The Land We Live In Part 5

The Algonquin Indians, who had regarded the French as allies and protectors, were now left to defend themselves against the English.

Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, conceived the idea of inducing all the tribes to unite in a general attack upon the English settlements as a last desperate resort to stay the advance of the whites. Pontiac is supposed to have led the Ottawas who a.s.sisted the French in defeating Braddock, and he perhaps underrated the power and prowess of his British antagonists. He was an able chieftain, of the same type as King Philip, Tec.u.mseh and Sitting Bull. He saw that the white man and the red man could not possess the land together, and he determined to make a stand in behalf of his race. The struggle lasted for about two years, attended by the usual barbarities of savage warfare, and ended in the death of Pontiac, who, after suing for peace, was murdered by a drunken Indian, bribed by an English trader with a barrel of rum to commit the deed.

Instead of preventing, Pontiac's War only hastened the flight of the Indian and the march of the colonists toward the setting sun.

THIRD PERIOD.

The Revolution.

CHAPTER XV.

Causes of the Revolution--The Act of Navigation--Acts of Trade--Odious Customs Laws--English Jealousy of New England--Effect of Restrictions on Colonial Trade--Du Chatelet Foresees Rebellion and Independence--The Revolution a Struggle for More Than Political Freedom.

It was not for the sake of the colonists that England had a.s.sisted them in driving the French from America, but with the wholly selfish aim of building up the trade and commerce of Great Britain. European nations looked upon their American colonies simply as resources from which the mother country might become enriched, and in this respect the policy of England was not different from that of Spain, described in the beginning of this volume. As early as 1625 an English author (Hagthorne) wrote that even in time of peace it was the purpose and aim of England to undermine and beat the Dutch and Spaniards out of their trades, "which may not improperly be called a war, for the deprivation and cutting off the trades of a kingdom may be to some prince more loss if his revenues depend thereon than the killing of his armies." The wars against Holland, which resulted in the subjection to the British crown of the colonial possessions of that industrious people, and which compelled the fleets of the United Provinces to acknowledge British supremacy on the high seas, were in the line of commercial aggrandizement, and the Navigation Act transferred to England a large share of the Dutch carrying trade, and enriched English s.h.i.+powners with an utterly selfish indifference to the welfare of English colonies.

When the colonists, their western bounds no longer threatened by civilized foes, their plantations flouris.h.i.+ng and their seaport towns wealthy with the profits of a commerce carried on in contempt of imperial restrictions, began to feel and to a.s.sert that they were ent.i.tled to all the rights of freeborn Englishmen, and to the same commercial and industrial independence enjoyed by loyal subjects in England, they were surprised to learn that Parliament and the English people regarded them not as freemen, but as tributaries. The colonists were themselves loyal, even up to the hour when they were compelled by stubborn tyranny to a.s.sert the right of revolution, for, to quote the language of John Adams, "it is true there always existed in the colonies a desire of independence of Parliament in the articles of internal taxation and internal policy, and a very general, if not universal opinion, that they were const.i.tutionally ent.i.tled to it, and as general a determination to maintain and defend it. But there never existed a desire of independence of the Crown, or of general regulations of commerce for the equal and impartial benefit of all parts of the empire." "If any man," said the same great statesman, "wishes to investigate thoroughly the causes, feelings and principles of the Revolution, he must study this Act of Navigation, and the Acts of Trade, as a philosopher, a politician and a philanthropist."

When the Act of Navigation was originally pa.s.sed, in the Cromwell period, it is probable that the colonies were not seriously in the minds of the people and of Parliament. The act was aimed, as we have before stated, at the Dutch, and was effective for the purposes intended; but within the decade that elapsed before its re-enactment under the Restoration, the colonial trade had grown with a vigor that aroused jealousy and uneasiness at home, and the Act of Navigation was soon followed, in 1663, by the first of the Acts of Trade, which provided that no supplies should be imported into any colony, except what had been actually s.h.i.+pped in an English port, and carried directly thence to the importing colony. This cut the colonies off from direct trade with any foreign country, and made England the depot for all necessaries or luxuries which the colonies desired, and which they could not obtain in America. Nine years later, in 1672, followed another act "for the better securing the plantation trade," which recited that the colonists had, contrary to the express letter of the aforesaid laws, brought into diverse parts of Europe great quant.i.ties of their growth, productions and manufactures, sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool and dye woods being particularly enumerated in the list, and that the trade and navigation in those commodities from one plantation to another had been greatly increased, and provided that all colonial commodities should either be s.h.i.+pped to England or Wales before being imported into another colony, or that a customs duty should be paid on such commodities equivalent to the cost of conveying the same to England, and thence to the colony for which they were destined. For instance, if a merchant in Rhode Island desired to sell some product of the colony of Ma.s.sachusetts in New York, and to forward the same by a vessel, either a bond had to be given that the commodity would be transported to England, or a duty had to be paid, in money or in goods sufficiently onerous to protect the English merchant and s.h.i.+powner against serious colonial compet.i.tion in the carrying trade.

