BURNING OF JAY IN EFFIGYBURNING OF JAY IN EFFIGY.For signing the Treaty of 1797 Jay was burned in effigy. Hamilton was stoned and the British Minister at Philadelphia insulted.
On the 20th of December, a second excursion was made by the garrison of Detroit, spreading fire and pillage through the settlements of Upper Canada. Early in November, General McArthur, with a large body of mounted Kentuckians and Indians, made a rapid march through the western part of the London districts, burning all the mills, destroying provisions and living upon the inhabitants. Other atrocities committed by the American troops, among them the wanton destruction of a tribe of Indians, unarmed and helpless, are detailed by Dr. Strachan. He adds, addressing Jefferson: "This brief account of the conduct of your governmentand army will fill the world with astonishment at the forbearance of Great Britain."
After two years and a half had been expended in vain and puerile attacks on the "handful of soldiers" with which Great Britain was able to resist its invasion, combined with such assistance as the patriotic Canadians were able to afford, it was found that not only Canada could not be conquered, but that much of the territory of the United States had passed into the hands of the enemy, with not one foot of that enemy's territory in their own hands to compensate for the loss.
When the arms of the United States had suffered many reverses and it became plain that they must accept the best terms from Great Britain that they could procure, John Adams declared that he "would continue the war forever rather than surrender one iota of the fisheries as established by the third article of the treaty of 1783." He boasted that he had saved the fishermen in that year, and now in 1814 he learned with dismay that they were again lost to his country, their relinquishment being one of the terms insisted on by the British commission as the price of peace.
The Federalists also were not easily satisfied. They admitted that peace was a happy escape for a country with a bankrupt treasury, and all resources dissipated. "But what," they asked, "have we gained by a war provoked and entered into by you with such a flourish of trumpets? Where are your 'sailors' rights?' Where is the indemnity for our impressed seamen? How about the paper blockade? The advantages you promised us we have not obtained. But we have lost nothing? Have we not? What about Grand Manan and Moose Island and the fisheries and our West Indian commerce?" So severely did Boston suffer that there were sixty vessels captured at the entrance to the harbor by one small fishing smack of Liverpool, Nova Scotia, cruising in Massachusetts Bay.
All who were concerned in the passage of the treaty were the subjects of the popular wrath. Jay was declared to be an "arch traitor," a "Judas who had betrayed his country with a kiss," and was burned in effigy in a dozen cities. Hamilton was stoned; the name of Washington was hooted, and the British flag dragged in the mud.
Edmund Quincy, in the life of his father, says, "The fall of Bonaparte, although it occasioned as genuine joy to New England as to the mother country herself, did not bring with it absolutely unalloyed satisfaction." There was reason to apprehend that the English administration, triumphant over its gigantic foe, its army and navy released from the incessant service of so many years, might concentrate the whole of the empire upon the power which it regarded as a volunteer ally of its mighty enemy, and administer an exemplary chastisement. No doubt many Englishmen felt, with Sir Walter Scott, that "it was their business to give the Americans a fearful memento, that the babe unborn should have remembered," and there is as little question that infinite damage might have been done to our cities and seacoast and to the banks of our great rivers, had Great Britainemployed her entire naval and military forces for that purpose. But happily the English people wisely refrained from an expenditure of blood and gold which could have no permanent good result, and which would only serve to exasperate passions and to prolong animosities which it was far wiser to permit to die out. It is not unlikely that the attention of English people had been so absorbed by the mighty conflict going on at their very doors that they had not much to spare for the distant and comparatively obscure fields across the Atlantic, and indeed the sentiments of the English people and the policy of English governments have never exhibited a spirit of revengefulness. The American war was but a slight episode in the great epic of the age. At any rate the English ministry were content to treat with the American commissioners at Ghent and to make a peace which left untouched the pretended occasion for the war, over in expressive silence, and peace was concluded, leaving "sailors' rights" the great watchword of the war party, substantially as they stood before hostilities began, except that our fishermen were deprived of the valuable privilege they enjoyed of catching and curing fish on the shores of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence.[94]
The news of peace was received in Boston with great joy. It was a day given up to rejoicing; salutes were fired; the bells rang out their merriest peals; the volunteer companies with their bands filled the streets; the school boys took a holiday; the wharves so long deserted were thronged, and the melancholy ships that rotted along side them were once more gay with flags and streamers. Thus rejoicing extended all along the seaboard and far inland, making glad all hearts and none more glad than those of the promoters of the war in high places and low.[95]
And so the "war of 1812" ended amid a general joy, not for what it had accomplished, for the American forces were defeated in their invasion of Canada, and the United States did not acquire one foot of additional territory, or the settlement of any of the questions which were the pretext for the war.
Much that occurred during the war of 1812 has been conveniently forgotten by American historians, and much that had not occurred, remembered. By degrees failure was transformed into success. The new generations were taught that in that war their fathers had won a great victory over the whole power of Great Britain single handed and alone. This amazing belief is still cherished among the people of the United States, to the astonishment of well informed visitors who meet with evidence of the fact.
