The Continental Congress had always been anxious to have delegates from the Fourteenth Colony. But as these never came the Congress finally decided to send a special commission to examine the whole civil and military state of Canada and see what could be done. The news of Montgomery's death and defeat was a very unwelcome surprise. But reinforcements were being sent; the Canadians could surely be persuaded; and a Congressional commission must be able to set things right. This commission was a very strong one. Benjamin Franklin was the chairman. Samuel Chase of Maryland and Charles Carroll of Carrollton were the other members. Carroll's brother, the future archbishop of Baltimore, accompanied them as a sort of ecclesiastical diplomatist. Franklin's prestige and the fact that he was to set up a 'free' printing-press in Montreal were to work wonders with the educated classes at once and with the uneducated masses later on. Chase would appeal to all the reasonable 'moderates.' Carroll, a great landlord and the nearest approach yet made to an American millionaire, was expected to charm the Canadian noblesse; while the fact that he and his exceedingly diplomatic brother were devout Roman Catholics was thought to be by itself a powerful argument with the clergy.
When they reached St Johns towards the end of April the commissioners sent on a courier to announce their arrival and prepare for their proper reception in Montreal. But the ferryman at Laprairie positively refused to accept Continental paper money at any price; and it was only when a 'Friend of Liberty' gave him a dollar in silver that he consented to cross the courier over the St Lawrence. The same hitch occurred in Montreal, where the same Friend of Liberty had to pay in silver before the cab-drivers consented to accept a fare either from him or from the commissioners. Even the name of Carroll of Carrollton was conjured with in vain. The French Canadians remembered Bigot's bad French paper. Their worst suspicions were being confirmed about the equally bad American paper. So they demanded nothing but hard cash—argent dur. However, the first great obstacle had been successfully overcome; and so, on the strength of five borrowed silver dollars, the accredited commissioners of the Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies made their state entry into what they still hoped to call the Fourteenth Colony. But silver dollars were scarce; and on the 1st of May the crestfallen commissioners had to send the Congress a financial report which may best be summed up in a pithy phrase which soon became proverbial—'Not worth a Continental.'
On the 10th of May they heard the bad news from Quebec and increased the panic among their Montreal sympathizers by hastily leaving the city lest they should be cut off by a British man-of-war. Franklin foresaw the end and left for Philadelphia accompanied by the Reverend John Carroll, whose twelve days of disheartening experience with the leading French-Canadian clergy had convinced him that they were impervious to any arguments or blandishments emanating from the Continental Congress. It was a sad disillusionment for the commissioners, who had expected to be settling the affairs of a fourteenth colony instead of being obliged to leave the city from which they were to have enlightened the people with a free press. In their first angry ignorance they laid the whole blame on their unfortunate army for its 'disgraceful flight' from Quebec. A week later, when Chase and Charles Carroll ought to have known better, they were still assuring the Congress that this 'shameful retreat' was 'the principal cause of all the disorders' in the army; and even after the whole story ought to have been understood neither they nor the Congress gave their army its proper due. But, as a matter of fact, the American position had become untenable the moment the British fleet began to threaten the American line of communication with Montreal. For the rest, the American volunteers, all things considered, had done very well indeed. Arnold's march was a truly magnificent feat. Morgan's men had fought with great courage at the Sault-au-Matelot. And though Montgomery's assault might well have been better planned and executed, we must remember that the good plan, which had been rejected, was the military one, while the bad plan, which had been adopted, was concocted by mere politicians. Nor were 'all the disorders' so severely condemned by the commissioners due to the army alone. Far from it, indeed. The root of 'all the disorders' lay in the fact that a makeshift government was obliged to use makeshift levies for an invasion which required a regular army supported by a fleet.
On the 19th of May another disaster happened, this time above Montreal. The Congress had not felt strong enough to attack the western posts. So Captain Forster of the 8th Foot, finding that he was free to go elsewhere, had come down from Oswegatchie (the modern Ogdensburg) with a hundred whites and two hundred Indians and made prisoners of four hundred and thirty Americans at the Cedars, about thirty miles up the St Lawrence from Montreal. Forster was a very good officer. Butterfield, the American commander, was a very bad one. And that made all the difference. After two days of feeble and misdirected defence Butterfield surrendered three hundred and fifty men. The other eighty were reinforcements who walked into the trap next day. Forster now had four American prisoners for every white soldier of his own; while Arnold was near by, having come up from Sorel to Lachine with a small but determined force. So Forster, carefully pointing out to his prisoners their danger if the Indians should be reinforced and run wild, offered them their freedom on condition that they should be regarded as being exchanged for an equal number of British prisoners in American hands. This was agreed to and never made a matter of dispute afterwards. But the second article Butterfield accepted was a stipulation that, while the released British were to be free to fight again, the released Americans were not; and it was over this point that a bitter controversy raged. The British authorities maintained that all the terms were binding because they had been accepted by an officer commissioned by the Congress. The Congress maintained that the disputed article was obtained by an unfair threat of an Indian massacre and that it was so one-sided as to be good for nothing but repudiation.
'The Affair at the Cedars' thus became a sorely vexed question. In itself it would have died out among later and more important issues if it had not been used as a torch to fire American public opinion at a time when the Congress was particularly anxious to make the Thirteen Colonies as anti-British as possible. Most of Forster's men were Indians. He had reminded Butterfield how dangerous an increasing number of Indians might become. Butterfield was naturally anxious to prove that he had yielded only to overwhelming odds and horrifying risks. Americans in general were ready to believe anything bad about the Indians and the British. The temptation and the opportunity seemed made for each other. And so a quite imaginary Indian massacre conveniently appeared in the American news of the day and helped to form the kind of public opinion which was ardently desired by the party of revolt.
