PART III The War in the First Half of 1776 19 The British Assault on Charleston

Bereft of hope for Loyalist aid in the South, and ordered to return north in a short while, General Clinton still had his powerful expeditionary force, and there was no point in not using it. He decided, not unexpectedly, to attack and seize the key southern port of Charleston, or at least Fort Sullivan in its harbor, which the British could then use as a firm base for invasion of the entire southland. Aided by Gen. Charles Lord Cornwallis, over three thousand regulars, and a strong fleet of over fifty warships under Commodore Sir Peter Parker, Clinton sailed against Charleston to assault it by land and by sea.

The American leadership knew that Gen. Charles Lee was perhaps the only man who could save Charleston. Indeed, Lee was in urgent demand everywhere, as John Adams wrote to him: “We want you at New York —we want you at Cambridge—we want you in Virginia....” George Washington wanted him in New York to counter the expected transfer there of the main British force from Boston. As Washington, later to be Lee’s mortal enemy, wrote to his brother at the time: “He [Lee] is the first officer in military knowledge and experience we have in the whole army.” If he could have been spared, Lee probably would have been chosen to lead the ill-starred campaign against Canada. As it was, both the dashing Gen. Richard Montgomery (an old friend of Lee’s) and, after Montgomery’s death, Benedict Arnold repeatedly urged that Lee be placed in supreme command over them. Now, in mid-February 1776, Congress unanimously decided to send him to Canada to save the campaign—and such leaders as John Adams, and Franklin, and the unpredictable Hancock sent him glowing and optimistic letters of congratulation. But no sooner had he accepted the post, and asked as his assistants for either Gen. John Sullivan or the able young Gen. Nathanael Greene, an admirer of Lee who had served under him at Boston, than Congress changed its mind. The southern leaders were now beginning to dread a British attack on the South, so at the end of February, the southern members persuaded Congress to name Lee head of a newly established Southern Military Department, covering Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia.

Lee hastily left New York, where he had been cowing the Tories and strengthening defenses, to assume his southern military post, virtually independent of Washington. (Indeed, with the imminent retirement of aging Artemas Ward, Lee was soon to be the second-ranking general in the Continental Army.) Taking up his post at Williamsburg at the end of March, Lee—inveterate scourge of the Tories—was horrified to find Maryland’s royal governor Robert Eden basking unmolested in wide personal popularity. Learning from captured dispatches that Eden intended to help a British invasion of the South, Lee urged Maryland to arrest him. When Maryland’s newly constituted rebel authorities refused, Lee, with the support of the Virginia Council of Safety, boldly went over their heads to appeal for Eden’s arrest to Samuel Purviance, chairman of the Baltimore Committee of Safety. Purviance and the Baltimore committee readily agreed and sent a small troop to the capital at Annapolis to arrest Eden. The angry conservatives of the Maryland Council of Safety at Annapolis prevented Purviance and his men from fulfilling their task, and issued condemnations of the actions of the Baltimore committee. The Council of Safety would do no more than place Eden on parole, and even an order of the Continental Congress could not persuade the council to place him under arrest. Instead, in June, the Maryland convention peacefully suggested that Eden leave for England, allowing him to depart un-searched and unseized.

Soon after his arrival, Lee learned of Clinton’s projected invasion of North Carolina from captured documents and swiftly organized defenses and armed forces in the South. The Tories having been crushed in North Carolina, it was clear to him that Clinton would soon strike in force, either at South Carolina or Virginia. When Clinton appeared off North Carolina in early May, Lee moved his 1,300 Virginia troops south to New Bern —slowly, so as not to be committed erroneously to a South Carolina theater of war while neglecting Virginia. By the beginning of June, Lee had learned that the British were probably sailing to Charleston, and he rushed down to the defense of that city in a battle that would decide the fate of the South for several years at the least. Both the Americans and the British fleet arrived at Charleston in early June 1776.

Lee found the defenses at Charleston hopelessly inadequate. President John Rutledge of South Carolina’s rebel government, in charge of the South Carolina militia, refused to abandon Fort Sullivan on Sullivan’s Island in Charleston Harbor, which Lee found to be in an exposed and unsound position. Fortunately, however, bad weather and harbor conditions delayed the British attack for several weeks, allowing Lee to shore up the defenses of the fort and Charleston Harbor with great energy. On June 28, the British fleet attacked, but clumsy piloting ran several of their frigates aground. The gallant band at the fort under Col. William Moultrie were almost miraculously able to outgun and batter the vaunted British fleet, even though they were badly short of ammunition, and there were very few American casualties. After a few weeks of hesitation, the British abandoned their plans and sailed north. Lee, Moultrie, and their heroic men at Fort Sullivan had saved Charleston, and with it much of the South.*

* Paul Smith, in opposition to other historians, makes a quite unconvincing case for deprecating the importance of the Battle of Sullivan’s Island. Paul H. Smith, Loyalists and Redcoats: A Study in British Revolutionary Policy (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1964), pp. 18–31.

20

Forcing the British Out of Boston

The securing of the South was not the only decisive military victory gained by the American revolutionaries in first half of 1776; another was the forced evacuation of Boston by the British. It is true that the British were contemplating an eventual shift of their base from Boston to New York, where Tories and provisions would be plentiful and the inner parts of the colonies accessible to attack. But the British were driven out much sooner than they had planned.

The idle siege army in front of Boston had its troubles, and the end of 1775 saw a huge turnover, as enlistment terms were up and new enlistments were secured. It was clear to the Americans that Boston could only be taken if the great guns that had been captured at Ticonderoga could be brought to bear. But how to transport them overland across the ice and the steep New England hills?

The answer was supplied by a young Boston bookseller and amateur student of military engineering, Col. Henry Knox, head of the American army artillery. Asking Washington to be sent to transport the guns, Knox arrived at Ticonderoga in early December. He conceived a fantastically ambitious plan of dragging sixteen big cannon, howitzers, and mortars, weighing over one hundred and twenty tons in all, on forty-three sledges over three hundred miles of snow and ice. The sledges had to be constructed and then dragged by eight yoke of oxen, slowly driven by whips. Whenever a big cannon broke through and sank beneath the ice, it was laboriously hauled up again. Knox finally completed the journey of his wondrous caravan in early February. It was a remarkable achievement, “a feat at which soldiers and engineers still marvel.”*

Now that the Continental Army had the guns, Washington, ever eager for military glory in the classical European manner, and drastically underestimating the number of British troops, proposed a direct frontal assault upon Boston. On three previous occasions—without the guns—he had impatiently urged such an attack, and each time had been opposed by a unanimous war council of his generals. The council of war again demurred, and General Ward sagely proposed to place the guns upon the unaccountably still-unoccupied Dorchester Heights commanding Boston to the south, just as Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill commanded it to the north. Washington grudgingly accepted the plan, which was agreed to by all the generals. The American army, given something sensible to do for the first time since Bunker Hill, worked with renewed enthusiasm.

The operation began on the night of March 2, 1776, with three nights of cannonading from the northwest, diverting British attention from Dorchester Heights. On the night of March 4, under cover of the bombardment, Gen. John Thomas took 2,000 men and 360 carts, and with splendid efficiency constructed two forts on Dorchester Heights. The Americans could perform this remarkable feat of constructing the entire works in one night by using a novel plan suggested by Col. Rufus Putnam, employing frames on top of the ground that required little digging in the frozen earth.