For the first fifty years after the Revolution, the wealthy aristocratic slave-holding Southern states governed the Union and controlled its destiny. The acquisition of Florida and the Louisiana purchase doubled the area of the United States, and the territory derived from the Mexican War doubled it again. It was the intention of the South to extend slavery over this immense territory, but they were checked in the northern part of it by the enormous European immigration that poured into it and prevented it from becoming slave territory. Then came the "irrepressible conflict," the border war in Missouri and "bleeding Kansas," the battle of Ossawatomie and Harper's Ferry raid, and the constant pin-pricking of the abolition societies in the North, the headquarters of which were in Boston.
The presidential election of 1860 showed the South that they had lost control of the government and that the free states were increasing enormously in wealth and population, and that, following the example of Great Britain, it would be only a question of time before they would insist on abolishing slavery. Then it was that the Southerners decided to do what their fathers had done eighty-five years before, secede and become Dis-unionists. They could not believe that there would be any opposition to their leaving, especially from Massachusetts, that place that had always been foremost in disunion sentiments. Besides, had not the Abolitionists said repeatedly in Faneuil Hall, "The Cradle of Liberty," that if they would leave the Union they would "pave their way with gold" to get rid of them, and did not the New York Tribune, which had been the organ of the Abolitionists, and which now declared that "if the cotton states wished to withdraw from the Union they should be allowed to do so"; that "any attempt to compel them to remain by force would be contrary to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and to the fundamental idea upon which human liberty is based," and that "if the Declaration of Independence justified the secession from the British Empire of three million subjects in 1776, it was not seen why it would not justify the secession of five million of Southerners from the Union in 1861." This was quite consistent with the remark of a leading Abolitionist paper in Boston that "the Constitution was a covenant with hell." The South also contended that even if they were not justified in becoming Dis-unionists in 1776, they had established their right to independence by force of arms and that when they had entered into a confederationwith the other seceding colonies, they had never assigned any of their rights which they had fought for, that they were sovereign, independent states, and that the bond that bound them together was simply for self-protection and was what the name signified "United States," and not a nation. In proof of this they stated that when the convention met in Philadelphia in May, 1787, for the purpose of adopting a constitution for a stronger form of government, the first resolution presented was, "Resolved, That it is the opinion of this committee that a national government ought to be established, consisting of a supreme legislature, executive and judiciary." This was followed by twenty-three other resolutions as adopted and reported by the committee in which the word "national" occurred twenty-six times. Mr. Ellsworth, of Connecticut moved to strike out the word "national" and to insert the words "Government of the United States." This was agreed to unanimously, and the word "national" was stricken out wherever it occurred, and nowhere makes its appearance in the Constitution finally adopted. The prompt rejection of this word "national" is obviously much more expressive of the intent of the authors of the Constitution than its mere absence from the Constitution would have been. It is a clear indication that they did not mean to give any countenance to the idea that the government which they organized was a consolidated nationality instead of a confederacy of sovereign members. The question of secession was first raised by men of Massachusetts, the birthplace of secession. Colonel Timothy Pickering was one of the leading secessionists of his day. He had been an officer in the Revolution; afterwards Postmaster General, Secretary of War, Secretary of State in the cabinet of General Washington and senator from Massachusetts.
Writing to a friend on December 24, 1803, he says: "I will not despair. I will rather anticipate a new confederacy exempt from the corrupt and corrupting influence and oppression of the aristocratic Democrats of the South. There will be (and our children, at farthest, will see it) a separation. The white and black population will mark the boundary."[96]
In another letter, written in January 29, 1804, he said: "The principles of our Revolution point to the remedy—a separation. This can be accomplished and without spilling one drop of blood, I have little doubt. It must begin in Massachusetts."[96]
In 1811, on the bill for the admission of Louisiana as a state of the Union, the Hon. Josiah Quincy, a member of Congress from Massachusetts, said: "If this bill pass, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of this Union; that it will free the states from other moral obligations, and as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some definitely to prepare for a separation, amicably, if they can, violently if they must."
The war between the North and the South produced an abundant crop of bitter prejudices against the mother country. This sentimentwas shared by the South as well as by the North. Each imagined it had been unfairly treated by the British Government.
Americans continually point to the period of the Civil war and triumphantly declare that Englishmen were unfriendly to the United States at that time. So they were. And Englishmen were unfriendly to the Confederate states during that time. In fact, Englishmen did exactly what Americans did at that time—some took the side of the North and others took the side of the South. This it was their privilege to do. They simply asserted the right of free men to think as they pleased, and to express those thoughts freely. But that in so doing they showed hostility to the United States it is false and foolish to assert. There was neither unfriendliness nor malice. This hostility to the South, so far as it existed, was based solely upon the existence of slavery there. That which existed against the North was based solely upon the belief that a stronger power was taking advantage of its strength to trample upon the political rights of a weaker one. Any person living either North or South at that time cannot deny that they met many examples of both of these opinions among their respective acquaintances in both these sections.
At the commencement of the Civil War, the Queen issued a proclamation of neutrality, forbidding the sale of munitions of war to either party, warning her subjects against entering any blockaded port for purposes of trade under penalty of forfeiture of vessel and cargo if captured by either contestant.
