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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32

Adams and the committee of correspondence met, in secret session, and
what they determined never has transpired and can be surmised by inference
only. On Thursday, December 16th, a great meeting was called in the Old
South Church. Thousands of people from surrounding towns were in
attendance; the willingness and eagerness of them all to resist at the
cost of their lives and fortunes had been abundantly expressed. Had there
been an armed force with which they could have fought, the way would have
been easy; but there was nothing palpable here: only that intangible Law,
which they had never yet broken, and their uniform loyalty to which, in
their disputes with England, had given them strength and advantage. Must
they defy it now, in the cause of liberty, and engage in a scuffle with
the king's officers, in which the latter would be technically at least in
the right? No doubt they might prevail: but would not the moral defeat
counterbalance the gain?

"Throw it overboard!" Young had exclaimed, at a meeting two weeks before.
The suggestion had seemed to pass unheeded; but this was a crisis when
every proposition must be considered. Josiah Quincy and other speakers set
clearly before the multitude the dilemma in which they stood. Rotch had
been dispatched to Milton, where the governor had taken refuge, to ask for
a pass out of the harbor, this being the last resort after the refusal of
clearance papers. The short winter day drew to a close; darkness fell, and
the church, filled with that great throng of resolute New Englanders, was
lighted only by a few wax candles, whose dim flare flickered on the stern
and anxious countenances that packed the pews and crowded the aisles, and
upon Adams, Young, Quincy, Hancock, and the other leaders, grouped round
the pulpit. They were in the house of God: would He provide help for His
people? A few hours more, and the cargo in yonder ship would lapse into
the hands of the British admiral. The meeting had given its final,
unanimous vote that the cargo never should be landed; but what measures
were to be taken to prevent it, was known to but few.

It was near six when a commotion at the door resolved itself into the
ushering-in of Rotch, panting from his ten-mile ride in the frosty air; he
made his way up the aisle, and delivered his report: the governor had
refused the pass. No other reply had been looked for; but at the news a
silence fell upon the grim assembly, which felt that it was now face to
face with the sinister power of the king. Then of a sudden, loud shouts
came from the lower part of the church, near the open door; and even as
Adams rose to his feet and throwing up his arm, called out, "This meeting
can do nothing more to save the country"--there was heard from without the
shrill, reduplicating yell of the Indian war whoop; and dusky figures were
seen to pass, their faces grisly with streaks of black and red, feathers
tossing in their hair, and blankets gathered round their shoulders; each,
as he passed through the dim light-ray, swung his hatchet, uttered his
war-cry, and was swallowed up in darkness again. Out poured the multitude
from the church, startled, excited, mystified, obscurely feeling that some
decisive act was about to be done: and here are Adams and Hancock among
them, cheering on that strange procession which passed down toward the
wharfs swiftly, two by two, and seeming to increase in numbers as they
passed. After them streamed the people, murmuring and questioning, through
the winter gloom of the narrow street, until the high-shouldered houses
fell away, and there were the wide reaches of the harbor, with the ships
lying at Griffin's Wharf amid the cakes of ice that swung up and down with
the movement of the tide. As they came there, a strange silence fell upon
all, amid which the Indians--were they Indians?--swung themselves lightly
aboard the vessels, and went swiftly and silently to work. Up from the
hold came case after case of tea, which were seized and broken open by the
hatchets, the sound of their breaking being clearly audible in the tense
stillness; and the black contents were showered into the waters. Minute
after minute, hour after hour went by, and still the wild figures worked,
and still the multitude looked on, forgetful of the cold, their hearts
beating higher and fuller with exultation as they saw the hated cargo
disappear. It was all but ten of the clock before the last hatchet-stroke
that smote the king's fetters from Massachusetts had been delivered; and
then the feathered and painted figures leaped ashore, drawing their
blankets round their faces, and melted silently into the crowd, and were
lost, never again to reappear. Who were they?--Never was secret better
kept; after six score years we know as little as did King George's
officers on that night. They seemed to have sprung into existence solely
to do that one bold deed, and then to vanish like a dream. But the deed
was no dream; nor its sequel. No blood was shed on the night of the 16th
of December, 1773: but Massachusetts, and through her the other colonies,
then and there gave notice to King George that he had passed the limits
which they had appointed for his tyranny; and the next argument must be
held at the musket's mouth.

