Great Events in the History of North and South America

by Charles A. Goodrich

In 1783, a general peace was concluded, and the United States procured a formal acknowledgment of their independence. When Adams, the first American envoy, attended at the levee, the king, to whom he was personally disagreeable, received him with dignified composure, and said, "I was the last man in England to acknowledge the independence of America, but having done so, I shall also be the last to violate it." This was highly honorable to the king. America was a jewel in the British crown which was increasing in lustre, to part with which was truly painful to royal ambition. Nor did George III. consent to any acts which tended to this relinquishment, only as he was compelled to it by the ill success of his armies in America, and the clamorous demands for peace by his subjects at home. But having, at length, parted with this jewel, and having acknowledged the independence of America, he nobly declared his intention to live in peace with this newborn empire.

JOHN BURGOYNE.

General Burgoyne was the natural son of Lord Bingley. At an early age he entered the army; and while quartered with his regiment at Preston, married Lady Charlotte Stanley, whose father, the Earl of Derby, was so incensed at the match, that he threatened utterly to discard her; but a reconciliation at length took place, and the earl allowed her three hundred pounds a-year during his life, and, by his will, bequeathed her a legacy of twenty-five thousand pounds. The influence of the family to which Burgoyne had thus become allied, tended materially to accelerate his professional advance. In 1762, he acted as brigadier-general of the British forces which were sent out for the defence of Portugal against France and Spain.

In 1775, he was appointed to a command in America; whence he returned in the following year, and held a long conference with the king on colonial affairs. Resuming his post in 1777, he addressed a proclamation to the native Indians, in which he invited them to his standard, but deprecated, with due severity, the cruel practice of scalping. The pompous turgidity of style, in which this address was couched, excited the ridicule of the Americans, and procured for General Burgoyne the soubriquet of "Chrononhotonthologos." His first operations were successful: he dislodged the enemy from Ticonderoga and Mount Independence, and took a large number of cannon, all their armed vessels and batteries, as well as a considerable part of their baggage, ammunition, provisions, and military stores. But his subsequent career was truly disastrous; his troops suffered much from bad roads, inclement weather, and a scarcity of provisions; the Indians, who had previously assisted him, deserted; and the Americans, under General Gates, surrounded him with a superior force, to which, although victorious in two engagements, he was, at length, compelled to capitulate at Saratoga, with the whole of his army. This event, which rendered him equally odious to ministers and the people, was, for some time, the leading topic of the press; and numberless lampoons appeared, in which the general's conduct was most severely satirized. The punsters of the day, taking advantage of the American general's name, amused themselves unmercifully at Burgoyne's expense; but of all their effusions, which, for the most part, were virulent rather than pointed, the following harmless epigram, poor as it is, appears to have been one of the best:

"Burgoyne, unconscious of impending fates,
Could cut his way through woods, but not through Gates."

In May, 1778, he returned to England, on his parole, but the king refused to see him. Burgoyne solicited a court-martial, but in vain. In 1779, he was dismissed the service for refusing to return to America. Three years after, however, he was restored to his rank in the army, appointed commander-in-chief in Ireland, and sworn in one of the privy-council of that kingdom. He died suddenly of a fit of the gout, at his house in Hertford street, on the 4th of August, 1792; and his remains were interred in the cloisters of Westminster abbey.

It would, perhaps, be rash to pronounce a positive opinion of the merits of Burgoyne, as a commander. He boldly courted a scrutiny into the causes which led to his surrender at Saratoga, which ministers refused, because, as it has been insinuated, such a proceeding might expose the absurd imprudence and inefficiency of their own measures with regard to the American war. Prior to the capitulation, his military career, as well in America as Portugal, had been rather brilliant; his misfortune was precisely that which befel Cornwallis; but, unlike the latter, Burgoyne was not allowed an opportunity of redeeming his reputation.

In parliament, he was a frequent and fluent, but neither a sound nor an impressive speaker. While in employment, he appears to have been a staunch advocate for the American war; which, however, he severely reprobated, from the time that he ceased to hold a command. He was a writer, chiefly dramatic, of considerable merit.

SIR HENRY CLINTON.

This distinguished general was a grandson of the Earl of Clinton, and was born about the year 1738. After having received a liberal education, he entered the army, and served for some time in Hanover. In the early part of the revolutionary struggle he came to America, and was present at the battle of Bunker's hill; from which time to the close of the American war, he continued to aid the British cause. In 1777, he was made a Knight of the Bath, and in January, 1778, commander-in-chief of the British forces in America. On his return to England, a pamphlet war took place between him and Cornwallis, as to the surrender of the latter, the entire blame of which each party attributed to the other. In 1793, he obtained the governorship of Gibraltar, in possession of which he died on the 23d of December, 1795.