That a majority of conservatives refused to meet this issue until after the battle of Lexington, and many not until the Declaration of Independence "closed the last door of reconciliation," was largely due to the widespread belief that if the colonies took a bold, stand the English Government would once more back down. Upon the conduct of radicals and conservatives alike, this persistent belief, one of those delusions which often change the course of history, exercised, indeed, a decisive influence. Even as high a Son of Liberty as Richard Henry Lee would have favored more cautious measures in the First Congress had he not been certain that "the same ship which carries home the resolutions will bring back the redress." Inspired among radicals partly by the feeling that so just a cause could not fail, the conviction was chiefly grounded upon information sent home by Americans residing in England. If Congress is unanimous, wrote Franklin in September, 1774, "you cannot fail of carrying your point. If you divide you are lost." Josiah Quincy, sent to England in order to get first-hand information, wrote letter after letter to men in every part of America, assuring them that the oppression of the colonies was an affair of corrupt ministers who were not supported by one in twenty of the inhabitants of Great Britain. "Corruption and the influence of the Crown hath led us into bondage," is the common cry here. "To Americans only we look for salvation." But yesterday a noble lord had assured him that, "this country will never carry on a civil war against America; we cannot, but the ministry hope to carry all by a single stroke." Certainly, he assured his friends, the common opinion here is that "if the Americans stand out, we must come to their terms."
Above all, therefore, America must stand out; she must be "firm and united," waiting the day when England would come to her terms. But the difficulty was to be firm and at the same time united; for with every measure bolder than the last, conservative men grew timid or deserted the cause to swell the ranks of the Loyalist party. It was precisely to preserve the appearance of unity where none existed that the journals of the First Congress had been falsified; for this reason alone many conservatives had voted for the Association; and in the year 1775, after the battle of Lexington had precipitated a state of war, radical members of the Second Congress voted for conciliatory petitions, and conservatives voted to take up arms against the British troops, in the hope that if the colonists showed themselves unanimous in the profession of loyalty, and at the same time unanimous in their determination to resort to forcible resistance as a last resort, the English Government would never press the matter to a conclusion.
In February, 1775, Lord North had, indeed, offered resolutions of conciliation. The measure amazed his own followers and was greeted by the Whigs with Homeric laughter. Offers of conciliation could scarcely have arrived in America at a more inopportune time,—the very moment almost when the battle of Lexington came like an alarm-bell in the night to waken men from the dream of peace. And the resolutions themselves had all the appearance of being a clever ruse designed to separate the Middle colonies from New England and Virginia, in order to destroy that very union which Americans believed to be the best hope of obtaining real concession. Such the Whigs in England asserted them to be; and generally so regarded in America, they were everywhere rejected with contempt. In November, after the non-exportation agreement became effective, when an American army was endeavoring to drive the British troops out of Boston, Lord North declared in Parliament that whereas former measures were intended as "civil corrections against civil crimes," the time was now come for prosecuting war against America as against any foreign enemy; and with the opening of the new year it was at last becoming clear, even to the most optimistic, that the English Government was prepared to exact submission at the point of the sword.
As the vain hope of conciliation died away, the radicals, under the able lead of John Adams and Richard Henry Lee, pushed on to a formal declaration of independence. This was now, indeed, the only way out for them. The non-intercourse policy, injuring America more than it injured England, had proved a hopeless failure. During the year 1775 imports fell from, £2,000,000 to £213,000; and after the non-exportation agreement became effective, business stagnation produced profound discontent and diminished the resources necessary for carrying on war. So drastic a self-denying ordinance could not be maintained, for "people will feel, and will say, that Congress oppresses them more than Parliament." Unable "to do without trade," they were "between Hawk and Buzzard"; and on April 6, 1776, the ports of America were opened to the world. "But no state will treat or trade with us," said Lee, "so long as we consider ourselves subjects of Great Britain." A declaration of independence was therefore recognized, gladly by some, with profound regret by many more, as the only alternative to submission; for it alone would make possible that military and commercial alliance with France without which America could not successfully withstand the superior power of Great Britain; and at the same time it would enable the de facto colonial Governments, with a show of legality, to suppress the disaffected Loyalists and confiscate their property to the uses of the cause which they had so basely betrayed.
On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, in behalf of the Virginia delegation and in obedience to instructions from the Virginia Assembly, accordingly moved "that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; ... that it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign alliances"; and "that a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective colonies for their consideration." Debated at length, the final decision, already a foregone conclusion, was deferred in deference to the wishes of the conservative Middle colonies. It was on July 2 that the momentous resolutions were finally carried; and two days later the Congress published to the world that famous declaration which derived the authority of just governments from the consent of the governed, and grounded civil society upon the inherent and inalienable rights of man. In the history of the Western world, the American Declaration of Independence was an event of outstanding importance: glittering or not, its sweeping generalities formulated those basic truths which no criticism can seriously impair, and to which the minds of men must always turn, so long as faith in democracy shall endure.