Great Britain, as well as all other civilized powers, granted to the Confederacy belligerent rights, the same as had been accorded to them by the United States. Many, through cupidity, were tempted to enter into an illegal traffic with the seceded states.
A writer at that time says: "It is to the disgrace of our country that some of the goods smuggled into the Confederacy via Nassau were from Northern ports, as for example, shiploads of pistols brought from Boston in barrels of lard." There was also a considerable trade between Boston and Confederate ports via Halifax during the war, as well as an immense amount of contraband trade along the border even by the United States officials, as for example, the exploits of General Benjamin F. Butler while in command at Norfolk, Va., in 1864. If citizens of the United States, even those of Massachusetts, the home of the abolitionists, entered into this traffic, what could be expected of Great Britain with her mills closed and thousands of operatives obliged to resort to the poor rates for subsistence, because she was prevented from buying cotton with which the wharves of the Southern states were loaded down awaiting shipment. It was claimed by Unionists that the British ministry and aristocracy, from political and commercial considerations, openly and heartily sympathized with the South, and that, under the friendly flag of Great Britain, secessionists and blockade-runners were welcomed and assisted in the nefarious traffic; that this unfriendliness of the British government at that time furnished a solid foundation upon which therebellion rested their hopes, thereby protracting the war. It should not be forgotten, however, that the Queen and the royal family stood faithfully by the Union in the days of its sorest peril, and refused to listen to the importunities of the French emperor, to recognize the Southern Confederacy and open the southern ports.
France, having taken advantage of the Civil War, set the Monroe Doctrine at defiance and conquered Mexico. Her remaining there depended on the success of the Confederacy, as after events proved. Had Great Britain listened to France and joined her in recognizing the Southern Confederacy, the South would have surely succeeded. It is generally admitted that the strict blockade of the Southern ports is what defeated the Confederacy. It is due to Great Britain that the United States is not dismembered. It should be remembered that during the Civil War the great body of British workmen were on the side of the North. Even in the cotton famine districts they preferred to starve rather than have the Southern ports opened whereby they could obtain an abundance of cotton, thereby relieving their sore necessities.
It is also true that the Confederacy had many friends in Great Britain; that Gladstone, the great Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer, so far forgot what was due to his position as to make a speech in which he said "he expected the liberation of the slaves by their own masters sooner than from the North; that Jefferson Davis and the leaders of the South have made an army; they are soon, I understand, to have a navy, but greater than all this, they have made a nation."
It must be admitted that in building a navy the government connived at the building of cruisers, such as the Alabama, in British shipyards, for which they had to pay dearly afterwards. In answer to this speech of Gladstone, the robust yet tender tones of John Bright's voice rang out for the Northern cause in the darkest hour of the Civil War. His voice was heard with no uncertain sound when he uttered his indignant protest at anything like a reception being tendered Mason and Slidell on their release. John Bright for a long time sustained the enormous loss of keeping his mills open at hast half time with no material to work with. There he stood, all Quaker as he was, praying that the North might not stay its hand till the last slave was freed, even if no bales of cotton were sent to relieve his grievious losses protesting against outside interference. When the day came that marked the passing away of this venerable patriot, one of earth's greatest and best, an attempt was made in Congress to pass a vote of sympathy to his family and to the shame and disgrace of the United States it must be said that Congress refused to pay even this poor tribute to the memory of the best friend the United States had in the whole wide world in the hour of her great distress. This was done because it would be "offensive to the Irish." John Bright could see no difference between dis-union in the United States and dis-union in the United Kingdom. He had written to Mr. Gladstone concerning Parnell, Dillon, O'Brien, etc., saying, "You deem them patriots; I hold them not to be patriots, but conspirators against the crown and government of theUnited Kingdom." These men were afterwards found guilty of criminal conspiracy and Parnell was received with honor on the floor of Congress.
Henry Ward Beecher stated that during the American Civil War there were thousands of mass meetings held in Great Britain in favor of the Union cause, and not one in favor of the Confederacy.
Jefferson Davis complained bitterly of the action of Great Britain. He says "The partiality of Her Majesty's government in favor of our enemies was further evinced in the marked difference of its conduct on the subject of the purchase of supplies by the two belligerents. This difference was conspicuous from the commencement of the war."(*) Great Britain endeavored to deal justly with both parties in the contest, but pleased neither and was blamed by both. This is probably the best evidence that can be given to show the impartiality of Great Britain in the great Civil War, and it is safe to say that there were ten times more British subjects serving in the Northern armies than there were in the Southern.
As previously stated, Great Britain has been greatly blamed by American historians for her treatment of American prisoners of war during the Revolution, and at Dartmouth prison in the war of 1812. In view of these facts it will be interesting to see how the Americans treated their prisoners when at war between themselves in the Civil War of 1861. One of the worst cases recorded in the history of the world is that of Andersonville. The first prisoners were received there in March, 1864. From that time till March, 1865, the deaths were 13,000 out of a total of 50,000 or 26 per cent. This enormous loss of life was due to the fact that in order to subjugate the South their crops were destroyed, their fields devastated, their railroads broken up, which interrupted their means of transportation, which reduced their people, troops and prisoners to the most straitened condition for food. If the troops in the field were in a half-starved condition, certainly the prisoners would fare worse.(*) The Confederates have been blamed for this enormous loss of life, but when the facts are examined it is found that it was due to the cold-blooded policy of the Federal Government, who would not exchange prisoners for the atrocious reason set forth in the dispatch from General Grant to General Butler, dated West Point, August 18, 1864.
