As we review the conflict we are apt to forget that the Americans were not alone in their efforts to throw off the restraint of law and authority of the government during the twenty years preceding the surrender at Yorktown; Wilkes, "Junius," and Lord George Gordon surpassed the efforts of Patrick Henry, Sam Adams, and Crispus Attucks, to make life unpleasant for King George. Mobs surged about the streets of London as they did in Boston, defying the law, destroying property, and disturbing the public peace. The house of Lord Mansfield, chief justice of England, was wrecked and burned to the ground in the same manner as the home of Thomas Hutchinson, chief justice of Massachusetts, was wrecked and pillaged. Both mobs claimed to act "on principle," and there is a curious likeness in the details of these two acts of violence. It was an age of insurrection, with no political genius able, or in a position, to direct the storm. During the Wilkes riots, in 1768, the civil power in England was reduced to extreme weakness. Lecky tells us "there were great fears that all the bulwarks of order would yield to the strain," and Franklin, then in London, said that if Wilkes had possessed a good character and the king a bad one, Wilkes would have driven George III. from the throne. In 1780, during the Gordon riots, chaos came again to London, and all England was threatened with anarchy. The time was out of joint on both continents, and George III. was not born to set it right. We may be sure there is something more serious than glory in all this turmoil that embittered the most beneficent of civilizing races. Whoever examines the dispute with impartial care, will probably perceive that the time had come for a new adjustment of the constitutional relations of the several parts of the British Empire, but the temper of George III. and the disorderly elements, active both in England and America, were unfavorable to rational treatment of the great problem.
Early in the Revolution it was considered necessary, in order to insure its success, to obtain aid and recognition from the French.
Mr. Silas Deane, of Connecticut, and three agents, were sent to France to feel the pulse of the king and nation upon the subject. They, however, neither acknowledged the agents nor directed them to leave the kingdom.
It was not so with individuals, among whom was M. Beaumarchais, who, on his own account and credit, furnished the United States with twenty thousand stand of arms and one thousand barrels of powder of one hundred pounds weight each. Ten thousand of the muskets were landed at Portsmouth, N. H., and the remainder in some southern State. The first opportunity of testing the qualities of the new French muskets occurred September 19, 1777, which engagement led up to the battle of Saratoga October 7, which terminated in the convention with Burgoyne October 17, 1777. Major Caleb Stark, the eldest son of Gen. John Stark, who was present in these actions, says: "I firmly believe that unless these arms had been thus timely furnished to the Americans, Burgoyne would have made an easy march to Albany. What then? My pen almost refuses to record the fact that these arms have never been paid for to this day. When the war ended, application was made to Congress for payment, which was refused on the frivolous pretext that they were a present from the French king. The claim was referred to the United States attorney-general, who reported in substance that he could find no evidence of their having been paid for, or that they were presented as a gift by the court of France.
"Supposing the most favorable plea of Congress to be true, that there was an underhand connivance by France to furnish the arms, or the king had thought proper to deny it, is it just or magnanimous for the United States to refuse payment? Suppose the arms were clearly a 'gift' bestowed upon us in our poverty, ought not a high-minded people to restore the value of that gift with ten-fold interest, when their benevolent friend has become poor, and they have waxed wealthy and strong?
