COLONEL MIFFLEN'S INTERVIEW WITH THE CAUGINAWAGA INDIANSCOLONEL MIFFLEN'S INTERVIEW WITH THE CAUGINAWAGA INDIANS.At Watertown during the seige of Boston, the Revolutionists endeavored to obtain their assistance.
On the 21st of June, two of the Indians killed four of the regulars with their bows and arrows, and plundered them. Frothingham saysthe British complained, and with reason, of their mode of warfare.
Lieut. Carter, writes July 2, 1775: "Never had the British army so ungenerous an enemy to oppose. They send their riflemen, five or six at a time, who conceal themselves behind trees, etc., till an opportunity presents itself of taking a shot at our advanced sentries, which done, they immediately retreat."[76]
During the siege of Boston, John Adams visited Washington's camp at Watertown, and wrote the following letter to his wife, which goes to prove the efforts made by the Americans to enlist the Canadian Indians in their cause, and which they afterwards complained so bitterly of the British for doing:
"Watertown, 24 January, 1776.
"I dined at Colonel Mifflin's with the general and lady, and a vast collection of other company, among whom were six or seven sachems and warriors of the French Caughnawaga Indians, with several of their wives and children. A savage feast they made of it, yet were very polite in the Indian style. One of the sachems is an Englishman, a native of this colony, whose name was Williams, captivated in infancy, with his mother, and adopted by some kind squaw."[77]
Many attempts were made by the Americans to use the Indians. Montgomery made use of them in his Canadian expedition.
In April, 1776, Washington wrote to Congress, urging their employment in the army, and reported on July 13th that, without special authority, he had directed General Schuyler to engage the Six Nations on the best terms he and his colleagues could procure, and again submitting the propriety of engaging the Eastern Indians. John Adams thought "we need not be so delicate as to refuse the assistance of Indians, provided we cannot keep them neutral." A treaty was exchanged with the Eastern Indians on July 17, 1776, whereby they agreed to furnish six hundred for a regiment, which was to be officered by the whites. As a result of this, the Massachusetts Council subsequently reported that seven Penobscot Indians—all that could be procured—were enlisted in October for one year.[78]It is interesting to remember, in this connection, that the courteous and chivalrous Lafayette raised a troop of Indians to fight the British and the Tories, though his reputation has been saved by the utter and almost ludicrous failure of his attempt.[79]
When all this had been done, it needed the forgetfulness and the blind hypocrisy of passion to denounce the king to the world for having "endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savage." Yet Americans have never had the self-respect to erase this charge from a document generally printed in the fore-front of theConstitution and Laws, and with which every schoolboy is sedulously made familiar.
The Revolutionists failed to enlist the Indians in their cause, for the Indian and the Colonist were bitter and irreconcilable foes. The Indian had long scores to pay, not upon the English nation or the English army, but upon the American settler who had stolen his lands, shot his sons, and debauched his daughters. It is well here to remember the speech of Logan, the Cayuga chief, on the occasion of the signing of the treaty of peace in 1764, at the close of the Pontiac Conspiracy. Logan said: "I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not. Such was my love of the white man that my countrymen in passing my cabin said: 'Logan is the friend of the white man.' I have even thought to have lived with you but for the injuries you did me last spring, when in cold blood and unprovoked, you murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called for revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance." Logan's family, being on a visit to a family of the name of Greathouse, was murdered by them and their associates under circumstances of great brutality and cowardice. It is known that in revenge, Logan took over 30 scalps with his own hand. And others than Indians had old scores to wipe out. Many loyalists who desired to be left alone in peace had been tarred and feathered by their former friends and fellow-townsmen; were driven from their homes and hunted like wild beasts; imprisoned, maimed, and compelled to suffer every kind of indignity. In many cases fathers, brothers and sons were hanged, because they insisted on remaining loyal to their country. Therefore it is not to be wondered at that many of these loyalists sought a terrible revenge against those who had maltreated them. If the loyalists of New York, Georgia and the Carolinas resolved to join the Indians and wreak vengeance on their fellow countrymen at Wyoming and Cherry Valley, and to take part in the raids of Tyron and Arnold, there was a rude cause for their retaliating. Their actions have been held up to the execration of posterity as being exceptionally barbarous, and as far surpassing in cruelty the provocative actions of the revolutionists, Sullivan's campaign through the Indian country being conveniently forgotten. There was not much to choose between a cowboy and a skinner, and very little difference between Major Ferguson's command and that of Marion and Sumpter. There were no more orderly or better behaved troops in either army than Simcoe's Queen's Rangers. There can be no doubt that the action of the loyalists have been grossly exaggerated, or at least dwelt upon as dreadful scenes of depravity, to form a background for the heroism and fortitude of the "patriotic" party whose misdeeds are passed lightly over. The methods of the growth of popular mythology have been the same in America as in Greece or Rome. Thegods of one party have become the devils of the other. The haze of distance has thrown a halo around the American leaders—softening outlines, obscuring faults, while those of the British and the loyalists have grown with the advanced years.[80]
CARTOON ILLUSTRATING FRANKLIN'S DIABOLICAL SCALP STORYCARTOON ILLUSTRATING FRANKLIN'S DIABOLICAL SCALP STORY.From an old print in the possession of the Bostonian Society.