The British awoke on the morning of March 5 to look up in amazement at the American heavy guns on the heights. General Howe sadly remarked that “the rebels have done more in one night than my whole army could do in months.” As at Bunker, he decided on March 7 to give up and evacuate, for it was not safe for the British fleet to remain in the harbor under the guns of Dorchester. He had planned to move at his own will to New York, but was now forced to move to Halifax, a military base unquestionably safe for the British, to await the arrival of supplies.

The understandably fearful citizens of Boston soon obtained a promise from Howe that he would not burn the city if the Americans would allow his troops to embark in peace and without bombardment. Washington took no official notice of the promise when it was conveyed to him, but he abided by its terms, and Boston was spared much devastation and bloodshed. Finally, Howe and the British troops, carrying with them no fewer than one thousand Tories in flight, embarked on March 17 in a mighty armada of over one hundred and seventy ships, soon setting sail for Halifax.

It was truly a great victory; Boston, the spearhead of the Revolution, the focal point of British military oppression, had at last been liberated. And in their hasty flight, the British had been forced to leave behind them an enormous amount of supplies and military equipment. As the Duke of Manchester was soon to declare in the House of Lords: “Let this transaction be dressed in what garb you please, the fact remains that the army which was sent to reduce the province of Massachusetts Bay has been driven from the capital, and... the standard of the provincial army now waves in triumph over the walls of Boston.”

* North Callahan, “Henry Knox: American Artillerist,” in Billias, ed., George Washington’s Generals, p. 241.

21

Privateering and the War at Sea

It was clear to all that, militarily, the Americans were most vulnerable at sea, where Britain ruled the waves and no American population lived to support armed operations. We have seen how Lord Dunmore was able to use the ocean with impunity as his base from which to raid and plunder the American coast, and the entire coastline lay open to raids of this sort. Soon after the outbreak of war, the separate colonies began to try to defend themselves at sea. The first to react was Rhode Island, which chartered two vessels in June 1775 to try to save Newport and the coast from the depredations of the British fleet. Massachusetts and Connecticut soon followed with two ships each; and in mid-July, Congress correctly but not very hopefully urged each colony to defend its coastal areas.

It soon became evident that American ships might accomplish more by taking the offensive, particularly in harassing the British supply lines to the army at Boston. At the end of June Rhode Island again took the lead; its radical governor, Nicholas Cooke, urged just one swift armed ship to seize arms and supplies. Washington took the hint, and despite lack of congressional authorization, appointed shipmaster Nicholas Broughton a captain in the “army,” and presented him with a schooner for that purpose. Broughton’s successes led to more of the same, and soon Congress began to give its tentative support. By the end of October, the Continental fleet consisted of six schooners, which acquitted themselves ably against the British. Particularly successful was Capt. John Manley, of the Lee, who cheered the Americans greatly by capturing several military ships filled with supplies and ammunition. In addition to the schooners, the Americans around Boston organized a fleet of 300 private whaleboats, which conducted guerrilla-type night raids on the British lighthouses and other installations in Boston harbor.

Nettled by his utter inability to cope with the American schooners and night raiders, Adm. Samuel Graves, commander of the British fleet at Boston, decided to punish the Americans collectively in their ports and harbors. In early October 1775, Graves sent out Capt. Henry Mowat with two schooners and nearly two hundred men on a savage terror raid of the coast north of Boston. He was ordered to “burn, destroy, and lay waste” every seaport town north to Maine, and to destroy all the shipping at their harbors. Specifically, he was to concentrate on burning to the ground the two port towns of Gloucester and Falmouth (now Portland, Maine), whose people, according to Admiral Lord Howe, were distinguished for their “opposition to government.” Finding it impractical to destroy Gloucester, Mowat entered Falmouth on the October 16. Giving the townspeople one day to evacuate, he shelled and fired the town until its over two hundred houses, eleven ships, and wharves and warehouses were completely burned.

The wanton destruction of Falmouth spurred Congress into action. By December, prodded by John Adams, it was ready to create officially a small marine corps and a continental fleet of four vessels, to name its officers, and to establish for its supervision what would become the Marine Committee. As commodore and commander of the little fleet, Congress selected the veteran general Ezek Hopkins, until then head of the armed forces of Rhode Island. By the following spring the Continental Navy was ready for offensive exploits in the British West Indies. Commodore Hopkins’ first operation was to raid Nassau on March 3, 1776, and to seize large stores of British gunpowder. Bermuda also proved a good source of enemy powder.

Such large-scale raids were exceptions, however, and usually the tiny Continental Navy was confined to forays by individual ships. As we have seen in the case of the whaleboats around Boston, the great many privateers were far more important than the governmental fleet. As their name implies, these ships were wholly private in ownership and operation. An old tradition of private armed merchantmen preying on enemy shipping during wars, privateering had reached a peak during the eighteenth century, and in America particularly during the Seven Years’ War. As the Revolutionary War began, many hundreds of ships took to seizing supplies and arms by capturing British vessels. New England (particularly Massachusetts), its fishing and carrying trades ruined by the war and by British control of the northern fishing banks, was an especially successful center of privateering, as were Philadelphia and Baltimore. The inlet of Little Egg Harbor on the New Jersey coast was a particularly attractive haven for privateer vessels. Privateering flourished especially during 1775 and 1776, and it has been estimated that as many as two thousand ships sailed against the British. During 1776 half the Jamaica fleet was captured by American privateers, along with large quantities of ammunition and military supplies. In that year, the British lost several hundred vessels to privateers, with ships and cargo worth over one million pounds sterling —a figure exclusive of government transports and store ships.

Privateering was not only a very effective means of naval warfare; it was a far less costly—and a far more libertarian—a method than building a government navy. Reliance on privateers saved enormous sums and the time necessary to build new ships, since existing merchant ships were used; Moreover, it saved the taxpayers (including “inflation-payers”) the expense of construction and operation. As in all private operations, the costs were borne only by those who assumed the risks, and their rewards were strictly proportionate to their successes. And the war effort also benefitted pari passu with the successes of the privateers. Even Washington saw this, and when he created his small fleet in the autumn of 1775, he tried to approximate privateering conditions by granting to the seamen on each ship one-third to one-half of the proceeds from the vessels they captured —about the same incentive pay received by the crews of privateers. Not the least important advantage of privateers was the fact that they automatically disappear with the arrival of peace, and convert to peaceful uses; the public would not then be saddled with the burdens, bureaucracy, potential tyranny, and the nuclei for the fomenting of future wars that are inherent in a governmental navy.

Where in all this was the vaunted British navy? Fortunately for the American cause the overconfident British did not bother to launch a serious naval effort against the rebels, and no attempt was made to blockade the American coast. In these critical first years of the war, only a few British warships were stationed in American waters, and the British did not bother to provide armed convoys to their merchant shipping on the Atlantic.*

During 1775, the privateers proceeded happily, even though unauthorized by the governmental authority. In November, Massachusetts authorized the issue of official letters of marque and reprisal to privateers, and other colonies followed suit. The harsh British Prohibitory Act of late December 1775, denouncing the Americans as traitors and rebels, prohibiting all ships from trading with any part of the thirteen colonies, and subjecting all American and foreign ships trading with them to seizure and confiscation, became known to the Americans by the end of February 1776. The Prohibitory Act spurred the Continental Congress to take further bold measures against Great Britain. In March, Congress officially authorized privateers, providing them with continental letters of marque and reprisal.