"Congress, skulking behind their sovereignty, still refused payment. Yet the cries of Beaumarchais, reduced to poverty by the French Revolution, have not been heeded."[71]
The action of Congress concerning the Saratoga Convention was equally base. The whole number of prisoners surrendered by Burgoyne was 5791. The force of the Americans was, according to a statement which Gates furnished to Burgoyne, 13,222. The terms of the Convention was that Burgoyne's troops were to march out of their camp with all the honors of war, the artillery to be moved to the banks of the Hudson, and there to be left, together with the soldiers' arms; that a free passage should be granted the troops to Great Britain, on condition of their not serving again during the war; that the army should march to the neighborhood of Boston by the most expeditious and convenient route, and not delayed when transport should arrive to receive them; that every care should be taken for the proper subsistence of the troops till they should be embarked. Although Congress ratified the terms of the Convention entered into by General Burgoyne and Gates, yet they violated them in the most perfidious manner. Many Americans now regard this as the most disgraceful act ever perpetrated by the United States. There was not the slightest excuse for this treachery. When the British ministry charged Congress with positive perfidy, Congress added insult to injury by charging the ministry with "meditated perfidy," for they "believed the British would break their parole if released." After the arrival of the troops at Boston they were quartered at Cambridge, where they were subjected to the most cruel and inhuman treatment. Officers and soldiers were shot down and bayoneted in the most cold-blooded manner without the slightest provocation. If the officers resented any insults, they were sent to Worcester and treated as felons. They were charged the most exorbitant prices for food. Burgoyne alone was allowed to go home on parole; all the other officers and men were marched into the interior of Virginia, where they were kept in confinement for five years.[72]
There is probably not one American in a thousand that knows the origin and meaning of Washington's advice to his countrymen against entering into "entangling foreign alliances," and the often quoted phrase: "French Spoliation Claims," and yet the two are inseparably connected, and form a most important phase in the early history of the United States. American historians have passed over this episode, fearing that it would bring odium on the "Fathers of the Revolution." By the treaty made by Franklin with France, in which she recognized the United States and by which means American independence was secured, it was agreed that the United States should assist France in foreign complications in which she might be involved, and furthermore to protect her possessions in the West Indies. This was the first treaty made by the United States. When the time came for putting these pledges into force, the United States refused to act.
"The expense of the war of the Revolution was as much, if not more, to France, than to the United States, and it is a matter of historical truth that the expenses incurred in this war by France bankrupted the nation and hurried on the terrible events which convulsed the world from the commencement of the French Revolution until the battle of Waterloo. During all this distress and disaster, the Americans were chuckling in their sleeves, and wasting the treasures of the old world to embellish the half-fledged cities of the new world. Gratitude is a virtue often spoken of with apparent sincerity, but not so frequently exhibited in practice." This is the language of a well-known Revolutionary officer.[73] Therefore, the United States acted in a most shameful and disgraceful manner in violating the first treaty she ever entered into, through which she secured her independence; she did not give the French that assistance she had agreed to give by treaty, but remained neutral and indifferent, while England seized upon the larger part of the French colonies in the West Indies. The base ingratitude of the United States exasperated the French, so they issued orders to seize and destroy American property wherever found. Several naval engagements between the late allies ensued, and 898 vessels were seized by the French government or were destroyed by its cruisers, prior to the year 1800. Hence, when Ellsworth, Van Murray and Davie, the commissioners appointed by the United States to negotiate with France, and to settle the dispute, asked for damages for the seizure and destruction of American vessels, the French foreign minister turned upon them with the assertion that in performing her part of the Franklin treaty of 1778, France had spent $28,000,000, and had sacrificed the lives of thousands of her people, simply for the purpose of gaining the independence for the United States. All it had asked had been the friendship and assistance of the United States in the manner provided in this treaty. Instead of meeting these claims and requiting the generosity of France in the way such conduct deserved, the United States had ignored its obligations, and now came forward and advanced a petty claim for money, utterly forgetful of how much France had sacrificed in its behalf.
As might be supposed, there was no answer that could be made to this assertion, and hence the new treaty then drawn up, in which the two states agreed to renounce respectively whatever pretensions they might have had to claims one against the other, was ratified by the Senate, and promulgated by President Jefferson December 21, 1801, thus relieving France of all responsibility for damages caused by her cruisers prior to 1800, and throwing the responsibility of liquidating these demands upon the United States government—a responsibility it succeeded in avoiding for a hundred years, as it succeeded in avoiding the demands which the French government could and did make upon it to defend French West India possessions. These were the "entangling foreign alliances" referred to by Washington.