Rhode Island.

STAMP ACT RIOTS.

But the minds of the British monarch and his ministers were not to be influenced either by the remonstrances and pleadings of the colonies or their agents in London, or of their few friends in parliament. Grenville, the minister, according to pre-arrangement, brought in his bill for collecting a stamp-tax in America, and it passed the House of Commons five to one, and in the House of Lords there was neither division on the subject nor the slightest opposition. This act was to come into operation on the 1st day of November of the same year. It was on the occasion of its discussion in the House of Commons, that Colonel Barre, who had fought with Wolfe at Louisburg and Quebec, electrified the house with his burst of eloquence in reply to one of the ministers who spoke of the colonists as “children planted by our care, nourished by our indulgence, and protected by our arms.” “They planted by your care!” retorted Barre. “No; your oppression planted them in America. They nourished by your indulgence! They grew up by your neglect of them. They protected by your arms! Those sons of liberty have nobly taken up arms in your defence. I claim to know more of America than most of you, having been conversant in that country. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal subjects as the king has, but a people jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them should they ever be violated.”

The day after the Stamp Act had passed the house, Benjamin Franklin, then in London as agent for Philadelphia, wrote the news to his friend, Charles Thompson. “The sun of liberty,” said he, “is set; you must light up the candles of industry and economy.” “We shall light up torches of quite another kind,” was the reply.

Anticipating opposition to this unpopular measure, a new clause was introduced in the Mutiny Act, authorising the sending of any number of troops into the colonies, which, by an especial enactment, were to be found with “quarters, fire-wood, bedding, drink, soap and candles,” by the colonists.

The news of the passage of the Stamp Act called forth a universal burst of indignation. At Boston and Philadelphia the bells were muffled, and rung a funeral peal; at New York the act was carried through the streets with a death’s head affixed to it, and labelled, “The folly of England and the ruin of America.”[^[12]]

The House of Assembly was sitting when the news reached Virginia, and the leading aristocratic members hesitated to express an opinion. Several days passed, and nothing was said; but the popular sentiment found an utterance from the lips of Patrick Henry, a young lawyer and member of the Assembly, who introduced a series of resolutions, which were, in fact, the key-note to all that followed. The first four resolutions asserted the rights and privileges of the colonists; the last denied the authority of any power whatsoever, excepting their own provincial Assembly, to impose taxes upon them, and denounced any person as an enemy to the colonies, who should by writing or speaking maintain the contrary. These strong resolutions led to a hot debate, during which Henry, carried away by the fervour of his patriotism, styled the king of England a tyrant. “Cæsar,” said he, “had his Brutus; Charles I. his Cromwell; and George III.——” the cry of “Treason! Treason!” interrupted him—“and George III.,” continued the corrected orator, “may profit by their example. If that be treason, make the most of it!” Spite of strong opposition, the resolutions passed; the last and most emphatic, by only the majority of one vote. The next day, in the absence of Henry, it was rescinded. But the whole had already gone to Philadelphia in manuscript, and soon circulating through the colonies, met with a warm response, and gave an impetus to the popular feeling.

Before the proceedings in Virginia were known in Massachusetts, the General Court had met, and a convention or congress of deputies from the various colonial houses of representatives was called “to meet at New York on the first Tuesday in October, to consult on the difficulties in which the colonies were and must be placed by the late acts of parliament levying duties and taxes upon them;” and further, “to consider of a general and humble address to his majesty and the parliament, to implore relief.”

In the meantime the popular feeling grew in intensity, and public meetings were held throughout the colonies—a new feature in colonial history,—and inflammatory speeches made, and associations formed, and resolutions agreed upon, to resist to the utmost this detested measure, which was stated to be “unconstitutional and subversive of their dearest rights.” Nor were they contented with talking merely. Associations, under the name of “Sons of Liberty,” a phrase taken from Colonel Barre’s famous speech, were formed in Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, who proceeded to express the popular sentiment in a very forcible manner. The stamp-officers in all these provinces were either compelled or persuaded to renounce their appointments; the stamps were seized and burned, and in Boston scenes even of disgraceful violence occurred. Public meetings were held under a large elm-tree, in an open space in the city, which hence took the name of the “Liberty Tree;” the effigies of such as were considered friends of the British government were hanged in its branches, beneath which inflammatory speeches were made. The house of Oliver, appointed stamp-distributor of Massachusetts, was attacked, the windows broken, and the furniture destroyed, and he compelled to resign. A violent sermon was preached against the Stamp Act, and this excited the mob still further; many houses of the public officers were attacked and destroyed, together with private papers and public records, as was particularly the case at the house of Hutchinson, the lieutenant-governor, whose furniture was piled into bonfires, the flames of which were fed with invaluable manuscripts, the carefully collected historical records of thirty years. These acts of violence were of course committed by such ignorant mobs as are the product of all periods of popular excitement. The respectable inhabitants of Boston expressed their “abhorrence,” and a civic guard was organised to prevent their recurrence; nevertheless the offenders passed unpunished, whence it may be inferred that “the respectability” of Boston did not quarrel with the spirit of their proceedings.

And now, on October 7th, the first Colonial Congress met at New York; twenty-eight delegates being present from nine colonies; among these were Timothy Ruggles, president, Otis, of Massachusetts, William Johnson, of Connecticut, Philip Livingstone, of New York, John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, John M‘Kean, of Delaware, Christopher Gadsden and John Rutledge, of South Carolina—all names afterwards distinguished in the revolution. After mature deliberation, “a Declaration of the Rights and Grievances of the Colonies” was drawn up, in which all the rights and privileges of Englishmen were claimed as the birthright of the colonists; one of the most important of which was an exemption from all taxation, except such as was imposed by their own consent and by their own representatives. A petition to the king and parliament was also prepared, in which the cause of the colonies was eloquently pleaded.

These proceedings were sanctioned by all the representatives, excepting Ruggles, the president, and Ogden, of New Jersey, both of whom refused to sign, on the plea of the approbation of their several assemblies being first required. The petition and memorials, signed by the other delegates, were transmitted to England, and all the other colonies gave in their approval immediately afterwards.

On the important 1st of November, the day on which the Stamp Act came into operation, scarcely a sheet of all the many bales of stamped paper which had been sent out to the colonies was to be found. They had either been destroyed or shipped back to England. The day was observed as one of public mourning; shops were closed, vessels displayed their flags half-mast high, processions paraded the streets, and every means was used to show the public disapprobation. The very terms of the act caused, in the present state of the popular mind, a suspension of the whole machinery of the social state. Business for the time was at an end; the courts of law were closed; marriages could not take place, nor could the affairs of the dead be legally settled. This was a state, however, which could not continue, and by degrees things fell into their usual course, without any regard to the act of parliament at all.

On the 6th of November, a public meeting of the more influential inhabitants of Boston formed a combination of retaliation on Great Britain. The purport of this was, that no goods should be imported from England nor used by the colonies. The women entered into the scheme with the utmost enthusiasm. All British manufactures were foresworn, and every kind of domestic manufacture was to be encouraged. In order to promote the home manufacture of woollen cloths, it was determined for the present to eat neither mutton nor lamb, that the American flocks might thus be allowed to increase. By these means it was intended that the trade with Great Britain should be destroyed.

England received the news with mingled alarm and displeasure. Nevertheless, a change having taken place in the ministry, Lord Grenville being succeeded by the Marquis of Rockingham, a party more favourable to America was in power; and it was now, therefore, evident to all that one of two measures must be immediately taken—either the odious Stamp Act must be repealed, or the colonies must be compelled to obedience by force of arms. The former was the wiser course, and a strong party now existed to advocate it. Angry debates began in the British senate on the subject. Lord Grenville’s party opposed repeal, which Pitt in the House of Commons, and Lord Camden in the House of Lords, as warmly advocated. “You have no right,” said Pitt, addressing the house, “to tax America. We are told that America is obstinate—is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as to voluntarily submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest. The Americans have been wronged. They have been driven to madness by injustice. Let this country be the first to resume its prudence and temper. I will pledge my word for the colonies, that on their part animosity and resentment will cease!”

Franklin, summoned to the bar of the house as a witness, declared that the act could never be enforced; and the bill for the repeal was carried in the Commons. In the House of Lords it met with great opposition. Lord Camden advocated the cause of the colonies with great eloquence. “My position is this,” said he—“I repeat it, I will maintain it to my last hour—taxation and representation are inseparable. This position is founded on the law of nature. It is more—it is itself an eternal law of nature; for whatever is a man’s own is absolutely his own; no man has a right to take it from him without his consent. Whoever attempts to do it attempts an injury; whoever does it commits a robbery.”

The bill for repeal passed, but it was accompanied by another, called “the Declaratory Act,” which was intended to save the national honour by avowing the principle “that parliament had a right to bind the colonies in all cases whatever.”

The repeal of the Stamp Act caused great joy in London to the merchants, manufacturers, and friends of America. In America it was received by a general outburst of loyalty and gratitude. A general thanksgiving was appointed; statues to Pitt and even to the king were voted, and erected in various places. Pitt became more than ever the idol of the colonies; and thanks were voted to him by most of the colonial assemblies.

The rejoicing, however, was only of short duration. The Declaratory Act made known the principle of action which it was intended to pursue towards the colonies, and accordingly the following year its operation commenced. Again the ministry was changed; and though Pitt, now Earl of Chatham, was at the head of affairs, and Lord Camden had a seat in the cabinet, advantage was taken of Chatham’s illness, and Charles Townshend, now Chancellor of the Exchequer and a former member of Grenville’s ministry, brought in a bill for taxing all tea, glass, paper and painters’ colours, imported into the colonies. This bill being supposed less objectionable than the Stamp Act, passed the two houses with but little opposition. Nor was this all; a standing army was to be maintained in the colonies, and permanent salaries provided for the governors and judges, so as to make them independent of the colonial assemblies; while a third act empowered the naval officers to act as custom-house officers, armed with authority to enforce the trade and navigation acts. Punishment was also inflicted on New York and Georgia for their disregard of the late Quartering Act; the legislative assembly of New York was suspended until his majesty’s troops were provided with supplies at the expense of the colony, and the troops were withdrawn from Georgia for the same cause, leaving her exposed to the incursions of Indians and the insurrection of negroes, which soon brought her to submission.

The passing of these bills in such quick succession left the Americans no longer in doubt of the line of policy which it was intended by England to adopt towards them, and the excitement and indignation which they occasioned equalled that produced by the Stamp Act. The colonial assemblies met, and the strongest dissatisfaction was expressed. Pamphlets circulated briskly, and the newspapers, now about five-and-twenty in number, entered boldly on the subject of colonial rights. The “Letters of a Pennsylvanian Farmer to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies,” written by John Dickinson, flew from one end of the colonies to the other. Franklin caused an edition to be published even in London. The object of Dickinson’s letters was to show how dangerous was the precedent of allowing parliamentary taxation in any form or to any extent whatever.

Again meetings were held and associations formed for the support and encouragement of home manufactures, and against the use and importation of British goods. This movement, which commenced in Boston, extended throughout the province, and the example was followed in Providence, New York and Philadelphia. In New Hampshire the non-importation agreement was not so warmly seconded, owing to the influence of the governor, Wentworth, while in Connecticut, under William Pitkin, the governor and an ardent patriot, it met with universal acceptation.

The assembly of Massachusetts invited by circular the co-operation of the other provinces for the maintenance of colonial rights; the prime movers in this measure being Thomas Cushing, the speaker of the House of Assembly, James Otis, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Joseph Hawley, all men of character and great influence. Otis was a lawyer; Cushing, descended from an old Puritan line in the colony; Adams, a stern Puritan likewise, educated for the ministry, but forced by circumstances to become a merchant—he had, however, been unsuccessful as such, and after various reverses and changes was now an active politician and patriot, a man though poor, and whose wife by her industry supported the family, yet who exercised an extraordinary influence upon the fate of his country. Hancock, the youngest of this patriot band, was a wealthy merchant, descended from a line of merchants, “young, gay, of winning manners, with a strong love of popular approbation.” “Hancock,” says Hildreth, “acted very much under the guidance of Adams, who saw the policy of putting him forward as a leader.” Hawley was a member of Northampton County, a lawyer by profession, a man of sound judgment, religious feeling, and unimpeachable character. The leader in the House of Representatives at this time was James Bowdoin, the grandson of a French Huguenot, whose father from the smallest beginnings had become the most opulent man in Boston, his immense wealth being inherited by his son and only child at one-and-twenty; he, too, acted under the direction of Adams.

The revenue officers no sooner began to enforce the collection of duties, than, as might be expected in the existing state of public feeling, they found themselves violently opposed by the merchants. Before long, also, the sloop Liberty, belonging to Hancock, being seized on the charge of having smuggled goods on board, the smothered fires burst into open flame. The populace rose, and the terrified revenue officers fled for their lives to the barracks on Castle Island, at the mouth of the harbour.

About the same time orders were received from England that “the Circular,” issued by the last court, and which had given great offence, should be rescinded, and great disapprobation was expressed in his majesty’s name of “that rash and hasty proceeding.” But the circular had already gone forth, and by a vote of ninety-two to seventeen the House of Assembly refused to rescind. Orders had also been received by all the other colonies, desiring them to pay no attention to this offensive circular; but Connecticut, New Jersey, Virginia, and Georgia, had already committed themselves to it; and Maryland and New York, instead of obedience, now put forth remonstrances of their own.

Still was New York in contention with the governor on the subject of the quartering of the troops, when General Gage, commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, at the request of Bernard, the governor, who had complained to England of the tumultuous and refractory character of the people of Boston, was ordered to establish a military force in the city, to keep the inhabitants in order, as well as to aid the revenue officers in performing their duties. Two additional regiments were in consequence sent over from England. Late in September they arrived, and with muskets charged, and fixed bayonets, marched in as to a conquered town. The people, however, remained refractory; nor, though ships of war were in their harbour, and 1,000 armed men in their streets, would they submit to find them quarters. At length the discomfited governor was compelled to yield; one regiment encamped on Boston common, and the State-house was thrown open for the accommodation of the rest. It was Sunday when all this happened, and as the State-house stood opposite the great church, the inhabitants were disagreeably disturbed in their worship by the beating of drums and the marching of the troops, only to find themselves challenged by sentinels stationed in the street on their way home. These were not circumstances calculated to mollify the popular resentment; the most irritating language passed between the soldiers and the citizens, and the public excitement increased daily.

The news of this reception given to the troops, which was transmitted to England both by Gage and Governor Bernard, caused an equally violent excitement in England. Parliament declared the conduct of Massachusetts to be “illegal, unconstitutional, and derogatory to the rights of the crown and of parliament, and urged upon the king, that the governor should be ordered to obtain all information regarding this treason, and to send suspected persons over to England for trial, under an old statute of Henry VIII., for the punishment of treasons committed out of the kingdom.” And a bill to the same effect, spite of the opposition of Barre, Burke, and Pownall, was immediately passed.