* On Admiral Howe’s failure to establish an effective blockade of the Americans after 1776, despite orders to do so, see Gruber, “Richard Lord Howe,” in Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents, pp. 235–43.

22

Commodities, Manufacturing, and Foreign Trade

Before the war, Great Britain had been the principal exporter to, and importer from, the American colonies. America had been particularly dependent upon Britain for supplies of high-grade manufactured goods, including textiles and ammunition. Now the outbreak of war suddenly cut off these supplies, necessary for the American economy and more acutely for the American army. The total imports from England to the American colonies were 2.6 million pounds sterling in 1774, plummeting to less than 200,000 pounds sterling in 1775, and 50,000 pounds sterling the following year. Apart from privateering, the Americans would have to make up the gap by shifting to other sources of trade.

The major obstacle to this vital shift in trade patterns faced by the Americans was paradoxically enough self-imposed. The Continental Association, an intelligent method of putting pressure on England before Lexington and Concord, was now simply a destructive, self-imposed barrier on importing supplies. The pressure policy had failed, war had begun, and now the desideratum was to obtain supplies. Already in July 1775, John Adams, Richard Henry Lee, and other radical delegates to the Congress had recommended that American ports be thrown open to all countries except Great Britain. Throwing American ports open to imports from all other nations, however, would mean open and outright defiance of the time-honored Navigation Acts, and hence a long step toward outright proclamation of independence from Britain, a step which the conservative and timorous in the colonies were not yet prepared to take.

Despite the drastic change of conditions, the American rebels, suffering from a “cultural lag,” continued to enforce even the nonimportation provisions of the Continental Association, and Congress, in effect, reaffirmed the association in May and July of 1775. By mid-July, rationality began to break through, and Congress authorized, for a period of nine months, the importation of munitions from anywhere in exchange for American produce, the Continental Association notwithstanding; merchants were specially licensed by the Congress to receive these imports. So shamefaced were the delegates about this arrangement, that it was not revealed to the public until late October.

American foreign trade had been further gravely crippled by the approach of the date set by the Continental Association for nonexportation (September 10) and by its zealous enforcement by the local committees of safety. At the end of October, further breaches were made by Congress’ recommendation to the provincial governments—and to its own newly created Secret Committee—to license ships to export produce to the West Indies in exchange for munitions. Moreover, export of food to Bermuda in exchange for salt and munitions was now officially allowed.

It also began to dawn on some colonists that Britain’s exemption of four of the less revolutionary colonies (New York, Delaware, North Carolina, Georgia) after April 1775 was now a boon rather than a bane. The conservative Whig, Thomas Willing of Pennsylvania, a merchant and shipowner, argued in October that it was absurd to “act like the dog in the manger—not suffer [the four colonies] to export because we can’t. We may get salt and ammunition by those ports.” But on November 1, Congress decided not to allow this major breach, and by the end of 1775 this particular matter had become academic as a result of Britain’s anathematizing all American trade with the Prohibitory Act.

November 1, indeed, was a black day for rationality as well as for the Revolutionary War effort, for Congress staunchly reaffirmed the nonimportation pact, with the exception of the specifically licensed shipments for munitions. Those aptly called “fools” by Adams in July had prevailed then, and they tightened their grip in November.

Nonexportation would expire on March 1, 1776, and this fact, as well as the increasing strangulation of foreign trade, reopened the debate on open or closed ports at the beginning of that year. This time Willing, eager enough to import goods into American ports, was hardly eager to throw open American importation to the ships of all nations. Typically, the conservative faction in Congress chose to place protection of the state-granted privileges above success for the Revolutionary War effort. Thomas Johnson of Maryland wailed that the merchants and shipbuilders would suffer if foreign nations enjoyed the carrying trade to America. Samuel Chase of Maryland and John Joachim Zubly of Georgia opined that opening of the ports smacked too much of American independence.

Spearheading the fight for free trade with the rest of the world were the radicals: Richard Henry Lee and George Wythe of Virginia, Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina, and John and Sam Adams of Massachusetts. They pointed to the growing scarcity of goods and the consequent distresses of the poor. They also shrewdly noted that admitting the ships of foreign nations would be likely to bring in its wake foreign warships to protect the merchant vessels, thus aiding in the American struggle against the British navy. The Virginia Provincial Convention urged Congress to open the ports, as did the Philadelphia Committee of Inspection.

The British Prohibitory Act proved to be the decisive means of radicalizing Congress on this issue, and on April 6, they provided that imports and exports of all goods to and from all parts of the world, except Great Britain and her possessions, would henceforth be free. The onerous Acts of Trade and Navigation were at last no more, and Sam Adams exulted that we have “torn into shivers their Acts of Trade, by allowing commerce subject to regulation to be made by ourselves with the people of all countries....” Here was a momentous step indeed toward American independence from Great Britain.

Although the restrictions of the Continental Association on trade with Britain remained, the freeing of all other trade greatly reduced their crippling impact, and they were soon relaxed still further. One of the most onerous provisions of the association, in effect since March 1, 1775, imposed total nonconsumption of tea. Zealous enforcement by local radical committees understandably alienated many citizens from the radical cause. Also understandably, merchants put pressure on Congress to relax what had now become absurd as well as tyrannical regulation. Despite the opposition of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Lynch of South Carolina, and Richard Henry Lee, Congress agreed on April 13, 1776, to permit at least the sale and consumption of all tea imported before December 1, 1774, when the nonimportation clauses of the Continental Association had gone into effect. Since it was difficult to distinguish between tea imported before and after that date, this measure proved another advance toward freedom of trade.

Still another important advance toward free trade was the liquidation of the economically absurd provisions of the Continental Association for fixing the prices of imported goods at their previous levels. Since the association and then the war were bound to make these goods far more scarce and therefore raise their prices, enforcement of such provisions could only lead to drastic shortages of the goods and dislocation of the economy, shortages and dislocation later aggravated by the still higher prices necessarily brought about by the paper-money inflation financing the war effort.

In the North, the price regulations caused a great deal of trouble from the beginning of the nonimportation, particularly in New York and Philadelphia and their tributary markets. Most foodstuffs were grown in America rather than imported, and hence remained abundant during the war; the important exceptions were salt, tea, and the West Indies products sugar and molasses. The dearth and consequent high prices of previously abundant West Indies commodities (in contrast to the more stable prices of home products) were the particular irritants in the North and hence were the special objects of zeal in enforcement by the radical local committees. During the winter of 1775–76, the Philadelphia committee continually harassed the merchants. In December 1775 the committee fixed detailed wholesale and retail prices for oil, following this up on March 6 with a comprehensive schedule of fixed prices for such West Indian trade products as salt, molasses, rum, coffee, cocoa, and sugar. Violators would be advertised as “sordid vultures who are preying on the vitals of their country in a time of general distress.” This petulant deed was quickly imitated by the New York committee, which had previously harassed merchants for alleged overcharging in the price of pins. The Newark committee followed with similar schedules for West Indian commodities on March 15, and other imitators were the joint Committees of Inspection of the towns of New London County, and the joint committees of Hartford County, Connecticut. The New Hampshire Provincial Congress and the Providence, Rhode Island, committee also issued frequent warnings and outcries against the rise of prices.

