Chapter Chapter 47 · The American Revolution
AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EUROPE HEARD STRANGE REPORTS
OF SOMETHING WHICH HAD HAPPENED IN THE WILDERNESS OF THE NORTH
AMERICAN CONTINENT. THE DESCENDANTS OF THE MEN WHO HAD PUNISHED
KING CHARLES FOR HIS INSISTENCE UPON HIS “DIVINE RIGHTS” ADDED A
NEW CHAPTER TO THE OLD STORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT
[Illustration: THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY]
For the sake of convenience, we ought to go back a few centuries and
repeat the early history of the great struggle for colonial possessions.
As soon as a number of European nations had been created upon the new
basis of national or dynastic interests, that is to say, during and
immediately after the Thirty Years War, their rulers, backed up by the
capital of their merchants and the ships of their trading companies,
continued the fight for more territory in Asia, Africa and America.
[Illustration: THE PILGRIMS]
The Spaniards and the Portuguese had been exploring the Indian Sea
and the Pacific Ocean for more than a century ere Holland and England
appeared upon the stage. This proved an advantage to the latter. The
first rough work had already been done. What is more, the earliest
navigators had so often made themselves unpopular with the Asiatic
and American and African natives that both the English and the Dutch
were welcomed as friends and deliverers. We cannot claim any superior
virtues for either of these two races. But they were merchants
before everything else. They never allowed religious considerations
to interfere with their practical common sense. During their first
relations with weaker races, all European nations have behaved with
shocking brutality. The English and the Dutch, however, knew better
where to draw the line. Provided they got their spices and their gold
and silver and their taxes, they were willing to let the native live
as it best pleased him.
[Illustration: HOW THE WHITE MAN SETTLED IN NORTH AMERICA]
It was not very difficult for them therefore to establish themselves
in the richest parts of the world. But as soon as this had been
accomplished, they began to fight each other for still further
possessions. Strangely enough, the colonial wars were never settled
in the colonies themselves. They were decided three thousand miles
away by the navies of the contending countries. It is one of the most
interesting principles of ancient and modern warfare (one of the few
reliable laws of history) that “the nation which commands the sea is
also the nation which commands the land.” So far this law has never
failed to work, but the modern airplane may have changed it. In the
eighteenth century, however, there were no flying machines and it was
the British navy which gained for England her vast American and Indian
and African colonies.
The series of naval wars between England and Holland in the seventeenth
century does not interest us here. It ended as all such encounters
between hopelessly ill-matched powers will end. But the warfare between
England and France (her other rival) is of greater importance to us,
for while the superior British fleet in the end defeated the French
navy, a great deal of the preliminary fighting was done on our own
American continent. In this vast country, both France and England
claimed everything which had been discovered and a lot more which
the eye of no white man had ever seen. In 1497 Cabot had landed in
the northern part of America and twenty-seven years later, Giovanni
Verrazano had visited these coasts. Cabot had flown the English flag.
Verrazano had sailed under the French flag. Hence both England and
France proclaimed themselves the owners of the entire continent.
During the seventeenth century, some ten small English colonies had
been founded between Maine and the Carolinas. They were usually a haven
of refuge for some particular sect of English dissenters, such as the
Puritans, who in the year 1620 went to New England, or the Quakers, who
settled in Pennsylvania in 1681. They were small frontier communities,
nestling close to the shores of the ocean, where people had gathered
to make a new home and begin life among happier surroundings, far away
from royal supervision and interference.
[Illustration: IN THE CABIN OF THE _MAYFLOWER_]
The French colonies, on the other hand, always remained a possession of
the crown. No Huguenots or Protestants were allowed in these colonies
for fear that they might contaminate the Indians with their dangerous
Protestant doctrines and would perhaps interfere with the missionary
work of the Jesuit fathers. The English colonies, therefore, had been
founded upon a much healthier basis than their French neighbours and
rivals. They were an expression of the commercial energy of the English
middle classes, while the French settlements were inhabited by people
who had crossed the ocean as servants of the king and who expected to
return to Paris at the first possible chance.
Politically, however, the position of the English colonies was far from
satisfactory. The French had discovered the mouth of the Saint Lawrence
in the sixteenth century. From the region of the Great Lakes they had
worked their way southward, had descended the Mississippi and had
built several fortifications along the Gulf of Mexico. After a century
of exploration, a line of sixty French forts cut off the English
settlements along the Atlantic seaboard from the interior.
[Illustration: THE FRENCH EXPLORE THE WEST]
The English land grants, made to the different colonial companies had
given them “all land from sea to sea.” This sounded well on paper,
but in practice, British territory ended where the line of French
fortifications began. To break through this barrier was possible but it
took both men and money and caused a series of horrible border wars in
which both sides murdered their white neighbours, with the help of the
Indian tribes.