Every new step now taken, either by the colonies or the mother-country, increased the distance between them. The news of these instructions called forth immediately the most decisive expression of opinion from the colonial assemblies. The Virginian Assembly, in which Thomas Jefferson now first distinguished himself, and which was sitting when these tidings reached, passed a resolution denying boldly the king’s right, either to tax the colonies without their consent, or to remove an offender out of the country for trial. As soon as Lord Boutetout, the governor, heard of this, he dissolved the assembly, but the members, instead of submitting, resumed their sittings in a private house, and choosing Peyton Randolph as their speaker, passed resolutions, drawn up by Colonel Washington, against the use of British goods. Their example was followed, and the “non-importation agreement” of Boston, Salem and New York, now became general. In North Carolina the assembly was also dissolved, as well as in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, indeed, the military still occupying the town of Boston and the State-house, the rupture became so violent, that when Sir Francis Bernard communicated to the assembly his intention of going to England, to represent to parliament the disaffected state of the province, the assembly drew up a petition praying that he might be removed for ever from the government of the province, and denouncing, in the strongest terms, the fact of a standing army being maintained among them in a time of peace, and against their express desire. Leaving the administration in the hands of Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson, Bernard departed.

In the following year, 1770, an event occurred at Boston, which caused great excitement throughout America. An affray having taken place between some citizens and soldiers, the populace became greatly exasperated, and on the 5th of March, a crowd insulted the city guard under Captain Preston, and dared them to fire. The soldiers fired, three of the people were killed, and others seriously wounded. At once the whole city was roused, and thousands appeared in arms. After great difficulty, and by promise that justice should be done them on the morrow, the lieutenant-governor succeeded in appeasing the tumult. Captain Preston and his company were tried for murder; two of the most distinguished American lawyers and patriots, John Adams and Josiah Quincy, very nobly volunteering their services in their defence. Two of the soldiers were convicted of manslaughter, the rest were acquitted; but this circumstance only tended to increase the ill-feeling between the citizens and the soldiers.[^[13]]

On the very day of the outrage at Boston, Lord North, who was now at the head of the British administration, brought in a bill for the repeal of the detestable Quartering Act, and the removal of all the late offensive duties, excepting those on tea. It was time, in fact, to do something, as during the last year the amount produced by these very taxes had been swallowed up in their collection; British trade with the colonies was nearly at an end, and the military expenses amounted within the same period to £170,000. But even this conciliatory measure could do little. The Americans would accept nothing which still recognised the principle that parliament had a right to tax the provinces, and tea became now an article especially marked out by the non-importation agreements.

The concessions of government were not, however, without their effect in America; two parties began now to exist; those who inclined to moderation and adherence to the mother-country, called Tories, and the opponents, Whigs. In New York the party of Tories was strong, being composed of wealthy merchants, and members of the Church of England. These having power in the assembly, which now, after a suspension of two years, was allowed to meet again, submitted to the “Quartering Act,” and provided for the soldiers, to the extreme disgust of the patriots and sons of Liberty, at whose head was a wealthy merchant, Alexander M‘Dougall, a man who had raised himself by his own energy from poverty, and who was afterwards a major-general in the revolutionary army. This man having expressed his views very strongly, was imprisoned by the assembly, thus glad to show their zeal and loyalty, and M‘Dougall became at once a popular hero and martyr, and his prison the gathering-place of patriots.

The non-importation and non-consumption agreements led to results of a beneficial character in social life which had not been contemplated. The senseless pomp of mourning and funeral expenses in which the colonists had indulged was discontinued; American manufactures were stimulated, “home-made was the fashion; and in 1770, the graduating students at Cambridge took their degrees in home-spun suits.”

As we have before said, every successive act of Britain only served to alienate still more the hearts of her colonies. In 1772, parliament provided for the maintenance of the governor and judges of Massachusetts out of the royal revenues of the province, independent of the colonial assembly, and this was resented as an intended bribe to the governor and an infraction of their rights. Public meetings were again held throughout Massachusetts, and corresponding committees were formed, whose business was to discuss and consider the rights of the colonists and to communicate and publish the result. In the following year these committees commenced operation in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Maryland, as well as in Massachusetts. These, “the nurseries of independence,” gave again great offence in England.

During June of the same year, the Gaspe, an armed revenue schooner, which had been a great cause of annoyance in Narrangansett Bay, was purposely enticed into shoal-water by a vessel to which she gave chase, boarded and burnt by a party from Providence. This daring outrage called forth the indignation of parliament, and an act was passed for sending to England for trial all persons concerned in destroying his majesty’s ships, etc. A reward of £600 was offered for the discovery of the persons concerned in the destruction of this vessel, and powerful machinery of examination was put in action; but though the perpetrators were well known, so strong was public feeling in their favour, that no legal evidence could be obtained against them.

“While ardent discussions,” says Hildreth, “on the subject of colonial and national rights were going on in Massachusetts, some reflecting persons were struck with the inconsistency of contending for their own liberty and depriving other people of theirs. Hence arose a controversy as to the justice and legality of negro slavery. This controversy led to trials at law, in which the question was freely canvassed, and it was proved by legal decisions ‘that the colonists, black or white, born there, were free-born British subjects, and entitled to all the essential rights of such.’ These were the first steps towards the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts.”

Whilst disputes were maturing themselves into the great national contest between the mother-country and the colonies, the colonies were not altogether at peace among themselves; the question of boundary being fruitful in controversy. Pennsylvania and Connecticut quarrelled violently about the possession of the Wyoming Valley, on the Upper Susquehanna, and blood was even shed. Virginia quarrelled with Pennsylvania, also, about her western frontier, laying claim to Pittsburg and the whole district west of the Laurel Mountains. The boundary dispute which had long agitated New York and New Jersey was happily adjusted about this time, as was also that between New York and Massachusetts. Violent were the disputes, however, between New York and the settlers in the infant Vermont, the territory lying west of the Connecticut, “the Green Mountain Boys,” as they were called, and the leaders of whom were Ethan Allen and Seth Warner, emigrants from Connecticut to the Green Mountains. But, spite of disputes both at home and abroad, settlers extended themselves farther and still farther, to the north and to the west. The formidable Six Nations had now disposed of all their vast territory south of the Ohio, as far as the Cherokee or Tennessee River, to the British Crown, for the sum of £10,460. Settlers were already occupying the banks of the Kenhawa River, flowing north into the Ohio, beyond the great Allegany Range. In consequence of this immense cession of territory, land companies started up in England for the establishment of new colonies, but the growing troubles with the mother-country prevented their plans being carried out.

The first settlements in the present state of Tennessee were made by emigrants from North Carolina, who established themselves on the Wataga, one of the head streams of the Tennessee, in the land of the Cherokees. Like the early settlers of New England, these emigrants organised themselves into a body politic, and drew up a code of laws to which every individual assented by signature. About the same time that settlers extended themselves to the Tennessee, an Indian trader, returning to North Carolina from one of his far journeys west, induced Daniel Boone and four other settlers on the Yadkin, in Maryland, by his glowing accounts of the wonderfully beautiful regions which he had discovered, to return with him for their exploration. They set out, reached the head waters of the Kentucky, and as hunters traversed the fertile plains and magnificent forests in pursuit of the buffalo and other game. They had encounters with Indians, and Boone was taken prisoner, but managed to escape, and was soon after joined by his brother, who had come out in search of him. Boone was a second Nimrod, a mighty hunter; and as such, explored the beautiful region between the Upper Kentucky and the Tennessee. The country pleased him greatly, and hastening back to the Yadkin, he sold his farm, and with his wife and children and five other families, returned to this “New Western Paradise,” being joined by volunteer settlers to the number of forty as he journeyed along. All, however, did not go smoothly with them; they were met by hostile Indians and some of their number killed; and war having broken out between the backwoodsmen of Virginia and the Indians on the Ohio, they were detained a year and a half by the way. While the west was thus opened to the colonists, Georgia also acquired a large increase of territory by the purchase of land from the Creeks and Cherokees.

About this time Whitfield died in America, and Wesley sent over disciples to establish the Wesleyan Church in that country; soon after which, Mother Ann Lee also arrived, the foundress of the Shakers, whose singular communities exist to this day, here and there, throughout the country. About the same time, also, the sect of the Universalists began to attract attention, under the preaching of John Murray; and though at first few dared to avow this so-called heresy, it gained great acceptation, and tended considerably to soften the stern, rugged heart of puritan New England.

We now return to the great contest which cast all minor subjects into the shade.

The British ministry intended by cunning policy to effect what open measures had failed to do. The East India company were allowed by act of parliament to export tea to the American colonies free from English duties, liable only to threepence per pound, to be paid by the colonists, and which would thus give them tea cheaper than that purchased by the English. Tea was shipped in great quantities to America, which the colonists, who objected as strongly as ever to the principle involved in the measure, determined should never be permitted to land.

The pilots, therefore, in Philadelphia harbour were ordered not to conduct the ships into the river, and their cargoes were consequently returned to England; at New York, the governor commanded the tea to be landed under protection of soldiers, but the people gained possession, and prohibited its sale. At Charleston, also, its sale was forbidden and it was stored up in damp cellars to render it unfit for use. At Boston, the tea being consigned to the governor and his friends, it was feared that it would be landed spite of the public, to prevent which a number of men, disguised as Indians, boarded the vessels at night, and threw their cargoes overboard. Three hundred and thirty-two chests of tea were thus broken open and destroyed.

The news of this determined and offensive procedure caused the utmost astonishment and indignation in England, and it was resolved in parliament “to make such provisions as should secure the just dependence of the colonies and due obedience to the laws throughout the British dominions and as an especial punishment of the contumacious Bostonians, a bill passed the house in March, 1774, to oblige them to repay the value of the destroyed article, and also interdicting all commercial intercourse with the port of Boston, and prohibiting the landing and shipping of any goods at that place;” and by the same act the custom-house and its dependencies were removed from Boston to Salem, which it was intended to raise on the ruins of its neighbour city and port.

THROWING THE TAXED TEA INTO BOSTON HARBOR.

General Gage superseded Hutchinson as governor of Massachusetts, in consequence of the unpopularity of the latter. A number of manuscript letters, written by him to various members of parliament, had fallen into the hands of Benjamin Franklin, now agent in London for Massachusetts, New Jersey, Georgia and Pennsylvania, and having been sent by him to Boston, and circulated extensively though privately, caused his removal from office.

When, in May, the news of the Boston Port Bill reached that city, together with instructions to the new governor, to send to another colony or to England, for trial, any persons indicted for murder, or any other capital offence committed in aid of the magistrates in the fulfilment of their duty, an astonishment of grief and anger fell upon the citizens, and a meeting of the inhabitants declared that “the impolicy, injustice and inhumanity of the act exceeded their powers of expression.”

The General Assembly met, but was adjourned by the governor to Salem, and it was then resolved that a colonial congress should be convened to take into serious consideration the present difficult state of affairs. James Bowdoin, Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Adams and Robert Treat Paine, were therefore at once appointed as their representatives to such a congress, and the speaker of the house was ordered to inform the other colonies of this measure. The governor, hearing of these proceedings, ordered the assembly to dissolve, but in vain; his officer was not admitted, and in defiance of orders, the assembly finished its business.

The colonies sympathised warmly with Massachusetts, and Massachusetts was true to herself. The behaviour of the inhabitants of Salem, whom it was intended to benefit at the expense of Boston, was very noble. They replied to the governor’s proclamation, “That nature, in forming their harbour, had prevented their becoming rivals to Boston in trade; and that, even if it were otherwise, they should regard themselves as lost to every idea of justice and all feelings of humanity, if they could indulge a thought of seizing upon the wealth of their neighbours, or raising their fortunes upon the ruins of their countrymen.” More than this; the inhabitants of Marblehead and Salem offered to the suffering merchants of Boston the use of their harbour, wharfs and warehouses, free of all charge; and in Virginia, where Lord Dunmore, now governor, found it impossible to manage the “the refractory people,” “a day of fast, humiliation, and prayer,” was appointed for the 1st of June, the day on which the Boston Port Act came into effect, “that they might beseech of God to avert the evils which threatened them, and to give them one heart and one mind firmly to oppose, by all just and proper means, every injury to the American rights.”

In September, the great congress proposed by Massachusetts met at Philadelphia, composed of delegates from eleven of the colonies—the most important assembly which had yet come together in America, and for the result of whose deliberations all parties waited with extreme interest and anxiety.

By unanimous consent, Peyton Randolph, of Virginia, was chosen president; to each province was given one vote; they proceeded in their deliberations with closed doors; and a committee, composed of two persons from each province, was appointed to state the rights of the colonies in general, together with every known instance in which these rights had been infringed by the mother-country, and the proposed means of redress. The conduct of Massachusetts, in her “conflict with wicked ministers,” was approved, and a continuance of supplies for her relief was voted. A letter of remonstrance was addressed to the governor, General Gage, who was erecting fortifications on Boston Neck, begging him to “desist from military operations, lest a difference altogether irreconcilable should arise between the colonies and the parent state.”

The committee appointed for that purpose drew up a document setting forth, in a string of resolutions, the rights of the colonies, which, being approved, was published as the well-known “Bill of Rights.” A suspension of all commercial intercourse with Great Britain was resolved upon, until the grievances of the colonies were redressed; an address to the king was voted, together with others to the people of Great Britain and British America. The non-importation agreement bound them, “under the sacred ties of virtue, honour, and love of liberty,” not to import or use any British goods after the 1st of December, 1774, particularly the articles, tea and molasses. Agriculture, the arts and manufactures, were to be promoted in America by all possible means; committees were appointed to see this agreement entered into, and all who violated it were to be regarded as enemies to their country. To the honour of this assembly it must be stated, that they bound themselves also not to be in any way concerned in the slave-trade.

The proceedings of this congress awoke, as might be expected, a still stronger spirit of animosity in England. In vain the congress deplored to the king “the apprehension of his colonists being degraded into a state of servitude from the pre-eminent rank of English freemen;” in vain they besought that “the royal indignation might fall on those designing and dangerous men, who, by their misrepresentations of his American subjects, had compelled them by the force of accumulated injuries to disturb his majesty’s repose;” in vain they prayed for “peace, liberty, and safety; wishing not the diminution of the royal prerogative, nor soliciting the grant of any new right in their favour;” in vain they concluded their petition by earnestly beseeching the king, “as the father of his whole people, not to permit the ties of blood, of law, and loyalty, to be broken.” In vain did Lord Chatham stand before the British senate as the eloquent advocate of America, declaring that the way must be immediately opened for reconciliation, or it would be soon too late. “His majesty,” argued he, “may indeed wear his crown, but the American jewel out of it, it will not be worth wearing. I say,” continued he, taking up the argument of American wrongs, “you have no right to tax the colonies without their consent. They say truly, representation and taxation must go together; they are inseparable. This wise people speak out. They do not hold the language of slaves; they tell you what they mean. They do not ask you to repeal your laws, as a favour; they claim it as a right—they demand it; and the acts must be repealed. Bare repeal, however, will not satisfy this enlightened and spirited people. You must go through with the work; you must declare that you have no right to tax them; thus they may trust you—thus they will have some confidence in you.”

In vain did the merchants of London and other commercial towns petition in favour of America. Dr. Franklin and other colonial agents were refused a hearing before the house. America was condemned. The two houses of parliament, by a large majority, assured the king that “the Americans had long wished to become independent, and only waited for ability and opportunity to accomplish their design. To prevent this, therefore, and to crush the monster in its birth, was the duty of every Englishman; and this must be done, at any price and at every hazard.” Such was the temper of parliament.

