The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 by Julian Hawthorne

J >> Julian Hawthorne >> The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1

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The following spring and summer were overshadowed by an unrighteous war
against the Cherokees, precipitated by the royalist governor of Virginia,
Lyttleton. An attempt by the French under Levi to recapture Quebec failed,
in spite of the folly of the English commander, Murray; Pitt had foreseen
the effort, and destroyed it with an English fleet. Amherst, in his own
tortoise-like way, advanced and took possession of Montreal; and by
permission of the Indian, Pontiac, who regarded himself as lord of the
country, the English flag was carried to the outposts. Canada had
surrendered; in the terms imposed, property and the religious faith of the
people were respected; but nothing was promised them in the way of civil
liberty. In discussing the European peace that was now looked for,
question was raised whether to restore Canada, or the West Indian island
of Guadaloupe, to France. Some, who feared that the retention of Canada
would too much incline the colonies to independence, favored its return.
But Franklin said that Canada would be a source of strength to England.
The expense of defending that vast frontier would be saved; the rapidly
increasing population would absorb English manufactures without limit, and
their necessary devotion to farming would diminish their competition as
manufacturers. He pointed out that their differences in governments and
mutual jealousies made their united action against England unthinkable,
"unless you grossly abuse them."--"Very true: that, I see, will happen,"
returned the English lawyer Pratt, afterward Lord Cam den, the
attorney-general. But Pitt would not listen to Canada's being given up;
he was for England, not for any English clique. On the other hand, one
of those cliques was preparing to carry out the long meditated taxation of
the colonies; and the sudden death of George II., bringing his son to the
throne, favored their purpose; for the Third George had character and
energy, and not a little intelligence for a king; and he was soon seen to
intend the re-establishment of the royal prerogative in all its integrity.
As a preliminary step to this end, he accepted Pitt's resignation in
October, 1761.

Much to the displeasure of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, already
Judge of Probate, was by Governor Bernard appointed to the Chief
Justiceship of the colony; the royalist direction of his sympathies was
known. In February, 1761, he heard argument in court as to whether revenue
officers had power to call in executive assistance to enforce the acts of
trade. The crown lawyer argued that to refuse it was to deny the
sovereignty of the English Parliament in the colonies. Then James Otis
arose, and made a protest which tingled through the whole colony, and was
the first direct blow aimed against English domination. Power such as was
asked for, he said, had already cost one king of England his head and
another his throne. Writs of assistance were open to intolerable abuse;
were the instrument of arbitrary power and destructive of the fundamental
principles of law. Reason and the constitution were against them. "No act
of Parliament can establish such a writ: an act of Parliament against the
constitution is void!" These words were the seed of revolution. Hutchinson
was frightened, but succeeded in persuading his colleagues to postpone
decision until he had written to England. The English instruction was to
enforce the law, and the judges acted accordingly; but the people replied
by electing Otis to the assembly; and Hutchinson was more distrusted than
ever. At the same time, in Virginia, Richard Henry Lee denounced the slave
trade; the legislature indorsed his plea, but England denied it. South
Carolina was alienated by the same decree, and also by an unpopular war
against the Cherokees. In New York, the appointment of a judge "during the
king's pleasure" roused the assembly; but the result of their remonstrance
was that all colonial governors were instructed from England to grant no
judicial commissions but during the king's pleasure. This was to make the
Bench the instrument of the Prerogative. A judge acted on questions of
property, without a jury, on information furnished by crown officers, and
derived emoluments from his own award of forfeitures; and the governor
would favor large seizures because he got one-third of the spoils. All the
assemblies could do, for the present, was to reduce salaries; but that did
not make the offenders any less avaricious. Moreover, the king began the
practice of paying them in spite of the assemblies, and reproved the
latter for "not being animated by a sense of their duty to their king and
country."

