While these negotiations and events were taking place in Europe, all was not peace and satisfaction in America; and as regarded the case of the loyalists, the prospect of peace with the concession of Great Britain was anything but acceptable. We will take one incident to show the state of feeling between the two parties. After the American successes in the Carolinas and Georgia, and the capitulation of York Town, the loyalists, maddened by the loss of their property and friends, and the hopeless prospects before them for the future, determined to take the law into their own hands, and on the first occasion hang a republican in retaliation. White, a loyalist, had been put to death for some cause on the 30th of March; on the 12th of April, therefore, Joshua Huddy, a captain in Washington’s army, was seized and hanged, with the following label on his breast: “We, the refugees, having beheld with grief the murders of our brethren, determine not to suffer without taking vengeance, and thus begin; and have made use of Captain Huddy as the first object to present to your view; and further determine to hang man for man while there is a refugee existing. Up goes Huddy for Philip White!”
Savage as was this spirit of vengeance, it was the natural growth of the terrible struggle which for so many years had been going forward in the heart of the country, and which gradually transformed men into fiends. This Philip White, it appears, was murdered by a set of men called the “Monmouth Retaliators,” at the head of which was a General Forman, otherwise “Black David.” Captain Huddy, it was said, was also himself a retaliator. Sir Henry Clinton immediately ordered the murderers of Huddy to be arrested; and Captain Lippincott, their leader, being tried by court-martial, a verdict of Not Guilty was returned, on the plea that he had merely acted in obedience to the commands of his superiors, the “Directors of the Board of Associated Loyalists.” Washington, dissatisfied with this decision, demanded that Lippincott should be given up to him, to be tried by republican law, which being refused, he wrote again, declaring that he, too, in that case, would retaliate. A few days after this second letter, Sir Henry Clinton was superseded by Sir Guy Carleton, who brought with him the first intimation of the willingness of the British government to treat for peace with the United States on the basis of their independence. To him Washington applied on the subject of Lippincott, declaring, as he had already done to Sir Henry Clinton, his intention of retaliation, if Lippincott were not given up. The young officer selected by lot for this melancholy and wicked purpose was Captain Asgill, a prisoner taken at York Town, son of Sir Charles Asgill, and only nineteen years of age. Sir Guy Carleton, in reply to Washington’s demand, very properly broke up the Society of Associated Loyalists; but Lippincott was still not given up. In the meantime, the rank and peculiar circumstances of young Asgill had aroused a strong party to intercede in his behalf; but it was not until November that this young man was set at liberty and allowed to return home. Whether in reality he would have suffered innocently under Washington’s threat of retaliation, we cannot say; but his liberation appears rather to have been the result of interference than a voluntary concession on the part of the American commander. Lady Asgill wrote, in July, a very affecting letter to the French minister Vergennes, beseeching his interference as a friend of Washington’s, with that commander; and this letter being read by Vergennes to the king and queen of France, they commissioned the minister to add their desires to his own, “that the inquietudes of an unfortunate mother might be calmed, and her tenderness reassured.” Washington, on this, forwarded the copy of Lady Asgill’s letter, which had been sent to him, together with that of the French minister, to congress, and the result was an order from that body, dated 7th of November, to set Captain Asgill at liberty.
CHAPTER XIII.
STATE OF THE COUNTRY AFTER THE WAR.
Another great cause of anxiety at this moment, though by no means a fresh one, was the poverty of the American government, which rendered the situation of the Republic, even after it had achieved its object, extremely critical. In the prospect of peace, and the consequent disbanding of the army, where was the money to be found to pay its long arrears, to say nothing of the gratuities which had been promised to both officers and men on the termination of the war? In May, 1782, Washington wrote of his army on the Hudson, as destitute of provisions and in a state of disorder and almost mutiny; and that if the British knew his real situation, and were to make a sudden attempt, he must be driven from his post. Of the army in the South, also, General Greene wrote in August an account still more melancholy. He said that of his men, one-third were “entirely naked, with nothing but a pair of breeches about them, and never came out of their tents,” and that the remainder were “as ragged as wolves.” Their food was as bad as it could be, “their beef perfect carrion, and even of that they had often none at all;” and that the spirit of the army was so mutinous that executions were not unfrequent to check it. Washington feared that even this terrible remedy would lose its effect, and that peace with Britain, if it came, might be succeeded by a social war, so difficult would it be to disband an army with weapons in their hands, who had no prospect before them but poverty and starvation. Well might a deep gloom rest at this time upon his mind.
In the month of July, the rate of interest demanded for money was sixty per cent. In September, Morris, on whose credit the national bank in Philadelphia had been established, confessed that he had no money, and as to borrowing more, it would only increase the mischief, as he saw no prospect of payment.
About this same time the French auxiliary army marched from Virginia to Boston, where it embarked. Hildreth says that the conduct of the French troops, during the two years and a half that they had been in the country, had been very exemplary. They had done less mischief on their marches than the same number of American soldiers; and the regularity with which all their supplies were paid for in cash, contrasted most favourably with the means by which the American troops were too often subsisted.