The British evidence in this and many another embittering dispute about the Indians need not be cited, since the following items of American evidence do ample justice to both sides. In the spring of 1775 the Massachusetts Provincial Congress sent Samuel Kirkland to exhort the Iroquois 'to whet their hatchet and be prepared to defend our liberties and lives'; while Ethan Allen asked the Indians round Vermont to treat him 'like a brother and ambush the regulars.' In 1776 the Continental Congress secretly resolved 'that it is highly expedient to engage the Indians in the service of the United Colonies.' This was before the members knew about the Affair at the Cedars. A few days later Washington was secretly authorized to raise two thousand Indians; while agents were secretly sent 'to engage the Six Nations in our Interest, on the best terms that can be procured.' Within three weeks of this secret arrangement the Declaration of Independence publicly accused the king of trying 'to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages.' Four days after this public accusation the Congress gave orders for raising Indians along 'the Penobscot, the St John, and in Nova Scotia'; and an entry to that effect was made in its Secret Journal. Yet, before the month was out, the same Congress publicly appealed to 'The People of Ireland' in the following words: 'The wild and barbarous savages of the wilderness have been solicited by gifts to take up the hatchet against us, and instigated to deluge our settlements with the blood of defenceless women and children.'
The American defeats at Quebec and at the Cedars completely changed the position of the two remaining commissioners. They had expected to control a victorious advance. They found themselves the highest authority present with a disastrous retreat. Thereupon they made blunder after blunder. Public interest and parliamentary control are the very life of armies and navies in every country which enjoys the blessings of self-government. But civilian interference is death. Yet Chase and Carroll practically abolished rank in the disintegrating army by becoming an open court of appeal to every junior with a grievance or a plan. There never was an occasion on which military rule was more essential in military matters. Yet, though they candidly admitted that they had 'neither abilities nor inclination' to command, these wretched misrulers tried to do their duty both to the Congress and the army by turning the camp into a sort of town meeting where the best orders had no chance whatever against the loudest 'sentiments.' They had themselves found the root of all evil in the retreat from Quebec. Their army, like every impartial critic, found it in 'the Commissioners and the smallpox'—with the commissioners easily first. The smallpox had been bad enough at Quebec. It became far worse at Sorel. There were few doctors, fewer medicines, and not a single hospital. The reinforcements melted away with the army they were meant to strengthen. Famine threatened both, even in May. Finally the commissioners left for home at the end of the month. But even their departure could no longer make the army's burden light enough to bear.
Thomas, the ex-apothecary, who did his best to stem the adverse tide of trouble, caught the smallpox, became blind, and died at the beginning of June. Sullivan, the fourth commander in less than half a year, having determined that one more effort should be made, arrived at Sorel with new battalions after innumerable difficulties by the way. He was led to believe that Carleton's reinforcements had come from Nova Scotia, not from England; and this encouraged him to push on farther. He was naturally of a very sanguine temper; and Thompson, his second-in-command, heartily approved of the dash. The new troops cheered up and thought of taking Quebec itself. But, after getting misled by their guide, floundering about in bottomless bogs, and losing a great deal of very precious time, they found Three Rivers defended by entrenchments, superior numbers, and the vanguard of the British fleet. Nevertheless they attacked bravely on the 8th of June. But, taken in front and flank by well-drilled regulars and well-handled men-of-war, they presently broke and fled. Every avenue of escape was closed as they wandered about the woods and bogs. But Carleton, who came up from Quebec after the battle was all over, purposely opened the way to Sorel. He had done his best to win the hearts of his prisoners at Quebec and had succeeded so well that when they returned to Crown Point they were kept away from the rest of the American army lest their account of his kindness should affect its anti-British zeal. Now that he was in overwhelming force he thought he saw an even better chance of earning gratitude from rebels and winning converts to the loyal side by a still greater act of clemency.
The battle of Three Rivers was the last action fought on Canadian soil. The American army retreated to Sorel and up the Richelieu to St Johns, where it was joined by Arnold, who had just evacuated Montreal. Most of the Friends of Liberty in Canada fled either with or before their beaten forces. So, like the ebbing of a whole river system, the main and tributary streams of fugitives drew south towards Lake Champlain. The neutral French Canadians turned against them at once; though not to the extent of making an actual attack. The habitant cared nothing for the incomprehensible constitutionalities over which different kinds of British foreigners were fighting their exasperating civil war. But he did know what the king's big fleet and army meant. He did begin to feel that his own ways of life were safer with the loyal than with the rebel side. And he quite understood that he had been forced to give a good deal for nothing ever since the American commissioners had authorized their famishing army to commandeer his supplies and pay him with their worthless 'Continentals.'
From St Johns the worn-out Americans crawled homewards in stray, exhausted parties, dropping fast by the way as they went. 'I did not look into a hut or a tent,' wrote a horrified observer, 'in which I did not find a dead or dying man.' Disorganization became so complete that no exact returns were ever made up. But it is known that over ten thousand armed men crossed into Canada from first to last and that not far short of half this total either found their death beyond the line or brought it back with them to Lake Champlain.
It was on what long afterwards became Dominion Day—the 1st of July—that the ruined American forces reassembled at Crown Point, having abandoned all hope of making Canada the Fourteenth Colony. Three days later the disappointed Thirteen issued the Declaration of Independence which virtually proclaimed that Canadians and Americans should thenceforth live a separate life.
