There were many others who thought just as he did; but they usually either went to live in England or Canada or kept quiet in semi-concealment waiting until the power of Britain should restore order and good government to the colonies. But Duché, feeling that he was in somewhat of a public position, argued out the whole subject in a long letter to General Washington, calling on him in the name of God and humanity to put an end to the frightful state of affairs so mutually destructive to the best interests of both the colonies and England.
He was horrified he said to find that rather than give up the idol independence the rebels "would deluge this country in blood." In short he was horrified at the Krugerism of Washington who intended to make England "pay a price that would stagger humanity." As to the rebel army its existence depended on one man. Most of its officers were from "the lowest of the people." "Take away those who surround your person, how few are there that you can ask to sit at your table." The rebels had hoped for aid from France: but after three years of waiting it had not come and there were no signs of it. The whig party in England was growing smaller. The whole English nation, "all orders and ranks of men are now unanimous and determined to risk their all on the contest."
"Under so many discouraging circumstances, can virtue, can honor, can the love of your country prompt you to persevere. Humanity itself (and sure I am humanity is no stranger to your breast) calls upon you to desist. Your army must perish for want of common necessaries, or thousands of innocent families must perish to support them. Wherever they encamp the country must be impoverished. Wherever they march the troops of Britain will pursue and must complete the devastation which America herself has begun."
"Perhaps it may be said, 'it is better to die than to be slaves.' This indeed is a splendid maxim in theory: and perhaps in some instances, may be found experimentally true. But where there is the least probability of a happy accommodation surely wisdom and humanity call for some sacrifices to be made to prevent inevitable destruction."
It reads almost as if you had written it yourself, does it not? It raised the whole question fairly and squarely, the whole question of the moral right of a naturally separated people to struggle for independence to the bitter end, the last ditch, extermination or whatever name you choose to give it, or as in the case of Ireland, the Armenians and the Poles without end.
I do not mean to say that that was the only time that Washington had had the question brought squarely before him. It was a question that came up all over the country every day for seven years down to within a few months of the surrender of Cornwallis in 1781; for the year 1780 was as you know the darkest hour in our revolution. Every individual in those seven years had that question before him every day and hour, and as individuals settled it for themselves one way or the other they dropped in and out of the two sides of the contest.
How did Washington settle it with Duché? The young clergyman made a powerful appeal to him. He said that the whole solution of the war rested with Washington alone. He alone could stop the fighting. He alone could persuade the other leaders in the name of God and humanity to give up a hopeless contest. This was somewhat of an exaggeration. The war was deeper than Washington just as the Boer war is deeper than Kruger. But never mind that. Duché's idea was that Washington should at the head of his army negotiate for some settlement short of independence. Independence, England would never grant.
Awful and wicked as it now no doubt seems to you, Washington declined this honor. He sent Duché's letter to the wandering congress. It was copied and given a wide publicity. Your ancestor and the men of that time never dodged the question raised by that letter. Washington also sent a copy to Duché's brother-in-law, Francis Hopkinson, and if you want to read a stinging letter I can recommend the letter Hopkinson wrote to his perverted relative. The whole correspondence including Duché's letter is printed in the appendix to the edition of 1846 of Graydon's Memoirs. I shall quote just one passage from Hopkinson's letter:
"The whole force of the reasoning," he says to Duché, "contained in your letter tends to this point: that virtue and honor require us to stand by truth, as long as it can be done with safety, but that her cause may be abandoned on the approach of danger; or in other words, that the justice of the American cause ought to be squared by the success of her arms."
The moral or principle contained in that passage is repudiated by you and by every one who lives in England; by the Russians also, most of the Germans, many Frenchmen and in fact Europe generally. If you fear numbers you do well, no doubt, in repudiating it. But it was on that moral principle that our revolution was put through. Whoever denies that principle denies the United States, denies our foundation principle and our validity, denies the justice and righteousness of the struggles which created Switzerland, and all the South American republics including Cuba, struggles which are still carried on by the Armenians after seven hundred years of failure and by the Irish for the same period, struggles which in fact, originally created England, France, Germany and all the powers which now affect to despise them, struggles which create nationalities and all that is useful, honorable or valuable in civil or political life. When you deny the right of a naturally separated people to struggle without end for independence, you deny the most fundamental and necessary, the most powerful and far reaching, the most scientific and well settled principle of moral conduct that history has disclosed.