In the meantime, the colonies were not indifferent to the increasing difficulties of the times. Massachusetts already assumed a military aspect. The congress, which, spite of the opposition of the governor, continued to hold its sittings, seeing that the military stores were already seized by the governor, proceeded themselves to take measures for the defence of the province. £20,000 were voted for this purpose, and the collectors of taxes received orders no longer to forward their moneys to the government treasurer, but to a new one of their own appointment. Further, it was ordained that a number of the inhabitants should be enrolled as a militia of 12,000 men, ready to march at a minute’s notice; officers were chosen, and committees of supplies and safety held their regular sittings. Gage denounced their proceedings, but no notice was taken of his denunciations; “he had no support except in his own troops and a few trembling officials, while the zealous co-operation of an intelligent, firm, energetic, and overwhelming majority of the people, gave to the provincial congress all the strength of an established government.”[^[14]]

In November, at the very time when the king and the British parliament were resolving to keep terms no longer with the colonies, Massachusetts sent agents to New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut, to inform them of her measures, and to solicit their co-operation in raising an army of 20,000 men, ready to act in case of need.

In the midst of all these growing internal excitements, and while the colonists were deeply occupied in the maintenance of their rights, the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia were again visited by the miseries of Indian warfare. It was at this time that the family of the famous chief Logan, an old and faithful friend of the whites, was murdered in cold blood; and this and other atrocities committed by the explorers of Ohio and Kentucky, led to the sorrows of the present Indian war. Daniel Boone, the hunter of the Kentucky plains, was placed in command of a frontier fort by Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, and a war of extermination was carried on against the Indians. At length, negotiations of peace were entered into, and it was on this occasion that Logan made his celebrated speech: “I appeal to any white man,” spoke the eloquent chief of the forest, “if he ever entered the cabin of Logan hungry, and he gave him not meat; if he ever came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin; and such was his love for the whites, that his countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, ‘Logan is the friend of the white men!’ I even thought to live with you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresop, last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relatives of Logan, not sparing women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature! This called on me for revenge! I have fully glutted my vengeance! For my people, I rejoice at the beams of peace; but mine is not the joy of fear—Logan never felt fear. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one!”

At the commencement of 1775, America very generally stood in a position of hostility to the mother-country. The congress of Massachusetts had held its third sitting; volunteers were in arms throughout the province, and every town had its committees of safety, correspondence and inspection. John Thomas, of Plymouth, and William Heath, a Roxbury farmer, were appointed generals of the Massachusetts army.

In Rhode Island, in consequence of the royal prohibition of the exportation of military stores to America, and the removal of armed ships from Narrangansett Bay, the people of Providence conveyed forty-four pieces of cannon thither from Newport; and when called upon by the British naval commander for an explanation, Governor Wanton, a stout patriot, bluntly replied, that they were removed to prevent their falling into his hands, and were intended to be used against any force which might molest the colony. In New Hampshire, John Sullivan a lawyer, and John Langdon, a merchant of Portsmouth, headed a party who entered the fort at that place, and possessed themselves of 100 barrels of powder, cannon and small arms. The convention of Maryland ordered the enrolment of militia, and voted £10,000 for the purchase of arms. In Pennsylvania, the public spirit was less unanimous. The provincial convention of that province expressed themselves less decidedly than suited the temper of the ardent patriots, one of the leaders of whom was Thomas Mifflin, a young Quaker, possessed of much energy of character, and remarkable powers of popular eloquence. Mifflin, however, was an exception to the general body of Quakers, who, whatever their original opposition to established forms, have ever been loyal and obedient to the powers that be; and now, in their yearly meeting held in Philadelphia at the commencement of 1775, they put forth their “testimony of abhorrence to every measure and writing tending to break off the happy connexion of the colonies with the mother-country, or to interrupt their just subordination to the king.” Very different was the spirit of the sects and their ministers in New England. Everywhere it evinced opposition to the king and the mother-country, whose attempts to force an established episcopal church, with a bishop at its head, upon the colonies, had only tended still more to increase that very spirit of resistance which had first sent their forefathers to these shores. The Presbyterians of every New England state were all staunch Whigs. The episcopal clergy and their congregations, wherever found, were Tories; so also were the landed proprietors and merchants, especially the more recent settlers. The Episcopalian and Tory party was more numerous in New York than in any other of the northern provinces. In Georgia they were also considerable, and the influence of Governor Wright prevented this province from joining the American Association; and in the southern provinces, the law of primogeniture, which still considerably prevailed, together with the institution of slavery, had given rise to a local aristocratic class, totally opposed in sentiment to the democracy of the north.

These were the elements upon which England depended to establish her power in the coming contest;—nor were these all; she depended, not only on the loyalty and attachment of the Episcopalians everywhere, but on the peace-loving principles of the Quakers, who were an influential portion of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and North Carolina; she expected if not aid, at least no opposition from the numerous German settlers, who, established in large colonies, had not yet acquired the English language nor amalgamated with the British colonists; and at the same time she depended for aid upon the Scotch Highlanders, who abounded in New York and North Carolina, and who were at the same time ignorant and loyal.

It being determined therefore to show no concession to the rebellious spirit of the colonies, a bill was brought in in February, 1775, for cutting off the trade of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, excepting with Great Britain and her West India possessions, and to prohibit also their fishing on the banks of Newfoundland, which was then a great branch of their trade and industry. While this bill was under discussion, news reached England of the adhesion which was given by the other colonies to the measures of the American Congress; and all the colonies, excepting New York, North Carolina and Georgia, were included in the bill of restriction. At the very time that this New England Restraining Bill was agitating all parties, Lord North proposed what he called a conciliatory plan, which was, in fact, that Great Britain should forbear any scheme of colonial taxation, on condition that the assembly of each province should raise a suitable amount of money, which should be disposable by parliament. This plan, though vehemently opposed in England, as conceding too much to the colonies, was utterly rejected by the colonies, as compelling them to yield that over which they claimed to have a right. In the midst of all these attempts at coercion and conciliation, an endeavour at negotiation also failed between Benjamin Franklin and some members of the cabinet who were friendly to America.

The West India merchants petitioned against the restraining bill, as interfering fatally with their commercial relationships, and foretelling famine and ruin to the West India islands in consequence. The assembly of Jamaica petitioned parliament on behalf of “the claim of rights set up by the North American provinces,” and protested against the “plan almost carried into execution for reducing the colonies into the most abject state of slavery.” Petitions for conciliation were presented from the British Quakers and the British settlers in Quebec, and Wilkes, as lord mayor of London, presented a remonstrance to the king from the city authorities, expressing “abhorrence of the measures in progress for the oppression of their fellow subjects in the colonies.” But all was of no avail. Nothing was to be done; and Franklin, seeing the hopeless state of affairs, set sail for America, and almost at the same moment the battle of Lexington was fought.

CHAPTER IV.
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.

When, in February, 1775, the provincial congress met again at Cambridge, the committee of supplies took the most active measures for the raising and drilling of the militia, and for the procuring of ammunition and military stores of all kinds. A day of fasting and prayer, according to puritan custom on solemn and important occasions, was also appointed; New England was preparing temporally and spiritually for the great time of trial.

The British forces under the command of General Gage, at Boston, amounted to about 3,000. Gage, aware of what was going forward around him, resolved to disable the insurgent colonists by gaining possession of the stores and ammunition which had been collected by them, and stored at Salem and Concord. At Salem the search was unsuccessful, the troops being driven back from a bridge, the passage of which was disputed on the Sunday. The attempt at Concord was of a much more serious character, military stores being collected there to a great extent. Eight hundred men were sent out on this expedition, with orders of despatch and secrecy, under the command of Colonel Smith and Major Pitcairn, on the night of April 18th, and arrived at Lexington, within five miles of Concord, just before sunrise. But the alarm had been already given, and it being supposed that the intention was to seize John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were then there, the minute-men of the place were drawn up to resist them. Pitcairn, at the head of his regulars, advanced within musket-shot, and exclaimed, “Disperse, rebels! Throw down your arms, and disperse!” No notice being taken of these words, a volley was then fired, which killed eight of the minute-men and wounded several others. The British, however, declared that the minute-men fired first; but be that as it may, they then fled, and the firing was continued, the regulars marching on to Concord, where they destroyed and took possession of the stores, while the minute-men being reinforced by different bodies which had hurried there at the sound of the firing, a skirmish ensued. A considerable number of the regulars were killed, and the rest forced to retreat, the colonial militia pursuing them hotly all the way back to Lexington, where, fortunately for themselves, they found Lord Percy with a reinforcement of 900 men. But for this timely aid, it is doubtful if any of their number would have reached Boston; the Americans, having the advantage of the knowledge of the ground, and availing themselves of the Indian mode of warfare, took fatal aim from behind bushes, stone walls, barns, or whatever offered a means of concealment. At sunset the exhausted regulars reached Bunker’s Hill, near Boston, having lost in killed and wounded about 300 men, while the loss of the provincials amounted to eighty-five.

The news of this battle, of this first shedding of blood, flew like wild-fire through the colonies. Couriers were despatched at full speed from place to place, bearing tidings which called all to arms. “The war has begun!” was shouted in the market-place; at the ferry on the river; in the crowded meeting-house on the Sabbath; and all rushed to arms. It was twenty days, however, with their utmost speed, before the news reached Charleston in South Carolina; yet, long before that time, volunteers had marched from all parts of the New England colonies.

From Rhode Island, a body of volunteers hastened to Boston, under the command of a young Quaker, Nathaniel Greene, who was disowned by his brethren for this violation of their principles. Nor could the admonitions and threats of discipline of the elder Friends of Philadelphia keep the martial spirit of their young men under control. Mifflin’s example and influence was stronger than all the advice they could give, and Quaker-Philadelphia sent out a company of brave volunteers. Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina, all were moved by the same spirit; while Patrick Henry, the young patriot lawyer of Virginia, marched with a troop of volunteer riflemen to Williamsburgh, the capital of the Old Dominion, and compelled the royal treasurer to refund the value of ammunition which Lord Dunmore, the governor, had lately seized. Dunmore, incensed, issued a proclamation declaring them rebels, and fortified his residence. Soon after, letters of his, addressed to the English government, and which were considered false to the colony, being intercepted, the public indignation waxed hot against him; whereupon, fearing for his life, he fled to a man-of-war lying at Yorktown, and abandoned his government. Governor Martin, of North Carolina, about the same time, fled also in terror on board a ship of war, at the mouth of Cape Fear River; and in South Carolina, Lord William Campbell, the governor, being suspected of secret negotiations with the Cherokees, was likewise obliged to retire. Georgia, the hitherto “defective link in the American chain,” soon became soldered by the kindling flame of liberty. In vain Sir James Wright, the governor, did his utmost to maintain the loyalty and allegiance of the province. The powder was removed from the magazine at Savannah; and the cargo of a powder-ship, which lay at the mouth of the river, forwarded to the camp at Boston.

Georgia sent five delegates to the provincial congress about to assemble at Philadelphia; and henceforth the style of the “Thirteen United Colonies” was assumed.

The battle of Lexington was soon followed by other events. The Massachusetts committee of safety had already contemplated gaining possession of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, on which depended the control of Lakes George and Champlain, when, without waiting for higher commands than those of patriotism, the bold Ethan Allen and Seth Warner, at the head of their “Green Mountain Boys,” set out on the enterprise. Without being aware of this movement, Benedict Arnold, a New Haven trader, then in camp before Boston with a company of volunteers, received a commission from the committee of safety, to raise a body of troops in Vermont and proceed on this enterprise. Arnold was well pleased, for it was a favourite scheme of his own, but presently found, to his surprise, that others were before him. Taking command, therefore, under Allen, they marched together to Ticonderoga, which they reached on the 9th of May, and on the 10th, by break of day, entered the fort unperceived, with eighty men, and surprising De la Place, the commandant, in his bed, ordered him to surrender, “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” No resistance was attempted; and Crown Point was taken with equal ease. The garrison of both forts did not amount to more than sixty men, but above 200 pieces of artillery and a valuable quantity of powder, of which there was great want in the provincial camp, fell into the hands of the captors. After this, Arnold manned a small schooner, and proceeding down the lake, surprised the Fort of St. John and seized a sloop-of-war laden with stores; the pass of Skeensborough, now Whitehall, was likewise secured. Three important posts which commanded the lakes, together with much needed cannon and munitions of war, being thus secured in rapid succession and without bloodshed, raised the hopes of the Americans and inspired them with confidence.

While these events were going forward, Lord North’s conciliatory proposition was laid before the various colonial assemblies and rejected. On May 10th the colonial congress met at Philadelphia. Its meeting was momentous. Thomas Jefferson was chosen president, and Thomas Hancock secretary. Bills of credit were issued for defraying the expenses of the war. It was resolved, that hostilities had been commenced by Great Britain; allegiance was still avowed, and an anxious desire expressed for peace; nevertheless it was voted that the colonies ought to put themselves in a posture of defence against the parliamentary schemes of compulsory taxation. After much opposition, another petition to the king was agreed upon. The New England states entertained and freely acknowledged the desire for independence; the middle and the southern states still hesitated, though all had sent delegates to the congress. Addresses were also prepared to the people of Great Britain and Ireland, as well as an appeal made to the “oppressed inhabitants of Canada,” as through Canada it was expected that England would make an attack on the colonies.

In order to prevent General Gage from penetrating into the country, which was his intention, congress recommended to the council of war completely to blockade him in Boston; for which purpose, Colonel Prescott, with a detachment of 1,000 men, including a company of artillery and two field-pieces, was ordered to march at nightfall of June 16th, and take possession of Bunker’s-hill, an elevation just within the peninsula of Charlestown, and commanding the northern approach to Boston, which city it overlooked. By some mistake, however, they proceeded to Breed’s Hill, a lower height and still nearer to Boston. With the utmost silence and despatch they laboured all night, and before morning had thrown up a considerable redoubt, capable of defending themselves from the fire of the enemy. Great was the astonishment of the British the next morning, and a fire was immediately opened upon them from the ships in the river. The work, however, went on uninterruptedly, when, about noon, 3,000 picked men, under command of Generals Howe and Pigot, embarked in boats and landed at the foot of Breed’s Hill, and advanced slowly in two columns; the artillery in the meantime being directed against the works. At this critical moment no system prevailed in the American army; the same troops who had been at work all night were still in the intrenchments; neither General Warren nor Israel Putnam, though on the ground, had troops under their command; forces which had been ordered thither had not arrived and the stock of ammunition was very small.

It was a splendid summer’s afternoon, when the British advanced up the hill. Clinton and Burgoyne were stationed on a height in Boston to watch the action; and all the surrounding eminences, spires of churches, and roofs of houses, were crowded with spectators, awaiting anxiously, though with opposing interests, the result of the approaching conflict. Slowly and uninterruptedly advanced the British, until within about ten rods of the redoubt, when such a deadly fire assailed them that their ranks were mown down, the whole line broken, and they fell back in disorder. Again they were rallied and brought back to the charge by their officers, but again were repulsed with loss. Infuriated by defeat, and in consequence also, it is said, of shots being fired from a house on the left, Gage ordered Charlestown to be set on fire; the wooden buildings burned rapidly and the tall spire of the meeting-house was wrapt in flame; 2,000 people at least being thus rendered houseless. Amid the terrors of the burning village, the British regulars made a second and yet a third attack, and this time with better success. The ammunition of the provincials began to fail, and the British artillery, now brought up to the breast-work, swept it from end to end, while three simultaneous attacks carried it at the point of the bayonet. Courage now could avail nothing, and the provincials under Colonel Prescott made good their retreat across Charlestown Neck, exposed to an incessant fire from the shipping, and entrenched themselves on another height still commanding the entrance to Boston. The British took possession of Bunker’s Hill. This defeat the Americans esteemed as a victory; in England the victory was considered little less than a defeat, and General Gage was in consequence superseded by Sir William Howe, brother of Lord Howe, who perished before Ticonderoga. Of 3,000 British engaged in this conflict above 1,000 fell. The loss of the Americans was in about the same proportion; out of 1,500, 450 were killed and wounded, but among the former was General Warren, whose loss caused the deepest regret to his country.

