In November, 1763, a treaty of peace was signed at Paris, which led to further changes, all being favourable to Britain; whilst Martinique, Guadalope and St. Lucia were restored to France, England took possession of St. Vincent’s, Dominica and Tobago islands, which had hitherto been considered neutral. By the same treaty all the vast territory east of the Mississippi, from its source to the Gulf of Mexico, with the exception of the island of New Orleans, was yielded up to the British; and Spain, in return for Havanna, ceded her possession of Florida. Thus, says Hildreth, was vested in the British crown, as far as the consent of rival European claimants could give it, the sovereignty of the whole eastern half of North America, from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson’s Bay and the Polar Ocean. By the same treaty the navigation of the Mississippi was free to both nations. France at the same time gave to Spain, as a compensation for her losses in the war, all Louisiana west of the Mississippi, which contained at that time about 10,000 inhabitants, to whom this transfer was very unsatisfactory.
Three new British provinces were now erected in America; Quebec and East and West Florida. East Florida included all the country embraced by the present Florida, bounded on the north by the St. Mary’s. West Florida extended from the Apalachicola River to the Mississippi; from the 31st degree of latitude on the north, to the Gulf of Mexico on the south, thus including portions of the present states of Alabama and Mississippi. The boundary of Quebec corresponded with the claims of New York and Massachusetts, being a line from the southern end of Lake Nipissing, striking the St. Lawrence at the 45th degree of latitude, and following that parallel across the foot of Lake Champlain to the sources of the Connecticut, and thence along the highlands which separate the waters flowing into the St. Lawrence from those which fall into the sea.[[9]]
All, however, was not yet peace in the northern provinces. The English might possess themselves of French territory, but they could not win the hearts of the Indian, whom the devoted missionaries and the kind and politic French traders had attached to their nation. When, therefore, the English, who treated the Indians with cold contempt, were about to take possession, Pontiac, the brave and intellectual chief of the Ottawas, who cherished the hope of restoring his nation to independence, endeavoured to excite the Red men against their new lords. “If,” reasoned he, addressing his people, “the English have expelled the French, what should hinder, but that the Indian should destroy them before they have established their power, and thus the Red man once more be lord of the forest?” Pontiac, by his eloquence and energy, gained the co-operation of the whole north-western tribes, and the plan of a simultaneous attack on all the British posts on the lakes was formed without any suspicion being excited. The day fixed was the 7th of July, and on that day nine forts—all, indeed, excepting those of Niagara, Detroit and Fort Pitt—were surprised and taken. Nor was the outbreak confined to the forts; the whole frontier of Pennsylvania and Virginia, especially the former, was attacked, and the scattered traders and settlers plundered and cruelly murdered. The back settlers of Pennsylvania—principally Scotch and Irish Presbyterians, men of a character very different to that of the mild Quakers, and who, in the spirit of the older Puritans, regarded the Indians as the Canaanites of the Old Testament—rose up in vengeance, and the leaders of this movement coming principally from a place called Paxton, the body assumed the name of “the Paxton Boys,” and pursued their victims with a bloodthirsty spirit, which aimed at nothing less than extermination. In vain Benjamin Franklin interfered to save such friendly Indians as had fled for refuge to Philadelphia and other towns; the avengers knew no mercy, and for these unhappy remnants of a once powerful race there appeared no place of refuge but the grave. Such of the Christianised Indians as escaped this cold-blooded massacre established themselves on a distant branch of the Susquehanna; though their peace there was but of short duration, being again compelled, within a few years, to emigrate to the country north-west of the Ohio, where they and their missionaries, the Moravians, settled in three villages on the Muskinghum.
The conquest of Canada and the subjection of the eastern Indians giving security to the colonists of Maine, that province began to expand and flourish. The counties of Cumberland and Lincoln were added to the former single county of York, and settlers began to occupy the lower Kennebec, and to extend themselves along the coast towards the Penobscot. Nor was this northern expansion confined alone to Maine; settlers began to occupy both sides of the upper Connecticut, and to advance into new regions beyond the Green Mountains, towards Lake Champlain, a beautiful and fertile country which had first become known to the colonists in the late war. Homes were growing up in Vermont. In the same manner population extended westward beyond the Alleganies, as soon as the Indian disturbances were allayed in that direction. The go-a-head principle was ever active in British America. The population of Georgia was beginning to increase greatly, and in 1763 the first newspaper of that colony was published, called the “Georgia Gazette.” A vital principle was operating also in the new province of East Florida, now that she ranked among the British possessions. In ten years, more was done for the colony than had been done through the whole period of the Spanish occupation. A colony of Greeks settled about this time on the inlet still known as New Smyrna; and a body of settlers from the banks of the Roanoke planted themselves in West Florida, near Baton Rouge.[[10]]
Nor was this increase confined to the newer provinces; the older ones progressed in the same degree. Hildreth calls this the golden age of Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina, which were increasing in population and productions at a rate unknown before or since. In the north, leisure was found for the cultivation of literature, art, and social refinement. The six colonial colleges were crowded with students; a medical college was established in Pennsylvania, the first in the colonies; and West and Copley, both born in the same year—the one in New York, the other in Boston—proved that genius was native to the New World, though the Old afforded richer patronage. Besides all this, the late wars and the growing difficulties with the mother-country had called forth and trained able commanders for the field, and sagacious intellects for the control of the great events which were at hand.