James Otis continued to be the voice of the colonies. "Kings were made
for the good of the people, not the people for them. By the laws of God
and nature, government must not raise taxes on the property of the people
without the consent of the people. To tax without the assembly's consent
was the same in principle as for the king and the House of Lords to usurp
legislative authority in England." For the utterance of these sentiments
he was honored by the hearty support of the people, and still more by the
denunciations of men of the Hutchinson sort. The ministers were not silent
on the popular side. "May Heaven blast the designs, though not the soul,"
said Mayhew, with Christian discrimination, "of whoever he be among us who
shall have the hardiness to attack the people's rights!" King George's
answer, as soon as he had concluded the peace with France and Spain, in
1763, was to take measures to terrorize the colonists by sending out an
army of twenty battalions to be kept permanently in America, the expenses
of which the colonists were to pay. But by enforcing the acts of trade,
England had now made herself the enemy of the whole civilized world, and
the American colonies would not be without allies in the struggle that was
drawing near.

While these matters were in agitation among the white people, the Indians
in the north were discovering grievances of their own. Pontiac, an Ottawa
chief, and by his personal abilities the natural leader of many tribes,
was the instigator and center of the revolt. The English masters of Canada
had showed themselves less congenial to the red men than the French had
done; they could not understand that savages had any rights which they
were bound to respect; while Pontiac conceived that no white man could
live in the wilderness without his permission. Upon this issue, trouble
was inevitable; and Pontiac planned a general movement of all the Indians
in the north against the colonists. The success of the scheme could of
course be only momentary; that it attained the dignity of a "war" was due
to the influence and energy of the Indian general. His design was of broad
scope, embracing a simultaneous attack on all the English frontier forts;
a wide coalition of tribes was effected; and though their tactics were not
essentially different from those heretofore employed by savages, yet their
possession of arms, their skill in their use, and their numbers, made
their onslaughts formidable. On several occasions they effected their
entry into the forts by stratagem: a tale of misery told by a squaw; a
ball in a game struck toward the door of the stronghold; professedly
amicable conferences suddenly becoming massacres; such were the naive yet
successful ruses employed. Many lives were lost, and the border lands were
laid waste and panicstricken; but it was impossible for the Indians to
hold together, and their victories hastened their undoing. No general
engagement, of course, was fought, but Pontiac's authority gradually
abated, and he was finally compelled to go into retirement. His Conspiracy
has its picturesque side, but it is not organically related to our
history; it was merely a fresh expression of the familiar fact that there
could be no sincere friendship between the white and the red. The former
could live with the latter if they would live like them; but no attempt to
reverse the case could succeed. The solemnity with which the practice of
signing treaties of peace with the Indians has uniformly been kept up is
one of the curious features of our colonial annals, and indeed of later
times. Indians will keep the peace without treaties, if they are kindly
used and given liberty to do as they please; but no engagement is binding
on them after they deem themselves wronged. They are pleased by the
formalities, the speeches, and the gifts that accompany such conferences;
they like to exchange compliments, and to play with belts of wampum; and
it is possible that when they make their promises, they think they will
keep them. They can understand the advantages of trade, and will make some
sacrifice of their pride or convenience to secure them. But the mind is
never dominant in them; the tides of passion flood it, and their wild
nature carries them away. It may be surmised that we should have had fewer
Indian troubles, had we never entered into any treaty with them. But
thousands of treaties have been made, and broken, sometimes by one side,
sometimes by the other, but always by one of the two. And then,
punishments must be administered; but if punishment is for improvement, it
has been as ineffective as the treaties. The only rational thing to do
with an Indian is to kill him; and yet it may fairly be doubted whether
complete moral justification could be shown for the killing of any Indian
since Columbus landed at San Salvador.--As for Pontiac, a keg of liquor
was inducement sufficient to one of his own race to murder him, five years
after the failure of his revolt.

Toward the end of September, Jenkinson, Secretary of the Treasury in
England, presented the draft for an American stamp-tax--the true
authorship of which was never disclosed. This tax was the result of the
argument of exclusion applied to the problem, How to raise a permanent and
sufficient revenue from the colonies. Foreign and internal commerce taxes
would not serve, because such commerce was forbidden by the Navigation
Acts. A poll-tax would be inequitable to the slaveholders. Land-taxes
could not be collected. Exchequer-bills were against an act of Parliament.
Nothing but a stamp-tax remained, and all persons concerned were in favor
of it, the colonists only excepted. Their opinion was that taxation
without representation was an iniquity. But they did not perhaps consider
that England owed a debt of seven hundred million dollars which must be
provided for somehow; and that the interests of the empire demanded, in
the opinion of those who were at its head, that the colonies be ruled with
a stronger hand than heretofore. George Grenville accepted the
responsibility of the act.