General Grant says: "On the subject of exchange, however, I differ from General Hitchcock. It is hard on our men in Southern prisons not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. Every man released on parole or otherwise becomes an active soldier against us at once, either directly or indirectly. If we commence a system of exchange, which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on till the whole South is exterminated. If we hold those caught, they amount to no more than dead men. At this particular time to release all rebel prisoners North would insure Sherman's defeat and would compromise our safety."
What brought forth this letter was a statement made by the Confederate government concerning the excessive mortality prevailing among the prisoners of Andersonville. As no answer was received, another communication was sent on Aug. 22, 1864 to Major General E. A. Hitchcock, United States Commissioner of Exchange, concerning the same proposal. But again no answer was made. One final effort was made to obtain an exchange. Jefferson Davis sent a delegation of prisoners from Andersonville to Washington. "It was of no avail. They were made to understand that the interest of the government required that they should return to prison and President Lincoln refused to see them. They carried back the sad tidings that their government held out no hope of their release."[97]
Up to this time the mortality among the prisoners had been far greater in the Northern prisons than in the Southern prisons, notwithstanding there was an abundance of food and clothing and medical supplies in the North. In proof of this it is only necessary to offer two facts. First, the report of the Secretary of War, E. M. Stanton, made on July 19, 1866, shows that of all the prisoners held by the Confederates during the war, only 22,576 died, while of the prisoners held by the Federal government, 26,246 died.
Second, the official report of Surgeon General Barnes, an officer of the U. S. Government, stated that the number of Confederate prisoners in their hands amounted to 220,000. The number of U. S. prisoners in Confederate hands amounted to 270,000. Thus out of 270,000 held by the Confederates 22,000 died, and of the 220,000 Confederates held in the North, 26,000 died. Thus 12 per cent of the Confederates died in Northern prisons and only 9 per cent U. S. prisoners died in the South.[98]
It is well known and now acknowledged that for the past hundred years it has been the deliberate and well considered policy of the United States to eradicate everything British from the country to the north of us.
During the Canadian rebellion of 1837, as well as during the Fenian raid of 1866, the American frontier was openly allowed to be made a base of operation against British North America.
Canada has always claimed that she has been deprived of enormous areas of territory by the United States through sharp practice and unjustifiable means, especially in Oregon, Maine and Alaska. The most notable case of duplicity on the part of the United States was that of the Northeast boundary settled under the Ashburton Treaty of Washington in 1842. After a bitter controversy it was left out to arbitration for the King of the Netherlands to decide. The award was accepted by Great Britain and rejected by the United States. The question remained in abeyance for two years, during which there was imminent danger of a collision and of war. Military posts were simultaneously established and rashly advanced into the wild country which both parties claimed as their own. Redoubts and blockhouses were erected at several points. Reinforcement of troops from either side poured in. The public mind in the United States became inflamed by the too ready cry of "British outrage," proclaimed in all quarters by the reckless politicians of both parties in order to lash the national spirit into fury. The people in the whole length and breadth of the Union were, to a man, convinced of the justice of their claim and of the manifest wrong intended by Great Britain. The Nation at large was ready and anxious for war, and had a skirmish taken place on the frontier involving the death of a dozen men during the so-called "Aroostook War," the whole country would have rushed to war and plunged the two nations into hostilities, the end of which no man then living could have foreseen.
During this trouble, the English people were quite calm and almost apathetic. With a vague notion of the locality of the disputed territory, a total ignorance of the merits or demerits of the dispute, and a profound contempt of the blustering and abuse of American politicians and newspapers, they were perfectly content to leave affairs in the hands of the government.
Finally a joint commission was appointed from the States of Maineand Massachusetts (both having rights in the disputed territory) and sent to Washington to negotiate a treaty with Lord Ashburton, a nobleman well adapted to the occasion from his connection by marriage, and property in the United States.
The odds were greatly against the British negotiator. His principal adversary was Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, who in one of his letters said: "I must be permitted to say that few questions have arisen under this government in regard to which a stronger or more general conviction was felt that the country was in the right than this question of the northeast boundary." He reiterated his own belief in "the justice of the claim which arose from our honest conviction that it was founded in truth and accorded with the intention of the negotiators of the treaty of 1783." The whole of the disputed territory amounted to 6,750,000 acres. At last a compromise was effected which granted to Great Britain 3,337,000 acres, and to the United States 3,413,000 acres, and acknowledged the title of England to all the military positions upon the frontier, and 700,000 acres more was awarded her than was assigned to her by the King of the Netherlands.
