Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Path to Revolution 1763-1773

'Let no man be dismayed at being proclaimed a Rebel'

Virginia Gazette

THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756–1763, was a triumph for Britain and the Treaty of Paris that concluded it in 1763 greatly extended the British Empire. France lost Canada and all her lands east of the Mississippi; all its stations in India but four; and some of its West Indian islands. Spain had to yield Florida to the British but gained Louisiana from France. It seemed a triumph that France, Britain's old enemy, had been thrust out of North America but it had an unexpected and unintended consequence. The thirteen colonies had needed British soldiers to protect them from the French but now that threat had disappeared — a disappearance reinforced by the supremacy in the Atlantic and the Caribbean of the British navy which had 800 ships and 70,000 sailors — a new relationship between the mother country and its colonies was about to unfold. With this new security the colonies would be able to develop their interests in their own way; expand westwards; trade more freely; trust to their own militias; and gain the confidence to run their own governments. The spirit of independence arose from the triumph of British arms.

In this success were planted the seeds that were to lead to an independent America. Before the war the thirteen American colonies were largely self — governing — they raised their own taxes, organised their own trade, had their own courts and were allowed to get on with their own lives. Above all the Yankees wanted to be left alone to get on with their own affairs in their own way. Ten years later the first American Continental Congress was to meet and pass resolutions yearning for the 'good old days' before 1763. the 'good old days' before 1763.

After the war the London government was forced to realise that it had a large empire in North America — some three million people compared to Britain's seven million. The British army that had protected the colonists in the wars were also needed to protect them from Native American Indians, and to police the thinly populated areas of Canada and Florida, and further marauding attacks from France could not be ruled out. Not unreasonably the Prime Minister, George Grenville, thought that American citizens should contribute towards their own defence — hence the Sugar Act 1764 and the Stamp Act 1765.

The Sugar Act imposed a duty on sugar and had two purposes. The first was to protect the sugar industry of the West Indies by banning supplies from Spanish and French territories, reflecting the influence of Jamaican sugar barons in the House of Commons. It disrupted the flourishing trade of smuggling which was the foundation of the fortunes of many American merchants who had no spokesmen in London. The second purpose was for the revenue from the duty to defray the costs of defending the colonies by maintaining a British army of 10,000 men. This was not un-reasonable for Britain's debt in 1763 at the end of the war was £60 million higher than in 1756, the beginning. Benjamin Franklin in April 1764 pointed out that the British were acting against their own self-interest: 'For Interest with you we have but little: the West Indies vastly outweigh us of the Northern Colonies. What we get above Subsistence we lay out for you with your Manufactures. Therefore what you get from us in Taxes, you must lose in Trade. The Cat can yield but its Skin.'

In 1765 Grenville decided to extend the principle of the colonies contributing towards the cost of maintaining an army by introducing a Stamp Act levied on all manner of documents. It seemed sensible as stamp taxes were levied in Britain and in the West Indies. In America it was a disaster as it hit the most articulate people: lawyers, printers, publishers, journalists, academics, merchants, newspaper editors and readers. It threatened the very existence of a free press which went into overdrive, by placing a skulls-head on their mastheads. Colonial troops could not protect the officials appointed to collect the tax and not one penny was collected. Boston merchants boycotted British goods which led to British merchants in Glasgow, Bristol, Liverpool and London telling a commons committee that businesses were being badly hit and the act had to be repealed. That was the clinching argument for Grenville's successor, Rockingham, when in 1766 he repealed it. It is not surprising that this surrender was greeted in Boston with 'Ringing of all the Bells in Town, Guns Firing, Drums Beating and all Sorts of Musik'.

Britain could not yield with grace. As the most powerful and successful country in Europe, it was used to winning, asserting, and laying down terms. Confident and proud that it had the best system of government in the world, it did not need to argue, concur or concede. This led to the House of Commons passing without a division the Declaratory Act which asserted that Parliament could pass laws affecting the American colonies on virtually anything. This fig — leaf was to turn into a poisonous thorn of provocation in the body politic of America.

Although the settlers welcomed the British suppression of the rising of Pontiac, the Ottawa Chief who in 1763 had seized most of the western outposts apart from Detroit and had killed over 200 settlers, they did not want the London government to act as a protector of the Native American Indians. But this was what Grenville decided to do. In order to prevent a series of Native American Indian uprisings, he acted to protect their ancient hunting grounds by issuing a proclamation in 1763 which in effect set a limit on the expansion of all thirteen colonies. Governors were not allowed to grant land west of a line drawn vertically down the country west of the Appalachian Mountains and Mississippi. Many of the colonists, including George Washington, had acquired land speculatively in just those areas and resented London's interference in their own brand of imperialism.