The following brief entry in a diary, will show that among the American forces savage customs found place: "On Monday, the 30th, sent out a party for some dead Indians. Toward morning found them, and skinned two of them from their hips down, for boot legs; one pair for the major, the other for myself."[81]
It has been the policy of American historians and their echoes in England to bring disrepute upon the Indians and the British government who employed them, and not only to magnify actual occurrences, but sometimes, when facts were wanting, to draw upon imagination for such deeds of ferocity and bloodshed as might serve to keep alive the strongest feelings of indignation against the mother country, and thus influence men to take the field for revenge who had not already been driven thither by the impulse of their sense of patriotism. Dr. Franklin himself did not think it unworthy of his antecedents and position to employ these methods to bring disrepute on the British. The "deliberate fiction for political purposes," by Franklin, were written as facts. Never before was there such diabolical fiction written as his well known scalp story, long believed and recently revived in several books purporting to be "authentic history." The details were so minute and varied as to create a belief that they were entirely true. For a century supposed to be authentic, it has since been ascertained to be a publication from the pen of Dr. Franklin for political purposes. It describes minutely the capture from the Seneca Indians of eight bales of scalps, which were being sent the governor of Canada, to be forwarded by him as a gift to the "Great King." The description of the contents of each bale was given with such an air of plausibility as to preclude a suspicion that it was fictitious. The following are a few brief abstracts from this story: "No. 1 contains forty-three scalps of Congress soldiers, also sixty-two farmers, killed in their houses in the night time. No. 2 contains ninety-eight farmers killed in their houses in the day time. No. 3 contains ninety-seven farmers killed in the fields in the day time. No. 4 contains 102 farmers, mixed, 18 burnt alive, after being scalped; sixty-seven being greyheads, and one clergyman. No. 5 containing eighty-eight scalps of woman's hair, long-braided in Indian fashion. No. 6 containing 193 boys' scalps of various ages. No. 7, 211 girls' scalps, big and little. No. 8, this package is a mixture of all the varieties above mentioned, to the number of 122, with a box of birch bark, containing twenty-nine infants' scalps of various sizes."[82]
With the bales of scalps was a speech addressed to the "Great King."
One of the most cruel and bloodthirsty acts of the Americans wasthe massacre of the Moravian Indians. "From love of peace they had advised those of their own color who were bent on war to desist from it. They were also led from humanity, to inform the white people of their danger, when they knew their settlements were about to be invaded. One hundred and sixty Americans crossed the Ohio and put to death these harmless, inoffensive people, though they made no resistance. In conformity with their religious principles these Moravians submitted to their hard fate without attempting to destroy their murderers. Upward of ninety of these pacific people were killed by men who, while they called themselves Christians, were more deserving of the names of savages than were their unresisting victims."[83]
The Huguenots and the proscribed of the French Revolution found sanctuary as welcome guests in England and the English colonies.
The Moors were well treated when banished from Spain; the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was civil death to all Huguenots; the Americans made the treaty of peace of 1783 worse than civil death to all Loyalists.
The Americans, at the inception and birth of their republic, violated every precept of Christianity and of a boasted civilization, even to confiscating the estates of helpless women. For all time it is to be a part of American history that the last decade of the eighteenth century saw the most cruel and vindictive acts of spoliation recorded in modern history.
