Again it would be laughable but for the tragic consequence. The colonial Governments deplored the lawless act and were ready to make compensation. But the king, who had ever bewailed what he called "the fatal compliance" in the repeal of the Stamp Act, would accept no expression of regret. Measures were introduced into Parliament for closing the port of Boston to all commerce, by way of punishment for the act of "hooliganism," as we now should call it, and virtually all the liberties granted by charter to the State of Massachusetts, of which Boston was the chief city, were withdrawn. Troops were sent out to enforce these decrees, and the general in command was appointed Governor of the State with powers such as had never before been vested in any governor of any American colony.
The citizens of Massachusetts refused to obey the enactments of the Governor, and all the colonies in America sooner or later came to the support of Massachusetts. And that is no matter for our wonder, seeing that they must have felt that what was done to Massachusetts to-day might be done to them to-morrow. They must quickly have realised that their best hope of liberty lay in opposing a united front to the servitude that threatened them. It might seem but a slender hope; yet we may remember that those colonists of a new world were far more apt to make good fighters than agriculturists or townsfolk in a long settled land. They were still surrounded by hostile tribes of Red Indians. Many of themselves, and most of their forefathers, must have lived with rifle ever ready at hand, for protection against sudden attack, while they went about their tasks of peace. They were doubtless quick-witted, as men needs must be who are constantly facing new conditions. They were tough, determined men, and in their struggle to be free they found a man to lead them—George Washington.
Of their tough quality the British soldiers made experience in the first serious clash of arms at Bunker's Hill. I cannot tell you, in a story of barest outlines like this, the details of the long drawn-out fighting, how the cause of the colonists' freedom seemed now and again all but lost, how the fortunes of the war went this way and that. For its changes were scarcely less remarkable than those of the Seven Years' War in Europe. The quality that served the colonists best and enabled them to win through was that essentially British quality of refusing to believe themselves defeated. They endured with an extraordinary steadfastness and they recovered themselves when beaten to the ground with a marvellous resilience.
Even after fighting had begun, a reconciliation might have been made had the counsels of Lord Chatham prevailed at home. George Washington was representative of the great landowners of Virginia. By their traditions, and also owing to the fact that their state lay far south of that Massachusetts which was the immediate sufferer by the British tyranny, the Virginians clung more closely and longer to the mother country than any of the other colonial children. But their clinging was of no use. Chatham's good counsel was rejected. Washington, as leader of the nation in war, was probably the more looked up to because he had tried so hard for peace. His face now was set as firmly towards the prosecution of the war as it had been towards peace while any hope of favourable peace was left. And every year of the war's duration revealed more and more his rare character for wisdom, determination, and moderation.
Course of the War
A solemn and formal declaration of the independence of the United States of America was made on July 4th, 1776, but all that year and the greater part of the next the fighting went hardly for the colonists until, in October, 1777, the British under Burgoyne suffered their first serious—and it was very serious—defeat at Saratoga.
It was a disaster to the British arms which had far-reaching effects. France was still seething with discontent over the loss of colonies in the Seven Years' War. Now, encouraged by the event of Saratoga, she declared war on Great Britain. Spain shortly followed her lead. And in the same year Lord Chatham died. A little later Holland took the side of the enemies of Great Britain also, provoked by the claims of Britain to search the ships of neutral nations for arms or other "contraband of war" which they might be carrying for the Americans. Sweden, Russia, and Denmark united in an "armed neutrality" compact against her, to enforce the freedom of the seas and the right which they claimed for their ships to cross the ocean without liability to be searched.
A further effect of Saratoga was that the British armies took the field no more in the northern States, but concentrated in the south. There they held their own, if not more than their own, until in 1781 a second blow, even more calamitous than that of Saratoga, befell them. The generals in command of the sections of the British did not work in harmony. Lord Cornwallis was disappointed in the support which he had expected, and entrenched himself behind defensive lines in York Town in Virginia. The French fleet held the sea. Washington marched round and cut him off from supplies by land. He was driven by famine to surrender, with all his army.
It was the end of the war. It was the establishment, never again to be shaken, of the independence of the United States of America. It looked grievously like the end of Great Britain as a leading power in the world. Ireland rose against her in a clamour for what virtually was independence, Spain claimed Gibraltar as the price of peace, and France demanded that Great Britain should give over to her the greater part of British India.
Then, in that very dark hour for England, deliverance came, as more than once before, from the sea. Lord Rodney had already struck a disabling blow at a main portion of the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent; and now, in 1782, he dealt what really was a shattering stroke on the French fleet in the West Indies. These naval victories and the repulse of the French and Spanish ships beleaguering Gibraltar disposed those nations to agree to terms of peace in which England could acquiesce without dishonour. She lost nothing to France; to Spain she resigned the island of Minorca and gave back Florida; and—she lost the United States.