CHAPTER FOURTEENTH

THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD

Franklin was sixty-seven years of age at this time; no man was then alive
more worthy than he of honor and veneration. For twenty years he had
guarded the interests of America in England; and while he had been
unswerving in his wise solicitude for the colonies, he had ever been
heedful to avoid all needless offense to England. The best men there were
the men who held Franklin in highest esteem as a politician, a
philosopher, and a man; and in France he was regarded as a superior being.
No other man could have filled his place as agent of the colonies: no
other had his sagacity, his experience, his wisdom, his address. He was
not of that class of diplomatists who surround every subject they handle
with a tissue of illusion or falsehood; Franklin was always honest and
undisguised in his transactions; so that what was long afterward said of a
lesser man was true of him: "Whatever record spring to light, he never
will be shamed." No service rendered by him to his country was more useful
than the exposure of Hutchinson; none was more incumbent on him, as
protector of colonial affairs. But in the rage which possessed the English
ministry upon learning how Massachusetts had parried the attack made upon
her liberties, some immediate victim was indispensable; and as Franklin
was there present, they fell upon him. A fluent and foul-mouthed young
barrister, Alexander Wedderburn by name, had by corrupt influence secured
the post of solicitor-general; and he made use of the occasion of
Franklin's submitting the petition for the removal of Hutchinson and
Oliver, to make a personal attack upon him, which was half falsehood and
half ribaldry. He pretended that the Hutchinson letters had been
dishonorably acquired, and that their publication was an outrage on
private ownership. Incidentally, he painted Hutchinson as a true patriot
and savior of his country; and called Franklin an incendiary, a traitor, a
hypocrite, who should find a fitting termination of his career on the
gallows. This billingsgate was heaped upon him before an unusually full
meeting of the lords of the privy council, the highest court of appeal;
and they laughed and cheered, while the venerable envoy of the colonies
stood "conspicuously erect," facing them with a steady countenance. Such,
and of such temper, were the aristocratic rulers of England and of America
(if she would be ruled) at this epoch.

America's friends in England were still stanch; but the ministry found no
difficulty in giving events a color which irritated the English people at
large against the colonies, and against Boston in particular; and they had
little trouble in securing the passage of the Boston Port Bill, the effect
of which was to close the largest and busiest port in the colonies against
all commerce whatsoever. Fuller said that it could not be put in execution
but by a military force; to which Lord North answered, "I shall not
hesitate to enforce a due obedience to the laws of this country." Another
added, "You will never meet with proper obedience until you have destroyed
that nest of locusts." Lord George Germain, speaking of revoking the
Massachusetts charter, said, "Whoever wishes to preserve such charters, I
wish him no worse than to govern such subjects." The act passed both
houses without a division, and Gage was appointed military governor, in
place of Hutchinson, who was recalled; and four regiments were quartered
in Boston. The wharfs were empty and deserted; the streets were dull, the
shops were closed; but the British Coffee House in King Street was gay
once more; and King George in London, felt that he was having his revenge,
though he was paying a round price for it. But Boston, having shown that
she could do without tea, and without commerce, was now about to show that
she could also do without George.

Nobody but Americans could govern America. The people were too
intelligent, too active, too various-minded, too full of native quality
and genius to be ruled from abroad. If they were to fall under foreign
subjection, they would become a dead weight in the world, instead of a
source of life; as Adams said, every increase in population would be but
an increase of slaves. And that they preferred death to slavery was every
day becoming increasingly manifest. They felt that the future was in them,
and that they must have space and freedom to bring it forth; and it is one
of the paradoxes of history that England, to whom they stood in
blood-relationship, from whom they derived the instinct for liberty,
should have attempted to reduce them to the most absolute bondage anywhere
known, except in the colonies of Spain. She was actuated partly by the
pride of authority, centered in George III., and from him percolating into
his creatures in the ministry and Parliament; and partly by the horde of
office-seekers and holders whose aim was sheer pecuniary gain at any cost
of honor and principle. The mercantile class had borne their share in
oppression at first; but when it became evident that tyranny applied to
America would kill her productiveness, the merchants were no longer on the
side of the tyrants. It was then too late to change the policy of the
country, however; George would have his way to the bitter end; the blind
lust to thrash the colonies into abject submission had the upper hand in
England; reason could not get a hearing; and such criticisms as the
opposition could offer served only to make still more rigid and medieval
the determination of the king.