At the treaty of peace, 1783, the banishment and extermination of the Loyalists was a foregone conclusion. The bitterest words ever uttered by Washington were in reference to them: "He could see nothing better for them than to recommend suicide." Neither Congress nor state governments made any recommendation that humane treatment should be meted out to these Loyalists. John Adams had written from Amsterdam that he would "have hanged his own brother had he taken part against him."[84]
At the close of the war the mob were allowed to commit any outrage or atrocity, while the authorities in each state remained apparently indifferent. An example of Loyalist ill-treatment is to be found in a letter written October 22, 1783, to a Boston friend, and preserved in New York City manual, 1870:—
"The British are leaving New York every day, and last week there came one of the d——d refugees from New York to a place called Wall Kill, in order to make a tarry with his parents, where he was taken into custody immediately. His head and eyebrows were shaved, tarred and feathered, a hog-yoke put on his neck, and a cowbell thereon; upon his head a very high hat and feathers were set, well plumed with tar, and a sheet of paper in front with a man drawn with two faces, representing the traitor Arnold and the devil."
Some American writers have been extremely severe upon Americans who served in the royal armies. Such condemnation is certainly illogical and unjust. They must have reasoned they were fighting to save theircountry from mob rule, from the domination of demagogues and traitors, and to preserve to it what, until then, all had agreed to be the greatest of blessings, the connection with Great Britain, the privilege of being Englishmen, heirs of all the free institutions which were embodied in a "great and glorious constitution." If the Loyalists reasoned in this manner, we cannot blame them, unless we are ready to maintain the proposition that the cause of every revolution is necessarily so sacred that those who do not sympathize with it should abstain from opposing it.
Very early in the Revolution the disunionists tried to drive the Loyalists into the rebel militia or into the Continental army by fines, and by obliging them to hire substitutes. The families of men who had fled from the country to escape implication in the impending war were obliged to hire substitutes, and they were fined for the misdeeds of the mercenary whom they had engaged. Fines were even imposed upon neutral and unoffending persons for not preventing their families from entering the British service. If the fines were refused, the property was recklessly sold to the amount of the fine and costs of action. Loyalists convicted of entering the enemy's lines could be fined as high as 2000 pounds, and even the unsuccessful attempt to enter might be punished by a fine of 1000 pounds.[85]If the property of the offender failed to answer for his offence, he became subject to corporal punishment, whipping, branding, cropping of ears, and exposure in the pillory being resorted to in some of the states.
The Disunionists had early a covetous eye upon the property of the Loyalists. The legislative bodies hastened to pass such laws as would prevent those suspected of Loyalism from transferring their property, real or personal, by real or pretended sale. Friends who tried to guard the property of refugees nailed up the doors that led to the room containing valuable furniture, but were obliged by bullying committeemen to remove their barricades and give up their treasures.
The members of one wealthy refugee's family were reduced in their housekeeping to broken chairs and teacups, and to dipping the water out of an iron skillet into a pot, which they did as cheerfully as if they were using a silver urn. The furniture had been removed, though the family picture still hung in the blue room, and the harpsichord stood in the passage way to be abused by the children who passed through. These two aristocratic ladies were obliged to use their coach-house as a dining-room, and the "fowl-house" as their bed chamber. The picture continues: "In character the old lady looks as majestic even there, and dresses with as much elegance as if she were in a palace."[86]This mansion was General Putnam's headquarters at the battle of Bunker Hill, and was afterward confiscated.
When the treaty of peace was signed, the question of amnesty and compensation for the Loyalists was long and bitterly discussed. Eventhe French minister had urged it. John Adams, one of the commission, favored compensating "the wretches, how little soever they deserved it, nay, how much soever they deserve the contrary."[87]
The commission hesitated "to saddle" America with the Loyalists because they feared the opposition at home, especially by the individual states. The British demand had been finally met with the mere promise that Congress would recommend to the states a conciliatory policy with reference to the Loyalists. This solution neither satisfied the Loyalists nor the more chivalrous Englishmen. They declared that the provision concerning the Loyalists was "precipitate, impolitic," and cruelly neglectful of their American friends.[88]But all of this cavilling was unreasonable and hasty, for England had gotten for the Loyalists the utmost attainable in the treaty, and later proved honorable and generous in the highest degree by compensating the Loyalists out of her own treasury—an act only excelled in the next century by the purchase and emancipation of all the slaves in the British Empire, for which the people of Great Britain taxed only themselves—the most generous act ever performed by any nation in the history of mankind.