The above act was followed up by another providing penalties for attempted violation of the customs laws. In this statute no mention was made of the plantations and its general tenor indicated that it was intended to apply to Great Britain only, providing, as it did, for the searching of houses and dwellings for smuggled goods by virtue of a writ of a.s.sistance under the seal of His Majesty's court of exchequer. Under William the Third, who was as arbitrary a monarch toward the colonies as the second James had been, the statute was made directly applicable to the plantation trade, with the provision that "the like a.s.sistance shall be given to the said officers in the execution of their office, as by the last-mentioned act is provided for the officers in England." It was on the question of whether such a writ could be issued from a colonial court that James Otis made the famous speech in which he arraigned the commercial policy of England, stripped the veil of reform from the bust of the Stadtholder-King, and awakened the colonists to a throbbing sense of English oppression and of American wrongs--the oration which, in the language of John Adams, who heard it, "breathed into this nation the breath of life."

It is needless to follow the numerous Acts of Trade in their order, for they were all in a line with the accepted and established principle of that age in England that the colonies should minister to the commercial aggrandizement of the mother country, instead of being the centres of an independent traffic, that they should be communities for the consumption of British manufactures and the feeding of British trade. New England was especially the object of English jealousy and restriction, and for reasons, as given by Sir Josiah Child, in his "New Discourse on Trade,"

written about the year 1677, that are creditable to the founders of those States, for after speaking of the people of Virginia and the Barbadoes as a loose vagrant sort, "vicious and dest.i.tute of means to live at home, gathered up about the streets of London or other places, and who, had there been no English foreign plantation in the world, must have come to be hanged or starved or died untimely of those miserable diseases that proceed from want and vice, or have sold themselves as soldiers to be knocked on the head, or at best, by begging or stealing two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence, have made their way to Holland to become servants to the Dutch, who refuse none," he goes on to describe "a people whose frugality, industry and temperance and the happiness of whose laws and inst.i.tutions, do promise to themselves long life, with a wonderful increase of people, riches and power." But, after paying this probably reluctant tribute to New England virtue and industry, he frankly avows his full sympathy with the restrictive system, and adds that "there is nothing more prejudicial and in prospect more dangerous to any mother kingdom than the increase of s.h.i.+pping in her colonies, plantations and provinces." It is no wonder that John Adams said that he never read these authors without being set on fire, and that at last the same fire spread to every patriotic breast.

The Acts of Navigation and of Trade were not the dead letters that some superficial writers and readers have seen fit to term them. It is true that obedience was reluctant and slow, and that evasion was extensive, and it is also true, that colonial commerce flourished in spite of the restrictions; but it should be remembered that the prolonged wars in which England was engaged gave lucrative opportunities for privateering, and that even the customs duties, though intended to be virtually prohibitory, were not heavy enough to overcome the advantages which the colonists enjoyed. In Rhode Island the General a.s.sembly a.s.serted and maintained the right to regulate the fees of the customs officers, and, as far as was possible, the collection of the dues. The s.h.i.+pping of the colony rapidly increased, and in 1731 included two vessels from England, as many from Holland and the Mediterranean, and ten or twelve from the West Indies, and ten years later numbered one hundred and twenty vessels engaged in the West Indian, African, European and coasting trade. The period preceding the Revolution witnessed New England's greatest commercial prosperity, and it was in that age that Moses Brown and other enterprising merchants and s.h.i.+powners laid the foundation of fortunes, a liberal share of which has been expended with ill.u.s.trious munificence in monuments of learning, of art and of charity. As for the restrictions upon domestic industry, they were not severely felt among a people devoted, in the country to agriculture, and in the towns to local traffic and s.h.i.+pping, and the American farmer who wore homespun attire, did not realize the harshness or appreciate the purpose of the statute which prohibited the export of wool, or woolen manufactures. As for the Southern planter, the question of fostering domestic manufactures never entered his thoughts. He raised his tobacco and his cotton, exported them to England, and got what goods he needed there just as his descendants, in a later age, procured the manufactured necessities and luxuries of life from the depots of New England trade.[1]