In June 1767 Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Pitt's administration, introduced further duties on goods imported into America — glass, lead, paper, printers' colours and tea. He tightened controls on smuggling and set up a Board of Customs Commissioners in Boston to administer the act. It was the Stamp Act writ large because virtually all paper came from Britain, so once again the liberty of the press was at risk. Within weeks a movement to boycott British goods swept through the colonies and New England's trade with Britain was cut by half in 1769. After three years the duties were an embarrassment as their yield barely exceeded the cost of collection and so in 1770 they were removed. But fatally the tax on tea was retained, by the margin of just one vote in the Cabinet, to show that the government in London still had the right to tax the colonies. By that time Townshend was dead: Horace Walpole penned this valediction: 'He had almost every great talent…if he had had but common truth, common sincerity, common honesty, common modesty, common steadiness, common courage, and commonsense.'

After the repeal of the Townshend duties there were few issues that kept the revolutionary flames burning brightly. When Benjamin Franklin released some old letters from Hutchinson, the Governor of Massachusetts, which he had come across, advocating tougher measures against rebellious colonists, the Massachusetts legislature passed a motion demanding the dismissal of the governor, but it was not a big enough issue for the other colonies to take up. This frustrated Sam Adams, the principal political agitator in Massachusetts, from 1765 — 1775, but it was difficult even for him to make bricks without straw.

Adams engendered and then kept alive the spirit of opposition to colonial rule, principally through the press by turning small slights into major injustices and by organising gatherings in various states of 'concerned citizens' — self-elected representatives — which created a growing sense of togetherness for he got them to correspond with each other. He also worked busily to glorify the 'Sons of Liberty' and to harass government officials — he was the master of 'rent-a-mob'. Based in Boston he turned the killing of five Americans in a local riot in 1770 into an unprovoked massacre which had to be celebrated annually forever after. But by far his most effective weapon was the use of the press where he would provoke controversy usually by writing letters under pseudonyms both for and against an issue. Sam Adams should be recognised as the first American to master the art of propaganda: the patron of spin said that 'to put your enemy in the wrong and keep him so is a wise maxim in politics as well as in war'.

In 1773 there were 31 local newspapers from New Hampshire to Georgia and being overwhelmingly Whig they were hostile to the colonial government. For the previous ten years they had fostered a growing resentment at the increasing intrusiveness of the government in London. The most patriotic — or virulent in the eyes of the colonial government — were The Boston Gazette and Massachusetts Spy, but they were closely followed by The Pennsylvania Gazette, owned by Benjamin Franklin, The New York Gazette, Weekly Postboy, The Virginia Gazette, and The New Hampshire Gazette. The effect of these papers was so great that when Gage proclaimed martial law in June 1774, he lashed out at the press and the pamphlets for 'the grossest forgeries, calumnies and absurdities that ever insulted human understanding'. The Tories had lost the propaganda war. It is indeed ironic that one of the great and enduring freedoms of Britain — the freedom of the press — became a powerful weapon directed at the very heart of British rule.

In 1763 the spirit of revolution was barely sputtering, but by 1773 it was burning brightly. Just as today the internet carries details of how to make bombs, Nathaniel Ame's Almanack of 1775, supplied practical directions for making gunpowder. The government in London had little idea of how much the revolutionary fervour had built up in the years from 1763–1775.

The British Government did not listen keenly enough to the clear advice from their servants in America: Gage who had demanded more troops, or Sir James Wright's plaintive question from Georgia to Dartmouth, 'No Troops, no Money, no orders or Instructions, and a wild Multitude gathering fast, what can any Man do in such a situation?'

By then America was clearly divided between the loyalists, the Tories, who looked to London and to George III as the guiding authorities for the colonies, and the rebels, the Whigs, who wanted to be more in control of their own affairs, although many of them professed loyalty to the King over the water. The very freedoms they cherished and wanted to entrench in their own country were learnt from English history — they were impressed by the words of Hampden, Pym and Locke. But the redcoats of the army whose protection in the Seven Years War they had needed and welcomed, had become the 'lobster – backs' of an alien force that did not understand their way of life.