Six thousand British troops, commanded by Burgoyne, and four thousand Germans, commanded by Baron Riedesel, had arrived at Quebec before the battle of Three Rivers. Quebec itself had then been left to the care of a German garrison under a German commandant, 'that excellent man, Colonel Baum,' while the great bulk of the army had marched up the St Lawrence, as we have seen already. Such a force as this new one of Carleton's was expected to dismay the rebel colonies. And so, to a great extent, it did. With a much larger force in the colonies themselves the king was confidently expected to master his unruly subjects, no matter how much they proclaimed their independence. The Loyalists were encouraged. The trimmers prepared to join them. Only those steadfast Americans who held their cause dearer than life itself were still determined to venture all. But they formed the one party that really knew its own mind. This gave them a great advantage over the king's party, which, hampered at every turn by the opposition in the mother country, was never quite sure whether it ought to strike hard or gently in America.
On one point, however, everybody was agreed. The command of Lake Champlain was essential to whichever side would hold its own. The American forces at Crown Point might be too weak for the time being. But Arnold knew that even ten thousand British soldiers could not overrun the land without a naval force to help them. So he got together a flotilla which had everything its own way during the time that Carleton was laboriously building a rival flotilla on the Richelieu with a very scanty supply of ship-wrights and materials. Arnold, moreover, could devote his whole attention to the work, makeshift as it had to be; while Carleton was obliged to keep moving about the province in an effort to bring it into some sort of order after the late invasion. Throughout the summer the British army held the line of the Richelieu all the way south as far as Isle-aux-Noix, very near the lake and the line. But Carleton's flotilla could not set sail from St Johns till October 5, by which time the main body of his army was concentrated round Pointe-au-Fer, at the northern end of the lake, ninety miles north of the American camp at Crown Point.
It was a curious situation for a civil and military governor to be hoisting his flag as a naval commander-in-chief, however small the fleet might be. But it is commonly ignored that, down to the present day, the governor-general of Canada is appointed 'Vice-Admiral of the Same' in his commissions from the Crown. Carleton of course carried expert naval officers with him and had enough professional seamen to work the vessels and lay the guns. But, though Captain Pringle manoeuvred the flotilla and Lieutenant Dacre handled the flagship Carleton, the actual command remained in Carleton's own hands. The capital ship (and the only real square-rigged 'ship') of this Lilliputian fleet was Pringle's Inflexible, which had been taken up the Richelieu in sections and hauled past the portages with immense labour before reaching St Johns, whence there is a clear run upstream to Lake Champlain. The Inflexible carried thirty guns, mostly 12-pounders, and was an overmatch for quite the half of Arnold's decidedly weaker flotilla. The Lady Maria was a sort of sister ship to the Carleton. The little armada was completed by a 'gondola' with six 9-pounders, by twenty gunboats and four longboats, each carrying a single piece, and by many small craft used as transports.
On the 11th of October Carleton's whole naval force was sailing south when one of Arnold's vessels was seen making for Valcour Island, a few miles still farther south on the same, or western, side of Lake Champlain. Presently the Yankee ran ashore on the southern end of the island, where she was immediately attacked by some British small craft while the Inflexible sailed on. Then, to the intense disgust of the Inflexible's crew, Arnold's complete flotilla was suddenly discovered drawn up in a masterly position between the mainland and the island. It was too late for the Inflexible to beat back now. But the rest of Carleton's flotilla turned in to the attack. Arnold's flanks rested on the island and the mainland. His rear could be approached only by beating back against a bad wind all the way round the outside of Valcour Island; and, even if this manoeuvre could have been performed, the British attack on his rear from the north could have been made only in a piecemeal way, because the channel was there at its narrowest, with a bad obstruction in the middle. So, for every reason, a frontal attack from the south was the one way of closing with him. The fight was furious while it lasted and seemingly decisive when it ended. Arnold's best vessel, the Royal Savage, which he had taken at St Johns the year before, was driven ashore and captured. The others were so severely mauled that when the victorious British anchored their superior force in line across Arnold's front there seemed to be no chance for him to escape the following day. But that night he performed an even more daring and wonderful feat than Bouchette had performed the year before when paddling Carleton through the American lines among the islands opposite Sorel. Using muffled sweeps, with consummate skill he slipped all his remaining vessels between the mainland and the nearest British gunboat, and was well on his way to Crown Point before his escape had been discovered. Next day Carleton chased south. The day after he destroyed the whole of the enemy's miniature sea-power as a fighting force. But the only three serviceable vessels got away; while Arnold burnt everything else likely to fall into British hands. So Carleton had no more than his own reduced flotilla to depend on when he occupied Crown Point.
A vexed question, destined to form part of a momentous issue, now arose. Should Ticonderoga be attacked at once or not? It commanded the only feasible line of march from Montreal to New York; and no force from Canada could therefore attack the new republic effectively without taking it first. But the season was late. The fort was strong, well gunned, and well manned. Carleton's reconnaissance convinced him that he could have little chance of reducing it quickly, if at all, with the means at hand, especially as the Americans had supplies close by at Lake George, while he was now a hundred miles south of his base. A winter siege was impossible. Sufficient supplies could never be brought through the dense, snow-encumbered bush, all the way from Canada, even if the long and harassing line of communications had not been everywhere open to American attack. Moreover, Carleton's army was in no way prepared for a midwinter campaign, even if it could have been supplied with food and warlike stores. So he very sensibly turned his back on Lake Champlain until the following year.