The king gave his consent to the employment of the entire official force
of the colonies to prevent infringements of the Navigation Acts, and the
army and navy were to assist them. There were large emoluments for
seizures, and the right of search was unrestricted, afloat or ashore. In
order to diminish the danger of union between the colonies, a new
distribution, or alteration of boundaries, was adopted, with a view to
increasing their number. But the country between the Alleghanies and the
Mississippi was to be closed to colonization, lest it should prove
impossible to control settlers at such a distance. It proved, of course,
still less possible to prevent emigration thither. But all seemed going
well, and the Grenville ministry was so firmly established that nothing
seemed able to shake it. The fact that a young Virginia lawyer, Patrick
Henry by name, had said in the course of an argument against the claim of
a clergyman for the value of some tobacco, that a king who annuls salutary
laws is a tyrant, and forfeits all right to obedience; and that if
ministers fail to fulfill the uses for which they were ordained, the
community may justly strip them of their appointments--this circumstance
probably did not come to the ears of the British ministry; but it had its
effect in Virginia. Grenville, however, was induced by the appeals of some
influential Americans in London to postpone his tax for a year, so that
the assemblies might have an opportunity to consent to it. By way of
tempting them to do this, he sought for special inducements; he revived
the hemp and flax bounties; he permitted rice to be carried south of
Carolina and Georgia on payment of half subsidy; and he removed the
restrictions on the New England whale fishery. He then informed Parliament
of his purpose of applying the stamp-tax to America, and asked if any
member wished to question the right of Parliament to impose such a tax. In
a full house, not a single person rose to object. The king gave it his
"hearty" approval. It only remained for America humbly and gratefully to
accept it.

First came comments. "If taxes are laid upon us in any shape, without our
having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from
the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary
slaves?" asked Samuel Adams of Boston. "These duties are only the
beginning of evils," said Livingston of New York. "Acts of Parliament
against natural equity are void," Otis affirmed; and in a lucid and cogent
analysis of the principles and ends of government he pointed out that the
best good of the people could be secured only by a supreme legislative and
executive ultimately in the people; but a universal congress being
impracticable, representation was substituted: "but to bring the powers of
all into the hands of one or some few, and to make them hereditary, is the
interested work of the weak and wicked. Nothing but life and liberty are
actually hereditable.... British colonists do not hold their liberties or
their lands by so slippery a tenure as the will of princes; the colonists
are common children of the same Creator with their brethren in Great
Britain.... A time may come when Parliament shall declare every American
charter void; but the natural, inherent rights of the colonists as men and
citizens can never be abolished. The colonists know the blood and treasure
independence would cost. They will never think of it till driven to it as
the last fatal resort against ministerial oppression: but human nature
must and will be rescued from the general slavery that has so long
triumphed over the species." The immediate practical result was, that the
colonists pledged themselves to use nothing of English manufacture, even
to going without lamb to save wool. And even Hutchinson remarked that if
England had paid as much for the support of the wars as had been
voluntarily paid by the colonists, there would have been no great increase
in the national debt.

All this made no impression in England. The dregs of the Canadian
population were a handful of disreputable Protestant ex-officers, traders
and publicans--"the most immoral collection of men I ever knew," as Murray
said--but judges and juries were selected from these gentry, and the
Catholics were disfranchised. In New England, boundaries were rearranged,
and colonists had to buy new titles. New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island,
protested before Parliament against the taxation scheme; Philadelphia at
first petitioned to be delivered from the selfishness of its proprietors
even at the cost of becoming a royal colony; but later, Franklin advised
that they grant supplies to the crown only when required of them "in the
usual constitutional manner." George Wythe, speaking for Virginia,
remonstrated against measures "fitter for exiles driven from their country
after ignominiously forfeiting its favor and protection, than for the
posterity of loyal Britons." Yet there were many royalist Americans who
were urgent that English rule should be strengthened; and the English
Board of Trade declared that the protests of the colonies showed "a most
indecent disrespect to the legislature of Great Britain." The king decreed
that in all military matters in America the orders of the
commander-in-chief there, and under him of the brigadiers, should be
supreme; and only in the absence of these officers might the governors
give the word. This became important on the occasion of the "Boston
Massacre" a few years later. In Parliament, Grenville said that he would
never lend a hand toward forging chains for America, "lest in so doing I
forge them for myself"; but he shuffled out of the American demand not to
be taxed without representation by declaring that Parliament was "the
common council of the whole empire," and added that America was to all
intents and purposes as much represented in Parliament as many Englishmen.
This assertion brought to his feet Barre, the companion of Wolfe at
Quebec. He denied that America was virtually represented, and said that
the House was ignorant of American affairs. Charles Townshend, who posed
as an infallible authority on America, replied that the last war had cost
the colonies little though they had profited much by it; and now these
"American children, planted by our care, nourished up to strength and
opulence by our indulgence, and protected by our arms, grudge to
contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy burden under which we
lie."