In the south, the major scarce imported commodity was salt. Salt was essential for the preservation of meat and fish, and the bulk of colonial supplies of salt had come from Turks Island in the British West Indies, now closed to American shipping. Local committees in the south, particularly in Virginia and Maryland, tried desperately and unavailingly to stop the rise in the price of salt, efforts which could only aggravate the shortage. People in the Virginia uplands went so far as to join in looting raids against the salt stocks of tidewater merchants, raids which only intensified the shortage still more.

Congress was finally moved at the end of December 1775 to relieve the salt shortage by opening Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina to the import of salt from any foreign country and to the export of any produce in exchange. Thus salt, at least in the upper south, won free trade before other commodities.

Having watched the colonies struggle unavailingly against price increases for scarce commodities, Congress decided to complete its great free trade program of April 1776 by completely scrapping the price-control provisions of the Continental Association. Wisely asserting that merchants should be encouraged to import from abroad by a prospect of profits proportionate to the risks incurred, Congress resolved on April 30 to end the powers of committees of observation and inspection to “regulate the prices of goods.” Domestic trade immediately flourished again with the sweeping away of the restrictions, and the merchants happily ignored the exemption the Congress had tried to make for green tea.

The breaking of this logjam of course allowed prices to rise to their free-market levels, thereby clearing supply and demand. Unfortunately, Congress soon partially backtracked on its free-market policy and on May 30 it advised the local committees once again to fix the price of salt. Most of the provinces and local committees were quick to adopt this advice, thereby perpetuating a salt shortage. The New Jersey Committee of Safety, on the other hand, displayed better sense. When, in various sections of the province, angry mobs formed to coerce merchants into lowering their prices, the New Jersey Committee warned the people that any forced reduction of prices would merely discourage importation and end by injuring the mass of the poor.

The gravest commodity shortage for the American war effort was ammunition, especially gunpowder, the great bulk of which had formerly been imported from England. Without ammunition, of course, the war would be over promptly. The Americans made determined efforts to encourage and subsidize domestic manufacturing of powder, but with little success. America, after all, was not a manufacturing country, and there was no reason why it should have been. Agriculture was its metier, and over 90 percent of the population lived on farms (including plantations). Cities were far more important as centers for commerce—trading in and for American agricultural products—than for manufacturing. What manufacturing took place was on a small scale indeed; there were artisans in urban centers and the more prevalent household manufacturers (e.g., of the family’s chief clothing) in the rural areas. The exception to the paucity of manufacturing for the market was Philadelphia, the largest city in British America. Wood from nearby forests and hides from neighboring farms provided raw material for numerous types of manufacturing, and local iron, zinc, and copper mines supplied the material for manufacture of arms.

Seeing that the powder shortage was critical, the Continental Congress as early as June 10, 1775, urged the provincial governments to subsidize or engage themselves in the manufacture of gunpowder. In Philadelphia and environs, with its tradition of manufacturing, six powder mills were soon producing several thousand pounds of powder a week. The Virginia convention also passed a bill subsidizing powder mills, but with little success. Many Virginians attempted powder manufacture, but they soon found that the heavy capital requirements and costly operations forced them to abandon the field. As the powder shortage accelerated throughout the colonies, and subsidized private manufacture proved hopelessly uneconomic, Virginia turned in January 1776 to consider the establishment of public powder mills at government expense. But despite the active support of the powerful John Page, the attempt was blocked by a majority of the Virginia Committee of Safety and especially by the president of the convention, Edmund Pendleton.

At any rate, it was rapidly becoming clear that domestic powder production could supply only a negligible amount of the needs of the American forces; even Philadelphia’s contribution could only be a drop in the bucket and was inferior in quality to European powder besides. In short, the great bulk of American powder still had to be imported. The obvious source was the West Indies, and this meant that tobacco, the great staple demanded in Europe, would be the main source of funds to pay for the imported powder. And tobacco meant Virginia, the great center of tobacco production and export.

The first attempt to expand the import of powder came in Virginia during 1775 when the merchant and planter John Goodrich was sent by the Committee of Safety to negotiate the purchase of powder in the West Indies. Goodrich, however, through no fault of his own, was soon in trouble on all sides. The British discovered his mission and arrested him, and after his release, Virginians, led by the Isle of Wight Committee of Safety, denounced him for daring to consider buying ammunition from the British West Indies. Few Americans, indeed, seemed to realize that purchase of war supplies from the British would be a boon, not a living shame, for the American war effort. After all, there was no mystical taint attached to British ammunition. Goodrich, in understandable disgust at his persecution, abandoned the struggle and joined the British cause.

A more successful effort to import powder came in April 1776 after the American seizure of Dorchester Heights and the British evacuation of Boston. French and Dutch merchants became far more optimistic about rebel chances, and promptly began to sell a steady and abundant flow of powder to the Americans, using the entrepôts of St. Eustatius (Dutch West Indies) and Martinique (French West Indies) to exchange European gunpowder for Virginia and Maryland tobacco. Large, though necessarily sporadic, shipments of arms and ammunition also came from Spain to the back country of Virginia by way of Havana and the port of New Orleans in Spanish Louisiana. So abundant was the flow of imports after April 1776 that the colonies had no further worries about a shortage of gunpowder.

For other types of arms and ammunition, American domestic sources were far superior. Particularly important was the rapidly growing iron industry of Pennsylvania. From producing only one-seventieth of the world’s crude iron (bar and pig iron) in 1700, the American colonies produced 30,000 tons in 1775—one-seventh of the world’s output and exceeding the iron production of England. Pennsylvania, with its abundance of iron ore, timber for fuel, and access to nearby markets, was preeiminent in iron output. Southeastern Pennsylvania had no fewer than seventy-three iron furnaces and forges, the largest and most numerous being in Berks County, north of the Schuylkill River. Hence, during the winter of 1775–76, Pennsylvania manufactured over four thousand stand of arms. Other major centers of iron manufacture were in northwestern New Jersey, around Lake Hopatcong, northwestern Connecticut, around Salisbury, northeastern Maryland, and—after 1775—in various parts of Virginia, and together they produced another four thousand stand of arms.

In contrast to the production of crude iron, the manufacture of finished iron had been restricted—though only slightly in practice—by the British Iron Act of 1750. The stimulus of war contracts, however, quickly spurred the construction of iron foundries in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, and especially in Pennsylvania, and village blacksmiths and other artisans were fully competent to turn their attention to finished iron for the war effort. The Americans also benefited from zinc deposits in northwestern New Jersey and copper mines in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. As a consequence, the army suffered no shortages of iron, rifles, muskets, or ammunition. American cannon, however, proved far inferior to European, and the rebels quickly placed their reliance on cannon, whether iron or brass, imported from France or captured from the British.

There was one vital ingredient of ammunition, however, that was short during the war: lead. So scarce was lead that as early as June 1775 the Continental Congress pleaded with the provinces to open up governmental lead mines. Several colonies tried this desperate experiment, but, as might be expected, the results were failures: yieldless mines, as in New York, or marginal mines, as in middle Connecticut. This should have been expected, for any useful lead mines would have been discovered and exploited by private enterprise. The only workable lead mines were operating in southwestern Virginia (near what is now Austinville). By the summer of 1776, the Americans were stripping lead from clocks and windows to provide the Continental Army.