The boundary line of some of the states having, as we have already said, been a fertile subject of dispute for many years, became in some few instances settled during the present year. Hence, the western boundary of Pennsylvania being decided, Pittsburg returned again to the jurisdiction of that state. The quarrel, too, was adjusted between Connecticut and Pennsylvania, relative to the territorial claim to Wyoming, which also was settled in favour of the larger state, not wholly, however, to the satisfaction of the people of Wyoming.
Between Vermont and New York an old dispute existed. New York asserted a claim to the whole territory—Vermont resolutely resisted it; and being peopled by a stout, determined race, the Green Mountain Boys had, as we have already related, declared themselves, in 1778, an independent state, and as such had applied to congress for admission into the Union. The delegates of New York prevented their admission, but nothing daunted by their rejection, they organised their own constitution, and chose the farmer and innkeeper, Thomas Chittenden, as governor. To be an innkeeper in those primitive, sturdy times, was not to be a man of an inferior class: three American generals, Putnam, Wheedon, and Sumner, were innkeepers, as well as the clear-headed and stout-hearted governor of Vermont. Besides the dispute with New York, the Green Mountain Boys had a second with their equally sturdy neighbour, New Hampshire, the ground of which was this: sixteen newly-settled townships, on the eastern side of the Connecticut River, had applied to be received as a part of Vermont, in order to escape from the heavy taxes which the war rendered it necessary to impose. The townships on both sides of the river next endeavoured to constitute themselves into a new state, under the name of New Connecticut. This secession caused New Hampshire, in retaliation, to lay claim to the whole territory of Vermont. New Hampshire and New York both claiming Vermont, Massachusetts next started up as a claimant also, and demanded, on the plea of her old rights, the whole southern portion of this coveted little state. Congress now offered to interfere and settle the question of this disputed territory, which Massachusetts objected to, in the fear that by this means she would not come in for any portion at all. Vermont, in the meantime, had made up her mind to abide no decision of congress, any more than to yield to any of the separate claimant states, and now took a step, in the persons of her bold sons, the farmer Chittenden and the two warlike brothers Ethan and Ira Allen, the true intention of which has never yet been clearly ascertained. Negotiations were entered into with the British authorities in Canada, probably with a twofold view of guarding against invasion from that side in the present critical state of their affairs, and of operating on the fears of congress. The scheme appeared to answer its purpose; congress promised to recognise Vermont as an independent state, providing she would relinquish her encroachments on New York and New Hampshire. Vermont deliberated; and New York and New Hampshire protesting against the interference of congress, declared that they would send in troops to establish their claims to the whole. Civil war seemed at hand, when Washington interfered, like the parent among his quarrelsome children, and recommended that the New Hampshire townships should be restored to the original state, which was agreed to, and Vermont again applied to be received into the Union, when again New York interfered to prevent the accomplishment of her wishes. This was in February, 1782, when peace with Great Britain was looked upon as certain. And now came a time when Vermont triumphed over her more powerful neighbours, and cared very little for admission into the Union. She was thus free from continental debt, and the perpetual calls of congress for money.
The opposition which New York made to the admission of Vermont into the Union was strengthened by the four Southern States, who dreaded lest their own backwoodsmen should follow the example of the bold little northern state. Kentucky, which in 1781 had increased so greatly that it was divided into three counties—Jefferson, Fayette, and Lincoln—had, as we already know, long since petitioned congress on the subject, and similar ideas prevailed among the settlers on the Tennessee.[[54]]
Though the main armies were lying in a state of inactivity during the present year of pacific negotiation, war still prevailed, and that with unusual severity, on the western frontiers. The Christian Delawares settled on the river Muskinghum, in the present state of Ohio, where they had many flourishing and populous villages, suffered cruelly at this period. Unlike the Indians in general, they had, as followers of Christ, renounced war and the weapons of war, and aimed at preserving throughout these troubled times a perfect neutrality. The hostile Indians, on their way from Detroit and the north-west to the American frontiers, demanded supplies from these Delawares, whose villages lay directly on the war-path, and which they had no means of refusing. Hence they were regarded by the backwoodsmen as “the half-way-house” of the enemy, and compelled, in the autumn of 1781, to abandon their peaceful and prosperous homes, and remove to Sandusky on Lake Erie. The following winter, being reduced to great suffering from the want of provisions, they obtained permission to return to the Muskinghum, to gather in the corn left standing in the fields. Just then some murders being committed, near Pittsburg, by a wandering party of Shawanees, the Delawares, though innocent, were suspected, and about ninety men of the neighbourhood, under the leadership of one Williamson, marched to the Muskinghum to take vengeance. For want of a canoe, they crossed the river in a wooden trough made to hold maple sap, two men at once, and arrived at the centre village, where a party of Christian Indians were gathering in their corn. The Indians of another village were sent for, and a council held to decide on their fate. Williamson referred the matter to his men. Sixteen only voted for mercy, the remainder, holding the faith common on the frontiers, that “an Indian had no more soul than a buffalo,” were for the murder of all. They rushed on their prey, knife in hand, and soon ninety unarmed Indians, avowing, like themselves, faith in Christ, lay bleeding on the ground.