War of Independence

Birth of the American Nation

The Seven Years War which was waged from 1756 to 1763 between Britain, Prussia and Hanover on the one hand, and France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, Sweden and finally Spain on the other, had two main aspects. In one it was a duel between Britain and France for the overseas empire in America and India; in the other it was the struggle of Prussia against enemies encircling her. Though it ended with Canada safely in English hands, and with France without an effective foothold in India, it also left England with a load of debt.

To meet the debt, still heavier taxation was introduced, the brunt of which was carried by the landowners, already the major tax­payers, and under the increased burden they became restive. Their representatives, who dominated Parliament, firmly believed that relief could be obtained if the colonies were called upon to con­tribute, and that the American colonies particularly could assist by undertaking at least some of the cost of the army in America.

A considerable revenue was raised in England at this time by the sale of stamps necessary to validate certain business documents, and it was decided to extend this system of taxation to America. On 5 February, 1765, the House of Commons passed the necessary resolutions to make this effective, and immediately two opposing tendencies met in sharp conflict.

In England, George III was the prime mover in designing the policy of organizing and administering the great empire which had recently been increased by the fruits of victory. In America, colonies over a hundred years old, well populated, and with a national spirit and way of life already strongly developed, resented any inter­ference in their domestic affairs. They maintained that they, and not the British Government, should determine what taxes they should pay, the basis on which they argued being what is now one of the major slogans of democratic government: “No taxation without representation.” Since they had no voice in affairs at Westminster, Westminster should have no right to tax them.

So great was the pressure exerted by the colonists that before the Act ever came into operation the Ministry which had passed it was driven from power, and in 1767 the Stamp Act was repealed. At the same time that this was done, however, the British Government passed a Declaratory Act which asserted the full authority of the Home Parliament over the colonies.

At home the landlords continued their efforts to obtain relief from taxation.

Now, the colonists’ objection to taxation which directly touched their internal affairs could be easily understood. But at the same time that they resisted this form of control, they did admit that Great Britain had the right to control their external trade, and that this control could be exercised by the home government’s imposition of duties on goods entering the country.

In their reasonableness, however, they did not seem to realize that they were practically suggesting a new method of making themselves partly responsible for the Englishman’s tax burden; and it would have been strange indeed had they not been taken at their word by the responsible minister at Westminster, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In 1767, Charles Townshend had recently been appointed Chancellor, and he immediately seized upon this “offer” by the colonists. He introduced Bills into Parliament imposing duties on glass, lead, painters’ colours, paper and tea shipped from England to America.

At once the colonists protested that this was going too far, and when Townshend refused to withdraw they declared a boycott of British goods, and unanimously resolved to pay no debts to England until the Acts were repealed. As in the case of the Stamp Act, so this Act brought about the downfall of the Ministry.

The new Ministry, led by Lord North, repealed the Act except that section which covered the duty on tea. For a time there was comparative quiet, and all might have been well had not the East India Company reaped an extraordinarily abundant tea harvest, and decided to dump its surplus stock in America.

In taking this decision, the directors of the East India Company had argued that the colonists could have no objection, because while the home consumer paid a shilling a pound tax, they would only have to pay threepence a pound. But the colonists did object, and with considerable violence.

It was not that the colonists objected to the amount they would have to pay. The true objection lay in the question of whether the home government could justly claim to have a right to tax them at all. And so strongly were the opposing views argued by both sides that tempers flared and a series of unpleasant incidents occurred.

On their part the British imposed unpopular restrictions on colonial trade. In retaliation, a Boston mob, in 1770, attacked British soldiers in the street and the soldiers fired on them, with fatal results. ‘ Two years later, the citizens of Providence, on Rhode Island, set fire to a small British warship which had run aground there, and had caused resentment by her efforts to stop illegal trade. In the following year, a party disguised as Red Indians threw into Boston harbour 340 chests of tea about to be unloaded from British ships.

But this was not the only source of trouble for the British on the American continent. In 1774 the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act, which offended colonial religious susceptibilities by its liberal attitude towards the Roman Catholic Church in Canada, and it also placed the vast hinterland north of the Ohio as far as the Mississippi under the rule of a despotic governor in Quebec. The colonists argued that the Bill threatened the liberty and expansion of the colonies. The popular reaction in Canada was as strong as that of their American neighbours vis-a-vis taxation.

The climax came when following upon the incidents at Boston, the British closed the port until the city agreed to make amends. General Gage was appointed Governor of Massachusetts and was provided with a large military force.

It was now evident that war was near. With Massachusetts and Virginia leading the Continental Congress, gathered at Philadelphia in the autumn of 1774 for the purpose of uniting the colonies in action, Gage saw that Massachusetts was preparing to fight, and on 19 April, 1775, he sent a force from Boston to Concord to destroy the military stores collected there lest they should be seized by the colonists.

At Lexington the column was attacked by armed farmers. It succeeded, however, in completing its mission, but had to withdraw under galling colonist fire. Gage now found himself besieged in Boston.

In May the Continental Congress met again, and made the cause of Massachusetts its own. On 15 June it appointed Colonel George Washington of Virginia to the command of the colonial troops.