This second encounter, in which undisciplined troops had so bravely withstood the flower of the British army, raised still higher the hopes and confidence of the Americans. The English discovered also that they had no insignificant enemy to deal with.

The day before the battle of Bunker’s Hill, the Provincial congress at Philadelphia, having voted to raise an army of 20,000 men, proceeded to elect George Washington, then present as delegate from Virginia, to the rank of commander-in-chief. The northern colonies had resolved, in order to secure the adherence of the South, to choose a southern commander, and the superior wisdom of Providence guided them in the selection. God provides the man for the work, and Washington was the appointed agent of a great people’s emancipation. Divine wisdom, and not that of man, guided the choice. Washington, with great modesty and dignity, accepted the appointment, declining all compensation for his services beyond the defrayment of expenses. At the same time that Washington received the command in chief, Artemas Ward, of Massachusetts, Colonel Lee, formerly a British officer, Philip Schuyler, of New York, and Israel Putnam, of Connecticut, then with the camp before Boston, were appointed major-generals, and Horatio Gates adjutant-general.

Washington, accompanied by a number of ardent young men from the South, soon appeared in the camp and assumed command. He found excellent materiel for an army, but great want of arms and ammunition as well as deficiency of discipline. The troops, now amounting to 14,000 men, were arranged in three divisions; the right wing under General Ward, at Roxbury; the left, under Lee, on Prospect Hill; and the centre at Cambridge, where were Washington’s head-quarters. The post of quarter-master-general was given by Washington to Mifflin, the young Quaker of Philadelphia, who had accompanied him as aide-de-camp; and Robert Harrison, a lawyer of Maryland, was chosen by him for the important office of his secretary, the duties of which he faithfully performed for several years. Among the new companies which now joined the camp was one from Virginia, led by that same village wrestler, Daniel Morgan, who was hired by Benjamin Franklin to aid in the removal of stores for Braddock’s army, and in whose defeat he was wounded. The British, thus hemmed in at Boston, suffered greatly from want of provisions.

While Washington was occupied in organising his army and endeavouring to introduce order and discipline among troops unaccustomed to subordination, congress was employed in providing the necessary means for the support of the war. A declaration of war was also issued, in which the causes and necessity for taking up arms were set forth. This document, which was ordered to be read from every pulpit in the colonies, asserted that their cause was just, their union perfect. “Our internal resources are great,” said the declaration, “and if necessary, foreign aid is undoubtedly attainable.” “Nevertheless,” it went on to say, “we have not raised armies with the ambitious design of separating from Great Britain. We have taken up arms in defence of the freedom which is our birthright. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their renewal shall be removed.”

The importance of keeping on good terms with the Indians at this critical juncture was not overlooked; and three boards were established for the management of Indian affairs. An armed body of Stockbridge Indians, the last remains of the New England tribes, was already with the camp at Boston; and overtures were made to the Six Nations. Louis, the chief of the French Mohawks, a half-blood Indian, received a commission as colonel, and at the head of an Indian troop faithfully served the American cause.

The first complete line of postal communication was established at this time by congress, amid its multifarious concerns, and Benjamin Franklin was appointed post-master-general, with power to appoint deputies for the conveyance of the mail from Falmouth in Maine to Savannah in Georgia.

While the British army was blockaded at Boston, and the highway to Canada opened for the Americans by their possession of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, it was resolved by congress to invade and possess themselves of that province, and thus counteract the movements of Sir Guy Carleton, the governor, who was evidently under orders from England to attack the colonies from the north-west. Two expeditions were therefore sent out—the one under Generals Schuyler and Montgomery, by way of Lake Champlain; the other by the Kennebec, under General Benedict Arnold; the whole of these forces amounting to about 3,000 men.

On the 10th of September, Schuyler and Montgomery appeared before St. John’s, the most southern British fort in Canada, but finding it too strong for attack, retired to the Isle aux Noix, 115 miles from Ticonderoga, which they fortified, and where Schuyler issued circulars to the Canadians, inviting them to join the Americans and assert their liberty. But soon after hastening to Ticonderoga for reinforcements, he fell sick, and the whole command devolved upon Montgomery.

Having received reinforcements, though in want of artillery and ammunition, and having engaged the Indians in a treaty of neutrality, Montgomery returned to St. John’s, which he besieged with but little success, though he took Fort Chambly, at a few miles distance, where he was fortunate enough to obtain several pieces of cannon and a considerable quantity of powder. Colonel Ethan Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga, being sent out, during the siege of St. John’s, with a detachment of about eighty men, to secure a party of hostile Indians, met on his return with another officer as rash and daring as himself, and they, without orders, madly determined to attempt the surprise of Montreal. Montreal did not yield so easily as Ticonderago fort had done; Allen was taken prisoner, treated with great severity, and sent to England in irons. Montgomery, however, having renewed the siege of St. John’s, that fort surrendered on the 3rd of November, after which he advanced rapidly to Montreal, which Carleton had abandoned, making his escape down the river to Quebec. The following day, Montgomery, having engaged to leave the inhabitants undisturbed in the free exercise of their laws and religion, took possession of the town, where his troops found a very welcome supply of woollen goods, with which they were enabled to clothe themselves—a necessary circumstance at the commencement of a rigorous Canadian winter. Although the kindness of Montgomery’s disposition and conduct induced many Canadians to enlist under his arms, he suffered greatly from the insubordination and desertions of his own troops; while others, the time of their service being expired, returned to their own homes. Nevertheless, with the remnant of his army, amounting merely to about 300 men, he proceeded rapidly towards Quebec, expecting to meet there General Arnold, with his detachment of 1,000 men, who was to advance thither by the Kennebec.

The hardships which Arnold and his men had in the meantime endured, in the trackless and desolate forests of Maine, at the commencement of winter, were almost incredible; nevertheless, on the 9th of November, he arrived at Point Levi, opposite Quebec. Could he have immediately crossed the St. Lawrence, the city, which was indifferently defended and which was alarmed at his approach, might easily have been taken; but, for want of boats, it was not until the 13th that he was able to cross, and by that time Carleton, who had escaped from Montreal, had gained the city and put it in a state of defence. On the night of the 13th, therefore, Arnold crossed with his army, now reduced to 700 men, and ascending the cliffs to the Heights of Abraham, as Wolfe had done before, hoped to take the city by surprise. Finding, however, the garrison prepared for his reception, and not being strong enough to hazard an assault, he retired twenty miles down the river, there to await the arrival of Montgomery.

Montgomery joined Arnold on the 1st of December, all his Connecticut men having by this time returned home, so that the united forces of the two generals did not amount to 1,000. On the 5th, a message to surrender being sent to Carleton, the messenger was fired upon. It was then resolved to batter the town, but their artillery was found insufficient for the purpose, and after a siege of three weeks, during which the assailants suffered incredibly from the severity of the season, an assault was resolved upon as the only chance in their desperate circumstances. On the last night of the year, therefore, in the midst of a violent snow-storm, and with the ground several feet deep in snow, the American troops set forth in four divisions, commanded by Montgomery, Arnold, Brown and Livingston; and whilst the two latter were to make a feigned attack on the Upper Town, the two former, each at the head of their respective forces, were to assault the Lower Town at two opposite quarters. Montgomery had already passed the first barrier, the enemy flying before him, when the discharge of a piece of artillery deprived this brave man and two other officers of life. Disheartened by the death of their leader, the next in command ordered a retreat. Arnold, in the meantime, was boldly pushing his way forward into the town, when a ball, while cheering his men onward, shattered his leg. He was unwillingly borne from the combat, while Daniel Morgan, at the head of his Virginian riflemen, pushed forward and made himself master of the second battery. For several hours he and the fragments of the companies who now met, sustained their ground, but at length, overcome by superior numbers, they were obliged to surrender as prisoners of war. Not less than 400 men perished in this unfortunate attempt, and 300 more were made prisoners. Wounded as he was, Arnold retired with the small remains of his army to a distance of three miles, where, covering his camp with ramparts of frozen snow, he kept Quebec in a state of blockade through the winter.

Carleton treated his prisoners with great kindness; they were well fed and clothed, and afterwards allowed a safe return home. This humane policy greatly strengthened the British interests in Canada. Reinforcements arrived early in the spring for Arnold, but small-pox had already broken out among the troops, of which frightful disease General Thomas, who was sent out to supersede Arnold, died. The Americans retreated; and one by one, before midsummer, nearly all the posts which had been taken by them fell into the hands of the British.

In the midst of the anxieties and disturbances of the preceding year, the new province, which is now Kentucky, received still further accession of settlers through the means of Richard Henderson, a North Carolina lawyer, a man of great enterprise and energy, who had purchased a large tract of country from the Cherokees for a few wagon-loads of goods. Henderson, now associated with Boone, the bold hunter and settler of the wilderness, who had already established himself at Boonesburgh, and with other early settlers, especially an adventurous backwoodsman named Harrod, the founder of Harrodsburg, proceeded to organise themselves as the province of Transylvania. Courts and a militia were established, and laws enacted; and soon after a delegate sent thence to the continental congress at Philadelphia. Unfortunately for the new colony, Virginia laid claim to the territory as lying within her charter, and the Transylvanian delegate could not be recognised. About the same time that this early settlement of Kentucky was going forward, 400 families from Connecticut left their old homes to seek new ones under General Lyman, in the province of West Florida.

While the Americans were wasting their strength in unsuccessful attempts in Canada, the seaports of New England were kept in continual alarm by British cruisers, who not only landed to obtain supplies of which the royal forces were in great need, but also sailed under orders to lay waste and destroy in case of resistance. Hence Falmouth, now Portland, a rising town of 500 houses, was burned by Lieutenant Mowatt, which caused an increase of exasperation in the minds of the colonists, and led them also to attempt maritime warfare. Congress authorised the fitting out of thirteen war-frigates, and the raising of two battalions of marines. Privateering was established, and courts of admiralty formed for the adjudication of prizes. All ships of war employed in harassing the colonies, and all vessels bringing supplies to the British forces, were declared lawful prizes.

Great anxiety existed in the mind of the commander-in-chief, owing to the extreme scarcity of ammunition and military stores in his army. The utmost efforts were used to discover lead mines in the country, and to establish the manufacture of saltpetre; a secret committee was also formed for the importation of powder and lead from the West Indies. Another cause of anxiety, and still the greater, existed in the insubordination of the army itself. At the close of 1775, the term of enlistment having in many cases expired, thousands had marched away to their homes, disgusted with the hardships and discomforts of military life. The enthusiasm of patriotism had died out in many breasts; whilst jealousies among the officers, selfishness and faithlessness, gave reason for an anxious looking forward to the future.

In the meantime, the petition of congress to the king, or “the Olive Branch,” as it was called, and which had been intrusted to the care of Richard Penn, grandson of the proprietary, and long time resident in America, had been presented. This was the last hope of the colonists for reconciliation, and the tidings regarding it were anxiously waited for. The news came. His majesty deigned no reply; and in his opening speech to parliament accused the Americans of hostility and rebellion, and declared the object of their taking up arms to be the establishment of their own independence. In vain did the friends of America in the House of Commons earnestly advocate their cause; in vain did the merchants of London again remonstrate against coercive measures; a bill was passed declaring them rebels, prohibiting all trade with the thirteen colonies, and making their ships and goods and all persons trafficing with them, lawful prize. The same act authorised the impressment of the crews of all captured vessels for service in the royal navy. Commissioners of the crown were, however, empowered to pardon and remit from penalty all such colonies or individuals as by ready submission merited such favour. Furthermore, treaties were entered into by the British government with the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel and other German princes, for 17,000 men to be employed against the Americans. Twenty-five thousand additional English troops and a large fleet, abundantly supplied with provisions and military stores, were ordered to America.

These tidings convinced America that she had no longer anything to hope from the mother-country; sorrow, indignation and anxiety filled all hearts. These measures gave, however, by no means unqualified satisfaction, even in England. It is worth recording, as an instance of noble sacrifice to principle, that Lord Effingham, and the eldest son of the Earl of Chatham, threw up their commissions rather than act in this American war, which they considered so unjust. The office of commander-in-chief having been offered likewise to General Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, was declined by him naturally enough, and that rank was now held by General Howe.

Howe and his army spent their winter in Boston as best they could, suffering greatly from want of supplies. Fuel was obtained by pulling down houses, and the poorer class of inhabitants were sent out of the city, in order to decrease the consumption of food. Three companies, however, of “Loyal American Associators” were formed; and, spite of puritanism, balls and a theatre were got up by the British officers, and the largest of their meeting-houses was turned into a riding-school.

The growth of the British interests in the colonies was not, however, confined by any means to Boston. New York had long been suspected of a growing partisanship; and the government newspaper, “Rivington’s Gazette,” now became so offensive to the “Sons of Liberty,” that some members of this distinguished body, to the number of seventy-five, rode at noonday to the suspected Tory newspaper-office, broke the presses, and carried off the type; a proceeding which was very satisfactory to the Whig portion of the public, both there and elsewhere. At Albany, too, on the Hudson, at the extreme frontier of New York, the party of loyalists was becoming very formidable, under Sir John and Guy Johnson; the one the head of a colony of Scotch Highlanders, the other the Indian agent there. General Schuyler had already compelled these men to give their word of honour not to take up arms against America; nevertheless, Guy Johnson had withdrawn into Canada with a large body of Mohawks, under the celebrated chief Brandt, who had long served on the British side. Sir John Johnson also fled to Canada, where he too became a powerful adversary, at the head of his “Royal Greens”—two battalions raised from his tenants and dependants.

Nor was Lord Dunmore inactive in the South. Having carried off in his turn a printing-press, he printed and dispersed a proclamation declaring martial law, calling upon all who could bear arms to join him in the king’s name, and offering freedom to all slaves and indented servants of rebels who would join his standard. By this means he gained a great number of adherents, amongst whom were many fugitive slaves, after which he took up his position near the town of Norfolk, where he was defeated by the colonial militia, and again driven to his ships, accompanied by great numbers of royalists. Norfolk was bombarded by him and finally burnt, which was a cause of great indignation in Virginia, this being one of the richest and largest of her towns. Great was the damage which for the next several months Dunmore effected on the coast, burning towns and houses, plundering plantations and carrying off slaves. Finally pursued, harassed, and suffering from want of provisions, he and his adherents were compelled to retire to St. Augustine in the West Indies.

CHAPTER V.
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR (continued).—EXPULSION OF THE BRITISH FROM BOSTON.—DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.—LOSS OF NEW YORK, ETC.

At the commencement of 1776, the American army under Washington was reduced to little more than 9,000 men. By the united strenuous efforts, however, of congress and the commander-in-chief, it was raised in February, to 14,000, and was moreover brought into a state of more perfect organisation.