That was the gayest winter Quebec had seen since Montcalm's first season, twenty years before. Carleton had been knighted for his services and was naturally supposed to be the chosen leader for the next campaign. The ten thousand troops gave confidence to the loyalists and promised success for the coming campaign. The clergy were getting their disillusioned parishioners back to the fold beneath the Union Jack; while Jean Ba'tis'e himself was fain to admit that his own ways of life and the money he got for his goods were very much safer with les Angla's than with the revolutionists, whom he called les Bastonna's because most trade between Quebec and the Thirteen Colonies was carried on by vessels hailing from the port of Boston. The seigneurs were delighted. They still hoped for commissions as regulars, which too few of them ever received; and they were charmed with the little viceregal court over which Lady Maria Carleton, despite her youthful two-and-twenty summers, presided with a dignity inherited from the premier ducal family of England and brought to the acme of conventional perfection by her intimate experience of Versailles. On New Year's Eve Carleton gave a public fete, a state dinner, and a ball to celebrate the anniversary of the British victory over Montgomery and Arnold. The bishop held a special thanksgiving and made all notorious renegades do open penance. Nothing seemed wanting to bring the New Year in under the happiest auspices since British rule began.
But, quite unknown to Carleton, mischief was brewing in the Colonial Office of that unhappy government which did so many stupid things and got the credit for so many more. In 1775 the well-meaning Earl of Dartmouth was superseded by Lord George Germain, who continued the mismanagement of colonial affairs for seven disastrous years. Few characters have abused civil and military positions more than the man who first, as a British general, disgraced the noble name of Sackville on the battlefield of Minden in 1759, and then, as a cabinet minister, disgraced throughout America the plebeian one of Germain, which he took in 1770 with a suitable legacy attached to it. His crime at Minden was set down by the thoughtless public to sheer cowardice. But Sackville was no coward. He had borne himself with conspicuous gallantry at Fontenoy. He was admired, before Minden, by two very brave soldiers, Wolfe and the Duke of Cumberland. And he afterwards fought a famous duel with as much sang-froid as any one would care to see. His real crime at Minden was admirably exposed by the court-martial which found him 'guilty of having disobeyed the orders of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, whom he was by his commission bound to obey as commander-in-chief, according to the rules of war.' This court also found him 'unfit to serve his Majesty in any military capacity whatever'; and George II directed that the following 'remarks' should be added when the sentence was read out on parade to every regiment in the service: 'It is his Majesty's pleasure that the above sentence be given out in public orders, not only in Britain, but in America, and in every quarter of the globe where British troops happen to be, so that all officers, being convinced that neither high birth nor great employments can shelter offences of such a nature, and seeing they are subject to censures worse than death to a man who has any sense of honour, may avoid the fatal consequences arising from disobedience of orders.'
This seemed to mark the end of Sackville's sinister career. But when George II died and George III began to reign, with a very different set of men to help him, the bad general reappeared as an equally bad politician. Haughty, cantankerous, and self-opinionated to the last degree, Germain, who had many perverse abilities fitting him for the meaner side of party politics, was appointed to the post for which he was least qualified just when Canada and the Thirteen Colonies most needed a master mind. Worse still, he cherished a contemptible grudge against Carleton for having refused to turn out a good officer and put in a bad one who happened to be a pampered favourite. At first, however, Carleton was allowed to do his best. But in the summer of 1776 Germain restricted Carleton's command to Canada and put Burgoyne, a junior officer, in command of the army destined to make the counterstroke. The ship bearing this malicious order had to put back; so it was not till the middle of May 1777 that Carleton was disillusioned by its arrival as well as by a second and still more exasperating dispatch accusing him of neglect of duty for not having taken Ticonderoga in November and thus prevented Washington from capturing the Hessians at Trenton. The physical impossibility of a winter siege, the three hundred miles of hostile country between Trenton and Ticonderoga, and the fact that the other leading British general, Howe, had thirty thousand troops in the Colonies, while Carleton had only ten thousand with which to hold Canada that year and act as ordered next year, all went for nothing when Germain found a chance to give a good stab in the back.
On May 20 Carleton wrote a pungent reply, pointing out the utter impossibility of following up his victory on Lake Champlain by carrying out Germain's arm-chair plan of operations in the middle of winter. 'I regard it as a particular blessing that your Lordship's dispatch did not arrive in due time.' As for the disaster at Trenton, he 'begs to inform his Lordship' that if Howe's thirty thousand men had been properly used the Hessians could never have been taken, 'though all the rebels from Ticonderoga had reinforced Mr Washington's army.' Moreover, 'I never could imagine why, if troops so far south [as Howe's] found it necessary to go into winter quarters, your Lordship could possibly expect troops so far north to continue their operations.' A week later Carleton wrote again and sent in his resignation. 'Finding that I can no longer be of use, under your Lordship's administration ... I flatter myself I shall obtain the king's permission to return home this fall. ... I shall embark with great satisfaction, still entertaining the ardent wish that, after my departure, the dignity of the Crown in this unfortunate Province may not appear beneath your Lordship's concern.'
Burgoyne had spent the winter in London and had arrived at Quebec about the same time as Germain's dispatches. He had loyally represented Carleton's plans at headquarters. But he did not know America and he was not great enough to see the weak points in the plan which Germain proposed to carry out with wholly inadequate means.
There was nothing wrong with the actual idea of this plan. Washington, Carleton, and every other leading man on either side saw perfectly well that the British army ought to cut the rebels in two by holding the direct line from Montreal to New York throughout the coming campaign of 1777. Given the irresistible British command of the sea, fifty thousand troops were enough. The general idea was that half of these should hold the four-hundred-mile line of the Richelieu, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson, while the other half seized strategic points elsewhere and still further divided the American forces. But the troops employed were ten thousand short of the proper number. Many of them were foreign mercenaries. And the generals were not the men to smash the enemy at all costs. They were ready to do their duty. But their affinities were rather with the opposition, which was against the war, than with the government, which was for it. Howe was a strong Whig. Burgoyne became a follower of Fox. Clinton had many Whig connections. Cornwallis voted against colonial taxation. To make matters worse, the government itself wavered between out-and-out war and some sort of compromise both with its political opponents at home and its armed opponents in America.