But the decision of the Commissioners suited neither party. The factions in England pronounced Lord Ashburton to have been sold, and those in America declared that Webster had been bought. The most violent opposition to the treaty was made; every part of it was denounced, and it became at last doubtful if the Senate would ratify it. That final consummation was, however, suddenly effected in a most remarkable manner, the Senate coming to its decision by an unexpected majority of thirty-nine to nine, after several days of secret debate. The sanction of the Queen and the British government had been given without hesitation and the people on both sides of the Atlantic were well satisfied with the termination of the long and virulent dispute, and the Northeastern Boundary Question would have sunk into the archives of diplomatic history, but truth like murder will out, and it so happened that Mr. Thomas Colley Grattan, British Consul for Massachusetts[99]who, at the request of the commissioners, had accompanied them to Washington to assist them in their negotiation, had the fortune to discover after the treaty was signed, the duplicity of the Senate during their secret debates leading to the ratification of the treaty. He says: "My informant gave unmeasured expression to his indignation, which he assured me was fully shared in by his friends, Judge Story and Dr. Channing. Judge Story expressed himself without reserve on Webster's conduct as a 'most disgraceful proceeding.'" Other gentlemen of Boston entirely coincided in these opinions.
Map of the Boundary Line between Maine and New Brunswick.Map of the Boundary Line between Maine and New Brunswick.
"It is obvious to all persons familiar with boundary disputes that the most important evidence in such disputes is founded on surveys and maps. Early in the controversy there was a strange disappearance of the one in the archives of the State Department, that had been transmitted by Franklinto Jefferson in October, 1790, with the true boundary line traced on it. It was, therefore, with great astonishment that I learned from the confidential communication just alluded to that during the whole of the negotiations at Washington, while the highest functionaries of the American Government were dealing with Lord Ashburton with seeming frankness and integrity, pledging their faith for a perfect conviction of the justice of their claim to the territory which was in dispute. Mr. Webster had in his possession and had communicated to them all—President, Cabinet, Commissioners and Senate—the highest evidence which the case admitted, that the United States had never had a shadow of right to any part of the territory which they had so pertinaciously claimed for nearly fifty years. This evidence, as my conscientious informant told me, was nothing less than a copy of an original map presented by Dr. Franklin to Count de Vergennes, the Minister of Louis XVI, on December 6, 1782 (six days after the preliminaries of the treaty of Paris of 1783 were signed) tracing the boundary, as agreed upon by himself and the other commissioners, with a strong red line south of the St. John, and exactly where a similar line appears in an unauthenticated map discovered in London subsequent to Lord Ashburton's departure on his mission."
Public attention being aroused by the statements made by the British Consul to his government, the injunction of secrecy imposed by the Senate on its members was dissolved, and permission was given for the publication of the speeches made in secret session of August 17-19, 1842. The most important of those speeches was that of Mr. Rives, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. His principal argument was that if they did not sign the treaty, the dispute would be referred to a second arbitration with very great danger of their losing the whole, Mr. Webster, the Secretary of State, having sent to him to be laid before the Senate a communication and a copy of the map presented by Dr. Franklin to Count de Vergennes. In short, it is exactly the line contended for by Great Britain except that it concedes more than is claimed. When this communication was read, Senator Benton informed the Senate that he could produce a map of higher validity than the one referred to. He accordingly repaired to the library of Congress and soon returned with a map which there is no doubt was the one sent by Franklin to Jefferson already alluded to as having been surreptitiously removed from the archives of the State Department some years before. The moment it was examined it was found to sustain, by the most precise and remarkable correspondence in every feature, the map communicated by Mr. Webster. Mr. Benton then stated that "if the maps were really authentic the concealment of them was a fraud on the British, and that the Senate was insulted by being a party to the fraud," and further that "if evidence had been discovered which deprived Maine of the title to one-third of its territory, honor required that it should be made known to the British."
The sudden acceptance of the treaty was in consequence of the evidence of the maps, and the conviction of all concerned that a discovery of theirexistence before the conclusion of a treaty would have given irresistible strength to the English claims.
Calhoun said: "It would be idle to suppose that these disclosures would not weigh heavily against the United States in any future negotiations."
The settlement of the Oregon boundary question again showed American hatred of England to be chronic. The question finally resolved itself into whether the threat of 54.40 or fight should be carried out, (a threat to deprive Canada of access to the Pacific Ocean and the possession of most of the enormous wheat fields now being developed in the northwest) or to fight Mexico and extend its boundaries to the South instead of the north. This latter scheme suited the slaveholders best who were then in power. The United States government then entered into a war with Mexico, one of the most unjustifiable contests ever entered into by a civilized nation. By this war of conquest the United States nearly doubled its territory. It must be said to the credit of New England that she would not take any part in this war any more than she did in the war of 1812.