Barre could not restrain his indignation. In the course of a fiery
rejoinder he uttered truths that made him the most loved Englishman in
America, when his words were published there. "Your oppressions planted
them in America," he thundered. "They met with pleasure all hardships
compared with those they suffered in their own country. They grew by your
neglect of them: as soon as you began to care for them, deputies of
members of this house were sent to spy out their liberties, to
misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them; men whose behavior
caused the blood of those Sons of Liberty to recoil within them: men who
were often glad, by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to
the bar of justice in their own. They 'protected by your arms'?--They
have, amid their constant and laborious industry, nobly taken up arms for
the defense of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its
interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And
believe me--remember--the same spirit of freedom which actuated that
people at first will accompany them still. They are as truly loyal as any
subjects the king has; but a people jealous of their liberties, and who
will vindicate them, if ever they should be violated." But Grenville had
gone too far to retreat; the case went against America by two hundred and
forty-five to forty-nine; and only Beckford and Conway were on record as
denying the power of Parliament to enact the tax. All petitions from the
colonies were refused. "We have power to tax them, and we will tax them,"
said one of the ministers. In the House of Lords the bill was agreed to
without debate or dissent. The king, at the time of signing the bill, was
suffering from one of his periodic attacks of insanity; but the
ratification was accepted as valid nevertheless. Neither Franklin nor any
of the other American agents imagined the act would be forcibly resisted
in America. Even Otis had said, "We must submit." But they reckoned
without their host. The stamp act was a two-edged sword; in aiming to cut
down the liberties of America, it severed the bonds that tied her to the
mother country.

The prospect before the colonies was truly intolerable. No product of
their industry could be exported save to England; none but English ships
might enter their ports; no wool might be moved from one part of the
country to another; no Bible might be printed anywhere; all hats must come
from England; no ore might be mined or worked; duties were imposed on
almost every imported article of use or luxury. No marriage, promissory
note, or other transaction requiring documentary record was valid except
with the government stamp. In a word, convicts in a jail could hardly be
shackled more severely than were these two millions of the most
freedom-loving and intelligent people on the globe. "If this system were
to prevail," remarked Thacher of Boston, "it would extinguish the flame of
liberty all over the world."

But it was not to prevail. Patrick Henry had been elected to the
legislature of Virginia. His first act was to maintain, in committee of
the whole, that the colony had never given up its right to be governed by
its own laws respecting taxation, and that it had been constantly
recognized by England; and that any attempt to vest such power in other
persons tended to destroy British as well as American freedom. In a
passionate peroration he warned George III. to remember the fate of other
tyrants who had trampled on popular liberties. Otis in Massachusetts
suggested the novel idea of summoning a congress from all the colonies to
deliberate on the situation. In New York a writer declared that while
there was no disposition among the colonies to break with England as long
as they were permitted their full rights, yet they would be "satisfied
with no less."--"The Gospel promises liberty and permits resistance," said
Mayhew. Finally, the dauntless and faithful Christopher Gadsden of South
Carolina, after considering Massachusett's suggestion of a union,
pronounced, as head of the committee, in its favor.

In England, meanwhile, the cause of the colonies had been somewhat
favored by the willfulness of the king, who, in order to bring his court
favorites into power, dismissed the Grenville ministry. There were no
persons of ability in the new cabinet, and vacant feebleness was accounted
better for America than resolute will to oppress. The king himself,
however, never wavered in his resolve that the colonies should be taxed.
On the other hand, the colonies were at this time disposed to think that
the king was friendly to their liberties. But whatever misapprehensions
existed on either side were soon to be finally dispelled.