Under these circumstances Carleton was in favour of a modified plan. Ticonderoga had been abandoned by the Americans and occupied by the British as Burgoyne marched south. Carleton's idea was to use it as a base of operations against New England, while Howe's main body struck at the main body of the rebels and broke them up as much as possible. Germain however, was all for the original plan. So Burgoyne set off for the Hudson, expecting to get into touch with Howe at Albany. But Germain, in his haste to leave town for a holiday, forgot to sign Howe's orders at the proper time; and afterwards forgot them altogether. So Howe, pro-American in politics and temporizer in the field, manoeuvred round his own headquarters at New York until October, when he sailed south to Philadelphia. Receiving no orders from Germain, and having no initiative of his own, he had made no attempt to hold the line of the Hudson all the way north to Albany, where he could have met Burgoyne and completed the union of the forces which would have cut the Colonies in two. Meanwhile Burgoyne, ignorant of Germain's neglect and Howe's futilities, was struggling to his fate at Saratoga, north of Albany. He had been receiving constant aid from Carleton's scanty resources, though Carleton knew full well that the sending of any aid beyond the limits of the province exposed him to personal ruin in case of a reverse in Canada. But it was all in vain; and, on the 17th of October, Burgoyne—much more sinned against than sinning—laid down his arms. The British garrison immediately evacuated Ticonderoga and retired to St Johns, thus making Carleton's position fairly safe in Canada. But Germain, only too glad to oust him, had now notified him that Haldimand, the new governor, was on the point of sailing for Quebec. Haldimand, to his great credit, had asked to have his own appointment cancelled when he heard of Germain's shameful attitude towards Carleton, and had only consented to go after being satisfied that Carleton really wished to come home. The exchange, however, was not to take place that year. Contrary winds blew Haldimand back; and so Canada had to remain under the best of all possible governors in spite of Germain.
Germain had provoked Carleton past endurance both by his public blunders and by his private malice. Even in 1776 there was hate on one side, contempt on the other. When Germain had blamed Carleton for not carrying out the idiotic winter siege of Ticonderoga, Carleton, in his official reply, 'could only suppose' that His Lordship had acted 'in other places with such great wisdom that, without our assistance, the rebels must immediately be compelled to lay down their arms and implore the King's mercy.' After that Germain had murder in his heart to the bitter end of Carleton's rule. Carleton had frequently reported the critical state of affairs in Canada. 'There is nothing to fear from the Canadians so long as things are in a state of prosperity; nothing to hope from them when in distress. There are some of them who are guided by sentiments of honour. The multitude is influenced by hope of gain or fear of punishment.' The recent invasion had proved this up to the hilt. Then welcome reaction began. The defeat of the invaders, the arrival of Burgoyne's army, and the efforts of the seigneurs and the clergy had considerably brightened the prospects of the British cause in Canada. The partial mobilization of the militia which followed Burgoyne's surrender was not, indeed, a great success. But it was far better than the fiasco of two years before. There was also a corresponding improvement in civil life. The judges whom Carleton had been obliged to appoint in haste all proved at leisure the wisdom of his choice; and there seemed to be every chance that other nominees would be equally fit for their positions, because the Quebec Act, which annulled every appointment made before it came into force, opened the way for the exclusion of bad officials and the inclusion of the good.
But the chance of perverting this excellent intention was too much for Germain, who succeeded in foisting one worthless nominee after another on the province just as Carleton was doing his best to heal old sores. One of the worst cases was that of Livius, a low-down, money-grubbing German Portuguese, who ousted the future Master of the Rolls; Sir William Grant, a man most admirably fitted to interpret the laws of Canada with knowledge, sympathy, and absolute impartiality. Livius as chief justice was more than Carleton could stand in silence. This mongrel lawyer had picked up all the Yankee vices without acquiring any of the countervailing Yankee virtues. He was 'greedy of power, more greedy of gain, imperious and impetuous in his temper, but learned in the ways and eloquence of the New England provinces, and valuing himself particularly on his knowledge of how to manage governors.' He had been sent by Germain 'to administer justice to the Canadians when he understands neither their laws, manners, customs, nor language.' Other like nominees followed, 'characters regardless of the public tranquility but zealous to pay court to a powerful minister and—provided they can obtain advantages—unconcerned should the means of obtaining them prove ruinous to the King's service.' These pettifoggers so turned and twisted the law about for the sake of screwing out the maximum of fees that Carleton pointedly refused to appoint Livius as a member of the Legislative Council. Livius then laid his case before the Privy Council in England. But this great court of ultimate appeal pronounced such a damning judgment on his gross pretensions that even Germain could not prevent his final dismissal from all employment under the Crown.
Wounded in the house of those who should have been his friends, thwarted in every measure of his self-sacrificing rule, Carleton served on devotedly through six weary months of 1778—the year in which a vindictive government of Bourbon France became the first of the several foreign enemies who made the new American republic an accomplished fact by taking sides in a British civil war. His burden was now far more than any man could bear. Yet he closed his answer to Germain's parting shot with words which are as noble as his deeds:
'I have long looked out for the arrival of a successor. Happy at last to learn his near approach, I resign the important commands with which I have been entrusted into hands less obnoxious to your Lordship. Thus, for the King's service, as willingly I lay them down as, for his service, I took them up.'