[1] "English Free Trade; Its Foundation, Growth and Decline." By Henry Mann.

But even if the British Parliament had never attempted to raise a revenue by taxation in the American colonies, it is probable that in time the restrictions on commerce would have led to revolution, unless rescinded.

This was the opinion of the shrewd observer Du Chatelet, who, after France had surrendered her American possessions to Great Britain, said that "they (the chambers of commerce) regard everything in colonial commerce which does not turn exclusively to the benefit of the kingdom as contrary to the end for which colonies were established, and as a theft from the state. To practice on these maxims is impossible. The wants of trade are stronger than the laws of trade. The north of America can alone furnish supplies to its south. This is the only point of view under which the cession of Canada can be regarded as a loss for France; but that cession will one day be amply compensated, if it shall cause in the English colonies the rebellion and the independence which become every day more probable and more near."

America, if not contented, was quiet under restrictive laws not stringently enforced, and but for the measures initiated by Grenville and Townshend, and approved by the king, the Parliament and the people of England, there would, if the leading American minds of that day were sincere, have been no insurrection in that era against British authority.

George the Third is called a tyrant on every recurring Fourth of July, but the nation he ruled was as tyrannical as he, and impartial history cannot condemn the monarch without awarding a greater share of odium to his people, who sustained by their p.r.o.nounced opinion and through their chosen representatives, every measure for the destruction of the liberties of these colonies, and who began to listen to the dictates of reason and of humanity only when America had become the prison of thousands of England's soldiers, and thousands of others, hired Hessian and kidnapped Briton alike, had been welcomed by American freemen to graves in American soil. The measures which led to war, and the war itself, were inspired and incited by the trading cla.s.ses, as well as the aristocracy of England, who expected, in the destruction of a powerful commercial and menacing industrial rival, an ample return for the blood and treasure expended in the strife. The American people recognized that the struggle was for commercial and industrial as well as for political independence, and the stand in behalf of American industry was taken long before the scattered colonies met an empire in the field of arms.

CHAPTER XVI.

Writs of a.s.sistance Issued--Excitement in Boston--The Stamp Act--Protests Against Taxation Without Representation--Ma.s.sachusetts Appoints a Committee of Correspondence--Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry--Henry's Celebrated Resolutions--His Warning to King George--Growing Agitation in the Colonies--The Stamp Act Repealed--Parliament Levies Duties on Tea and Other Imports to America--Lord North's Choice of Infamy--Measures Of Resistance in America--The Ma.s.sachusetts Circular Letter--British Troops in Boston--The Boston Ma.s.sacre--Burning of the "Gaspee"--North Carolina "Regulators"--The Boston Tea Party--The Boston Port Bill--The First Continental Congress--A Declaration of Rights--"Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!"

Even before peace had been made with France the king's officers in America began to enforce the revenue laws with a rigor to which the colonists had been unaccustomed. Charles Paxton, commissioner of customs in Boston, applied to the Superior Court for authority to use writs of a.s.sistance in searching for smuggled goods. These writs were warrants for the officers to search when and where they pleased and to call upon others to a.s.sist them, instead of procuring a special search-warrant for some designated place. Thomas Hutchinson, chief justice, and afterward royalist governor and refugee, favored the application, which was earnestly opposed by the merchants and the people generally.[1] "To my dying day," exclaimed James Otis, in pleading against the measure, "I will oppose with all the power and faculties G.o.d has given me, all such instruments of slavery on one hand and of villainy on the other."