Of the food products, we have seen that the major item in short supply was salt. While some salt could be imported from the West Indies, the Americans also constructed makeshift factories along the coast to make salt from evaporated sea water. This was a basically uneconomic process to be sure, but was made temporarily profitable by the high price of salt caused by the scarcity of supply. Thus when market prices were permitted to rise, the wartime shortage of salt created its own partial corrective.

Also cut off by the war was a very large amount of textiles for clothing imported from Great Britain, but this drastic cut was nearly compensated by large increases in household manufactures of homespun cloth, as well as by seizures by privateers. In New England and the middle provinces, farmers with ready flexibility increased their household production of woolen and linen cloth. In the South, farmers and planters increased their output of homespun linens, cottons, and linsey-woolsey. And many back-country settlers simply wore their deerskin clothing as before.

23

Getting Aid from France

To open the ports of America to trade for munitions and with the West Indies the Americans were required to take a step toward independence almost as momentous as throwing open the ports in defiance of the navigation acts: they had to negotiate as a separate country with the European countries supplying the munitions, especially with the major supplier, France.

As early as July 1775 the Continental Congress began its first diplomatic efforts by sidestepping the British government and speaking directly to their fellow subjects. An address stating its wish for equal liberty was sent to the City of London. Appeals to the people of Canada and Jamaica to join in the colonial cause, and a particularly noteworthy address sent to the people of Ireland, were the first attempts to export the revolution overseas. Congress noted the grievances of the Irish under British rule, and suggested that both peoples should engage in a common struggle for liberty, albeit within the framework of the British Empire. The subservient Irish Parliament, however, merely moved to endorse the British war of suppression against the colonies.

At the same time Congress was moving toward liberty and independence, however, it was taking some steps at home toward oligarchic rule Of necessity, it had already begun to function through various standing committees to discharge its vital responsibilities for the war effort. Generally these functioned under the strict control of Congress itself and were always open to its guidance and supervision. But in late 1775 Congress created two “secret committees,” and as their name implies, they acted in secret and on their own initiative, without checking with Congress. Instead, Congress only had the power (largely unexercised) to ask for their records at its discretion. A great deal of working power was thereby put into the hands of a few men who dealt, furthermore, in the particularly sensitive area of foreign affairs. On September 18 Congress created the nine-man Secret Committee to handle the deals with foreign countries for munitions; on November 29 it created the five- (later six-) man Committee of Secret Correspondence, to correspond “with our friends” abroad. An omen for the future was the highly conservative complexion of the Committee of Secret Correspondence, consisting of John Jay, John Dickinson, Benjamin Harrison, and Thomas Johnson, who were archconservatives, and Benjamin Franklin, a thoroughgoing opportunist with highly conservative instincts. The establishment of this committee came as a response to the prodding by John Adams, Patrick Henry, and Samuel Chase of Maryland to open full diplomatic relations with France.

Soon the two secret committees were able to work very closely and cozily together. This close working relationship was embodied in the person of the young Philadelphia merchant Robert Morris, destined to become the great Mephistophelean figure of the revolutionary era. At the turn of the year, he became a member of both committees; he virtually ran the Committee of Secret Correspondence himself throughout 1776 and quickly became the leading figure in the Secret Committee. He was, in fact, to serve as the second chairman of the latter committee, succeeding his friend and partner, Thomas Willing of the firm of Willing and Morris. Thus catapulted to the very seat of power in the American colonies, the highly conservative Morris was able to make himself the center of a veritable plunderbund, which unabashedly and systematically looted the public purse for their private profit.

One of the first deeds of the Secret Committee was to substitute for regular market purchases a system of contracting—the ancestor of modern “cost-plus” government contracts. Under this system some favored firms were selected by the government to purchase (or to produce) certain goods, which the government pledges to buy at a rate that will give the merchants a guaranteed margin of profit, a lucrative special privilege eagerly fought for by business then and since. The Secret Committee established a handsome rate of profit on such mercantile purchases and often advanced the merchants the initial capital to buy the supplies. Moreover, Congress had thoughtfully allowed only merchants specifically to purchase supplies abroad, and as we have seen, this condition obtained until April 1776. This authorization came from the Secret Committee, and it was soon clear enough that control of this committee was the open sesame to special privilege and high guaranteed fortunes to be made out of the revolutionary effort.

Control of the committee Morris and Willing had, and they lost no time in exploiting their position. One of the first acts of the committee was to grant heavy contracts to the firm of Willing and Morris. These commission contracts were not the only form of subsidy the company enjoyed. The committee now quickly granted it a startling contract for supplying gunpowder, guaranteeing a high flat price of fourteen dollars a barrel, whether or not the powder reached American stores safely! This assured Willing and Morris a clear profit of $60,000 without even a fleeting risk of loss.

Other members of the Secret Committee also came in for their share of the loot. John Langdon of New Hampshire provided contracts to his own firm; Philip J. Livingston routed contracts to Livingston and Turnbull of New York; Silas Deane of Connecticut furnished commissions to his brother Barnabas. But heading the associates in plunder were Willing and Morris. All in all, the Secret Committee paid out over $2 million in war contracts from 1775 to 1777, and of these nearly $500,000, or one-fourth of all disbursements, went directly to the firm of Willing and Morris. Morris also directly shared with fellow members of the committee the largesse of nearly $300,000 in other contracts. Morris and Willing soon established a far-flung network of agents and followers, including leading merchants Benjamin Harrison (a member of the Committee of Secret Correspondence) and Carter Braxton, both of whom consequently received handsome contracts from the Secret Committee. Two particularly important committee agents were soon to double as congressional envoys to the French, William Bingham of Philadelphia, and Silas Deane of Westfield, Connecticut.

Deane was a prototype of the young lawyer with a keen eye to the main chance. He had launched his career by marrying the widow of a wealthy merchant, then capped that by divorcing her and marrying a member of the powerful Saltonstall family, thus getting himself profitably launched in Connecticut politics. Hardly had he latched onto a good thing in the operations of the Secret Committee, however, when the ungrateful voters of Connecticut unceremoniously turned him out of Congress in the elections of October 1775. But the lame-duck congressman continued to stay in Philadelphia, knowing that he would soon be taken care of. His expectations were not to be disappointed.

Great Britain, by its aggressive expansion of over two centuries, culminating in the conquest and arrogant seizure of shipping during the Seven Years’ War, had gravely alienated the other powers of Europe. Particularly bitter at England was France, crushed by the Pittite war and the peace of 1763. France, of course, especially welcomed the American Revolution and its prospects of trouble and even loss of the colonies for Great Britain. A reduction in British power would benefit France and the other countries of Europe, and would guard France against any possible resumption of a Carthaginian War against her by a united Anglo-American Empire under another Chatham ministry.

During the summer of 1775, the dashing young dramatist Caron de Beaumarchais, an agent of the French government in London, was able to make contact with many British and American radicals. On the basis of his information, he predicted turbulence in Britain and urged some understanding between France and the American revolutionaries. The shrewd French foreign minister Comte de Vergennes thereupon sent to the American colonies a secret agent, Achard de Bonvouloir. Without making any definite commitments of French aid, Bonvouloir was to assure the Americans that France had no designs for reconquest of Canada, had nothing but admiration for the American revolutionary efforts, and would welcome American commerce in French ports.