In spite of the recommendation of Congress which had been made in accordance with the terms of the treaty, confiscation still went on actively. Governors of the states were urged to exchange lists of proscribed persons, that no Loyalists might find a resting-place in the United States, and in every state they were disfranchised, while in many localities they were tarred and feathered, driven from town and warned never to return again. Some were murdered and maltreated in the most horrible manner. Thousands of inconspicuous Loyalists did, nevertheless, succeed in remaining in the larger cities, where their identity was lost, and they were not the objects of jealous social and political exclusion as in the small town. In some localities where they were in the majority, the hostile minority was not able to wreak its vengeance.
With the treaty of peace there came a rush for British American territory. The numbers were increased in Canada to some 25,000 during the next few years, and those in Nova Scotia and other British territory swelled the number to 60,000.
Most of these exiles became, in one way or another, a temporary expense to the British government, and the burden was borne honorably and ungrudgingly. The care began during the war. The Loyalists who aided Burgoyne were provided with homes in Canada, and before the close of 1779 nearly a thousand refugees were cared for in houses and barracks and given fuel, household furniture, and even pensioned with money. After the peace, thousands of exiles at once turned to the British government for temporary support. The vast majority had lost but little, and asked only for land and supplies to start life with. The minoritywho had lost lands, offices and incomes, demanded indemnity. As for the members of the humbler class, the government ordered that there should be given 500 acres of land to heads of families, 300 acres to single men, and each township in the new settlements was to have 2000 acres for church purposes and 1000 for schools. Building material and tools, an axe, spade, hoe and plow, were furnished each head of a family. Even clothing and food were issued to the needy, and as late as 1785 there were 26,000 entitled to rations. Communities were equipped with grindstones and the machinery for grist and saw mills. In this way $5,000,000 were spent to get Nova Scotia well started, and in Upper Canada, besides the three million acres given to the Loyalist, some $4,000,000 were expended for this benefit before 1787.
But there was a far greater burden assumed by the British government in granting the compensation asked for by those who had sacrificed everything to their loyalty. Those who had lost offices or professional practice were, in many cases, cared for by the gift of lucrative offices under the government, and Loyalist military officers were put on half pay. It is said with truth that the defeated government dealt with the exiled and fugitive Loyalists with a far greater liberality than the United States bestowed upon their victorious army.
After the peace, over five thousand Loyalists submitted claims for losses, usually through agents appointed by the refugees from each American colony. In July of 1783, a commission of five members was appointed by Parliament to classify the losses and services of the Loyalists. They examined the claims with an impartial and judicial severity. The claimant entered the room alone with the commissioners and, after telling his services and losses, was rigidly questioned concerning fellow claimants as well as himself. The claimant then submitted a written and sworn statement of his losses. After the results of both examinations were critically scrutinized, the judges made the award. In the whole course of their work, they examined claims to the amount of forty million of dollars, and ordered nineteen millions to be paid.
If to the cost of establishing the Loyalists in Nova Scotia and Canada we add the compensation granted in money, the total amount expended by the British government for their American adherents was at least thirty million dollars. There is evidence that the greatest care that human ingenuity could devise was exercised to make all these awards in a fair and equitable manner. The members of the commission were of unimpeachable honesty. Nevertheless there was much complaint by the Loyalists because of the partial failure of giving the loyal exiles a new start in life. The task was no easy one—to transfer a disheartened people to a strange land and a trying climate, and let them begin life anew. But when, years later, they had made of the land of this exile a mighty member of the British empire, they began to glory in the days of trial through which they had passed.
At a council meeting held at Quebec, November 9, 1789, an order was passed for "preserving a register of the Loyalists that had adhered to the unity of the empire, and joined the Royal Standard previous to the treaty of peace in 1783, to the end that their posterity may be distinguished from future settlers in the rank, registers, and rolls of the militia of their respective districts, as proper objects for preserving and showing the fidelity and conduct so honorable to their ancestors for distinguished benefit and privileges."