His anxieties with regard to the army being now so far removed, Washington resolved to expel the enemy from Boston, which they had occupied so long. A portion of the British troops still being encamped on Bunker’s Hill, where they had lain all the winter and suffered severely, Washington sent a strong detachment on the night of the 4th of March, when there was no moon, to take possession of Dorchester Heights, on the opposite side of the city, and which commanded it entirely. Carrying the necessary tools with them, the Americans silently ascended the heights, and before daylight had thrown up a strong redoubt. The sight of these works astonished General Howe the next morning, and he immediately made preparations for dislodging the Americans, plainly perceiving that unless this were done he must evacuate the city. A violent storm, however, rendered the embarkation of the troops impossible, and the Americans had thus time afforded for the completion of their works.

Before, however, an attack on either side was made, Washington received a proposal that he should allow the British troops to pass out unmolested, on condition that Howe left the town uninjured. Accordingly, on the 17th, the whole British force, amounting to 7,000, with about 2,000 marines, and accompanied by about 1,500 loyalists, quietly left the city and embarked for Halifax. Of the loyalists it must be remarked, that many of them were persons of large property, who thus sacrificed all for the maintenance of principle. Their conduct was admirable, though it met with no reward but misery and ruin. The embarkation occupied eleven days, and as the rear-guard was passing on board, Washington and his troops entered the city, with colours flying and drums beating, while the inhabitants knew not how to give sufficient evidence of their joy. Many fugitive families also now returned to their homes, and all Massachusetts rejoiced exceedingly. A medal was struck, by order of congress, to celebrate this event.

The British fleet sailed for Halifax, Washington being convinced that its ultimate destination would be New York, which, from its central situation and the great number and influential character of the British partisans there, would be an easy and important acquisition. No sooner, therefore, had he placed Boston in a suitable state of defence, than, leaving five regiments there, under the command of General Ward, the main body of the army was put in motion towards New York, which was intended to form his head-quarters. Washington arrived there in April.

The plans of the British for 1776 embraced the recovery of Canada, the reduction of the southern colonies, and the possession of New York. Canada, as we have said, was soon regained; and about the time when the first detachment of Washington’s army reached New York, Sir Henry Clinton appeared off Sandy Hook, with a fleet from England. Finding, however, that any attempts were at this time impracticable, Clinton sailed to the south, and at Cape Fear River was joined by Sir Peter Parker, who had sailed from England with seven regiments on board.

A packet of intercepted letters to Governor Eden and others had given to congress information of the enemy’s intended movements, and General Lee was appointed to the command in the southern provinces. All was in readiness, therefore, at Charleston, the point of attack. The most vigorous means had been used for this purpose throughout the Carolinas. Charleston was fortified, and a fort on Sullivan’s Island at the entrance of Charleston harbour, built of palmetto wood, was garrisoned with about 400 men, and placed under command of Colonel Moultrie.

On the 4th of June, the British fleet appeared off the harbour, and after considerable delay, a strong force having landed under General Clinton, on Long Island, east of Sullivan’s Island, the palmetto fort was subjected to a heavy bombardment; but the balls took little effect, sinking into the soft wood as into a bed of earth, and at the same time three ships, attempting to gain a position between Sullivan’s Island and the shore, were stranded; two of them being afterwards got off with damage, and the third abandoned and burnt. Moultrie and his brave 400 Carolinians defended the fort with such cool and resolute courage, that after an engagement of eight hours, from eleven in the morning to seven in the evening, the British vessels retired with considerable damage and loss, the admiral himself being wounded, and the ex-governor, Lord Campbell, who fought on the flag-ship, mortally so. The loss of the garrison was only ten killed and twenty-two wounded. This fort has borne the name of Moultrie ever since.

One little incident of this attack may be related, as it proves the cool courage of the garrison. At one moment, after a heavy cannonade, the anxious Americans, who were watching the fight from the shore, beheld the American flag suddenly disappear from the ramparts. They now feared that it was all over, and expected to see the British ascend the parapets in triumph. But no! a moment afterwards and again the republican banner was floating on the walls. The fact was, that the flag-staff was shot away and the banner fell outside the fort, when, without a moment’s hesitation, a sergeant of the name of Jasper leaped over the walls, and amid a shower of English bullets returned with the flag and hoisted it once more. Within a few days after this repulse, the British set sail, with all their troops on board, for the neighbourhood of New York.

Thirty-five thousand men, well supplied with provisions and all the necessary munitions of war, were now in array against the Americans. It was evident that Britain would remit none of her demands, and now aimed at nothing but the entire subjection of the colonies. For a long time, and even after they appeared in arms, had the colonies sincerely wished to preserve their allegiance to the monarch and attachment to the mother-country. Now, however, a change was rapidly taking place in their feelings; the sentiment of loyalty was giving way before republican principles and the desire for independence.

Early in this year, Thomas Paine, a recent emigrant to America and editor of the “Pennsylvania Magazine,” published a pamphlet, called “Common Sense,” which spoke out at once the secret sentiment of the people. It went direct to the point, showing in the simplest but strongest language the folly of keeping up the British connexion, and the absolute necessity which existed for separation. The cause of independence took, as it were, a definite form from this moment.

Early in May, in accordance with the growing sentiment of the public, congress, on the motion of John Adams, recommended to the colonies no longer to consider themselves as holding authority under Great Britain. “The exercise of all powers of government,” said congress, soon after, “must be under authority from the people of the colonies, for the maintenance of internal peace, the defence of their lives, liberties and properties, against the hostile invasions and cruel depredations of their enemies.”

Virginia had already acted on these principles, and other colonies soon followed the example. On June the 7th, Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, at the request of his colleagues, formally introduced into congress a motion declaring that, “The United Colonies are, and ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that their political connexion with Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.” This important resolution, like all other proceedings of congress, was debated with closed doors, and finally was carried; though it encountered great opposition from some even of the warmest friends of American independence, but who now considered it premature. It was carried by a bare majority, and then left for final deliberation on the 1st of July.

In the meantime, a committee, consisting of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and R. R. Livingstone, had been appointed to draw up a declaration in accordance with the purport of the resolution. Each, it was agreed by the committee, should prepare such a statement as his own judgment might dictate; all should then be compared, and the most complete selected; or one be finally drawn up from all. The one prepared by Thomas Jefferson was at once, it is said, declared by his brother committeemen to be so superior to the rest that it was unanimously adopted, with but little alteration.

The Declaration of Independence was read in congress on the day appointed. Delegates for nine out of the thirteen colonies adopted it at once. New York declined to vote for want of instructions; Delaware was divided; the delegates of Pennsylvania were three for and four against it; of South Carolina one for and three against. On the 4th of July it received the votes of all, with the exception of New York, which, however, was formally given a few days afterwards.

Miss Bremer tells us, in her recent work on America, that everything in the hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed, is preserved as it was then to the present day. The green table still stands, around which the members of the government sat, and upon which this important document was signed. She relates also an amusing expression of Benjamin Franklin’s on this occasion. Some of those present appeared doubtful and uncertain as to whether it were wise to sign, and were half-inclined to draw back. “Nay, gentlemen,” said some one, wishing to insure their adherence, “let us not be divided, let us all hang together.” “Yes,” said Franklin, in his quiet way, “or else we shall all have to hang separately!” All laughed and all signed.

The Declaration of Independence for the whole Thirteen United States went abroad, and was received by demonstrations of joy. Public rejoicings were made, and the ensigns of royalty everywhere destroyed; leaden statues of the monarch being, wherever found, melted down for bullets. The legal position of the Tory party now became very serious. Many of these, being persons of high principle as well as of education and wealth, were exposed to the violence of political mobs, whose practices of tarring, feathering and carting, were disgraceful to the cause of liberty, of which they called themselves the supporters. As party-feeling in the course of the war grew more violent, the sufferings of the royalist party became extreme. The new state governments enforced obedience to their authority by severe penalties, confiscation of property, imprisonment, banishment, and finally death. As yet, however, they contented themselves with admonitions, fines, recognisances to keep the peace and prohibitions to go beyond certain bounds.[^[15]]

Besides all these important measures in congress, it must be borne in mind that money had to be raised for the carrying on of the war. The United States congress had already an enormous debt, and again about £1,000,000 was issued in paper money.

Whilst the Declaration of Independence was occupying congress, General Howe arrived on June 25th from Halifax before Sandy Hook, just by New York, and on the 2nd of July took possession of Staten Island. On July 12th, Admiral, brother of General Howe, arrived from England with large reinforcements, and soon after, Sir Henry Clinton, with his fleet from the south. General Howe thus found himself at the head of 24,000 of the finest troops in Europe, well-appointed and supplied; while further reinforcements were expected daily, which would swell his numbers to 55,000.

As Washington had supposed, the intention of the British was to gain possession of New York, and having command of the Hudson river, open communication with Canada, and thus separate the eastern from the middle states and be able to carry the war into the interior; while Long Island, adjacent to New York, which abounded in grain and cattle, would afford subsistence to the army. By the middle of summer, as we have already seen, the American forces were driven out of Canada, and the northern frontier exposed to attack.

One of Washington’s first measures, on taking up his quarters in New York, where the British party was strong, was to prevent any communication with the enemy’s ships, or between the ex-governor Tryon, who had been for some time on board the Asia in the harbour, and his friends in the town. Nor were these precautions needless; among other plots discovered was one for seizing Washington, and conveying him on board a British ship, some of Washington’s own soldiers having been corrupted for that purpose, one of whom was tried by court-martial and shot in consequence. The mayor also of the city was imprisoned for carrying on a correspondence with Tryon.

Although the force under Washington at this time amounted to 27,000 men, yet great numbers were again undisciplined militia, many invalids, and all very indifferently provided with arms. The really effective force amounted, perhaps, to 17,000. Among other distinguished men who now entered the American service was Thadeus Kosciusko, afterwards so distinguished in Poland, and who served during the whole war as an engineer.

Soon after the landing of the British army, the admiral, Lord Howe, who had brought with him from England authority to the royal governors “to grant pardon and exception from penalty of all such colonies or individuals as might by speedy submission merit that favour,” sent a letter containing a statement of this authority, and an offer of pardon to all who would submit. This letter was directed to George Washington, Esq. Washington, however, declined receiving in his private capacity any communication from the enemies of his country; the style of the address was then changed to that of George Washington, etc., etc., etc., and it was requested that the offer of pardon contained in the letter might be made known as widely as possible. Congress ordered it to be published in every newspaper throughout the Union, “that everybody might see how Great Britain was insidiously endeavouring to amuse and disarm them;” and replied, that “not considering that their opposition to British tyranny was a crime, they therefore could not solicit pardon.”

Nothing being gained by this attempt at conciliation, the British now proceeded to the prosecution of the war, which they were prepared to carry on with the utmost vigour. Washington, aware that the enemy would advance to New York by way of Long Island, had entrenched a portion of the American army, 9,000 strong, at Brooklyn, opposite New York, under General Greene. Greene, unfortunately, being taken dangerously ill, the command was transferred to Israel Putnam, who, being a stranger to the ground and unacquainted with the works, was not qualified for the command of so important a position.

On August 22nd, the English landed on the southern shore of Long Island, and advanced to within four miles of the American camp, between themselves and which stretched a range of wooded hills, through which ran two roads, while a third followed the shore at the western base of the hills. On the 27th, dividing their forces into three divisions, under Grant, Heisler and Clinton, the British silently advanced at night by these three several roads towards the American army. Early in the morning, Clinton, proceeding by the eastern road, having seized an important defile, which through carelessness had been left unguarded, descended with the morning light into the plain, and within sight of the American camp. In the meantime General Sullivan, who, on the first alarm of the British approach, had hastened out to meet them with a considerable force, had fallen in with Generals Grant and Heisler; whilst Clinton, who by this time was safe on the plain, hastened forward and threw himself between Sullivan’s corps and the American camp. The moment Clinton’s approach had been perceived, the Americans attempted a retreat, but it was too late. The English drove back upon Heisler’s Hessians, and thus locked in between two hostile armies, some few managed to escape, but the greater number were killed or taken prisoners. It was a disastrous day. The true number of the Americans killed was never ascertained; about 1,000 were taken prisoners. The English lost only about 400. The victors, 15,000 strong, encamped directly opposite the American lines. Among the prisoners were Generals Sullivan, Stirling and Woodhull, late president of the provincial congress. This latter was taken the day after the battle, being surprised with a small party driving off cattle. He was wounded and treated with such cruel neglect that his wounds mortified and he died. The Tories of Long Island, who had been treated with severity, now retorted the same on the adverse party.[^[16]]

This defeat was more disastrous even than the loss of so much life, in the effect which it produced on the American mind. The utmost doubt and depression prevailed, and again regiments which were enlisted only on a short term, quitted the service the moment it had expired, and even in some cases deserted before that was the case.

The British not following up their advantage immediately, Washington, aware that his position could not be maintained, withdrew silently to New York on the night of the 29th, greatly to the surprise and vexation of the enemy; who, however, had now the entire and undisputed possession of Long Island. A descent upon New York was the next object of the British commanders; but before this was attempted, another endeavour was made for compromise and accommodation. Howe sent over his prisoner, General Sullivan, to desire a conference for this purpose, offering an exchange of Generals Sullivan and Stirling for Generals Prescott and M‘Donald, which took place; and a deputation, consisting of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Edward Rutledge, met the British commissioners on Staten Island; but no favourable result followed, the American deputies insisting that “the Associated Colonies should not accede to any peace or alliance but as free and independent states.”

This attempt having again failed, the next movement was to enlist a loyalist force. Oliver Delaney, brother of a former governor of New York, and Courtlandt Skinner, late attorney-general of New Jersey, were commissioned to raise four battalions each; while Tryon, still claiming to be governor of New York, was appointed major-general. Landing a considerable force in the city of New York, Washington, on the 12th of September, removed his head-quarters to the heights of Harlem, seven miles above the city. The British fleet appeared in the Sound and sailed up each side of Manhattan, or New York Island, on which New York stands; a battery was erected, and while the attention of the Americans was diverted by the fire from Howe’s ships stationed in the East River and the Hudson, he landed his troops at Bloomingdale, about five miles above the city and only two from the American camp. Troops had been stationed to guard this landing; but seeing now the advantage gained by the alacrity of the English, they fled panic-stricken, without even firing a gun, as did also two New England brigades, in company with Washington, who had come down to view the ground. Washington, thus left undefended, except by his immediate attendants, within eighty paces of the enemy, was so distressed and excited by their dastardly conduct, that he exclaimed, “Are these the men with whom I am to defend America?” His attendants turned his horse’s head, and hurried him from the field.[^[17]] The next day, a skirmish taking place, the Americans retrieved their character in some degree, though it was with the loss of two able officers.

The loyalists of New York received the British army with the utmost joy. A few nights after, a fire breaking out, which destroyed the largest church and about one-third of the city, this disaster was attributed to “the Sons of Liberty,” some of whom, seized on suspicion by the British soldiers, were thrown into the flames. The fire, however, is supposed to have originated in accident.

The utmost depression prevailed in the American camp at Harlem. The favour of Heaven, it was feared, had deserted their cause. Anxiety, despondency and dread filled all hearts; and sickness, the necessary concomitant of such a state of mind, prevailed greatly. There were no proper hospitals; the sick lay in barns and sheds, and even in the open air under walls and fences. The army was wasting away by the expiration of service and desertion; few would enlist. It seemed as if ere long America must yield from the mere inability to sustain her army. Washington did his utmost to revive hope and courage, and also appealed to congress for aid, without which success was impossible. A bounty of twenty dollars was offered therefore on enlistment, and grants of land promised to the soldiers and officers. So far good; in the meantime, Washington was unwilling to risk a general engagement, and Howe also on his side not venturing to attack the American camp, satisfied himself by making a movement to gain Washington’s rear, in order to cut off his connexion with the eastern states and thus prevent his receiving supplies from that quarter. For this purpose a portion of the royal troops was withdrawn from New York to Westchester, while three frigates were sent up the Hudson, to prevent any intercourse with New Jersey. Reinforcements were received by the British army.