It was the policy of the English government to regard Boston as the
head-center of revolt, and to concentrate all severities against her. It
was thought that in this way she could be isolated from the other
colonies, who would say to themselves that her troubles were none of
their affair, and that so long as they were treated with decency they
would not antagonize all-powerful England. Arguing from the average
selfishness of human nature, this policy did not seem unwise; but the fact
was that in this case human nature manifested an exceptional generosity
and enlightenment. Although the colonies, being on the coast, must depend
largely for their prosperity on commerce, and commerce is notoriously
self-seeking, nevertheless all the American settlements without exception
made the cause of Boston their own, sent her supplies to tide over her
evil days, and passed resolutions looking to union and common action
against oppression. South Carolina had every selfish ground for siding
with England; her internal affairs were in a prosperous condition, and her
traffic with England was profitable, and not likely to be interfered with;
yet none of the colonies was more outspoken and thoroughgoing than she in
denouncing England's action and befriending Boston. The great commonwealth
of Virginia was not less altruistic in her conduct, and did more than any
of her sister provinces to enforce the doctrine of union and independence.
New York, a colony in which aristocracy held a dominant place, owing to
the tenure of large estates by the patroons, and which necessarily was a
commercial center, yet spoke with no uncertain voice, in spite of the fact
that there were there two parties, representing the lower and the upper
social class, whose differences were marked, and later led to the
formation of two political parties throughout the colonies. In
Pennsylvania, the combination of non-fighting Quakers and careful traders
deadened energy in the cause, and the preachings of Dickinson, the
venerable "Farmer," were interpreted as favoring a policy of conciliation;
but this hesitation was only temporary. The new-made city of Baltimore was
conspicuous in patriotism; and the lesser colonies, and many
out-of-the-way hamlets and villages, were magnificent in their devotion
and liberality. The demand for a congress was general, and Boston was made
to feel that her sacrifices were understood and appreciated. She had but
to pay for the tea which had been thrown overboard, and her port would
have been reopened and her business restored; but she staked her existence
upon a principle and did not weaken. There were, in all parts of the
colonies, a strong minority of loyalists, as they called themselves,
traitors, as they were termed by extremists on the other side, or tories,
as they came to be known later on, who did and said what they could to
induce submission to England, with all which that implied. But the
practical assistance they were able to give to England was never
considerable, and, on the other hand, they sharpened the senses of the
patriots and kept them from slackening their efforts or modifying their
views.

Gage, a weak and irresolute man, as well as a stupid one, was making a
great bluster in Boston. His powers were despotic. Soldiers and frigates
were his in abundance; he talked about arresting the patriots for treason,
to be tried in England; and Parliament had passed an act relieving him and
his men from all responsibility for killings or other outrages done upon
the colonists. He transferred the legislature from Boston to Salem; and
urged in season and out of season the doctrine that resistance to England
was hopeless. Upon the whole, his threats were more terrible than his
deeds, though these were bad enough. Meanwhile Hutchinson in England had
been encouraging and at the same time misleading the king, by assurances
that the colonies would not unite, and that Boston must succumb. At the
same time, Washington was declaring that nothing was to be expected from
petitioning, and that he was ready to raise a thousand men and subsist
them at his own expense, and march at their head for the relief of Boston;
Thomson Mason was saying that he did not wish to survive the liberties of
his country a single moment; Prescott of New Hampshire was affirming that
"a glorious death in defense of our liberties is better than a short and
infamous life"; Israel Putnam of Connecticut announced himself ready to
treat the army and navy of England as enemies; and thousands of citizens
in Massachusetts were compelling royal councilors to resign their places,
and answering those who threatened them with the charge of treason and
death with--"No consequences are so dreadful to a free people as that of
being made slaves." Jay's suggestion to form a union under the auspices of
the king was disapproved: "We must stand undisguised on one side or the
other." Gage's orders were ignored; judges appointed by royal decree were
forced to retire; and "if British troops should march to Worcester, they
would be opposed by at least twenty thousand men from Hampshire County and
Connecticut." Gage, finding himself confronted by a population, could
think of no remedy but more troops. He wrote to England that "the people
are numerous, waked up to a fury, and not a Boston rabble, but the
freeholders of the county. A check would be fatal, and the first stroke
will decide a great deal. We should therefore be strong before anything
decisive is urged." He had, on the 1st of September, 1774, captured two
hundred and fifty half-barrels of provincial powder, stored at Quarry
Hill, near Medford. Forty thousand militia, from various parts of the
country, took up arms and prepared to march on Boston; and though word was
sent to them that the time had not yet come, their rising was an object
lesson to those who had been asserting that the colonies would submit.
Gage had ten regiments at his disposal, but was trying to raise a force of
Canadians and Indians in addition, and was asking for still more
re-enforcements from England. The employment of Indians was a new thing in
English policy, and was a needless barbarism which can never be excused or
palliated. Gage fortified Boston Neck, thus putting all within the lines
at the mercy of his army; yet the starving carpenters of the town refused
to erect barracks for the British troops. Outside of Boston, the towns
threw off the English yoke. Hawley said he would resist the whole power of
England with the forces of the four New England colonies alone; and every
man between sixteen and seventy years of age was enrolled under the name
of "minute-men," ready to march and fight at a minute's warning.