Burgoyne's surrender marked the turning of the tide against the British arms. True, the three campaigns of purely civil war, begun in 1775, had reached no decisive result. True also that the Independence declared in 1776 had no apparent chance of becoming an accomplished fact. But 1777 was the fatal year for all that. The long political strife in England, the gross mismanagement of colonial affairs under Germain, and the shameful blunders that made Saratoga possible, all combined to encourage foreign powers to take the field against the king's incompetent and distracted ministry. France, Spain, and Holland joined the Americans in arms; while Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, and all the German seaboard countries formed the Armed Neutrality of the North. This made stupendous odds—no less than ten to one. First of the ten came the political opposition at home, which, in regard to the American rebellion itself, was at least equal to the most powerful enemy abroad. Next came the four enemies in arms: the American rebels, France, Spain, and Holland. Finally came the five armed neutrals, all ready to use their navies on the slightest provocation.
From this it may be seen that not one-half, perhaps not a quarter, of all the various forces that won the Revolutionary war were purely American. Nor were the Americans and their allies together victorious over the mother country, but only over one sorely hampered party in it. Yet, from the nature of the case, the Americans got much more than the lion's share of the spoils, while, even in their own eyes, they seemed to have gained honour and glory in the same proportion. The last real campaign was fought in 1781 and ended with the British surrender at Yorktown. From that time on peace was in the air. The unfortunate ministry, now on the eve of political defeat at home, were sick of civil war and only too anxious for a chance of uniting all parties against the foreign foes. But they had first to settle with the Americans, who had considered themselves an independent sovereign power for the last five years and who were determined to make the most of England's difficulties. No darker New Year's Day had ever dawned on any cabinet than that of 1782 on North's. In spite of his change from repression to conciliation, and in spite of dismissing Germain to the House of Lords with an ill-earned peerage, Lord North found his majority dwindling away. At last, on the 20th of March, he resigned.
Meanwhile every real statesman in either party had felt that the crisis required the master-hand of Carleton. With Germain, the empire-wrecker, gone, Carleton would doubtless have served under any cabinet, for no government could have done without him. But his actual commission came through the Rockingham administration on the 4th of April. After three quiet years of retirement at his country seat in Hampshire he was again called upon to face a situation of extreme difficulty. For once, with a wisdom rare enough in any age and almost unknown in that one, the government gave him a free hand and almost unlimited powers. The only questions over which he had no final power were those of making treaties. He was appointed 'General and Commander-in-chief of all His Majesty's forces within the Colonies lying in the Atlantic Ocean, from Nova Scotia to the Floridas, and inclusive of Newfoundland and Canada should they be attacked.' He was also appointed commissioner for executing the terms of any treaty that might be made; and his instructions contained two passages which bore eloquent witness to the universal confidence reposed in him. 'It is impossible to judge of the precise situation at so great a distance' and 'His Majesty's affairs are so situated that further deliberations give way to instant decision. We are satisfied that whatever inconveniences may arise they will be compensated by the presence of a commander-in-chief of whose discretion, conduct, and ability His Majesty has long entertained the highest opinion.' Thus the great justifier of British rule beyond the seas arrived in New York on the 9th of May 1782 with at least some hope of reconciling enough Americans to turn the scale before it was too late.
For three months the prospect, though worse than he had anticipated, did not seem utterly hopeless. It had been considerably brightened by Rodney's great victory over the French fleet which was on its way to attack Jamaica. But an unfortunate incident happened to be exasperating Loyalists and revolutionists at this very time. Some revolutionists had killed a Loyalist named Philip White, apparently out of pure hate. Some Loyalists, under Captain Lippincott, then seized and hanged Joshua Huddy, a captain in the Congress militia, out of sheer revenge. A paper left pinned on Huddy's breast bore the inscription: 'Up goes Huddy for Philip White.' Washington then demanded that Lippincott should be delivered up; and, on Carleton's refusal, chose a British prisoner by lot instead. The lot fell on a young Lieutenant Asgill of the Guards, whose mother appealed to the king and queen of France and to their powerful minister, Vergennes. The American Congress wanted blood for blood, which would have led to an endless vendetta. But Vergennes pointed out that Asgill, a youth of nineteen, was as much a prisoner of the king of France as of the Continental Congress. At this the Congress gnashed its teeth, but had to give way.
While the Asgill affair was still running its course, and embittering Loyalists and rebels more than ever, Carleton was suddenly informed that the government had decided to grant complete independence. This was more than he could stand; and he at once asked to be recalled. He had been all for honourable reconciliation from the first. He had been particularly kind to his American prisoners in Canada and had purposely refrained from annihilating the American army after the battle of Three Rivers. But he was not prepared for independence. Nor had he been sent out with this ostensible object in view. His official instructions were to inform the Americans that 'the most liberal sentiments had taken root in the nation, and that the narrow policy of monopoly was totally extinguished.' Now he was called upon to surrender without having tried either his arms or his diplomacy. With British sea-power beginning to reassert its age-long superiority over all possible rivals, with practically all constitutional points of dispute conceded to the revolutionists, and with the certain knowledge that by no means the majority of all Americans were absolute anti-British out-and-outers, he thought it no time to dismember the Empire. His Intelligence Department had been busily collecting information which seems surprising enough as we read it over to-day, but which was based on the solid facts of that unhappy time. One member of the Continental Congress was anxious to know what would become of the American army if reconciliation should be effected on the understanding that there would be no more imperial taxation or customs duty—would it become part of the Imperial Army, or what?