Washington, to avoid being thus enclosed on all sides, crossed over with his army from New York Island, and took up his position along the western bank of the Bronx River, which separated him from the English, and so extending towards White Plains. On the 28th of October, a skirmish took place, in which the Americans were driven from their ground with considerable loss; immediately after which, Washington took up a much stronger position on the heights of North Castle, about five miles further northward.

Discontinuing the pursuit of Washington, Howe now turned his attention to the American posts on the Hudson, with the design of entering New Jersey. Aware of this intention, Washington crossed the Hudson with his army, and joined General Greene at Fort Lee, on the western bank of the Hudson, at the town of Hackensack in New Jersey, three miles only to the south-west of Fort Washington, where was a garrison of 3,000 men, and ten miles only from New York city. Scarcely, however, were these arrangements made, when Fort Washington was assaulted by a strong British force. The commander, Colonel Magaw, made a brave defence and the assailants lost 400 men in gaining the outworks; but no sooner were the British within the fort, than the garrison, to the number of 2,000, overcome with terror, refused to offer any resistance, and all, together with a great quantity of artillery, fell into the hands of the British.[^[18]] Two days afterwards Lord Cornwallis crossed the Hudson with 6,000 men, against Fort Lee, which also surrendered with the loss of baggage and military stores.

Misfortune was the order of the day. Alarm and distrust increased; Washington and his daily diminishing army fled from point to point. The New York convention moved its sittings from one place to another, the members often sitting with arms in their hands to prevent surprise; when just at this disastrous crises, new alarm arose from the proposed rising of the Tories in aid of the British. Many suspected Tories, therefore, were seized, their property confiscated and themselves sent into Connecticut for safety. The gaols were full; so also were the churches, now employed as prisons, while numbers were kept on parole. These resolute measures effected their purpose; the Tory party yielded to a force which they were not yet strong enough to control, and deferred active co-operation with the British to a yet more favourable time.

On the last day of November, the American army amounted but to 3,000 men, and was then retreating into an open country at the commencement of winter, without tents, blankets, or intrenching tools, and but imperfectly clad. The prospect was hopeless in the extreme. The towns of Newark, New Brunswick, Princetown, and Trenton, all in New Jersey, were taken possession of by the British. Finally, Washington, on the 8th of December, crossed the Delaware, which was now the only barrier between the English and Philadelphia. The first state legislature of New Jersey, of which William Livingston was governor, like that of New York, had been driven, during these commotions, from one place to another; nor had their most urgent endeavours to call out a militia been availing, so depressed was the public mind.

Nor was the prospect more cheering in Pennsylvania. The hearts of many began to fail them; and saving for the energy of Mifflin and a few others, the American party in Philadelphia might have gradually melted away. But Israel Putnam had command of the city, and Mifflin put forth all his eloquence, and patriotism and courage still survived. In the meantime the disasters of the Americans were not ended. General Lee, an ambitious and conceited man, who ranked his own military experience as superior to that of the commander-in-chief, instead of hastening across the Hudson to join the main army, as Washington had earnestly requested him to do without loss of time, determined on a brilliant and independent achievement which should at once startle both English and Americans, and give him a great reputation. Lingering, therefore, among the hills of New Jersey while he decided what his great exploit should be, he lodged one night with a small guard at a house some little distance from his army, when he was surprised by a body of British cavalry sent there for the purpose, and carried prisoner to New York. The command of his troops falling on General Sullivan, the latter conducted them without further delay to join Washington, whose forces were thus increased to 7,000 men.

On the very day also on which Washington crossed the Delaware, a British squadron from New York, under command of Sir Peter Parker, took possession of Newport in Rhode Island, the second city in New England, the few troops stationed there abandoning the place without a blow for its defence. The American squadron, under Commodore Hopkins, was thus blocked up in Providence River, where it lay for a long time useless.

Having gained this important hold on the colonies both by land and sea, the Howes issued, as royal commissioners, a proclamation “commanding all insurgents to disband, and all political bodies to relinquish their assumed authority, granting sixty days within which to make this submission.” On this, great numbers of wealthy persons, many of whom had already been active in the revolutionary movements, to the amount even of from two to three hundred a day, came in to make the required submission. The cause of American independence appeared hopeless, and would have been so had all the people been cowards and time-servers. But there were thousands of true hearts left within her yet. Congress, sitting at that time at Philadelphia, adjourned to Baltimore in Maryland, and Washington was invested for six months with unlimited powers. Authority was given him to raise sixteen battalions of infantry, in addition to those already voted, and to appoint officers; the bounty on enlistment was increased, as were also grants of land for service. He was also empowered to raise and equip 3,000 light horse, three regiments of artillery, and a corps of engineers; to call out the militia of the different states; to displace and appoint all officers under the rank of brigadier-general, and to fill up all vacancies. He was further authorised to take whatever he might require for the use of the army at his own price, and to arrest and confine all such as should refuse the continental money, a new trouble which had arisen, owing to the vast issue of paper money. The entire power was thus placed in the hands of Washington, and he was worthy of the confidence.

Christmas was now at hand, and gloom and despondency pervaded the American mind. The sixty days were passing on, and the timid and vacillating were giving in their adherence to the British, when Washington, as it were, rose up and girded his loins for action. Aware that the festivities of the season would be fully enjoyed in the British camp, he resolved to avail himself of the time for an unexpected attack, and selected the Hessians stationed at Trenton as its object. On Christmas-eve, therefore, he set out with 2,500 picked men and six pieces of artillery, intending to cross the Delaware nine miles below Trenton, while two other forces, under Generals Cadwallader and Irving, were to cross at other points at the same time. The river was full of floating masses of ice, and it was only after great difficulty and danger that the landing was effected by four o’clock in the morning, when, amid a heavy snow-storm, Washington’s force advanced towards Trenton; the other bodies under Cadwallader and Irving not having been able to effect a landing at all.

It was eight o’clock when Washington reached Trenton, where, as he expected, the Hessians, fast asleep after a night’s debauch, were easily surprised. Their commander was slain, and their artillery taken, together with a thousand prisoners. Of the Americans two only were killed, two frozen to death, and a few wounded, among whom was Lieutenant Monroe, afterwards president of the United States. Without waiting for any movement on the part of the British, whose forces so far outnumbered the Americans, Washington immediately re-crossed the Delaware, and entered Philadelphia in a sort of triumph with his prisoners.

This unexpected and brilliant achievement created an immediate reaction. Several regiments, whose term of enlistment was about expiring, agreed to serve six weeks longer, and militia from the adjoining provinces marched in. Nor was the effect on the British less striking. General Howe, astounded by this sudden movement in the depth of winter, in an enemy whom he considered already crushed, detained Lord Cornwallis, then just setting out for England, and despatched him with additional forces to New Jersey, to regain the ground which had been lost. Washington, in the meantime, knowing the importance of maintaining the advantage he had gained, re-crossed the Delaware, and established himself at Trenton, where reinforcements were ordered immediately to join him. On January 2nd, 1777, Lord Cornwallis, with the van of the British army, approached. On this, Washington withdrew to some high ground on the eastern bank of a small river which divides the town, and commenced to entrench himself. The British attempting to cross, a sharp cannonade ensued, which produced little effect on either side, when Cornwallis, thinking it most prudent to wait for reinforcements which he expected the next day, encamped for the night.

Washington knew that his position was a very hazardous one. It was a great risk to wait for a battle, with his 5,000 men, most of them militia, new to the camp, and that against a greatly superior and well-disciplined force. To re-cross the Delaware, then still more obstructed with floating ice, was equally dangerous, with the enemy behind him. With great sagacity and courage, therefore, he decided on a bold scheme, which fortunately was executed with equal courage and skill. This was no other than to attack the enemy’s rear at Princetown, and, if possible, gain possession of his artillery and baggage.

Replenishing, therefore, his camp fires, and silently sending his own heavy baggage to Burlington, and leaving parties still busied at their entrenchments within hearing of the enemy, Washington marched with his army, about midnight, towards Princetown, where three British regiments had passed the night, two of which, marching out to join Cornwallis, were met and attacked about sunrise by the Americans. A sharp conflict took place, and the Americans were giving way, General Mercer, an officer of great promise, being mortally wounded, when Washington and his select corps came up, and the battle was renewed. One division of the British fled to New Brunswick, the rest rallied and continued their march to Trenton. About 400 of the British were killed and wounded; the American loss was somewhat less.

At dawn, Lord Cornwallis beheld the deserted camp of the Americans and heard the roar of the cannonade at Princetown, on which, discovering Washington’s artifice, and fearful lest his military stores and baggage at New Brunswick should fall into his hands, he immediately put his army in motion, and reached Princetown when the Americans were about to leave it. Again was Washington in great danger. “His troops,” says Hildreth, “were exhausted; all had been one night without sleep, and some of them longer; many had no blankets; others were barefoot; all were very thinly clad.” Under these circumstances the attack on New Brunswick was abandoned, and Washington retired to strong winter-quarters at Morristown. There he remained till spring, having, in fact, repossessed himself, in the most masterly manner, of New Jersey. General Putnam was stationed at Princetown, and other officers at various places, and skirmishes went on continually, in which the Americans were mostly successful, being eagerly joined by the inhabitants, who had many wrongs and ravages to complain of. The British, in fact, suffered greatly through the winter, from want of forage and fresh provisions.

The effect of Washington’s rapid successes in the Jerseys was like a succession of electric shocks through the states; and even to this day it is said, when any unexpected and exciting intelligence is about to be given, the phrase “Great news from the Jerseys!” is made use of.

“The recovery of the Jerseys,” to use again the words of the able historian Hildreth, “by the fragments of a defeated army, which had seemed just before on the point of dissolution, gained Washington a high reputation, not only at home, but in Europe, where the progress of the campaign had been watched with great interest, and where the disastrous loss of New York and the retreat through the Jerseys had given the impression that America would not be able to maintain her independence. The recovery of the Jerseys created a reaction. The American general was extolled as a Fabius, whose prudence availed his country no less than his valour. At home, also, these successes had the best effect. The recruiting service, which before had been almost at a stand, began to revive, and considerable progress was again made in organising the new army.”

The powers with which congress had invested the commander-in-chief enabled him to make many important changes and provisions for the well-being of his troops. For instance, the whole hospital department, which had been very inefficiently filled, was now reorganised; and in order to prevent the visitation of small-pox, which had proved hitherto a fatal scourge in the army, every recruit was properly inoculated before entering the service. An exchange of prisoners took place also at this time, though the British at first refused, on the plea that the Americans were rebels. The number of prisoners amounted to about 5,000 in the hands of the British, and 3,000 in those of the Americans. Great indignation was excited in consequence of the condition to which, it was discovered, the Americans taken at Long Island and Fort Washington were reduced by the hardships of their confinement. They were placed in the custody of the New York Tory party, by whom they had been so cruelly treated that many had died, and the rest were so emaciated and feeble that Washington refused to return an equal number of well-conditioned Hessians and British.

Congress, in the meantime, was again sitting at Philadelphia, and wiser heads or braver hearts never met for a country’s need. The business which occupied them was of the most momentous character.

Though Hopkins and his squadron were blocked up at Providence, privateering had been carried on, principally by New England frigates, to a great extent. The homeward-bound British ships from the West Indies offered rich prizes, and in the year just concluded no less than 350 British ships had been captured. A new foreign trade had also been opened with France, Spain and Holland, principally by way of the West Indies; and though great risk attended it, still it was the successful commencement of the great American trade; and the national flag of thirteen stars and stripes, as appointed by congress, was now first hoisted in this maritime service.

By no European nation was the progress of the war of independence in America watched with more interest than by France, who still was smarting under the loss of her American possessions; hence the American privateer found ever a ready sale for his prizes in the French ports; and armed French vessels, sailing under American commissions, were secretly fitted out. Early in the struggle with the mother-country, the colonies had avowed their reliance on foreign aid, if necessary; and at the commencement of the preceding year, Silas Deane, member of congress for Connecticut, had gone to Paris, ostensibly as a private merchant, but, in fact, to negotiate with France for the supply of arms and ammunition.

After the Declaration of Independence, however, Benjamin Franklin was openly sent to Paris, and other persons to different European courts, for the same purpose. “The distinguished talents, high reputation, and great personal popularity of Dr. Franklin,” says Willson, “were highly successful in increasing the general enthusiasm which began to be felt in behalf of the Americans.” His efforts were in the end successful; and although France delayed for a while the recognition of American independence, yet she began to act with less reserve, and by lending assistance in various ways—by loans, gifts, supplies of arms, provisions and clothing—she materially aided the Americans. The tardy action, however, of the French court was outdone by the general zeal of the nation. Numerous volunteers, the most eminent of whom was the young Marquis de Lafayette, offered to risk their fortunes and bear arms in the cause of American liberty. Lafayette fitted out a vessel at his own expense, and in the spring of 1777 arrived in America. He at first enlisted as a volunteer in Washington’s army, declining all pay for his services; but congress soon after bestowed upon him the appointment of major-general.

While all these important affairs were going on in the north, the western frontier of the Carolinas and Georgia was again visited by Indian warfare, which was only concluded by the Cherokees ceding a large portion of territory. About the same time, the newly-attempted colony of Transylvania quietly gave up its plans of independent existence and became a portion of Virginia, the new county of Kentucky including the whole of the present state of that name.

CHAPTER VI.
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR (continued), 1777.

The fear of the invasion of Canada by the British, had, as we have already seen, led the Americans to make a disastrous attempt at the conquest of that province. The so-much-feared invasion was now at hand. In the meantime, as the spring of 1777 advanced, although as yet the main armies were inactive, various little attacks and reprisals were made. An armament sent up the Hudson by Howe for that purpose destroyed the military stores of the Americans at Peekskill, and General Lincoln, stationed at Boundbrook in New Jersey, was surprised by Lord Cornwallis, and escaped only with the loss of a considerable portion of his baggage and about sixty lives. A few days afterwards, Tryon, late governor of New York, at the head of 2,000 men, landed in Connecticut and advanced to Danbury, an inland town, where a large quantity of provisions was collected; having destroyed these, set fire to the town, and committed various acts of atrocity, he departed as rapidly as he had come. Arnold and Wooster, however, pursued him at the head of militia, hastily collected for that purpose, and three several attacks were made, in which the veteran and greatly respected Wooster was killed and Arnold had two horses shot under him. Tryon made good his escape with a loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners, of about 300; and congress, in acknowledgment of Arnold’s bravery, presented him with a horse fully caparisoned, and raised him to the rank of major-general. In return, a small party of Americans under Colonel Meigs landed on Long Island, destroyed twelve vessels, and took a large quantity of provisions and forage collected at Sag Harbour, and carried off ninety prisoners, without himself losing a single man. Another little triumph of the Americans is worth recording. General Prescott, who had been taken prisoner at Montreal, two years before, when Governor Carleton made his escape, now being stationed at Newport in Rhode Island, irritated the Americans no little by offering a reward for the capture of Arnold; on which Arnold, in return, offered half the amount for the capture of Prescott. Accordingly, it being presently ascertained that Prescott frequented without precaution a country-house near the town, a party of forty men under one Colonel Barton set out with the intention of carrying him off, landed at night on the island, entered the house, and taking the general from his bed, hurried away with their prize. Until now the Americans had not been able to ransom their General Lee, who had been taken much in the same manner, and the two officers were shortly exchanged.