Today their descendants are organized as the United Empire Loyalists, and count it an honor that their ancestors suffered persecution and exile rather than yield the principle and idea of union with Great Britain.
The cause of the Loyalists failed, but their stand was a natural one and was just and noble. They were the prosperous and contended men—the men without a grievance. Conservatism was the only policy that one could expect of them. Men do not rebel to rid themselves of prosperity. Prosperous men seek to conceive prosperity. The Loyalist obeyed his nature, but as events proved, chose the ill-fated cause, and when the struggle ended, his prosperity had fled, and he was an outcast and an exile.
If, when George III. and his government recognized the independence of the thirteen colonies, the Loyalists had been permitted to remain here and become, if they would, American citizens, the probabilities are that, long before this time, an expansion would have taken place in the national domain which would have brought under its control the entire American continent north of the United States, an extension brought about in an entirely peaceful and satisfactory manner. The method of exclusion adopted peopled Canada, so far as its English-speaking inhabitants were concerned, with those who went from the United States as political exiles, and who carried with them to their new homes an ever-burning sense of personal wrong and a bitter hatred of those who had abused them.
The indifference shown to treaty obligations by Congress and the states, and the secret determination to eradicate everything British from the country, is now known to have been the deliberate, well-considered policy of the founders of the Republic.
This old legacy of wrongdoing has been a barrier in the way of a healthful northern development of the United States. The contentions which gave rise to these hostile feelings have been forgotten, but the feelings themselves have long outlived the causes which gave rise to them.
When the Revolutionary War had ended came the long twenty-three years' war in which Great Britain, for the most part, single-handed, fought for the freedom of Europe against the most colossal tyranny ever devised by a victorious general. No nation in the history of the world carried on a war so stubborn, so desperate, so costly, so vital. Had Great Britain failed, what would now be the position of the world? At the very time when Britain's need was the sorest, when every ship, every soldier and sailor that she could find was needed to break down the power of the man who had subjugated all Europe except Russia and Great Britain, the United States, the land of boasted liberty, did her best to cripple the liberating armies by proclaiming war against Britain in the hour of her sorest need.
Napoleon was at the height of his power, with an army collected at Boulogne for the invasion of England. England was growing exhausted by the contest. Her great Prime Minister, Pitt, had died broken hearted. Every indication was favorable to the conquest of Canada by the United States and therewith the extinction of all British interests on the western continent.
In the motherland it seemed, to the popular imagination, that on the other side of the Atlantic lived an implacable enemy, whose rancor was greater than their boasted love of liberty. Fisher Ames, who was regarded by his party as its wisest counsellor and chief ornament, expresses this general feeling on their part in a letter to Mr. Quincy, dated Dedham, Dec. 6, 1807, in which he says: "Our cabinet takes council of the mob, and it is now a question whether hatred of Great Britain and the reproach fixed even upon violent men, if they will not proceed in their violence, will not overcome the fears of the maritime states, and of the planters in Congress. The usual levity of a democracy has not appeared in regard to Great Britain. We have been steady in our hatred of her, and when popular passions are not worn out by time, but argument, they must, I should think, explode in war."[89]
The action of the United States in declaring war against Great Britain when she was most sorely pressed in righting for the liberty of mankind is best set forth in the famous speech of Josiah Quincy, delivered before Congress on the 5th of January, 1813. It was, as he himself says of it, "most direct, pointed and searching as to the motive and conduct of our rulers. It exposed openly and without reserve or fear the iniquity ofthe proposed invasion of Canada. I was sparing of neither language nor illustration." Its author, on reading it over in his old age, might well say that "he shrunk not from the judgment of after times." Its invective is keen, its sarcasm bitter, its denunciations heavy and severe, but the facts from which they derive their sting or their weight are clearly stated and sustained.
As a means of carrying on the war, he denounces the invasion of Canada as "cruel, wanton, senseless, and wicked—an attempt to compel the mother country to our terms by laying waste an innocent province which had never injured us, but had long been connected with us by habits of good neighborhood and mutual good offices." He said "that the embarrassment of our relations with Great Britain and the keeping alive between this country and that of a root of bitterness has been, is, and will continue to be, a main principle of the policy of this American Cabinet."
