The various Highland regiments that were raised after the Black Watch were largely the outcome of personal enterprise. The chief of the Macleods, for instance, raised the battalion that afterwards became the 1st Highland Light Infantry. The principal cities in Scotland each contributed towards a regiment, and the great families of Seaforth, Gordon, Argyll, and Macdonald did much in the time succeeding and preceding the American War to foster the military spirit. The regiment created by the Earl of Seaforth ultimately became the 1st Seaforth Highlanders.

There is, I think, only one particular point to note before we continue this narrative. In times of major warfare, such as in the great campaigning of the Napoleonic wars, the Crimea, and South Africa, several Highland regiments, not necessarily all, were banded together under the control of a commander, and called the Highland Brigade. A brigade may consist of three or four or more battalions, each battalion roughly a thousand odd men, and naturally comes into severe fighting.

In the Crimea the Highland Brigade was composed of three regiments, the Black Watch, the Camerons, and the 93rd Sutherlands. It was commanded by the famous Sir Colin Campbell. In the Indian Mutiny no regular brigade was formed. In the Egyptian war in 1882 the Highland Brigade was under the command of Sir Archibald Alison, and included the Black Watch, the Highland Light Infantry, the Gordons, and the Camerons. In the Boer War of 1889-1902 the Highland Brigade was under the command of General Wauchope, and included the 2nd Battalion of the Black Watch, the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders, the 1st Argyll and Sutherlands, and the 1st Highland Light Infantry. It was these four regiments that met with the severe reverse at Magersfontein.

At the time when the American War of Independence broke out George III. was upon the throne. He was an Englishman born and bred, and, after the earlier Georges, that in itself made a great appeal to the imagination of the English people. He was a man possessed of a great sincerity and a greater obstinacy, who lived as much as possible amongst his tenants in the country or within his own domestic circle. He evidenced, in brief, most of the virtues with many of the weaknesses of the English character. Though he displayed to a large degree the genial spirit that made men call him ‘Farmer George,’ there was also rather too much John Bull in his personality. His were the virtues of an honest, determined, rather stupid Englishman. It might be said that such a nature as this, particularly in the riotous eighteenth century, could achieve nothing but good. Unfortunately he not only ruled his family so harshly that they all turned out extremely badly, but he also tried to carry out the same attitude towards America. He scolded the colonists as though they were naughty children, and the colonists, many of whom had no acquaintance with England, and whose forebears had left the mother-country for the very good reason that they were happier out of it, met this intolerance with a bold and determined front. They naturally resented the autocratic demands of the Government; they could not tolerate the attitude of the English officers, while although they had outgrown Jacobite sympathies, they cherished no loyalty to a Hanoverian king.

In 1761 the Importation Act was passed, an attempt to enforce payment of duty, in consequence of which English ships went far to ruin trade with the West Indies. The end of the French and Indian wars had brought with it a great increase to the National Debt, and it seemed only fair to the Government that, as the conflict had been undertaken principally to guard the interests of the settlers, the cost should be shared by them. To this the colonists retorted that they too had fought, and that Canada was ample compensation to the British for any loss of capital.

In 1765 the Stamp Act was passed, ordering that all documents of every description must be printed on paper purchased from the Government.

On October 1, 1768, seven hundred soldiers marched into Boston and attempted to overawe the residents. To use a familiar catch-phrase, ‘the Government was asking for trouble.’ But the colonists still displayed great patience, and though disaffection simmered, it was not until 1773 that any sign of rebellion was visible. It was then that fifty men, dressed up as Red Indians, flung a cargo of tea into Boston Harbour, and on March 31, 1774, the port was ordered to be closed by the Government. Once started, deeds followed fast upon words, while incident hurried upon incident. Little things acquire an indescribable importance at such times, just as a spark will blow up a magazine. Finally, on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the war commenced.

In England the effect of the Declaration was provocative of hardly more alarm than the outbreak of war in South Africa in 1899. In both cases it was exceedingly difficult to estimate the power of the enemy, and hard to believe he could resist a disciplined army. Take, for instance, a typical blusterer of the period. Major James Grant stated in the House of Commons that he knew the Americans very well, and was certain they would not fight,—“that they were not soldiers, and never could be made so, being naturally pusillanimous and incapable of discipline; that a very slight force would be more than sufficient for their complete reduction; and he fortified his statement by repeating their peculiar expressions and ridiculing their religious enthusiasm, manners, and ways of living, greatly to the entertainment of the House.”[[6]]

Pitt replied in memorable words. “The spirit,” he said, “which resists your taxation in America is the same that formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money in England.... This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America, who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence, and who will die in defence of their rights as freemen.”

Throughout England there was the bitterest resentment against the war, with the widest sympathy for the Americans. Many officers handed in their papers, and meetings were held to express the indignation that such a step should have been forced upon a loyal and long-suffering people. Only Scotland, Tory at home and abroad, supported the king against America, while, with pathetic loyalty, the Highlanders, some of whom had fought for Prince Charlie against George II., risked their lives and lost their homes in America for the cause of George III.