V
The men who with resolution and high hope pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the defense of these novel principles, could scarcely have foreseen the emotional reaction that was soon to follow; the profound disillusionment of those weary years when only an occasional victory came to lift the despondency occasioned by constant defeat: years when "the spirit of the people begins to flag, or the approach of danger dispirits them"; when "few of the numbers who talked so largely of death and honor" were to be found on the field of battle; when a febrile enthusiasm for liberty and the just rights of humanity seemed strangely transformed into the sordid spirit of the money-changer; those years of the drawn-out war when drudgery in obscure committee rooms was valued above declamation and the practical sense of Robert Morris counted for more than the finished oratory of Richard Henry Lee; the times that tried men's souls, when "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot ... shrinks from the service of his country, but he that stands ... deserves the love of man and woman." Happily for America there were many who kept the faith, who fought the good fight, during these dark days. Yet one is apt to think that the Declaration must have proved a vain boast of rebels but for that Virginia colonel whom the Congress appointed, on June 17, 1775, to be "General and Commander in Chief of the armies of the United Colonies"; that man so modest that he thought himself incompetent for the task, yet of such heroic resolution that neither difficulties nor reverses nor betrayals could bring him to despair; that man of rectitude, whose will was steeled to finer temper by every defeat, and who was not to be turned, by any failure or success, by any calumny, by gold, or by the dream of empire, from the straight path of his purpose.
He had come, in June, 1776, fresh from the notable achievement which drove the British army out of Boston, to defend New York against the most formidable military and naval force ever seen in America. With a rashness born of inexperience or the necessity of making a stand, Washington carried his undisciplined farmers and frontier riflemen across to Brooklyn Heights on Long Island, to meet inevitable defeat at the hands of General Howe. A ship or two, which the slow-moving British commander might have sent up the East River, would have prevented the masterly retreat which saved the American army from capture. But Howe seemed bent only upon occupying New York, which thus became, and until the end of the war remained, the British and Loyalist headquarters. With a deliberation that enraged the Loyalist and non-plussed his subordinates, the general pushed the patriot army northward to White Plains, missing there a second opportunity to win a decisive battle. But the capture of Fort Washington on the Hudson opened the river to the British navy, and compelled the American forces to retreat through New Jersey, and across the Delaware River at Trenton into Pennsylvania. Half a year had not passed since the Declaration of Independence when the cause of America seemed already lost. "We looked upon the contest as nearly closed," Major Thomas assured his patriot friends, "and considered ourselves a vanquished people." The indifferent populace of New York and New Jersey came in crowds to swear allegiance to the victorious army. No one doubted that Howe would cross the river and take Philadelphia. The jubilant Loyalists of the capital city awaited their deliverance. Congress, bundling its records into a farm wagon, scrambled away to Baltimore. And even the steadfast Washington, with his tatterdemalion army reduced to three thousand effectives, wrote that if new troops could not be raised without delay "the game is nearly up."
Of Villeroi, a general in the army of Louis XIV, it was said that he had "well served the king—William." It might be said of Howe that he shares with Washington the merit of achieving American independence. He never quite deserted the patriot cause; and now, at this critical moment, instead of pressing on to Philadelphia, he retired his main army, leaving only some Hessian outposts at Trenton and Bordentown. This arrangement enabled Washington to revive the waning enthusiasm of the country by executing one of the most daring and brilliant strokes of the war. Amidst the snow and sleet of a bitter December night, he ferried his forlorn little force through the floating ice of the Delaware, and on Christmas morning of 1776 surprised and captured Colonel Ball and one thousand Hessians. Cornwallis, on the point of departure for England, was hastily recalled to recover the lost ground; but he was out-generaled and defeated, and Washington occupied Morristown Heights, where he would indeed have been "left to scuffle for Liberty like another Cato," had he not been, to his great amazement, allowed by the British commander to remain unmolested there until the next spring. "All winter," he writes, "we were at their mercy, with sometimes scarcely a sufficient body of men to mount the ordinary guards, liable at every moment to be dissipated, if they had only thought proper to march against us."
If the conduct of the British general in the winter of 1777 amazed Washington, his management of the next campaign was even more inexplicable. The army of Burgoyne was then moving slowly southward from Canada by way of Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. It was the intention of the ministers that Howe should coöperate with the northern army; and Washington supposed that the purpose of the campaign was to effect a complete separation of New England from the more Loyalist Middle and Southern colonies. As this was thought to be precisely the most fatal circumstance which could come to pass, an army, far larger than that of Washington, was gathering to check if possible the advance of Burgoyne. But Howe neither moved north to the relief of Burgoyne, nor sent any part of his troops until it was too late. Wasting the early summer in fruitless maneuvers in northern Jersey, he finally carried his army by sea to the Chesapeake Bay, where he arrived on the 21st of August. The general had sailed three hundred miles, and had now to march fifty miles more, in order to reach Philadelphia, which was ninety-two miles from the point where he first embarked; and the army of Washington, the very army which he had sailed so far and wasted so many precious weeks to avoid, still lay across his path. At Brandywine and Germantown he fought, and easily won, the battles which could no longer be avoided. The way to Philadelphia was indeed open; but the fate of the northern army was already sealed. Caught in the difficult forests of the Hudson Valley, with supplies exhausted, unable either to retreat or to advance, on October 17, thirteen days after Howe won the battle of Germantown, Burgoyne lost the battle of Saratoga and surrendered his entire army to General Gates.