It was at one in the morning that the adventure was begun. Silently the boats moved down the stream, the dark ships following in silence. Thousands of brave hearts beat with heroic resolve beneath the eternal stars. The shadowy cove was gained; Wolfe's foot has touched the shore; as the armed figures follow and gather at the foot of the ascent, no words are spoken, but what an eloquence in those faces! Upward they climb, afire with zeal; Howe has won a battery; upward! the picket on the height, too late aroused from sleep by the stern miracle, is overpowered. With panting lungs man after man tops the ascent and sees the darkling plain and forms in line with his comrades, while still the stream winds up endlessly from the depths below. The earth is giving birth to an army. Coiling upward, deploying, ranging out, rank after rank they are extended along the front of the forest, with Quebec before them. No drum has beat; no bugle has spoken; but Wolfe is there, his spirit is in five thousand breasts, and there needs no trumpet for the battle.
As the last of the army formed upon the rugged field, dawn broke upon the east, and soon the early sunshine sparkled on their weapons and glowed along the ranks of English red. Meanwhile Montcalm had been apprised; his first instinct of incredulity had been swept away by the inevitable truth, and he manned himself for the struggle. Often had he conquered against odds; but now his spirit must bow before a spirit stronger than his, as Antony's before Augustus. And what had he to oppose against the seasoned veterans of the English army, thrice armed in the consciousness of their unparalleled achievement?—Five weak and astounded battalions, and a horde of inchoate peasants. But Montcalm did not falter; by ten he had taken up his position, and by eleven, after some ineffectual cannonading, to allow time for the arrival of re-enforcements which came not, he led the charge. The attack was disordered by the uneven ground, the fences and the ravines; and it was broken by the granite front of the English (three-fourths of them Americans) and their long-reserved and withering fire. The undisciplined Canadians flinched from that certain death; and Wolfe, advancing on them with his grenadiers, saw them melt away before the cold steel could reach them. The two leaders faced each other, both equally undaunted and alert; it was like a duel between them; no opening was missed, no chance neglected. The smoke hung in the still air of morning; the long lines of men swayed and undulated beneath it obscurely, and the roar of musketry dinned terribly in the ear, here slackening for a moment, there breaking forth in volleying thunders; and men were dropping everywhere; there were shoutings from the captains, the fierce crash of cheers, yells of triumph or agony, and the faint groans of the wounded unto death. Wolfe was hit, but he did not heed it; Montcalm has received a musket ball, but he cannot yet die. The English battle does not yield; it advances, the light of victory is upon it. Backward stagger the French; Montcalm strives to check the fatal movement, but the flying death has torn its way through his body, and he can no more. Wolfe, even as the day was won, got his death wound in the breast, but "Support me—don't let my brave fellows see me drop," he gasped out. His thoughts were with his army; let the retreat of the enemy be cut off; and he died with a happy will, and with God's name on his lips. Montcalm lingered, suggesting means by which to retrieve the day; but the power of France died with him. Quebec was lost and won; and human history was turned into a new channel, and no longer flowing through the caverns of mediaeval error, rolled its current toward the sunlight of liberty and progress. "The more a man is versed in business, the more he finds the hand of Providence everywhere," was the reply of William Pitt, when Parliament congratulated him on the victory. He had wrought his plans with wisdom and zeal; but "except the Lord build the city, they labor in vain who build it." There have been great statesmen and brave soldiers, before Pitt and Wolfe, and since; but there could be only one fall of Quebec, with all which that implied.