[Illustration: THE BLOCKHOUSE IN THE WILDERNESS]
As long as the Stuarts had ruled England there had been no danger of
war with France. The Stuarts needed the Bourbons in their attempt to
establish an autocratic form of government and to break the power
of Parliament. But in 1689 the last of the Stuarts had disappeared
from British soil and Dutch William, the great enemy of Louis XIV
succeeded him. From that time on, until the Treaty of Paris of 1763,
France and England fought for the possession of India and North America.
During these wars, as I have said before, the English navies invariably
beat the French. Cut off from her colonies, France lost most of her
possessions, and when peace was declared, the entire North American
continent had fallen into British hands and the great work of
exploration of Cartier, Champlain, La Salle, Marquette and a score of
others was lost to France.
[Illustration: THE FIRST WINTER IN NEW ENGLAND]
Only a very small part of this vast domain was inhabited. From
Massachusetts in the north, where the Pilgrims (a sect of Puritans who
were very intolerant and who therefore had found no happiness either
in Anglican England or Calvinist Holland) had landed in the year 1620,
to the Carolinas and Virginia (the tobacco-raising provinces which had
been founded entirely for the sake of profit), stretched a thin line of
sparsely populated territory. But the men who lived in this new land
of fresh air and high skies were very different from their brethren of
the mother country. In the wilderness they had learned independence and
self-reliance. They were the sons of hardy and energetic ancestors.
Lazy and timourous people did not cross the ocean in those days. The
American colonists hated the restraint and the lack of breathing space
which had made their lives in the old country so very unhappy. They
meant to be their own masters. This the ruling classes of England did
not seem to understand. The government annoyed the colonists and the
colonists, who hated to be bothered in this way, began to annoy the
British government.
Bad feeling caused more bad feeling. It is not necessary to repeat
here in detail what actually happened and what might have been avoided
if the British king had been more intelligent than George III or less
given to drowsiness and indifference than his minister, Lord North. The
British colonists, when they understood that peaceful arguments would
not settle the difficulties, took to arms. From being loyal subjects,
they turned rebels, who exposed themselves to the punishment of death
when they were captured by the German soldiers, whom George hired to
do his fighting after the pleasant custom of that day, when Teutonic
princes sold whole regiments to the highest bidder.
The war between England and her American colonies lasted seven years.
During most of that time, the final success of the rebels seemed very
doubtful. A great number of the people, especially in the cities, had
remained loyal to their king. They were in favour of a compromise,
and would have been willing to sue for peace. But the great figure of
Washington stood guard over the cause of the colonists.
Ably assisted by a handful of brave men, he used his steadfast but
badly equipped armies to weaken the forces of the king. Time and again
when defeat seemed unavoidable, his strategy turned the tide of battle.
Often his men were ill-fed. During the winter they lacked shoes and
coats and were forced to live in unhealthy dug-outs. But their trust in
their great leader was absolute and they stuck it out until the final
hour of victory.
But more interesting than the campaigns of Washington or the diplomatic
triumphs of Benjamin Franklin who was in Europe getting money from
the French government and the Amsterdam bankers, was an event which
occurred early in the revolution. The representatives of the different
colonies had gathered in Philadelphia to discuss matters of common
importance. It was the first year of the Revolution. Most of the
big towns of the sea coast were still in the hands of the British.
Reinforcements from England were arriving by the ship load. Only men
who were deeply convinced of the righteousness of their cause would
have found the courage to take the momentous decision of the months of
June and July of the year 1776.
[Illustration: GEORGE WASHINGTON]
In June, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a motion to the
Continental Congress that “these united colonies are, and of right
ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from
all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection
between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be, totally
dissolved.”
The motion was seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts. It was carried
on July the second and on July fourth, it was followed by an official
Declaration of Independence, which was the work of Thomas Jefferson, a
serious and exceedingly capable student of both politics and government
and destined to be one of the most famous of our American presidents.
[Illustration: THE GREAT AMERICAN REVOLUTION]
When news of this event reached Europe, and was followed by the final
victory of the colonists and the adoption of the famous Constitution of
the year 1787 (the first of all written constitutions) it caused great
interest. The dynastic system of the highly centralised states which
had been developed after the great religious wars of the seventeenth
century had reached the height of its power. Everywhere the palace of
the king had grown to enormous proportions, while the cities of the
royal realm were being surrounded by rapidly growing acres of slums.
The inhabitants of those slums were showing signs of restlessness.
They were quite helpless. But the higher classes, the nobles and the
professional men, they too were beginning to have certain doubts about
the economic and political conditions under which they lived. The
success of the American colonists showed them that many things were
possible which had been held impossible only a short time before.
According to the poet, the shot which opened the battle of Lexington
was “heard around the world.” That was a bit of an exaggeration.
The Chinese and the Japanese and the Russians (not to speak of the
Australians and the Hawaiians who had just been re-discovered by
Captain Cook, whom they had killed for his trouble) never heard of
it at all. But it carried across the Atlantic Ocean. It landed in
the powder house of European discontent and in France it caused an
explosion which rocked the entire continent from Petrograd to Madrid
and buried the representatives of the old statecraft and the old
diplomacy under several tons of democratic bricks.