While he was on his way to Boston to take up his command, Washington received news of the battle of Bunker Hill, one of two elevations overlooking Boston, which Gage wished to secure. On 16 April, a party of American militia about 1,200 strong forestalled bis intention, and though they mistook the nearby hill, Breed’s, for Bunker Hill, the ensuing engagement has always been known under the latter name.

The Americans hastily fortified Breed’s Hill, and behind their works they were able to ignore the fire from the British warships in the harbour. Gage thereupon ordered 2,000 infantry to seize the hill. They had almost reached the top when the Americans opened fire and almost decimated them. They re-formed, but their second assault was equally unsuccessful. A third attack was more skilfully conducted, and as by this time the Americans had run out of ammunition they retreated. The English lost 226 killed and 828 wounded and missing, while the colonists’ losses were about 450 killed and wounded, Washington now planned an aggressive war. To make the Union continental, he considered it necessary to occupy Canada. Already in May, 1775, the Vermont leader, Ethan Allen, had seized Fort Ticonderoga, commanding the route by Lake Champlain to Montreal, and by the late autumn the Americans held the St Lawrence with the British garrison shut up in Quebec. But the sea-route to Quebec remained open, and the arrival of a relieving fleet in the spring of 1776 led to the entire withdrawal of the American forces from Canada.

In March, 1776, the British abandoned Boston and moved to Halifax. Gage was replaced by Sir William Howe, who had a plan for attacking New York and Philadelphia, and cutting off the North from the South, which he would then subdue in turn. By mid-September Howe was in New York, but the adoption by Congress of the Declaration of Independence on 4 July, 1776, made any thought of surrender impossible. Congress now sought to make an alliance with France.

Meanwhile, the British were gathering an army in Canada under General Burgoyne, and in the summer of 1777 Burgoyne invaded New York State by way of Lake Champlain. Had Howe advanced up the Hudson from New York to join up with Burgoyne, New England could have been cut off from the other colonies. But the generals had not been instructed to co-operate and so a great opportunity was lost.

While Burgoyne was invading New York State, Howe launched an attack on Philadelphia, and on 26 September he defeated Washington at the battle of Brandywine, and occupied the city. But already a crisis was developing for the British, and soon disaster was to overtake Burgoyne. On 17 October, with six thousand men, he surrendered to General Gates at Saratoga, a victory for the Americans which persuaded France to sign an alliance with the colonists.

Despite this, however, the cause of the colonists was in a very precarious situation. Driven from Philadelphia, the Congress had no effective organization with which to prosecute the war. Only the incompetence of the British commanders and a badly conceived plan of campaign prevented a final British victory at this stage.

On the entry of France into the war, the British decided to abandon an extensive campaign, and, concentrating on New York, to use their sea-power in coast raids with the hope of wearing out the colonists. Accordingly, in June, 1778, Howe evacuated Philadelphia and returned to New York.

But this enabled Washington to set up his chief post on the Hudson, and from there he was able to check any British advance to the interior.

A long period of inactivity followed and the spirit of the Americans declined. Howe was replaced by Sir Harry Clinton, who arranged with the treacherous American general Benedict Arnold the handing over of West Point, the chief American supply depot, to the British. The plot was discovered in time, but it demonstrated how hopeless at least one leader believed the colonists’ cause to be.

The British now turned their main effort to the South, where they met with considerable success. By August, 1780, the whole of the South to the Virginian border was in British hands.

This success was due almost entirely to Lord Cornwallis, who was the first really able British general to appear on the scene. His aggressive policy appeared to be justified. He met Greene, Washington’s ablest general, at Guilford Court House, North Carolina, on 15 March, 1781. The battle was drawn, but Cornwallis, relying on reinforcements which were to be brought to him by sea, pushed on into Virginia. To master Virginia was to master the whole South; to fail here was to fail elsewhere.

He overran the greater part of the state, but Greene slipped past him, and now embarked upon a victorious campaign. By September, after severe fighting, he had recovered most of the South and Cornwallis was confined to the area between the York and Jarmes rivers.

The weakness of Cornwallis’s position was not lost on Washington. The British support from the sea was insecure, for Holland and Spain had now entered the war, and with France threatening the British in the West Indies the fleet was divided.

Cornwallis made his headquarters at Yorktown, an exposed position near the mouth of the York river. A French fleet cut off rescue by sea, and Washington closed in from land. This masterly combination meant surrender or annihilation. On 19 October, 1781, Cornwallis surrendered with an army of 7,000 men. The disaster ended the war.

Peace negotiations were put in hand immediately, and in November, 1782, a provisional treaty was signed in Paris. Wash­ington then declared hostilities at an end. On 3 September, 1783, the final treaty was signed, and the British evacuated New York, their last stronghold.

The treaty recognized the independence of the thirteen states, and to the United States, which they formed, was given the sovereignty of the vast region between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi.

The American War of Independence influenced profoundly the whole western world. Though the loose union of the thirteen states broke down on account of corruption and inefficiency, it yet led to a new federal constitution in 1787, under which the present United States is governed.

By lack of foresight, by incompetence and by the failure to appreciate the spirit of men sprung from their own stock, the British lost their richest possession. With more understanding, the United States might to-day still have been a member of the British Commonwealth.