The following spring and summer were overshadowed by an unrighteous war against the Cherokees, precipitated by the royalist governor of Virginia, Lyttleton. An attempt by the French under Levi to recapture Quebec failed, in spite of the folly of the English commander, Murray; Pitt had foreseen the effort, and destroyed it with an English fleet. Amherst, in his own tortoise-like way, advanced and took possession of Montreal; and by permission of the Indian, Pontiac, who regarded himself as lord of the country, the English flag was carried to the outposts. Canada had surrendered; in the terms imposed, property and the religious faith of the people were respected; but nothing was promised them in the way of civil liberty. In discussing the European peace that was now looked for, question was raised whether to restore Canada, or the West Indian island of Guadaloupe, to France. Some, who feared that the retention of Canada would too much incline the colonies to independence, favored its return. But Franklin said that Canada would be a source of strength to England. The expense of defending that vast frontier would be saved; the rapidly increasing population would absorb English manufactures without limit, and their necessary devotion to farming would diminish their competition as manufacturers. He pointed out that their differences in governments and mutual jealousies made their united action against England unthinkable, "unless you grossly abuse them."—"Very true: that, I see, will happen," returned the English lawyer Pratt, afterward Lord Cam den, the attorney-general. But Pitt would not listen to Canada's being given up; he was for England, not for any English clique. On the other hand, one of those cliques was preparing to carry out the long meditated taxation of the colonies; and the sudden death of George II., bringing his son to the throne, favored their purpose; for the Third George had character and energy, and not a little intelligence for a king; and he was soon seen to intend the re-establishment of the royal prerogative in all its integrity. As a preliminary step to this end, he accepted Pitt's resignation in October, 1761.
Much to the displeasure of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, already Judge of Probate, was by Governor Bernard appointed to the Chief Justiceship of the colony; the royalist direction of his sympathies was known. In February, 1761, he heard argument in court as to whether revenue officers had power to call in executive assistance to enforce the acts of trade. The crown lawyer argued that to refuse it was to deny the sovereignty of the English Parliament in the colonies. Then James Otis arose, and made a protest which tingled through the whole colony, and was the first direct blow aimed against English domination. Power such as was asked for, he said, had already cost one king of England his head and another his throne. Writs of assistance were open to intolerable abuse; were the instrument of arbitrary power and destructive of the fundamental principles of law. Reason and the constitution were against them. "No act of Parliament can establish such a writ: an act of Parliament against the constitution is void!" These words were the seed of revolution. Hutchinson was frightened, but succeeded in persuading his colleagues to postpone decision until he had written to England. The English instruction was to enforce the law, and the judges acted accordingly; but the people replied by electing Otis to the assembly; and Hutchinson was more distrusted than ever. At the same time, in Virginia, Richard Henry Lee denounced the slave trade; the legislature indorsed his plea, but England denied it. South Carolina was alienated by the same decree, and also by an unpopular war against the Cherokees. In New York, the appointment of a judge "during the king's pleasure" roused the assembly; but the result of their remonstrance was that all colonial governors were instructed from England to grant no judicial commissions but during the king's pleasure. This was to make the Bench the instrument of the Prerogative. A judge acted on questions of property, without a jury, on information furnished by crown officers, and derived emoluments from his own award of forfeitures; and the governor would favor large seizures because he got one-third of the spoils. All the assemblies could do, for the present, was to reduce salaries; but that did not make the offenders any less avaricious. Moreover, the king began the practice of paying them in spite of the assemblies, and reproved the latter for "not being animated by a sense of their duty to their king and country."
James Otis continued to be the voice of the colonies. "Kings were made for the good of the people, not the people for them. By the laws of God and nature, government must not raise taxes on the property of the people without the consent of the people. To tax without the assembly's consent was the same in principle as for the king and the House of Lords to usurp legislative authority in England." For the utterance of these sentiments he was honored by the hearty support of the people, and still more by the denunciations of men of the Hutchinson sort. The ministers were not silent on the popular side. "May Heaven blast the designs, though not the soul," said Mayhew, with Christian discrimination, "of whoever he be among us who shall have the hardiness to attack the people's rights!" King George's answer, as soon as he had concluded the peace with France and Spain, in 1763, was to take measures to terrorize the colonists by sending out an army of twenty battalions to be kept permanently in America, the expenses of which the colonists were to pay. But by enforcing the acts of trade, England had now made herself the enemy of the whole civilized world, and the American colonies would not be without allies in the struggle that was drawing near.