In August, 1765, the names of the stamp distributers (who were to be
citizens of the colonies) were published in America; and the packages of
stamped paper were dispatched from England. There was an old elm-tree in
Boston, standing near the corner of Essex Street, opposite Boylston
Market. On the morning of the 14th of August, two figures were descried by
early pedestrians hanging from the lower branches of the tree. "They were
dressed in square-skirted coats and small-clothes, and as their wigs hung
down over their faces, they looked like real men. One was intended to
represent the Earl of Bute, who was supposed to have advised the king to
tax America; the other was meant for the effigy of Andrew Oliver, a
gentleman belonging to one of the most respectable families in
Massachusetts, whom the king had appointed to be the distributer of
stamps." It was in vain that Hutchinson ordered the removal of the
effigies; the people had the matter in their own hands. In the evening a
great and orderly crowd marched behind a bier bearing the figures, gave
three cheers for "Liberty, Property and no stamps," before the State
House, where the governor and Hutchinson were in session, and thence went
to the house which Oliver had intended for his stamp office, tore it down,
and burned his image in the fire they kindled with it, in front of his own
residence. "Death to the man who offers stamped paper to sell!" they
shouted. "Beat an alarm!" quavered Hutchinson to the militia colonel.--"My
drummers are in the mob," was the reply; and when Hutchinson attempted to
disperse the crowd, they forced him to run the gantlet, in the Indian
fashion which was too familiar to New Englanders, and caught him several
raps as he ran. "If Oliver had been there he'd have been murdered," said
Governor Bernard, with conviction; "if he doesn't resign--!" But Oliver,
much as he loved the perquisites of the office, loved his life more, and
he resigned before the mob could threaten him. Bernard, with chattering
teeth, was ensconced in the safest room in the castle. There remained
Hutchinson, in his handsome house in Garden Court Street, near the North
Square. Late at night the mob came surging and roaring in that direction.
As they turned into Garden Court Street, the sound of them was as if a
wild beast had broken loose and was howling for its prey. From the window,
the terrified chief-justice beheld "an immense concourse of people,
rolling onward like a tempestuous flood that had swelled beyond its bounds
and would sweep everything before it. He felt, at that moment, that the
wrath of the people was a thousand-fold more terrible than the wrath of a
king. That was a moment when an aristocrat and a loyalist might have
learned how powerless are kings, nobles, and great men, when the low and
humble range themselves against them. Had Hutchinson understood and
remembered this lesson he need not in after years have been an exile from
his native country, nor finally have laid his bones in a distant land."

The mob broke into the house, destroyed the valuable furniture, pictures
and library, and completely gutted it. The act was denounced and
repudiated by the better class of patriots, like Adams and Mayhew; but it
served a good purpose. The voice of the infuriated mob is sometimes the
only one that tyranny can hear. One after another all the colonies refused
to accept the stamp act, and every stamp officer was obliged to resign.
Meanwhile the leaders discussed the people's rights openly. The law was to
go into effect on November 1st. "Will you violate the law of Parliament?"
was asked. "The stamp act is against Magna Charta, and Lord Coke says an
act of Parliament against Magna Charta is for that reason void," was the
reply. "Rulers are attorneys, agents and trustees of the people," said
Adams, "and if the trust is betrayed or wantonly trifled away, the people
have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed,
and to constitute abler and better agents. We have an indisputable right
to demand our privileges against all the power and authority on earth."
Never had there been such unanimity throughout the colonies; but in New
York, General Gage, who had betrayed lack of courage under Amherst a few
years before, but who was now commander-in-chief, declared he would put
down disaffection with a strong hand. There were ships of war in the
harbor, and the fort in the town mounted heavy guns. Major James of the
artillery was intrusted with the preparations. "I'll cram the stamps down
their throats with the end of my sword: if they attempt to rise I'll drive
them out of town for a pack of rascals, with four and twenty men!" It was
easy to pass a stamp act, and to bring stamped paper into the colonies;
but it would take more than Major James, and Governor Golden, and General
Gage himself to make the people swallow them. The day of the "Sons of
Liberty" was dawning.

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