The Committee of Secret Correspondence had been recently established by Congress, and Bonvouloir met privately with it to convey the French assurances to the rebels. In its turn, the committee was eager to convince the French that Congress was moving toward independence, and thus spur French aid to the revolutionary cause. In early March, despite the absence of a declaration of independence, the committee decided to send a secret agent to France as its envoy to bid for French aid. This envoy was Silas Deane, who arrived at Paris in early July 1776 in the guise of a private merchant. He was able to use his crucial position in the procurement of munitions to serve also as an agent of the firm of Willing and Morris. There Deane was able to draw many influential French financiers and officials into the Morris-Willing network. Deane and Morris employed the network to plunder public activities systematically for their private profit. In addition to granting themselves contracts, public ships and wagons were freely and abundantly used to convey their private cargoes without charge. Accounts were scarcely kept and remained virtually unsupervised, and thus Deane and Morris were able to engage in large-scale outright peculation of American funds. In 1776, on one contract alone, the government advanced Morris the large sum of $80,000 to buy goods abroad. Even though the goods were never delivered, Morris never returned the money. Furthermore, purchases on public account were given a back seat by Morris and his group in preference to their strictly private transactions.

Before the dispatch of Deane, the Committee of Secret Correspondence was able to engage secret agents living abroad. The separate colonies had employed six agents in London; of these two were members of Parliament and hence effectively ineligible for further work, one became a Tory actively serving the British cause, one resigned, and one (Franklin) had been forced to return home. This left the learned Massachusetts radical Arthur Lee, Richard Henry Lee’s brother, who became a secret agent of the Committee of Secret Correspondence in mid-December. The committee also engaged an old friend of Franklin’s living at The Hague, Charles W. F. Dumas, to work for it in Holland.

Meanwhile, Beaumarchais was strengthened in his purpose by frequent conferences with Arthur Lee, who had the verve and vision to ask for French aid on his own initiative. Beaumarchais pressed upon King Louis XVI a policy not only of permitting and encouraging private shipment of munitions to America by selling these munitions to French merchants, but of going beyond this to positive aid by the French government itself. This aid was to be secret, through a dummy private firm, so as not to provide Great Britain with a casus belli. Bonvouloir’s optimistic report on American plans for independence persuaded Vergennes to recommend, and the king to adopt, the Beaumarchais plan. On May 2, 1776, the king ordered the government to supply as a virtual gift to the Americans, one million livres worth of munitions through Beaumarchais, who emerged as a supposed merchant representing the fictitious firm of Roderigue Hortalez et Cie. As part of the active new policy, the king also moved to strengthen France’s army and navy. This gift was promptly matched by another one million livres supplied to Beaumarchais by Charles III of Spain, eager to join his ally in weakening their ancient foe.

King Louis envisioned French governmental aid as an outright gift to the Americans in the guise of a loan. But when Beaumarchais saw that Deane had come prepared to purchase the munitions, he saw an opportunity for a huge future windfall for himself. He drew up an agreement with Congress to supply munitions on credit, to be repaid in money or in tobacco at an indefinite later date. He also advanced government credit to French ships to carry the war supplies to America. Indeed, Beaumarchais was to send to America on credit many times the initial Franco-Spanish subsidy; by mid-October 1776, he had shipped over five and a half million livres of supplies furnished by the government (of which Spain refused to pay more than the initial one million), including powder, guns, cannon, cannon balls, and clothing for soldiers. After the war, Beaumarchais had the nerve to demand 3.6 million livres from the United States in payment for the supplies, but the perceptive Arthur Lee had early realized that Beaumarchais was simply a cover agent intended by the French government to give munitions in secret to the Americans. Congress properly paid Beaumarchais nothing.*

As the Americans had foreseen, France quickly followed its encouragement of private as well as its own secret trade with America by using its navy to protect that trade. France informed Britain in June that it would insist on full rights as a neutral under international law: to open its ports to American merchant shipping; to have its ships free from British search in French territorial waters (e.g., the French West Indies, especially Martinique and Cap François in Haiti, the entrepôts for the new trade); and to keep its trade with its own colonies inviolate from British interference. The French could then keep their shipments within their empire, and therefore inviolate until they reached the West Indies, thus protecting them most of the way to America. Furthermore, France greatly aided American privateers by secretly permitting them to fit out in French ports; British complaints were either ignored or the privateers would be seized officially and then allowed to escape without loss.

* In 1835, however, the United States government paid 800,000 francs (livres) to the heirs of Beaumarchais as a deduction monies paid to the U.S. by the French government under the Treaty of 1831.

24

Polarization in England and the German Response to Renting “Hessians”

During 1775 and early 1776, as we have seen, the American conflict escalated and intensified step by step: as the military clashes widened on land and at sea; as the British cracked down bitterly on the revolutionaries; as militant measures were taken against Americans loyal to Britain; and as the Continental Congress opened diplomatic relations, organized the war effort, and opened the ports to foreign trade and supplies in defiance of the time-honored British laws of trade.

As the conflict got underway and for many months thereafter, most of the American leaders had conservative aims and goals. They aimed not at all at independence, but at intensifying the old pressure of the boycott to bring Britain to her senses and to abandon her recent policy of aggressive imperial domination. Others at least realized that Britain would adopt a hard-line policy of crushing the rebellion, inexorably pushing the Americans into greater conflict, but only a handful of the most radical and prescient leaders fought eagerly for the maximum goal: independence. They realized that France would only be interested in aiding an American movement that would aim for independence and not for eventual reconciliation and strengthening of the British Empire. Moreover, they saw that in the difficult war ahead only American independence would provide the necessary inspiration for waging the struggle. The radicals realized, as Curtis Nettels has written, that

the Americans had arrived at a crossroads of history. Backward the road led to monarchy, serfdom, oppression. Ahead was visible the trace of a new path leading to emancipation, freedom and self-government.... Should [Congress] take the road backward to the oppressions of the old world or build a new road to the summit discernible in the distance...?

It was independence that “offered an inspiring prospect—nothing less than the creation of a new nation, a great republic, dedicated to rights of man.”*

New England, the center of liberalism and democracy, with its traditions of virtual independence, had little difficulty in visualizing American independence. But as long as Massachusetts was the focal point of conflict with Britain, it and the rest of New England had to tread warily in Congress. “Levelling” New England was under enough suspicion as it was from the other colonies, and it would have been suicidal for it to take the lead in advocating independence—a most unpopular concept in 1775. Massachusetts and its chief radicals, the Adamses, had to lie low, waiting for the lead for militancy and eventual independence to be taken by Virginia, the foremost—and the most radical—colony in the South. This was a further consideration in the decision to give George Washington command of the Continental Army: he was an uncommon blend of impeccable conservative on social and political matters and yet a militant in the fight against Britain.