The Democratic Party having attained power by fostering the old grudge against England, and having maintained itself in power by force of that antipathy, a consent to the declaration of war had been extorted from the reluctant Madison as the condition precedent of his nomination for a second term of office.
When war against Great Britain was proposed at the last session, there were thousands in these United States, and I confess to you I was myself among the number, who believed not one word of the matter, I put my trust in the old-fashioned notions of common sense and common prudence. That a people which had been more than twenty years at peace should enter upon hostilities against a people which had been twenty years at war, the idea seemed so absurd that I never once entertained it as possible. It is easy enough to make an excuse for any purpose. When a victim is destined to be immolated, every hedge presents sticks for the sacrifice. The lamb that stands at the mouth of the stream will always trouble the water if you take the account of the wolf who stands at the source of it. We have heard great lamentation about the disgrace of our arms on the frontier. Why, sir, the disgrace of our arms on the frontier is terrestrial glory in comparison with the disgrace of the attempt. Mr. Speaker, when I contemplate the character and consequences of this invasion of Canada, when I reflect on its criminality and its danger to the peace and liberty of this once happy country, I thank the great Author and Source of all virtue that, through His grace, that section of country in which I have the happiness to reside, is in so great a degree free from the iniquity of this transgression. I speak it with pride. The people of that section have done what they could to vindicate themselves and their children from the burden of their sin.
Surely if any nation had a claim for liberal treatment from another, it was the British nation from the American. After the discovery of the error of the American government in relation to the repeal of the Berlin and Milan Decrees in November, 1810, they had declared war against heron the supposition that she had refused to repeal her orders in council after the French Decrees were in fact revoked, whereas it now appears that they were in fact not revoked. Surely the knowledge of this error was followed by an instant and anxious desire to redress the resulting injury. No, sir, nothing occurred. On the contrary the question of impressment is made the basis of continuing the war. They renewed hostilities. They rushed upon Canada. Nothing would satisfy them but blood.
I know, Mr. Speaker, that while I utter these things, a thousand tongues and a thousand pens are preparing without doors to overwhelm me, if possible, by their pestiferous gall. Already I hear in the air the sound of "Traitor," "British Agent," "British Gold!" and all those changes of calumny by which the imagination of the mass of men are affected and by which they are prevented from listening to what is true and receiving what is reasonable.[90]
As will be noticed in the foregoing extract from Josiah Quincy's celebrated speech, New England refused to take any part in the war. In fact, it must be said in their favor that they refused absolutely to send any troops to aid in the invasion of Canada. They regarded the pretexts on which the war had been declared with contemptuous incredulity, believing them to be but thin disguises of its real object. That object they believed to be the gratification of the malignant hatred the slave-holding states bore toward communities of free and intelligent labor, by the destruction of their wealth and prosperity.
A town meeting was held in Boston at Faneuil Hall on June 11, 1812, at which it was "Resolved: That in the opinion of this town, it is of the last importance to the interest of this country to avert the threatened calamity of war with Great Britain," etc. A committee of twelve was appointed to take into consideration the present alarming state of our public affairs, and report what measures, in their opinion, it is proper for the town to adopt at this momentous crisis.
The committee reported in part as follows: "While the temper and views of the national administration are intent upon war, an expression of the sense of this town, will of itself be quite ineffectual either to avert this deplorable calamity or to accelerate a return of peace, but believing as we do that an immense majority of the people are invincibly averse from conflict equally unnecessary and menacing ruin to themselves and their posterity, convinced as we are that the event will overwhelm them with astonishment and dismay, we cannot but trust that a general expression of the voice of the people would satisfy Congress that those of their representatives who had voted in favor of war, have not truly represented the wishes of their constituents, and thus arrest the tendency of their measures to this extremity."
Had the policy of government been inclined towards resistance to the pretentions of the belligerants by open war, there could be neither policy,reason or justice in singling out Great Britain as the exclusive object of hostility. If the object of war is merely to vindicate our honor, why is it not declared against the first aggressor? If the object is defense and success, why is it to be waged against the adversary most able to annoy and least likely to yield? Why, at the moment when England explicitly declares her order in council repealed whenever France shall rescind her decrees, is the one selected for an enemy and the other courted as a conqueror? "Under present circumstances there will be no scope for valor, no field for enterprise, no chance for success, no hope of national glory, no prospect but of a war against Great Britain, in aid of the common enemy of the human race, and in the end an inglorious peace."