While these matters were in agitation among the white people, the Indians in the north were discovering grievances of their own. Pontiac, an Ottawa chief, and by his personal abilities the natural leader of many tribes, was the instigator and center of the revolt. The English masters of Canada had showed themselves less congenial to the red men than the French had done; they could not understand that savages had any rights which they were bound to respect; while Pontiac conceived that no white man could live in the wilderness without his permission. Upon this issue, trouble was inevitable; and Pontiac planned a general movement of all the Indians in the north against the colonists. The success of the scheme could of course be only momentary; that it attained the dignity of a "war" was due to the influence and energy of the Indian general. His design was of broad scope, embracing a simultaneous attack on all the English frontier forts; a wide coalition of tribes was effected; and though their tactics were not essentially different from those heretofore employed by savages, yet their possession of arms, their skill in their use, and their numbers, made their onslaughts formidable. On several occasions they effected their entry into the forts by stratagem: a tale of misery told by a squaw; a ball in a game struck toward the door of the stronghold; professedly amicable conferences suddenly becoming massacres; such were the naive yet successful ruses employed. Many lives were lost, and the border lands were laid waste and panicstricken; but it was impossible for the Indians to hold together, and their victories hastened their undoing. No general engagement, of course, was fought, but Pontiac's authority gradually abated, and he was finally compelled to go into retirement. His Conspiracy has its picturesque side, but it is not organically related to our history; it was merely a fresh expression of the familiar fact that there could be no sincere friendship between the white and the red. The former could live with the latter if they would live like them; but no attempt to reverse the case could succeed. The solemnity with which the practice of signing treaties of peace with the Indians has uniformly been kept up is one of the curious features of our colonial annals, and indeed of later times. Indians will keep the peace without treaties, if they are kindly used and given liberty to do as they please; but no engagement is binding on them after they deem themselves wronged. They are pleased by the formalities, the speeches, and the gifts that accompany such conferences; they like to exchange compliments, and to play with belts of wampum; and it is possible that when they make their promises, they think they will keep them. They can understand the advantages of trade, and will make some sacrifice of their pride or convenience to secure them. But the mind is never dominant in them; the tides of passion flood it, and their wild nature carries them away. It may be surmised that we should have had fewer Indian troubles, had we never entered into any treaty with them. But thousands of treaties have been made, and broken, sometimes by one side, sometimes by the other, but always by one of the two. And then, punishments must be administered; but if punishment is for improvement, it has been as ineffective as the treaties. The only rational thing to do with an Indian is to kill him; and yet it may fairly be doubted whether complete moral justification could be shown for the killing of any Indian since Columbus landed at San Salvador.—As for Pontiac, a keg of liquor was inducement sufficient to one of his own race to murder him, five years after the failure of his revolt.
Toward the end of September, Jenkinson, Secretary of the Treasury in England, presented the draft for an American stamp-tax—the true authorship of which was never disclosed. This tax was the result of the argument of exclusion applied to the problem, How to raise a permanent and sufficient revenue from the colonies. Foreign and internal commerce taxes would not serve, because such commerce was forbidden by the Navigation Acts. A poll-tax would be inequitable to the slaveholders. Land-taxes could not be collected. Exchequer-bills were against an act of Parliament. Nothing but a stamp-tax remained, and all persons concerned were in favor of it, the colonists only excepted. Their opinion was that taxation without representation was an iniquity. But they did not perhaps consider that England owed a debt of seven hundred million dollars which must be provided for somehow; and that the interests of the empire demanded, in the opinion of those who were at its head, that the colonies be ruled with a stronger hand than heretofore. George Grenville accepted the responsibility of the act.