When confederation of the Canadian provinces occurred in 1867, there was placed on record in the House of Representatives at Washington that it was disapproved and that the House regarded the Act of Confederation as a menace to the United States. For a hundred years after the Revolution it had been the policy of the United States to force Canada into annexation, and it was considered that she would be more likely to come into the Union if she was harrassed by a high tariff, boundary and fishing disputes, but now it is known to have been all wrong. The factors worked out just the reverse. Conditions have arrived that were little foreseen until within ten years. The American people have recognized the fact that a great change has taken place in Canada which materially effects the relation between Canada and the United States. Mr. Root, U. S. Secretary of State, recently said:
"Canada is no longer the outlying northern country in which a fringe of descendants of royalists emigrating from the colonies when they became independent of Great Britain, lived and gained a precarious subsistence from a fertile soil. It has become the home of a great people increasing in population and wealth. The stirrings of a national sentiment are to be felt. In their relations to England one can see that while still loyal to their mother country, still a loyal part of the British Empire, they are growing up, and, as the boy is to his parents when he attains manhood, they are a personality of themselves. In their relations to us they have become a sister nation. With their enormous national wealth, with their vigor and energy following the pathway that we have followed, protecting their industries as we have protected ours, proud of their country as we are proud of ours, they are no longer the little remnants upon our borders; they are a great and powerful sister nation."
For years after the Civil War there came from the press, from thelecture platform, and from the political rostrum, the most relentless abuse of Great Britain and everything British. Lecturers gave their audiences vivid descriptions of the Revolution and the war of 1812, in which American valor was always rated high and British brutality was held up to scorn. These lectures were frequently of thrilling interest because the speakers were not handicapped by matters so paltry as facts of history. But the most formidable batteries of wrath were trained against everything British from the political stump. The iron-lunged orators told of the iniquity of England, of its infamous tariff laws, the oppression of Ireland, etc. He was but a poor speaker who could not enliven a political meeting by twisting the tail of the British lion. All this is now changed. It was brought about by President Cleveland's Venezuelian message of December, 1895, and the Spanish War. When the Venezuelian episode occurred, England was believed to be isolated and without an ally. It proved that war could be declared against Great Britain at any time, in ten minutes, upon any pretext. The insolent message fell upon every one in England, from Lord Salisbury down, as a bolt from the blue sky. Englishmen were as innocent as babes of intentional offence to the United States. They had no conception that there existed in the United States such latent irritation or antagonism as under the first provocation would lead to an almost open avowal of national enmity. It, however, happily disclosed the fact that there still existed in the United States a numerous highly educated and conservative element (not dissimilar to the vanished Loyalists of the last century) in which one seldom finds a trace of antagonism to the old mother country. Following the message, magazine reviews, the public press, and the pulpit overflowed with a brilliant series of public utterances and these soon checked the noisy approving outbursts of a reckless half-educated majority to obtain whose votes at the next election undoubtedly prompted the presumptuous interference of the chief of the Republic and the unfriendly tone of his message.
Within three years after the message a wonderful change came over the people of the United States. The Spanish War had taken place and instead of finding Great Britain to be the hereditary enemy of the United States, which they had been taught in the school histories to believe, it was found that among the great powers of the world, Great Britain was the only friend which the United States had, and that "blood was thicker than water." It was discovered that the nations were envious of the great Republic, and that Britain alone was proud of her eldest daughter. It was remarked to the writer by a Spanish officer shortly after the surrender of Porto Rico: "But mind you, this from an old man who has studied history. You would never have had these islands had not England stepped in at the beginning of the trouble and said to all the nations of the world, 'Allow me to present my daughter, America.'" It was found, too, that the "traditional friendship" of Russia was of but little account at that time.
It was Russia that eagerly became the spokesman for envious Europeand gave voice to the words: "Now is the time for us to combine and crush this huge American monster before she becomes too strong for all of us, as she is already too strong for any one of us." It was Russia that planned to have the "concert of Europe" warn us that we were not to pose as champion of any other American people against any form of misrule by Europe—and that we were not to dare to meddle in Europe on any pretext.
She failed because England refused to join the league, or to enter with the other powers into a naval demonstration before Cuba, but so long as the war lasted with Spain the Russian diplomats kept pounding at every backdoor in Europe with an insistence that something be done to cut our comb, or make trouble or lose us the friendship of England. Our people in Washington know all this. They know also the behavior of the Russian minister at Washington who thought to poison us against England in the very days when we were buying in that country and shipping in secret from that country the vital necessities which the war demanded and which we had not got; when great steamers were found abandoned off New York loaded with contraband of war, cannon, arms, ammunition, etc., and towed into port by United States warships; when coal and ammunition were left on desert islands in the Philippines by British warships for the use of the United States navy; when England's fleet at Manila stood ready to take sides with Dewey and to open fire, to begin war on the Germans should occasion arise. American naval officers who were there know these facts to be true, and it is very significant that the Navy Department has not published the correspondence between it and Admiral Dewey at that time. We are hated all over the continent of Europe. Paris made a fete day when she imagined Sampson's fleet was destroyed.
The Germans hate us for taking 3,000,000 fighting men away from them, and also because we prevented them from purchasing the Philippines from Spain, and because the Monroe doctrine prevents them from obtaining colonies or naval stations in the Western Hemisphere. The Austrians hate us for humiliating Spain. There is not a country to the south of us but what hates us. Every republic in South America would put a knife in our back if the opportunity occurs.