Yet the radicals had a difficult row to hoe indeed, for Congress began firmly in the hands of conservatives who would not consider independence: such leaders as John Jay, James Duane, John Alsop, Philip Schuyler, and Philip and Robert Livingston of New York; John Dickinson, James Wilson, and Robert Morris of Pennsylvania; Thomas Johnson of Maryland; Benjamin Harrison of Virginia; Thomas Lynch and the Rutledges of South Carolina; and Dr. John Zubly of Georgia. Even New England had conservative delegates: Silas Deane of Connecticut, and Thomas Cushing and the waffling and petulant John Hancock of Massachusetts. Against such a formidable array the Adamses, Patrick Henry, and Richard Henry Lee could only fume in private and await the passage of time that they firmly believed would be on their side.

The superior insight of the radicals was partly due to their superior information on political conditions in Great Britain and on the formidable strength of the Tory forces. The prime source of this information was Arthur Lee, who was functioning as a one-man committee of correspondence from London from the late 1760s, sending his news and evaluations to the Adamses and other radical leaders. Lee and his other brother William, a merchant settled in London who had become important in London politics, reported clearly the feebleness and decline of the Whigs and radicals, as well as the triumphal successes of the imperialists and Tories and the subservience of a corrupt Parliament.

The American radicals soon saw this estimate of the temper of the British government confirmed as the king brusquely refused even to receive Dickinson’s Olive Branch Petition and issued the staunchly hardline Proclamation of Rebellion on August 23, 1775. The proclamation absurdly denounced the Americans as rebels and traitors who had now brought long-laid designs and “traitorous conspiracies” to open rebellion and war. The king announced that “he would bring traitors to justice... [and] condign punishment.” This was quickly followed by a royal order to seize the ships of Americans or all those trading with America, and the royal authorities expressed their determination to proceed against the Americans as “open and announced enemies of the State.”

In England the Whig and liberal cause had fallen to low estate. No mass protests of merchants or populace arose to block the determination of the North ministry to crush the Americans. Many English merchants were beguiled by the temporary expansion of markets in Europe, aided by the recent peace between Russia and Turkey, and by the lure of government war contracts. The mass of the people were seduced by a wave of patriotism as well as the desire to force the Americans to pay part of their tax burden. The aristocratic Whig leadership, always inclined to luxurious indolence, decided against the efforts of Edmund Burke to arouse them, and instead to give up and absent themselves from Parliament. Burke did his best to work for peace on his own and roused peace petitions from London and his constitutency in Bristol, but all in vain; indeed, more people in Bristol addressed their support of the government on the American war.

Burke’s persistent appeals to the Marquis of Rockingham and the Whigs to oppose the war vigorously was not simple impetuosity; it was based on profound insight into the proper strategy for a party truly in opposition to the existing regime. Vigorous opposition, though in a weak minority at the time, would not be at all futile. On the contrary, local opposition would inform people of the available alternative to which they might turn in anger when present policy became bankrupt. But for such an angry turn toward a radical change of the system, there must be skilled leadership and direction. There must be a vanguard. As Burke wrote: “To bring the people to a feeling... as tends to amendment or alteration of system, there must be plan and management. All direction of public humor and opinion must originate in a few.” He vainly urged on the Whigs a large and powerful nationwide petition movement, which would remain permanently in operation as a network of local committees of correspondence to serve as the lever of dynamic political change.

The eloquent young Charles James Fox, a son of Henry Fox and close to the Whig party, also argued against the Britain’s war against the Americans. The Pittites opposed the war, too, but were enfeebled by the chronic illness of Lord Chatham. Leading individual Whigs did make their mark by refusing to serve in the armed forces against the Americans; and these came to include Lord Effingham, an army officer, and the great Adm. Augustus Keppel.

Meanwhile, the radical movement in Britain had fallen into rapid decline. John Wilkes’ triumphal entry into Parliament in 1774, as well as into London politics, marked the beginning not of new triumphs for the Wilkite movement, but of its collapse. In any age of Tory ascendance, Wilkes proved to have been a far better radical leader in disgrace than in positions of power or influence; in fact, “having realized his civic and Parliamentary ambitions, it seemed that he no longer sought or depended on the acclaim of the ’lower orders’ of citizens.”* He was still a liberal opposed to the war, however, and he warned that victory would be hollow, since the Americans could not be kept permanently in subjection, even by large forces of occupation. Soon to abandon the radical position, Wilkes was to remain for a while an undistinguished liberal member of Parliament; but he began to follow the classic ever-rightward path of the renegade radical, until, after two decades, he died “in the odour and sanctity of the new Toryism.”** The radical cause in 1776 had become moribund in Britain, a state aggravated by Parliament’s recent reimposition of a high tax on newspapers, crippling the cheap and popular press that had served as a vehicle for gaining support of the cause from the masses.

Of the radicals only the doughty Reverend John Home managed to remain active: he took up a collection in London in June 1775 for widows and orphans of the Americans “murdered” at Lexington by the British troops. He was promptly sent to prison for his audacity. It is significant of the decline of British radicalism that his arrest evoked none of the popular agitation generated by the imprisonment of John Wilkes in 1763.

In their desperate state, the various liberal and opposition groups began to draw hesitantly together and to become increasingly radicalized by the American crisis. They soon realized that their only hope lay in a drastic British defeat at the hands of the Americans. Openly favoring the American cause, they grew more radical in their proferred solutions. Burke, who habitually dealt in terms of utility and expediency, or else tradition, now acknowledged in part the validity of the Americans’ stress on their rights. Yet he was gradually being outflanked on his left. The Earl of Shelburne and the other Chathamites, along with the London radicals, called for repeal of the Declaratory Acts asserting full parliamentary sovereignty over America, including the right of taxation; and Charles James Fox was calling for repeal of every British measure toward America passed since 1763.

With the liberal and radical movements weak and in disarray, the field was wide open for the hard-line apostles of force and suppression. Bunker Hill was characteristically taken, not as a signal to stop and think, but as a stain to Britain’s honor to be avenged as quickly and forcefully as possible. Only Lord Dartmouth, the colonial secretary, stood out against the war policy of the cabinet, but with no success. So widespread was British support for suppression that the manufacturing centers of Manchester, Lancaster, Liverpool, and Bristol presented progovernment addresses. Driven on by the king and by the war party in control of the rest of the cabinet and of popular opinion, the equivocal prime minister, Lord North, was forced to press the war with vigor. He raised troops, relieved General Gage and Vice Admiral Samuel Graves, who were considered dilatory by the war party, and sent five Irish regiments to America. In the autumn of 1775, moreover, the two cabinet moderates lost their posts: the Whig Duke of Grafton went into opposition in bitter protest against the war, and Lord Dartmouth lost the key post of colonial secretary to hardline Lord George Germain, a man bitterly opposed to appeasement of the colonies.

Strengthening hard-line dominance over public opinion was a pamphlet published in 1775 by the eminent Tory literary critic Samuel Johnson. With his accustomed perceptiveness, Johnson, in Taxation No Tyranny, warned that the logical conclusion of the “libertine” and American hostility to taxation, was no taxation at all, or anarchy.

Prowar petitions, inspired by the government, denounced the “sophistical arguments and seditious correspondence” of “a few disappointed men” who were responsible for “deluding” the Americans into rebellion. The ministry propounded a similar line. Indeed, more serious than the imprisonment of John Horne was the arrest on a charge of treason of the radical alderman and leading London banker Stephen Sayre, whom Burke and other Whigs were refused permission to visit in prison. Similar treatment for the Whig leaders was hinted to be in the offing, though Sayre was eventually able to sue successfully for false arrest.