The king gave his consent to the employment of the entire official force of the colonies to prevent infringements of the Navigation Acts, and the army and navy were to assist them. There were large emoluments for seizures, and the right of search was unrestricted, afloat or ashore. In order to diminish the danger of union between the colonies, a new distribution, or alteration of boundaries, was adopted, with a view to increasing their number. But the country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi was to be closed to colonization, lest it should prove impossible to control settlers at such a distance. It proved, of course, still less possible to prevent emigration thither. But all seemed going well, and the Grenville ministry was so firmly established that nothing seemed able to shake it. The fact that a young Virginia lawyer, Patrick Henry by name, had said in the course of an argument against the claim of a clergyman for the value of some tobacco, that a king who annuls salutary laws is a tyrant, and forfeits all right to obedience; and that if ministers fail to fulfill the uses for which they were ordained, the community may justly strip them of their appointments—this circumstance probably did not come to the ears of the British ministry; but it had its effect in Virginia. Grenville, however, was induced by the appeals of some influential Americans in London to postpone his tax for a year, so that the assemblies might have an opportunity to consent to it. By way of tempting them to do this, he sought for special inducements; he revived the hemp and flax bounties; he permitted rice to be carried south of Carolina and Georgia on payment of half subsidy; and he removed the restrictions on the New England whale fishery. He then informed Parliament of his purpose of applying the stamp-tax to America, and asked if any member wished to question the right of Parliament to impose such a tax. In a full house, not a single person rose to object. The king gave it his "hearty" approval. It only remained for America humbly and gratefully to accept it.
First came comments. "If taxes are laid upon us in any shape, without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves?" asked Samuel Adams of Boston. "These duties are only the beginning of evils," said Livingston of New York. "Acts of Parliament against natural equity are void," Otis affirmed; and in a lucid and cogent analysis of the principles and ends of government he pointed out that the best good of the people could be secured only by a supreme legislative and executive ultimately in the people; but a universal congress being impracticable, representation was substituted: "but to bring the powers of all into the hands of one or some few, and to make them hereditary, is the interested work of the weak and wicked. Nothing but life and liberty are actually hereditable…. British colonists do not hold their liberties or their lands by so slippery a tenure as the will of princes; the colonists are common children of the same Creator with their brethren in Great Britain…. A time may come when Parliament shall declare every American charter void; but the natural, inherent rights of the colonists as men and citizens can never be abolished. The colonists know the blood and treasure independence would cost. They will never think of it till driven to it as the last fatal resort against ministerial oppression: but human nature must and will be rescued from the general slavery that has so long triumphed over the species." The immediate practical result was, that the colonists pledged themselves to use nothing of English manufacture, even to going without lamb to save wool. And even Hutchinson remarked that if England had paid as much for the support of the wars as had been voluntarily paid by the colonists, there would have been no great increase in the national debt.
All this made no impression in England. The dregs of the Canadian population were a handful of disreputable Protestant ex-officers, traders and publicans—"the most immoral collection of men I ever knew," as Murray said—but judges and juries were selected from these gentry, and the Catholics were disfranchised. In New England, boundaries were rearranged, and colonists had to buy new titles. New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, protested before Parliament against the taxation scheme; Philadelphia at first petitioned to be delivered from the selfishness of its proprietors even at the cost of becoming a royal colony; but later, Franklin advised that they grant supplies to the crown only when required of them "in the usual constitutional manner." George Wythe, speaking for Virginia, remonstrated against measures "fitter for exiles driven from their country after ignominiously forfeiting its favor and protection, than for the posterity of loyal Britons." Yet there were many royalist Americans who were urgent that English rule should be strengthened; and the English Board of Trade declared that the protests of the colonies showed "a most indecent disrespect to the legislature of Great Britain." The king decreed that in all military matters in America the orders of the commander-in-chief there, and under him of the brigadiers, should be supreme; and only in the absence of these officers might the governors give the word. This became important on the occasion of the "Boston Massacre" a few years later. In Parliament, Grenville said that he would never lend a hand toward forging chains for America, "lest in so doing I forge them for myself"; but he shuffled out of the American demand not to be taxed without representation by declaring that Parliament was "the common council of the whole empire," and added that America was to all intents and purposes as much represented in Parliament as many Englishmen. This assertion brought to his feet Barré, the companion of Wolfe at Quebec. He denied that America was virtually represented, and said that the House was ignorant of American affairs. Charles Townshend, who posed as an infallible authority on America, replied that the last war had cost the colonies little though they had profited much by it; and now these "American children, planted by our care, nourished up to strength and opulence by our indulgence, and protected by our arms, grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy burden under which we lie."