Very significant, too, was the reception and banquet given at Windsor Castle in 1896 by Queen Victoria to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston—the oldest military organization in the Western Hemisphere—and the grand reception they received everywhere they went in England. It was a revelation to the Americans, as every one of them acknowledged, to receive such marked expression of kindliness and brotherhood at the old home. It was something they did not expect. The company more than reciprocated when the parent company, The Honourable Artillery of London, visited Boston in 1903. Once more were seen armed British sailors and soldiers marching through Boston's streets under the British flag, the buildings along the entire route beautifully decorated, and the visitors received with vociferous welcome wherever theywent. We will hope that something even better and more substantial may yet come to us, when the United States and Great Britain will be allied in amity as firm as that which now holds together these federal states. "Old prejudices should be cast aside; the English-speaking states recognizing their kinship, should knit bonds together around the world, forming a kingly brotherhood inspired by beneficence, to which supreme dominion in the earth would be sure to fall; for whatever may be said today for other stocks, the 135,000,000 of English-speaking men have been able to make themselves masters of the world to an extent which no people has thus far approached.
"If love would but once unite, the seas could never sever. Earth has never beheld a co-mingling of men, so impressive, so likely to be frought with noble advantages through ages to come, as would be the coming together of English-speaking men in one cordial bond."[100]
The statesmen of Britain and America can do no worthier service than to find a way by which their strength may be combined to secure the peace of the world and the betterment of mankind. It is not necessary that their governments should be unified, or even that any hard and fast treaty obligation incurred. It is only necessary that they should agree to be friends and to stand by each other in all that will further these great objects. They alone of all the nations can do this and that they ought to do it few will deny. Both must forget certain bitterness born of the past and certain jealousies growing out of the greatness of both.
What Great Britain is doing for the many peoples under her care and what this nation is doing for the few outside our borders that we have in hand we might unitedly do for a great portion of the globe and its inhabitants. This combination must be strong enough to check certain highwaymen in international relations and to install a wholesome regard for human rights. Such an outcome of present friendliness will not be achieved in a day or generation. But it will come; it must come. Asia and the continent of Europe may become Chinese or Cossack, but the English-speaking race shall rule over every other land and all the islands and every sea.
The present time is a critical period in the life of the American Republic, and therefore in the life of the world. The impotence of the federal government to stop strike disturbances, lynchings and disfranchisements, the growing power of an oligarchial and plutocratic Senate, and the perils of imperialism are disquieting enough, but worst of all is the evil of party rule and party strife.
Washington abhorred party and regarded it as a disease which he hoped to avert by putting federalists and anti-federalists in his cabinet together. The intuition of the founders of the Republic was that the president should be elected by a chosen body of select and responsible citizens, but since the Jacksonian era, nomination and election have been completely in the hands of the Democracy at large, and the election has beenperformed by a process of national agitation and conflict which sets at work all the forces of political intrigue and corruption on the most enormous scale, besides filling the country with persons almost as violent and anti-social as those of the Civil War.
The qualification for public office from that of president down to that of a member of a city council in national, state or city politics is not a question of which man is most worthy of public confidence. It is no longer eminence but availability. The great aim of each party is to prevent the country from being successfully governed by its rival. Each will do anything to catch votes and anything rather than lose them. Government consequently is at the mercy of any organization which has votes on a large scale to sell, or corporations that will freely contribute its funds. The Grand Army of the Republic is thus enabled to levy upon the nation tribute to the amount of a hundred and fifty million dollars each year, thirty-six years after the war, although General Grant at the close of the war said that the pensions should never exceed seven millions each year. And now both parties in their platform promise their countenance to this exaction.
The recent exposures of the millions contributed by the trusts, tariff protected industries, life insurance companies, etc., to the campaign funds has astonished the world. The history of the most corrupt monarchies could hardly furnish a more monstrous case of financial abuse, to say nothing of the effect upon national character.
Each party machine has a standing army of wire pullers with an apparatus of intrigue and corruption to the support of which holders of office under government are assessed. The boss is a recognized authority, and mastery of unscrupulous intrigue is his avowed qualification for his place. The pest of partyism invades all the large cities of the country. New York is made the plunder of the thieves of one party and Philadelphia of thieves of the other. It is surely impossible that any nation should endure such a system forever. A nation which deliberately gives itself up to government by faction, under the name of party, signs its own doom. The end may be delayed but it is sure. The American people undoubtedly have the political wisdom and force to deal with this crisis, but there is no evidence that these qualities are being brought to bear on the situation nor is there any great man arisen to lead the reform.
of the
with
The Addresses to Governor Hutchinson. The Conspiracy Act; and Resolution, relating to the banishing and confiscation of the estates of the Absentees, and Refugees, and a list of the Loyalists that went to Halifax on the evacuation of Boston.
The Addresses to Governor Hutchinson. The Conspiracy Act; and Resolution, relating to the banishing and confiscation of the estates of the Absentees, and Refugees, and a list of the Loyalists that went to Halifax on the evacuation of Boston.