On the 5th of September, the first American Congress met in Philadelphia.
Almost all the eminent men of the country were present--Gadsden of South
Carolina, Washington, Dickinson, Patrick Henry, Lee, the Adamses, and many
more. They agreed to vote by colonies. Their business was to consider a
constitution, to protest against the regulating act in force at Boston,
which left no liberty to the citizens; to frame a declaration of rights,
and to make a statement to the king of their attitude and demands. The
session was long, for the delegates had to make one another's
acquaintance, and to discover a middle course between what was desired by
separate colonies and what was agreeable to all. Great differences of
opinion and policy were developed, and there were not wanting men like
Galloway, the Speaker, who aimed at paralyzing all resistance to England.
But the longer they debated and voted, the more clearly and unanimously
did they oppose the tyrannous acts of Parliament and the extension of the
royal prerogative, and the more firmly did they demand liberty and
equality. Separation they did not demand, but a free union with the mother
country, to the mutual enrichment and advantage of both. By a concession,
they admitted the right of Parliament to lay external duties and to
regulate trade; but they strongly indorsed the resistance of
Massachusetts, and declared that if her oppression were persisted in, it
would be the duty of all America to come to her aid. With the hope of
influencing the merchants of England to reflect upon the injustice of the
present trade restrictions, they voted to cease all imports into England,
and to refuse all exports therefrom, though the loss and inconvenience to
themselves from this resolve must be immeasurably greater than to the
older country, which had other sources of supply and markets for goods. In
all that they did, they were ruled by the consideration that they
possessed no power of enforcing their decrees upon their own
fellow-countrymen, and must therefore so frame them that the natural
instinct for right and justice should induce to obedience to them. Their
moderation, their desire for conciliation, was marked throughout; and when
a message was received from Boston, reciting the iniquitous proceedings of
Gage, and proposing, if the Congress agreed, that the citizens of the
wealthiest community in the new world should abandon their homes and
possessions and retire to a life of log huts and cornfields in the
wilderness--when this heroic suggestion was made, the Congress resisted
the fiery counsel of Gadsden to march forthwith on Boston and drive Gage
and his army into the sea; and bade the people of Boston to be patient yet
a while, and await the issue of the message to England. But although they
were conscientious in adopting every measure that could honorably be
employed to induce England to reconsider her behavior, they had little
hope of a favorable issue. "After all, we must fight," said Hawley; and
Washington, when he heard it, raised his hand, and called God to witness
as he cried out, "I am of that man's mind!"

Their final utterance to England was noble and full of dignity. "To your
justice we appeal. You have been told that we are impatient of government
and desirous of independence. These are calumnies. Permit us to be as free
as yourselves, and we shall ever esteem a union with you to be our
greatest glory and our greatest happiness. But if you are determined that
your ministers shall wantonly sport with the rights of mankind: if neither
the voice of justice, the dictates of law, the principles of the
constitution, or the suggestions of humanity, can restrain your hands from
shedding human blood in such an impious cause, we must then tell you that
we will never submit to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for any
ministry or nation in the world."

