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shipbuilders in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut; they had been out of employment during the recent embargo; but they were ready to set to work again. Several boats were built at Rhode Island, and they constituted the beginning of the American Navy, which has always maintained an enviable reputation. Meantime, the mariners of Gloucester, at Cape Ann, distinguished themselves by discomfiting Captain Linzee, of the "Falcon," who had pursued two schooners into their harbor, and there lost them and his own pinnace and boats' crews. The town of Portland was wantonly and barbarously burned by Mowat with a ship of sixteen guns. Several of the colonies had cruisers out on the watch for British supply ships; and Washington urged seizing the powder magazine in the Island of Bermuda; but before his suggestion could be acted on, George Ord appeared with the powder-one hundred barrels-which he had taken by surprise with a sloop fitted out by Pennsylvania. This was a relief; and more was to come from other sources.

But the questions of enlistments and of money pressed; and Franklin came before Congress with a plan for a selfperpetuating confederacy of colonies, somewhat similar to his plan of twenty years before. Each colony was to retain the control of its domestic affairs, while the central authority of the annually-elected Congress was to decide upon wars, foreign treaties, commerce, currency, and taxes for the common treasury. But the delegates assembled in Philadelphia were waiting with still some remains of hope for the king's answer to their petition; and would wish to postpone doing anything more than was absolutely unavoidable till it ar rived. Among these unavoidable things seems to have been the order to issue a third of a million of paper money; and the suggestion to the colonies that they raise quotas for the defense of the country. It is interesting to note that a "pledge of unalterable sympathy" was sent to Ireland. The ports were still closed to trade, in spite of the need

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of arms and supplies; and finally Congress adjourned for a month or more, leaving Washington to make what way he could by his personal influence and genius.

The colonies responded with commendable spirit to the request for men. Besides the riflemen, there were two regiments enrolled in New Jersey, with a levy of ten thousand pounds, and of thirty thousand in bills of credit; Pennsylvania, owing to the opposition between the party of the proprietors and the people, did no more than appoint a committee of safety, with thirty thousand pounds; Maryland obliterated all disabilities arising from religion and politics, elected Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a Catholic, to the committee of correspondence, ordered the raising of forty companies of minute-men, and issued two hundred and fifty thousand pounds in paper. In Virginia, the governor abdicated, the people met in convention, created two regular and sixteen minute-men regiments, and issued paper to the amount of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds; and declared that while they would defend the king in so far as he was constitutional, they would go all lengths to vindicate their rights and privileges. One can never enough admire the almost invincible reluctance with which the Virginians, and many others of the colonists, turned their faces away from the semi-lunatic German who sat on the English throne. There is hardly an Englishman alive to-day in monarchical England, who is half so loyal as the American rebels were at the beginning of the Revolution in 1775.

South Carolina exported rice only in exchange for arms and ammunition, occupied a fort on the coast, captured twenty thousand pounds of gunpowder from British ships, and was abandoned by its royal governor, after he had intrigued to incite the Indians against them. North Carolinians, from the greatest to the least citizens, were ardent for resistance; drove out their governor, declared themselves obedient to the Congress, and resolved on the purchase of

arms, organization of the militia, and the raising of a regular force of a thousand men; and provided, as did many of the colonies, for a popular government to take the place of that which had ceased to have authority.

The Continental Congress reconvened in September, and appointed Franklin and two others a committee to go to Cambridge and concert measures with Washington. It was and had long been clear to Franklin that separation was the only cure for the ills of America; and he and the General, with the New England commissioners, planned a re-enlistment of the army, to number twenty-three thousand men. The friendship and confidence between Washington and Franklin was confirmed by this conference; and the country could not lose courage who had such a soldier to fight and such a statesman to advise for her.