The politicians in London, not one of whom had visited America, failed to appreciate that their Empire in the thirteen colonies was fundamentally different and infinitely more advanced than their other possessions in the West Indies and India. There was more than an aura of sophistication; in the towns there were tine houses, paved streets, meeting halls, churches built from classic English designs, shipping, insurance and fire companies, a mass of newspapers, schools, colleges, a university, circulating libraries, representative assemblies, a flourishing ship-building industry, and in the north an extensive iron-forging industry financed by local capital and producing more than in Britain. They also had their own courts, militias and prisons. But there was no large aristocratic class and so their leaders were merchants, lawyers, planters and farmers. Apart from slavery it was a more egalitarian society as Carleton, the Governor General of Canada, hit upon in 1768: 'The British Form of government transplanted into this Continent never will produce the same Fruits as at Home. A popular Assembly which preserves its full Vigor, and in a Country where all Men appear nearly upon a Level, must give a strong Bias to Republican Principles.'

Ten long years of mistakes and misunderstandings had created a spirit of revolution. John Adams reflected in his later life, 'The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.'

Friends and Enemies

'The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, "T'is time to part".'

Tom Paine

THE FRIENDS AND ENEMIES OF AMERICA in Britain from 1763 not only reflected their own personal views but they also mirrored the parties or groups to which they belonged. The Rockingham Whigs, whether in office or opposition, generally favoured America, but Rockingham was no radical — he sensibly repealed the Stamp Act but foolishly passed the Declaratory Act. His disciple, Edmund Burke, was more consistent. In April 1774 in his famous speech on American taxation he was amazed that the politicians for ten years had allowed a situation that, 'So paltry a sum as three pence in the eyes of a financier, so insignificant an article as tea in the eyes of a philosopher, have shaken the pillars of a commercial empire that ordered the whole globe.' In March 1775 he made his equally famous speech on Conciliations — 'I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.' The Chatham Whigs, with the clever young Shelburne, also favoured America and took their lead from their revered but ill leader. The young rising Whig, Charles James Fox, quickly decided to abandon North and take his chance in opposition — 'The noble Lord said that we are in the dilemma of conquering or abandoning America: if we are reduced to that I am for abandoning America.' Britain's most respected and senior general, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, refused to lead the armies in America, and Admiral Lord Augustus Keppel, Britain's most distinguished naval commander, also declined to serve.

They were ranged essentially against the King's ministers and the King himself. Grenville, the Prime Minister from 1763 – 1765, was personally totally convinced that Westminster had the right to levy taxes on America, a view strongly supported by his predecessor, Lord Bute. Grenville's successor, Rockingham, 1765-1766, repealed the Stamp Act but was only in office for less than a year.

His successor, Chatham, 1766–1768, although sympathetic to America did little to further its cause. Chatham's successor, Grafton, 1768–1770, was vaguely sympathetic to America but very weak and it was only after his resignation that he became more committed and supportive. His successor, Lord North, was totally committed to the policy that George III wanted.

The prints in London in the period of 1763 – 1783 were overwhelmingly in favour of America and anti-the British government and reinforced those urging peace. This creates an imbalance in the pictorial and visual history of the Revolutionary War which is not redressed by the handful of prints that were published in America. These were predictably patriotic since the rebels were fighting to throw off colonial rule and emerge as victors — there was no place for scepticism or satire. The loyalists did not think it necessary to commission any prints in favour of their cause for one very good reason: there were no trained engravers or etchers in America apart from Paul Revere, who was a committed patriot and moreover was not a creative satirical artist.

In London the friends of America easily won the arguments in the press and print media. They also had three of the most eloquent politicians — Chatham, Burke and Fox — but what they did not have were the numbers in the House of Commons. North was always able to put together a majority and this was reinforced by his two election victories of 1774 and 1780 — in the 18th century incumbent governments usually won. Until 1782 George III, therefore, could always count on a majority in both the Commons and the Lords — he won there while his armies were losing in America.

George was constant in his unflinching support of his governments. The Royal Proclamation in August 1775 stated bluntly that his American subjects were 'engaged in open and avowed rebellion'. The generals often complained of his ministers' inconsistencies, their ever-changing policies, and no follow-up, but the one rock that never moved was George III. It was not surprising therefore that he drew upon himself the hatred and ignominy of the American patriots. Sam Adams said, 'I have heard that George III is his own minister. Why, then, should we cast the odium upon his minions?' That is why the Declaration of Independence made him the evil centre of British tyranny charging him with eighteen offences including:

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly....

He has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause others to be elected....

He has made judges dependent on his will alone ...

He has kept among us, in times of peace, stranding armies without the consent of our legislatures....

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns....

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny.

---

Excerpted from "George Washington's War"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Kenneth Baker.
Excerpted by permission of Grub Street.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---