In the meantime Washington remained with his army at Morristown, waiting with great anxiety the development of the enemy’s plans of operation, and increasing his own strength by the arrival of recruits, who still came in only slowly. The plans of the British general appeared for a long time uncertain, whether to march directly upon Philadelphia or to co-operate with Burgoyne, who had now assumed the command in Canada. In the north, the American army was so very feeble, that it was feared lest Ticonderoga, almost the sole remains of the American conquests in that quarter, might be seized by a sudden movement from Canada over the ice. The service in the north was indeed so unpopular, that a species of conscription was obliged to be resorted to in order to fill up the regiments. Indeed the reluctance to serve was felt so generally throughout the northern provinces, that the prohibition against the enlistment of negro-slaves was removed, and now recruits of any colour were joyfully received, and many negro-slaves gained their freedom in this manner. In the south, also, indented servants enlisting were declared to be freemen.

As spring came on, General Burgoyne, who had served in Canada under Governor Carleton, and who had gone to England for the purpose of urging upon parliament the reduction of America by a powerful descent upon the colonies by the way of Lake Champlain and the Hudson, returned with a large army and military stores for that purpose.

GENERAL BURGOYNE AND THE INDIANS.

On the 16th of June, Burgoyne, at the head of an army of nearly 10,000 men, British and German, with a great number of Canadians and Indians, set forth on his expedition. His first encampment was on the western shore of Lake Champlain, near Crown Point, where he met the Six Nations in council, and was joined by about 400 of those powerful warriors. Burgoyne, however, so little understood the character of the red men, that he addressed them in a very pompous speech, endeavouring to induce them to alter their irregular mode of warfare. To just as little purpose was the proclamation which he issued at the same time, in an equally pompous manner, in which, after demonstrating his own power and that of the British, he threatened the colonists with extermination, before the fury of the savage Indian, if they persisted in resisting his arms.

Burgoyne’s plan of operation was, after taking Ticonderoga, to advance upon Albany on the Hudson, where he would be met by Colonel St. Leger, who, with 2,000 men, chiefly Canadians and Indians, was to proceed by way of Oswego, against Fort Schuyler or Stanwix, and so gain the same point, after which both armies were to join General Clinton at New York.

Two days after Burgoyne had published his formidable proclamation, he appeared before Ticonderoga, then garrisoned by General St. Clair with about 3,000 men. Spite of all the labour and expense which had been bestowed on this fort, one important circumstance had been most singularly overlooked. The fort was commanded by a neighbouring height, called Mount Defiance, which being considered inaccessible, had been left undefended. Burgoyne, however, at once perceiving the advantage to be obtained by the possession of this height, lost no time in preparing to gain it, and three days after he had made his appearance, his artillery was placed on the summit. St. Clair seeing that no chance remained for himself and his troops, resolved upon immediate evacuation. The baggage and stores, under the convoy of the last remains of the American flotilla, were secretly despatched down to Skeensborough, and the troops also in two divisions, the one under St. Clair, the other, which left two hours later, under Colonel Francis, commenced their retreat at the dead of night, but were discovered by the enemy owing to the accidental burning of a building on an adjoining height. The next morning, therefore, the rear division was overtaken by General Fraser at the head of a British troop, near Hubbardton, where an engagement took place, in which the Americans were routed, and flying before the enemy, spread throughout the adjoining country the terror of the British arms. One thousand Americans were killed, wounded and taken prisoners on this disastrous day, among the former of whom was Colonel Francis. Nor was this all; General Reidesel with a corps of Germans pursued and overtook the American stores and baggage, which fell into his hands; and the garrison of Skeensborough, on learning this melancholy intelligence and of the approach of Burgoyne, set fire to the works, and fled to Fort Anne, half-way between them and the Hudson. Pursuit followed; a skirmish took place, and in the infectious terror of the time, having set fire to the works of Fort Anne, they fled to Fort Edward, the head-quarters of General Schuyler. At this same point, also, arrived St. Clair, who with his division had been wandering about for seven days. Thus, after defeat and flight, were assembled the whole force of the American northern army, amounting only to 5,000 men, many of whom were only hastily-summoned militia, wholly unorganised, while of ammunition there was great scarcity.

Again despondency and gloom overspread the American mind. The successes of Burgoyne came, says Hildreth, like a thunderclap on congress. “We shall never be able to defend a fort,” wrote John Adams, “till we shoot a general.” Disasters, the inevitable result of weakness, were attributed to the incapacity or cowardice of the officers. The New England prejudice against Schuyler revived, and all the northern generals in fact were recalled; and but for the interference of Washington, the northern army must have been disbanded for want of officers. Schuyler, in the meantime, was doing the best that he could under existing circumstances. Before leaving the various positions, he took every means to annoy and impede the movements of the enemy, obstructing navigation, breaking up roads and bridges, and closing up every passable defile by felling trees on either side, which, interlacing their branches in the fall, formed an almost insuperable barrier. Schuyler, in whom, however, Washington never lost confidence, was superseded, and Gates was appointed by congress to take his place. Reinforcements also were sent up; Daniel Morgan with his rifle corps, the impetuous and bold Arnold and Lincoln, who was a great favourite with the Massachusetts men. Kosciusko was also in the army as its principal engineer.

Burgoyne, making himself sure of speedily establishing the royal power in the north, called a convention by proclamation for concerting measures for this purpose. A circumstance connected with the history of Vermont, as an infant state, gave him additional hopes of the popular adhesion in this quarter. Vermont having organised herself into an independent state, had solicited admission into the union as such, and been refused, through the influence of New York, who claimed that country as a portion of her territory. Burgoyne was, however, disappointed in his hopes; Vermont entertained no feelings of animosity; and Schuyler, in return, published his counter-proclamation, threatening the punishment of traitors to all who foreswore their allegiance to American independence.

Burgoyne, not without great difficulty, at length reached the Hudson, to the great joy of the British army; and Schuyler, unable to face him, retreated to Saratoga, where the tidings of new disasters soon reached him. Burgoyne had several weeks before despatched Colonel St. Leger, with Sir John Johnson and his Royal Greens, together with a body of Canadian rangers, and the formidable Brandt and his savages, to harass the western frontier of New York. Fort Schuyler, commanded by Colonels Gansevoost and Willett, was attacked, and General Herkimer, hastening to his relief with militia, which he had raised for that purpose, fell into an ambush near the fort and was mortally wounded, besides losing 400 men, amongst whom were many of the leading patriots of that part of the country. This was sad news for Schuyler, and as the north-west abounded in Tories, it was necessary, if possible, to relieve Fort Schuyler, so as to prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy, which would cause, it was apprehended, a general disaffection. Arnold volunteered to undertake this perilous service, and Schuyler, having despatched him with three regiments, withdrew from Saratoga to the islands at the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers.

Although success had followed the British, and Burgoyne was in possession of so many strong posts, and had command of Lakes Champlain and George, and great amount of stores and provisions lay at Fort George for his use, yet the means of transport were so difficult, that the army was reduced to the greatest straits. To obtain immediate supplies, therefore, he despatched Colonel Baum, a German officer of rank, with 500 men, together with a body of Canadians and Indians, to seize a quantity of provisions which the Americans had stored at Bennington. There was at this time at Bennington, under the command of Colonel Stark, a corps of New Hampshire militia, raised by a merchant of Portsmouth, named Langdon, on the news of the loss of Ticonderoga. As soon as Stark heard of the attack which was to be made on the stores, he sent off for Seth Warner’s Green Mountain Boys, his own force having also been strengthened by volunteers and fugitives from the defeat at Hubbardton. Baum, seeing Stark prepared for him, entrenched himself about six miles from Bennington, intending to make an attack the following day. But violent rain came on, and both Stark and Baum deferred any movement, both hoping for reinforcements, Baum from Colonel Breyman, who was marching to his assistance, and Stark from the Green Mountain Boys, who were hourly expected. But the violence of the weather kept both back, and the next morning, Stark, at the head of his New Hampshire men, marched out to meet the enemy. The address of Stark to his men is worthy of being remembered. “There they are;” said he, pointing to the British; “there they are! We must beat them, my boys, or Molly Stark will be a widow this night!”

The assault was vigorous, and after a desperate fight of about two hours the intrenchments were carried, Baum was killed, and the Germans were mostly slain or taken prisoners, and the Indians and Canadians fled to the woods. Hardly, however, was the victory gained, when Breyman and his reinforcements appeared, and the fight was renewed, Seth Warner and his brave Boys having fortunately appeared at the same moment on the other side. The battle lasted till dark, and then Breyman fled, leaving his baggage and artillery behind him. The British lost about 600, the greater number however being taken prisoners, besides 1,000 stand of arms and four pieces of artillery. The American loss was merely fourteen killed and forty-two wounded.

This defeat was the turning point in the career of the British; the tidings dispirited and embarrassed them, and for the first time showed their grand plan of dividing the northern from the southern provinces to be doubtful. The effect on the Americans was still greater; hope and confidence woke anew, and the worthy Schuyler might soon have regained his character, had not Gates appeared a few days afterwards to assume the command. Schuyler, however, like a true patriot, who is able to sink self-interest in the well-being of his country, removed merely to Albany, where he continued to render every possible assistance to the carrying on of the campaign. Gates was also immediately joined by Daniel Morgan and his riflemen, and by a New Hampshire regiment.

The tide had now completely turned. Not only had Stark’s victory revived the hopes of the Americans, but the cruelties and treacheries of Burgoyne’s Indian allies had roused the popular indignation, and the tragical fate of a young woman, while it called forth universal sympathy, completed the measure of hatred which was given to the British. Jenny M‘Crea, a young lady of Fort Edward, the daughter of a loyalist family, and betrothed to a loyalist officer, was murdered in the woods by the Indian guard whom her lover had appointed to conduct her to a place of safety, and whose fidelity he believed secured by a promised reward. On the road, however, it appeared that the Indians quarrelled respecting this reward, and the poor girl was murdered in the dispute, her bloody scalp with its long tresses being the Indian signal to the lover of the cruel fate of his mistress. Such was Burgoyne’s version of this tragedy; but besides the daughter, the whole family was murdered, they being carried off to the woods, murdered and scalped in a most barbarous manner. These cruel individual instances, which every man and woman would take home to themselves, roused the whole northern provinces. The death of Jenny M‘Crea sent out hundreds of volunteers.

The Indians, also, now began to desert the camp of the British in great numbers; and Arnold, on his way to the relief of Fort Schuyler, having spread everywhere exaggerated accounts of his numbers, St. Leger fled from his newly-acquired possession, leaving his tents standing and his stores and baggage behind him.

The American army now amounted to upwards of 5,000, and Gates left his camp on the Islands, and took up his position on Behmus Heights at Stillwater, on the west bank of the Hudson, close to the river. With great labour and difficulty Burgoyne had brought down from the depôt on Lake St. George thirty days’ provisions for his troops, and now, therefore, he crossed the Hudson by a bridge of boats, and encamped on the 14th of September at Saratoga. On the 19th, skirmishing began between the advanced parties; reinforcements were sent in by the two armies as the fortunes of the combat seemed to vary, till at length the battle became general. The fighting continued furiously and without intermission, till night at length made it impossible to distinguish friend from foe. Victory had changed sides many times during the fight; but the British retired, and left the Americans masters of the field. Both claimed the victory, but the loss of the British was the greater.

Two days before the battle of Stillwater, a considerable advantage had also been gained by a party of Lincoln’s militia, who surprised the posts at the outlet of Lake George, took a considerable number of prisoners and armed vessels; after which, in concert with another party, they advanced to Ticonderoga. Burgoyne’s position thus became perilous and difficult in the extreme. His provisions and forage were diminishing; his allies were daily deserting; and if he retreated, the Americans, flushed with what was vaunted as a great victory, were in his rear. In the midst of this anxiety one hope remained, which was communicated by a letter in cypher, that troops would be sent by Clinton from New York to make a diversion on the Hudson, and thus the alarming position of Burgoyne be relieved. The present time must, however, be cared for. The two camps were within a short distance of each other, and skirmishes were of daily occurrence; and at length, on October 7th, a battle took place—the famous battle of Saratoga. Morgan and his riflemen distinguished themselves early in the combat. “Gates,” says Hildreth, “did not appear on the field; but Arnold, though without any regular command, took, as usual, a leading part. He seemed under the impulse of some extraordinary excitement, riding at full speed, issuing orders and cheering on the men.” The battle was fought with the utmost bravery on both sides, until night again put an end to the fighting. The Americans slept on their arms, intending to renew the combat with the morning; their advantages so far were decisive. Of the British, 400 men were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners; tents, ammunition and artillery, fell into the hands of the Americans. Next morning the British commander was found to have quietly retired during the night, and to be drawn up in order of battle on some high ground near.

Gates was too wary to venture another battle with the enemy posted to so much advantage, and made preparations, therefore, for enclosing him as he lay, which Burgoyne perceiving, prepared for retreat. In the meantime skirmishing went on; General Lincoln was severely wounded on the American side, and General Fraser, a British officer of high rank, was killed, and buried on the hill which bears his name. The Baroness de Reidesel, who, with her young children, followed the camp, and whose quarters were turned into a sort of hospital for the wounded officers, has left a pathetic account of the horrors of that day, and the retreat which followed.[^[19]]

Burgoyne fell back upon Saratoga, abandoning his sick and wounded amid drenching rain; the bridges were broken down, the rivers were swollen, and though the distance was but six miles, this retreat consumed the whole day. His situation was now lamentable in the extreme. He heard nothing from New York of the expected aid; he was in the midst of a hostile country hemmed in by an enemy whose forces, now amounting to 12,000 men, were daily increasing, while his had melted away to less than one-half of that number, nor could even these be depended upon. His boats laden with provisions were taken, and there remained now but a three days’ supply. In this terrible and unlooked-for emergency, a council of war was called, to which every officer was summoned, and a treaty of capitulation was agreed upon.

Gates demanded unconditional surrender, but Burgoyne would not consent to this. And it being feared that the long-expected diversion from New York should be made, and thus change again the fortunes of the day, Gates did not hesitate long as to terms. On the 27th of October, Burgoyne surrendered his army as prisoners of war, it being agreed that on laying down their arms they should be conducted to Boston, thence to embark for England under condition of not again serving against the United States. The prisoners included in this capitulation amounted to 5,642, the previous losses being upwards of 4,000. There fell also into the hands of the Americans thirty-five brass field-pieces and 5,000 muskets, besides baggage and camp equipage. The colours of the German regiments were preserved by being cut from their staves, rolled up, and stowed away in the baggage of Madame Reidesel.

The British troops thus subjected to humiliation were, however, treated with great delicacy by the Americans; their officers, and Burgoyne in particular, receiving many kind attentions. Burgoyne was entertained with distinguished hospitality by General Schuyler, although his country-house and much of his property had been destroyed by order of the British commander.