Parliament had authorized the issue of the writs, however, and the custom house officers therefore had the law on their side. Writs were granted, but their enforcement was attended with so many difficulties that the customs authorities virtually gave up this attempt to encroach upon the rights of the people. The next step in provoking the colonists to revolution was the Stamp Act. The object of this enactment was to raise money for the support of British troops and the payment of salaries to certain public officers in the colonies who had depended upon the colonial treasuries for their compensation. In this there was a threefold invasion of colonial rights. Taxation without representation was contrary to a principle recognized for centuries in England, vindicated in the revolution which cost Charles I his head, and upheld in America from the very beginning of the settlements here. Again, while British troops had been welcome as allies in battling against the French and the Indians, they were not desired as garrisons to overawe the free people of the colonies, and finally the colonial officers whom it was proposed to pay from the royal treasury would become the masters instead of servants of the people--or they would be servants only of the king. The purpose of the Stamp Act obviously was to make America the va.s.sal of Great Britain.

The act required that legal doc.u.ments and commercial instruments should be written, and that newspapers should be printed on stamped paper.

[1] John Adams, in his letter to the President of Congress, July 17, 1780, attributes the outbreak of the Revolution to Hutchinson's course in this and other matters. "He was perhaps the only man in the world," wrote Adams, "who could have brought on the controversy between Great Britain and America in the manner and at the time it was done, and involved the two countries in an enmity which must end in their everlasting separation."

The people everywhere protested against the tyrannical action of Parliament. Samuel Adams drew up the instructions to the newly elected representatives of Boston to use all efforts against the plan of parliamentary taxation. It was resolved "that the imposition of duties and taxes by the Parliament of Great Britain upon a people not represented in the House of Commons is irreconcilable with their rights."

A committee of correspondence was appointed in Ma.s.sachusetts to communicate with other colonial a.s.semblies, and the idea of union for the common defence began to take firm hold on the public mind. Benjamin Franklin, in the Congress held at Albany in 1754 to insure the aid of the Six Nations in the war then breaking out with France, had proposed a plan of union for the colonies, with a grand council having extensive powers and a president to be appointed by the crown. The plan was not adopted.

Adams had written about the same time that "the only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us." Everybody now began to perceive the need of union, which the great intellects of Franklin and Adams had discerned long before.

No influence was so powerful in leading the South to stand side by side with the Northern colonies as that of Patrick Henry, the great orator of Virginia. In the House of Burgesses, in 1765, Mr. Henry introduced his celebrated resolutions against the Stamp Act, as follows:

"Resolved, That the first adventurers and settlers of this his majesty's colony and dominion, brought with them, and transmitted to their posterity, and all other his majesty's subjects, since inhabiting in this, his majesty's said colony, all the privileges, franchises and immunities, that have at any time been held, enjoyed and possessed by the people of Great Britain.

"Resolved, That by two royal charters, granted by King James the First, the colonists, aforesaid, are declared ent.i.tled to all the privileges, liberties and immunities of denizens and natural born subjects, to all intents and purposes, as if they had been abiding and born within the realm of England.

"Resolved, That the taxation of the people by themselves, or by persons chosen by themselves to represent them, who can only know what taxes the people are able to bear, and the easiest mode of raising them, and are equally affected by such taxes themselves, is the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of British freedom, and without which the ancient const.i.tution cannot subsist.

"Resolved, That his majesty's liege people of this most ancient colony have uninterruptedly enjoyed the right of being thus governed by their own a.s.sembly in the article of their taxes and internal police, and that the same hath never been forfeited, or any other way given up, but hath been constantly recognized by the king and people of Great Britain.

"Resolved, therefore, That the General a.s.sembly of this colony have the sole right and power to lay taxes and impositions upon the inhabitants of this colony; and that every attempt to vest such power in any person or persons whatsoever, other than the General a.s.sembly aforesaid, has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom."

On the back of the paper containing those resolutions, and found among Henry's papers after his death, was the following endors.e.m.e.nt in the handwriting of Mr. Henry himself: "The within resolutions pa.s.sed the House of Burgesses in May, 1765. They formed the first opposition to the Stamp Act, and the scheme of taxing America by the British Parliament.

All the colonies, either through fear or want of opportunity to form an opposition, or from influence of some kind or other, had remained silent.