But speculation on all such contingencies was suddenly cut short by the complete change of policy at home. The idea was to end the civil war that had divided the Empire and to concentrate on the foreign war that at least united the people of Great Britain. No matter at what cost this policy had now to be carried out; and Carleton was the only man that every one would trust to do it. So, sacrificing his own feelings and convictions, he made the best of an exceedingly bad business. He had to safeguard the prisoners and Loyalists while preparing to evacuate the few remaining footholds of British power in the face of an implacable foe. At the same time he had to watch every other point in North America and keep in touch with his excellent naval colleague, Admiral Digby, lest his own rear might be attacked by the three foreign enemies of England. He was even ordered off to the West Indies in the autumn. But counter-orders fortunately arrived before he could start. Thus, surrounded by enemies in front and rear and on both flanks, he spent the seven months between August and the following March.
At the end of March 1783 news arrived that the preliminary treaty of peace had been signed. The final treaty was not signed till his fifty-ninth birthday, the 3rd of the following September. The signature of the preliminaries simplified the naval and military situation. But it made the situation of the Loyalists worse than ever. Compared with them the prisoners of war had been most highly favoured from the first. And yet the British prisoners had little to thank the Congress for. That they were badly fed and badly housed was not always the fault of the Americans. But that political favourites and underlings were allowed to prey on them was an inexcusable disgrace. When a prisoner complained, he was told it was the fault of the British government which would not pay for his keep! This answer, so contrary to all the accepted usages of war, which reserve such payments till after the conclusion of peace, was no empty gibe; for when, some time before the preliminaries had been signed, the British and American commissioners met to effect an exchange of prisoners, the Americans began by claiming the immediate payment of what the British prisoners had cost them. This of course broke up the meeting at once. In the meantime the German prisoners in British pay were offered their freedom at eighty dollars a head. Then farmers came forward to buy up these prisoners at this price. But the farmers found competitors in the recruiting sergeants, who urged the Germans, with only too much truth, not to become 'the slaves of farmers' but to follow 'the glorious trade of war' against their employers, the British government. To their honour be it said, these Germans kept faith with the British, much to the surprise of the Americans, who, like many modern writers, could not understand that these foreign mercenaries took a professional pride in carrying out a sworn contract, even when it would pay them better to break it. The British prisoners were not put up for sale in the same way. But money sent to them had a habit of disappearing on the road—one item mentioned by Carleton amounted to six thousand pounds.
If such was the happy lot of prisoners during the war, what was the wretched lot of Loyalists after the treaty of peace? The words of one of the many petitions sent in to Carleton will suggest the answer. 'If we have to encounter this inexpressible misfortune we beg consideration for our lives, fortunes, and property, and not by mere terms of treaty.' What this means cannot be appreciated unless we fully realize how strong the spirit of hate and greed had grown, and why it had grown so strong.
The American Revolution had not been provoked by oppression, violence, and massacre. The 'chains and slavery' of revolutionary orators was only a figure of speech. The real causes were constitutional and personal; and the actual crux of the question was one of payment for defence. Of course there were many other causes at work. The social, religious, and political grudges with which so many emigrants had left the mother country had not been forgotten and were now revived. Commercial restrictions, however well they agreed with the spirit of the age, were galling to such keen traders. And the mere difference between colonies and motherland had produced misunderstandings on both sides. But the main provocative cause was Imperial taxation for local defence. The Thirteen Colonies could not have held their own by land or sea, much less could they have conquered their French rivals, without the Imperial forces, which, indeed, had done by far the greater part of the fighting. How was the cost to be shared between the mother country and themselves? The colonies had not been asked to pay more than their share. The point was whether they could be taxed at all by the Imperial government when they had no representation in the Imperial parliament. The government said Yes. The colonies and the opposition at home said No. As the colonies would not pay of their own accord, and as the government did not see why they should be parasites on the armed strength of the mother country, parliament proceeded to tax them. They then refused to pay under compulsion; and a complete deadlock ensued.
The personal factors in this perhaps insoluble problem were still more refractory than the constitutional. All the great questions of peace and war and other foreign relations were settled by the mother country, which was the only sovereign power and which alone possessed the force to make any British rights respected. The Americans supplied subordinate means and so became subordinate men when they and the Imperial forces worked together. This, to use a homely phrase, made their leaders feel out of it. Everything that breeds trouble between militiamen and regulars, colonials and mother-countrymen, fanned the flame of colonial resentment till the leaders were able to set their followers on fire. It was a leaders' rebellion: there was no maddening cruelty or even oppression such as those which have produced so many revolutions elsewhere. It was a leaders' victory: there was no general feeling that death or independence were the only alternatives from the first. But as the fight went on, and Loyalists and revolutionists grew more and more bitter towards one another, the revolutionary followers found the same cause for hating the Loyalists as their leaders had found for hating the government. Many of the Loyalists belonged to the well-educated and well-to-do classes. So the envy and greed of the revolutionary followers were added to the personal and political rage of their leaders.
The British government had done its best for the Loyalists in the treaty of peace and had urged Carleton, who needed no urging in such a cause, to do his best as well. But the treaty was made with the Congress; and the Congress had no authority over the internal affairs of the thirteen new states, each one of which could do as it liked with its own envied and detested Loyalists. The revolutionists wanted some tangible spoils. The safety of peace had made the trimmers equally 'patriotic' and equally clamorous. So the confiscation of Loyalist property soon became the order of the day.
