The entire failure of the Americans to conquer Canada in the war of 1812-1815 is an illustration of the folly of coercing the allegiance of a people against their will. Upper Canada at that time consisted of less than 100,000 inhabitants; yet, with the extra aid of only a few hundred English soldiers, she repelled for three years the forces of the United States—more than ten times their number, and separated only by a river.
Mr. J.M. Ludlow, in his brief but comprehensive "History of the War of American Independence, 1775-1783," Chapter vii., well states the folly of England in endeavouring to conquer by arms the opinions of three millions of people, and the impossibility of the American colonists achieving their independence without the aid of men and money, and ships from France, to which, in connection with Spain and Holland, the Americans are actually indebted for their independence, and not merely to their own sole strength and prowess, as American writers so universally boast. Mr. Ludlow observes:
"At a time when steam had not yet baffled the winds, to dream of conquering by force of arms, on the other side of the Atlantic, a people of the English race, numbering between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000, with something like 1,200 miles of seaboard, was surely an act of enormous folly. We have seen in our own days the difficulties experienced by the far more powerful and populous Northern States in quelling the secession of the Southern, when between the two there was no other frontier than at most a river, very often a mere ideal line, and when armies could be raised by 100,000 men at a time. England attempted a far more difficult task, with forces which, till 1781, never exceeded 35,000 men, and never afterwards exceeded 42,075, including 'Provincials,' i.e., American Loyalists." (But England, repeatedly on the verge of success, failed from the incapacity and inactivity of the English generals.)
"Yet it is impossible to doubt that not once only, but repeatedly during the course of the struggle, England was on the verge of triumph. The American armies were perpetually melting away before the enemy—directly, through the practice of short enlistments; indirectly, through desertions. These desertions, if they might be often palliated by the straits to which the men were reduced through arrears of pay and want of supplies, arose in other cases, as after the retreat from New York, from sheer loss of heart in the cause. The main army, under Washington, was seldom even equal in numbers to that opposed to him. In the winter of 1776-77, when his troops were only 4,000 strong, it is difficult to understand how it was that Sir William Howe, with more than double the number, should have failed to annihilate the American army."
"WEAKNESS OF THE AMERICAN ARMY.
"In the winter of 1777-78 the 'dreadful situation of the army for want of provisions,' made Washington 'advise' that they should not have been excited to a general mutiny and desertion. In May, 1779, he hardly knew any resource for the American cause except in reinforcements from France, and did not know what might be the consequence if the enemy had it in their power to press the troops hard in the ensuing campaign. In December of that year his forces were 'mouldering away daily,' and he considered that Sir Henry Clinton, with more than twice his numbers, could 'not justify remaining inactive with a force so superior.' A year later he was compelled, for want of clothing, to discharge the levies which he had always so much trouble in obtaining; and 'want of flour would have disbanded the whole army' if he had not adopted this expedient.
"In March, 1781, again the crisis was 'perilous,' and though he did not doubt the happy issue of the contest, he considered that the period for accomplishment might be too far distant for a person of his years. In April he wrote: 'We cannot transport provisions from the States in which they are assessed to the army, because we cannot pay the teamsters, who will no longer work for certificates. It is equally certain that our troops are approaching fast to nakedness, and that we have nothing to clothe them with; that our hospitals are without medicines, and our sick without nutriment, except such as well men eat; and that all our public works are at a stand, and the artificers disbanding. * * It may be declared in a word that we are at the end of our tether, and that now or never our deliverance must come.' Six months later, when Yorktown capitulated, the British forces remaining in North America, after the surrender of that garrison by Cornwallis, were more considerable than they had been as late as February, 1779, and Sir Henry Clinton even then declared that with a reinforcement of 10,000 he would be responsible for the conquest of America.
"The main hope of success on the English side lay in the idea that the spirit and acts of resistance to the authority of the mother country were in reality only on the part of a turbulent minority—that the bulk of the people desired to be loyal. It is certain indeed that the struggle was, in America itself, much more of a civil war than the Americans are now generally disposed to admit. In December, 1780, there were 8,954 'Provincials' among the British forces in America, and on March 7th, 1781, a letter from Lord George Germaine to Sir H. Clinton, intercepted by the Americans, says: 'The American levies in the King's service are more in number than the whole of the enlisted troops in the service of the Congress.' As late as September 1st, 1781, there were 7,241. We hear of loyal 'associations' in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Pennsylvania; of 'associated Loyalists' in New York; and everywhere of 'Tories,' whose arrest Washington is found suggesting to Governor Trumbull, of Connecticut, as early as November 12th, 1775. But New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania remained long full of Tories. By June 28th, 1776, the disaffected on Long Island had taken up arms, and after the evacuation of New York by Washington a brigade of Loyalists was raised on the island, and companies were formed in two neighbouring counties to join the King's troops. During Washington's retreat through New Jersey, 'the inhabitants, either from fear or disaffection, almost to a man refused to turn out.' In Pennsylvania, the militia, instead of giving any assistance in repelling the British, exulted at their approach and over the misfortunes of their countrymen. On the 20th of that month the British were 'daily gathering strength from the disaffected.' In 1777, the Tories who joined Burgoyne in his expedition from the North are said to have doubled his force. In 1778, Tories joined the Indians in the devastation of Wyoming and Cherry Valley; and although the indiscriminate ravages of the British, or of the Germans in their pay, seem to have aroused the three States above mentioned to self-defence, yet, as late as May, 1780, Washington still speaks of sending a small party of cavalry to escort La Fayette safely through the 'Tory settlements' of New York. Virginia, as late as the spring of 1776, was 'alarmed at the idea of independence.' Washington admitted that his countrymen (of that State), 'from their form of government, and steady attachment heretofore to royalty,' would 'come reluctantly' to that idea, but trusted to 'time and persecution.' In 1781, the ground for transferring the seat of war to the Chesapeake was the number of Loyalists in that quarter. In the Southern States the division of feeling was still greater. In the Carolinas, a royalist regiment was raised in a few days in 1776, and again in 1779. In Georgia and in South Carolina the bitterest partisan warfare was carried on between Whig and Tory bands; and a body of New York Tories contributed powerfully to the fall of Savannah in 1778, by taking the American forces in the rear.
"On the other hand, the British generals did not receive that support from the Loyalists which they had expected. They seem to have looked upon the Loyalists as an inferior class of aids to the regular soldiery; their advice seems to have been unsought, and the mode of war pursued was European, and not adapted to the peculiar circumstances of America. The Loyalist volunteers were looked upon as the rivals to rather than fellow-soldiers of the regular army; and no provincial Loyalist was promoted to lead any expedition or command any position of importance. This depreciation of the Loyalists by the English (utterly incompetent) generals exactly answered the purposes of American writers. But the real cause of its protraction, though it may be hard to an American to admit the fact, lay in the incapacity of the American politicians, and, it must be added, in the supineness and want of patriotism of the American people. If indeed importing into the views of later date, we look upon it as one between two nations, the mismanagement of the war by the Americans on all points save one—the retention of Washington in the chief command—is seen to have been so pitiable, from first to last, as to be in fact almost unintelligible."
"DESCRIPTION OF THE AMERICAN ARMY, AND THE MANNER OF RAISING IT.