The resolution recommended by the committee was adopted and it was voted that the selectmen be requested to transmit a copy thereof to each town in this commonwealth.
At a town meeting held August 6, 1812, the following resolutions were passed: "That the inhabitants of the town of Boston have learned with heartfelt concern that in the City of Baltimore a most outrageous attack, the result of deliberate combinations has been made upon the freedom of opinion and the liberty of the press. An infuriated mob has succeeded in accomplishing its sanguinary purpose by the destruction of printing presses and other property, by violating the sanctuary of dwelling houses, breaking open the public prison and dragging forth from the protection of civil authority the victims of their ferocious pursuit, guilty of no crime but the expression of their opinions and completing the tissue of their enormities by curses, wounds and murders, accompanied by the most barbarous and shocking indignities.
"In the circumstances attending the origin, the progress, and the catastrophe of this bloody scene, we discern with painful emotion, not merely an aggravation of the calamities of the present unjust and ruinous war, but a prelude to the dissolution of all free government, and the establishing of a reign of terror. Mobs, by reducing men to a state of nature, defeat the object of every social compact. The sober citizen who trembles in beholding the fury of the mob, seeks refuge from its dangers by joining in its acclamations. The laws are silenced. New objects of violence are discovered. The government of the nation and the mob government change places with each other. The mob erects its horrid crest over the ruins of liberty, of property, of the domestic relations of life and of civil institutions."[91]
The foregoing is a fair example of the feelings shown in New England towards this unjustifiable war, and which culminated in the famous Hartford convention which was accused of designing an organized resistance to the general government, and a separation of the New England states from the Union if the war was not stopped. The resolutions condemning the Baltimore mob also show the change in public opinion that had taken place in Boston during the thirty-seven years that had elapsedsince the commencement of the Revolution in Boston, which was inaugurated by mob violence, participated in by many who, by the strange irony of fate, by these resolutions condemned their own actions.
Mr. Quincy did not stand alone among his countrymen of that day in a general championship of Great Britain in the hour of her extremity. The Reverend John Sylvester, John Gardner, rector of Trinity church, Boston, a man of great scholarship, among others lifted up his voice in protest against unfair treatment of Great Britain by the government and people of the United States.
In a sermon at this time he said: "Though submissive and even servile to France, to Great Britain we are eager to display our hatred and hurl our defiance. Every petty dispute which may happen between an American captain and a British officer is magnified into a national insult. The land of our fathers, whence is derived the best blood of the nation, the country to which we are chiefly indebted for our laws and knowledge is stigmatized as a nest of pirates, plunderers and assassins. We entice away her seamen, the very sinews of her power.
"We refuse to restore them on application; we issue hostile proclamations; we interdict her ships of war from the common rights to hospitality; we have non-importation acts; we lay embargoes; we refuse to ratify a treaty in which she has made great concessions to us; we dismiss her envoy of peace who came purposely to apologize for an act unauthorized by her government; we commit every act of hostility against her in proportion to our means and station. Observe the conduct of the two nations and our strange conduct. France robs us and we love her; Britain courts us and we hate her."
It was during the summer of 1812, when Jefferson truly stated that every continental power of importance, except Russia, was allied with Napoleon, and Great Britain stood alone to oppose them, for Russia could not aid her if she would—her commerce paralyzed, her factories closed, commerce and her people threatened with famine. It was at this moment of dire extremity that Madison chose to launch his war message. His action was eagerly supported by Jefferson, Clay and Calhoun, and the younger members of his party.
Jefferson wrote to Duane: "The acquisition of Canada this year (1812) as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack on Halifax, the next and the final expulsion of England from the American continent. Perhaps they will burn New York or Boston. If they do, we must burn the city of London, not by expensive fleets of Congreve rockets, but by employing a hundred or two Jack-the-painters, whom nakedness, famine, desperation and hardened vice will abundantly furnish from among themselves."[92]
BURNING OF NEWARK, CANADABURNING OF NEWARK, CANADA, BY UNITED STATES TROOPS.In retaliation for the destruction of the Public landing at Toronto and Newark, and other villages, the public building at Washington was burned.