It was not the custom of that age to confiscate private property simply because the owners were on the losing side, still less to confiscate it under local instead of national authority. But need, greed, and resentment were stronger than any scruples. Need was the weakest, resentment the strongest of all the animating motives. The American army was in rags and its pay greatly in arrears while the British forces under Carleton were fed, clothed, and paid in the regular way. But it was the passionate resentment of the revolutionists that perverted this exasperating difference into another 'intolerable wrong.' Washington was above such meaner measures. But when he said the Loyalists were only fit for suicide, and when Adams, another future president, said they ought to be hanged, it is little wonder that lesser men thought the time had come for legal looting. Those Loyalists who best understood the temper of their late fellow-countrymen left at once. They were right. Even to be a woman was no protection against confiscation in the case of Mary Phillips, sister-in-law to Beverley Robinson, a well-known Loyalist who settled in New Brunswick after the Revolution. Her case was not nearly so hard as many another. But her historic love-affair makes it the most romantic. Eight-and-twenty years before this General Braddock had marched to death and defeat beside the Monongahela with two handsome and gallant young aides-de-camp, Washington and Morris. Both fell in love with bewitching Mary Phillips. But, while Washington left her fancy-free, Morris won her heart and hand. Now that the strife was no longer against a foreign foe but between two British parties, the former aides-de-camp found themselves rivals in arms as well as love; for Colonel Morris was Carleton's right-hand man in all that concerned the Loyalists, being the official head of the department of Claims and Succour:
Morris, Morgan, and Carleton were the three busiest men in New York. Forty thick manuscript volumes still show Maurice Morgan's assiduous work as Carleton's confidential secretary. But Morris had the more heart-breaking duty of the three, with no relief, day after sorrow-laden day, from the anguishing appeals of Loyalist widows, orphans, and other ruined refugees. No sooner had the dire news arrived that peace had been made with the Congress, and that each of the thirteen United States was free to show uncovenanted mercies towards its own Loyalists, than the exodus began. Five thousand five hundred and ninety-three Loyalists sailed for Halifax in the first convoy on the 17th of April with a strong recommendation from Carleton to Governor Parr of Nova Scotia. 'Many of these are of the first families and born to the fairest possessions. I therefore beg that you will have them properly considered.' Shipping was scarce; for the hostility of the whole foreign naval world had made enormous demands on the British navy and mercantile marine. So six thousand Loyalists had to march overland to join Carleton's vessels at New York, some of them from as far south as Charlottesville, Virginia. They were carefully shepherded by Colonel Alured Clarke, of whom we shall hear again.
Meanwhile Carleton and Washington had exchanged the usual compliments on the conclusion of peace and had met each other on the 6th of May at Tappan, where they discussed the exchange of prisoners. By the terms of the treaty the British were to evacuate New York, their last foothold in the new republic, with all practicable dispatch; so, as summer changed into autumn, the Congress became more and more impatient to see the last of them. But Carleton would not go without the Loyalists, whose many tributary streams of misery were still flowing into New York. In September, when the treaty of peace was ratified in Europe, the Congress asked Carleton point-blank to name the date of his own departure. But he replied that this was impossible and that the more the Loyalists were persecuted the longer he would be obliged to stay. The correspondence between him and the Congress teems with complaints and explanations. The Americans were very anxious lest the Loyalists should take away any goods and chattels not their own, particularly slaves. Carleton was disposed to consider slaves as human beings, though slavery was still the law in the British oversea dominions, and so the Americans felt uneasy lest he might discriminate between their slaves and other chattels. Reams of the Carleton papers are covered with descriptive lists of claimed and counter-claimed niggers—Julius Caesars, Jupiters, Venuses, Dianas, and so on, who were either 'stout wenches' and 'likely fellows' or 'incurably lazy' and 'old worn-outs.'
Perhaps, when a slave wished to remain British, and his case was nicely balanced between the claimants and the counter-claimants, Carleton was a little inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But with other forms of disputed property he was too severe to please all Loyalists. A typical case of restitution in Canada will show how differently the two governments viewed the rights of private property. Mercier and Halsted, two Quebec rebels, owned a wharf and the frame of a warehouse in 1775. It was Arnold's intercepted letter to Mercier that gave Carleton's lieutenant, Cramahe, the first warning of danger from the south. Halsted was Major Caldwell's miller at the time and took advantage of his position to give his employer's flour to Arnold's army, in which he served as commissary throughout the siege. Just after the peace of 1783 Mercier and Halsted laid claim to their former property, which they had abandoned for eight years and on which the government had meanwhile built a provision store, making use of the original frame. The case was complicated by many details too long for notice here. But the British government finally gave the two rebels the original property, plus thirteen years' rent, less the cost of government works erected in the meantime. All the documents are still in Quebec.
Property was troublesome enough. But people were worse. And Carleton's difficulties increased as the autumn wore on. The first great harrying of the Loyalists drove more than thirty thousand from their homes; and about twenty-five thousand of these embarked at New York. Then there were the remnants of twenty Loyalist corps to pension, settle, or employ. There were also the British prisoners to receive, besides ten thousand German mercenaries. Add to all this the regular garrison and the general oversight of every British interest in North America, from the Floridas to Labrador, remember the implacable enemy in front, and we may faintly imagine what Carleton had to do before he could report that 'His Majesty's troops and such remaining Loyalists as chose to emigrate were successfully withdrawn on the 25th [of November] without the smallest circumstance of irregularity.'
Thus ended one of the greatest acts in the drama of the British Empire, the English-speaking peoples, or the world; and thus, for the second time, Carleton, now in his sixtieth year, apparently ended his own long service in America. He had left Canada, after saving her from obliteration, because, so long as he remained her governor, the war minister at home remained her enemy. He had then returned to serve in New York, and had stayed there to the bitter end, because there was no other man whom the new government would trust to command the rearguard of the Empire in retreat.