As soon as the surrender of Burgoyne was known, the British garrison at Ticonderoga destroyed the works and retired to Canada. Clinton, with Tryon and his Tory forces, on the same intelligence, dismantled the forts on the Hudson, and having burnt every house within their reach, and done all the damage in their power, returned to New York. Thus ended an enterprise from which the British had hoped and the Americans feared so much, and its results were in the highest degree advantageous to the cause of the republicans. The enemy was not only weakened and humiliated, a large and welcome supply of arms and stores obtained, but the Americans rose greatly in the estimation of foreign nations, who watched the contest with anxious and eager attention.

The joy of the Americans, especially those of the Northern States, was almost beyond bounds, and, as might be expected, the military reputation of Gates stood very high—nay, even for the time, outshone that of Washington, whose loss of Philadelphia, of which we have yet to speak, was placed unfavourably beside the surrender of a whole British army. The good General Schuyler, who had been superseded by the prosperous Gates, was acquitted with the highest honour after strict investigation of his military conduct. He resigned his commission in the army, but still continued to serve his country no less zealously as a member of congress.

We must now return to Washington at Philadelphia, whom we left in anxious uncertainty as to the intentions of the British general, whether he would march upon Philadelphia according to former plans, or seize upon the passes of the Hudson, and carrying up his large forces to the north, co-operate with Burgoyne in that quarter. In order, however, to be prepared for either of these movements, a large camp was formed under General Arnold on the western bank of the Delaware; and towards the end of May, Washington, with about 8,000 men, moved to Middlebrook, ten miles from Princetown, where he might have a better opportunity of watching and interrupting the movements of the enemy.

Howe, whose real intention was to bring on a general engagement with Washington, in which case he calculated on certain victory, marched out from New Brunswick, where he had concentrated his army, after leaving his winter-quarters at New York. Finding, however, the position of Washington too strong, he fell back to Amboy, threw a bridge across to Staten Island, and sent over his heavy baggage and some of his troops. Washington, deceived by this manœuvre, ordered his troops out in pursuit, and himself moved to Quibbleton. This was what Howe had in view, and now suddenly turning round, he attempted to gain the strong ground which the American commander had left; but Washington, perceiving the drift of the enemy, made a hasty retreat to his old position, not, however, without some loss both of men and artillery. Finding his plans unsuccessful, Howe finally on the 30th of June withdrew with all his troops to Staten Island, leaving Washington in undisturbed possession of New Jersey.

Again Washington knew not the intentions of the British either by land or water. A fleet of transports, he knew, was fitting out in New York harbour, but its destination was unknown. At length, on the 23rd of July, the fleet, under command of Admiral Howe, set sail northward with troops to the amount of 18,000 on board, and Washington, suspecting that its operations would be in that quarter, marched also in the same direction. By the end of July, however, it was heard of as approaching Cape May, and Washington then returned to the Delaware. After still continued uncertainty as to its object, the fleet at length sailed up the Chesapeake, and on the 25th of August the troops landed near the head of Elk River in Maryland, fifty miles south-west of Philadelphia. While the unascertained intentions of the British left Washington unemployed, other minor objects engaged his attention. An expedition was made against the loyalists of Staten Island, who were a great annoyance to the inhabitants of New Jersey, against whom they made armed incursions, plundering their dwellings and driving off their cattle. The non-combatant Quakers also of Pennsylvania and New Jersey became a cause of anxiety, and were subjected to punishment. It happened that the papers and advices of the two several yearly meetings of this body came in possession of the leaders of the expedition against Staten Island. These being examined by the Council of Philadelphia, were found to contain matter of a treasonable character, and eleven wealthy and leading Quakers of Philadelphia, among whom was the father of the president of the council, were arrested. So great indeed was the suspicion excited by the Quaker loyalty, that it was deemed necessary not only to send these eleven but various other leading men, John Penn, the late governor, and Benjamin Chud, the late chief justice, being of the number, prisoners to Fredricksburg in Virginia. So alarming indeed was this detected treason considered to be, that congress recommended every state to arrest all persons, Quakers or others, who had in any way evinced a disposition inimical to the cause of America, also to seize the papers of the Quaker yearly meetings, and transmit the political portion of their contents to congress.

Howe, on landing in Maryland, published as usual his offer of pardon to all who would submit at once to the British sway, and security to such as remained peaceably at home; after which he commenced his march towards Philadelphia. Washington awaited his approach at Wilmington, under circumstances, as the historian[^[20]] remarks, much less favourable than those which enabled the northern army so successfully to repel the contemporaneous advance of Burgoyne. There was no New England here to pour in her militia; no bold forces of New Hampshire and the young Vermont to come down like a mountain torrent; Pennsylvania was impelled by no general zeal either of patriotism or liberty; the greater part of the Quakers, a wealthy and influential body, were, if not strongly tinged by British loyalty, at all events neutral. The militia of Pennsylvania, even at this moment, when the enemy was advancing on the capital, amounted barely to 3,000. Washington’s force was greatly inferior to that of the enemy, not much exceeding 11,000 men. The militia of Maryland and Virginia it is true, had been called out to his aid, but as yet had not arrived. Nevertheless, he now resolved upon a battle, and after considerable manœuvring and skirmishing, on Sept. 10th he crossed the Brandywine River, a shallow stream, on the opposite side of which the enemy was encamped, and awaited the event of the next day.

Early on the morning of the 11th, the British force crossed the Brandywine in two columns. The Hessians, under General Kniphausen, having commenced a spirited attack, the intention being to deceive the Americans by the idea that no other attack was intended, whilst Lord Cornwallis, with a still larger force, having made a circuitous march, crossed the Brandywine at another point, with the design of falling on the American rear. Aware of this movement only too late, and confused by contradictory statements, General Sullivan, who had been despatched by Washington to interrupt it, was soon driven back and the fortunes of the day terminated wholly in favour of the British. The Americans retreated during the night, and the next day reached Philadelphia, their loss in the battle being above 1,000 in killed, wounded and prisoners, while the loss of the British was not above half that number. Among the officers who suffered and distinguished themselves on the American side were three foreigners—La Fayette who was wounded in the leg while attempting to rally the retreating troops; the Baron St. Ovary was taken prisoner; and Count Pulaski, a Pole, who had entered the army as a volunteer, displayed so much courage and conduct that he was rewarded by congress a few days afterwards with the rank of brigadier-general and command of the horse.

The day after the battle, a party of the enemy entered Wilmington and took prisoner the governor of Delaware, and seized beside a considerable amount of property, both public and private.

After a few days’ rest, Washington resolved to hazard another battle, and accordingly, on the 16th, re-crossed the Schuylkill, and marched against the British at Goshen, twenty miles from Philadelphia; but violent rain coming on after the action had commenced and the powder in the defective cartridge-boxes of the Americans becoming wet and unfit for use, he was obliged to recall his men and retire. In another instance also, were they unfortunate on the same day. Washington had left Colonel Wayne, with a detachment of 1,500 men, concealed in a wood to annoy the rear of the British, tidings of whom being carried to the British commander by some of the numerous disaffected in the neighbourhood, they were surprised by a strong detachment sent out for that purpose, and compelled to fly with the loss of 300 men; the British lost but seven.

On the 22nd, Howe crossed the Schuylkill, lower down than Washington had done, and thus, to the infinite annoyance of the American commander, placed himself between him and Philadelphia. Nothing, says Hildreth, could now save the city but a battle and victory. Washington’s troops, inferior in number, had been fatigued and harassed by their recent marches. They were sadly deficient in shoes and clothing; their arms were bad; while the irregular supplies consequent on recent changes in the commissary department, and the increasing financial embarrassments of congress, had sometimes even deprived them of food. Under these circumstances it seemed almost too hazardous to risk a battle. The necessity of abandoning Philadelphia had already been foreseen; the hospitals, magazines and public stores had been removed; congress had adjourned to Lancaster, having first invested Washington with the same unlimited powers which had been given to him on a former occasion. Washington entrusted to the young Hamilton, one of his aides-de-camp, the important office of obtaining a supply of shoes, blankets, and clothing for his army from Philadelphia, before the city passed into the hands of the enemy, which was accordingly done.

On the 25th of September, Howe entered Philadelphia, where he was received with a warm welcome by many; Duche, the late chaplain of congress, writing to Washington and advising him “to give up the ungodly cause in which he was engaged.” Four regiments were quartered in the city, and the main army encamped at Germantown, ten miles distant.

Washington in the meantime passed down the Schuylkill, and encamped with his army at Shippack Creek, eleven miles from Germantown, where he was at length joined by the Maryland militia, though diminished to half its promised amount by desertion. Having learnt that a part of the British army had been sent to the Delaware, Washington resolved on attacking the remainder at Germantown, and accordingly, on the evening of the 3rd of October, set out for that purpose, and succeeded in surprising the British early the next morning. For some time everything went well for the Americans, when a heavy fog coming on, and the British availing themselves of the cover of a stone house, the fortune of the day turned. The darkness was such that friend could not be distinguished from foe; the Americans fell into confusion; the ammunition of some corps was expended, and others, seized with a panic, fled. That which had promised to be a victory was changed into defeat. The American loss was about 1,000, 400 of whom were taken prisoners; among the killed was General Nash, of North Carolina. The British lost about half that number.

Washington retired about twenty miles inland, where he received reinforcements from the north with the welcome news of Burgoyne’s surrender, and additional militia from Maryland and Virginia, after which he returned to his old quarters at Shippack Creek. Howe also removed from Germantown to Philadelphia. Instead of pursuing Washington, shortness of provisions rendered it necessary for Howe to open the navigation of the Delaware, the command of which was held by Forts Mifflin and Mercer, still in the hands of the Americans, and which prevented any communication between the British army and their fleet then lying in Delaware Bay. This measure indeed was absolutely necessary, as but little subsistence could be obtained from the adjacent country, for although considerable defection prevailed throughout Pennsylvania, still the presence of the American army formed a great check; and the late edict of congress, which Washington was there to enforce, and which rendered liable to the punishment of death any person daring to afford supplies to the British, rendered help from the country impossible. “The British commander,” said Dr. Franklin, wittily, “now discovered that instead of taking Philadelphia, Philadelphia had taken him.”

Forts Mifflin and Mercer were therefore attacked on the 22nd of October. Fort Mercer, which was garrisoned by somewhat less than 500 men, under the quaker commander Nathaniel Greene, was assailed by General Count Donop, at the head of 2,000 Hessian grenadiers, who, after having succeeded in taking the outworks were repulsed with great loss, Donop himself being mortally wounded. The attack on Fort Mifflin, which was made by shipping, was at first equally unsuccessful, two of the enemy’s ships being destroyed in the attempt. Every effort was now made to strengthen the defences of both forts, but in proportion as the efforts on the one hand increased, so did those on the other; and finally, after the utmost bravery had been displayed, Fort Mifflin, which was almost battered to pieces by the fire of the enemy, was abandoned in the night by its garrison who withdrew to Fort Mercer, which was also evacuated on the 16th of November, before the accumulated force of the British. With the loss of those forts, the American shipping was reduced to great danger. Some few, under the cover of night, succeeded in ascending the river above Philadelphia; and seventeen were burnt by their crews that they might not fall into the hands of the enemy. The navigation of the Delaware was now opened and the British commander could freely communicate with the fleet.

Soon after these events, Washington, wishing to confine the enemy within as close quarters as possible, established his winter-quarters at Valley Forge, a high and strong position on the south side of the Schuylkill, and about twenty miles from Philadelphia. Contrary to the wishes of some of his more ardent officers, Washington refused to attack Philadelphia, nor would he be drawn out to battle by any of the repeated attempts which Howe made for that purpose. A season of sorrow and of hard trial was at hand for Washington. As we have said, the brilliant success of Gates in the north had eclipsed the reputation of the commander-in-chief, and a plot was formed at this time to supplant him by his more successful rival. But patience as well as achievement is the virtue of heroes; and Washington, calm in the midst of enemies, abated not one jot of patriotic endeavour, nor allowed himself to be turned either by friend or foe from the path which, though yet dark, he knew to be that of duty; and ere long events justified him before the world.

A gloomy winter was at hand. We will give Hildreth’s picture of the state of the camp at Valley Forge. “Such was the destitution of shoes, that all the late marches had been tracked in blood, an evil which Washington had endeavoured to mitigate by offering a premium for the best pattern of a shoe made of untanned hides. For want of blankets, many of the men were obliged to sit up all night before the camp fires. More than a quarter of the troops were reported unfit for duty, because they were ‘barefoot and otherwise naked.’ Even provisions failed; and on more than one occasion there was famine in the camp.[^[21]] Diseases ensued as a matter of course; the temporary buildings used as hospitals were crowded and unfit for the purpose. Great numbers died from hospital fever alone. There was no change of linen; nor were even medicines to be obtained. The hospitals, it is said, resembled rather receptacles for the dying than places of refuge for the sick.”

Such was the American camp at Valley Forge.

Other national events besides those of war took place in the past year, to which we must now for a moment revert, and which we will give in the condensed form of Marcius Willson.

“After the colonies had thrown off their allegiance to the British crown, and had established separate governments in the states, there arose the further necessity for some common bond of union which should better enable them to act in concert as one nation. In the summer of 1775, Benjamin Franklin had proposed to the American congress articles of confederation and union among the colonies; but the majority in congress not being prepared for so decisive a step, the subject was for the time dropped, but was resumed again shortly before the declaration of independence in the following year.

“On the 11th of June, congress appointed a committee to prepare a plan of confederation. And the plan, reported by the committee in the following July, was, after various changes, finally adopted by congress on the 15th of November, 1777. Various causes, the principal of which was a difference of opinion respecting the disposition of the vacant western lands, prevented the immediate ratification of these articles by all the states; but at length those states which claimed the western lands having ceded them to the Union for the common benefit of the whole, the articles of confederation were ratified by Maryland, the last remaining state, on the 1st of March, 1781, at which time they became the constitution of the country.

“The confederation, however, amounted to little more than a mere league of friendship between the states; for although it invested congress with many of the powers of sovereignty, it was defective as a permanent government, owing to the want of means to enforce its decrees. While the states were bound together by a sense of common danger, the evils of the plan were little noticed; but after the close of the war they became so prominent as to make a revision of the system necessary.”

CHAPTER VII.
REVOLUTIONARY WAR (continued), 1778.

Let us now see the effect of the war so far, both in the mother-country and America. The surrender of Burgoyne’s army caused a great sensation in England, and efforts were immediately made in several of the large Scotch and English towns to send out troops to supply the loss; in London also, where the progress of the war had raised an anti-American spirit, £20,000 was raised by subscription for that purpose. On the other hand, subscriptions were also raised to relieve the American prisoners, who, from the cupidity and heartlessness of those in whose hands they were placed, were suffering from the want of the very necessaries of life.

When parliament met in January of this year, the American war was the first and most important topic of discussion, and Burke and the Duke of Richmond, Lord North, and the whole of the Rockingham party, entered more or less into the advocacy of the colonies. As to the war itself, the loss of life it had occasioned, the enormous expenses which it had entailed, and the hopelessness of its results, formed a strong argument in the mouths of all reasonable men. Still the war-party was strong, and Burgoyne could neither obtain an audience from the king nor get a hearing in parliament. To increase the inveteracy of feeling also, congress appeared ready to evade the terms of the convention of Saratoga. On some plea of suspicion regarding the intentions of the British officers who objected to the troops embarking at Boston, and had ordered the transports for their conveyance to Rhode Island instead, they were detained in the country as prisoners of war.