Matters in Boston, during the summer, had been far from agreeable to any of the persons shut in there. Of these, sixty-five hundred were British soldiers-the residue after Lexington and Bunker Hill, sickness, desertions and skirmishes. Most of the troops were collected on Roxbury Neck, leaving only the light horse and some companies of infantry in the town. Faneuil Hall was made into a sort of theater by the British officers; they tried to beguile the tedium of their enforced sojourn by watching mummers speak lines learned by rote, in the hall where living truth had leaped like flames from the lips of patriots. North Church, from whose tower had hung the signal lanterns which told Paul Revere what message he must carry, was torn down by the soldiers, and its fragments used for fuel. In the Old South, where the meeting had been held previous to the throwing of the tea into the harbor, a dragoon regiment was domiciled, and the troopers were drilled in riding evolutions. Liberty Tree was cut down, by the order of Gage, who perhaps hoped as easily to cut down the aspirations for freedom with the inception of so many of which the Tree had been associated. Many of the citizens of

Boston, as we have seen, had left the town; but there remained, of loyalists and others, more than six thousand, none of whom could have been of a contented frame of mind. Business, of course, was at a standstill; a town occupied by soldiery is never an agreeable place for noncombatants; and after Bunker Hill, it became intolerable. Property was liable to confiscation on frivolous grounds, or none at all; drunken soldiers committed robberies in the public streets, while their officers passed indifferent by; loyalists, or tories, were snubbed and despised, and patriots were persecuted. The wounded brought from Bunker Hill were lodged in private houses from which their rightful owners were driven, or allowed to remain only on the footing of servants; food was bad and dear, and existence in general was almost intolerable. Every one was obliged to be indoors by ten o'clock, and the sweltering nights were not relieved by any pleasant dreams of the morrow. This was what had been rich, prosperous and busy Boston, the leading city of America. Those who had left the city, albeit to wander dependent upon the charity of the country folk, had chosen the better part. They could move about freely, without fear of insult or outrage. Some of the exiles, meeting in Concord, held a meeting and elected representatives, chose James Warren of Plymouth speaker and Bowdoin president, designed a seal of the commonwealth of a figure holding a drawn sword, with the motto-"Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietam," raised taxes to the amount of forty thousand pounds, and authorized the issue of one hundred thousand on bills of credit. This was preferable to wandering about deserted streets or sitting in darkened rooms, afraid to betray ownership in one's own soul. The prisoners which the British troops had taken were thrown into the common jail, and the wounded among them were neglected, or worse. In short, the English army in Boston behaved like ill-conditioned savages, wreaking upon the helpless the injuries which they could not, and dared not

attempt to inflict upon their enemies in the open field. was time they were expelled.

On the 23d of August the king issued a proclamation in London, to the effect that a rebellion existed in Amerca, and that its authors there, and its abettors in England, would be brought to condign punishment. Richard Penn had arrived in London ten days before, with the petition from the American Congress; it was only after the proclamation had been issued that he was allowed to hand the petition to Dartmouth, who informed him that the king would not receive it, or consent to recognize any such body as a Continental Congress. The petition really asked nothing but a revocation of the illegal acts of Parliament passed since 1763; but Parliament, which had identified itself with the king, could not recede without resigning; so that, as the Frenchman, Vergennes, perceived, "America or the ministers must succumb." The proclamation reached Congress in November, and convinced most of them that there could be no reconciliation; they prepared to declare independence, and meanwhile allowed the colonies who had not already done so, to institute governments of their own. Pennsylvania, influenced by Dickinson, was afraid to take the bold and righteous step of resistance, and Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey followed her lead; but Jefferson spoke the true sentiment of the country when he said that, while no man loved union with Great Britain more cordially than he, yet, "by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament proposes."

George, having no available troops of his own adequate to the subjection of America, made an urgent and undignified appeal to Catherine II. of Russia to sell him the use of twenty thousand of her soldiers; she refused the request pointblank, adding some moral reflections which George declared to be "not genteel." He could see no impropriety in sending mercenaries to kill his own subjects. He next

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