Having agreed to prosecute the war vigorously, North attempted to offer peace terms to the Americans. After a great deal of wrangling with Germain and the war party, he won an agreement in May 1776 to send as peace commissioners to America, Gen. Sir William Howe and his brother the Whig Adm. Richard Lord Howe, the newly appointed commander of the fleet in American waters. This wrangling was a waste of time, for the peace terms merely amounted to a demand for American submission in exchange for instituting North’s rejected Plan of Conciliation and a plan to consider American grievances. There was not the ghost of a chance that the Americans would submit. As Professor Ritcheson comments: “The terms thus held out were those a victorious and reasonably benevolent mother country might have granted to discouraged and chastised rebels.”* But the Americans, of course, were neither beaten nor discouraged.

Lord North’s first task in prosecuting the war was to raise 20,000 men to send to the American colonies. Rather than annoy the British people by raising the troops at home, he determined to use Britain’s vast wealth to hire mercenary troops from other governments. He turned first to Russia, which had been substantially helped by Britain to defeat Turkey in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74. Russia had installed King Stanislaus as its puppet ruler in Poland, and in 1768 the liberal Polish country party, or Confederation of Bar, led by Counts Joseph and Casimir Pulaski, rose in rebellion against the king. By 1772, the Polish rebellion was crushed, and Poland suffered the loss of one-third of its territory and half of its population in the First Partition by Russia and Prussia. Turkey had decided to aid the Polish rebels, earning the belligerent attention of Russia. But Russia’s gratitude to Britain for its aid in the war had cooled. The German-born empress Catherine the Great had come strongly under the influence of Prussia, and Frederick the Great of Prussia was peeved at Britain for what he considered unsatisfactory peace terms after the Seven Years’ War. After much backing and filling and seeming agreement, Catherine finally refused Britain’s request.

North turned next to the Dutch. Ever since the accession to the English throne of William of Orange in 1688, the Dutch House of Orange had been subservient to Great Britain. They had been governed during the first half of the eighteenth century by the libertarian Republican party, which pursued a policy of thoroughgoing decentralization, minimal government, and profitable neutrality in Europe’s wars. During the War of Austrian Succession, Britain had engineered a coup by the House of Orange; the Republic was overthrown, and William IV of Orange was installed as Stadholder of the Dutch provinces. Now Great Britain asked the Dutch to supply the needed troops, specifically the “Scotch Brigade.” (This brigade originally consisted of Scotsmen, but was now largely comprised of Walloons from the southern Netherlands). The House of Orange was, of course, willing to agree; but the Prince of Orange was by no means the autocratic ruler of Holland, and the republican-led assemblies of most of the provinces vetoed the scheme. Eloquent opposition to providing the troops was expressed by John Derk, who, citing English depredations upon the sea and upon Dutch commerce, declared that the Americans were contending for their liberty just as the Dutch themselves had fought for their independence as rebels against Spain in the late sixteenth century.

Leading the successful opposition to troop-aid to Britain in the interior Dutch province of Overijssel was a man destined to become one of the most important figures in the international revolutionary movement in the near future: the nobleman J. D. van der Capellen tot de Pol, who broke precedent by making public his views in the secret discussion within the provincial estates. Van der Capellen, who also led the movement to abolish corvée servitude by the peasants of the province, was in contact with British radicals and was soon to correspond with the revolutionary governors of Connecticut and New Jersey.

The substantial number of republican merchants in the Dutch provinces also expressed their opposition to British dictation by happily engaging in “illicit” trade with the rebellious Americans and with the French, St. Eustatius in the Dutch West Indies serving as a crucial entrepôt in the American trade.

Twice rebuffed in their search for mercenary troops, the British now turned to some of the petty princes of western and southern Germany who were always eager to augment their incomes by renting out their troops. In January 1776, Britain received into its service 30,000 German mercenaries from six principalities, including Hesse and Brunswick, of which three-fifths came from Hesse-Kassel.* While some of these German troops were mere hired killers or soldiers of fortune, many were imbued with deep sympathy for the American cause, proving to be reluctant fighters at best and often deserting outright to the American ranks.

In their discontent the German troops at least partially reflected a wave of enthusiasm for the revolutionary cause that was sweeping the intellectuals of Germany. The Enlightenment had deeply penetrated into German thought, and Rousseau and Voltaire were read as widely in Germany as in America. The rights of man were keenly admired, and the German intellectuals saw with enthusiasm that here was a new type of war, a war for liberty, a revolutionary war for an ideal very different from the familiar European war of mercantilistic and dynastic plunder.

The rental of the troops to counter-revolutionary England ignited a torrent of protest in Germany. The German poets were in the forefront of the protest, including the young poets Goethe and Schiller. The poets were moved to use the American struggle for liberty to protest directly or obliquely against their own petty despotisms. The poet Johann Voss called courageously for Germans to “drain the cup of tyrant’s blood to triumph.” Leading the campaign was the romantic poet and newspaper editor of Wurttemberg, Christian F. D. Schubart, who had recently founded a lively paper to help launch Germany’s political press. Also avidly enthusiastic for the American Revolution was the poet Johann Georg Jacobi, who hailed the Americans as really battling against despotism in all countries; an editor of a sentimental women’s magazine, Jacobi rhapsodized over revolutionary activities by the women of Pennsylvania. Another prominent romantic libertarian poet of the revolution was Christopher M. Wieland, former jurist and professor of philosophy, who founded Der Teutsche Merkur, the most lively and popular—and most politically oriented—paper in Germany.

Schubart and Jacobi were soon suppressed by their respective princes, but Wieland carried on, and he was joined in advocating the American cause by more sober thinkers. These writings included a constitutional defense of the American case and of American smuggling, and an attack on the Navigation Acts by Jakob Mauvillon, professor of military science at Kassel. Mauvillon was greatly influenced by the first modern economists, the French physiocrats, who had evolved a rigorous libertarian theory that included a commitment to a strictly laissez-faire economy and to the natural rights of man. Mauvillon declared the lesson of the American revolution to be that, to avoid revolution, the German states must abolish the statist repressions at home, including “religious intolerance, monopolies, guilds, taxes on agriculture, and... economic burdens on trade and commerce.” Mauvillon’s physiocracy, in turn, influenced his colleague, the statesman and economist Christian von Dohm, who became the political commentator for Wieland’s Merkur. Von Dohm criticized the vicious trade monopoly of the British mercantilist system, and pointed out that American independence would be a great boon to the world if only because it would smash this monopoly. He thereby summed up the German—indeed the European—radical hopes for the American Revolution: its success would “create new routes for trade, new types of industry, new connections between nations in various parts of the world.... It can give wider circles of influence to the Enlightenment, new keenness to popular thought, new life to the spirit of freedom.”*

* Curtis P. Nettels, George Washington and American Independence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1951), p. 107.

* George Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 192.

**Ibid., p. 192.

* Charles R. Ritcheson, British Politics and the American Revolution (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), p. 207.

* Of the 30,000 troops, 7,500 were to perish during the war, either in battle or of disease; of the remaining 22,500, 5,000 were to desert to settle in the United States.

* Quoted in the important article by Elisha P. Douglass, “German Intellectuals and the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly (April 1960), p. 216.