Three months after making this prediction, the surrender of the United States invading force to the British General Brock, or as Jefferson preferred to style it, "the detestable treason of Hull," "excited," he writes, "a deep anxiety in all breasts." A few months later we find him lamenting that "our war on the land was commenced most inauspiciously." This has resulted, he thinks, from the employment of generals before it is known whether they will "stand fire" and has cost us thousands of good men and deplorable degradation of reputation.(*) "The treachery, cowardice, and imbecility of the men in command has sunk our spirits at home and our character abroad."[93]
At the commencement of the war of 1812, the whole number of British troops in Canada was 4450, supplemented by about four thousand Canadian militia. With this corporal guard it was necessary to protect a frontier of over 1600 miles in length. Any part of this line was liable to an invasion of United States troops whose lines of communication were far superior. Moreover Great Britain was unable to send reinforcements until after the fall of Napoleon in June, 1814, when the war was nearly fought out.
American writers have always severely criticised the British for burning the public buildings when they captured Washington. Ex-President Jefferson, who proposed that the criminal classes of London should be hired to burn that city, stigmatized the burning of Washington as "vandalism," and declared it would "immortalize the infamy" of Great Britain. He who could contemplate with equanimity the fearful horrors that must have resulted from the putting in practice of his monstrous proposition to burn a city crowded with peaceful citizens, professed to be horrified at the destruction of a few public buildings by which no man, woman or child, was injured in person or property. With equal hypocrisy he professed to believe that no provocation for the act was given by the United States commanders. Upon this point he was taken to an account by an open letter from Dr. John Strachan, afterwards Bishop of Toronto. This letter should be preserved as long as there lives a British apologist for the acts of the United States in the War of 1812. In part it was as follows:
"As you are not ignorant of the mode of carrying on the war adopted by your friends, you must have known it was a small retaliation after redress had been refused, for burnings and depredations not only of public but private property, committed by them in Canada." In July, 1812, General Hull invaded Upper Canada and threatened by proclamation to exterminate the inhabitants if they made any resistance. He plundered those with whom he had been in habits of intimacy for years before the war. Their linen and plate were found in his possession after his surrender to General Brock. He marked out the loyal subjects of the king as objects of peculiar resentment, and consigned their property to pillage and conflagration.
In April, 1813, the public buildings at York (now Toronto) the capital of Upper Canada, were burned by the troops of the United States contrary to the articles of capitulation. Much private property was plundered and several homes left in a state of ruin. Can you tell me, sir, the reason why the public buildings and library at Washington should be held more sacred than those at our York?
In June, 1813, Newark came into possession of your army, and its inhabitants were repeatedly promised protection to themselves and property by General Dearborne and General Boyd. In the midst of their professions the most respectable of them, almost all non-combatants, were made prisoners and sent into the United States. The two churches were burned to the ground; detachments were sent under the direction of British traitors to pillage the loyal inhabitants in the neighborhood and to carry them away captive. Many farm-houses were burned during the summer and at length, to fill up the measure of iniquity, the whole of the beautiful village of Newark was consigned to flames. The wretched inhabitants had scarcely time to save themselves, much less any of their property. More than four hundred women and children were exposed without shelter on the night of the tenth of December, to the extreme cold of a Canadian winter, and great numbers must have perished, had not the flight of your troops, after perpetrating their ferocious act, enabled the inhabitants of the country to come to their relief. General McClure says he acted in conformity with the order of his government.
In November, 1813, your friend General Wilkinson committed great depredations through the eastern district of Upper Canada. The third campaign exhibits equal enormities. General Brown laid waste the country between Chippewa and Fort Erie, burning mills and private houses. The pleasant village of St. David was burned by his army when about to retreat. On the 15th of May a detachment of the American army pillaged and laid waste as much of the adjacent country as they could reach. They burned the village of Dover with all the mills, stores, distillery, and dwelling houses in the vicinity, carrying away such property as was portable, and killing the cattle.
On the 16th of August, some American troops and Indians from Detroit surprised the settlement of Port Talbot, where they committed the most atrocious acts of violence, leaving upwards of 234 men, women and children in a state of nakedness and want.