I had been for the first time elected a burgess, a few days before; was young, inexperienced, unacquainted with the forms of the House, and the members that composed it. Finding the men of weight averse to opposition, and the commencement of the tax at hand, and that no person was likely to step forth, I determined to venture, and alone, unadvised and una.s.sisted, on a blank leaf of an old law book wrote the within. Upon offering them to the House, violent debates ensued. Many threats were uttered, and much abuse cast upon me by the party for submission. After a long and warm contest, the resolutions pa.s.sed by a very small majority, perhaps of one or two only. The alarm spread throughout America with astonis.h.i.+ng quickness, and the ministerial party were overwhelmed. The great point of resistance to British taxation was universally established in the colonies. This brought on the war, which finally separated the two countries, and gave independence to ours. Whether this will prove a blessing or a curse will depend upon the use our people make of the blessings which a gracious G.o.d hath bestowed on us. If they are wise, they will be great and happy. If they are of a contrary character, they will be miserable--Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation.

"Reader, whoever thou art, remember this; and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself, and encourage it in others.--P. HENRY."

Every American realized the truth expressed in Mr. Henry's resolutions; but no man beside himself dared to utter it. All wished for independence; and all hitherto trembled at the thought of a.s.serting it. Randolph, Bland, Pendleton and Wythe, with "all the old members whose influence in the House had, till then, been unbroken," opposed the resolutions, and had not Henry's unrivalled eloquence supported them, they would have been strangled in their birth. "The last and strongest resolution was carried by a single vote;" and Peyton Randolph said, immediately after, "I would have given 500 guineas for a single vote!" From this we may easily imagine how spirited was the opposition, and how energetic the eloquence exerted against Henry. It was in the midst of this magnificent debate, while he was descanting on the tyranny of the obnoxious act, that he exclaimed in a voice of thunder, and with the look of a G.o.d, "Caesar had his Brutus--Charles the First his Cromwell--and George the Third--('Treason,'

cried the Speaker--'treason, treason,' echoed from every part of the House--it was one of those trying moments which is decisive of character--Henry faltered not for an instant; but rising to a loftier att.i.tude, and fixing on the Speaker an eye of the most determined fire, he finished his sentence with the firmest emphasis) _may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it_."[2]

[2] Wirts' "Life of Patrick Henry," pages 64, 65.

On the following day, when Henry was absent, the more timid a.s.serted themselves and the most important of the resolutions was reconsidered and expunged.

A congress held at New York declared against, the Stamp Act, and sent a protest to Parliament. Americans would not buy or use the stamps, and those who undertook agencies for their sale were treated as public enemies. Boxes of stamped paper were burned on arrival in port; the newspapers ignored the act, and legal doc.u.ments were, by general consent, treated as valid without the stamp. In the following year Parliament, after a prolonged debate, in which William Pitt earnestly supported the American cause, repealed the act. The news of the repeal was received with great rejoicing in America, and the colonists hoped that there would be no more attempts to invade their rights as English subjects.

King George III., however, was bent upon reducing the colonists to abject submission to his will, and the fact that William Pitt, whom the king detested, had championed the Americans, made the monarch all the more obstinate in his purpose to humiliate them. In 1767 Charles Townshend, chancellor of the exchequer, carried through Parliament a bill putting a duty upon tea, gla.s.s, paper and other articles entering American ports.

In connection with this measure the scheme of the British crown to reduce the colonies to a va.s.sal condition was fully disclosed. Not only were troops to be supported out of the revenue thus raised, but the salaries of governors, judges and crown attorneys were to be paid from it, and any surplus remaining could be used by the king to pension Americans who had gained the royal grace by their subserviency. Townshend suddenly died after these measures had been adopted, and was succeeded by Lord North, who soon afterward became prime minister. North was not personally in favor of dealing harshly with the colonies, but he yielded to the royal will as the price of remaining in office, and shares in history the infamy of his master's course.

The Americans began to concert measures of resistance. They refused to use the dutiable articles, and made it unprofitable to import them. The Ma.s.sachusetts legislature was dissolved by order of the king, because it had sent a circular-letter to other colonies inviting common action against the aggressions of Parliament. Other colonial a.s.semblies were dissolved by the king's governors because they answered the letter favorably. The people's representatives continued to attend to the people's interests in informal conventions, and had the more time to give to the overshadowing issue of colonial rights, because royal displeasure had relieved them from the ordinary business of law making. Boston and Richmond worked in harmony in the one great cause, and North and South forgot social and religious differences in common effort for the common weal.