CHAPTER III.
CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.
A vast amount of debt, as is always the case with war, was the result of the late contests in America. With peace, the costs of the struggle began to be reckoned. The colonies had lost, by disease or the sword, above 30,000 men; and their debt amounted to about £4,000,000, Massachusetts alone having been reimbursed by parliament. The popular power had, however, grown in various ways; the colonial assemblies had resisted the claims of the royal and proprietary governors to the management and irresponsible expenditure of the large sums which were raised for the war, and thus the executive influence became transferred in considerable degree from the governors to the colonial assemblies. Another, and still more dangerous result, was the martial spirit which had sprung up, and the discovery of the powerful means which the colonists held in their hands for settling any disputed points of authority and right with the mother-country. The colonies had of late been a military college to her citizens, in which, though they had performed the hardest service and had been extremely offended and annoyed by the superiority assumed by the British officers and their own subordination, yet they had been well trained, and had learned their own power and resources. The conquest of New France, in great measure, cost England her colonies.
England, at the close of the war—at the close, in fact, of four wars within seventy years—found herself burdened with a debt of £140,000,000; and as it was necessary now to keep a standing army in her colonies, to defend and maintain her late conquests, the scheme of colonial taxation to provide a regular and certain revenue began again to be agitated. Already England feared the growing power and independence of her colonies, and even at one moment hesitated as to whether it were not wiser to restore Canada to France, in order that the proximity of a powerful rival might keep them in check and secure their dependence on the mother-country. As far as the colonists themselves were concerned, we are assured by their earlier historians that the majority had no idea of or wish to separate themselves from England, and that the utmost which they contemplated by the conquest of Canada, was the freedom from French and Indian wars, and that state of tranquil prosperity which would leave them at liberty to cultivate and avail themselves of the productions and resources of an affluent land. The true causes which slowly alienated the colonies from the parent state may be traced back to the early encroachments on their civil rights and the restrictive enactments against their commerce.
The Americans were a bold and independent people from the beginning. They came to the shores of the New World, the greater and better part of them, republicans in feeling and principle. “They were men who scoffed at the right of kings, and looked upon rulers as public servants bound to exercise their authority for the benefit of the governed, and ever maintained that it is the inalienable right of the subject freely to give his money to the crown or to withhold it at his discretion.” Such were the Americans in principle, yet were they bound to the mother-country by old ties of affection, and by no means wishful to rush into rebellion. It was precisely the case of the son grown to years of discretion, whom an unreasonable parent seeks still to coerce, until the hitherto dutiful, though clear-headed and resolute son, violently breaks the bonds of parental authority and asserts the independence of his manhood. The human being would have been less worthy in submission; the colonies would have belied the strong race which planted them, had they done otherwise.
England believed that she had a right to dictate and change the government of the colonies at her pleasure, and to regulate and restrict their commerce; and for some time this was, if not patiently submitted to, at least allowed. The navigation acts declared that, for the benefit of British shipping, no merchandise from the English colonies should be imported into England excepting by English vessels; and, for the benefit of English manufacturers, prohibited exportation from the colonies, nor allowed articles of domestic manufacture to be carried from one colony to another; she forbade hats, at one time, to be made in the colony, where beaver abounded; at another, that any hatter should have above two apprentices at one time; she subjected sugar, rum and molasses to exorbitant duties on importation; she forbade the erection of iron-works and the preparation of steel; or the felling of pitch and white pine-trees unless in enclosed lands. To some of these laws, though felt to be an encroachment on their rights, the colonies submitted patiently; others, as for instance, the duties on sugar and molasses, they evaded and opposed in every possible way, and the British authorities, from the year 1733, when these duties were first imposed, to 1761, made but little resistance to this opposition. At this latter date, however, George III. having then ascended the throne, and being, as Charles Townshend described him, “a very obstinate young man,” it was determined to enforce this law, and “writs of assistance,” in other words, search-warrants, were issued, by means of which the royal custom-house officers were authorised to search for goods which had been imported without the payment of duty. The people of Boston opposed and resented these measures; and their two most eminent lawyers, Oxenbridge Thatcher and James Otis, expressed the public sentiment in the strongest language. Spite of search-warrants and official vigilance, the payment of these duties was still evaded, and smuggling increased to a great extent, while the colonial trade with the West Indies was nearly destroyed.