The first and second chapters of this work treated of the settlement of Massachusetts and the framing and establishing of that social system and form of government which through successive generations, the settlers and their descendants took part, which culminated in the Revolution. The founders of Massachusetts and of all New England, were almost entirely Englishmen. Their emigration to New England began in 1620, it was inconsiderable till 1630, at the end of ten years more it almost ceased. A people consisting at that time of not many more than twenty thousand persons, thenceforward multiplied on its own soil, in remarkable seclusion from other communities, for nearly two centuries. Such exceptions to this statement are of small account. In 1651 after the battle of Dunbar, Cromwell sent some four or five hundred of his Scotch prisoners to Boston, but very little trace of this accession is left. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, about one hundred and fifty families of French Huguenots came to Massachusetts; their names and a considerable number of their posterity are yet to be found. A hundred and twenty Scotch-Irish families, came over in 1719 and settled in Boston, and New Hampshire. Some slight emigrations from it took place at an early date, but they soon discontinued, and it was not till after the Revolution that those swarms began to depart, which have since occupied so large a portion of the territory of the United States. During that long period their identity was unimpaired. No race has ever been more homogeneous than this, at the outbreak of the Revolution, and for many years later. Thus the people of New England was a singularly unmixed race. There was probably not a county in England occupied by a population of purer English blood than theirs. Down to the eve of the war in 1775, New England had little knowledge of the communities which took part in that conflict with her. Till the time of the Boston Port Bill, Massachusetts and Virginia, the two principal English settlements, had with each other scarcely more relations of acquaintance, business, mutual influence, or common action, than either of them had with Bermuda or Barbados.
During the latter part of the nineteenth century vast numbers of Irish, and next to them German, came to New England, so at the time of writing, 1908, it is claimed that one half of the inhabitants of Boston are Irish, or of Irish parentage. During the past ten years the places of the Irish are being taken by the Italians, Jews, Portuguese, Greeks, Armenians, French Canadians, and others. The reader will see from the foregoing that the contestants in Massachusetts during the Revolutionary war were a race representing a peculiar type of the Englishmen of the seventeenth century who, sequestrated from foreign influences formed a distinct character by their own discipline, and was engaged in a work within itself, on its own problem, through a century and a half, and which terminated in the Revolutionary War, that dismembered the Empire. That the foregoing statement concerning the purity of the race at the time of the Revolution is a correct one, is shown in the following biographies of the Loyalists of Massachusetts, for in nearly every case their ancestry date back to that of the first settlers, through several generations.
The Addressers.
The importance of the following addressers is out of all proportion to their apparent significance. They are an indispensable genesis to the history of the Loyalists. For the next seven years the Addressers were held up to their countrymen as traitors and enemies to their country. In the arraignments, which soon began, the Loyalists were convicted not out of their mouths, but out of their addresses. The ink was hardly dry upon the parchment before the persecution began against all those who would not recant, and throughout the long years of the war, the crime of an addresser grew in its enormity, and they were exposed to the perils of tarring and feathering, the horrors of Simbury mines, a gaol or a gallows.
Boston, May 30, 1774.
We, merchants and traders of the town of Boston, and others, do now wait on you, in the most respectful manner, before your departure for England, to testify, for ourselves the entire satisfaction we feel at your wise, zealous, and faithful administration, during the few years that you have presided at the head of this province. Had your success been equal to your endeavors, and to the warmest wishes of your heart, we cannot doubt that many of the evils under which we now suffer, would have been averted, and that tranquility would have been restored to this long divided province; but we assure ourselves that the want of success in those endeavors will not abate yourgood wishes when removed from us, or your earnest exertions still on every occasion to serve the true interest of this your native country.
While we lament the loss of so good a governor, we are greatly relieved that his Majesty, in his gracious favor, hath appointed as your successor a gentleman who, having distinguished himself in the long command he hath held in another department, gives us the most favorable prepossessions of his future administration.
We greatly deplore the calamities that are impending and will soon fall on this metropolis, by the operation of a late act of Parliament for shutting up the port on the first of next month. You cannot but be sensible, sir, of the numberless evils that will ensue to the province in general, and the miseries and distresses into which it will particularly involve this town, in the course of a few months. Without meaning to arraign the justice of the British Parliament, we could humbly wish that this act had been couched with less rigor, and that the execution of it had been delayed to a more distant time, that the people might have had the alternative either to have complied with the conditions therein set forth, or to have submitted to the consequent evils on refusal; but as it now stands, all choice is precluded, and however disposed to compliance or concession the people may be, they must unavoidably suffer very great calamities before they can receive relief. Making restitution for damage done to the property of the East India Company, or to the property of any individual, by the outrage of the people, we acknowledge to be just; and though we have ever disavowed, and do now solemnly bear our testimony against such lawless proceedings, yet, considering ourselves as members of the same community, we are fully disposed to bear our proportions of those damages, whenever the sum and the manner of laying it can be ascertained. We earnestly request that you, sir, who know our condition, and have at all times displayed the most benevolent disposition towards us, will, on your arrival in England, interest yourself in our behalf, and make such favorable representations of our case, as that we may hope to obtain speedy and effectual relief.
May you enjoy a pleasant passage to England; and under all the mortifications you have patiently endured, may you possess the inward and consolatory testimonies of having discharged your trust with fidelity and honor, and receive those distinguishing marks of his Majesty's royal approbation and favor, as may enable you to pass the remainder of your life in quietness and ease, and preserve your name with honor to posterity.