In order to cripple America, the new province of Quebec was enlarged, so
as to cut off the western extension of several of the older colonies. At
the same time discrimination against the Catholics was relaxed, and the
Canadians were given to understand that they would be treated with favor.
The Americans, however, were not blind to the value of Canadian
friendship, and sent emissaries among them to secure their good will. "If
you throw in your lot with us," they were told, "you will have been
conquered into liberty." In Virginia, Lord Dunmore had been appointed
governor, and in order to gratify his passion for wealth, he broke the
injunction of the king, and allowed the extension of the province
westward; but this was the result of his personal greed, and did not
prevent his hostility to all plans for colonial liberty. Nevertheless, his
conduct gained him temporary popularity in Virginia; and still more did
his management of the war against the Shawnees, brought on by their
attacks upon the frontiersmen who had pushed their little settlements as
far as the Mississippi. These backwoodsmen were always on the borders of
peril, and aided in hastening the spread of population westward.

The proceedings of the American Congress produced a sensation in England;
they were more moderate in tone and able in quality than had been
anticipated. They could not divert the king from his purpose, but they
aroused sympathy in England among the People, and from Lord Chatham the
remark that the annals of Greece and Rome yielded nothing so lofty and
just in sentiment as their remonstrance. The non-representative character
of Parliament at this juncture is illustrated by the fact that
three-fourths of the English population were estimated to be opposed to
the war with America. It was also pointed out that it would be difficult
to find men to fill the regiments, inasmuch as all the ablebodied men in
England were needed to carry on the industries of the country; there were
no general officers of reputation, and many of those holding commissions
were mere boys, or incompetent for service. There were three million
people in America, and they would be fighting for their own homes, and
amid them, with the whole vastness of the continent to retire into. On the
other hand, it was asserted that the Americans were all cowards, and
incapable of discipline; that five thousand English soldiers were more
than a match for fifty thousand provincials. They had no navy, no army, no
forts, no organization. They would collapse at the first real threat of
force. The English ministry and their followers vied with one another in
heaping contempt and abuse upon the colonists. It was in reply to them
that Burke made one of his greatest speeches. Burke was an artist in
sentiments, and cannot be regarded as a statesman of settled and profound
convictions; his voice regarding America had not been consistent or wise;
but ever and anon he threw forth some worthy and noble thought. "I do not
know the method," he said in his speech, "of drawing up an indictment
against a whole people." Franklin, in March, after listening to one of
Lord Sandwich's shallow and frothy vilifications of America, "turned on
his heel" and left England. With him vanished the last hope of
reconciliation. "Had I been in power," exclaimed Hutchinson, "I would not
have suffered him to embark."

The colonists everywhere were collecting arms and ammunition, storing
powder, and diligently drilling. Whatever the leaders might say, or
refrain from saying, the mass of the people believed in the immediate
probability of war with England. In every village you could see the
farmers shouldering arms and marching to and fro on the green, while an
old man played the fife and a boy beat the drum. They did not concern
themselves about "regimentals" or any of the pomp and glory of battle; but
they knew how to cast bullets, and how to shoot them into the bull's-eye.
In their homespun small-clothes, home-knit stockings, home-made shirts and
cowhide shoes, they could march to the cannon's mouth as well as in the
finest scarlet broadcloth and gold epaulets. Their intelligence, their
good cause, their sore extremity, made them learn to be soldiers more
quickly than seemed possible to English officers who knew the sturdy
stupidity of the English peasant of whom the British regiments were
composed. And while the Yankees (as they began to be called) were learning
how to march and countermarch, and do whatever else the system of the
British regulars called for, they also knew, by inheritance, if not by
actual experience, the tactics of the Indians; they could make a fortress
of a rock or a tree or a rail fence, and could shoot and vanish, or fall,
as it seemed, from the empty air into the midst of the unsuspecting foe.
They were effective not only in bodies, but individually; and in the heart
of each, as he faced the foe, would be not only the resolve to conquer,
but the holy thought of wife and children, and of liberty. They were as
fit to be led by Washington as was he to lead them. Professing to despise
them, Gage nevertheless protested against taking the field with less than
twenty thousand men; upon which David Hume scornfully observed, "If fifty
thousand men and twenty millions of money were intrusted to such a
lukewarm coward, they never could produce any effect." It was resolved to
supersede him.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32