[24] In a paper read before the Maryland Historical Society. See, also, his Logan and Cresap, Albany, 1867. The story is well told by Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, in his admirable book, The Winning of the West, New York, 1889. Though I leave the present chapter mainly as it was written in 1883, I have, in revising it for publication, derived one or two valuable hints from Mr. Roosevelt’s work.
[25] This point has been well elucidated by Mr. Roosevelt in his Winning of the West, vol. i. pp. 240, 306.
[26] See my Critical Period of American History, chap. i.
[27] “The conduct of the Americans upon this occasion was highly meritorious: for they would have been fully justified in putting the garrison to the sword: not one man of which was put to death but in fair combat.” Stedman’s History of the American War, London, 1794, vol. ii. p. 145. This remark seems to bear unconscious testimony to the somewhat higher degree of humanity which American civilization had reached as compared with civilization in Europe. According to the usage inherited from the so-called ages of chivalry, it was deemed proper to massacre a captured garrison as a “punishment” calculated to deter commanders from wasting lives in trying to defend indefensible places. In the thirteenth article of the international agreement proposed in the Brussels Conference of 1874, such slaughter is called “murder,” and is strictly prohibited; it would not now be tolerated by public opinion anywhere in Europe outside of Turkey. In our Revolutionary War the garrison of Fort Washington was threatened with slaughter by General Howe, but the threat was not carried out. (See above, vol. i. p. 230.) At the capture of Fort Griswold, Sept. 6, 1781, the massacre of the surrendered garrison has always been rightly regarded as a foul blot upon the British record. Mr. Lecky more than once recognizes the humanity of the Americans, and pronounces them superior in this respect to the British. (History of England in the Eighteenth Century, iv. 145, and elsewhere.) Care must be taken, however, in the interests of historic truth, not to press this opinion too far. A great deal of fustian has been written about the “barbarities” of the British soldiers in the Revolutionary War. John Adams compared those honourable and kindly gentlemen, the brothers Howe, with such wretches as Borgia and Alva, and suggested that “medals in gold, silver, and copper ought to be struck in commemoration of the shocking cruelties, the brutal barbarities, and the diabolical impieties of this war; and these should be contrasted with the kindness, tenderness, humanity, and philanthropy which have marked the conduct of Americans toward their prisoners.” (Familiar Letters of John Adams and his Wife, p. 266.) The spirit of this quotation pervades the late George Bancroft’s narrative of the Revolution, and fills it with a carping animosity that is simply silly. In point of fact there was no strongly marked difference between British and Americans in respect of humanity. Much has been said about the horrors of the British prison-ships in New York harbour and elsewhere (see Greene’s Historical View, p. 351); but the horrors of the old Newgate prison near Granby, in my native state of Connecticut, were even worse (see Phelps’s History of the Newgate Prison), and the prisons of Massachusetts were not much better. Honest men unable to pay their debts were thrown into these frightful dungeons and treated as brutally as ever the British treated their prisoners of war.
Blame has been deservedly bestowed upon the British for their employment of Indian auxiliaries; but Americans must to some extent share the blame, for early in 1775, before the bloodshed at Lexington, the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts enlisted Stockbridge Indians as minute-men, and tried to prevail upon the Six Nations “to take an active part in this glorious cause.” Indians served on the American side at the battles of Long Island and White Plains (New York Colonial Documents, viii. 740; Jones’s Annals of Oneida County, p. 854; Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist. vi. 612-618). In a well-known passage of the Declaration of Independence the king is arraigned because “he has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.” The taint of hypocrisy here is revealed by the fact that Congress had on June 3 authorized Washington to employ 2,000 Indians in Canada; and on July 8 it further empowered him to enlist the tribes in eastern Maine and Nova Scotia. These orders were in pursuance of a resolve of May 25, that “it is highly expedient to engage the Indians in the service of the United Colonies.” (Secret Journals of Congress, p. 44; cf. Washington’s Writings, ed. Ford, iv. 140, 154, 168.) Washington approved of this hiring of Indians. On the whole, as so often happens, we held up our hands in holy horror at other people for doing what we did not scruple to do ourselves.
Among the articles adopted at the Brussels Conference of 1874 was one to the effect that “the population of an occupied territory cannot be compelled to take part in military operations against their own country, nor to swear allegiance to the enemy’s power.” (Farrer, Military Manners and Customs, p. 12.) No such rule was recognized a century ago. In South Carolina the British commanders shot as deserters persons captured in fight after having once accepted British protection. The execution of Col. Isaac Hayne, an eminent citizen, under peculiarly aggravating circumstances, by order of Lord Rawdon, called forth intense indignation. But it should not be forgotten that Greene also, on several occasions, shot as deserters persons found in the enemy’s ranks after serving in his own. Such was the military usage at that time.
A good many of the charges of cruelty, alleged on either side, must be taken with allowances for gross exaggeration. For example, at Concord, April 19, 1775, a farmer’s boy, in combat with a wounded soldier, struck him on the head with a hatchet and killed him. This incident, as magnified by the British, gave rise to the statement that the Americans mutilated and scalped the wounded soldiers lying on the road; a statement which is still sometimes repeated, although it was long ago proved to be false.
On the whole, while I agree with Mr. Lecky that the Americans behaved with more humanity than their antagonists, it does not appear that the difference was a wide one. To the credit of both sides it may be said that there was less barbarity than was usual in European wars before the nineteenth century.
[28] The first commander-in-chief of the United States navy was Ezekiel Hopkins, of Rhode Island, appointed by Congress in December, 1775. His rank was intended to correspond in the navy with that held by Washington in the army. In the papers of the time he is often styled “admiral,” but among seamen he was commonly known as “commodore.” The officers next below him were captains. In February, 1776, Hopkins got out to sea with a small fleet; in April, with two sloops-of-war and three small brigs, he attacked the British sloop Glasgow 20, and failed to take her. His failure was visited with severe and perhaps excessive condemnation; in the following October, Congress passed a vote of censure on him, and in January, 1777, dismissed him from the service. For the rest of the war no commander-in-chief of the navy was appointed.
One of Hopkins’s vessels, the brig Lexington 14, was commanded by John Barry, a native of Wexford county, Ireland, who had long dwelt in Philadelphia. In April, 1776, a few days after Hopkins’s failure, the Lexington met the British tender Edward off the capes of Virginia, and captured her after an hour’s fight. This was the first capture of a British warship by an American. Barry served with distinction through the war and died at the head of the navy in 1803.