demonstration when the surrender took place. Patient, reserved, and admirably poised through all the taxing years of the war, the Great Virginian was doubly so in this his hour of victory. "O God," cried the ruined Lord North at the news of the surrender, "it is all over now"; for it was a foregone conclusion that the Whig party in England would now triumph and turn out the ministry which had King George yields handled the whole American matter with so little wisdom and so little judgment. Moreover, it was evident that, once in power, the Whigs would grant the successful colonists THE SIEGE OF YORKTOWN lenient terms in the Treaty of Paris which should make the United States an independent nation. These expectations were fully justified and peace was concluded in a prelimi nary form No- Preliminary peace 1782. It set the boundaries of the new nation (map following p. 298) along the Great Lakes. It made the Mississippi River the western boundary line, not only including Virginia's western county of Illinois but the far Northwest above Illinois as well. In the South, Spain was given Florida, the line standing on the 31st parallel. It was agreed that the private debts owed by Americans to British merchants should be honored and paid and that Loyalists who had not taken up arms for the King should be treated impartially. It had been a peculiar war. The immense extent of territory over which it had been fought, and the weakness of British generalship, made the winning of it by England impossible; for had it been lost at one point on the seaboard it might have been won at another; and if lost entirely throughout the whole seaboard there was room for it to be won again in the home of the Gods of the Mountains back of that giant frontier. Well does Professor Bassett hit the nail on the head by saying: "It was, in fact, long marches rather than men and muskets that put an end to the British power in America." The war on the sea In good part, however, the war was won on the sea- -a phase of the struggle which must not be overlooked, for it brought some curious international complications of lasting influence in our history. England was, then, a law to herself on the ocean. She forcibly reclaimed impressed English sailors from ships of other navies. She also called goods "contraband" (goods which cannot legally be sent into a belligerent country) or not, according to the whim of the moment without regard to the opinions of others. The colonial navy, which never totalled fifty small ships with about 800 small guns in all, was no match for England's fleets. But the hundreds of fleet cruisers, fitted out for privateering, proved veritable dirk-knives to British merchantmen and caused a loss in the very first year of the war more than 6,206 times greater than the annual profit from revenues England received from the colonies before the war.1 THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE While New England played the important part in this phase of the war (to the great profit of her privateers) every colony had a part in it. With the signing of the treaty of alliance with France, American skippers gained a legal right to ply their That profit in 1770 was £295; the loss at sea the first year of the war was £1,800,000-not counting increased freight and insurance rates. warfare from the French coast as they had been doing earlier— with the secret aid of French harbor-masters. John Paul In 1778 John Paul Jones, America's chief hero in the war with England on the seas, received four ships from France. With this fleet he harried the coasts of England. Near Hull, on September 23, 1779, Jones, in his flag- Jones ship, the Bon Homme Richard, sighted a fleet of British merchantmen being convoyed by the Serapis, a more powerful fighter than his own ship. The odds against him only redoubled his energy. At the outset of the battle two of his guns burst. He succeeded, however, in lashing the two ships together, and, in a hand-to-hand conflict, the Britishers were compelled to yield. The exploit gave to the American navy an heroic tradition for bravery and shocked England's confidence to its foundation stones. League of England retaliated on France for her American alliance by seizing French cargoes; whereupon France appealed to neutral Russia, proposing an "armed neutrality league" which was soon formed. Eventually it was agreed to by ten nations jealous of England, in- trality cluding the United States. The immediate result was that four powers were arrayed against England: France, Spain, and Holland, in addition to the colonies. This explains England's lack of interest in the war against the colonies in 1779 and, in large part, the political revolution which brought the Whigs into power in England, and the quick abandonment of the war and recognition of the new Republic. But if the war was lost to England because of long marches, as Professor Bassett has said, it was won for America by the man who, more than all others, made those marches England as costly and as exhausting as possible by The American victory a the patience, firmness, and never-failing courage gain for of Washington, behind whom always stoodeven if it tottered now and then-the faith of a God-fearing people in the English principles which the war reestablished. England was, therefore, stronger, not weaker, for its loss. The most cherished traditions of the English were at stake at Saratoga, King's Mountain, Bunker Hill, and at far Vincennes. Splendidly, indeed, has one of Indiana's poets, Maurice Thompson, put this matter: The whelp that nipped its mother's dug in turning from her breast, World-conquering mother, hard we bit in parting from thy breast, READING LIST Wrong, Chaps. 9-11; Skinner, Chaps. 8-11; Van Tyne, Chaps. 15-18; Fiske, II, Chaps. 12 and 15; Channing, III, Chaps. 11 and 12; R. D. Paine, The Old Merchant Marine, Chaps. 2 and 3; Fox, Map Studies, No. 12. I. THE TREATY OF PARIS: in addition to above see: J. B. Moore, American Diplomacy, 29-31, 88-90; J. W. Foster, A Century of American Diplomacy, Chap. 2; C. R. Fish, American Diplomacy, Chap. 5. QUERY AND DISCUSSION Explain the larger number of Loyalists in the South. What racial and religious differences determined the "civil war" character of the war in that section? This war has been called "conservative" in character: what is meant? Were our forefathers fighting for new principles? A high English official has said that while England "lost [the American] colonies from want of intelligence and sympathy she learned a lesson in the art of keeping the rest" (of her colonies). What would have been the effect on the "liberties of Englishman in England" if she had won? In what colonies did England practice the lesson she learned most successfully? Did Ireland profit by it? Quebec? (Look up the Quebec Act of 1791 and compare it with that of 1774.) Do wars ever "pay" unless they bring something that money can not buy? May the abolition (if it is permanent) of monarchy from Germany and Russia have "paid" the peoples of these lands for all the Great War cost? What trait in Washington and Grant (p. 367) in the hour of greatest success commends their characters to posterity? Can we acclaim it as a distinctly American trait? CHAPTER VI THE FIRST CRITICAL YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC It was one thing to outline a noble theory of government as Jefferson did in the Declaration of Independence, but a very different thing to bring it into existence. In the present chapter we observe how the poor, outworn machinery (Articles of Confederation) which carried the colonies through the war was put aside and how a genuine government with real powers was created and set to work. Few sterner tasks were ever given to legislators, but the best testimony to their success is the fact that, despite all the changes of nearly a century and a half, we are still living under the government which they created. When we consider how marvelously the nation has expanded, how greatly its population has grown and how complex it has become, we appreciate the truth of Professor Channing's words when he said that this Constitution now formed was the most marvelous written political instrument that has ever been made." 66 But it is one thing to write a document and another thing to have a common understanding of what its words really mean. Almost at the outset, as the first President, Washington, set the wheels of government going, there appeared to be two ways by which the Constitution might be interpreted; this gave rise to our first political parties, Federalists and Republicans, one advocating a strong central government and the other very jealous lest the central government should encroach upon the rights of the states and individual citizens. It was difficult enough to start the new government with all varied problems of finance, public lands, taxation, and international relations to meet; the rise of this bitter political rivalry added greatly to the trials of the brilliant group of men who were, fortunately, placed in positions of trust and responsibility in this doubly critical period. |